Mark Gatiss

Robert & Russell meet Mark Gatiss, the influential British actor, screenwriter, director and novelist. We discuss Mark's recent BBC4 art documentary 'John Minton: The Lost Man of British Art', celebrating the life and work of the highly prolific and successful 20th century English artist whose work is now all but forgotten. A contemporary of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, Minton suffered psychological problems, self-medicated with alcohol, and in 1957 died by suicide. We chat in depth about Mark's forthcoming documentary on the life of illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, a peer of Oscar Wilde, whose black ink drawings revealed the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. We explore Mark's own passion for drawing and painting portraits, the psychology behind The League of Gentlemen, his admiration for Alan Bennett, and how he came to write the series of 8 monologues ‘Queers’ in response to the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act. This episode was recorded in early January 2020.

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Thanks for listening to Season 4! We will be back NEXT WEEK with the all new Season 5 'Talk Art: QuarARTine' series, recorded remotely from the global lockdown.

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