Four years before publication of this book, Derek Jarman, the controversial film maker discovered that he was HIV positive. He withdrew to a cottage on the bleak coast at Dungeness, as he puts it "a hermit in the desert of illness". These journals cover time spent living at the cottage, including the filming of The Garden and videos for the Pet Shop Boys, the conceiving of Edward II, the contracting of the tuberculosis that nearly dragged him down, and his emergence as a bold champion of gay rights.
At Dungeness he also mused on his past life: his father who force-fed him and once threw him through a window, his being discovered in bed with another boy at prep school, his eventual coming out at art school in the company of David Hockney and Patrick Proctor, his affairs with Robert Mapplethorpe and the serial murderer Michele Lupo, and his career in films - he describes himself as the "most fortunate film maker of his generation".
Modern Nature is at once a volume of autobiography, a lament for a lost generation and a celebration of gay sexuality.
Contains 16 pages of b/w photographs.
