A writer and rare book collector based in London, Brooke-Hitching specializes in drawing readers’ attention to the unusual, from literary curiosities to dangerous sports to mysterious maps. As he tells Antiques and the Arts Weekly’s Z.G. Burnett, “I take a favorite fact or story from history that isn’t well known and think, ‘If this was in a book, what would the book be about?’ This way, odd material dictates an odd concept and fortunately, more often than not, the result is an original idea that offers readers new things to discover.”Consider, for instance, a second-century marble statue of the god Glycon. Discovered beneath a railway station in Romania in 1962, the “curious and confusing” carving’s story “involves a con artist, a snake deity and a hand puppet,” writes Brooke-Hitching.Supposedly the serpent form of healing god Asclepius, Glycon was the creation of Greek grifter Alexander of Abonoteichus. Proclaiming himself Glycon’s prophet, Alexander carried around a snake-shaped puppet with a mouth that “would open and close … by means of horsehairs” and a “forked black tongue also controlled by horsehairs, [which] would dart out,” according to Syrian writer Lucian of Samosata. The sculpture shows the serpent god with humanoid facial features and long, tousled hair.
A writer and rare book collector based in London, Brooke-Hitching specializes in drawing readers’ attention to the unusual, from literary curiosities to dangerous sports to mysterious maps. As he tells Antiques and the Arts Weekly’s Z.G. Burnett, “I take a favorite fact or story from history that isn’t well known and think, ‘If this was in a book, what would the book be about?’ This way, odd material dictates an odd concept and fortunately, more often than not, the result is an original idea that offers readers new things to discover.”Consider, for instance, a second-century marble statue of the god Glycon. Discovered beneath a railway station in Romania in 1962, the “curious and confusing” carving’s story “involves a con artist, a snake deity and a hand puppet,” writes Brooke-Hitching.Supposedly the serpent form of healing god Asclepius, Glycon was the creation of Greek grifter Alexander of Abonoteichus. Proclaiming himself Glycon’s prophet, Alexander carried around a snake-shaped puppet with a mouth that “would open and close … by means of horsehairs” and a “forked black tongue also controlled by horsehairs, [which] would dart out,” according to Syrian writer Lucian of Samosata. The sculpture shows the serpent god with humanoid facial features and long, tousled hair.
A writer and rare book collector based in London, Brooke-Hitching specializes in drawing readers’ attention to the unusual, from literary curiosities to dangerous sports to mysterious maps. As he tells Antiques and the Arts Weekly’s Z.G. Burnett, “I take a favorite fact or story from history that isn’t well known and think, ‘If this was in a book, what would the book be about?’ This way, odd material dictates an odd concept and fortunately, more often than not, the result is an original idea that offers readers new things to discover.”Consider, for instance, a second-century marble statue of the god Glycon. Discovered beneath a railway station in Romania in 1962, the “curious and confusing” carving’s story “involves a con artist, a snake deity and a hand puppet,” writes Brooke-Hitching.Supposedly the serpent form of healing god Asclepius, Glycon was the creation of Greek grifter Alexander of Abonoteichus. Proclaiming himself Glycon’s prophet, Alexander carried around a snake-shaped puppet with a mouth that “would open and close … by means of horsehairs” and a “forked black tongue also controlled by horsehairs, [which] would dart out,” according to Syrian writer Lucian of Samosata. The sculpture shows the serpent god with humanoid facial features and long, tousled hair.
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