Aleksandra Ugelstad Elnæs
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aleksandraue.bsky.social
Aleksandra Ugelstad Elnæs
@aleksandraue.bsky.social
75 followers 150 following 62 posts
Writer, historian & reclusive escapist haunted by all things lost, fragmented and shipwrecked. Lapsed 18th centuryist interested in antiquity, queer classical reception, gothic fiction & the sea.
https://linktr.ee/aleksandraue
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aleksandraue.bsky.social
Sir John Soane's Museum, former home and showroom of the architect and collector, kept intact since his death in 1837.
November 2, 2025 at 6:25 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Autumns of yore. 🍂
November 2, 2025 at 6:11 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Happy belated Halloween, ghouls! Spooky kittens, October 2020. 🍂🦇🎃
November 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
John Rylands Library & Chetham’s Library, Manchester. Rylands opened in 1900 and is gloriously neo-gothic, while Chetham’s was founded in 1653.
October 19, 2025 at 8:30 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Goodbye and good riddance, summer.
September 21, 2025 at 6:50 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Summer reading (selected).
September 21, 2025 at 6:41 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began; but I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Lyme Park, June 2025.
September 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
‘Ought we to be drunk every night?’
Sebastian asked one morning.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘I think so too.’
September 13, 2025 at 11:33 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
The Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, June 2025.
September 13, 2025 at 10:45 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
“You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey—which isn't a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven with strawberries.” - Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. Castle Howard, June 2025.
September 12, 2025 at 6:31 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Castle Howard, June 2025 @castlehowardestate.bsky.social
September 6, 2025 at 9:39 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
“I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer.”
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Castle Howard, June 2025
September 6, 2025 at 9:35 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Sebastian contra mundum. Castle Howard filming locations for Brideshead Revisited (1981).
September 4, 2025 at 1:07 AM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
"It is poetry that I want now-long poems. […] I want the concentration & the romance, & the words all glued together, fused, glowing: I have no time to waste any more on prose. [...] It's poetry I want, so I repeat like a tipsy sailor in front of a public house." - Diary of Virginia Woolf,
15.8.1924
A person with red hair wearing a brown corduroy skirt, double breasted waistcoat, 18th century replica shirt and a blue neckerchief stands with arms akimbo in front of summer greenery and fortress walls.
July 12, 2025 at 12:20 AM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
“And then he spoke of the rain and the wind by which all things are changed, of the air through which all things live, and of the woods in which all things can be hidden.” - E.M. Forster, The Story of a Panic.
The book The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan edited by Michael Wheatley and featuring an illustration of Pan playing his flute in a moonlit clearing in the woods surrounded by dancing worshippers. An illustration of the horned god Pan playing his flute among the reeds and a business card reading Ai Tre Scalini Bottiglieria dal 1895 also with an illustration of Pan.
May 25, 2025 at 2:41 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Spring reading.
The Heroes’ Shrine or The Elegant Bidet by Marios Hakkas The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell Around the Lagoon by Alexandros Papadiamandis Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
May 10, 2025 at 7:16 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Began in autumn and finished in spring. Perfect seasonal companion by @slipperyjack.bsky.social.
Damnable Tales, a book of folk horror illustrated by Richard Wells, held up in a green spring forest. The cover of the book is richly illustrated in a woodcut style, depicting a gallows, ruins, sinister figures, a crow and a hand reaching out from the undergrowth.
May 10, 2025 at 3:21 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Cambridge, June 2024.
May 9, 2025 at 9:43 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Maurice (1987) filming locations at King’s College, Cambridge, which was E.M. Forster’s own college.
May 9, 2025 at 9:21 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Sunlight on a broken column. 🏛️ Athens, March 2025.
The propylaea at Acropolis, columns of white marble streaked with sun, seen against a blue sky. The temple of Athena Nike seen through the columns of the propylaea. Columns of the propylaea against the backdrop of a blue sky with white clouds viewed through an opening in the wall of the propylaea. A black and white cat grooming itself among the columns of the propylaea.
May 7, 2025 at 10:27 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Athens, March 2025.
Fragment of an ancient sculpture depicting the head of a youth, exhibited at the National Archeological Museum in Athens. View of the Roman Forum with the Tower of the Four Winds at the foot of the Acropolis. Sunset view of Athens from Areopagus Hill with Mount Lycabettus in the distance. Interior of Cafe Avissinia with an antique wooden bench, wooden chairs, red and white striped tablecloths and a large bouquet of pink and purple flowers. The walls are covered in a wallpaper with red and pink roses, and there are shelves running along the top of the room, filled with white and blue china and knick-knacks.
May 2, 2025 at 4:26 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
“To what purpose, April, do you return again? / Beauty is not enough. […] / Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. / It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay, Spring
A pocket book of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry with a cover featuring a sepia tinted photograph of Millay standing beneath a magnolia tree, touching the branches. A hand holds the book up against a backdrop of a magnolia tree in full bloom, covered in pink flowers.
April 30, 2025 at 7:19 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Sambourne House, June 2024. The preserved Victorian townhouse was a filming location for the 1987 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, notably the deleted scenes set before Clive leaves for Greece. Might need to do a post on all the Maurice-locations I’ve visited!
April 15, 2025 at 5:46 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
At home, in winter. 🌲❄️🕯️🔥 Art by @marlowelune.bsky.social & @johannaost.com.
April 14, 2025 at 11:20 PM
aleksandraue.bsky.social
Miscellaneous snaps from the heady Pre-Raphaelite fever dream that is Leighton House Museum, once the studio home of the painter and sculptor Frederic Leighton.
March 20, 2025 at 10:08 AM