In Julian Cole’s 1987 film Ostia, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final day on earth is transposed from sun-steeped Rome to noirish east London and its sooty, liquid light. Here, the infamous Salò director is sensitively incarnated by Derek Jarman as the English-speaking ‘Paul’; Julian had wanted Terence Stamp for leading man, but, as he recalls, the actor ‘wasn’t available and I had no budget for the film either, so Derek did it’. All to the good: the meditative short, made by Julian while at film school, was one of Jarman’s only starring roles.
This penny-luck fortuity is a feature of Julian’s working life: he was scouted in a pub in 1986 by the poet-artist David Robilliard, who recommended him as a model to Gilbert and George; Julian would be immortalised in blue denim in front of a pair of Eckleburg eyes in an artwork by the duo that he couldn’t afford to buy. ‘It was 10,000 guineas, which was way more than I had at the time, but, you know, I wish I had bought it because it’s probably worth considerably more than that now,’ he says. Nevertheless, he would later befriend the artists and, over the course of 18 years, made a documentary in collaboration with them – With Gilbert & George, released in 2008. The film focuses in part on the artists’ 18th-century Spitalfields home and studio, which is for Julian an enduring inspiration. So too Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, which he visited frequently during the time Jarman made it a sanctuary.
In the late 1980s Julian lived in Hackney and was swept into the House of Beauty and Culture, the avant-garde collective selling furniture, fashion and art made from salvaged materials from a shop in Dalston. Alan MacDonald, one half of the iconoclastic furniture-makers Frick and Frack, lived in Julian’s basement; Julian now has a collection of pieces by the duo, including a chair inspired by a parking meter.
In the early 1990s, he headed to Hollywood and worked on Gus van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. And then, in 1997, he returned to London and bought a ‘wonky’ 18th-century pub – knocked down the market because it was listed and couldn’t be converted into flats. A few years later, after some intensive restoration work, the Cable Street Inn was transformed into ‘a traditional seaside bed-and-breakfast-type model’ on the edge of central London, run by Julian and his partner, choreographer Jean Abreu. Just in time, too: the 2012 Olympics brought a bevy of new visitors, many of whom now return regularly.
Julian’s encounters with artists over a lifetime, however brief, has helped shape the way in which he now lives in the Cable Street Inn. On the stairwell is a reproduction of the Gilbert and George artwork in which he features, while his Arts and Crafts sideboards are inspired by similar furniture in the duo’s Spitalfields home. Paintings by Jarman can be found throughout the house – as well as shards of Roman amphorae, 17th-century clay pipes and 19th-century ginger-beer bottles dug out of the garden. ‘Derek loved old rusty bits of metal and stuff that he would find on the beach – sea-worn wood and stuff like that,’ says Julian, who agrees that this salvaging impulse rubbed off on him. The aesthetic of the House of Beauty and Culture has also had a residual influence: ‘I helped [founder] John Moore do it up,’ explains Julian, describing a room where they covered the floor in copper coins under a layer of resin. Now, an equal trove of old coins, seashells and ceramic shards are displayed in cabinets, bowls and on tabletops at the Cable Street Inn.
There is something of the scenic spaces in Ostia that hum in the house too: the assorted icons, the proximity to a railway line, the Georgian buildings, the layers of paint peeling back from a wall, the moulded ceilings, the artist’s studio-turned-altar filled with earthenware jars, an open fire and a four-poster bed. This visual lexicon also goes further back: ‘I’ve grown up in old places,’ says Julian, who lived in then slum-like Islington in ‘a falling-down early-Victorian house that my dad did up’. Later, he’d spend time in a Suffolk commune with his mother – a ‘huge former monastery’ patched together with architectural styles spanning 500 years. ‘I’ve never been put off by old, crumbling, falling-down places,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind roughing it, so to speak, in somewhere that’s draughty and cold.’
Julian has kept what he can of the original fittings and textures of the house on Cable Street. On the chimney breast in the breakfast room are remnants of early 19th-century wallpaper, exposed when he peeled back more than 20 layers. A wallpaper expert who happened to be staying in the B&B dated it to around 1810. The floorboards, too, are original: ‘Just think of all the stories that they tell, all the different people who’ve passed through,’ says Julian animatedly, also pointing out an original Meux & Co ale house mirror fitted alongside the living-room door with its glass inset that reads ‘Saloon Bar’.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, having trained as a filmmaker, what he finds most enchanting about the Cable Street Inn is its many stories. ‘It’s just layers and layers of history,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Charles Dickens probably came here and possibly Oscar Wilde because he used to frequent an opium den at [nearby] Blue Gate Fields, which is mentioned in The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ Captain Cook may have visited the ale house too, considering its proximity to the docks. Across the way, visible from a first-floor terrace, is a more recent lick of the past: the late 1970s mural by Dave Binnington, Paul Butler, Ray Walker and Desmond Rochfort depicting the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, fought between residents, police and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. In creating a B&B, Julian has restored some of the building’s original use, while adding his own narrative spin. ‘When you’re in an old building like this, you feel like you become part of the history,’ he says, adding: ‘One of the things I’m quite proud of is that I’ve kept it intact; it’s not been divided into flats and sold off.’ Just as well: where else would he put his assortment of furniture, objects and art assembled over a lifetime?
Julian has always been ‘a collector of stuff’, recalling taking home an enamelled cigarette sign from a derelict building at age 12. In the 1980s and 90s he travelled widely while filming – to China, Russia, Indonesia and the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria and Turkey – and brought back souvenirs. Closer to home, he visited weekly auctions, acquiring items as varied as Gothic Revival chandeliers and a white hare in red coat and ruff that reminds him (perhaps in vain) not to fall down the rabbit hole. ‘I like old stuff,’ he says, somewhat blithely, glossing over his era-spanning knowledge of antiques and keen feeling for the worth of an object – or indeed a place. After a beat, he adds: ‘I think it’s something I learnt from Gilbert and George in terms of their art and their work – to value things that nobody else values, the things that are despised or rejected or thrown away. I like the idea of giving things like that a new life or finding beauty in some things that people don’t really notice.’
Cable Street Inn, 232 Cable St, London E1. For more information, visit cablestreetinn.co.uk
‘Gilbert & George’, Sonnabend Collection Mantova, Palazzo della Ragione, Piazza Erbe, Mantua, from 10 September 2026 – 5 April 2027. Visit sonnabendmantova.it
