Scandal & Beauty: Mark Gatiss on Aubrey Beardsley

Gatiss's obsession with late Victorian/Edwardian gothic is an open secret - perhaps first glimpsed in his lavish Chinnery segment in the League's Christmas special in the year 2000, but also followed across his Lucifer Box novels and christmas horrors. Beyond fiction and adaptation he's always particularly good at elucidating his passion in person for these things and his BBC documentaries are always worth a watch - this latest from March 2020 is no exception.

Here he looks at underrated monochromatic illustrator Aubrey Beardsley whose surreal and seductively simple pictures - part art nouveau, part Edo Japanese, part classical greek - are all arresting at the very least and whose influence can clearly be seen across a lot of pop culture. He's got a good range of guests in as well from Stephen Fry to illustrator Chris Riddell. Beardsley's life was tragically a very short one but quite influential and it's always nice to see a British illustrator getting some serious air-time.