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Bram Stoker & Dracula (The Novel)

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Mighty_Emperor

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Bit of an odd one -here is the Guardian review:

Dracula - Pages From a Virgin's Diary


Cert 12A

Peter Bradshaw
Friday December 12, 2003
The Guardian

Sprightly Canadian maverick Guy Maddin has created an elaborate, self-conscious but arresting take on the Dracula myth.

He directs the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in a version of the Bram Stoker novel, while photographing the entire thing like a hyperreal silent black-and-white movie, with orchestral score and fluorescent dialogue titles that occasionally appear on screen like the shout-lines from old Hollywood trailers.

It's dredged up from the imaginary cinematheque of Maddin's own mind: bewhiskered faces loom in and out of focus and the film stock switches from grey to tinges of blue and pink, with hi-tech flashes of colour painted in.

The story concentrates largely on the part where the sinister count appears in Whitby, and a map of northern Europe shows his dark trajectory with the unsubtle legend: "Immigrants from the East", so pointing up the vampire as metaphor for xenophobia and paranoia. Dracula's sexual potency is given its full reign, too, and ballet is an excellent way of conveying Dracula's seduction ritual.

The movie superficially resembles Dreyer and Murnau, and Maddin is perhaps trying to absorb the strangeness and exoticism of their movies and make their creative presence a kind of adjunct to Dracula's own. The difference is that films like Vampyr and Nosferatu have an uncompromising sincerity which makes them fascinating, and which the playful Maddin can't match.

I saw a screening of Murnau's Nosferatu at the Berlin film festival this year with live piano accompaniment and the effect was authentically disturbing. This wasn't. But it was diverting and stimulating nevertheless.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1104694,00.html
 
Seen it.

It's...interesting. It has some fine images but it's a little pretentious.
 
Was it scary? I would imagine the atmosphere would be quite creepy.
 
Spooky angel said:
Was it scary? I would imagine the atmosphere would be quite creepy.
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creepy would be closer.

There are some aresting images in it including the rather sureal one where they cut Dracula's arm and money spills out.

Worth a watch (it also exploits the modern fear of immagration quite well.)
 
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=680&e=3&u=/usatoday/20040820/en_usatoday/thisdraculainneedofatransfusion

This 'Dracula' in need of a transfusion

Fri Aug 20, 7:40 AM ET
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

NEW YORK - The latest installment in that long-running Broadway saga, When Bad Shows Happen to Good Performers, has arrived. And this time, the cast of characters is particularly rich.


It's tough to decide which of the tragic heroes and heroines in Dracula ( * ½ out of four) merits the most sympathy. Might it be dashing leading man Tom Hewitt? Or Melissa Errico, whose delicate beauty and earthy soprano have allowed her to remain one of musical theater's most soulful ingénues for more than a decade? Or perhaps it's veteran character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, whose indelible work has enhanced the plays of August Wilson and other great writers?


One hopes that these troupers are at least being well compensated for their participation in Frank Wildhorn's latest overstuffed turkey, which opened Thursday at the Belasco Theatre.


It's hardly surprising that Wildhorn should have set his sights on the bloodsucking Transylvanian. Like Andrew Lloyd Webber, the vampire who spiritually sired Wildhorn and a whole brood of bombastic, banal pop-opera poseurs, the composer of Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel has shown a fondness for stories involving virtuous but malleable young women who fall for menacing strangers. Watching Errico's raven-haired Mina Murray offer her alabaster skin to Hewitt's Dracula, it's hard not to be reminded of Lloyd Webber's ex-wife, Sarah Brightman (news), being ogled by Michael Crawford (news) in The Phantom of the Opera.


But few of the syrupy tunes that Wildhorn has concocted here are likely to stick in your brain as stubbornly as Phantom's thicker sap did. Dracula is further saddled with dunderheaded lyrics and a witless book, both contributed by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, whose idea of comic relief is having an anxious Southerner declare, "I ain't been on tenterhooks like this since that night we were waiting for the tiger to come for that tethered goat down in Sumatra."


Other characters are British, though some of the American actors playing them speak with such erratic accents you might wonder whether they have multiple personality disorders. Hewitt sounds authentically exotic or he handles his cartoonish dialogue like a good sport. Errico looks and sounds lovely, as does Kelli O'Hara, playing another doomed damsel.


I can't imagine how they all got sucked into this mess, but I hope they're rescued from the walking, singing death that is Dracula as soon as possible.
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More Dracula related touristic fun:

Romania Takes Its Stake in the Dracula Legend To Heart

Tourist Blood Overcomes Disdain for the Vampire

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 1, 2004; Page C01

BUCHAREST, Romania

Petre Moraru emerged from the darkness of his stand-up coffin, dressed in a long black cape and white chiffon scarf, and grabbed the hand of a young lady who wobbled on spiked heels. Moraru stared at her with piercing eyes and purred in his best Transylvanian-accented English, "My, you have a nice neck."

As he retreated into the tomb, the woman followed briskly, beseeching, "Can I come with you?"

"Sometimes, I feel I have the force," Moraru later told a pair of visitors. "It can be dangerous to be Dracula. He is irresistible."

Moraru, a veteran stage actor, is the star attraction at the Dracula Club Restaurant, a theme eatery in the heart of Bucharest, Romania's foggy capital. And he's not the only one finding the vampire irresistible.

Dracula is much in vogue in a country that once ferociously resisted identification with a celluloid bloodsucker whose most famous film interpreter may be Bela Lugosi -- a Hungarian no less. Although tour guides still half-heartedly explain that Romania's own real-life Dracula, a historical figure known as Vlad the Impaler, had nothing to do with bats and bites, they have also surrendered to the irrepressible desire of tourists to thrill at the sites purported to be locales for Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula," which he just happened to set in Transylvania, the rugged western part of the country, and on which the film versions, however loosely, are based.

Disdain has given way to the lure of money. Despite unhappy holdouts to the vampire's allure, Romania, it seems, is learning to love the vampire. Restaurants, bars, nightclubs and campgrounds bear the vampire's name. Souvenir vendors hawk plastic fangs and rubber bats. An on-again, off-again plan to build a Dracula theme park is on again.

"We're beginning to find Dracula interesting as well as lucrative. Why fight it?" asked Moraru as he devoured a meal of "The Count's Mixed Grill," one of the restaurant's specialties. With his longish face and swept-back gray hair, Moraru looks uncannily like Christopher Lee, who starred in the British hit 1958 Hammer Films version of "Dracula," as well as a long list of sequels: "Dracula: Prince of Darkness," "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave," "Scars of Dracula," "Dracula and Son" and . . . well, you get the picture.

When Moraru pops out of his coffin, artificial mist fills the restaurant; you're suddenly on a movie set. The rooms have fake hands sticking out of the walls.

There are passionate dissenters to the Dracula craze. Some regard it as a setback in Romania's climb to respectability. As a candidate for membership in the European Union, Romania is already burdened with gruesome claims to fame: the Christmas Day 1989 execution of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, scandals over house-of-horror orphanages, runaway crime and its reputation for corruption (87th out of 145 places in the most recent Transparency International Survey).

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"Here is Romania, trying to join the EU, a club of nice countries, and it is saddled with a bloodthirsty image that Dracula only accentuates," said Duncan Light, a professor from Liverpool Hope University College in England. He is spending a year in Romania to study its folklore.

For others, the Dracula link is a sad case of identity distortion and historical falsification. The cinematic Dracula has become inexorably linked with Vlad the Impaler. Romanians by and large admire Vlad for relentlessly beating back Ottoman Empire invasions and safeguarding Christianity in Europe. He never morphed into a bat.

"How would you like it if someone said Abraham Lincoln was a vampire?" asked Constantin Balaceanu Stolnici, the last surviving blood relative of Vlad's family. He is a direct descendant of Vlad the Monk, one of the Impaler's brothers. He is a neuropsychologist whose genial hospitality is somewhat offset by the jarring display of a plastic brain on his desk. He blames the whole Dracula fad on globalization. "This is an example of a simple, local culture being dominated by a powerful one," he said. "Hollywood rules."

Now, let's get a few facts straight. Bram Stoker, an Irishman, never visited Transylvania. Stoker discovered the name Dracula in a book that included tales of Vlad the Impaler, a 15th-century warrior. Vlad got the name Dracula from his father, who was honored by Germans with a chivalrous "Order of the Dragon." The Romanians had no word for dragon, so they transliterated it into "drac," which means devil. Vlad Jr. called himself Vlad Dracula, i.e. Vlad, Son of the Devil.

Perhaps an unfortunate choice for a nickname, but then Vlad generally suffered from bad public relations. The Turks pinned the Impaler moniker on him because he habitually executed foes by driving them onto stakes. It was a common execution method in the 15th century, though Vlad seemed to have been an especially enthusiastic practitioner. He even impaled tax evaders. Sometimes he dined while watching the victims' bodies slide down the poles. There are, by the way, various accounts of Vlad's own death -- at the hands of Turkish enemies, vengeful local nobility or by his own soldiers -- but none includes the hammering of a stake through his heart.

As early as the 1970s, the Romanian government explored the commercial possibilities of exploiting moviedom's Dracula. It built an ersatz castle near the Borgo Pass, the place where the imaginary Castle Dracula was supposed to be. But the Ceausescu government was clearly of two minds about promoting imported superstition. It never allowed any of the Dracula movies to be shown on TV nor the Stoker book to be sold. In any case, the exploitation stopped at Borgo Pass; Ceausescu became more interested in self-aggrandizement, exemplified by construction of a huge palace in Bucharest that is purportedly the world's second largest building.

Currently, with capitalism taking hold, the Dracula tide seems inexorable. "It's a problem. On the one hand, Dracula promotes a negative image. On the other hand, he has become a kind of attractive figure in the West, a sex symbol. So he's becoming digestible even for us Romanians," said Nicolae Paduraru, director of the Company of Mysterious Journeys, which organizes Dracula tours.

Paduraru embodies a certain ambivalence about Dracula. Although he runs tours to Borgo Pass and to Vlad's reputed tomb on Lake Snagov, he is also head of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, dedicated to spreading the truth about Vlad the Impaler.

"Vlad Dracula is a genuine heroic figure. No matter how hard we try to distinguish between him and the film legend, there is going to be confusion between the two," he said.

The vampire issue erupted in controversy three years ago when investors laid out a project for a Dracula theme park near Sighisoara, reputed to be the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Sighisoara is a well-preserved, walled medieval town. Environmentalists and historians fought and killed the project on grounds that the park would diminish the area's pristine, historic value.

-------------
"Besides shoving history aside, the movie Dracula is a kind of spiritual pollution," said Hans Bruno Frohlich, a Lutheran pastor in Sighisoara. "The myth attracts all kinds of fishy beliefs. Satanists visit our town and hold congresses. I try to persuade tourists that Sighisoara has many authentic and beautiful things to see. We don't have or need vampires."

Frohlich said he has seen only one Dracula movie, Mel Brooks's 1995 parody "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

"I don't much like these kind of films," he said.

Adrian Gherca, proprietor of Sighisoara's Vlad Dracula Restaurant, expressed disappointment over the theme park's death. The restaurant is reputed to be Vlad the Impaler's birthplace, although Gherca acknowledges there is no documentary evidence to that effect.

"From a touristic point of view, everyone who comes here asks about Dracula. I care about history, but I also care about business," he said. "The park would not have affected our beauty, but it would have attracted visitors and created lots of jobs. Is there a Loch Ness monster? I don't think so, but that doesn't stop people from exploiting the story."

In any event, like the vampire itself, the Dracula theme park seems to have many lives. A new group of investors is proposing to build the facility on Lake Snagov and include a golf course, a Formula One race track, a hippodrome and water park.

In the meantime, for the current run of tourists, almost any castle will do as a Dracula landmark. Take Bran Castle, a medieval fortress near the city of Brasov. There is no indication that either Vlad pere, Vlad fils or any other of the celebrated Vlads spent time there. But it has plenty of horror-show ambiance: pointed towers, creaky doors and secret staircases. The parking lot is full of kiosks selling T-shirts printed with the words "Someone in Transylvania Loves You" and teeth dripping blood.

A tour guide takes it all in good-naturedly, happily mixing Vlad facts with Dracula fiction."Hey, Bram Stoker picked Transylvania out of a hat," he told a group of amused tourists. "It might just as well have been Pennsylvania."

Romania may soon have more cinematic guilt-by-association problems. The film "Seed of Chucky," the fifth installment of the series about a two-foot-tall killer doll, was shot in Bucharest last spring, even though the setting for the "story" is supposed to be Hollywood.

Next up: Chucky the Impaler?
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Source
 
Stoker's blood relative to bring Dracula back from the undead
Alison Flood
The Guardian, Tuesday October 7 2008

Abraham van Helsing and his intrepid band of vampire hunters may have disposed of Bram Stoker's creation Dracula more than a century ago, but a sequel to the novel co-authored by Stoker's great-grand-nephew will see them under attack from the undead once again, it was announced yesterday.

Dacre Stoker, who formerly coached the Canadian Olympic pentathlon team and now lives in the US, delved into his ancestor's handwritten notes on the original Dracula novel to pen his sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead - the original name of Dracula before an editor changed the title.

The new book - the first Dracula story to be fully authorised by the Stoker family since the 1931 film starring Béla Lugosi - has provoked a storm in the publishing world, selling for more than $1m (£575,000) to Dutton US, HarperCollins UK and Penguin Canada.

Dacre Stoker wrote the novel with the screenwriter Ian Holt, and a movie is also planned.

The new novel, which is due to be published next October, draws on excised characters and plot lines that were cut from Stoker's original, first published 111 years ago.

In the new book, set in London in 1912, Quincey, the son of Stoker's hero, Jonathan Harker, has become involved in a troubled theatre production of Dracula, directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself. The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets.

Stoker said that he had not got around to reading his great-grand-uncle's novel until he went to college. "Word got out about my family connection to the old vamp and I grew tired of being unable to answer people's questions. So I chose to finally break down and read the novel for a research paper on Bram and his possible motivations to write the story," he said.

"I had seen so many film versions of Dracula and was terribly surprised that very few of the films had any resemblance to Bram's original novel. Because the novel was so good and had stood up so well over the years, I found it exceedingly sad that all of the trash Hollywood had put out monumentally sullied Bram's and my family's literary legacy."

Stoker later met Holt and the pair decided to work together to resurrect Bram Stoker's original themes and characters. "Our intent is to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity," Stoker said.

Bram Stoker's original Dracula has never been out of print since it was published in 1897.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oc ... yandhorror
 
Bram Stoker's great-grandson finds journal in which author sketched out Dracula
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:33 PM on 29th October 2011

Bram Stoker’s private journal -in which he sketched out his first thoughts about his legendary creation Dracula -has been unearthed after more than 100 years.
The thin, unmarked book was discovered on a shelf in his great-grandson’s home on the Isle of Wight. It had been passed down by his ancestors for more than a century before arriving in Noel Dobbs’ home.

He was unaware of what the book was until a US researcher contacted him to ask if he knew about a journal his famous relative had written.
Dobbs then dug out the tiny tome which was signed ‘Abraham Stoker’. There were 305 entries dating from 1871 when Stoker was in his 20s. Some are pages long, with others just a few sentences. The journal also contains romantic poems.

He sent photocopies of a few pages to his cousin, Dacre Stoker, a professor in South Carolina, who has now written a book about his famous ancestor based on the journal.
‘When I saw it, I was amazed. ‘I thought, “The Holy Grail! We’ve found it,”’ said Mr Stoker.
‘There is so little written by Bram about Bram. Family, scholars and fans wanted to know what made the man who wrote Dracula tick. And here we had a major set of clues.’

His book, The Lost Journal, will be published next March to mark the centenary of the author’s death.
The last entry of Stoker’s journal in 1881 hints at a major character he would use in Dracula, a man who was driven to eat living things including flies. One passage says: ‘A man builds up his shadow on a wall bit by bit by adding to substance. Suddenly the shadow becomes alive.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1cGlVirY0
 
Support the centenary, theres a lot at stake.

Minister urged to help promote Bram Stoker's centenary
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 42765.html

PATSY McGARRY

Wed, Mar 21, 2012

APRIL 5TH WILL see worldwide commemorations marking the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. Five days later there will be another major Irish-related centenary, also of world-wide significance, but whose commemoration – according to one heritage group – is in danger of being overshadowed both at home and abroad.

On April 20th, 1912, Dubliner Bram Stoker, author of one of the worlds’s most famous novels, Dracula, died at the age of 64. The comparative lack of fuss over the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death in an age when vampirism and all things gothic have such huge appeal is being seen as a lost opportunity.

It has prompted Douglas Appleyard of The Friends of Bram Stoker group to write to Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan calling on him to take action.

A not-for-profit group of descendants, relatives and devotees of Bram Stoker, the Friends point out that this centenary “is an ideal year for Ireland and Dublin to tap into this [Gothic] genre and this is where your help is needed as a Minister.”

They say Stoker “created a character, which has become the greatest worldwide ‘brand’ created by any Irish writer, and yet Bram’s Irishness is not as widely known as it should be.”

Dracula was “second only to Sherlock Holmes in the number of films [over 200] inspired by a novel. In fact where would Halloween be without a Dracula costume? And all of this started here in Dublin! Yet it is Romania and Whitby which are associated with and benefiting from his work,” they say. Dublin, they continue, “could create a niche Stoker/Dracula market.”

The letter notes that while “a number of top-class events have been arranged by Dublin’s major institutions to celebrate Bram’s life and work in 2012” these are being run independently with “no overall ‘package’ to attract the tourists, as each event is being run and advertised by the body involved”.

Bram Stoker was born at 15 Marino Crescent Clontarf in Dublin on November 8th, 1847, the third of seven children.

He excelled as an athlete at Trinity College where he was named University Athlete and graduated with honours in mathematics from there in 1870.

He had been auditor of the College Historical Society and president of the the University Philosophical Society.

In the 1880s, when he moved to London, he was acting manager and then business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years.

He was also manager of the great English actor Henry Irving who owned the Lyceum. He wrote 12 novels and two collections of short stories. Dracula was written in 1897.

Further details at www.bramstokerestate.com.
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I'd like to celebrate by seeing those ancient preserved corpses in some Dublin church that are supposed to have inspired him. Can you still visit them? :D
 
escargot1 said:
I'd like to celebrate by seeing those ancient preserved corpses in some Dublin church that are supposed to have inspired him. Can you still visit them? :D
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Yes, still on the go (well the mummies aren't).

ST. MICHAN’S
http://www.cccgroup.dublin.anglican.org ... chans.html

HISTORY

St. Michan’s church is situated on Church Street behind Dublin’s Four Courts and near the old city fruit and vegetable markets, St. Michan’s church is the oldest parish church on the north side of the river Liffey. Originally founded in 1095, the present church dates from 1685 and was renovated in 1825. Internally the church retains its original galleried interior and organ. The interior of the church is little changed since Victorian times. The pulpit, now displayed at the back of the church, was commissioned from Christopher Stephens in February 1724. It originally had according to a contemporary description, ‘seven Finneered Panels of Dantzick oak and a moving staircase with carving and Fluted Banisters of oak and two poles for carrying the Pulpit on men’s shoulders’. The staircase dates from 1724 but the original pulpit proper has not survived. Another remarkable survival is the ‘oak moving desk’ or ‘Penitants desk’. Used for public confession, it was commissioned in 1724. Records recall that one Christopher Pell was led into the church following an argument with the clergy and had to make a public confession for his behaviour!

The Organ

The delightfully decorated instrument was built by John Baptiste Cuvillie between 1723-1725. The cost of the organ was £470 (about €550) which included the case, two manuals, eleven stops and three bellows. In front of the gallery is the ‘Organ Trophy’ a piece of wood depicting 17 musical instruments, possibly carved by Henry Houghton or John Houghton. The ‘Trophy’ was installed in 1724. Legend has it that Handel practised for the first performance of ‘Messiah’ on this organ.


The Vaults

Underneath the church are five long burial vaults containing the mummified remains of many of Dublin’s most influential 17th, 18th and 19th century families, including the legendary Shears brothers and the highly decorated coffins of the Earl’s of Leitrim. The exact date of construction is unknown though in their present form they may well date from the rebuilding of the church in 1865. The constant dry atmosphere has caused the mummification of the bodies and the preservation of the coffins. Since Victorian times visitors have descended the vault steps to see the mummies and Bram Stoker, creator of the ‘Dracula’ stories is believed to have visited the vaults in the company of his family.

In one vault can be seen the remains of the Crusader though in fact he is only 650 years dead. The early visitors to the vaults were responsible for many of the myths and legends surrounding the bodies, though modern scientific investigations have cast doubts on many of these stories. Nevertheless, to see the historic mummies is a remarkable experience.
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I wonder if it was this that inspired the writers of Being Human to make the vampires headquarters Stoker Import & Export :lol:
 
Definitely! :lol:

The Hal 'SHOW NO MERCY' poster is on BH's FB page. I like it.
 
His obituary in The Irish Times.

April 23rd, 1912
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 48171.html

JOE JOYCE

Mon, Apr 23, 2012

FROM THE ARCHIVES: This informative obituary of Bram Stoker a few days after his death thought he was a better biographer then novelist.

IN THE early seventies there was no more popular man in Trinity College. As an athletic he was facile princeps, being one of the finest walkers who ever won the championship. His attainments in science gained him honours in pure mathematics, but his fame was made not in the Examination Hall, but in the Undergraduate Debating Societies.

He was Auditor of the College Historical and President of the Philosophical Societies, a double distinction which it is reserved for few to obtain. The exuberance of his spirits, the friendliness of his manner, and his firm, straight- forward character gained for him a welcome wherever he went. Mr. Stoker was born in Dublin on the 8th of March, 1847. His father, Mr. Abraham Stoker, was an official in the Chief Secretary’s Office, Dublin Castle, which position he held for over fifty years. He married the daughter of Captain Thomas Thornley, of Ballyshannon, and they had a large family of sons.

Bram was appointed to the office of Registrar of Petty Sessions Clerks in Dublin Castle, where he remained until 1878. During this period he took the M.A. degree in the University of Dublin, and, having also gone through the Law School, he was called to the English Bar.

Mr. Stoker’s literary ability was shown at an early age, and while still a college student, in addition to his office work, he found time to act as dramatic, art, and literary critic for several journals both in England and Ireland.

It was at a supper party given in the rooms of that Mr. Stoker first made Sir Henry Irving’s acquaintance, which resulted in his becoming manager and confidential secretary to Irving, then lessee of the Lyceum .

Many of his friends in Dublin thought at the time that it was hardly wise on his part to give up the certainty of a Government position and to commence life afresh in the hazardous theatrical profession. Events proved the risk was worth taking, and he remained with Sir Henry Irving until the great actor’s death in October, 1905.

Since then, his attention was more fully directed to literary work. He was on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, and has written several novels, mostly of a sensational character. In 1906 he brought out his Life of Henry Irving, which was one of the books of the year, and financially and in every other respect proved a huge success. As a biographer dealing with the life of a man he knew so intimately, he did better work than as a novelist. There was a demand for his books, however, and from 1882, when he published Under the Sunset, until 1905, when he wrote The Man, he brought out eight tales, which were readable, though they were not marked by any originality. Before attempting fiction he published a valuable work on The Duties of Clerks of Petty sessions in Ireland, which is a standard authority on the subject.

url.ie/f5yi
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Last edited:
Bite the coin to see if it's genuine.

Just in time for Halloween, the Central Bank has launched a commemorative €15 Bram Stoker Dracula collector coin.

The silver proof coin commemorates the life of the Dublin-born author and his famous novel Dracula, which was published in 1897 and became world-renowned after an American film adaptation starring Bela Lugosi opened in 1931.

To date, more than 1,000 novels and 200 films have been made about the famous count, making him the most portrayed literary character in history.

In an official unveiling at Glasnevin Cemetery, Central Bank deputy governor Sharon Donnery presented the coin to the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business...ates-dracula-with-15-collector-coin-1.3676713
 
I was in Whitby on Monday, look what I saw -

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 11.22.43.png



I was going to wait for the forum change over to fully write up my experience. Consider this a teaser...
 
I saw a production of Dracula last night at the smock Alley Theatre. An interesting interpretation running for two hours. Five cast members playing multiple roles involving mime and movement(rather than dance) as well as normal spoken parts. Blood suggested by red ribbons. Good fun.

https://smockalley.com/dracula/
 
Some morons have desecrated the crypt.

An 800-year-old 'Crusader' from a crypt in St Michan's Church in Dublin has been decapitated by vandals.

Archdeacon David Pierpoint spoke to Philip Boucher-Hayes on RTÉ's Liveline and said the Crusader's head has been "severed from his body and taken away." The discovery was made by the tour guide at 1pm when the guide was preparing to open the church for visitors. Archdeacon Pierpoint said he is upset and disappointed that the church has been targeted again by vandals. The crypt of St Michan’s was vandalised in 1996.Archdeacon Pierpoint said the incident is devastating for the parish and community. He said initially he was "quite disgusted" when he saw what had happened, but now he is "just sad".

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2019/0225/1032776-st-michans-crypt-crusader/
 
ramonmercado said:
Some morons have desecrated the crypt.

An 800-year-old 'Crusader' from a crypt in St Michan's Church in Dublin has been decapitated by vandals.

Archdeacon David Pierpoint spoke to Philip Boucher-Hayes on RTÉ's Liveline and said the Crusader's head has been "severed from his body and taken away." The discovery was made by the tour guide at 1pm when the guide was preparing to open the church for visitors. Archdeacon Pierpoint said he is upset and disappointed that the church has been targeted again by vandals. The crypt of St Michan’s was vandalised in 1996.Archdeacon Pierpoint said the incident is devastating for the parish and community. He said initially he was "quite disgusted" when he saw what had happened, but now he is "just sad".

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2019/0225/1032776-st-michans-crypt-crusader/
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Crusader's skull has been recovered.

The skull of an 800-year-old skeleton known as the Crusader, which was stolen from the crypt of an Irish church, has been found.

Vandals decapitated the skeleton, which was interred beneath St Michan's Church in Dublin, during a break-in last week. On Tuesday, gardaí (Irish police) said they had recovered the skull along with another stolen from the crypt. The crypt is a popular tourist attraction but tours were cancelled after the break-in.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-euro...witter&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews
 
I loved Dracula but thought that Stoker's later work, The Lair of The White Worm was kind of a mess. There are those who think he suffered from syphilis and, as time went on, it affected his writing abilities. Not sure that's true but there is no comparison between the two works.
 
Yes. Although I have a great fondness for the Capaldi/Donahue/Grant vehicle directed by Ken Russell.
 
Russell's film is what happens when you see that title and think "fnarr!", only turned up to eleven.
 
ramonmercado said:
Crusader's skull has been recovered.

The skull of an 800-year-old skeleton known as the Crusader, which was stolen from the crypt of an Irish church, has been found.

Vandals decapitated the skeleton, which was interred beneath St Michan's Church in Dublin, during a break-in last week. On Tuesday, gardaí (Irish police) said they had recovered the skull along with another stolen from the crypt. The crypt is a popular tourist attraction but tours were cancelled after the break-in.

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The culprit has pleaded guilty.

A 36-year-old man has admitted stealing the mummified head of an 800-year-old 'Crusader' from a church in Dublin.

'The Crusader' was decapitated at the crypt in St Michan's Church, Church Street in February of this year and stolen, along with another skull.
On March 5, gardaí recovered both the head of the crusader and the second skull. Brian Bridgeman, with an address at Fortlawn Park, Blanchardstown, Dublin, appeared briefly before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today, where he was arraigned. Bridgeman pleaded guilty to entering the vaults of St Michan’s between February 23 and 24 last as a trespasser and committing theft. Judge Martin Nolan adjourned the case for sentencing on July 24. Bridgeman has been remanded in custody.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...ied-head-of-800-year-old-crusader-933587.html
 
I was in Cambridge University Library doing some research on old steamships and I ordered up from the vaults a bound volume of magazines. Turning to the relevant pages I did a double take when I saw the author's name - Bram Stoker!
 
Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker gave a presentation tonight in Marsh’s Library on Recent discoveries about Bram Stoker’s research for Dracula.

Dacre has trailed his ancestors path of research through numerous libraries and private collections. Interesting stuff about how Bram was likely subjected to bloodletting as a child when ill. Also how decades after his mother first told him the tale he got her to write down a story about the premature burial of an acquaintance of hers. Van Helsing was based on a Professor at Budapest University Arminius Vambery who was an expert on Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman history. A table plan (drawn by Stoker) for a dinner held in London 1890 has both Stoker and Vambery present.

The original ending of Dracula had him perishing in a volcanic eruption. This suggests that Castle Dracula was modeled on one of Romania's extinct volcanoes, most Likely Racos which is close to the Rupea Fortress. I won a copy of Dacre's prequel to Dracula, Dracul by answering the question:
How do we know Stoker didn't intend to permanently kill off Dracula?
At the end Dracula is killed with a Bowie knife to the heart rather than a wooden stake.

I gave Dacre a copy of the Fortean Times, he hadn't seen it before.
 
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