What an actor's dressing table looks like

I’ve had lovely emails and comments over the past few weeks – thank you to all of you who have taken the time to write. It is both humbling and thrilling to know that I have readers from West Hampstead to the West Coast.

The fantastic Edward Petherbridge left the following comment under my most recent blog post and I really felt I must dedicate a post to it. I admire anything of a literary persuasion, and what I feel is surely the lifelong literary student in me takes great joy in beautiful words.

So here is Edward’s comment, inspired I believe by our series of photographs of the view from the room with the view.

‘Your sky-scapes perhaps gain from having no quaint or noble towers - only chimney pots and an aerial is it? Nature puts on her magical displays despite our banalities. A blossom tree round a couple of corners from us this spring would have graced a palace - once more made me marvel that it was prepared to display its white magnificence adjacent to the crude red brick and plastic framed windows of a block of flats.

Today, walking into The British Museum, I passed a man whose job was scraping the chewing gum off the stone steps under the magnificent portico - was he set to work there to remind us of our crudity in the face of thousands of years of high culture?

I feel like seeing the films you tell us about - even failing a Retro Tastic Cinema.

All the best, Edward.’

Here's Edward (and his daughter, the much featured Dora) in his dressing room at the Duchess Theatre, London, when he was appearing in The Fantasticks.

And just in case you ever wondered what actually graces an actor's dressing table ...


Edward Petherbridge's dressing table image by Dora Petherbridge