Snapshots and old photographs
posted by Henri Llewelyn Davies @ 09:33
6 Comments
Friday 6 June 2008
About Me
- Name: Henri Llewelyn Davies
- Location: London, United Kingdom
My real name is Henrietta - Henri stuck (like names do - for no reason) from when I was sixteen and at boarding school, which I hated. (Well, it's no worse than Hen or Henny, which were sometimes awarded to me in my youth, and when I started writing a lot of horoscope columns the full nine syllables was too much of a mouthful to put on a by-line - Henri Ll. D in itself is more than long enough!) I am a psychic astrologer, doing personal readings, and I love my work - which I've been doing for (almost) three decades. I also write. Work website: http://www.henrillewelyndavies.com/
6 Comments:
I'm welded to my scanner and my camera Henri and can't imagine life without them. It's odd, especially with the camera, that you think there's some huge mystery to photography and you can't hope to be any good unless you've done a course and know about light and composition. Of course most of us just point the thing and click and get a good enough approximation of what's there, Now I'm wondering who picked up that book of pics on the train? Please get your scanner very soon and a camera too because I think the HLD eye would be a very astute one indeed.
Hi Henri - your post has inspired me about the idea of lost books, have posted on my blog. Also just read a thing about merc retro which said it is a great time for a re-connection with your soul/ re-fit of old ideas into new ones - I like that idea
dove-grey reader: very many thanks for your encouragement re the visuals.
gondal-girl: that's a great interpretation of Mercury retrograde that I never heard before...
Very interesting post. I know that Daphne's family disapproved of her book about Gerald, but I wonder if their description of it as a 'bad' book is to do with the fact that she revealed some of his 'bad' attributes -- the drinking, the infidelities, the jealousies -- which they might have preferred to be kept secret? As you say, I think it's a good book because it's unafraid of tackling 'the truth' -- though what is also intriguing about it is that Daphne's silence on her own relationship with Gerald, referring to herself, only very briefly, in the third person, as if she were a semi-fictional character. Though of course, all kinds of things are revealed between the lines of that memoir, including the difficulties of being the daughter of Gerald du Maurier.
Your post also made me think about my own memoir -- of my sister, after her death -- and the fact that some readers refer to it as 'a novel'. And memoir can have fictional qualities -- as does all supposed 'non-fiction' -- in that it is inherently subjective, however much a writer might claim objectivity. Which I never did... Not that I made things up -- in fact, I had an almost superstitious belief that I had to tell the truth in "If The Spirit Moves You" , and when an American editor asked me to fiddle with the sequence of events for the US edition, I refused, saying that would compromise the integrity of the story. But it is, nevertheless, a story told from my point of view, and my mother, for example, would doubtless tell it in a subtly different way.
Hi Henri have just come across your blog and been enjoying it. We are a bit related as I am a great great granddaughter of Maurice, Arthur's brother. Last week I was in Kirby Lonsdale as my mum was giving a bit of a talk about Rev John LlD and I have been at Girton this week reading lots of letters from Mary Crompton to Margaret LlD Hey I too am not an academic and pretty scared by all their talents! I am at www.emmadogliani.com
Hi Emma,
Thanks so much for your comment, and am fascinated to find more Llewelyn Davies connections (whatever sort of cousins we are, I can never work out the maths). I did very slightly know/met twice some cousins who lived on the other side of Primrose Hill when I was a child - before it was bijou - who I'm fairly sure came down from Crompton, your great great grandfather's brother - they were still called Ll. D. (Their father was Richard - architect who designed Milton Keynes apparently, amongst other places!) But actually I'm really very ignorant about that line of boys where we connect - Maurice and his brothers - and about the one girl among them, even...So it's really interesting your mum and you know muchmore about that side.
My great-grandfather Arthur was seemingly so self-effacing, especially compared with the rather flash du Mauriers he married into, it's as if he got a bit blanked by history too. I always think he was one of the nicest of the ancestors, of the most true/solid worth, and maybe the whole line tended to be like that.
Anyway, I've had fun looking at your website after all these months of not doing anything much to my blog or seeing your post was there. I really enjoyed listening to all your lovely music (which is right up my street) and I was also really struck by that fantastic picture of your children that you've put on there - wonderful - so wide and free.
You may not ever see this post after all these months - so I may try contacting you on your website.
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