Shocking World of Eric Gill! Shocking! Shocked!

In 1989 Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Gill was published. It became immediately notorious in the British press for highlighting some of Gill’s sexual preferences, as well as incest with his daughters. This cover is from the magazine to the Independent newspaper, then one of the best papers in the UK. Sadly it has sunk to nothing more than a tabloid gossip sheet. The drawing  is a self-portrait and comes in a letter he wrote to daughter Betty from Army camp, August 1915.

As MacCarthy writes in the article: “Sexual energy spilled over into everything he [Gill] touched.” She records that Gill kept meticulous diaries and it is only in these that the real Gill is revealed, since his Autobiography is, she says, ‘charmingly misleading’.

A full copy of the Independent article is available as a PDF on request.