BBC The Secret World of Lewis Carroll

Comments · 833

• ST

  @Stubentiger-o1k · 11 months ago

  Let's not forget illustrator John Tenniel, who created the perfectly realized images of Alice's world.

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• AC

  @AC-ze1nh · 9 years ago

  I think the best evidence is the Liddell mother's feelings towards Dodgson/Carroll. He was a dear friend and then suddenly he was cast out of their circle. It obviously had something to do with her daughters. I think it's fairly compelling that the mother, who lived in the Victorian age and shared the sensibilities of that era, was uncomfortable enough to take such extreme measures. If he was an undesirable suitor of an eligable daughter, they had polite ways of dealing with that didnt usually include banning the person from the house. I think she caught him doing something inapropriate and thus took steps to keep him away from the girls. The children might not have understood what was going on and just saw Dodgson as a friend, not realizing the greater scope of the situation. If the photograph in France is actually real, that might have been the reason.  Obviously we will never know but the destroyed pages of his diary do not speak to his innocence, especially since the missing pages are from the time when he was visiting the Liddells and just after their falling out.

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• ON

  @onlyonce1707 · 2 years ago

  It didn't captivate me as a child. A scary and frustrating nightmare.

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• DA

  @darlamcfarland1826 · 6 years ago

  Alice in Wonderland scared me to death as a child. Even the Disney version made me cry. His genius is not obvious to me.

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• BR

  @break154videos · 1 year ago

  my great great grandfather was Theophillus Carter - He was allegedly the inspiration for the Mad Hatter

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• CI

  @cidacosta6182 · 10 months ago

  Had the relatives not cut those pages, we would have been able  to know the man better than we know the artist!

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• DE

  @delphinidin · 4 months ago

  I like that they're very balanced on the discussion of what exactly his attraction was to little girls. They give all the evidence on both sides and agree that there's literally no way to know and that there's evidence to back up many different interpretations.

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• NA

  @natashastacy4436 · 3 years ago

  No matter what the timeline is, I don't think any children should be photographed that way

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• NI

  @niemann3942 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Just some thoughts on that infamous &quot;photo of Lorina Liddell&quot;: &nbsp;I&apos;ve just looked again at the section with the &quot;forensic expert&quot; who says his feeling is that that photo is Lorina Liddell. &nbsp;Based on what he says, I can&apos;t imagine anyone hiring him as an expert because so much of what he claims is obviously contradicted by the photos right in front of him:<br>No, the lines of the eyebrows are NOT the same. &nbsp;In all photos of Lorina Liddell, from childhood through adulthood &nbsp;-- and this &quot;expert&quot; only looked at two, although many more exist -- her eyebrows are clearly higher above the eyes and <b>much</b> more noticeably arched. &nbsp;In the photo of the other girl, the eyebrows are fairly flat.<br>No, the areas above the eyelids are obviously NOT the same. &nbsp;In all photos of Lorina the &quot;hooded&quot; look he mentions shows her entire upper eyelids. &nbsp;In the photo of the other girl, the lids are almost completely hidden by the fold of skin under the eyebrows.<br>Also, this &quot;expert&quot; failed to notice that Lorina clearly had very light-colored eyes, while the girl in the photo has dark eyes.<br><br>So while those experts&apos; &quot;gut feelings&quot; might tell them one thing, they&apos;re worthless because other people&apos;s equally valid gut feelings say the opposite. &nbsp;Edward Wakeling was an expert on Carroll&apos;s photography and he determined it wasn&apos;t by Carroll.<br>In fact, <b>the experts at the Musee Cantini itself, which holds the photo, have determined the photo is NOT by Lewis Carroll</b> . &nbsp;For some reason the filmmakers neglected to mention that pretty crucial fact in their documentary. &nbsp;Talking about the museum, but then not telling us what <b>its</b> official stance on the matter is, and how it arrived at it, is, frankly, dishonest.<br>(Also not mentioned in the documentary: &nbsp;Some analysts have speculated that that photo was not intended as &quot;pornography&quot; at all, but to document a medical condition, perhaps of the spine.)<br><br>SO ... to repeat again: &nbsp;That photo&apos;s ONLY tenuous connection to Lewis Carroll seems to be an inscription made at some unknown time ... by some unknown person ... for some unknown reason ... in a country to which Carroll had no known connection. &nbsp;(And before ending up in that museum, the photo apparently belonged to a gallery that was attempting to sell it.) &nbsp;Since the inscription&apos;s identification of the subject as Lorina Liddell is pretty clearly wrong, the attribution to Lewis Carroll must also be considered equally suspect.

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• LE

  @leew1598 · 8 years ago

  I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but that last bit of evidence was pretty damming.

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• JU

  @jubjub2743 · 8 months ago (edited)

  Do you honestly think that people were different back then? Because it was a different age? That&apos;s delusional. It was probably just a whole lot easier to hide.

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• CI

  @Cillsfillums · 1 year ago

  When I was a child, Wonderland was not a place I wanted to visit. Tom’s Midnight Garden, on the other hand, was.

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