James Norton, from Malton continues his period projects with a drama detailing the Bloomsbury Group.

 

MALTON-RAISED, North Yorkshire actor James Norton describes his latest role of Duncan Grant of the Bloomsbury group as "they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles".

It's a description of the tangled lives of a revolutionary collection of friends and lovers who were pioneers of artistic and sexual freedom.

Penned by Bafta-winning writer Amanda Coe (Room At The Top), Norton says: "It is a glimpse into the world we know in an academic sense – a lot of the characters are known by their work and being historical figures, but this drama pulls back the curtain and allows us into their world and private lives."

The drama focuses on the close yet often fraught relationship between painter Vanessa Bell (Phoebe Fox) and her sister Virginia Woolf (Lydia Leonard), alongside Vanessa’s complicated alliance with gay artist Grant. Together they, and their group of like-minded friends, navigate their way through love, sex and artistic life in the first half of the 20th Century.

"Someone described the Bloomsbury group as being united by their shared love of Duncan Grant. I felt that this is quite true, not in just an affectionate friendship-based love, but it seemed a lot of them actually had sex with Duncan Grant. Despite not going to Cambridge, he does become the essence and embodiment of the group."

Filming took place in London and the group's Charleston Farmhouse base in East Sussex. Norton was aware of his responsibility of playing a real person from history and says: "There is a massive following for the Bloomsbury group, and being in Charleston and meeting these people we wanted to make sure we did right in their eyes. I was luck enough to meet Henrietta Garnett (Duncan's granddaughter). She has a wonderful eccentric manner. When I was introduced as Duncan, she asked me to lie on the floor and pose like Duncan and when I got up she embraced me and said, 'Oh Duncan'. I felt like I got her seal of approval."

Norton describes the relationship between Duncan and Vanessa as incredibly complicated and very sad in many ways, but also beautiful.

"I think Duncan was probably aware, but in slight denial of how much pain he caused Vanessa. She was the main casualty of his happy-go-lucky free lifestyle. Phoebe Fox is an old friend of mine, so it was nice playing old friends like that too," he says.

"Duncan was never able to give her what she needed, but he stayed with her until she died in 1961. When their daughter came, Vanessa finally got the family unit she desperately wanted, but he wasn't able to be that father figure. It was very interesting to explore."

Life in Squares, BBc2, Monday, 9pm