The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

This is a companion and follow-up to ‘Derek Jarman’s Garden’, still arguably Jarman’s most popular book. While the garden of Prospect Cottage in Dungeness is much-visited and widely featured, the house has long remained closed to visitors. We are now finally permitted to open the door onto a previously undisturbed, unseen world, itself an artistic testament. The background to the book is a poignant story of love and loss. Following Derek Jarman’s death, Prospect Cottage passed to his partner Keith Collins, who changed only one thing: introducing curtains to prevent visitors to the garden from peering in. When Collins died suddenly in 2018, McCarragher, a friend and neighbour in Dungeness, was asked to record the house. This was the first time a photographer had so extensively documented the cottage, an artwork in its own right, which encapsulates Jarman’s vision of the world.