William Beckford had two lives: one real and sensational, the other an elegant forgery he invented in retirement after the young Disraeli mischievously sent him a homoerotic epic based loosely on Beckford's own career. Biographers have been bemused by Beckford's faked letters and dream encounters with celebrities, but his real life was far more significant: he is the pivotal Romantic between Horace Walpole and Byron. Beckford was reared in exotic isolation in a Palladian palace where he grew up obsessed with dark grottoes, towers and images of the living dead. Rushed into marriage by an apprehensive mother, he indulged his actual passions (both legal and paedophile) until a Tory administration staged a sex scandal that exiled him. In his absence his novel, Vathek was treacherously pirated. Returned to England, Beckford flung his wealth into the creation of Fonthill Abbey, which, by its shadowy vistas and glamorous camp furnishings, paved the way for the wildest excesses of Victorian taste.

William Beckford

Mowl, Timothy

Mowl, Tim

Biographies & Memoirs

Faber&Faber

Bristol: City on the Edge

Travel

Menneer, Neill

Europe

Frances Lincoln Ltd.

<p>. with dustjacket, bright clean copy</p>

Trumpet at a Distant Gate: The Lodge as Prelude to the Country House

Arts & Photography

Earnshaw, Brian

Architecture

Waterstone & Co Ltd

Country Walks Around Bath

Millstream Books

Palladian Bridges

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Books by Mowl, Tim