Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Mountain men

Mountain men were trappers and explorers who roamed the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 to the early 1840s. Mountain men were ethnically, socially, and religiously diverse. Most were born in Canada, the United States, or in Spanish-governed Mexican territories, although some European immigrants moved west in search of financial opportunity. Mountain men were primarily motivated by profit, trapping beaver and selling the skins, although some were more interested in exploring the West.

Vicky de Lambray

Vicky de Lambray was a transvestite male prostitute, conman and thief who became a favourite of Fleet Street gossip columnists. In an essay called "London Grandeur" Phaedra Kelly says "Vikki's claim was that she would be the most famous transgenderist ever and die dramatically at the age of 30." De Lambray once changed his name by deed poll to Louis de Rothschild — hoping he would be confused as a Rothschild family member. The Rothschild family paid him ten thousand pounds to change it back again, which he did. Vicky de Lambray claimed he was addicted to the idea of becoming famous. He would regularly hire a Rolls Royce with the funds received prostituting himself in Shepherd Market in London's West End. He would place a large sign in the back of the Rolls, saying VICKY de LAMBRAY—ENTERTAINER, and drive for hours around central London or park outside Harrods. It was while working at Shepherd Market that de Lambray met the former head of MI6 Sir James Dunnet. During the assignation, de Lambray stole Dunnet's wallet and credit cards and was arrested after a few days while attempting to use Dunnet's credit card.

Axel Munthe

Axel Munthe was a true Renaissance man, a scientist, and doctor as well as a poet who was a friend of Henry James, Somerset Maugham, and others. Munthe first came to Capri in 1885. He built his villa on the ruins of an ancient Chapel dedicated to San Michele, following a series of sketches made on a wall. The result was a building articulated on various levels: the study is on the first floor, the loggia crosses pergolas and columns to reach a circular viewpoint which looks out across the Bay of Naples. In Villa San Michele a number of ancient artifacts are displayed - objects found by Munthe in Capri, Anacapri and elsewhere, some of which donated by friends. There are fragments of sarcophaguses, busts, Roman paving, marble and columns can be seen. In the garden there is a Greek tomb and a granite Sphinx which gazes out over the whole Island of Capri.

Roy Shaw

Roy Shaw is an English millionaire, real estate investor, author and businessman from the East End of London who was formerly a notorious criminal and Category A prisoner. During the 1970s-1980s, Shaw was a well known and respected figure in the criminal underworld of London and was frequently associated with the Kray twins. Shaw is perhaps best remembered today for his infamous careers as both a professional boxer and an unlicensed fighter, becoming a legend in bare-knuckle boxing and during which time he became arch-rival with the also legendary Lenny McLean.

Hal Lipset

Hal Lipset was the most respected and also the sleaziest private detective in America. Lipset began as an investigator in the U.S. Army. Later he became a pioneer in electronic surveillance techniques (Coppola's movie The Conversation was partly a portrait of Lipset), while remaining busy with a variety of cases that range from standard divorce snooping through insurance fraud to catching a jewel thief in Europe. Lipset had an apolitical approach to his work: according to him, guilt or innocence is the court's concern, not his; he worked for anyone who paid.

Thomas Phillipps

Sir Thomas Phillipps was an English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century, due to his severe condition of bibliomania. He was the illegitimate son of a textile manufacturer and inherited a substantial estate which he spent almost entirely on vellum manuscripts, and, when out of funds, borrowed heavily to buy manuscripts, thereby putting his family deep into debt. Phillipps recorded in an early catalogue that his collection was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction of valuable manuscripts. Philipps began his collecting while still at Rugby School and continued at Oxford. Such was his devotion that he acquired some 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts, arguably the largest collection a single individual has created, and coined the term vello-maniac.

Immanuel Velikovsky

Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, a book which asserts, among many other things, that the planet Venus did not exist until recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit. Velikovsky (1895-1979), a psychiatrist by training, did not base his claims on astronomical evidence and scientific inference or argument. Instead, he argued on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer.