Lately #39: Sequins, Sherlock and the history of toilets
Five things to entertain you, and one piece of advice.
On Sundays, we share some of our favourite finds from the week in our Lately newsletter.
I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to Scotland, Norfolk and London (more on that below) - so reading time has been scarce.
I did catch this interesting piece by
about statues of women around the city, and in the few spare moments I had, I’ve finally been listening to Spare. Only two years behind and I’d absorbed the big Harry headlines (Elizabeth Arden cream, etc.) but I’m glad I jumped in. I could feel the ghostwriter coming through a lot, but I appreciate the honesty and found sympathy for wee Harry again! Might skip past all the wedding chat, though.Back to the usual routine, and more backstories coming your way,
Gillian
Something we should all be watching…
I was looking for a film to keep me awake on the plane, so I amped up the sparkle factor…. He’s been called the ‘Sultan of Sequins’ and the ‘King of Camp’, and this documentary takes you along the racks of Bob Mackie’s most iconic dress designs.
Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion (2024) focuses on what’s made the costume designer a legend of stage and screen: the sequins, the sketches, the sheer volume of work - and a level of artistry that the film shows is becoming increasingly rare.
Bob always knew what he wanted to do and came out the gate running - he created the sketches for THE Marilyn Monroe dress fresh out of college when he was only 21! From there came Cher’s most eyeball-smashing looks, Tina Turner’s revamped Paris thrift finds, and 17,000(!) costumes for The Carol Burnett Show.
We get flashes of Bob’s vulnerability behind all the sparkle - from personal loss to finding a grandchild he didn’t know existed - but the heart of the film is a portrait of a relentless, detail-obsessed artist who reshaped pop culture, one rhinestone at a time.
Something else we should all be watching…
Sorry, no podcasts from me this week, but Yara has things covered here. (Try Sea of Lies and you’ll be hooked!)
Instead, a quick mention for a ‘story behind’ tale that caught my interest - about a different Epstein. Midas Man (2024), the biopic about Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ early manager drew some critical reviews (first up, no rights to Beatles songs), but I hadn’t realised that the production issues were so vast, they could make a film of their own!
Still, we all know that behind every drama like this are the individuals who go above and beyond to pull a project together. As someone who knew little about Epstein, I loved seeing him ‘discover’ the band at the Cavern Club and give them their grey-suit-mop-haircut makeovers. The film balances humour and tragedy, and it’s astonishing to see what he and the band achieved before his death at just 32.
Some literary stops in London…
A snapshot from the Marylebone stopover, which became unintentionally literary-themed…
How to pick a hotel… I went with The Holmes Hotel on Baker Street, which says it’s ‘Created for curious minds’. It is, of course, inspired by the area’s most famous resident, Sherlock Holmes - I was in, and hopeful for gimmicks. The interiors are full of nods to the great detective, from velvet armchairs to framed magnifying glasses. The building itself has history - once the first higher education college for women in the UK and, before that, home to aristocrats who decamped to London for the social season. I left my ballgowns in Dubai and was in bed by 9pm.
Played detective at… the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street - who’s been? I loved it, and there were plenty of nodding heads on the tour from the die-hard Holmes fans (did you know he never wore the deerstalker hat in the books?).
Consider me daunted… by Daunt Books which has been around since 1912, and was originally a travel bookshop (hello Hugh Grant in Notting Hill). It still leads with destinations rather than genres. I’d love to tell you more about that but I barely got a glimpse at the adult books - the kids’ shelves were calling. See what my daughter picked at point 5 below….
An interesting backstory…
We also managed to catch Matilda the Musical and got a fresh copy of the book, seeing as my old one has wandered off. Roald Dahl’s daughter, Lucy, once said Matilda was one of the hardest books for him to write: “I think that there was a deep genuine fear within his heart that books were going to go away and he wanted to write about it.”
In a 1986 letter to her - two years before Matilda was published - Dahl confessed:
"The reason I haven't written you for a long time is that I have been giving every moment to getting a new children's book finished. And now at last I have finished it, and I know jolly well that I am going to have to spend the next three months rewriting the second half. The first half is great, about a small girl who can move things with her eyes and about a terrible headmistress who lifts small children up by their hair and hangs them out of upstairs windows by one ear. But I've got now to think of a really decent second half. The present one will all be scrapped. Three months work gone out the window, but that's the way it is. I must have rewritten Charlie [and the Chocolate Factory] five or six times all through and no one knows it."
Something that might surprise you…
Our most recent book purchase. The word ‘revolting’ on the back cover was a big draw (see previous section for relevance).
When my young daughter took this up to the sales counter, the assistant, wide-eyed said, “That’s a bit rude…”. Before I could step in and say, “Eh, it’s from your shelf,” she finished, “… and I’d love to read it, too!”
So, assuming you feel the same, here’s one of many facts from this disgustingly fascinating book:
“As the Black Death plague swept the world in the 1300s, Mongol armies mixed gunpowder with poo from their own infected soldiers, lit it on fire, then catapulted it over enemy walls! The exploding poo balls infected everyone inside.”
A piece of advice:
Seeing as I’m listening to Matilda the Musical soundtrack on repeat, here’s some wisdom from the composer and lyricist, Tim Minchin:
“Don’t seek happiness. This is a futile pursuit. Just keep busy and try to make other people happy.”
From Tim Minchin’s brilliant 9 Life Lessons graduation speech
Sounds like the London trip was a huge success! If you like Roald Dahl there was (maybe still is) a play at the West End called Giant with John Lithgow as Dahl. It’s about a very specific episode in his life when he was writing The Witches and it touches on his creative process as well as on many other things, like his views on Israel at the time. Highly recommend it, John Lithgow is brilliant in it.
I so love Matilda – both the book and the musical. Tim Minchin is a genius!