At Home With Derek Jarman

Home is never only of the present. A sense of personal robustness and sometimes political resistance can emerge through a tacking back and forth between homes past and present—especially for those who felt and feel socially or culturally marginalized. We see this vividly in the way the filmmaker Derek Jarman created his home and garden at Prospect Cottage at Dungeness on the Kent coast in the context of his failing health. In this piece I show how formative homes, homes of early adulthood, and aspirations for a different kind of home life inflect the way Jarman lived at Prospect in his here and now. This is about the rolling together of different ages and experiences in ways that can give a sense of endurance in uncertain times.