“Eleanor tells me men aren’t built to understand a woman’s pain. One day all the girls in the world will rise up and men won’t know what’s hit them.” Elise Porlock
Queen Nefertari plays Senet, the world’s oldest known board game.
Ophelia by John Stuart Millais.
The main picture in the Porlock parlour.Michelangelo’s Pietà.
A miniature replica is one of the last items
packed away.
“That exquisite sense I’ll never really know who you are and the danger it could all collapse in on us and take us down to the bottom of the earth.” Madeline Everard
The return of the king:
Caravaggio’s The Supper of Emmaus.Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the inspiration for Elise’s Show and Tell.
“Next Easter Michael would have to hack his way through the foliage, resuscitating his family from suspended sleep.” The Sleeping Beauty by Edward Burne-Jones.
“Nowhere to go. Not even a mirror through which I can see outside, and wait for a glimpse of Sir Lancelot to ride past and lure me to cursed freedom.” Kirsten Atwood
The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse The Rape of Proserpine by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
“She always felt close to those ladies…
the exquisiteness of their touch, hand-to-hand, breast-to-breast.”
Little Red Riding Hood by Carl Larsson
“Imagine this is a resurrection machine, bringing to life ancient voices from the past. Just remember how much I love you.” Eleanor Waverley
1001 Night’s Scheherazade by Sophie Anderson A Woman Ghost Appeared from a Well by Katsushika Hokusai
“When you were little, I used to read Arabian Nights to you in bed. Telling stories are sometimes the only thing that gives us hope.” Jacqueline Eliot
“The parlour’s swirling emotional gyres kept them both together… elevating them to a higher place.”
“The last thing I feel like now is a kid. Which I suppose is what I wanted and why we started.” Lucy Butler

Lamia by John William Waterhouse The Three Graces by Edward Burne-Jones The Spirit of the Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw
“She imagined herself as Alice, peering through the tiniest door and gazing into a wondrous garden, a realm so beautiful yet tantalisingly beyond reach.” Dreamers by Albert Joseph Moore.
“He got up close with his stinking whisky breath and spoke about those Ripper killings. Talked to me like I was one of them poor girls who got butchered.” Elsie Waverley
“I still believe in fairy castles and living in a palace on the hill despite everything. Because if you don’t, growing up must be no fun at all.”
‘Last of all was hope’. Pandora opens the box. The Pied Piper of Hamelin by James Elder Christie
“They’re frightened, that’s why. Of time, insignificance, the unknown, our never-ending rotation through the infinite sky until we’re finally swallowed by the stars.” Mary Ann Davenport
