Julia Blackburn

“{{cite web|title=interview with Julia Blackburn|website=famouswritingroutines.com|url=https://famouswritingroutines.com/interviews/interview-with-julia-blackburn/}}”

“Julia Blackburn's official website”

“The author’s father, {{w|Thomas Blackburn (poet)|Thomas Blackburn}}, was “a poet and an alcoholic”; her mother, Rosalie de Meric, a painter and an exhibitionist. Both parents were breathtaking narcissists and dirty fighters. Until they divorced, when Julia was 13, they scrapped loudly and vigorously. Rosalie would often thrust Julia in front of her to act as a shield from her husband’s fists. Once a punch missed and hit the child. “So sorry darling,” Thomas said. “No blood I hope?””

“In order to try to see what Goya saw, I have visited the places he knew well: the village of his childhood, the farmhouse where he stayed with the {{w|Mar%C3%ADa Josefa Pimentel, Duchess of Osuna|Duchess of Alba}}, the cities of {{w|Zaragoza}}, Madrid, {{w|Cadiz}} and, finally, {{w|Bordeaux}}. In my mind's eye I can look across the landscapes that he once travelled through. I can walk the same streets, I can gaze out of the window of the house in which he was born and the house in which he died. Maybe that is another way of meeting a a man who died.”