Lit. Art, Music was an idea that came to me while struggling for a story. I had a vague idea about a story involving William Blake, who was the sort of character The Doctor would get on with like a house on fire. While I was googling his life to work out where exactly he lived and when, I had an idea of what might happen if he was removed from literary history. The scene with Susan reciting ‘Jerusalem’ and slowly forgetting it, despite The Doctor prompting her, virtually wrote itself after that.

Lambeth in the late Georgian era WAS exactly as described in this story. A dismal place. The windmills mentioned ARE Blake’s Dark Satanic Mills. That poem is NOT about the Industrial Revolution and Lancashire cotton mills as most people think. He was DEAD before the height of that era. He WAS referring to the windmills which he imagined to be “malevolent giants” as The Doctor says here.

The story of Blake and his wife reading Paradise Lost while naked may or may not be true. It was told by my undergraduate literature teacher to try to engender some enthusiasm for Milton. The story about Aeschylus and the death by tortoise also came from the same teacher and had the effect of being the only thing I can remember about Aeschylus without googling him. BOTH those anecdotes HAD to go into the story after that.

And you can tell, can’t you, that I really don’t like Thomas Hardy. Nothing against the man, and other people like his stuff. But it bored me. Even the film adaptation of Jude with the gorgeous Christopher Eccleston playing a blinder in the title role leaves me cold. And don’t even go there with Mayor of Casterbridge. Evelyn Waugh, on the other hand, I always liked APART from Brideshead Revisited, which goes in the same bin as Mayor of Casterbridge now that I HAVE my degree and don’t have to read them, again.

A world without Bram Stoker’s Dracula, on the other hand, wouldn’t bear thinking about!

Then there was art. And here it got fun. Visiting the Louvre and finding that Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa isn’t the most famous painting in the world was one shock. The drawing of a police telephone box getting smaller and smaller was another. There was a Doctor Who in-joke of course, in the fact that the TARDIS was being mistaken for a piece of modern art. Remember City of Death where the TARDIS got appraised for its aesthetic beauty!

Leonardo giving the clue as to what happened to The Doctor, the only other person he could trust. Again, Leonardo Da Vinci is an old acquaintance of The Doctor’s, and one who is in on the secret.

The other literary genius in on The Doctor’s secret, of course, is H G Wells. Remember Timelash. Not a fan favourite, and with problems in its production, but it DID introduce The Doctor to young Herbert, and allegedly inspired his great novel, The Time Machine.

But who is up to the mischief? None other than B’Tallia Vance! The thorn in The Doctor’s side. She finally gets her come-uppance when The Doctor turns her shrink ray on him. And notice that he KEEPS one of the shrink guns. Watch this space!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Louvre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_G_Wells