Pete Doherty exhibits blood paintings

Lead singer of rock band Babyshambles, Pete Doherty, is showing paintings created with his own blood at a new show in Camden.

On Blood: a portrait of the artist, displays artwork from the British rocker Doherty’s 2009 solo album Grace/Wastelands, as well as several canvases at the Cob Gallery.

Doherty -- who has been linked with a string of drug-related arrests -- told the Independent recently that he developed his “arterial splatter” technique by squirting his blood with a syringe onto a canvas. The paintings include elements of college and written lyrics and poetry written by the former Libertines star.

The show's co-curator Rachel Chudley told Reuters: "If you look at art through the ages, the subject matter has always been life. We all die and painting in blood is a reminder of our mortality. It's a universal media. I don't think there is anything gory about it."

According to sources, prices range from £4,500 to £8,000 for the original paintings and £500 for limited edition prints.

The jury is out, I am yet to be convinced I’d pay that much - but, according to reports some have sold already!

(pic source: Rolling Stone)

First detective novel ever published

The British Library has today published The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix, widely considered to be the first detective novel ever published.

Originally serialised between 1862 and 1863 in the magazine Once a Week and then published as a single volume in 1863, The Notting Hill Mystery has not been commercially available since the turn of the century.

pic: "He said he was not drunk, but the policeman found him lying on the doorstep" © British Library Board

For years, many considered the first detective novel to be Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, published in 1868, while others have proposed Emile Gaboriau’s first Monsieur Lecoq novel, L’Affaire Lerouge. However, The Notting Hill Mystery can truly claim to be the first modern detective novel and pre-dates both of these by several years, according to the British Library.

Presented in the form of diary entries, family letters, chemical analysis reports, interviews with witnesses and a crime scene map, the novel displays innovative techniques that would not become common features of detective fiction until the 1920s.

The author, Charles Felix, used Felix as a pseudonym. His real name was Charles Warren Adams and he was a journalist, traveller, lawyer, and the sole proprietor of the firm Saunders, Otley & Co as well as the author of Barefooted Birdie and Velvet Lawn.

The book is available here!