Overview

• Archivists found sticky-note outlines and a dedicated notebook pinned inside Bowie’s locked New York office, a room only he and his assistant could access.
• The materials show a fact-and-fiction project set in 1700s London, featuring figures like Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and scenes tied to the Mohocks and the Gordon Riots.
• Bowie drew directly from the early-18th-century periodical The Spectator, summarizing essays and rating them as potential themes and subplots.
• Curators say the unfinished musical illuminates Bowie’s late creative process and long-stated ambition to write for theatre, following his work on Lazarus.
• The V&A’s David Bowie Centre will display around 200 items permanently from a 90,000-piece archive, with wider access available by appointment.