Never Give Up by Miranda Miller

Hello Everybody,

Thanks so much to all of you who came to the launch , or relaunch, of The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd at The Owl bookshop in Kentish Town. It was great to see you all and I particularly enjoyed the lively discussion after Sally interviewed me.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Richard Dadd exhibition at the Royal Academy:

Detail from The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke by Richard Dadd 1855 - 64

Richard Dadd

Beyond Bedlam

25 July - 25 October 2026

The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries | Burlington House

“The highly original works of Victorian artist Richard Dadd, best known for his fairy paintings, draw upon literature, legend and memory to portray elaborate worlds that radiate imaginative power.

The first years of Richard Dadd’s life promised the conventional success of a highly talented British artist. The young Dadd was a student of the Royal Academy Schools and founding member of a group of artist-friends known as the Clique. In the early 1840s Dadd was already establishing himself as a painter of Shakespearean fairy scenes when he embarked on an ambitious trip across the Eastern Mediterranean that would inspire him for the rest of his life. On his return to Britain, Dadd began experiencing delusions, which led to him killing his father.

Dadd spent the rest of his life as a patient in Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals, where he was encouraged to continue producing oil paintings and watercolours of extraordinary delicacy and vividness. Despite Dadd’s seclusion in the Victorian asylum system, he was able to draw upon his memory, imagination and abiding interest in literature and legends to render fantastical worlds replete with exquisite detail. These paintings and watercolours are among the most original and imaginative works in British art.

Dadd’s art was all but forgotten until it resurfaced in the 1960s and 70s. In the years since, his work has continued to inspire artists, writers and musicians, including the band Queen, who named a song after one of Dadd’s most celebrated paintings, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. Bringing together more than 100 works, this exhibition tells the story of Dadd’s life and art, as radical and imaginative in his time as it is today.”

I did most of my research for this novel in the Bethlem archives, near Beckenham in Kent. Now those fascinating archives are available online, and the temporary building where I worked has blossomed into Bethlem Museum of the Mind which is well worth visiting. The museum records the lives and experience and celebrates the achievements of people with mental health problems. As well as Richard Dadd, many other talented inmates of the hospital have left drawings and paintings which are on display in this elegant Art Deco building.

On July 23rd I will be giving an illustrated talk about Richard Dadd at the Holborn Library.(http://www.camdenhistorysociety.org/events/2026/7/23/richard-dadd-in-camden-and-bedlam-an-illustrated-talk-by-miranda-miller).

Signed copies of my novel are available for £12.99 plus £3 for postage and packing in the UK. Please email me at: millermiranda39@gmail.com.

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