Aleksandra Ugelstad Elnæs

Goodbye and good riddance, summer.

Summer reading (selected).

“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began; but I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Lyme Park, June 2025.

‘Ought we to be drunk every night?’
Sebastian asked one morning.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘I think so too.’

The Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, June 2025.

“You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey—which isn't a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven with strawberries.” - Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. Castle Howard, June 2025.

Castle Howard, June 2025 @castlehowardestate.bsky.social

“I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer.”
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Castle Howard, June 2025

Sebastian contra mundum. Castle Howard filming locations for Brideshead Revisited (1981).

A person with red hair wearing a brown corduroy skirt, double breasted waistcoat, 18th century replica shirt and a blue neckerchief stands with arms akimbo in front of summer greenery and fortress walls.

"It is poetry that I want now-long poems. […] I want the concentration & the romance, & the words all glued together, fused, glowing: I have no time to waste any more on prose. [...] It's poetry I want, so I repeat like a tipsy sailor in front of a public house." - Diary of Virginia Woolf,
15.8.1924

The book The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan edited by Michael Wheatley and featuring an illustration of Pan playing his flute in a moonlit clearing in the woods surrounded by dancing worshippers.

An illustration of the horned god Pan playing his flute among the reeds and a business card reading Ai Tre Scalini Bottiglieria dal 1895 also with an illustration of Pan.

“And then he spoke of the rain and the wind by which all things are changed, of the air through which all things live, and of the woods in which all things can be hidden.” - E.M. Forster, The Story of a Panic.

The Heroes’ Shrine or The Elegant Bidet by Marios Hakkas

The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell

Around the Lagoon by Alexandros Papadiamandis

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

Spring reading.

Damnable Tales, a book of folk horror illustrated by Richard Wells, held up in a green spring forest. The cover of the book is richly illustrated in a woodcut style, depicting a gallows, ruins, sinister figures, a crow and a hand reaching out from the undergrowth.

Began in autumn and finished in spring. Perfect seasonal companion by @slipperyjack.bsky.social.

Cambridge, June 2024.

Maurice (1987) filming locations at King’s College, Cambridge, which was E.M. Forster’s own college.

The propylaea at Acropolis, columns of white marble streaked with sun, seen against a blue sky.

The temple of Athena Nike seen through the columns of the propylaea.

Columns of the propylaea against the backdrop of a blue sky with white clouds viewed through an opening in the wall of the propylaea.

A black and white cat grooming itself among the columns of the propylaea.

Sunlight on a broken column. 🏛️ Athens, March 2025.

Fragment of an ancient sculpture depicting the head of a youth, exhibited at the National Archeological Museum in Athens.

View of the Roman Forum with the Tower of the Four Winds at the foot of the Acropolis.

Sunset view of Athens from Areopagus Hill with Mount Lycabettus in the distance.

Interior of Cafe Avissinia with an antique wooden bench, wooden chairs, red and white striped tablecloths and a large bouquet of pink and purple flowers. The walls are covered in a wallpaper with red and pink roses, and there are shelves running along the top of the room, filled with white and blue china and knick-knacks.

Athens, March 2025.

A pocket book of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry with a cover featuring a sepia tinted photograph of Millay standing beneath a magnolia tree, touching the branches. A hand holds the book up against a backdrop of a magnolia tree in full bloom, covered in pink flowers.

“To what purpose, April, do you return again? / Beauty is not enough. […] / Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. / It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay, Spring

Sambourne House, June 2024. The preserved Victorian townhouse was a filming location for the 1987 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, notably the deleted scenes set before Clive leaves for Greece. Might need to do a post on all the Maurice-locations I’ve visited!

At home, in winter. 🌲❄️🕯️🔥 Art by @marlowelune.bsky.social & @johannaost.com.

Excited to learn that my gothic short story Spolia, originally published by Egaeus Press, has made the shortlist for Brave New Weird!

Miscellaneous snaps from the heady Pre-Raphaelite fever dream that is Leighton House Museum, once the studio home of the painter and sculptor Frederic Leighton.

Two ships docked in a harbour in heavy fog.

A book held up by a gloved hand in front of still water in heavy fog. The book is called Polar Horrors Strange Tales from the World’s End and has a black and blue cover depicting a monstrous polar bear standing on its hind legs in front of a ship stuck in the ice.

A book held up by a gloved hand in front of still water in heavy fog. The book is titled James Fitzjames Commander of the HMS Erebus and the cover depicts a colourised daguerreotype photograph of a man with brown hair wearing a blue naval uniform with gold epaulettes on the shoulders.

Fog on the fjord and recently read.

Carrington (1995)

No thoughts, just Edna St. Vincent Millay.

No thoughts, just Daphne du Maurier.

A book titled Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights edited by Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk is held up by a gloved hand against a snowy landscape on a sunny day. The cover is black and purple and depicts flames surrounding a house in a moonlit forest.

A large group of male and female mallards swim on a lake in the winter sun.

Winter reading.

A small red book with the title A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens embossed in ornate gold lettering encircled by a wreath.

A book held up in front of a pine tree covered in snow. The book is titled Dickens and Christmas by Lucinda Hawksley and depicts a portrait of Charles Dickens above an illustration of Mr and Mrs Fezziwig dancing.

A book held up by a hand in a black, green and pink mitten against a background of bare trees in the snow. The book is called Twelve Gothic tales edited by Richard Dalby and has the figure of a face in stone surrounded by green ivy on the cover.

A book held up in front of a decorated Christmas tree. The book is called Everyman’s Pocket Classics Christmas Stories and has a bird with a red head holding a green sprig of mistletoe on the cover.

Christmas reading 2024.

Close up of a Christmas tree decorated with tinsel, fake candles, felted figures of naval officers, Sir Walter Scott and a ship, a red and white hot air balloon, a red and white drum, Jack Skellington and Zero and a cut out of Libuse Safrankova as Cinderella.

A black kitten sits beside a decorated Christmas tree contemplating mischief.

A cat with green eyes and a chaotic tabby and diluted tortoiseshell coat of dark brown, light brown, ginger and white markings lies on a green velvet sofa looking at the camera.

A tv screen showing a scene from the series Fanny and Alexander in which Helena Ekdahl and her maids light candles in a drawing room decked out for Christmas. The tv stands next to a Christmas tree and is surrounded by Christmas decorations and candles.

Old Christmas is past, twelve tide is the last and we bid you adieu, great joy to the new. 🎄🕯️❄️🔥

Black cat facing two tall windows decorated for Christmas with a lantern, poinsettias and candles.

A candlelit 18th century interior with two portraits on a dark green wall at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.

Candlelit Christmas tree in a late 19th century parlour at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.

Reflection of a person with red hair holding a black cat in a mirror surrounded by two small Christmas trees in gold metal glowing by candlelight.

“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. […] This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol