Dracula

It has become something of a tradition to assume that Bram Stoker’s inspiration for the character of Dracula stemmed from the exploits of the 15th-century Romanian tyrant Vlad Țepeș - Vlad the Impaler. I disagree, and instead have come to conclude that the true origins of the character lay much closer to home for Stoker, and with an individual who dominated his own life: his overbearing employer, the despotic actor-manager Sir Henry Irving, for whom Stoker worked for 27 years, and whom Stoker seems to have both loathed and revered. Stoker even asked the charismatic Irving to portray Dracula on the stage – a role which Irving, perhaps aware of how much of himself had been written into the character, consistently declined. In my 'portrait' of the Count Stoker’s wish has at last been fulfilled: it is the features of Irving himself which form the basis for my own Dracula.

Does an imagined portrait of the notorious Count really need a heavy emphasis on blood and fangs? Not to me. Horror is in suggestion: in what you think you see, rather than in literal detail, and menace and dark charisma can be as much in the eyes as in more obvious attributes. And there is no actual 'blood' anywhere here: what you see is merely an overlay of brushstrokes.