Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2016 | Page 21

Interview

“As a model you
can be a bit of a
spy. The role itself
demands nothing
from you, but you
absorb so much
from the people
you meet – and I
met a lot!”

Photo: Gail Downey at a photo shoot in 1994

take centre stage – being around books
seems to make them talk. Everyone has
a story to share and I love that openness
and nostalgia. Actually it’s a kind of
magic!”
It’s for this reason that Gail has a strict
rule for herself - never to read when she’s
in the shop.
“If you have your nose in a book,
the message you give is ‘Go away, I’m
reading’, so no, I would never read in the
shop. There are too many interesting
conversations I’d miss by reading, so I save
it til I go home!”
Not surprisingly, Gail is a prolific reader –
“everything from high brow to low-brow”
and lots in between - not to mention a
researcher and author on her pet subjects
of Lewis Carroll and the Bloomsbury
movement.

Soon after discovering and falling under
the spell of the West Wight, she visited
Dimbola Lodge and became captivated
by the work and life of Julia Margaret
Cameron.
This led her to her making connections
between the pioneering Victorian
photographer and the arty Bloomsbury
set that followed her - including Alice in
Wonderland author Lewis Carroll.
Gail’s findings – which she outlined
in her own book The Freshwater Circle
Through the Looking Glass - were so
ground-breaking that academics still
consult her on the subject.
They also fuelled her fertile imagination
and, as a trustee of Dimbola Lodge, she
masterminded a Mad Hatter-themed
makeover of the Lodge’s tearoom which
in 2013 won the Museum and Heritage

Award for Excellence for best project on a
limited budget - beating off competition
from the likes of The British Library and
National Galleries of Scotland.

Teenage rebel
Always arty and fascinated by fashion,
Gail originally began training in fashion
design at Eastbourne College in the late
1970s – but her rebellious spirit was soon
showing itself.
“When the lecturer asked us to draw
three outfits for the spring and summer
and then went off and left us to it, I threw
down my pens and put on an Ian Drury
track!” she laughs.
She promptly joined a model agency in
London – not, she insists for the glamour,
but as a way of learning more about the

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