A short time later, the British magazine Idols published a piece on Louise Brooks, giving me more information and alerting me to the existence of a biography by Barry Paris. One trip to the (thankfully well-stocked) library later, and I was able to read this excellent and intelligently-written book. When I demanded my own copy as a present, my poor parents had to have it sent over from France, as it wasn't actually available to buy in the UK at the time for some reason.

Despite all this interest, I still managed to reach the age of eighteen without actually seeing a single Louise Brooks film. I'm doing better now, having seen Pandora's Box, Diary Of A Lost Girl, Beggars of Life, Love em and Leave em and Windy Reilly in Hollywood. So while there are still many films I haven't seen, I reckon I'm doing not badly considering my location.

Now, maybe you're thinking that eleven year olds shouldn't be spending their time in bookstores gaping at pictures of 1920s film stars. That maybe I should have used this time productively instead, being active and generally Getting A Life. But I can honestly say that my interest in Louise Brooks has lead me to developing other interests (others may call them obsessions) which have widened my horizons significantly. No, really. For example: a continuing interest in anything and everything associated with Weimar Germany (very handy for exams, that one), an introduction to silent cinema which until that point I hadn't really investigated, the discovery of new (well, to me anyway) areas of literature and art, stimulated by Expressionism, Louise's circle of acquaintances, and even mere mentions in the Barry Paris biography (Jose Ortega y Gasset doesn't get much attention these days, so thank you Mr Paris). And yes, I have in the past tried my best to look like the divine Louise, perhaps not entirely successfully.I did manage the hair, but then that's the easy bit.

So while most appreciations of Louise Brooks stem from visceral appeal, it is possible for this to lead to intellectual stimulation (oh dear, getting a bit pretentious, my humblest apologies). I'll leave you with a tribute which puts it rather better than I can, courtesy of Henri Langlois.

"Those who have seen her can never forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence because, like the statues of antiquity, she is outside of time... She has the naturalness that only primitives retain before the lens... She is the intelligence of the cinematographic process, she is the most perfect incarnation of photogenie; she embodies in herself all that the cinema rediscovered in its last years of silence: complete naturalness and complete simplicity"