Some thoughts on Le Fanu’s Camilla – and the affer-effects of reading after dark….

ljclayton

Have you ever read Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’? It’s one of the most frightening vampire books I’ve ever come across. I first read it several years ago when I was an actress. The company was touring with ‘Wuthering Heights’, spending a week in almost every town in Britain.

For the week in Malvern I was sharing digs with an actress called Helen Dorwood, who was playing Nelly Dean. It was the ground-floor flat of a sizeable Edwardian house, where the landlady, when she didn’t have guests, lived alone.

On the second night Helen had to drive to London after the perfomance to attend an audition the following morning. She came back to the digs to collect a few things and, the landlady being in bed, I locked up after she’d left. It was well after midnight but actors take a long time to wind down after a performance and I was…

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