Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Pre-Raphaelites

Astarte Syriaca by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

On the 1st of May Andrew Lloyd Webber paid homage to his love of the Pre-Raphaelites in a programme on ITV1 called 'Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Pre-Raphaelites'.

He owns a substantial collection of PRB paintings, which he started collecting many years ago.

You can see this programme for another week on ITV Player

The interesting thing that I took from this is programme is that he says that Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites have been more loved by ordinary people than by the great art critics - having seen a huge blown up picture of Rossetti's Proserpine in Las Vegas, he was told that it was there because it was the most popular greetings card.  He also said that he felt that the Pre-Raphaelites are extremely relevant to today, with their very British passion. He believes they will become increasingly popular as time goes on.

Our musical POSSESSED, tells the passionate and dramatic story of Rossetti's love for William Morris's wife Jane.  All the way through Lord Lloyd Webber's programme I hear echoes of the iconic Rossetti and Morris words that come through the songs and dialogue in our musical.  It is also interesting that many of the songs that have been used for the programme have that same Celtic feel that many of our songs have.