Culture

Epitaph | Masters of Suspense

— January 12, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a 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...

Culture

Epitaph | Great Mahavits

— January 4, 2010—

Ned Beauman’s Epitaph is a 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...

Culture

Epitaph | Scrap Metal

— December 23, 2009—

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

The Three Graces, from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum Garden, 2006 Photography by Steve Matthys

In 1938 the heiress and art patron Peggy Guggenheim was given the pretty galling verdict that a boatload of sculptures for which she had paid tens of thousands of dollars were legally nothing more than driftwood and scrap metal. She was trying to mount a sculpture exhibition at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, but James Bolivar Manson, the director of the Tate, had ruled that these works by Constantin Brancus...

Culture

Epitaph | A String of Deaths

— December 18, 2009—

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

The Violin Maker’s Shop Window, Seattle, Washington, 2008 Photography by Viv

On the world's oldest surviving violin, produced by Andrea Amati in 1564, you can see the same curly soundholes either side of the strings, like silhouettes of apple peel that you can see on any modern violin. And that's not because of tradition. It's because, in nearly five hundred years, no-one has been able to come up with a shape that works better. In fact, it's extraordinary how little has changed in any aspect of t...

Culture

Epitaph | Serial Monopolists

— December 2, 2009—

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

Jay Gould and wife Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

In the London Library this week, I came across an intriguing little book called The House of Gibbs and the Peruvian Guano Monopoly by WM Mathew. That title is notable not just for its unexpected euphony but also for its implication that once upon a time somebody genuinely made it his most cherished ambition to corner the market in sundried birdshit. But then perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise: absolutely anything w...

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Culture

Epitaph | A Sure Bet

— November 27, 2009—

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

Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, Reconstructed in 1991 Public Domain

If you are a zoologist who goes out looking for unicorns in the hope that you can sell off their powdered horns for some sort of male potency tonic, you probably do not find yourself the toast of your faculty Christmas drinks. But somehow, if you are a mathematician who goes out looking for a sure way to win at gambling – equally implausible, equally greedy – you can still be respectable. The man who invented...