Resnais's interest in 18th century British architecture and the extravagant projects of William Beckford provided the starting point for the section about Forbek and his castle.
William Thomas Beckford (1760–1844), English novelist, art collector, travel writer and politician
William Shakespeare | William Laud | Thomas Jefferson | William Blake | William | Thomas Edison | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | Thomas | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | Thomas Hardy | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | Thomas Mann | William Hogarth | Thomas Aquinas | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | Clarence Thomas | Thomas Gainsborough | William Penn | Dylan Thomas | Thomas Pynchon | William Jennings Bryan |
The eccentric William Thomas Beckford was originally buried here, but moved once its former retreat of Lansdown Tower was converted into Lansdown Cemetery (which was sold after his death and when it appeared that the buyer wanted to turn it into a pub and pleasure garden, Beckford’s daughter bought it back and presented it to the Rector of Walcot as a cemetery.) “The best monuments are slightly neo-Grecian with canopied tops, dating from the 1840s.
Fonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford's Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built around the turn of the 18th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt.
In 1766, Sir Peter Beckford (1740–1811), a wealthy Englishman and cousin of the novelist William Thomas Beckford, twice Lord Mayor of London, visited Rome.
At Christmas, 1781, Loutherbourg mounted a spectacle at a party in the Egyptian Hall at Fonthill for William Beckford, promising (according to Beckford) to "present a mysterious something that the eye has not seen or heart of man conceived ".
Hundreds of genre author entries are provided, including: William Beckford by E.F. Bleiler, Ambrose Bierce and Algernon Blackwood by Jack Sullivan, Ramsey Campbell by Robert Hadji, Robert W. Chambers by T. E. D. Klein, James Herbert by Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson by Sullivan, Stephen King by Don Herron, Arthur Machen by Klein, Ann Radcliffe by Devendra P. Varma, and Peter Straub by Patricia Skarda.