Derek Jarman

About the Author

Derek Jarman was a painter, theater designer, and filmmaker. In the 1960s he designed sets and costumes for the theater, including Jazz Calendar with Frederick Ashton and The Rake’s Progress with Ken Russell. His work in the film medium spanned the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, during which time he produced films such as Jubilee (1977), Caravaggio (1986), The Garden (1990), and Blue (1993). His books include Dancing Ledge (1984), Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), and the autobiographical Modern Nature (1991).

As an activist and prominent figure in avant-garde London circles from the 1970s to the 1990s, Jarman became a voice in AIDS activism after being diagnosed in 1986. Always a gardener, he bought Prospect Cottage in the final decade of his life and made it his focal point, planting indigenous plants and inviting nature into the shadows of the nuclear waste plant. The garden has since become iconic for being a hopeful, stalwart paradise at the seeming ends of the earth in Dungeness, Kent, one of the largest expanses of shingle in Europe.