DAY ONE:

Francis Trevelyan Buckland was a Victorian naturalist who I have only just discovered through reading a very amusing biography. Raised from within the established clergy he found fame and fortune through his love of animals... keeping animals, dissecting animals, stuffing animals... you name it, he did it to an animal (with one possible exception!)

DAY TWO:

I've always admired Morris' belief in the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement - that of beauty being found through function and vice versa. But the more you look into his Socialist hopes for civilisation, the more you have to admire the man. His "News from Nowhere" was part call to arms, part science fiction, it now reads as a glorious insight into the aspirations of the Liberal Victorian Intelligentsia.

DAY THREE:

I LOVE THIS MAN! I spent the majority of my A-levels studying the works of Rodin. I even had the great fortune to go to France specifically to visit the Hotel de Biron - his home and now museum devoted to him. He was an undoubted genius. He was also a bit of a dick to women though... So I try not to look up to him too strongly! Very few sculptors have inspired ballets, operas and films to be created based upon their work... What-a-guy!

DAY FOUR:

Very few notable people have come out of my home town, Fordingbridge. Perhaps the greatest was Charles Chubb who invented the eponymous "Chubb Lock", or perhaps it was the F1 Commentator Murray Walker who lived up the road in Sandleheath. My vote is for this notably eccentric artist. His sister, Gwen, another brilliant artist had an intriguing affair with day three's subject matter. You can see a beautiful sculpture (created by Ivor Robert-Jones) of this great man down by Fordingbridge's eponymous bridge. #Eponymous!

DAY FIVE:

My horizons were already being expanded greatly when I was first given a copy of "The Magus" - I can now not tell you whether John changed my perception of art, love and curiosity or whether he just accompanied me upon a journey I had already set out upon. Either way, he now never leaves my side.

DAY SIX:

I was in my second year at university in Manchester when I first saw "La Traviata" - It was a production by Opera North. Up until that point I think I had probably only seen dirgeful touring companies devoid of theatricality or subtlety of emotive performance. The power of Verdi's opening prelude alone had my nerves exposed; as the show continued tears soaked my cheeks. For this opera alone, Verdi can be considered a true master of his craft, but there are so many other gems of his to discover too. (I think I had a similar reaction when I watched the Lean/Rachmaninoff coalition within "Brief Encounter"... But Rach doesn't have a beard...!)

DAY SEVEN:

I did a fair amount of film studies at university under the tutelage of Dr David Butler - a glorious man with his geek credentials held high and proud (he ran a symposium on Dr Who called "Time and Relative Dissertations in Space"...!) Anyway, it was through his course, "Falstaff and Gandalf go to the Movies" (another classic title, this time for a course on adaptation to screen), that I met Welles for the first time - through his adaptations of Shakespeare. First through "Chimes at Midnight" and then his brilliantly sparse "Macbeth". Welles was a precocious arse I have little doubt - he was 25(!!!) when he remoulded American cinema with "Citizen Kane" - but like all thespy humanities students, I thought I wanted to take on the world like him. I wanted to direct and produce and act and redefine theatre and be a talented dick; I think as far as I got was being the dick, albeit without the talent. His "War of the Worlds", his ability to tap in to his audiences so completely, awes me the most. Tragically, his last job was voicing an animated transformer...!

DAY EIGHT:

At the end of my childhood bookcase, terrifying front cover exposed, sat ominously a copy of Hoffman's "Struwwelpeter". An eminent German psychiatrist, Hoffman had failed to find suitable literature with which to instil in his children a proper sense of decorum, manners and morals, and so concocted his own devious creation. "Stuwwelpeter" was born. "Struwwelpeter" stared at me as I tried to sleep. Terrified, each night I would take this book and place it face down in the spare room. "Struwwelpeter" couldn't get me that night. Each day, my parents would place it back on the bookshelf. Each night "Struwwelpeter" would terrify me anew. This went on for YEARS! In early 1997, my school produced a musical production of the book that so scared me the years before. In London another musical version, "Shock Headed Peter" was being born too - fronted by my eventual "The Borgias" co-star and friend, Julian Bleach. Julian and I bonded over a mutual dark sensibility that Hoffman had a huge, long-nailed hand in creating.

DAY NINE:

William Golding taught at Bishop Wordsworth's Boys Grammar School in Salisbury, my school, for 17 years. Whilst there he wrote the book for which he is most remembered, "Lord of the Flies". Although he had taught long before I had arrived, my classmates and I, who were ostensibly a bunch of well behaved boys, took great pride from Golding's manifesto - that, should we be dumped on a tropical island, we would naturally become awesome savages and survivalists all!

DAY TEN:

Not famous for having a beard, but he did stick one to his face in "Spite Marriage"! He's a true artist - they even have him on loop in the Reina Sofia in Madrid! In my eyes his movies are what I would like cinema to be: experimental, well-funded, not afraid to play with the medium and with their tongue firmly in their cheek... Fewer Disney-owned toy-machines and more houses falling on people's heads, trains, trains, trains, individuals being chased by communities and trains - did I mention trains? His slapstick was one of the influences behind what Henry Bell and I did in our "Dog Ate Cake" days (we ran a Theatre Company devoted to one-act Victorian Farce, and described our output as "Sheridan meets Naked Gun via Bottom Live!") - it even led us to make a short b+w silent movie called "Who Shall I Play With Now?".