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Lead guitarist of rock band Queen, Dr Brian May, astrophysicist, author and keen gardener, has now found time for a heritage project. SUE HERDMN meets him to find out more

I WANT TO FEED THE TOPICS I CARE ABOUT!

LET’S START WITH THAT LATEST PROJECT…

It’s a book written with my co-author Elena Vidal: the result of more than 30 years’ research into the work of Victorian stereoscopic photographer Thomas Richard Williams (1824-71). In the 1850s he created a series of beautiful stereo photographs showing life in a small English village (Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire). We think he made the series as a very personal statement; the village was his boyhood dream-place. He saw it as an idyll. So maybe he was partly recapturing his youth, partly wanting to share it with the public. That idyll was country life, unsullied by the Industrial Revolution. A life that was already disappearing. This will be the first time in 100 years that the series can be seen together.

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER T. R. WILLIAMS?

It started with Weetabix. When I was a kid they gave away 3-D picture cards; you could send off for a viewer to see the pictures stereoscopically. I was fascinated; the sort of kid who had to work out how it was done. They take a picture – then move two-and-a-half inches and take another. That gives you two pictures that look the same, but they’re not, because they’re from a slightly different viewpoint. Seen through a viewer, you see them 3-D. Magical! I started taking my own with my little Woolworths camera. Then I started collecting stereo cards. At university I’d go to auction houses, junk shops, anywhere. I began to find Williams’ Scenes in Our Village. They’re rare. Nobody knew anything about them. Yet when we were on tour with Queen, I’d find them all over the world. Chicago was good; France too.

DID YOU FIND OUT MUCH ABOUT HIM?

To start there was only a paragraph of information. But we’ve discovered that he had been a student of Antoine Claudet – one of the first daguerrotypists (who had been a student of Daguerre). So Williams was close to the source. He was good. One of his greatest achievements was a picture of HMS Marlborough in 1955, taken from a boat with a daguerrotype camera. He kept the image sharp. It’s one of the earliest news photographs. He was also a society photographer. Queen Victoria commissioned him. To me, he was like a rock star of his day. Stereo photography was huge. His fans flocked to buy his work – like they do for, say, the next Beyonce track today. The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company (which I’m resurrecting!) was the biggest retailer in Oxford Street at the time. But now, stereo photography gets a bit neglected.

YOU SEEM TO IDENTIFY WITH HIM…

What he was doing was in an area that fascinates me: art for art’s sake and art for an audience. If you’re into your art to please yourself, fine, but you’re not communicating. There’s no conversation going on. And if you’re making art for an audience – to make money, to become famous – then it goes into a meaningless place too. It’s only working when you make something with your heart and you’re getting a response. That’s the part that’s alive and dangerous. When you’re taking a risk. He was an artistic pioneer: ahead of his time.

DANGEROUS, MEMORABLE – SUCH A MOMENT FROM YOUR CAREER?

Well, terrifying would be the day I played by arrangement of ‘God Save the Queen’ from the roof of Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s 2002 Golden Jubilee concert. Each time I drove past the palace beforehand I felt fear. In rehearsal I never got it right. It was suggested I should mime – but it had to be live. I’m not religious but I prayed to the big spirit in the sky before. When I was up there I was really aware of Freddie [Mercury, Queen’s lead singer who died in 1991]. A feeling he was there.

AS AN ASTROPHYSICIST HAVE YOU MARKED INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY?

I always watch the sky anyway. Just keeping an eye. There are so many false alarms about astral happenings on the internet. But everything is carrying on as normal right now – thank goodness. You want astronomy to stay quiet. You want good things for our planet: for our vegetation, our species.

WITH SUCH WIDE INTERESTS, WHICH PART OF OUR MAGAZINE WOULD YOU TURN TO FIRST?

For pleasure? The plant stuff. I love gardening; I like getting my hands dirty. We grow vegetables and fruit in the garden here in my house in Surrey. For education, well, I want to feed the topics I care about: wildlife, the plight of animals. There are such high hopes for the human race but not such a high regard for the welfare of animals. We should rethink that.

IN ART YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE A RISK, BE A PIONEER, GET A RESPONSE

* A Village Lost and Found: An annotated tour of the celebrated 1850s stereo card series Scenes in Our Village by T. R. Williams is published this autumn by Frances Lincoln Ltd. To find out more about the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company go to www.londonstereo.co­m

PORTRAIT BY JOHN MILLAR

Visit National Trust website HERE

© brianmay.com