Gordon Keirle-Smith
Gordon has lived many lives in the course of his present one.
He loved writing from the outset: poems, dramatic monologues and also began developing his instinctive artistic skills. At 18, he began a two-year advertising executive training programme with a major London agency. At this time, he also discovered the Rosicrucians, going on to join Lodges in London, Paris and Nîmes (southern France). Two years later, after writing countless poems, stage and radio plays, he left the glitz of advertising and joined a Repertory Company where he did everything from painting scenery to bit parts. Just over one year later he was an electrician at the Strand Theatre (now the “Novello”) in the heart of London’s West End.
He became a virtuoso lighting board operator and, three years later, had his artist’s studio in the theatre, selling his highly symbolic, Pre-Raphaelite inspired paintings to actors, actresses and impresarios. He exhibited in a prestigious Cork Street gallery, where one of his paintings was acquired by the British National Art Collection. Then, by synchronistic “chance”, he met Dutch founders of the “Meta-Realist” school, Johfra Bosschart and Ellen Lorien, with painting techniques on a par with Salvador Dali and featuring mind-bending esoteric symbolism. Gordon was invited to stay with this illustrious couple in the south of France and desperately wanted to paint like them – but was missing 10 years of art school… This was a game-changer.
From this point onwards, Gordon’s writing began to regain the upper hand, expressing his visions in words rather than “original” works of art. Three years later, Gordon was living in Paris with a German wife, working as a tour guide. He then began teaching English to French advertising executives and within three years was managing and training a 20 strong teaching team at a major International Commerce school just off the Champs-Elysees. It was during this period that Gordon wrote the first draft of “Zandernatis”, a vast epic inspired by Johfra and Ellen tracing the origins of humanity in Antarctica and rejected by a publisher for being “too ambitious for a first book”. For some eight years, Gordon and his wife were part of a community living at a Chateau in Louveciennes (in the leafy, affluent western suburbs of Paris) set in a 10-hectare park and once the home of Louis XV’s mistress, the Comtesse DuBarry. After this colourful chateau episode – culminating in a divorce – Gordon further developed his language services, particularly for advertising executives, extending his skills to translation, copywriting and presentation training. (Gordon was then an active member of the Paris Anglophone Toastmasters’ public-speaking club – winning the annual European Championship Competition twice).
Some two years after leaving the Chateau, Gordon and his team, “The WordRight Shop”, were providing language training and creative linguistic services to the prestigious Publicis Group at their Head Office next to the Arc de Triomphe and their subsidiaries. For a couple of years, Gordon operated a sleek cabin cruiser on the Seine called “La Flêche Gordon”, organising champagne cruises for his many friends and executive clients, instrumental in landing his first real copywriting assignment – for Air France. In 1994 he married Claudine, a documentary filmmaker for Protestant programmes on French TV. They lived in a loft apartment close to the Bastille Marina where the boat was moored. In 1996, G&C adopted a newborn child in Brazil and moved to Nîmes in the south of France. This was when the internet was developing, allowing Gordon to work remotely, expanding his clientele entirely by “word of mouth” (he never had to advertise his services throughout his entire career).
This period involved working for major brands such as Renault, Aerospatiale, Heineken, Coca-Cola and dozens more. In 2007, G&C founded “OperaDou”, a 30 seater Home Opera House in their converted garage, screening operas, ballets and concerts plus a few live shows… Well before the Met started their live transmissions from New York. For several years, OperaDou had a special relationship with London’s Royal Opera House and Opera Australia, showing their latest HD productions or exclusive previews to the “OperaDou Jury” and posting its verdicts on Amazon. In 2011, G&C launched a luxury Opera Themed vacation apartment in the centre of Nimes; known as “Diva-Nîmes” (sleeps 6).
Then, in 2014, as self-publication boomed, Gordon decided to revive his “Zandernatis” epic from the 1980s, realising it had indeed been too ambitious for a first book. But now, having worked intensively with words for the last 30 years, things were different. Furthermore, since the actual story only needed a general re-working, he was able to focus on the “meta-realist” aspect of the work (in honour of Johfra and Ellen), adding all the ancillary material to give the work greater “credibility”. The result was a 776-page book containing the original story backed by news cuttings, interview transcripts, diary entries and much more. The audiobook version was subsequently recorded by two ex-Royal Shakespeare Company members, Bill Homewood (who has recorded many classic books including “Les Misérables”) and his wife Estelle Kohler (who has played all of Shakespeare’s leading heroines), paving the way for other books…
Including the recently published “Revelation Antarctica” – a Quantum vision fired by imagination… creating yet another new genre of literature…
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