3.5 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
In one of the less salubrious parts of London, sometimes known as Porn Alley, David Banning started a short stint of work experience. Not in the sex trade, but as a tape operator in a recording studio.
It was here that he met Gen and the story of him picking up a filmmaker called Derek. At the time, Banning had no idea who he was, but he knew that both of them had virtually no money.
Three decades later, Banning would be making a pilgrimage to the home of this filmmaker. He lived on the Dungeness peninsula, and his home was called Prospect Cottage.
Derek Jarman went to school at Canford, close to where I live and made his name in art and film and was a prominent gay rights campaigner. It was later at Prospect Cottage where his love of gardening would develop. Born in 1942, the same year as my mother, he would have been 84 if AIDS hadn’t cruelly taken him in 1994.
Dungeness is a bleak place. The open shingle beach is also the location of a nuclear power station and somehow a national nature reserve. Jarman bought a cottage there and somehow created a beautiful garden. It was full of salt-tolerant plants and he decorated it with the flotsam that he collected from the beach. If you haven’t read Modern Nature, then I can highly recommend it.
Banning’s journey to the tiny black building with its yellow windows is an espresso-length book. He manages to capture the emptiness of Dungeness and the bright intensity of Prospect Cottage that still reflects the character of the man he had come to find. In those polar opposites, he sees glimpses of Jarman and is left wondering what would have been if he was still with us today…
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