Authorship, history and the dialectic of trauma: Derek Jarman's The Last of England DANIEL HUMPHREY 1 Derek Jarman. The Last of England, ed. David L. Hirst (London: Constable. 1987). pp. 16-17. As Derek Jarman was working on The Last of England (1987), the queer filmmaker's savage critique of Margaret Thatcher's Britain, he kept a joumal published under the same title as the film and sold as a companion book. In a key passage, Jarman described the moming of 22 December 1986, the day he received the results of a test confirming he was HIV positive: The young doctor who told me this moming I was a carrier of AIDS vims was visibly distressed. I smiled and told her not to worry; I had never liked Christmas. I had put on my dark black overcoat ... to walk to the hospital. Wearing it at my father's funeral a few weeks ago I looked more sombre than the undertakers. It gave me confidence for this meeting. As I walked up the freezing street against the tide of Christmas shoppers, I thought it was inconceivable I could have avoided the virus, though I had avoided the test as long as was decently possible. ... It was almost with relief that I listened to the doctor's catalogue of do's and don'ts . . . but for all of medicine you might as well wash your mouth out with carbolic. The sword of Damocles had taken a sideways swipe, but I was still sitting in the chair.' I quote this passage at length because in it Jarman reveals several remarkable thoughts and feelings with important ramifications for the consideration of the interrelated issues of authorship and trauma, not to mention referentiality and experience. First, Jarman indicated that 208 Screen 44:2 Summer 2003 . Dossier