Epitaph | AnOther

Epitaph | At the Savoy in Mayfair

— February 12, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

Lillie Langtry, Photography by W. & D. Downey, 1891 9 1/8 x 7 1/4 in.

Last week it emerged that the refurbishment of the Savoy in Mayfair may end up costing as much as £200 million, twice what it was supposed to. The London debut of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado financed the hotel's original construction in the 1880s, but you'd presumably need a whole karaoke bar full of Mikados to pay for the current refit; and there is no celebrity alive today that could guarantee such a vigorou...

Epitaph | Sunset Boulevard

— February 1, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

Sunset Boulevard poster, 1950

There's a famous scene in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard when Gloria Swanson's character, an aging silent film actress called Norma Desmond, sits down to a game of bridge with Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson and H. B. Warner, all playing themselves.William Holden's character, her young lover, describes them as “the waxworks.” After the first take of that scene was finished, Keaton, then 55, looked...

Epitaph | Around the World

— January 27, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae showing route of Francis Drakes Circumnavigation of the globe by Jodocus Hondius, 1595 The Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake

One of my favourite pages on the entire internet is this one, on which someone has gone to the trouble of transcribing the complete and unabridged lyrics to Daft Punk's 1997 single “Around the World” – which consist of the words “around the world” repeated 144 times. It's not only an indispensable reference text but also a reminder that the very act of circumnavigation, like the lau...

Epitaph | Commanding the Masses

— January 21, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

Untitled, (Crowd 2), Photography by Alexey Titarenko, 1993

In 1923, Cecil B DeMille paid two assistants a hefty bonus to sit on the beach for a few weeks until they were so sunburnt they looked like braised pork belly. The purpose of their agony was that, during the filming of The Ten Commandments, DeMille wanted to know exactly how much scorch-simulating oil to squirt on the 2,500 extras playing Israelites in the desert. Those extras had been sent out on a train to the Californi...

Epitaph | Masters of Suspense

— January 12, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

Photography by Alison Scarpulla, March 7 2009

In her autobiography, Agatha Christie writes about her second husband: "Poor Max had one serious penalty laid on him by marriage. He had, as far as I could find out, never read a novel. Katharine Woolley had forced The Murder of Roger Ackroyd upon him, but he had got out of reading it. Somebody had discussed the denouement in front of him, and after that, he said, 'What on earth is the good of reading a book when you k...

Epitaph | Great Mahavits

— January 4, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a weekly tribute to pioneers and heavyweights who died on this day in history, and the unexpected coincidences that bind them together

T.S. Eliot with his sister and cousin, Photograhy by Lady Ottoline Morrell, Date unknown National Portrait Gallery, London

In Hinduism there is a word, mahavit, for someone who has learnt the theory of a religion but hasn't yet applied it to the practice of his daily life. Whether its usual connotation is more like "cautious observer" or "slouchy dilletante", I don't know enough to say, but either way, inherent in it is a slight tension. If you believe, then why not live as if you believe? And if you don't believe, then why waste all that time i...