Life in Squares

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Life in Squares
GenreDrama
Written by Amanda Coe
Directed by Simon Kaijser
ComposerEdmund Butt
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes3
Production
Executive producers
ProducerRhonda Smith
Production locations London
Charleston Farmhouse
Running time60 minutes
Production companies Ecosse Films
Tiger Aspect Productions
Original release
Network
Release27 July (2015-07-27) 
10 August 2015 (2015-08-10)

Life in Squares is a British television mini-series that was broadcast on BBC Two from 27 July to 10 August 2015. [1] [2] [3] The title comes from Dorothy Parker's witticism that the Bloomsbury Group, whose lives it portrays, had "lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles". [4]

Contents

Plot

The three-part serial centres on the close and often fraught relationship between sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa’s sexually complicated alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant as they, and their group of like-minded friends, navigate their way through love, sex and artistic life through the first half of the 20th century.

Production

The series was commissioned by Ben Stephenson and Lucy Richer, and produced by Ecosse Films in association with Tiger Aspect Productions. The executive producers are Lucy Bedford, Amanda Coe, Douglas Rae and Lucy Richer. [5] [6] Filming began in August 2014 in London and Charleston Farmhouse. [7] [8]

Cast

The main roles were played by: [9]

Critical reception

Writing in UK newspaper The Guardian , Lucy Mangan found that, "The drama took a certain effort of will to get into. You just have to accept that you are in a world where people convened salons, and probably did say things like 'Childe Harold is a load of posturing nonsense! It can’t hold a candle to Don Juan, even if the alexandrines are forced to breaking point!'" However, having made this effort Mangan, added: "[…] it’s very, very good. From Phoebe Fox and Lydia Leonard as the loving/warring sisters Vanessa, soon-to-be-Bell, and Virginia, slightly-later-to-be-Woolf, around whose increasingly strained relationship the story essentially revolves, to the doctor in a single scene realising his patient (the painter Duncan Grant) is 'an invert', the performances are uniformly wonderful (though Ed Birch as Lytton Strachey has so far the best part and the best time). And the script – once you take that linguistic leap of faith – is glorious. 'That’s what they do,' muses Virginia as she and Vanessa ponder the proclivities of the men in their house and lives. 'Exclude us. From clubs. Schools. Orifices.' Though on the last, Vanessa comes to disagree. She marries the uninverted Clive Bell and sends her sister a letter. 'Copulation a tremendous success!' Attagirl". [10]

In The Independent , Ellen E Jones was less impressed, writing: "The romantic entanglements of this set are so complicated that there is an undeniable achievement in laying them out clearly, as writer Amanda Coe has done here. Alas, the work's the thing and while this opening episode contained all the gossip, it conveyed none of the depth of thought or artistic feeling that must ultimately justify our interest (if any) in these people". She concluded by citing both BBC Radio 4’s parody of the Bloomsbury Group, Gloomsbury , and the "excellent" BBC Four documentary How to Be Bohemian, as having "advanced an alternative view of the set as, essentially, self-indulgent ninnies, cosseted by their wealth. If you've had the pleasure of either programme it would have been especially difficult to take this new drama seriously". [4]

Broadcast

Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on 27 October 2015 on BBC First. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Woolf</span> English modernist writer (1882–1941)

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts." Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

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Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, and artists including Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and Gilbert Spencer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duncan Grant</span> Scottish painter and designer

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vanessa Bell</span> British painter, designer and member of the Bloomsbury Group

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clive Bell</span> English art critic, 1881–1964

Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Fry</span> English painter and critic (1866–1934)

Roger Eliot Fry was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the "associated ideas" conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry". The taste Fry influenced was primarily that of the Anglophone world, and his success lay largely in alerting an educated public to a compelling version of recent artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Bell</span> British poet

Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett was his half-sister. His relationship with his mother is explored in Susan Sellers' novel Vanessa and Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charleston Farmhouse</span> Historic house museum

Charleston, in East Sussex, is a property associated with the Bloomsbury group, that is open to the public. It was the country home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and is an example of their decorative style within a domestic context, representing the fruition of more than sixty years of artistic creativity. In addition to the house and artists' garden, Charleston hosts a year-round programme of Bloomsbury and contemporary exhibitions in a suite of galleries designed by Jamie Fobert Architects which opened in September 2018. Two restored barns are home to The Threshing Barn café and The Hay Barn where events and workshops are held throughout the year. The outer studio at Charleston hosts a permanent display of Bell and Grant's Famous Women Dinner Service, and there is also a shop selling Bloomsbury-inspired art, homeware fabrics, fashion, books and stationery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelica Garnett</span> British writer and artist (1918–2012)

Angelica Vanessa Garnett, was a British writer, painter and artist. She was the author of the memoir Deceived with Kindness (1984), an account of her experience growing up at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monk's House</span> Writers house museum near Lewes, East Sussex, England

Monk's House is a 16th-century weatherboarded cottage in the village of Rodmell, three miles (4.8 km) south of Lewes, East Sussex, England. The writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, the political activist, journalist and editor Leonard Woolf, bought the house by auction at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, on 1 July 1919 for 700 pounds, and received there many visitors connected to the Bloomsbury Group, including T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. The purchase is described in detail in her Diary, vol. 1, pp. 286–8.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Stephen</span> British author, psychoanalyst & member of the Bloomsbury Group (1883-1948)

Adrian Leslie Stephen was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an author and psychoanalyst, and the younger brother of Thoby Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. He and his wife, Karin, became interested in the work of Sigmund Freud, and were among the first British psychoanalysts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saxon Sydney-Turner</span> British civil servant, member of Bloomsbury Group

Saxon Arnoll Sydney-Turner was a member of the Bloomsbury Group who worked as a British civil servant throughout his life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Partridge</span> British soldier and pacifist

Reginald Sherring Partridge,, generally known as Ralph Partridge, was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. He worked for Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, married Dora Carrington and then Frances Marshall, and was the unrequited love of Lytton Strachey.

The Bloomsbury Group plays a prominent role in the LGBT history of its day.

Amanda Coe is an English screenwriter and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Hiles</span>

Barbara Hiles Bagenal (1891–1984) was an artist associated with members of the Bloomsbury Group, primarily Vanessa Bell and Saxon Sydney-Turner. She was a long-time friend of fellow "Bohemian" and artist Dora Carrington.

Mary Barnes Hutchinson was a British short-story writer, socialite, model and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Laird Cox</span> Member of the Bloomsbury set

Katherine Laird "Ka" Cox, the daughter of a British socialist stockbroker and his wife, was a Fabian and graduate of Cambridge University. There, she met Rupert Brooke, becoming his lover, and was a member of his Neo-Pagans. She was also a friend of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. During World War I she worked with the Serbian Relief Fund, assisting refugees in Corsica. After the war, she married the Labour politician Will Arnold-Forster, and became the first woman magistrate in Cornwall. She and her husband were instrumental in founding Gordonstoun School in Scotland in 1934. Her sudden death at the age of 51 fuelled speculation of involvement in the occult.

References

  1. "BBC - BBC announces 3x60 films by Amanda Coe, Life In Squares - Media Centre". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  2. Singh, Anita (28 February 2015). "Bloomsbury set laid bare in 'intimate' new BBC drama". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  3. "Life in Squares and Vita & Virginia are bringing the Bloomsbury group to a new generation" . Independent.co.uk. 6 March 2015. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  4. 1 2 Jones, Ellen E (27 July 2015). "Life in Squares, BBC2 - TV review: Self-indulgent and over-sexed, the Bloomsbury set were hard to take seriously" . The Independent . London. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  5. "BBC - Phoebe Fox, Lydia Leonard, Sam Hoare and James Norton to star in Life In Squares for BBC Two - Media Centre". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  6. Designers, PFD - Website and Graphic. "Life in Squares - Ecosse Films". Ecossefilms.com. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  7. "BBC Two's Life In Squares confirms cast". Digitalspy.co.uk. 18 August 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  8. "Visit BBC drama Life in Squares' main location in Charleston". The Argus. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  9. "BBC2: Life in Squares: Credits – Episode 1". BBC Online . Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  10. Mangan, Lucy (28 July 2015). "Life in Squares review: 'absurd, beautiful characters in a ridiculously golden world'". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  11. Purcell, Charles (23 October 2015). "New This Week (Oct 26): Chicago Fire, Bear Grylls, Halloween, RWC finals and live sport". The Green Room. Archived from the original on 23 October 2015. Retrieved 23 October 2015.