WordJam Extreme Clickbait: 10 Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Batman

As The Batman continues to fly high at the box office, so too does the endless stream of Dark Knight-related clickbait clogging up the online world. I mean, seriously, how much is there left to say about an 82-year old comic character whose whole modus operandi is making shitloads of money during the day and beating up bad guys at night? Why in God's name do we need to know the ten greatest Batman stories, ten times Batman lost, or the ten weirdest Bat-costumes? And who spends their time and energy putting these lists together, exactly: some 400lb hack with an ice cream scoop in one hand and a cheque from Warner Bros. in the other?

That said, bloggers can't be choosers if they're desperate for clicks - especially when their stock in trade is snarky commentary espousing deeply unpopular political opinions. So that's why, this week, WordJam takes a first-class seat on the vacuous trivia gravy train to bring you ten things you didn't know you didn't know about Batman: a comprehensive, painstakingly researched list of factoids and eye-openers that'll change forever the way you view everyone's favourite entrepreneur and vigilante. Or not. Anyway, on with the dog and pony show...

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1. He speaks fluent Welsh

Sometimes Batman's crime-fighting activities take him far from the sepulchral skyscrapers and dreary backstreets of Gotham City to more exotic climes like Tel Aviv, Geneva or Surrey. Naturally, this requires the Caped Crusader to be conversant in some of the world's major languages - but did you know he's also fluent in Welsh? Unfortunately, he hasn't had a chance to use it yet, but should the Joker ever set up a deadly laughing gas factory in Pontypridd or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch you can be sure Batman will be there, beating the living daylights out of male voice choirs and calling everyone 'boyo'.

2. He never remembers Alfred's birthday

Everybody knows that faithful family retainer Alfred Pennyworth acts as both a father figure to Bruce Wayne and a loyal ally in his war on crime, but did you know the Dark Knight has never once remembered Alfred's birthday? As a gentleman's gentleman, social etiquette prevents Alfred from telling his master what a selfish, ungrateful bastard he is, so instead, in time-honoured British tradition, he vents this frustration through arch comments and acerbic asides. Although this doesn't go unnoticed by Batman, every August 16th he still fails to stop off at the all-night garage on his way home from a hard night's vigilantism to pick up a cheap birthday card for his trusted companion.

3. He follows a strict beef-only diet

When you're out every night swinging from rooftops and knocking fifty shades of shit out of perps, you've got to stay healthy. While controversial, an all-beef diet is known to help improve muscle mass and strengthen the immune system: perfect for a creature of the night with a Chiroptera fixation! Contrary to popular belief, Batman didn't learn the benefits of an iron-rich diet from his mentor Ra's Al Ghul but from Kermit-voiced, Canadian pop psychologist Jordan Peterson, whose seminal book 12 Rules for Life takes pride of place on the Batcave coffee table. Not that Batman's read it, of course; if he had he'd know to tidy his own room instead of leaving it to Alfred, the lazy sod.

 

4. He knows every word to Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca"

While roaring through Gotham City in the Batmobile, Batman likes to psych himself up with a few tunes for the night ahead. Ice Cube's "Wrong Nigga to Fuck Wit" and Wu-Tang Clan's "Bring da Ruckus" do the job nicely, but did you know the Caped Crusader's all-time favourite banger is Ricky Martin's cheesy, salsa-rock classic "Livin' la Vida Loca"? Not because this annoyingly catchy pop song about a gold-digging femme fatale speaks to Batman's own troubled relationships with beautiful women such as Selina Kyle and Poison Ivy, but simply because he finds Ricky Martin a clean-cut, morally upstanding young man. So much so, in fact, he even hired the Puerto Rican singer to perform at his 30th birthday party. Well, there's no accounting for taste, is there?

5. He's never seen a Carry On film

On the rare occasions he's not foiling supervillains or attending soirées, Bruce likes to relax with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, some beef sticks and a good movie. But while his tastes range from action flicks like The Fast and the Furious to arthouse fare like Zoltán Huszárik's exquisite 1971 masterpiece Szindbád, he's yet to watch a single entry in the deliriously bawdy Carry On franchise. You'd think he'd probably enjoy the mirthful antics of the craggy-faced Sid James, waspish Kenneth Williams and buxom Barbara Windsor in such classics as Carry On Up the Khyber, Carry On Screaming or Carry On Girls, but then a man who expects people to take him seriously while running around in a rubber costume is clearly lacking a sense of humour.

6. He once dated Joan Collins

As a billionaire playboy Bruce has his pick of the ladies, so it probably won't surprise you too much to know he's had more than a few dalliances with some of Hollywood's most glamorous leading ladies. And Joan Collins. The two dated for a brief time back in the mid-1980s, but according to the pint-sized Dynasty star they had a troubled relationship in the bedroom. In her memoir The English Open, Collins recounts how Bruce insisted on sexual roleplay which involved confronting her in a dark alley with a prop gun and tearing off her pearl necklace. "Whenever I asked him about it he'd just mutter something about wires being crossed before reciting this awful poem about dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight," wrote Collins. "I still love Bruce, but he needs serious help."

7. He's blocked the Joker on Twitter

In an age where the number of followers you accumulate on social media dictates your stature in the public sphere, it makes sense for Batman to maintain an active presence on Twitter. This does, however, lead to the problem of his account being trolled by arch-enemies. But while the Penguin fires off devilishly witty Wildean quips and the Riddler sends incomprehensible word puzzles, the Joker bombards his beloved nemesis with clown world memes, videos of Ben Shapiro censuring rubber-wear enthusiasts and an old photo of Bruce Wayne shaking hands with Jeffrey Epstein at a Boy Scouts of America fundraiser. In order to safeguard his true identity, Batman eventually blocked him, although that hasn't stopped his frenemy DMing him under the alias 'Harley's Quim'.

8. He collects garden gnomes

While Wayne Manor may be such an exemplary piece of neo-Gothic architecture it would put the great Augustus Pugin to shame, that doesn't stop it being a fucking drag to live in. That's why, to brighten the place up a bit, Bruce fills the grounds with hundreds upon thousands of garden gnomes sporting different hues and poses. Of course, he lives in perpetual fear that one of his enemies, most likely the Toymaker or the Scarecrow, will hatch some fiendish plan to weaponise them and lay waste to the Batcave, but that's a risk he's willing to take if it means opening the curtains every morning to find an army of fat, jolly, bearded dwarves holding fishing rods and shovels beaming back at him. After all, it's a lonely life being a superhero, y'know.

9. He uses Commissioner Gordon as a glorified alarm clock

The Bat-Signal: a symbol of hope in a world overrun by madness and decay. We all know it, we all admire it. But did you know its real purpose is to wake Batman up of an evening after sleeping off the previous night's mixture of attending lavish gala functions as Bruce Wayne before donning the mantle of the bat? Imagine how poor Jim Gordon would feel if he knew. There he is, fighting Batman's case against the higher-ups at City Hall, labouring under the assumption that Gotham's dark protector would gift him - and him alone - the means to summon his help out of an unspoken yet nonetheless palpable sense of friendship, when all the time he's just being used as a glorified alarm clock. And to add insult to injury, when the Caped Crusader does show up he's all gruff and tetchy from having dragged himself out of bed. Would you still sanction his activities knowing that? I bloody wouldn't, the cheeky bastard.

10. He doesn't read comic books

You may think being a costumed adventurer would indicate Batman has at least some interest in the superhero genre, but it's actually a well-established fact that the Dark Knight hates comic books. "I never know which panel to read next," he tells the resurrected Earth-One version of Vicki Vale in Almighty World-shattering Crisis on Infinitesimal Earths #789,245. "And all this convoluted backstory and jerking around of continuity doesn't make any sense to me." Meanwhile in Detective Comics #8,645,078, he unsuccessfully tries to sue Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons for defamation of character after being made aware of subtle similarities between himself and various characters in Watchmen, but the case is thrown out of court. This experience strengthened his distaste for the medium, although he secretly enjoys reprints of old Garfield comic strips in the Gotham Globe. "It's a cat that eats lasagne," he explains to his irritating sidekick in Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder #11. "That's some crazy shit right there."

Horror Show #2

...Because what's the point of freedom of speech if you don't use it?

"Holiday Snaps" by Daisy Dawson: A Ghost Story Inspired by the Work of L.S. Lowry

[This article was originally published in the August 2018 edition of Bricolage art magazine.]

My name's Daisy Dawson. I'm 12 years old and live in Peterborough with my Auntie Shelley and Uncle Patrick. People say I look a bit like Tracey Beaker. Probably because of my brown curly hair. I don't mind, though. She's pretty cool. I'm not as loud as she is, you'll be pleased to hear!

I have lots of interests, but I enjoy writing most of all. I'd like to be a writer someday. My stories are about weird, funny things. My English teacher Mr. Mortimer says I probably watch too much Doctor Who. But this story isn't one I've made up. Every word is true! It's about when I went to spend the summer holiday with my Nana in Lytham St. Anne's. I go every year.

I love Nana's house. She lives in a Bed and Breakfast by the sea. Her parents used to own it, so it's very old. Uncle Patrick grew up there with my mum and said it was like living in the Addams Family house. Auntie Shelley says he's being over the top, but there is something creepy about it. One time I stayed there I remember waking up in the middle of the night and going down to the dining room. There's this big cabinet down there with lots of odd little things in it. Little ornaments, mostly. Nana says they're all family knick-knacks, but I don't know. Maybe she bought them in a jumble sale. Anyway, this one time I went downstairs I saw them lit up by the moonlight. There was a little model of a ballerina dancing on one of the shelves! There was also a really horrible one of a horse being led along by a stableman. It really scared me because the horse was rearing up and snorting its nostrils. I don't like horses.

It's really cool there, though. I get to meet lots of nice people and go to the beach every day. I know all of Nana's staff and they're really friendly. Except Mrs. Buckley. She's the receptionist. She only lets people call her Mrs. Buckley, never her first name. She's not even a teacher! She bosses me around - even Nana! You'd think she owned the place. Emma's my favourite. She's a chambermaid. She's older than me (22) but we get on well. Like this one time, when Nana went out for the evening, we had a slumber party and told each other our secrets and did our hair and got dressed up in all these cool clothes we'd bought and listened to music! She wants to be a fashion designer. I think she'd be really good at it. She knows all about clothes. I was looking forward to seeing her.

After Uncle Patrick dropped me off and Auntie Shelley kissed me goodbye in front of everybody, Nana took my bags up to my room. It's on the top floor and has a great view of the beach. It's like it really is my room because no one else ever uses it and I've got lots of pictures and posters on the walls. It's got a big double bed in it too. I unpacked my clothes and was things and got ready for the big dinner Nana promised me. I was just brushing my hair when I heard a door slam down the end of the hallway. Then I could hear people walking about and talking to each other. There was a woman who seemed to be telling a man what to do. I couldn't tell what she was saying to him but she sounded very bossy. I could hear a little boy with them. The woman told him to stay in her sight at all times. Being naturally curious (and not nosey, as Auntie Shelley says) I went over to the door and poked my head around it. There was no one there! They couldn't have left that quickly because the stairs were on the opposite side of the hallway near my room, and the door definitely slammed at the far end of the hallway. It was most unusual. The next thing I heard was Nana calling me from the foot of the stairs telling me dinner was ready.

A little later I was in the kitchen eating Nana's Shepherd's Pie. We were just talking about how I would earn my keep, as Nana calls it, when I got to asking how many people were staying in the hotel. Nana said all the rooms were full. Mrs. Buckley, who was helping Nana wash some bed sheets, suddenly coughed and said that they weren't all occupied and the extra £780 a week wouldn't hurt. I asked Mrs. Buckley what she meant but she just rolled her eyes and told me to ask Nana.

    "How many more times?" she said to Mrs. Buckley. "I'm not prepared to get into that again."

    "Did something happen there?" I asked, expecting tales of murder and intrigue.

    "This is a respectable establishment," Mrs. Buckley replied. "Nothing happens here except a lot of eating and sleeping."

Nana flashed Mrs. Buckley one of her disapproving looks, then looked at me and sighed.

    "All right!" she said, and began her tale of mystery and suspense. It was about 40 years ago. There hadn't been any trouble with the room before. It was one of the most popular rooms. Then one day they started getting complaints from the guests. First it was about someone looking through their belongings, and then they started hearing voices. In the end they couldn't get anyone to stay in there for more than a night. Nana said that Grandad locked the door and they vowed never to open it again.

    "Do you think it's haunted?" I asked.

    "I don't know," she said, picking up the laundry basket. "All I do know is I've got twelve paying guests who don't want to hear any silly stories about things that go bump in the night." I think Nana thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn't.

A couple of days into my stay the Bed and Breakfast was facing a crisis and only I could help. Carice (one of the chambermaids) was ill and had to take time off work immediately. Being fully booked there was a danger that not all of the guests would have their laundry done and the beds in their rooms turned down. Nana said it would be a good way to keep me out of trouble. I don't know why grown-ups say that. I think ot just shows how boring they are. I didn't mind helping out, though. I'd met some of the people staying there and they were really nice. I was talking to one girl in the guests' dining room one night and she invited me to the beach with her and her parents the next day. We had fun laughing at some of the boys who were windsurfing. They kept falling off! But anyway, there I was - helping out Nana and the other staff. I won't bore you with the details of the all the little jobs I was doing around the place. As I said before, though, one of them was turning down the beds in people's rooms. Nana gave me a set of keys to get in if the guests were out. I was just doing the top floor when I remembered Room 22: the ghost room! My curiosity got the better of me again and I thought I'd have a bit of a look to see what it looked like inside. I put the key in the lock and heard it go CLICK! I paused for a minute, gathering my wits about me. You know when you pull a plaster off you do it very quickly so it doesn't hurt so much? I was a bit scared there might be something behind the door waiting for me. so I opened it very quickly...

I don't know what I was expecting, but there wasn't any blood on the walls or a moose's head on a plaque over the bed, or anything. It was just an ordinary looking room - like mine! It was very dusty. There was a paining on the wall with lots of little yachts in it. No people, just these funny little sailing boats. I pushed the chair over to the wall to have a better look (it was quite high up). In the corner of the painting I made out a couple of initials. 'L.S...' Suddenly there was a voice behind me.

    "Hello."

I almost jumped out of my skin! I turned round and saw a boy standing there. He was about my age. He had a very goofy face and was wearing strange clothes. Olden days clothes. I was really creeped out. He sounded very nervous.

    "Who are you?" he asked. "What are you doing in our room?"

    "I'm Daisy Dawson," I said. "What do you mean 'your' room? No one's allowed in here."

    "Mother's calling me," he said quietly. "We're going for a walk on the promenade. I have to go."

He went to leave the room. I could tell he didn't really want to go. He looked a bit sad. I didn't ask him if he was all right because everybody knows when you ask someone that when they're upset it's going to make them cry. Nicola at school did that to me once when my mum was ill at the home. I thought I'd never stop crying! I think Nicola did that deliberately, though. She pulled my hair once and I stamped on her foot. We're not exactly friends. But anyway, I didn't ask him if he was all right. I just said the first thing that popped into my head.

    "Would you like to go to the beach tomorrow?"

He blushed.

    "That would be very nice," he replied. Something about the way he said it made me think he didn't have many friends. I told him to meet me at 1pm outside Giuseppe's ice cream place on the sea front. He said he didn't know where that was. I told him to look out for the building with the big ice cream cone on the top. I don't think he was listening, though. It was like he was trying to get to the door. Suddenly I heard a woman's voice outside the door. The same one I heard a few days earlier in the corridor. She was still being very bossy. She told him to get himself outside at once. He seemed worried that she should catch me in their room. I told him I'd let myself out. He smiled and said he'd see me tomorrow. I waited for a minute before poking my head round the door to make sure they'd gone. They were nowhere to be seen... Vanished into thin air! Grandad was right all along: the room was haunted.

I went to bed that night thinking about ghosts. I wondered if you only became a ghost because you wanted to or if you had to die in a terrible way. I don't think I'd like to be a ghost. It must be very boring. But you'd get to scare people you didn't like, so that would be good. It would be horrible the rest of the time, though. You'd probably have to repeat the circumstances of your death over and over. I also got to thinking about Grandad and if he was a ghost. If he was it was a bit strange he hadn't come to visit Nana or me at the Bed and Breakfast. After a while I started feeling a bit sad. I switched on the bedside lamp and started reading one of my Jelly books. I'd read that one a few times, but it was better than just lying there thinking about death.

He was there the next day waiting for me at Giuseppe's. He looked different. A bit older, somehow. He was very polite. He even shook my hand when I arrived! I told him it wasn't a date. He blushed again. It took a while to get him to talk. Everybody was looking at me. I thought it was because of his old clothes.

    "I didn't know you could go out in the daylight," I said. He gave me a funny look.

    "Of course," he answered. "I can go anywhere. I've been everywhere."

I didn't know what to say to that so we kept on walking.

    "I wish everyone would stop looking at us," I said.

    "They're not looking at us," he laughed. "They're looking at you."

That really creeped me out.

    "Why are they looking at me?"

    "You're talking to yourself."

    "I'm talking to you!"

    "They don't know that," he said. I felt a little frightened. I didn't want people to think I was mad.

    "So no one else can see you?"

He shook his head and smiled.

    "Not if I don't want them to."

I thought about that for a minute. It's strange but I didn't feel scared anymore.

    "So you're like an imaginary friend?"

    "If you like, yes."

    "I don't have to share you with anybody!"

    "Am I not my own man, then?" he asked. He seemed a little cross. I didn't know what to say. "I don't belong to anybody. I'm my own man and that's that."

I told him I was sorry. He looked at me and said he didn't mean to snap like that, it's just he always felt that other people were making decisions for him all the time. I asked him if he was talking about his mum. He sighed. Then he said we should get some ice cream. I said I much preferred a Smoothie. He didn't know what that was. He said he'd like a cup of tea. I asked him if he could still drink being a ghost.

    "You're a strange girl," he said.

Anyway, we went to this little café and got our refreshments. I paid because he said he didn't have any modern money. Then we went to sit on a bench on the promenade.

    "Are you from here?" he asked.

    "Peterborough," I said. "I'm staying with my Nana for the summer."

    "Your mother wanted a rest, did she?"

I knew he was only joking, but I didn't like him saying that.

    "I live with my Auntie and Uncle. My mum's in a home. She can't look after me."

He turned and looked at the sea.

    "Look at it rolling away there. It's been like that for thousands of years."

    "Do you like the sea?"

    "Oh. definitely. It's a part of me. Everything here is." He sipped his tea. "Do you see her often? Your mother, I mean."

    "Only when Uncle Patrick says it's okay. We made a cake together at Christmas. But she got confused and it got burned. She's always doing things like that."

    "My mother's ill, you know."

    "What's wrong with her?" I asked. I knew it was a bit rude but I couldn't help it.

    "Disappointment," he said, and stared back out at the waves. I couldn't understand what he meant, and I didn't ask in case he thought I was stupid. We sat there for a while not saying anything. I don't know why, it was so silly. There were lots of things I wanted to ask him, like what it was like being a ghost. I knew it wasn't the right time to ask that, so I didn't. I just finished my Smoothie.

    "The tide's turned," he said suddenly. "Can you imagine what it would be like if it didn't? Ever, I mean. Everything would be swept away. There'd be nothing left."

    "We'd get soaked!" I said. He smiled. "What about you?" I asked him. "Are you on holiday?"

    "In a manner of speaking. I've been trying to find something. Something I lost a long time ago."

    "I'm always losing things," I said. I don't think he was really listening. He was still watching the waves.

    "I never had time," he said quietly. "It was always running out on me." He turned to look at me again. There were tears in his eyes. "Don't be like me," he said suddenly. "Don't be like me, living your life through other people." That set me off. I didn't know what he meant, but I did if you know what I mean! I held his hand and told him I wouldn't live my life through other people. It's weird, but he seemed much older than he was that morning. It was like he was ageing all the time I was talking to him. I just didn't notice. He dried his eyes and I asked him if he was okay. He nodded. "I should take you back to the hotel now," he said. "It's getting late." I looked at my watch. It was almost 6pm.

    "Where did the time go?" I said (like you do).

    "The clock's still on your side," he said. "Make the most of it."

I asked him if I would see him tomorrow. He shook his head. I was upset about that. Spending a day with a ghost wasn't what I expected to do on my holiday. I told him that, and I said nothing would would ever be as exciting or strange again.

    "Don't say that," he replied. "The world's full of fascinating places and people." Then he waved his hand like a conductor standing in front of an orchestra or a painter does on a canvas and suddenly everything seemed so much stranger. The blue sky melted into a creamy white and the people walking past started to walk funny, like in one of those really old films where nobody talks. I could see all these yachts with bright yellow sails bobbing away on the horizon. Everything was so colourful! A blur of reds, yellows, greens and blues. It was beautiful.

    "Turn your mind sideways," he said. "That's all you need to do. You have to look at everything as though you've never seen it before."

    "It's fantastic!" I said, and turned to look at him. But he was gone. Disappeared!

I ran back to the Bed and Breakfast to see if he was there. I asked Nana to give me the key to the empty room. She wouldn't, but then I told her my story. She was angry at first and couldn't understand why I'd gone in there in the first place, but she gave in in the end saying it would keep me quiet. We went upstairs and unlocked the door. The room was completely still. Everything looked just as it was when I went in before. I'm not sure why, but I knew I had to take a closer look at the picture. I pulled the chair over to the wall and climbed on top. I turned the picture over and on the back of the frame were the words:

'This is for you, Daisy Dawson. Thank you'

Nana looked at me. She knew I hadn't written it because it was in paint and looked like it had been there for years. The painting now hangs on my bedroom wall at home. It's a reminder of the greatest holiday I ever had, and the wonderful things this man taught me.

Angels and Dirt: The Art of L.S. Lowry and Stanley Spencer

L. S. Lowry (1887-1976) and Stanley Spencer (1891-1959)

Laurence Stephen Lowry and Stanley Spencer were two of the most distinctive, original and, above all, eccentric British artists of the 20th century. They never met, but as contemporaries they almost certainly would have been aware of each other's work. In 1935, their paintings appeared alongside those of Lucien Pissaro and Walter Sickert at the National Society's annual exhibition. By the mid 1940s, they were both documenting the wave of destruction left by the Luftwaffe as official war artists. In the pre-war years, they set themselves apart from formal developments in modern art in favour of pursuing intensely personal visions. While, on the surface, the industrial landscapes and crowd scenes that made Lowry's name appear completely at odds with the bucolic domesticity of Spencer's work, there are many points of convergence between the two artists that tend to be overlooked by both casual observers and art historians. This article is, to my knowledge, the first such attempt to explore these commonalities, examine how these mutual preoccupations were shaped, and consider their legacy in the canon of British art. But first, we must familiarise ourselves with Lowry and Spencer's respective backgrounds.

Lowry and Spencer came into their own worlds apart from each other: Lowry in industrial Manchester, and Spencer in rural Cookham, a small village on the Thames in Berkshire. Lowry was an only child, Spencer the second youngest of nine children. Both hailed from middle class homes, but while Spencer grew up in comfort and security, Lowry's father was dependent upon loans and borrowed money. Lowry's mother initially encouraged her son's appreciation of the arts, only to denigrate his efforts once he attempted to turn this to practical use. By contrast, Spencer's family actively discussed the poetry of John Donne, the children played musical instruments, and their father read to them from the Old Testament. While Lowry argued with his domineering mother about the benefits of evening classes at the Salford School of Art, Spencer's father would ease his son's shyness by accompanying him on the train to London for his daily commute to the Slade School of Art. These experiences were to fundamentally affect their artistic visions.

As a result of his idyllic childhood, Spencer came to see Cookham as a paradise on earth where everything around him was imbued with a sacred presence. In Spencer's eyes, Christ was baptised in the Thames, delivered the Sermon on the Mount at Cookham Regatta, and the route to Calvary ran through Cookham high street. Remembering his father's bible readings, Spencer portrayed him as St. Francis of Assisi - replacing the saint's humble sandals with slippers and a dressing gown. Throughout his work, Spencer frequently depicts himself as a young man: an obvious attempt to preserve the magical wonder of a child-like vision.

"St. Francis and the Birds" (1935) by Stanley Spencer

Lowry, however, did not initially see what he would later describe as the 'beauty' of the industrial landscape and the quirky figures that would populate his work. That would come at the age of 21, when his family moved from genteel Victoria Park in Manchester to working class Pendlebury in Salford. When interviewed in his advanced years, Lowry would embellish the details of how he came to his artistic vision, recalling it almost as a 'Road to Damascus' experience. The bare facts are stark to say the least. As a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, Lowry found himself becoming increasingly accustomed to the dingy streets and their grimy inhabitants. As this familiarity grew, the thinner his adolescent mask of respectable snobbery became until he realised that industrial Manchester would make a far more engaging subject for his paintings than the pastoral scenes he had previously envisaged.

As he developed as an artist, Lowry began to adopt a wondrous view of these supposedly everyday scenes: like Spencer, an essentially child-like vision.The mills and factories indelibly printed in Lowry's imagination now acted merely as backdrops for the human drama being played out in and around them. In many cases, the importance of the industrial north is completely absent from his work. The 'horrible heads' series he painted in the 1930s are expressionist portraits that exist in a twilight world where nothing is real except the guarded emotions of the works themselves. The derelict figures of the 1950s and '60s are represented in an inverted form of chiaroscuro, where the subjects are shaded against the burning white of the impasto. Despite Lowry's decision to remove all traces of sentimentality from his work, these paintings bare an unmistakable affection for the lost and lonely coupled with a suggestion of 'otherness'. This is an integral concept for Lowry and Spencer and occupies much of their work: the attempt to unlock that which remains hidden.

"A Beggar" (1965) by L. S. Lowry

The emotional frankness of Spencer's work is an essential component of his art. Spencer saw Christianity as a living, breathing experience sharing the quintessential tenet of Orthodox Judaism that the very act of creation is an ongoing process. To this end, sex is elevated beyond a functional or recreational act and becomes a celebration of life and rejuvenation. Nowhere is this more apparent than "The Resurrection" (1924-26), a vast mural depicting the naked dead ascending into paradise. At the centre of the painting, looking over Christ's shoulder, is God; instead of giving Him a face, Spencer depicts what he described as a "never-before seen flower". In classical art, flowers denote the female, and throughout Spencer's work women - in particular his first wife Hilda Carline, whom he married during completion of "The Resurrection" - are often represented holding flowers or wearing floral dresses. By representing God with a feminine symbol and juxtaposing this with the reborn souls of the war dead, Spencer reveals the hidden nature of sex as a form of resurrection in itself. Similarly, "A Village in Heaven" (1937) features the residents of Cookham both going about their everyday business and engaging in playful but nevertheless sexually-charged activities. At the centre of the painting again stands God, surveying the scene with quiet satisfaction.

"The Resurrection" (1924-26) by Stanley Spencer

As a self-professed 'Victorian man', Lowry could never have brought himself to openly express the same sexual abandon, so as always his work exposes what remains hidden and allows it to remain as such. Paintings such as "People with Dogs" (1965), which appears to suggest sexual violation, keeps the identities of the shadowy assailants obscured from view. Only the girl in the red overcoat and the dogs that act as mute witnesses are clearly visible. Elsewhere, "Man Looking Through a Hole in the Fence" (1963), in addition to being a self-reflexive work about artist as voyeur, hints at a hidden world beyond but dares not enter. In this regard, Lowry's work often appears to take the form of an elaborate game of hide and seek in which the artist continually evades being pinned down by the art critic's or psychoanalyst's pen. However, there are a number of tantalising clues placed within his work that allude to deeper, more specific concerns. In life, Lowry kept his religious leanings close to his chest, but a number of his industrial landscapes, most notably "Street Scene" (1935) and "The Procession" (1937), seem to intentionally transform streets into the  form of crosses, implying the suffering of the ordinary man.

"The Procession" (1937) by L. S. Lowry

The most revealing works the two artists produced were in the dark years of the 1930s when both men were experiencing considerable personal difficulties. In 1932, Lowry's father died suddenly from pneumonia, leaving behind a substantial number of debts. Lowry, 45, unmarried and still living in his parent's house, found himself acting as both unofficial nursemaid to his now bedridden mother and begrudging guarantor to his father's creditors. As he had not yet made a living from his art, he was obliged to spend more time at the Pall Property Company and less on what he feared the art critics of the day would have dismissed as his 'Sunday job'. At the same time, Spencer's affections for his wife Hilda were starting to drift away towards Patricia Preece, a marginal figure in his artistic circle. After Hilda left him in 1935, Spencer sublimated his love for Preece in a series of sexually charged portraits and sketches. By the time of their marriage in 1936, this promise of newfound love appears to have turned sour. Preece and Spencer never consummated their relationship, and it appears the marriage may have been one of convenience for the homosexual Patricia.

Spencer's nude portraits from this time contemplate the prospect of a loveless future with an unusual and highly disturbing intensity. The most notable of which is "Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and His Second Wife" (1936). In an early sketch of the couple they appear to be sitting on a communal lavatory, Spencer, proudly erect, studying every curve of Preece's body. Now the artist appears as a disappointed onlooker, nude and tellingly flaccid, staring blankly at Preece's pallid, unappetising flesh as she gazes at him with disinterest. In the foreground, Spencer perversely places a leg of mutton next to his former beloved: the ultimate representation of rancid desire.

"Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and His Second Wife" (1936) by Stanley Spencer

The same year, Lowry, reflecting on his destiny as a bachelor as long as he remained tied to his mother's apron strings, also painted his testament to the erosion of sexual longing in "A Landmark" (1936) - one of the most desolate works he ever produced. The image is deceptively simple, a stone monument set on a hilltop battered by the elements, but it is also a telling signifier of Lowry's sexual and emotional frustrations. The feminine curves of the landscape mirror the classical image of nature as a matriarchal force, but here nature seems barren, exemplified by the sterile, milky lake in the foreground, representing spent masculinity. The monument itself, on the other hand, is an ambiguous symbol that appears in many of Lowry's works - most notably his "Self-Portrait" from 1966, where he sets the same structure in a stormy sea. Here, though, its phallic quality sets it at odds with the landscape, perhaps suggesting the irreconcilable gulf between the male and female, the progressive artist and his Victorian mother, or the immutable authenticity of an artist's vision.

"A Landmark" (1936) by L. S. Lowry

The critical acclaim bestowed upon Spencer in his lifetime has noticeably diminished in recent years. In a neurotic and cynical age, Spencer's work, despite its eternal themes of love and redemption, has been dismissed as overly sentimental: a throwback to a more gentle and arguably 'purer' time and place. If Spencer's vision characterises the longings of the first half of the last century, it is the nightmarish and, it must be said, misanthropic, vision of Francis Bacon that occupies the latter half.

Bacon's stock in trade, alongside Spencer and Lowry, was also in laying open what remains hidden. His hideously contorted and grotesque figures, however, are the refuse of a secular world. Bacon once stated that his work was an attempt to record how human activity and memory leaves behind a vapour trail in the same way a snail leaves its slime. In light of this, it is curious that one of the perennial criticisms of Lowry's work is a supposed sense of detachment from his subjects and a 'dreary' world view. In the 2006 inaugural L. S. Lowry lecture, art critic Julian Spalding attributed this to the "residual cultural snobbery" of London-based academics; a simplistic but nevertheless fair supposition. Lowry made the conscious decision to paint for the ordinary man and play down the thematic elements of his work. "I only paint what I see" was his guarded response to criticism, but while this authenticates the uniquely personal aspect of Lowry's vision, it continues to be misunderstood, deliberately in some cases, as a means to prove the 'poverty of inspiration' in his work. His enduring popularity, therefore, is a by-product of the artist's studied philistinism. Indeed, Spencer once declared his own work a vindication of "angels and dirt" - a sentiment that could well have been Lowry's. Perhaps this is why Lowry and Spencer continue to enjoy popular appreciation outside of the traditional art establishment with its internal (or should that be impregnable?) set of codes and practices. As playwright and novelist David Storey has observed, they remain the only British artists of their period to capture the "reclusive charm of our native art".