DREAM TEAM

A rewatching of a seminal film laid the foundation for JW Anderson's latest collection, a fantastical collaboration with artist Christiane Kubrick

- JACK MOSS

There was a loving arrangement to divide Childwickbury Manor, the Hertfordshire home that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick shared with his wife Christiane. She, an artist, would have the back, where there was light through the day to paint, while Stanley, despite the frequent intrusions of paparazzi peering over the hedges, would take the front, working in a ground-floor office surrounded by filing cabinets full of scripts, documents and photographs. There was another promise between the two: when they married in 1958, Christiane, then an actress, asked that she never appear in any of his films. Stanley kept his promise until his death in 1999, and he is now buried beneath his favourite tree in the grounds of the manor where Christiane continues to live and work in relative solace.

The home is a handy half-hour-or-so drive to Elstree Studios, the location of many of the director’s film projects, and comprises a jumble of buildings first inhabited by monks in the medieval era (although the majority of the home dates to the 18th century). Inside, a warren of rooms lead off from a central kitchen, including a wood-panelled billiards room which appears straight from a Stanley Kubrick film set, and a library with crimson red walls, the mass of books providing a teasing insight into the director’s mind and fixations (there’s everything from witchcraft to cats). Glimpsed through an open door is a room decorated with the Venetian masks that appear in Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley’s much-mythologised final movie.