RedHanded - ShortHand: Eric Gill - British Art’s Darkest Secret

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

From the BBC and Westminster Cathedral to Penguin paperbacks, typeface creator Eric Gill was once lauded as the eccentric genius behind some of Britain’s most iconic visual landmarks. But behind the scenes, he was also a sex-mad monster who shamelessly abused his own daughters within the rural Catholic artisanal communes where he lived and worked…And the art world covered it all up for decades. TL;DR – Did you know one of the UK’s most celebrated sculptors and graphic designers was actually a notorious nonce? Neither did we.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Picked up a Penguin classics book recently. Or tuned in to an old rerun on the BBC? Well, without knowing it, you've been consuming the work of an artist who shaped the visual identity of 20th century Britain. Typeface designer and sculptor Eric Gill. And why you might not have known his name before, you're about to find out way more about the man behind the neat black lettering than you ever bargained for.

A devout Catholic convert who preached a philosophy of traditional traditional craftsmanship and spirituality. Eric Gill was known as one of Britain's most celebrated artists. But, decades after his death, twisted details from his very own diaries came to light. The painting did a less than flattering portrait of the creative genius, exposing him as a sex-mad pervert who dabbled in incest with his own sisters, sexually abused his own daughters,

and even indulged in sinister experiments with his pet dog. Luckily for Eric Gill, people weren't quite so hot on canceling everyone back then. It wasn't really a thing. But today, his crimes have a lot of people asking, how far can we really separate art from the artist? This is the shorthand. To start, we are taking you back to January 2022, when crowds gathered outside the BBC's Broadcasting House in London,

watching in shock as a beanie-clad man scaled the building with a hammer. The man hacked at the iconic 10-foot wall sculpture of Shakespearean characters Prospero and Ariel above the building's main entrance, drawing gasps with every chunk of stone that tumbled to the pavement below. As for what has triggered this frenzied assault on the Beeb's stony guardians, well, according to Beanie Guy, the artist behind the sculpture was a paedophile. Police eventually got him down and the Beanie Man was arrested for causing him. criminal damage. But not before he managed to gouge a good few holes out of the artwork that had proudly welcomed the BBC's workforce since 1933, leaving young Ariel conspicuously lacking

his delicately carved nether regions. As BBC bigwigs dithered over loudening cries for the sculpture's removal, the story blew the lid off an open secret that had been festering in artistic circles for decades. One that exposed an unsavory truth that the BBC would rather have kept under wraps. They've got quite a few of those. So let's go back. Maybe we should just arrest everyone who applies for a job of the BBC. Why not, man? It's something to do, isn't it? Like, it's just, like they are everyone. Every single person who's ever walked to the earth is a paedophile. That's how it's starting to feel to me. So let's go back and tell that horrible story once again all the way

from the beginning. The man at the centre of this shitstorm entered the world almost exactly 140 years earlier in 1882, in the seaside town of Brighton. Arthur Eric Routon Gill was one of a whopping 13 children born to the Reverend Arthur Tiedman Gill and his wife, Sicily Rose King, a former opera singer who went by the stage name Rose LaRoe, before going on to have a gaggle of children. Fucking... It's like 11 too many. I mean...

There needs to be like four twins in there. I just, I cannot imagine how this is possible. And the young Eric's artistic ambitions were clear from an early age. Inspired by the ornate lettering at Chichester Cathedral, Gill studied at a local college before moving to London in the early 1900s to pursue a career in design. He became an apprentice for an ecclesiastical architecture firm, the guys who built the churches.

And he also took evening classes in stone masonry and calligraphy. One of his teachers was Edward Johnston, the man most famous for designing the iconic London underground font that still used today. Gill became a disciple of Johnston, sparking a creative partnership that lasted years. After abandoning his architectural training, Gil set up a business cutting headstone inscriptions and designing fancy chapter headings for books. But art wasn't just a way for Gil to pay the bills. It had a deeper philosophical meaning. As a young man, Gill initially aligned himself with the arts and crafts movement, popularised by his predecessors like William Morris,

rejecting modern mass production techniques and pushing for a return to old-timey craftsmanship methods. But by 1907, he'd outgrown the movement and was publicly criticising its failings. Eric Gill was searching for more, and he'd found it in the oh-so-tight embrace of the Roman Catholic Church. Gil and his wife became Catholics in 1913, with Ethel even changing her name to Mary. This spiritual awakening triggered Gil to move Mary and his young daughters, Elizabeth Petra and Joanna, to a plot of land on Ditchling Common in Sussex. Here he built a community of artisans called the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, made up of fellow Catholic craftsmen who strictly followed traditional methods.

Most of the guild's members, including Gill, were also members. of the Third Order of St Dominic, a lay division of the Dominican Order, with a focus on preaching. And let's just say, life at Ditchling wasn't your average village scene. A chapel designed by Eric Gill was built into the middle of the Gill's workshops,

with a wooden cross featuring a carved Christ figure standing proudly on a nearby hill. The flock of artists and their families followed the strict Dominican daily prayer schedule. One of the community's core beliefs was that the crafting process was a form of holy worship and a way for the Gil to actually commune with God. Gill himself wore a workman smock with woolen stockings that looked just like a monk's habit, even earning him the tongue-in-cheek nickname the married monk.

As for Gil's family, they seem like the classical idea of a happy Catholic home, torn straight from the pages of the Bible. According to biographers, Gil's aura of holy domesticity invited comparisons with the household of St Thomas More. Even in the early 20th century, the Gill family seemed transplanted from a historic age. The household had no modern appliances or bathroom with water hand pump from a well and cooking done over a rustic log fire. Guests were scolded for bringing in newfangled contraptions like typewriters.

And clothed in old-fashioned dresses, Gill's three daughters didn't attend school. He would have hated an air friar. I do sometimes think I'm like, what would the people who originally lived in this house or in this town think of like what the fuck is going on now? It's hilarious. I was trying to think of what the most modern thing, we got underfloor heating and I was like, God, the Edwardians who lived here would lose their fucking shit, wouldn't they? It's hectic. Even though underfloor heating, like the Romans had figured that one out. That's true. And that's true. And actually the water one is much better. I couldn't afford it. We went for the electric one, which is like way more shit and expensive. To run, not to lay. Obviously, that wouldn't make sense. To outsiders, Eric Gill looked like some kind of modern day Jesus. He was so devoted to his faith that he even started wearing a symbolic chastity girdle. Here we fucking go. I knew this was coming around his thigh.

Why is he wearing that? Why is he wearing that? He's already got kids. I don't get it. And he's married. Well, maybe he just is better than you. Oh, fair enough. Fair enough. He's right. I don't wear a chastity girdle. That is true. But as his friends would later sarcastically mutter, much good it did him. Because as with his nickname, the married monk, there was a huge contradiction at the very heart, Gil. His intense religious obsession and his absolutely insatiable appetite for sex. Ever since he was old enough to discover his own libido, Eric Gill was consumed by the pleasures of the flesh. In one of his

diaries, Gil reminisced on a major milestone, his very first wank. Here is what he has to say. How shall I ever forget the strange inexplicable rapture of my first experience? What marvelous thing was this that suddenly transformed a mere water tap into a pillar of fire and water into an elixir of life. That is the most poetic way I've ever heard somebody's first rank described to be able. Unsurprisingly, Eric Gill wasn't content to keep his hands to himself. He described multiple dalliances with prostitutes

in his diaries before marrying his wife Ethel in 1904. and he had a particular fixation on women's pubic hair. Oh, we'd hate it today. He would hate it now. And a twist of good fortune for Gill, married life didn't stop that fuzzy pleasure train. Gill were absurdised about he and Ethel's love life in his diaries, and they even co-wrote an essay in 1913 called He and She detailing their sexual experiences.

One particular quote, comes up their mutual enthusiasm in this department. Always ready and willing was our motto, with respect to the lovemaking. Let them all come, was our motto in respect of babies. Ah, okay, now the 13 babies makes sense. Gotcha. So now let's move on to the elephant in the room.

We're all familiar with Catholic guilt, some, maybe more than others. So you might be wondering, where the hell was Eric Gill's fair share of that? As biographer Fiona McCarthy writes, Gell's adventurous sex life was, quote, puzzlingly at odds with his public role, a sage, pronouncer on morality and upholder of decorum. So with that chastity belt chafing at his thigh, didn't Gil feel even a tainty bit of a hypocrite for loudly extolling the joys of sex?

Well, for Gil, it didn't seem to be that simple. Because rather than curbing his sexual appetite, Catholicism, it seems, seems, only egged Gill on. Art, religion, sex, spirituality and philosophy all blurred into one delicious moral crumble. And he seemed to believe that he had the God-given right to do whatever the fuck he wanted, since every choice he made must be pre-blessed by the big guy upstairs. So while Gill had the nerve to publicly protest against Mary Stopes and her birth control crusade, because it was unnatural and against God's will. Meanwhile, he was bending the rules of his own adopted religion.

The first biggie being adultery. While Ethel was pregnant with their first daughter in 1905, Gill had a fling with the maid. A few years later, he travelled around France with a scandalous young woman called Lillium Meisham, doing a fair bit more than just French kissing. And later diary entries show Gil didn't just dip his toe in the extramarital lady-loving. He also experimented with men, like his close friend, Robert Gibbings. He wrote this glowing report in 1927 after messing around with Gibbings and his hot wife, Moira, during a wild weekend at their country house. The shape of the head of a man's erect penis is very excellent in the mouth.

There is no doubt about this. I have often wondered, and now I know. I'm so glad I have never had the attention span to write a diary. It just fucks you retroactively, I think. I know. I mean, I can only think of one that, you know, it's like, oh, that was good that you wrote all that down. Who, and Frank? Anne.

Everyone else, fucked. Don't do it. Still, despite this little Apolland sojourn, Gill largely focused his amorous attentions on the fairer sex throughout his life. In fact, he seemed to get away with shagging just about every woman in his circle. even if they were related to him. So let's get into the incest, because Eric Gill had a lot of sisters.

And from what we know, from his own writings and diaries, it appears that he was sexually involved with at least two of them, Gladys and Angela. Now we don't know the full details of these alleged incestuous relationships or when exactly they began, but as far as we can tell, they were consensual. And while today incest is a hugely taboo subject, it seems that maybe there wasn't quite as big a deal than Eric Gill's lifetime, or at least certainly not to him. Gill wrote Breazily in 1913 in his he and she collection of essays that all of his sexual encounters outside of his marriage so far had been with prostitutes apart from his affair with Lillian Meachan.

Oh and of course his sisters, who didn't really count? He continued to write about encounters with Gladys into his 40s, when both of them had been married for years, and he writes about it all in a weirdly casual manner, saying things like Bath and then slept with Gladys. For Gill's sexual boundaries with family were more like guidelines, ones that he was all too willing to break. Which brings us on to the most sickening part of Gill's legacy.

the sexual abuse of his underage daughters whilst at Ditchling Common in the 20s. Gill recorded this abuse in his diaries using clip descriptions of what he did to his daughters and when, as well as noting their bodily responses, almost like a scientific logbook. But we don't have access to those diaries, and we're not sure we would want to read them anyway.

But biographer Fiona McCarthy, who will come back to you later, summarised some of the sickening confessions in her 1989 book on Gill's life. and legacy. She found one particular entry that suggests Gil felt a sense of anxiety that what he was doing to the girls was wrong, or at least was conflicted about how it compared to his saintly public image. After visiting one of his younger daughter's bedrooms, Gil jotted down, stayed half hour, put P in a hole, this has to stop. Oh. But Gil seemed obsessed with

constantly pushing the boundaries of how far he could go when it came to. sex. And that led him to beastiality. In a diary entry from the last decade of his life, he noted in casual shorthand an experiment with his pet where he had discovered a dog, will join with a man. Whatever that means, I think we know what it means. I think we know exactly what that fucking means. But perhaps the most shocking element of this story isn't that Gil was interfering with his dog, sleeping with his sisters, or nonsing his own kids. It's that evidence of his sexual depravity lives on in his most celebrated works. Take one of Gill's early sculptures from 1911 that shows a man and woman's bodies tangled together.

Never one for subtlety, Gil originally named it, fucking. Although the Tate Gallery discreetly renamed it, ecstasy when they bought it in 1980. too. But what nobody realized was that the models for that particular bit of ecstasy were Gill's own sister Gladys and her husband, Ernest Lawton. Might look like an inspirational piece of art, but when you picture the scene of how it came to be, a woman having sex with her husband while her brother slash lover furiously sketched in the corner, it's a bit. It's a bit awkward. Eric Gill famously only used his inner circle as live models for his artwork, and that included the teenage daughters that he abused.

Some of Gill's most prized drawings are girl in bath and hair combing from 1923, which show a naked young woman in various poses, and the model was none other than his 17-year-old daughter, Petra. Knowing what we know now about what was going on in the Gill household, at the time. These life drawings are undeniably problematic. I don't even think that cuts it. But most interestingly, Gill's own daughters didn't seem to see it that way. Speaking in 1996 at the age of 90, Petra gave an interview in which she shrugged that she wasn't the least bit embarrassed about the revelations of incest in the Gill household during her youth.

She told a Guardian journalist that her father's endless curiosity about sex was just something they all took for granted. Petra did admit. that if she and her sisters had gone to school, they might have realised their dad's behaviour wasn't normal. But since they lived such an isolated life, Petra and her siblings had nothing to compare their experiences to, and they went on to live happy, well-adjusted lives without shame. Still, it's important to say that even if Petra didn't see herself as a victim, what Eric Gill did with his daughters was rape. Not only were they not old enough to consent, but he took advantage of his position of power as their literal father. As protesters would say a century later,

Eric Gill was a fucking paedophile. Yeah. And look, Petra's obviously entitled to her opinion on that matter. You know, she's the one who was abused in the victim at it at the end of the day. But it is a dangerous narrative, I think, for anyone else to propagate the idea that If society didn't make it such a taboo for a father to rape his own daughter, then actually there'd be no victim because that person would no feel no shame. All the shame purely comes from society saying it's bad and awful and wrong. And it's like, no, it's bad and awful and wrong. And that's the, and it's a full stop there.

Yes. Yeah. Why are we trying to qualify these things? Like, yeah. God. So I don't like. And I would, I would, I would, I would be disgusted in appalled. anybody trying to use that argument and I just I get why she's saying that and maybe it's a bit of a protective thing as well for her but I don't want to put words in her mouth but I fear that

people would jump on that nefarious people in order to use that to be like oh well you know maybe it's not such a bad thing for like adults to have sex with children and it's just because society tells children that it's wrong no no no no no no stop it but anyway while eric gill was gaining fame in the wider art world not everyone was singing his praises closer to home. His decidedly loose chastity belt raised eyebrows within the close-knit Craftsman Guild that he'd built at Ditchland Common, while his increasingly erotic artworks, like fucking, alienated him from other Catholic artists. Tensions eventually came to a head in 1924 when a bust up with his closest pal and fellow artist, Hilary Pepler, led Gil to resign

from the guild and leave Sussex in a bit of a huff. With two other families in tow, Gill relocated to an isolated abandoned monastery in the Black Mountains of Wales, you know, as you do when you're a fucking paedophile. And it's here that Gill designed the now iconic fonts, perpetua, solace, and the big one. Gil Sands. An instant success upon its release in 1928, Gil Sands became one of the most iconic hallmarks of mid-century British graphic design, used commercially for Penguin Books, the London Northeastern Railway, L-E-E-R, and even the BBC for several decades. The font studio TyperTech

calls Gill Sands the Helvetica of England, a part of British visual heritage, just like the Union Jack and the safety pin. And it cemented Eric Gill's place in the Graphic Design Hall of Fame. Soon after, Gil built a third artistic commune in Buckinghamshire named Piggots. Now a respected artist of national acclaim.

He was commissioned to create a sculpture at the original London Underground headquarters in 1929, as well as the now notorious stone relief above the BBC's Broadcasting House in 1933. When Gill died in 1940, age just 58, he was mourned as one of Britain's best ever artists. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography called him the greatest artist craftsman of the 20th century, a letter cutter and type designer of genius. and why you might assume that the truth of what went on behind closed doors didn't become clear until decades later,

well, that's not quite true. The darker side of Eric Gill was never actually a closely guarded secret at all. In fact, biographers had access to Gill's private diaries and papers from his estate as soon as he died. They just chose not to mention the uncomfortable parts. Mostly Catholic biographers admitted the dodgy parts of his legacy, feeling duty-bound to protect one of the most lauded religious artists, and thinkers of the century.

For years, Gill was celebrated as an iconic genius of British design and philosophy, kind of like a less famous William Morris. Until 1989, when biographer Fiona McCarthy exposed the shocking details of his inner world for the very first time in print. But McCarthy wasn't prepared for the backlash

she'd received from hardcore Gill supporters who refused to accept the revelations, calling it a baptism of fire. And while the biography spoke, sparked a flurry of controversy about Gill's legacy within the niche British art world. It didn't really make waves for the wider public, because we just don't really give a fuck about fonts that much, I think, is the real like. No one knows his name. No one knows his name.

Until that is, the BBC protest incident in 2022 thrust Gil well and truly into the spotlight. I don't remember this happening. No, me either. The scandal heralded a modern times cancellation of a guy who's been six feet under for over 80 years, with our organisations like the Ditchling Museum that had formerly championed Gill now scrambling to issue statements condemning him. The charity Save the Children

was even forced to change its official font after the controversy since the hideous irony of an organisation that aims to protect kids was using a paedophiles font and that just wasn't lost on anybody. For the BBC, it couldn't have come at a worse time.

After BLM protesters tore down a statue of 17th century merchant and slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020, problematic monuments were, at the time, if you all remember, were a hot topic in the UK. And soon, more were joining Beeney vigilante, David Chick, in his efforts to get Gill's masterpiece removed from the Beebs HQ, but with online petitions instead of hammers. And it's not exactly hard to see why people hate this piece. It depicts a grown arse man cradling a naked prepubescent child, which considering what we know about its noncy creator, is all kinds of wrong.

And after the exposure of high-profile pedophiles linked to the BBC like Jimmy Saville in the late Nauties, it wasn't a good look for what's meant to be. Can I get through this with a straight face? One of the most distinguished of British institutions like the PPC. Still in 2025, the BBC ultimately resisted calls to remove the controversial sculpture, and they actually chose to restore it in a statement saying

the BBC doesn't condone the views or actions of Eric Gill. Clearly there are debates about whether you can separate the work of an artist from the art itself. We think the right thing to do is for people to have those discussions. We don't think the right approach is to damage the artwork itself. Which I'm thoroughly surprised at the BBC for taking such a stand, if I'm perfectly honest. Not that they don't stand by paedophiles all the time. I'm just saying they're so quick to capitulate to things like that that I'm surprised that they didn't. And you can, if you so wish, still go and see the patched up Prospero and area.

looming over broadcasting house today, although they are now safely hidden behind a glass anti-vandalism box. Thank God. Like, our priorities here are fucking outrageous. I think it's all like well and good to be like, oh, but now we know that he was a paedophile. It is a bit weird that it's a little boy and a fully grown man in a clearly quite a compromising prison. It already was that.

It always was that. Like, it's not like it magically took another form. It was always a fully grown man and a child smack on the front of the BBC. And nobody thought that was a problem. Yeah. They're... It's... I don't know.

I don't know what the BBC are doing. I don't know what they are. I couldn't give a fuck about them. I hate the TV license now has gone up in price and it auto renews, just so everybody knows. Fuck right off. You absolute petos. Even though the BBC decided to stick by Gill and restore that sculpture,

his legacy has been tainted. and has left an ugly blot on Britain's art history. So the next time you're repolishing your CV, sending an e-card to your nan, maybe think twice before picking Gil Sands as your font of choice. Because now you know the dirty secrets behind it, and unlike Ariel and Prospero, you could be excused for not noticing.

And you can ruin fonts for your friends as well. Fonds for Friends no more. and you can send them this shorthand. Yeah, I think that's the fun thing about shorthands. Ruin it for your friends with this information. That's fun. Yeah, that's fun. I just, if separating art from artist was possible,

forgeries would be worth the same amount of money, wouldn't they? Like, it's bullshit, it's utter bullshit. I can't stand it. The only reason anyone wants to separate art from artist is because it makes them slightly uncomfortable that they don't get to listen to Michael Jackson. I don't have the energy to go into, I don't know, I'm just like, okay, they're like, you found out that he was a nonce and you'll be like, okay, well, I won't use that font, but like, what, you're going to investigate every single thing you do in your entire life just in case the person behind it was a nonce? You don't have to, they are.

Yeah, there you go. So just do whatever you want. Just do whatever you want. And I will not not listen to smooth criminal. I'm sorry. So there we go. And look, it's just like, I get it. People are like, oh, this person. person, like, blah, blah, but I'm like, sure, but Hugh Edward still gets a BBC pension and he's still alive, like, focus on that. Like, I don't, I don't care. I don't care about the fucking font. So, not a very articulate end to that, but that's where I've got. Ah, well, never mind. Don't ruin it for your friends. And we'll see you next time. And don't write a journal about things, like, especially not your first blank. Don't do it. Someone will find it and cancel you years later. Goodbye. Bye.

You know,