I'm an eccentric!

It's not that often you hear someone describe themselves as 'eccentric'. Publicly at least. While researching my book I found that only the die-hard exhibitionists went out of their way to do this.

Which makes the president of the Formula 1 governing body Max Mosley's description of his private life as 'eccentric' quite interesting. For me at least, as I'm more or less obsessed with the word. It's interesting because it reinforces the idea that for a person or lifestyle to be eccentric it must be within the bounds of common sympathy. It's not taboo.

What I also came to realise is that anyone who actively calls themselves eccentric is almost certainly not, which is why this headline stuck out.

Here's what he looks like,

Videotape, Youtube, Moral Turpitude

I've found Arthur's video- or rather someone else found it and passed it on to me. This is a relief. The tape was in a box at a film production company's office and looked set to see out its days in there until the box was opened accidentally, which means I can, in theory, look him in the eye again.

With the kind of symmetry that I like, only hours after getting my hands on his compilation tape of former tv appearances I was able to upload a brand new piece about Arthur. It's the pick of the footage shot by me and Hels (lover) over the last four months. I do the camerawork. She does the sound. We both ask questions and nod politely. I think the section at the end of this clip is really moving.

In other news In Search of the English Eccentric, I've edited my chat with Sebastian Horsley about Moral Turpitude and being eccentric into this; the nation's favourite jailbird has been moved into a secure unit after prison staff learnt of a plot to do him in; and Vivienne Westwood has just launched a new line of shoes in collaboration with Melissa (who is not a person but one of the leading lights in Brazilian footwear, I'm told).

I had dinner with someone called Sebastian Mary this week. Sebastian Mary blogs a lot. She has more blogs than pairs of shoes. She said that when it came to writing blogs the key was to keep it to three paragraphs, or less, and always include a picture... So. If I can't do three paragraphs, I can at least put up a picture. Here are Dame Vivienne's new shoes. The silver one is best if you ask me. And I think we need one of Arthur,

And another

Review of Tree of Rivers, this time in the Sunday Times; including the best part of a paragraph about one of my favourite English eccentrics, someone who gets a few pages in In Search of the English Eccentric, the naturalist Charles Waterton:

We meet Charles Waterton, “the first Englishman to write in praise of tropical forests”. In his later years he turned his Yorkshire estate “into a wildlife sanctuary full of artificial burrows and nests...liked to dress as a scarecrow and sit in trees”, and “launched the world's first successful legal action over environmental pollution, against the owner of a nearby soap-works whose chimneys released noxious chemicals”.

Tree of Rivers

This doesn't have much to do with English eccentrics, but, here are two great reviews in this weekend's Telegraph of my Dad's latest book. It's called Tree of Rivers, published by Thames and Hudson, and is a single-volume history of the Amazon; obviously I'm biased in saying this but I think it's great, so have a look if you get the chance.

In the beginning there was Pete

Here is the first of twelve etchings that I've been working on over the last four months. It's of Pete Doherty, based on a photo I took backstage moments before Babyshambles played a gig in Birmingham at the National Indoor Arena. 'You pick your moments, don't you,' were the words that had just left his lips when the shutter opened.

I've etched him into copper, before inking him up and printing him onto some 19th century hand-made laid paper.

But why? - why bother going to all that trouble instead of just using a photo? Because I wanted to imitate/emulate Sydney Parkinson, one of the principle artists to accompany Captain Cook on his voyage to the south seas in the late 18th century. This moment in history was also when the word 'eccentric' first appeared in the English literary and cultural landscape. In writing In Search of... I've tried to use a late 18th century understanding of the word and apply it to a 21st century setting. So with this etching, similarly, a late 18th century lens is used to present a contemporary icon. Also I wanted to emulate this man's work because of the way he depicted his subjects. Most were Pacific islanders, men or women who had never seen white Western Europeans before, avatars of the unknown for an English public who would later see the prints, so for Parkinson there'd have been a temptation to show them as exotically wierd, alien, unusual, Other. He doesn't. See below. Instead he renders them familiar. There's something entirely unthreatening about the expression of this guy- 'a Chief of New Zealand, the face curiously tatowd, or mark'd, according to their manner'. I guess in an identical sense, having met them, I didn't want to portray the people I had interviewed as odd or in some way alien, and I think there's a temptation of sorts to do this when writing a book about English eccentrics.

where to begin

This really is not the beginning. That won't be for a month or so, for now I just want to see how it works, and what the words look like on the screen.

That said, while I'm here, I may as well run through what some of the people who appear in In Search of the English Eccentric are up to - after all that's what I've just said I'd do in filling out the bit at the top that asks you what your blog is about. No more than 500 words. So. How are they? Arthur's doing very well, he's just written a book, and although a bit broke, is in good spirits and looking forward to Gordon Brown calling a General Election so he can start his campaign for Salisbury. I am right behind him. He's also about to start a picket at Stone Henge in the next few weeks. I had lunch with him yesterday in a pub in Kennington because I'm trying to make a film about him. Though this might be in jeopardy- there's a slim chance that one of his videos went missing while it was in my care. It's a compilation tape that he lent me a few months ago. This makes me feel really bad. Not only do I hate losing things that belong to other people but Arthur is someone I don't want to piss off - probably a combination of fear and liking him a lot.

Sebastian Horsley, the Dandy, was deported from America a few weeks ago on account of, as he told me this afternoon, lips curling themselves around the words as if they were female and getting undressed, 'moral turpitude'. What he said will go up on my website fairly soon as I had a camera on my lap.

There are plenty of other things to say about the people in my book, since the book has gone to the printers, but I will leave the rest until later and close with the beginning of the letter that arrived today. It came in a dinky cream-coloured envelope, second-class post. On the back the following words had been stamped: THE ONLY GOOD GERMAN IS A DEAD ONE. Because a stamp had been used, rather than one of those gold stickers people with stationery disorders used in the 90s, it looked for a moment like a Royal Mail frank. Perhaps they were trying to promote a new line of first edition stamps I thought for a moment. Or it was a new advertising space - what a great place to advertise. But I knew by then who it was from, and that I'd interviewed him a year ago.

'Dear Henry', it began, 'Thank you for your letter warning me that your book is actually going to happen. This is going to cause me much embarrassment, so I will have to hope the work proves a miserable failure. In any case I shall arrange to live abroad for a couple of years.'

The rest can wait for a little bit.