Gilbert & George: With Telephone Box

"London's the new Babylon, don't you think? Nobody can understand each other, but it is all happening"

Is there an artist or writer they both particularly admire?

"Obviously William Blake. He personified what you could call looking at the world in a different way."

Telegraph, London's artists, curators, actors, musicians and writers on creativity.

Also contains Peter Ackroyd and Grayson Perry. 
 

Peter Ackroyd: On Hitchcock

Something that surprised Ackroyd in his trawl through the films was Hitchcock's effeminacy. "I had no idea he was like that. You occasionally get little snatches of documentary film, in which he's behaving – not outrageously, but in a rather camp way. I think it was a component of his personality, but of course he was too scared and undemonstrative to allow it to take over." In the book, he says: "It would be an interesting parlour game to name any [of Hitchcock's] leading characters who were not intimated to be bisexual." Seriously? What, Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps? "Well, OK, not him," Ackroyd says, smiling. "But they all seem a bit… funny, don't they? Michael Redgrave in The Lady Vanishes? Cary Grant in North by Northwest? The two men in Strangers on a Train? They're all fey and unserious and camp. And he treated his heroines as more masculine than the men."

Peter Ackroyd in The Independent on the titular subject of his latest biography, Alfred Hitchcock,

Update: Peter develops his theme in The Sunday Times...

He was inspired to begin his newest book, a well- received biography of Alfred Hitchcock published last week, after discovering the director was “camp” and “really rather a screamer” with a “funny mincing step”, which Ackroyd demonstrates by walking his index and middle fingers along his desk in a prissy sort of fashion and doing a little pout. Might Hitchcock have been bisexual, I ask.

“Well, he said he had ‘poofy’ moments when he was reading Vogue. But if that qualified you as a homosexual, half the population would be condemned.”

Fagburn: On The Beach

Nothing remarkable in Saturday's papers, so I think I'll go to the beach with some improving literature.

PS Mind you, I was up at this crack this morning and went for a troll down Holborn with dolly old Peter Ackroyd.
She says she's writing a gay history of London.
Bona!

Peter Ackroyd: Disappointed

"When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either. I used to tap dance, but I can’t now."

Q&A with Peter Ackroyd in FT Weekend - the FT proper has next to no coverage of The Gays, it's kinda outside their remit, but FT Weekend seems positively obsessed - and in a good way.