In her ambitious and powerful seventh novel, Miranda Miller returns to Bethlem Hospital – Bedlam – where she left the eponymous heroine of her last, Nina in Utopia. Here we meet the celebrated Victorian painter Richard Dadd, confined to the hospital after committing patricide, who is haunted by vicious fairies, his dead father and the Egyptian god Osiris.

Dr Hood, the forward-thinking warden of Bedlam who has enlightened views about mental illness, is determined to reform the institution. In 1857 he gives Dadd a spacious room in which to paint, and with the doctor’s encouragement the artist begins to produce his best work, including The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. But Dadd soon finds himself in 21st- century London where he glimpses the mysterious Nina and his own painting…

Miranda Miller, Mary Hamer and Jonathan Falla discuss their recent historical fiction at Daunt Books:

Listen to Miranda reading from the book at Brixton BookJam:

Royal Academy Magazine chose The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd as one of their six Christmas books in December 2013.

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