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Paris by the book, by Carol Drinkwater

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Paris in the spring is like no other time of year, no other place on earth. April in Paris.

Grace, my young English heroine in THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, who is trying to escape the scars of her violent upbringing, is in search of adventure and perhaps a romantic encounter. When she steps off the train from London into the unknown exotic world of Paris in April 1968 she has no idea what lies ahead, the future that awaits her. 


I have spent this last weekend wandering the streets of the Left Bank because my husband, Michel, has a festival in progress - the first GrecDoc has been unveiled; his newly-founded festival of modern Greek documentary films is underway.  I am not in the cinema watching all the films because I have been on the jury to choose the winning three, so I have seen and enjoyed them already. They represent a fascinating window into modern Greek life and its recent, sometimes turbulent history.




This photo was taken by the young Greek director, Stathis Galazoulas, during the screening on Friday of his award-winning short film, My Grandmother, the Tobacco Grower. 


The audience is assembling for the very first Grecdoc festival in Paris
photo: Stathis Galazoulas, March 2019 

I had considered writing about modern Greece and some of the fascinating facts I have learned and discovered through these films, but I am going to leave that subject for another day, another blog. Who knows, another novel?
Because, the publication of my novel, THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF  is drawing close, 16th May - as I write, there are 53 days to go - I want to touch upon the role Paris plays in the book. If you read my blog of last month you will know that vital sections of the book are set in Paris in 1968. 

During April and May '68, the lead up to and the unfolding of the students' uprising. It was a time of hope, of dreams of peace and a new order. A vision of a fairer world.
It was the Sixties, hippies, flower power, anti-Vietnam War peace marches, the murder of Martin Luther King.

Michel's Grecdoc festival is being screened at a fabulous little cinema on the Left Bank at 5, rue des Écoles. Le Grand Action is an art house cinema in that it is not in the business of showing the latest American blockbusters. It opens its doors to lesser known films and to small festivals such as GrecDoc.  It is in the heart of Paris's student land. Further along the street is the famous Sorbonne University. This area of the city is central to the action of the '68 sections of THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF.  It is the stage upon which many scenes are set. 

Although I know this area well and over the years have spent many hours walking these streets, this weekend I began to see the quartier anew. Perhaps because the structuring and writing of the novel is behind me now and I know these characters so well. I have lived with them, inhabited their hopes and dreams for the best part of two years. This weekend, I could look quietly at all that was around me, through my characters' eyes rather than my own. I was pacing the very same streets, gazing upon buildings, statues, parks, seeing them as Grace, the novel's central character, and Peter, one of the two young men she meets during that summer of '68, (both of whom impact dramatically on the rest of her life, but in very different ways), might have seen them.

                                          The front façade of the Sorbonne University, Paris 5, 
                                                              Founded in 1257.

Peter is a student at the Sorbonne, studying politics and social sciences, when he first meets sixteen-year-old Grace, on her first day in Paris. He might have walked in and out of these great doors almost on a daily basis. Perhaps Grace waited outside for him before they went off to explore the city? During the uprisings in May '68, the Rector of the Sorbonne locked the doors of the university, in response to a peaceful student demonstration, thus shutting out the students from their belongings and lectures halls. This act was partially responsible for the escalation from civil urest to street violence, the involvement of the police, the building of the barricades and, after days of riots, the occupation of the university by the students themselves.

Grace and Peter were participants in these events. For a young girl of sixteen, May 68 was a life-changing experience. Grace was waking up to some of the possibilities that life could offer her, to her own sexuality and the power of her own convictions and voice. Women's rights, sexual liberties. A better education system. Respect and opportunities for the working classes. The rights of the people.

Across the street, still strolling along the rue des Écoles, is a fine statue I have never noticed before. Michel de Montaigne, one of France's most renowned philosophers, famous for establishing the essay as a literary genre. I stood in the spring sunshine taking photos of the statue, asking myself might Grace have lingered here, leaning against this statue, reading a book, while waiting for Peter? Or might she have walked right by it on many occasions as I have done?


                                  Michel de Montaigne  1533 - 1592. Renaissance philosopher.

On one of my recent afternoon strolls along rue des Écoles, I took a right hand turn, descending to Place Maubert (where I lived with Michel in the tiniest and most romantic of studios when I first came to Paris). It's famous food market was in full swing. In the bar, Feignes Alain, on the corner of rue Frédéric Sauton and 18 Place Maubert, after an incident occurs during the demonstrations, Grace stops to buy herself a glass of wine. She is shaken by what she has witnessed and what has befallen her personally. The shadows of real life are beginning to cloud over her. Her dreams of a carefree summer are slipping away. It is time to quit the city, she feels, and travel south in search of sun and new adventures.

Alone and unnerved by the rising violence in the capital, Grace eventually catches up with Peter and a few of his comrades at Chez George, 11 rue des Canettes, Paris, 6e arrondissement. They are deep in conversation, mulling over the escalating events. Chez George was one of the students' regular hangouts in the Sixties. Today, it has become almost a Left Bank institution and you can still enjoy its 'great vibes', a decent meal or simply a glass of wine. Late in the evenings it is a very lively joint. Downstairs, in the candle-lit cave, where the music rocks, young locals come to dance and swing. Today, it is in the very capable hands of George's daughter and his grandson, Jean François. Do pop in, if you are in Paris.
While in the vicinity, why not visit one of my favourite churches in Paris, Saint Sulpice? The present church is the second on the site. The original was Romanesque. The one that dominates Place Saint-Sulpice today was founded in 1646. Its interior is quite daunting, exceedingly high ceilings, little ornamentation and usually, outside the time of Mass when its great and very splendid organ is played, eerily quiet. The Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were both baptised here. Victor Hugo celebrated his marriage to Adéle Foucher within these great stone walls.
If you are a visitor to Paris, Sunday organ concerts are held regularly in the church.

But I digress.... Saint Sulpice plays no role in the novel except as a landmark when Grace is discovering her new city while searching for a place to stay.

A short walk away is the rue Guy-Lussac. In a studio in this street, Peter and Grace camp out, sleeping on the floor of a fellow student's pad while he, arrested during the student riots, is being held in a prison cell. This rather attractive little street played an important role in the '68 students' revolution. In the novel we find Grace here, spending back-breaking hours, working all through the night, building barricades in the company of other students and citizens. By this point in the story, the revolution has caught the attention of the nation. Parisians from all walks of life were shocked by the clamp down and the violence shown by de Gaulle's military-minded government towards the young. Many joined the cause, which escalated into violent clashes with the police who used tear gas and brutality to quell the growing force of the voice of the people.

Unfortunately, the uprising and the national strikes that followed were short-lived. By mid-June, de Gaulle had the country back under control. Elections were called and his government was brought back with a greater majority.

However, the long view of history shows us that it was not in vain. Many historians claim that May '68 transformed France, bringing it - kicking and screaming perhaps - into the second half of the twentieth-century. It is seen as a cultural turning point, "a social revolution rather than a political one." (Alain Geismar.)

For a young girl like Grace who suffered violence in her childhood, the street fighting is too confronting. She needs to get out, to move on.

Peter and Grace's flight from Paris during the turbulent month of May '68 leads them to the south, to a secluded house on a cliff's edge not too far from Marseille. It is the house of Peter's aunt, a renowned artist. Overlooking the most spectacular landscape of sandy bays and rocky inlets, Grace believes she will find the harmony she has been seeking.



                A few photos I took of the Calanques area when I was researching the novel.

But here in the south, Grace meets another young man and falls under his spell. Here, at the House on the Edge of the Cliff, which stands high above these magnificent bays, witnessing all, summer arrives. The days grow hot and emotions reach a fever pitch until a tragedy ensues and Grace's life is never to be the same again ...

Over the years right up to the present time, when Grace looks back on that summer of '68, it is not the weeks in Paris that haunt her but the months that followed ...





THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF is published on 16th May.

The publishers are saying: "Carol Drinkwater's epic story of enduring love and betrayal, from Paris in the Sixties to the present day."

It can be preordered and shipped worldwide free from
https://www.bookdepository.com/The-House-on-the-Edge-of-the-Cliff/9781405933346

I hope you will read and enjoy it.

www.CarolDrinkwater.com






What's for dinner? by Janie Hampton

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'Simple but appetising' minced meat pie. Woman's Own, 1964

When Mary Gallati wrote her Hostess Dinner Book in 1953, she thought her recipes were the height of modern cooking. Reading it nearly 70 years later, it has become social history. Mary Gallati was the daughter of Italian restaurateur Mario Gallati, who co-founded 'The Ivy' restaurant in London in 1917. Thirty years later he opened the equally famous ‘Le Caprice’ restaurant behind The Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly.
July by Raymond E Meylan
In 1953, food rationing in Britain had another year to go, making fourteen years of miserable meals. The restrictions on the sale and purchase of all types of food, including bread, meat and eggs became even stronger after the end of the Second World War. People were fed up with dried eggs, tinned Spam, limited fruit, and the expense of using the black market. They were ready for something new, and Mary was ready to show them how to entertain. She wanted to share her cooking skills with post-war Britons. Her recipes were designed to fit the seasons, so she offered roast woodcock and ‘fried éperlans’ (smelts, a small fish) in March; and ‘kid au romain’ and shrimp cocktail in April. Lobsters and ‘potatoes parisienne’ feature in May, as do copious eggs and butter in preparation for when rationing was over.
April by Raymond E Meylan
However, tastes and ingredients were not as culturally diverse as they are now. Even Gallati with her Italian background, only used garlic sparingly. Avocadoes were a rare treat reserved for dinner parties, not for every-day sandwiches. Other ingredients were available. Not many recipe books now would include gulls eggs, smoked eel or 'cannelloni stuffed with calves' brains'. Duck aux cerises froides (duck with cold cherries) involved crushing the cherry stones to retrieve the tiny nuts. Aspic appears often, an ingredient my mother used  50 years ago for parties. With aspic and jelly moulds, she could make one chicken and tin of peas feed 20 people. I remember being surprised by old men saying with glee, ‘Mmmm, aspic! I haven’t had that since the nursery!’ Egg en gelée is poached eggs in aspic. To achieve that special 1950s look, you could mix aspic with mayonnaise (homemade, obviously) before piping it artistically onto your fish. Remember ‘Russian salad’? Tiny cubes of carrots and turnips with peas, mixed into mayonnaise, served in tomatoes with their insides scooped out, and a touch more aspic. Don’t forget the sprig of parsley!
The days of tiny supermarket trolleys, trendy baskets
and kitten heels!  Photo by Tesco Stories, 1963.
Gallati also suggested which drinks to serve, including cocktails. In January, one could drink ‘Peter Pan’, made from equal parts of gin, French vermouth, orange juice and peach bitter. Shaken not stirred, as is August’s ‘Highland Cooler’ of whisky, bitters and lemon. Whereas July’s Pimms no.1 demanded No Shaking.

February by Raymond E Meylan
The illustrations by Raymond E. Meylan still look modern – stark black and white ink drawings adorn the start of each month’s recipes. They remind me of 1950s tiles or Heal’s fabric, and would work well as tapestry designs. Meylan also designed logos for chemical companies in the 1960s, when abstract corporate logos were all the rage.
March by Raymond E Meylan
I love the mixture of French and English to give the recipes continental class, such as ‘carrots vichy’ and ‘crayfish a la russe’. ‘Moussaka á l’algerienne’ brought together Greece, France and North Africa. At my very first dinner party, cooked on my 13th birthday for six school friends, the menu I wrote by hand stated ‘Saucissons en toade dans une hole.’ Maybe Mary Gallati’s French was as bad as mine, and she just didn’t know the word for carrot or crayfish? Like Gallati, I also tried the latest pudding – Baked Alaska. Only I had never seen one, just heard about it. So the cake underneath was soggy, the meringue  chewy, and the ice cream completely melted. My friends claimed to be delighted by the glacé cherries sprinkled all over it.

'Three Course Dinner cooked in a pressure cooker'.
Why does it look so unappetizing? Maybe because it's served on school plates.
Woman's Own Cook Book, 1964.
If only I had used the Woman’s Own Cook Book of 1964 which has handy tips on ‘The etiquette of dining’, such as how to cut a grapefruit, and where to place the glacé cherry. I didn’t know that ‘the chief male guest sits on the hostesses right, and the chief woman guest on the host’s right.’ Woman’s Own usefully pointed out that if there were eight people round the table, the sexes couldn't alternate and ‘adaptations are made at the host’s end.’ How confused the hostess of the 1960s would be by same sex couples, and non-binary people. The ‘chief duties of the host are pouring out wine and carving.’ Thank goodness nowadays, we can pour our own wine, and carving meat is a rare occurrence at a dinner party.
An exciting dinner party in 1964.
Which side of the hostess will the chief guest sit? 

How do these colour photos make the food look clean but cold and dull? 
Woman’s Own Cook Book, 1964.  
The chapter about children’s food insisted that they needed bland, tasteless, preferably steamed, mush – what we used to call ’Nursery food.’ Oat or barley ‘Jelly’ was recommended to build up weak children, and raw beef juice ( i.e. watered down blood) for delicate and anaemic babies. Colour, experimentation and taste were not encouraged.
'All-on-a-level kitchen', Woman's Own 1964.
I've often dreamed of a tidy kitchen like this,
and to wear kitten heels for cooking. 
My favourite chapter, one that clearly demonstrates how things have changed, was ‘Routine for Putting on Weight’. ‘Plenty of rest and exercise, a good diet of fattening foods and no worries – those are the essentials.’ The underweight reader was encouraged to stay in bed after breakfast; eat plenty of cake and ice cream; avoid green vegetables, salads, vinegar and egg white; and drink more cocktails. That’s a diet to aspire to!

Here are some recipes from Mary Gallati’s Hostess Dinner Book:
August: Sweetbreads Maréchale Place 2 large sweetbreads (lamb’s pancreas) in water and boil. Cool and remove fat and sinew. Cut into slices, roll in breadcrumbs and shallow-fry. Garnish with points of asparagus. Pour melted butter over . [Note to reader: à la maréchale is a French phrase for cooking food à l'anglaise ("English-style"), i.e. coated with bread crumbs and fried.] 

December: Smoked Eel. Cut into 3 inch sections. Garnish with quartered lettuce and tomato. Pass round horseradish sauce separately. Horseradish sauce: 4 tablespoons fresh grated horse-radish. ½ teaspoon salt. 1 ½ tablespoons vinegar. ½ cup cream. Cayenne pepper. Mix, add cream beaten stiff.
May by Raymond E Meylan
 www.janiehampton.co.uk






Medicine, Murder and Mouse Droppings - by Ruth Downie

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Medical instruments and bandage by the light of an oil lamp
If I’d known that my three chapters for that “start a novel” competition would turn into a whole series of murder mysteries, I’d never have based them on a Roman army medic. All I was looking for at the time was a character who was in a quandary, plus the suggestion of a story to follow.

There wasn’t a story, of course - which was something I had to confess when an agent got in touch and asked to see the rest of the manuscript. What I didn’t dare tell her was that I didn’t know enough about Roman army medics to write one.

Fortunately, plenty of ancient medical textbooks survive and there are modern scholars who know how to interpret them. You’ll find some of them listed at the end of this post. Meanwhile, here are ten of the fun facts that have kept me entertained over the years while I’ve tried to find G Petreius Ruso, Medicus, credible things to do.

1) Buyer beware! Ancientmedical practice had no quality control. Much as anyone today can call themselves a ‘therapist’, anyone in the classical world could call themselves a doctor.

2) When only the best will do:  Xenophon, doctor to the emperor Claudius, earned a vast salary. However, demonstrating that you don’t always get what you pay for, Xenophon was said to have finished Claudius off by sticking a poisoned feather down his throat, faking an attempt to save the emperor from the poisoned mushrooms he’d been fed at dinner.

3) “Only a doctor can kill a man with impunity.” Pliny the Elder was not a fan of the medical profession. Not only were doctors dangerous foreign* charlatans who conspired to murder the population of Rome, but they also expected to get paid for doing it.
*Doctors were often Greek.

Rolled bandages and medical equipment laid out on a table

4) Human arteries were full of air, or possibly milk, and one day somebody would devise a way to prove it. (To be fair, not everybody believed this. We only know about it because the multi-talented Galen took time to pour scorn on his deluded competitors. According to him, his own public lectures on anatomy - complete with live animal dissections - filled the crowds with wonder and his rivals with envy.)

5) This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me. With no microscopes, scans or x-rays, and with human dissection not allowed, the best place for a doctor to learn about anatomy was somewhere with a handy supply of injured patients - like a gladiator school, or the Army.

Two gladiators locked in combat

6) Practice makes perfect: Some of the surgery on offer was top-class. Field hospitals in the first world war were still using amputation techniques that would have been used in the Roman army, and for the bold and the desperate, it was even possible to have successful cataract surgery. 

Display of replica medical instruments
7) Maybe it’s the bad air. The causes of disease were largely unknown. Bacteria and viruses were still undiscovered, which perhaps explains a whole slew of remedies using animal waste, including lizard dung to make ladies’ complexions glow, and wild boar dung - smeared on fresh, if necessary - to treat injured chariot drivers. The emperor Nero, who fancied himself as a charioteer, was said to prefer his boar dung dried, powdered, and drunk with water.

Still, looking on the bright side - if you were unlucky enough to have a mouse infestation and a bald patch, and on top of all that you found that your wine had gone off, you could grind the mouse-droppings into the vinegar to make a hair-restorer. 

Wormwood plant
Wormwood - just the thing to get rid of clothes moths and mosquitoes and stop mice eating your scrolls. Also used as a purgative and diuretic, it was said to prevent nausea and to cure sore throats, eye troubles and prurulent ears. Boiled up with lentils, it was (allegedly) ideal for fattening up sheep.
8) Remember to pack the medicine: Drugs derived from plants, animals and minerals were widely used and common medicines like opium were very well understood. In the absence of inoculations, travellers might ask to be prescribed a theriac - a complicated mixture of dozens of tonics and antidotes that would protect them against foreign diseases and poisons.   

9) Where doctors failed, the gods could succeed: here’s the cast of a plaque set up by a grateful worshipper who had his deafness cured at the temple in Epidauros.

Plaster cast of a plaque showing two human ears

10) And finally: The weak (who include “a large proportion of townspeople and almost all those fond of letters”) need to take good care of themselves. In particular, if last night’s meal has not been fully digested, the weak person should stay in bed “and neither work, take exercise nor attend to business.”
 As a townsperson who is fond of letters, this is the only piece of ancient medical advice that I can fully recommend.

For more rounded and reliable information, try:

Roman Medicine - Audrey Cruse
Ancient Medicine -Vivian Nutton (not a light read, but an excellent in-depth study)
The free Futurelearn course on Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World, offered by the Open University.
Anything by Professor John Scarborough
 On the subject of women practising medicine - here's the delightful tale of “Agnodike, the Flashing Midwife”, being discussed by Professor Helen King of the Open University.
Click here to visit an earlier blog post on the theory of the Wandering Womb

I'd like to thank the re-enactors whose collections are displayed in my photos above but I can't remember where I took all of them - if you recognise your kit please let me know! 

Ruth Downie writes a series of mysteries featuring Roman military medic Ruso and his British partner Tilla - find out more at www.ruthdownie.com.

The Bigger Picture by Sophia Bennett

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Our guest for March is Sophia Bennett, who has been here before. She writes about herself:


Sophia Bennett's novels tell the adventures of creative young people in the worlds of fashion, music and art, and have been translated into over a dozen languages. She is the winner of the Times/Chicken House Competition for Threads and the Romantic Novel of the Year for Love Song, and has been shortlisted for the Booktrust’s Best Book Award for You Don’t Know Me. Amanda Craig, writing in The Times, called her ‘the queen of teen dreams’.
Sophia teaches Writing for Children at City University and regularly gives masterclasses on aspects of writing. She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, based at St George’s University of London. 
She lives in London, where she can be as close to as many art galleries as possible. The Bigger Picture is her first work of non-fiction. (But probably not her last.) 


Welcome back, Sophia!


Rejection, failure, anxiety and disappointment – a story of women in art


In 1979 a ground-breaking artwork called The Dinner Party was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It celebrated great women in history and the female-centric art forms of needlework and painting on china. In three months over 100,000 people came to see it. Many of them wrote to the artist afterwards to say it had changed their lives. It was the most successful exhibition in the museum’s history.

The work was due to go on tour but instead it was boxed up and put away. Art critics called it ‘kitsch’ and museums didn’t like its focus on female anatomy. All except one decided not to show it. A planned tour was cancelled. The artist, Judy Chicago, spent that summer alone and $30,000 in debt from the cost of making it.

The Dinner Partyconsists of three tables in a triangle, with custom-made settings for 39 great women in Western history. The names of 999 others are painted on the tiled floor. It took Chicago five years to make it, with the help of nearly 400 mostly female contributors. She did it because she had realised that in order to be recognised as a serious artist herself she needed to reintroduce women into history – where so often their contributions had been forgotten. She also wanted women to celebrate themselves, their bodies and what they made. Now this seems obvious, but in 1979 the idea was too radical to survive the censure of the art establishment.

Chicago was born Judy Cohen in 1939. She took her adopted name in 1970 when she launched herself as a feminist artist, to divest herself of ‘all names imposed upon her through male social dominance’. She was, however, always grateful to her own father for the liberated, pro-feminist example he set. He had encouraged her to express her ideas and to take art classes, which she did from the age of five at the Art Institute of Chicago. 


After this start, it came as a shock to her when, at art school in Los Angeles, her teachers did not value her opinions or her art. At first she tried to please them but, frustrated, she went on to study female artists and writers and developed her own style, introducing softness and female-centred experience into her paintings and sculptures – which can be as big as a room, or as small as a biscuit.

Today, The Dinner Party is on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, with regular exhibitions to explain how it was made. As well as making art, Chicago has for decades encouraged communities of women to come together and support each other. Nearly fifty years before the #MeToo movement, she was describing and addressing the same issues. Finally, the world has caught up with her.

*          *          *

Or what about Gwen John - Rodin’s rejected muse, whose letters to the female object of her desire were locked in a cupboard?

To look at the muted tones and inner stillness of her paintings, you would think Gwen John had a quiet life. In fact, she was daring, independent and passionate. She was once overshadowed by her beloved younger brother, Augustus, but she has since become the more famous ‘John’.

Gwen was a lawyer’s daughter, born in Tenby, a seaside town in Wales in 1876. Her mother died when she was eight. In 1895, aged 19, she left her unhappy home to join Augustus at the Slade School of Art in London. After living in a run-down London squat, John and a fellow artist called Dorelia McNeill decided to walk to Rome, selling paintings along the way. This was not normal behaviour for young women in 1903! 


In fact, they ended up in Paris where John was soon modelling for Auguste Rodin to earn money while she painted. They had a long affair and she moved to Meudon, a suburb of Paris, to be closer to him. However, Rodin did not return John’s obsessive passion. She nearly stopped working, but her brother Augustus encouraged her to pursue her talent. As I’ve found, the story of women in art often includes men who supported them – fathers, brothers, partners, lovers – only for their legacy to be ignored by the people who wrote that story later on.

John’s paintings portray the opposite of her precarious adventures. Their closely-related tones suggest calm, intimacy and reflection. Leading a solitary existence, she painted mostly interiors and portraits of women, including the local nuns. Her sitters look thoughtful, as though they have a deep interior life. John doesn’t make them look idealised and beautiful, but intelligent and interesting. Often, she would create many different versions of a painting until she felt she had got it right.

She was unlucky in love again, this time with a woman called Vera Oumancoff. Gwen showered Vera with letters enclosing over a hundred drawings and watercolours. Unmoved, Vera stuck them in a cupboard. John’s final days were spent in Meudon, in a house on stilts set in an overgrown garden, surrounded by cats she fed with expensive paté. She set off for Dieppe one day in 1939, and died there, aged 63 – eccentric and independent to the end.

However, in a twist of fate, Gwen’s hidden letters to Vera were discovered decades later, along with their exquisite enclosures. The person who found the letters was Susan Chitty, who went on to publish the first major biography of John in 1981. This led to the art world’s full appreciation of John’s talent at last.
Another thing I found fascinating: how once women became writers of art history, instead of merely the passive objects of it, the bigger picture of great women’s achievements began to emerge.

*          *          *

“I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to help creating art.”

– From the autobiography of Yayoi Kusama


Yakoi Kusama is one of the most successful artists alive today. In 2014 her solo shows – and there were many of them – were attended by more people than those of any other artist in the world. Her works are alive with colour and pattern and, to quote one of her works ‘Filled with the Brilliance of Life’. She is known as ‘the princess of polka dots’.

Yet Kusama has lived with mental illness most of her life. In fact, this has been a contributing factor to her career. Yayoi sees the world differently from most people. From childhood she has had severe obsessive thoughts, and visions where sunflowers or dots on a tablecloth would seem to multiply until they were infinite and all around her. Though frightened at first, Kusama eventually found these visions reassuring as if the dots, like infinite stars, were connecting her to the universe. This is what she has consistently tried to express in her art. 


Her mother did not make it easy. She wanted Kusama to marry, not become a professional artist, so she took Yayoi’s art materials away. Kusama simply started creating with old seed sacks and mud. She made thousands of works before she left Japan, and then destroyed most of them to make room for more.

In 1957, encouraged by Georgia O’Keeffe, Kusama went to New York. Here, her avant-garde work influenced Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein (another fan of dots). She constantly experimented with new materials and new technologies to create paintings, sculptures, installations and performance art. And yet she failed to find the success she craved, though the men around her did. She returned to Japan, disappointed and, it seemed, defeated.  

But she couldn’t stop making art. Today, Yayoi works in her Tokyo studio by day and lives in a psychiatric institution across the road by night. With bright red hair and polka dot clothes she is an icon of the art world, while crowds queue to see her sculptures of dotted pumpkins and ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’ around the globe. She says, ‘Love is the most important thing.’ Her art, born out of fear and anxiety, is perhaps so popular because it is suffused with wonder and joy.

*          *          *

I learned about Chicago, John, Kusama and a host of other artists during the intense months of research I did last summer for The Bigger Picture. It was the brainchild of Holly Tonks, then editor at Tate Publishing. Her idea was to celebrate Tate’s new emphasis on supporting traditionally marginalised artists, be they women, non-binary, non-white or not from the Western tradition of making art. And to target the book at the next generation of artists, art facilitators and art lovers – ie young teenagers: my audience.

I found out about the project when I was pitching another book and basically begged to be allowed to write it. With over 50 full-colour spreads illustrated by Manjit Thapp, the result was a labour of love. 


It was made difficult – and therefore more interesting – by the fact that every artist in the book by definition has a fascinating life, body of work and artistic process… And I only had a maximum of about 400 words to describe each one. If she was alive and chose to contribute an interview (16 did) I sometimes had only 200 words. How could I possibly sum up the ground-breaking, zeitgeist-skewering, post-Communist, internet-savvy multimedia achievements of Cao Fei in three small paragraphs? I couldn’t, of course. I can only hope the book will get its readers Googling like crazy.

One of the toughest artist profiles to write was Judy Chicago’s. I wanted to include her because she is such a central feminist icon, with something to say about almost every aspect of art the book discusses. Then, to our joy and astonishment, she also agreed to contribute an interview. I was thrilled – and had to cut my own wordcount by two thirds. So I was pleased to know this blog would be a home for what I had to leave out, and the chance to connect Judy’s journey with some of her fellow ‘rejects’.

For thousands of years – until the lifetime of my young readers – women have been ‘other’ in the history of art: seen and not heard. They have known every form of refusal, deprivation, anonymity, disappointment, invisibility and anxiety. And yet art has been made, always. Great art, even. Wherever we look, we find it, even if the name of the maker has been lost in the mists of time. 


Women have persisted, extemporised, explored, expressed, resisted, created, reached out, reached up. I find them all so inspirational. I love their work. I so admire those other women – curators, critics, historians, biographers, gallerists, collectors – who since the 1970s have been gradually reintroducing them into the history of art where they belong.

The teens I write for are besieged by images of perfection and it is creating levels of anxiety they don’t know how to manage, at an age when they should be loving the chance to explore who they want to become. Thinking like an artist is about looking, not looking perfect. Or being perfect. That is what Gwen and Yayoi and Judy knew. That’s what I hope the readers of The Bigger Picture can discover for themselves. 



Cabinet of Curiosities - A Cat's Got In! - by Charlotte Wightwick

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The last few weeks for me have been all about one thing. No, not Brexit.

February and March have, for me, been the months of The Cat. Within days of my Feline Overlord arriving, I was fully under the paw, accepting as standard the fact that I will be woken up every day at 5am by a barrage of yowls, followed by a large furry creature sitting on my head, attempting to lick my face and demanding I get up to feed it. Not to mention all the 'help' I get whenever I sit down to write anything.

Stevie the Cat, helping. Source: C. Wightwick

The joys of cat ‘ownership’ have made me wonder what feline artefact should be placed in the Cabinet of Curiosities to celebrate the thousands of years that humans have been domesticated by cats.

The obvious place to start is of course ancient Egypt, where cats were famously worshipped as gods and millions of cat mummies have been found. Personally, I’ve never quite got over the horror/ fascination of seeing kitten mummies at the British Museum as a small child: somehow the idea disturbed me more than the idea of embalmed people. I’m not sure what this says about me – nothing good, I fear. 

Ancient Egyptian cat mummies
Source: Wikipedia Commons
One of my favourite ‘real life’ historical cats is Pangur Ban, the subject of a ninth-century Irish poem, who spends his time hunting mice while his master, the monk and author of the poem, styles himself as a hunter of words. As a lover of medieval history, there’s something about this poem that really appeals to me: it gives me an incredibly vivid image of a tonsured and robed monk, writing long into the night with only his white cat, chasing mice through the library, for company.

The next candidate for the Cabinet of Curiosities has to be the suit of feline armour recently doing the rounds on Twitter, reportedly made for Henry VIII’s cat Dagobert. I suspect I wasn’t alone spending a few confused minutes wondering how on earth one persuaded a cat to wear said armour (presumably a LOT of whatever the sixteenth century equivalent of Dreamies were) before finding out that Dagobert probably never existed, and the armour is modern, created by Canadian artist Jeff de Boer. A disappointment.

I saw my final option on Twitter too, but this one is attested by the good folks (and specifically Mark Forsyth, author of A Short History of Drunkenness) at History Extra. And it’s a good one: the ‘Puss and Mew Machine’: a mechanical cat-shaped gin dispenser. The machine was a way of illegal gin-sellers avoiding the swingeing taxes that the government had imposed in an effort to ban drinking among the lower classes in the eighteenth century. You can find out more at https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/gin-craze-panic-18th-century-london-when-came-england-alcohol-drinking-history/. I knew there was something missing from my life, and now I know what it is.

So, which feline delight shall go into the Cabinet? A mummified kitten, a ninth-century monk’s companion, some impossible feline armour or a mechanical gin-dispensing cat? Its tricky. But as a ‘word hunter’ myself, I think it will have to be the memory of a small white cat, over a thousand years old but immortalised forever:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight

Hunting words I sit all night.

Written by an unknown Irish monk, 9th century. Trans Robin Flower. 
The page of the Reichenau Primer on which the Pangur Ban 
poem is preserved. Source: Wikimedia Commons


March Competition

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To win a copy of Sophia Bennett's The Bigger Picture, just answer the question below in the comments section.

‘Which creative woman has most inspired you, and why?’

Then send a copy of your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that we have your email address.

Closing date: 7th April

We are sorry that our competitions are open only to UK Followers

Good luck!

 

 

Thomas Cromwell by Mary Hoffman (review)

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Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein the Younger 1534
In Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, Thomas Cromwell shows this portrait to his son Gregory. It has recently come from the painter, Hans Holbein the Younger. Cromwell tells Gregory that someone has told him he looks like a murderer. "Didn't you know?" the boy responds.

Holbein has not flattered his subject, it's true, but we see here the real man, with a firm grasp on his work, and on England. It is the man that Dairmaid MacCulloch gives us in his thorough biography, Thomas Cromwell: a Life.

Especially during the last decade of his life, while working for the king, Henry Vlll, Cromwell was everywhere, as a civil servant and politician, a man with considerable power both in secular life and over the church. He was incredibly hard-working, intelligent and with an impressive attention to detail. As one of his servants says on looking at the portrait earlier, according to Mantel, he was not and did not look like a man to cross.

What characterises his work and his personality is what MacCulloch describes as his "omnicompetence." That made me ache with longing for such a politician to take today's situation in hand. (Although it is unlikely he would have let us get into today's situation in the first place). At the height of his career, no-one bothered to write an address of correspondence to the king's secretary, later Lord Privy Seal: "His name would find him more easily than his exact location."

MacCulloch is generous in acknowledging the interest in his subject generated by Hilary Mantel's two novels. In a rare appreciation of historical fiction by a "straight" historian, he says, "to call them 'historical novels' does them an injustice; they are novels which happen to be set in the sixteenth century, and with a profound knowledge of how that era functioned.'

Coming fresh to biography from fiction, I was surprised to discover that Cromwell's father was possibly not a blacksmith but definitely a brewer and, though he was a bit of a thug, there is no evidence that he was brutal to his son. Thomas, as a teenager at the turn of the sixteenth century, took himself off to the continent, ending up in Italy, but not to escape his father. It looks more as if he was escaping Putney, in order to spread his wings and learn more about the wider world.

If that is the case, he succeeded brilliantly well; his facility with the Italian language and with continental mores came in very useful later.

MacCulloch has scrutinised what remains of Cromwell's vast correspondence. You might naturally expect that to consist of what was in his in-box but in fact in Tudor times it was customary to keep copies or at least drafts of letters out as well. In Cromwell's case, there are massive gaps, attributable to his loyal servants having hastily burned many documents at the time of his fall from grace in 1540. It must have been hasty as Cromwell's downfall unfolded as rapidly as any he had brought about for others.

For all of what is missing, MacCullough has meticulously sifted through whatever was available and constantly turns the figure of Cromwell round to cast light on unexpected facets. There is a salutary reminder that it was Cardinal Wolsey, not Cromwell, who started the programme of systematic dissolution of the monasteries, so closely associated with Henry Vlll and his right hand man.
Because Cromwell had been Wolsey's right hand man until the cardinal's fall, as inevitable as, though less speedy than Cromwell's own a decade later. Cromwell's loyalty to his former patron is as unshakeable as it is occasionally unwise. Take the coat of arms (above) he took up to reflect the importance of his position in court in 1532, when he was granted lands in Wales. If you compare it with that of Cardinal Wolsey (below) you will see the similarity.

Cromwell took the 'chief'  (the headband) of Wolsey's coat and made it his 'fess,' (central band). In both cases there is a red rose, symbol of the king, between two Cornish choughs. MacCulloch calls this "a defiant statement of support" for the cardinal. (The chough, with its heraldic associations with Thomas Becket, had become the appropriate symbol for all Thomases).

In spite of his competent organising of events like Queen Anne's coronation in 1533 or the meeting with the French court in Calais and Boulogne in 1532, Cromwell was not made so much as a knight until after Anne Boleyn's death. No glamorous titles and robes for him; instead he was put in charge of sewers.

That meant something different in 16th century England from what it does today. It included weirs and waterworks and Cromwell tackled the commission with the energy and attention to detail he seemed to bring to every project that passed through his hands. As well as becoming the most powerful and dangerous man in England, he was certainly one of the busiest in Europe.

But what we want to know about is his relationship with Anne Boleyn and her fate. In spite of the profound effect Cromwell had on the running of England, some of which is apparent to this day, it is his involvement in the king's marital affairs that dominate the life of this remarkable man.

MacCulloch says that Henry's first marriage was "for dynastic reasons," which is a bit harsh. It was honourable and conscientious of the teenage prince to take on his late brother's widow and it seems as if that was not in accord with his father's wishes, whose treatment of Katherine of Aragon was less than kind.

However, there was no doubt by the end of the 1520s that Henry had set his mind on a new young wife, to give him the longed-for heir and this time the match was not dynastically valuable. Cromwell was as energetic in pursuing ways the king could annul his marriage as he was about every task he was given. But he and Anne had a complex relationship.


For a start, Cromwell could not forgive her the role she played in the downfall of his old mentor Thomas Wolsey. Then there was the fact that in all political manoeuvrings she favoured France, where Cromwell leaned more towards the Holy Roman Empire. In the delicate seesaw of continental politics and with the history of Anglo-French hostilities, the queen's personal preferences sometimes caused Henry to be at odds with his Secretary's advice.

Nevertheless, Cromwell did everything he could to bring the king's first marriage to an end and to facilitate the new union with Anne Boleyn. This was Cromwell as fixer and he was of course successful. After a clandestine wedding in at the end on January 1533 (and possibly an earlier even more clandestine ceremony), there was a triumphant coronation for Anne in May. All organised by Henry's most efficient minister.

There was a blip in Henry's plans in September when his first child with Anne was a girl (not knowing that "blip" would be one of England's most successful monarchs).

But opposition to the marriage didn't stop with the coronation and it was Cromwell's job to make sure that everyone fell into line with the king's decision to place his position of head of the Church in England above any ruling from the Pope. He had been excommunicated in July.

The recalcitrant clerics Thomas More and John Fisher, who baulked at signing the oath of Supremacy, did not stand a chance against Cromwell. In early 1535 he had been made "Vice-Gerent in Spirituals (note: not Vice-Regent, though the anagram has had an irresistible pull over the centuries), which enabled him to act for Henry in church matters. And this he did by means "complex and crabwise."

Fisher and More were beheaded in the summer of 1535, only months after the new Pope, Paul lll, had made Fisher a cardinal. This seems to have incensed the king even more against the stubborn bishop.

So, now we come to the central event of Henry's downward spiral into tyranny and cruelty (my words, not MacCulloch's) and this where I feel there is a lack in this biography. Just one chapter of 24 pages and of those only 17 devoted to the the most tumultuous four months of the king's reign, dispatch Queen Anne almost as rapidly and cursorily as happened to her in real life.

So Anne's life comes to an end but not Cromwell's - not yet - and in the summer of 1536 he is made Lord Privy Seal, the pinnacle of his secular influence. Henry has already re-married, to quiet, compliant Jane Seymour and is once gain enjoying marital happiness. Cromwell is created a baron and therefore a knight; there are even rumours that he might marry "Lady Mary," the deposed princess, now declared illegitimate but with the blood of kings and queens in her veins.


But Cromwell was pursuing evangelical reformation rather than marriage. It was his son Gregory, now seventeen, who was on the market – and he made a match almost as daring as his father's to Mary would have been: he married the king's sister-in-law.

Elizabeth Seymour, Queen Jane's younger sister, aged about twenty at the time, had been married and widowed already and had two children. In one swift stroke, Thomas Cromwell had made himself part of the Royal Family, not exactly the king's uncle, but pretty close. Not bad for the brewer's son from Putney.

Holbein, portrait of a lady, possibly Elizabeth Cromwell
In October, Queen Jane gave birth to Henry's longed for legitimate son and heir, Prince Edward. (His illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, had died shortly after witnessing Anne Boleyn's execution). The general joy was soon mitigated by the death of the queen. It was a blow for the king but it put him back on the market as a still very eligible groom.

Perhaps the death of Jane Seymour marks the beginning of Cromwell's slide down the ladder of his considerable achievements? Although further ennoblement awaited, it was the negotiations for a fourth queen that began the process that would lead rapidly to his disgrace and death.

Cromwell favoured a foreign wife for Henry, Archbishop Cranmer an English one. As we all know from the endless Tudor studies in school curricula, Cromwell backed the wrong horse. It was an uncharacteristic false step for such a shrewd man. Henry did not like his new bride. More specifically, he didn't fancy her.

In mid-March 1537, Cromwell was created Earl of Essex and Lord Great Chamberlain but two months later he was in the Tower for treason. What happened? The unsuccessful marriage to Anne of Cleves was part of Henry's deep disappointment with his chief minister – the king launched an annulment in early July – but also significant was the build up of Cromwell's enemies at court.

The king was cracking down on evangelicals too, which made Cromwell's position vulnerable. And Henry was already eyeing up a fifth wife, making presents to a pretty young lady-in-waiting called Katherine Howard, another niece of the Duke of Norfolk, by now Cromwell's sworn enemy. In the hectic spring and summer months of 1540, Cromwell's fate could have gone either way, honours and titles one minute, imprisonment the next.

Holbein Henry Vlll in 1540
But once Henry did make up his mind against someone he was implacable, as Cromwell had good reason to know. In spite of begging letters from the man himself and a defence by Archbishop Cranmer, who had also argued in vain for Anne Boleyn's life, Cromwell was executed on 28th July.

On the same day the king married Katherine Howard.

Everything else is aftermath but MacCulloch certainly hurries the new queen Katherine off the scene, without discussing the causes of her fate, and turns to the "eirenic" Katherine Parr. (It means something like "seeking peace" but also has a technical meaning in church matters involving the reconciliation of different denominations).

Gregory Cromwell was made a baron and was one of the six stave-bearers who upheld the canopy over the king's coffin in February 1547 and was made a Knight of the Bath at Edward Vl's coronation, the flow of honours not halted by the fate of his father. Indeed there is evidence that Henry soon regretted getting rid of his most competent and diligent minister.

Diarmaid MacCulloch saves any summing up of Cromwell's life to the last page and a bit of this 552 page book but sees his legacy as the confirmed Protestantism of first Edward and then Elizabeth l. He even suggests that this paved the way for the birth of the British Empire. It seems that Thomas Cromwell has a lot to answer for.


(Many thanks to Ann Jungman for lending me her copy when I had to send mine back to the London Library).

 









 

Culpeper and Writing, by Gillian Polack

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I often ask people “What would you like me to write about in my articles?” They want me (mostly) to write about people. 

My fiction is about people, but my historian side isn’t that kind of historian. I’m an historiographer and ethnohistorian. I think about cultures and about books and about books in culture and about stories.

Today, when I thought “I want to write about Nicholas Culpeper” because I was thinking of my own past, not because I’m interested in the seventeenth century nor in his life. At high school we were allowed to choose our own books for the end-of-year prizes. My English prize was Culpeper’s herbal. It combined so many of my interests. I chose it because I wanted a copy of my own, so that I could learn to decode the entries and know how Culpeper thought of herbs and used herbs. My kind of history. I had it even when I was seventeen.



I’ve used my volume of Culpeper so often since I was seventeen, but it’s been a while since I sat down and questioned how I use it. These days I use it as a reference for my fiction, but also as an historian. I know a lot more about the historical context of the book, and theoretically whenever I look at a page, that automatically kicks in. This makes my fiction quite different to what I wrote when I was eighteen. Around then my first short story was published and it was a very precise description of working at a rubber glove factory. If I had included Culpeper, it would possibly have been the main character going home and reading the book herself, for my writing was often very literal and everyday back then.

I’m not certain that we talk enough about what fiction writers do when they read a book to use in their fiction. I have a new short story to write soon and Culpeper is a useful source, since the story is set in a strange and wonderful shop. If the shop assistant had an array of herbs for various uses and only a single reference volume to consult, what would she know, and how do I read an entry to interpret it in this environment? Is it as simple as my response would have been when I was a brand-new writer with little life experience and only the beginnings of an understanding of what history is and how to use sources?

I want to begin with the second question. In fact, I have to begin with the second question.

What my character would know depends wholly on how I would read an entry for the place and time that character lives in. There’s a big difference between how I read Culpeper as a seventeen year old to how I read Culpeper forty years later, so let’s start with that.

The entry I’ve chosen to play with is that on the cherry tree, mainly because it’s a short entry. You can find it here: http://www.complete-herbal.com/culpepper/cherrytree.htm



When I was seventeen I read it literally. When I read ‘sour cherries” I thought ‘Morello’ and I looked for where a tree could be grown and how it could be eaten. I tasted uncooked sour cherries and I tried drying them to match what the entry described.

The health side of the entry I noted, but pushed aside, for a couple of my relatives were health professionals (doctors and dentists) and had given me strict warnings on health issues and old herbals. I used more modern herbals to test some medicinal properties, but Culpeper was of a period that, I was told, had dangerous medicine.

Now, in this day and place, I read it for the physical qualities Culpeper describes, for it’s a medical herbal, not a culinary one and I know far too well how few medieval medicines have actually been tested. I would check to see if Morello cherries are the same type of sour cherry as Culpeper describes, and if the change in cherries over time has been documented by specialists. I’d check sites like Brogdale to see what they tell me about fruit in general and about cherries in particular. Then, and only then, I’d play with the fruit itself, knowing more about the relationship between a modern cherry tree and Culpeper’s.

The next thing I do is look for the qualities of a plant in relation to the structure of the universe. 

This sounds big. It isn’t. It’s quite simple. In the case of cherries, they are of Venus. Culpeper tells us so. He always tells us so. This informs me how the cherry might work in relation to other plants if I were a doctor and finding suitable medicine for an ailment. Medicine back then didn’t operate along the same lines as modern medicine (it had to balance the humours, for instance) and knowing a plants qualities meant that the heat, the cold, the wet and the dry could be deduced. That sentence “It is a tree of Venus.” is a coded explanation for the long paragraph that follows and that describes different types of cherries, how they work fresh and how they work dried. 



It’s not a complete list of ways cherries might be used in medicine: it’s a guide to how cherries fit into the world of remedy.

This leads to something important. The shop assistant in my story would not be able to prescribe using Culpeper alone. She would need other references, or medicinal products already packaged, or someone she could ask for help. She could sell the dried fruit as dried fruit and helpfully explain that Culpeper lists it as ‘being cooling in hot diseases, and welcome to the stomach’. She would find it harder to create  prescription for a particular illness: medieval medicine required a lot more training than access to a herbal, no matter how wonderful the herbal is.

My short story, however, is a fantasy short story with historical elements. Can’t I use Culpeper any way I want, then? The answer to that is, sadly, “Only if I want historians to find it comic or sad or simply badly done.” Taking historical sources from a given time and lifting out fun facts and putting them into a context where those fun facts are distorted lead to such reactions. The reason for that is one of the things I’m researching right now, because it’s seriously cool.

Every single novel has certain attributes that readers pick up on. They’re the reason we choose to read this novel over that other one. Historical fiction tends to keep historical material in stronger historical context than historical fantasy does. Within a given novel, a certain level of historical accuracy is more or less appropriate and this fits very closely in with the genre of the novel. (This is my older research – if you want to explore it, History and Fiction is the place to go.)



All novels have an invented world. Some invented worlds look very much like ours (historical fiction) and some go in interestingly wayward directions (historical fantasy) and some borrow from history but deviate in even more ways. Other world fantasy is a good illustration of this description, but it applies to a range of genres. My short story will be part of a series of stories that are ‘portal’ – the shop door can lead from the shopfloor into a range of places. This means that the historical accuracy of the Culpeper really doesn’t matter, in one way. There is nothing medieval about this shop except… 

When we (writers) build a world for a novel, it has to contain a certain level of credibility for the reader. The need for credibility in the story itself applies to almost all novels. It even applies to short stories, but because short stories contain so much less detail, credibility is easier to achieve. A few bits of detail that give the right feel and all is good. When someone writers a linked sequences of short stories (as I am, now) that sequence has about the same credibility requirements as a short novel.

How does Culpeper relate to credibility? I need a reason to have cherries on that medicinal shelf. I need a reason to have Culpeper on the reference shelf (the door leads to our word sometimes, perhaps). I need someone who can read the book (ie speaks English) and knows what cherries are. Then come the questions about how those dried cherries are used, why they are being bought, why the book is picked up at all…

My decisions on all these things might make or break the short story, even if they are merely two paragraphs in twenty pages.

Every single bit of historical information in historical fiction carries such weight. This brings me to my endgame: I am not writing about Culpeper today. I’m using Culpeper as an example to show you the weight of the research behind the work of the History Girls and other writers. Evaluating every single element of history in a novel is part of the novel-writing game. Making sure it fits the kind of novel we’re writing, the place, the time, and even the characters in the novel is not easy. It is, however, what brings history into fiction in a way that more readers can enjoy.

No post today

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Owing to unforeseen circumstance, Anna Mazzola is unable to post today. She will be back next month.

Tips from The New Family Receipt Book (1837) - Katherine Langrish

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This book has been in my family since I was a child; I can only assume it's been handed down over generations, and it's given me and my mother quite a lot of amusement over the years. It is: The New Family Receipt Book, Containing one thousand Truly Valuable Receipts in various branches of Domestic Economy: London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1837
 
Yes, to set the scene, that's the same John Murray who was Byron's friend and publisher, though by 1837 Lord Byron had been dead for 13 years. In 1837 Charlotte and Emily and Anne Bronte were unknown schoolteachers. Jane Eyre would not be published for another ten years. In June 1837 William IV died and his niece Victoria ascended the throne: no one could guess it, but she would reign for the rest of the century; the Victorian Age was about to begin. In July Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ship the Great Western was launched in Bristol; Lea and Perrins started making their famous Worcestershire Sauce in August, and Spring-Heeled Jack was sighted in London in October.



While all this was going on someone, somewhere in my family, purchased this little book of remedies, recipies and practical tips. Here are some examples. 

Gargle for a Sore Throat (it sounds much nicer than anything you can buy in Boots, but why would you gargle with it and not drink it?):

Take half a pound of Turkey figs, put them into a quart of spring water, and let them simmer over a small fire till better than one-half is wasted [boiled down]; in the meantime take a large lemon, cut it in slices and between every slice put some brown sugar-candy; and let it stand before the fire to roast, then strain the figs, and squeeze them through a coarse cloth, and put the juice of the lemon into it. Gargle the throat with it, warm and the oftener the better. 

Avoid, as much as possible, living near Church-Yards (danger of getting fevers from the ‘putrid emanations’ which emanate from the ground in spring).

Rules for Preserving Health in Winter (wear a night-cap in bed, ‘go not abroad without breakfast, shun the night air as you would the plague, and let your house be kept from damps by warm fires’).
Preventive of Autumnal Rheumatisms (light fires even if it means dirt; ‘Follow your feelings’); To Promote Sleep (do not keep a ‘fire, rush-light or candle’ burning in your bedroom, for it ‘vitiates the air’ and also disturbs rest).

Drink ‘Tar Water’– yes, that is actually tar dissolved in water –  to ‘Expand the Lungs of Public Speakers etc’ (though ‘it may be as well, especially at first, to try how it sits on the stomach’).
A German Method of Preventing Hysterics (surprisingly gentle, this one: pounded caraway seeds mixed with ginger and salt, spread upon bread and butter and eaten twice a day).

To Prevent the Mischief arising from the Bite of Mad Dog (cut out the bitten area or else cauterize the bite with a red-hot iron: ‘Nothing else is at all to be depended on’; did Emily Bronte own this book?)


Hints for Ventilating Stage Coaches (who knew they were so air-tight? This involves letting an air-tube into the roof, with a grid to prevent the hoi-polloi riding outside from dropping things through)
A Mode of Avoiding the Fatal Accidents of Open Carriages (here, though I’m rather puzzled by the penultimate sentence, I love the somewhat hopeless ending):

Jumping out is particularly dangerous (the motion of the gig communicating a different one to the one you give yourself from jumping), which tends very much to throw you on your side or head; many suppose it easier to jump a little forward and alight safe; ‘tis supposition; they will not find it so on trial. The method of getting out behind the carriage is the most safe of any, having often tried it, when the horse has been going very fast. – Perhaps it is best to fix yourself firm and remain in the carriage.


I will end with a truly stunning recipe for Genuine British Punch which - I have to say -  sounds a lot better than any punch I have ever tasted; our forebears clearly knew how to throw a party. I might leave out the capillaire syrup which 'may be added', though: it's also known as Maidenhair Syrup and is made from the leaves of the maidenhair fern, sweetened with honey and mixed with water or milk.

Procure half a dozen ripe, sound and fresh lemons, or a proportionate number of limes, and two Seville oranges. Rub off the yellow rinds of three or four of the lemons, with lumps of fine loaf sugar; putting each lump into the bowl, as soon as it is sufficiently saturated with the grated rind. Then thinly pare the other lemons as Seville oranges, and put these rinds also into the bowl; to which, adding plenty of sugar, pour a very small quantity of boiling water and immediately press the juice of nearly all the fruit, followed by a little more hot water. Blend the whole thoroughly with the punch ladle. The sherbet being thus prepared, to make it into genuine British punch, spirit should be added, to the quantity of a bottle of Jamaica rum to every pint of the finest cognac brandy. The above quantity of fruit, with a pound and a half of sugar, will make enough for a bowl that may contain two gallons; the strangth, or weakness, must be suited to the general inclination of the company. Pine-apple rum, and capillaire syrup, may be used if convenient.



Picture  credits 

Spring-Heeled Jack: wikipedia 
English Stagecoach, found at Jane Austen's London
Two gentlemen in a gig: wikimedia

Cherry Blossom Time - Joan Lennon

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In the garden of the flat below us is a beautiful flowering cherry tree.  Every year, we watch the weather closely - worry when the buds are just a whisker shy of bursting and the temperature drops (this year, there was snow!) - hope the big winds won't come the instant they've bloomed and rip the petals away - applaud the very first full blossoms and hope their optimism isn't unfounded ... 





Hanami, or flower-viewing, is a Japanese tradition which focuses primarily on cherry blossom (sakura) and its ephemeral beauty.  To do this properly, I should be having a picnic under my neighbour's tree, laughing and drinking and expressing poetic thoughts.


Cherry-blossom viewing by Shinobazu Pond, by Torii Kiyonaga,1700s 



On the Sumida Embankment in the Eastern Capital, two bijin walking under Cherry blossom. A distant view of Fuji san in the background by Hiroshige (1797-1858)




"Under the Cherry Trees" by Kunisada, 1852




Bokusui tsutsumi hanazakari no zu by Hiroshige, 1881




Monkeys in a Blossoming Cherry Tree by Mori Sosen, early 1800s

Instead, I'll be on a plane to visit family in Canada, and the blossom will be long gone by the time I get back.  Still, it was beautiful.  No need for any other words, perhaps.  And I'll leave you now with the iconic Sakura, Sakura played on the 25 string koto:



For those of you who, like me, find Japanese culture fascinating, an excellent way to learn more is to visit the posts of History Girls' very own Lesley Downer.  Simply type her name into the Search box on the right hand side and enjoy!

 
Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin.


History in Abundance by Sheena Wilkinson

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Greetings from the Clockhouse, Arvon’s writing retreat in the grounds of The Hurst in Shropshire. 




I’m sitting here in front of a view that hasn’t changed substantially in centuries, a landscape that has inspired writers from Housman to Webb to Malcolm Saville. The building I’m in, while recently refurbished, is properly old, with windowsills two foot thick. I’ve spent hours wandering ancient forest pathways. The ground is riddled with hoof-prints and it’s so easy to imagine them belonging not to a modern pleasure horse but to a hack or carthorse of years gone by.

Oh yes --  and I’m here to edit a novel set in Belfast 1921. A story of politics and rioting and tribal loyalties and young women. A story of despair and hope. 

So there’s HISTORY in abundance – in my head, on the manuscript at my elbow as a type, in the built and natural environment in which I have my being for this week. Easy, I thought, when I realised my History Girls post would fall due while I was here: lots of inspiration all around you. No excuse! And yet…

Sometimes, I admit, it’s really hard to think of what to write for this blog. I checked through some recent posts for inspiration. Maybe one of them would spark a response in me. There’s certainly an eclectic mix of topics – from Roman medicine to Thomas Cromwell, women artists to 195os housekeeping. All fascinating, all guaranteed to pull me out of Belfast 1921 and into various other worlds. And let me assure me, almost anywhere is a better place to be than Belfast 1921. Belfast 1921 is the last thing I want to write about just now. And yet, it's here in my head, chasing out almost everything else. 


It never fails to astonish me, how much work people put into their History Girls posts – the careful research, the detailed analysis, the well-chosen and often hard-to-source pictures. I know I often take a History-Lite approach myself – a bit of family history, a few old houses, some Musing. Other times – like next month, I promise, when I will have emerged from Belfast 1921 sufficiently to have something interesting to say about it – I manage a more thoughtful, erudite post. 


But for now, I’m so mired in my own historical fiction, in what I often call The Editing Cave, that I don’t think I have much more to offer. Apart from these pictures of an ancient landscape. 






SUMMER IN FEBRUARY by Adèle Geras

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If you follow this link, you will find an account of my involvement with the Alice in Wonderland celebrations to celebrate the anniversary of this novel's publication. 





The piece makes no mention of what happened at the end of term, after we'd put on a play of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Christ Church Meadow in the summer of 1965. The whole company went to Cornwall and put it on in the beautiful Minack Theatre. It rained a lot. I sat on rocks looking out to sea to sing the songs that I'd previously sung hidden up a tree. I have very happy memories of a beautiful place, but a very rainy one.

Then in the winter of 2013, I spent a couple of days in a cottage in Mousehole. We visited the Eden Project and Land's End. And as we left, a huge storm raged over the county, causing damaging and scary floods.

So imagine my surprise when the two days of summer, real summer, which hit us in February, were the exact days that Jill Paton Walsh and I were in  St. Ives. She has written most movingly about this place, in Goldengrove and The Serpentine Cave.  She spent much of her childhood here, with her grandparents. She and  John Rowe Townsend had a flat here for 17 years. When she suggested a visit, I was delighted to agree with her plan. 









This (above) was the view from my hotel bedroom.  Our aim was to see as much as possible in a very short time and the main thing on our agenda was ART.  St. Ives has drawn artists to it for many decades and it's the quality of the light that does it. Hard to describe but very clear to see once you're there. The Godrevy lighthouse was exactly opposite this window and that is Virginia Woolf's lighthouse, so I was eager to see it. Every morning it was wreathed in mist, but it emerged after a few hours, white and beautiful.




Above is a photo of the garden at Barbara Hepworth's studio. It was  thrilling to walk around the garden, stand in the place where she worked and above all, to listen to stories about the artist and her history.  Jill  knows so much  about the town and its artists that I felt privileged to be going round it with her. 




Here is a Hepworth sculpture that I admired particularly, for its colour as much as its shape.

One of the great things about St Ives is the fact that you can walk everywhere. We strolled down the hill towards the Tate from the Hepworth studio and passed the house where Alfred Wallis lived. I took a photo of his plaque because I love his work and know it from the wonderful collection of his paintings in Kettle'sYard in Cambridge. 






The shop window below has nothing to do with Art or History. It shows, on the top shelf, a heap of raspberry meringues. Just saying the words to myself as I type them makes my mouth water. I didn't buy one but am now regretting it!



On our second day, we visited the Bernard Leach pottery. It's on a main road above the town and most beautifully arranged for visitors. You can walk through the working part of the studio and see the kilns, and watch a video of Leach himself, talking about his work.  Pottery is still made here and sent all over the world. I bought a small celadon bowl by Joanna Wason. 



After leaving the Bernard Leach Pottery, we drove to Zennor. In the church there, I looked up and saw this model ship. Jill explained that replicas of ships were made and hung up in the hope and belief that God would then protect the real vessel, out on the dangerous, rock-studded seas. 






But the real attraction of the church in Zennor is the mermaid, carved on the side of a bench. She is most beautiful and stories behind the carving abound. From the artist who carved this in Zennor to Hans Andersen; from Carol Shields to  Imogen Hermes Gowar and her recent novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, we are entranced and fascinated by these creatures. This mermaid is haunting, in its beauty and simplicity.



I'm very conscious that this is more a Geography Girls post than a History Girls one and I will try and return to more historical matters next month. I felt I wanted to write about this beautiful Cornish town, whose history was all around us as we strolled through its street, and whose phantoms walked beside us in the bright sunlight. For Jill, these spirits were the  personal and beloved  ghosts of her late husband and her grandmother. For me, it was the artists, the fishermen, the lifeboat crews and the townspeople.  And always,  out there at Godrevy, the lighthouse.  That Lighthouse. 




(detail from a birthday card sent to me by my friend Lynne Hatwell. The painting  of Godrevy lighthouse is by Diana Leadbetter.)

'"Certaine Wytches" - A Tapestry of Magic' by Karen Maitland

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'Certaine Wytches.' Tapestry by Anne Jackson
I have just enjoyed a morning at a fascinating and unusual exhibition of knotted tapestries by the talented, American-born artist, Anne Jackson, on the theme of The History of Witch Persecution in Europe. The more I thought about it, the more I realised what an appropriate medium tapestry is for exploring the subject of witchcraft and not least because in earlier centuries, witches were thought to riding their distaffs to the Sabbats rather than brooms, and, of course, the whole concept of 'weaving' spells.

The technique of knotting tapestries is, as the artist points out, ‘hugely time consuming’, but in itself symbolises the witches who used ‘knot magic’ for charms and to raise storms, for which they were condemned to die by means of the knotted hangman’s noose, as is starkly illustrated in the first tapestry – Certaine Wytches.

Certaine Wytches, Chelmsford, Essex’ is a memorial to three witches from the same family who were tried at Chelmsford in 1566, Joan Waterhouse, her mother, Agnes and her grandmother, Eve. Agnes was hanged and the title of the tapestry comes from a trial pamphlet of the time.

'Grace Thomas and Temperance Lloyd: 
Why dost thou weep for me?''
Tapestry by Anne Jackson
Grace Thomas and Temperance Lloyd: Why dost thou weep for me?’ This tapestry tells the story of Temperance Lloyd who was convicted of being the leader of three Bideford witches. Grace testified against Temperance, claiming that when they met in the street, Temperance fell to her knees weeping. When Grace asked her why, she replied with the words that are woven into the tapestry. Grace swore that from that moment onwards, Temperance tormented her, entering Grace’s bedroom with the aid of the Devil; sticking pins in her; pinching her and putting a poppet in her bed. Grace said the Devil, in the form of a magpie, repeatedly terrified her by beating against her window and she also accused Temperance of turning herself into cat. Tragically, Temperance was convicted on this ‘evidence’ and hanged for witchcraft in Exeter in 1682.

'The Devon Witches: Half Hidden Signs'
Tapestry by Anne Jackson
'The Devon Witches: Half Hidden Signs' - This tapestry was inspired the book ‘The Witch in History’ by Diane Purkiss, in which she writes -
'their acts of magic are silent and unseeable, detectable only by half hidden signs.'
The artist has included images in the tapestry still used in pagan ritual today, including some runes which were given to her by a practising witch in her village,

In 'Once upon a Time.' Anne Jackson explores the way children are introduced to the concept of the ugly and wicked witch through bedtime fairy tales, whose caricature images feed into Halloween costumes and decorations. We are all familiar with the Disney cartoon of 'Snow White' being given the poisoned apple by the wicked witch, her stepmother, but tragically, this accusation is not a fairy tale. In 1664, Elizabeth Style at her trial in the cider town of Taunton was accused of poisoning a child by giving her a ‘very fair red apple’. Anne Jackson points out that cutting an apple in half is used in love charms. It has been also been used for centuries by many ordinary girls at Halloween to divine when they will be wed. Thinking of bedtime stories, reminded me that the wicked witch or bad fairy in 'Sleeping Beauty' lures the princess to pick her finger as she spins flax into thread, another link between witchcraft, spinning and weaving that has burrowed deep into our collective psyche.

'Once Upon a Time' and 'Never mention Money'
Tapestries by Anne Jackson
The tapestry next to it, Never Mention Money, depicts some of the superstitions once practised by Grimsby trawler men, to ward off witchcraft, such as smashing empty egg shells after you’ve eaten your boiled egg, so that witches can't use the them to sail out to sea and sink ships.

The tapestry exhibition is supported by a number of fascinating witchcraft artefacts on loan from The Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, including a pair of glass knitting needles used to create curses and charms. The piece of knitting made in the course of the casting the spell would later be burned, so that the spell was fixed and could not be unravelled.

Tapestry by Anne Jackson
There are many other fascinating tapestries in this exhibition bearing testament to the estimated 50,000 to 1,000,000 women, men and even small children who were executed for witchcraft throughout Europe and Russia between 1450 and 1750. So, if it is coming to a centre near you, it is really worth a visit.

‘Certaine Wytches’ is currently on until 6th May 2019, at Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AF (Funding by Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Arts Council of England and Heritage Lottery Fund.)

Leather Bikini Bottoms!

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replica Roman leather bikini bottoms
by Caroline Lawrence 


(This blog post is about how a pair of 2000-year-old Roman leather bikini bottoms in the Museum of London inspired a scene in my new kids’ book, The Time Travel Diaries.)



A few days ago a new case appeared in the Roman Gallery at the Museum of London, near the marble head of Mithras. The display contains objects from the grave of a 14-year-old girl from South London. The girl lived around 1800 years ago in what was then known as Londinium. DNA and stable isotopes tell us she had blue eyes but grew up in the southern Med, possibly North Africa, before making the long sea-voyage to Britannia. Three of the five objects buried with her feature heavily in my new Time Travel Diaries book and I am extremely grateful to curator Jackie Keily for putting them on display. I hope the artefacts will send kids to my book and vice versa. 

Grave goods belonging to the Lant Street Teenager

Artefacts are wonderful for creating the possible backstory of a character and these generated ideas almost immediately. 

But sometimes artefacts inspire me in less obvious ways, and Im certain this holds true of other authors. This happens when you write with Both Sides of the Brain.

Memory masters know that it is often the juxtaposition of strange objects and images that help dry facts or numbers stick in the head.


That’s why they turn numbers into pictures and then link them to memorable images as with the Number-Rhyme System or the Number-Shape System.


Number-Shape Memory System
For example, I recently used the Number-Shape system to teach kids the first ten emperors of Rome in order. In less than ten minutes.


You take a left-brain list of the first ten emperors, then make it right-brain-friendly by adding colour, image, movement, humour, rudeness and the five senses.


Example? Number one looks a bit like an arrow. I get kids to visualise an arrow. Occasionally they can’t do it until I help them by being more specific.


‘Imagine a standing-up arrow with a wooden shaft, a sharp steel arrowhead and red feathers’ I might say. ‘Now imagine touching the smooth wooden shaft, the sharp tip (ouch!) and the soft feathers. Now stroke the feathers the wrong way. Now make the feathers a different colour. Or multi-coloured. You choose! Now make the arrow lean towards you and rotate it in 3-D.’


Memory masters teach themselves do this. A few of them can’t help it. The famous Jewish mnemonist ‘S’ (made famous in A.R. LuriaThe Mind of a Mnemonist) not only saw numbers as specific shapes but also associated them with colours and taste,

Once you’ve trained yourself to imagine the arrow in detail with all the senses you can apply the technique. Imagine someone firing your steel-tipped, red-feathered arrow into a calendar on a wall opened to the month of August. (Make the image on the calendar evoke August for you.)


By linking an arrow (number one) with the month of August you will remember that Augustus was the first emperor.


Two is shaped like a swan. Make yours a giant one, swimming on the River Tiber. (Can’t visualise Rome’s river? Put a giant colosseum behind it. Or make it tiger-striped. Or both!) That will help you remember that Tiberius was the second emperor of Rome.


A number 3 on its side looks like a baby’s bottom. Imagine patting talcum powder on a smooth baby’s bottom and then noticing he’s wearing baby-sized Roman boots. The word for ‘Baby Boots’ in Latin is Caligula! 


And so forth. By making boring facts visual and linking them with bizarre, funny, colourful objects you help cement them in your memory bank of stored images.


(I’ll bet you don’t have another giant swan swimming on a tiger-striped river with the Colosseum looming in your memory banks!)


real Roman leather bikini bottoms
In the same way, juxtaposition of unusual artefacts often inspire scenes in my books. For example, there are a pair of Roman leather bikini bottoms now on display in the Museum of London. These are one of two pairs (!) found in a Roman well. Experts think the bikinis might have belonged to girl acrobats. Near the case displaying the leather bikini bottoms is a delightful model of the port of Roman London, one of my favourite items in the museum.


Great screenwriters like Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and Paul King (the Paddington writer/director) know the power of miniatures. I love to stand there and look down at this model of Londinum’s port. The longer you gaze, the more you see.


acrobats in Nîmes 
Remembering some re-enactor acrobats I’d seen at a weekend of Gladiator Games in Nîmes, I suddenly had the image of girl acrobats walking along the side of London Bridge, like gymnasts on a balance beam. That gave me the idea that maybe my young hero Alex has to get to the north bank fast but there is a traffic jam on the bridge. Sarah Dhanjal once mentioned that it took an hour to cross London Bridge in Medieval times.


model of London's Roman Port
Suddenly the impatient people waiting to cross begin to laugh and buzz like bees (a popular method of applause in Roman times). Alex and his two friends see the reason: four leather-bikini-clad girl acrobats doing cartwheels on the guard rail, in order to get to the gladiator games in London’s amphitheatre. 

illustration by Sara Mulvanny
The sight of them making their way across the guard rail of London Bridge gives Alex and his friends an idea. They can copy the girls and walk along the guard rail, too. 

This is a happy solution because it also involves ‘Crossing the Threshold’ another one of my favourite mythic plot beats, where the hero leaves one world and enters another. As Romans knew, thresholds can be magical places.


As I visualised the scene, using all my senses, a plot beat occurred that I had not consciously considered. Alex falls, but not in the way you think… Or maybe you can guess!


That’s the magic of using both sides of your brain when you write by linking ancient artefacts and the sensory imagination.


I’ll be sharing more writing tips tomorrow (Wednesday 10 April) at London’s Mithraeum, another place that has inspired me hugely. 

Everyone who comes will get a reward: a free signed copy of my book thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropy. This family-friendly event includes the immersive experience in the Temple of Mithras seven metres below London street level. It is all free, but you must book a slot HERE


Don’t worry. I’ll be there from beginning to end!



If you cant make it to LondonMithraeum tomorrow for your free copy, you can buy The Time Travel Diaries on almost any format... but only if you live in the UK. 




Commissioning a reliquary of Rose la Touche - Michelle Lovric

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This post is a meditation on the confluence of belief, grief and love. It’s also about how research takes you into places of the heart as well as crevices of the brain.

There are some stabs of wretchedness that all bereavements have in common. The brute sense of loss comes to anyone who loses a parent, a friend or partner, a child, a sibling or trust in someone they thought they knew.

But what do you do with mess of feelings that darken your life when a pet dies? Mixed up in all the mess is shame. Pet-death is first-world problem. The drama in your home and heart is dwarfed by the crises in Syria, Yemen and all the humanitarian scars on the world map today.

And yet, grief there is, and it must be dealt with.

Anyone who has recently lost a cat may need to look away now.

Rose La Touche of Harristown was named after the girl who inspired John Ruskin with devotion. (I urge everyone to read this definitive article by James Spates about the relationship between Ruskin and Rose. It demolishes the prurient myths that have served too long instead of truth).

The human Rose La Touche died tragically young of a brain fever. The feline Rose was a recycled rescue cat, so I could not be sure of her age. She was an inveterate tea-rustler. She liked it with milk and sugar, as I do. She hated pretty much everyone except me, and made her disdain quite clear, which was somehow gratifying. Anyone who telephoned me would be informed by Rose – nosing into the telephone mouthpiece – that any more than a few minutes of my time was an outrageous theft from her. During dinner parties she would sit up in the beams, sneering down at guests and sometimes flicking dust on to their plates.

Rose struggled through her last year. She fell from one of the beams, tearing her side on an old nail, breaking both a leg and her spirit. She was never the same cat. She grew profoundly deaf. She became a night-howler and began to walk not like the Pink Panther but like a prematurely old lady. She had fits.

In the end, she suffered a stroke and went blind. I made the classic error of cruelty through imagined kindness, keeping her alive far too long, anointing her with noxious ointments I had couriered in from America. (Yes, there is quackery for cats too, expensively and emolliently marketed.)

Finally, I let Rose go. Even though I watched her die, I found could not quite accept that she was fully gone. Painfully, I imagined her, like this image, dancing in the dark. Rose and I listened to a lot of Springsteen together, so this image has a sound track.

At the time Rose died, I was thinking a great deal about saints and relics, drafting out ideas for a children's historical novel that eventually became The Wishing Bones. It started as YA but I was asked to change it down to Middle Grade. So I faced the challenge of trying to explain the potency of saints' relics in a way that would make sense to a readership of relative young children of all faiths and none.

In the end, I decided to put my explanation in voice of an orphan named Eulalia, known as ‘Sorrowful Lily’. She lives in a convent on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon, the site of a factory churning out fake saint bones. As guests start disappearing from a hotel in Venice, Lily becomes aware that the fakery is not a victimless crime. The date is 1739. At twelve years old, Lily is in some ways naïve, in other ways very knowing. This is how she relates Venice’s obsession with saints and their relics:

 ‘Relics are bits of saints: fingers, knee-bones, skulls, noses, ribs, toes and teeth. Relics can also be things that saints once touched or wore, such as shrouds, nails or sandals.

   The Venetians were mad for a bit of saint. ‘Mad’ is the only word I can use for it, because the Venetians loved those old bones and rags so much. But, like any fairy-story, the mad love of saints has a certain strange sense to it.

   Now I was brought up with these things and so do not think them so odd. But I do declare and admit that if a stranger were to arrive in Venice from a distant planet they would quite probably find our love of bones very hard to understand. So let me try to tell you how it started.

   In the very very old days, when the Christian religion was as new as a fresh laid egg, it was quite a risky thing to be a good Christian. It was against the law. To be an especially good Christian – doing good works like healing the sick – might bring you to the attention of the authorities and then you could find yourself in deadly trouble. You could even find yourself dead – executed by the leaders who worshipped the old gods.

   People who lived or died this way often became saints, the specially honoured servants of God.

   The holiest saints were the ones who were made to suffer horribly for their faith. These ‘martyrs’ were thought to be a bit like Jesus Christ, because he also died for his religion, nailed to a cross in Golgotha in the Holy Land. ‘Martyrdom’ was what also happened when the Romans tried to make the saints give up their religion and worship the old gods. If the saints refused, then the Romans would boil them in a bath like Saint Cecilia, or roast them on a gridiron, and tear their body with tongs and set fire to their hair, like Saint Eulalia, my own patron saint.

   The braveness of these saints won them the special love of God. This meant it was good for ordinary people to pray to them for help in difficult situations. And the prayer was even more powerful if you had a piece of the saint’s body to pray to.

   The saints might have died on earth; they might have been cut into pieces by those who hated and feared them, but their souls were still alive in heaven and could do you a rare amount of good. You could catch holiness yourself, like a cold, from these fragmented parts of a saint’s body. If you owned one of those pieces or prayed in front of it, you could also get special blessings and promises of great things to come.

   Every time a saint died, other Christians would try to touch a bit of his or her skin and even bones, just to get a smudge of holiness on their fingertips or even to graze it with their own eyes. 


   Years and centuries after they died, these saints were still so holy that even one small morsel of their body, even a rusty drop of their dried blood, or a splintery bone from their nose, or one of their toes, was thought to be powerfully holy. So were the sponges and clothes dipped in their blood or their sweat as they suffered their tortures.

   Even after they’d been buried, if these saints were dug up, their bodies would be fresh and whole, and smell of flowers. Those bodies divided into as many pieces as possible so that lots of people could have the benefits.

   Some saints’ bodies were cut up into so many pieces that it seemed they had as many limbs as a centipede. If you believe it all, Saint Gregory must have had four heads and Saint Mary Magdalene had six complete bodies …

   It may seem a gruesome and unkind thing to cut up these much beloved heroes and heroines, but usually the Romans had already broken their bodies, so they were not whole any more.

    And each piece was as important and as holy as the next. Every tooth and every finger was full of special powers to do rare good. And so these little pieces of saints were prized, and sold, and traded; wars were fought over them.

  Rome has the whole bodies of some of the most important saints, like Peter and Paul. But Venice has her share. Of course we have the body of Saint Mark, our patron saint. The blind warrior doge Enrico Dandolo had also sent to Venice the whole body Saint Lucy, an ampoule with the blood of Jesus Christ, a piece of Saint John the Baptist’s skull, the arm of Saint George, and three nails from the cross on which Jesus Christ had been crucified …'

 
What has this to do with Rose la Touche?

Three years and three more books had passed and two new cats arrived, but I found myself still frightened of revisiting the pain of Rose’s death. Trauma’s like that: you get used to the knife embedded in your feelings and you know it will hurt more to pull it out.

Even in memory, Rose was no saint. But I decided that I would see what it felt like to create something tangible in her memory, intending, of course, no offence to any religion. This was not entirely my own idea. I had always admired the work of my dear friend, the mosaic artist Susie Nickerson Palmarin, and I asked her to help me.

Much of Susie’s work plays on three themes interwoven by the media of found objects, mosaics, ink and mortar. Venice is evoked in the theme of relics and reliquaries: small precious objects caught in glass. Literature is evoked by words in mosaic form: letters as tesserae, words as painting, and painting as words. The rhythms of the spoken word are preserved, expressing the artist’s conviction that writing is in itself art. Finally, the artist brings into play the nature of her own medium, the mosaic itself: an interplay of colour and texture, light and concealment, and softness and permanence.


Susie had made a mosaic reliquary for her own beloved cat Arturo after his death. In this beautiful piece, she created a frame of tiny tesserae that simulated Arturo’s tabby fur. In the centre, she set a tiny white funerary bouquet of his whiskers, which she had saved over the years.



I too had a collection of whiskers, some translucent half-moon nails and the fur the vet shaved from Rose before administering her final injection. Susie offered to make a memorial piece that literally incorporated Rose. It would be different to Arturo’s memorial as Rose herself was of course very different. Arturo and Rose were both tabbies – but one was born in Venice and one (I guess) in South London.

Susie immediately asked me for some words to put into her artwork and to guide her. But I was still tongue-tied with grief. The words had fled. Like all novelists, I write about loss persistently, as the changing rhythms of gain and loss shape every story. But faced with the actual aching absence of Rose la Touche, words seemed trivial. As for writing something ‘artistic’ or ‘poetic’ – that was not appropriate to the continuing brute reality of Rose’s absence. What I was feeling could not be accessorized, elaborated or made picturesque. Yet it was quietly and sometimes loudly omnipresent, like certain kinds of physical pain.

Last year French artist Sophie Calle produced a kind of reliquary for her cat Souris. Calle, famous for her multi-disciplinary collaborations, did it her characteristic way. When Souris was close to death, Calle called on a friend to whisper the words of a song into her dying cat’s ears. Later, she requested a full song as a tribute to Souris. Then Calle asked her friend Laurie Anderson to write something. Offers flooded in from other friends and people who heard about the project. They happen to include Bono, Pharrell, Jarvis Cocker and Jean-Michel Jarre. An album evolved, Souris Calle. Some of the 39 contributing artists knew Souris in life. Others were briefed about her with photographs and a video that Calle prepared about her life with Souris. Here’s a sample. The songs and associated artwork turned into an exhibition in Paris.

As Sophie Calle commented, ‘I am not the only person who has ever lost a cat.’

And nor am I. But like Calle, I felt the need to respond to the loss: to create something lasting from my memories of a cat who lived too short a life.

So how did Rose’s reliquary turn out?

Having given Susie the raw ingredients of fur, whiskers, claws and love, I asked her to surprise me.

And she did. She chose a rose-coloured gesso background and on it she too imagined Rose – housebound in real life – running through a forest of trees in the light of a setting sun – that time when cats are most twitchingly themselves. She set Rose’s corporeal relics into a silver skeleton of a leaf.


The words I finally delivered were without sentiment, Susie reproduced them on the front and the back: Here lie the remains of Rose La Touche of Harristown, the beloved green-eyed tabby of Michelle. No-one knows where she was born but she lived from around 1997 till 2011. She will never be forgotten by anyone who met her and she is sadly missed, sadly missed, sadly missed.

And yes, she still is. But the reliquary helps.
 
Made with Susie’s love, including the immortal parts of Rose, it really does.


Michelle Lovric’s website

Photographs of Susie’s work by Giordano Russo and Aurelia S. Palmarin

The Wishing Bones is published on July 25th, 2019. The extract above is from an earlier draft.
I'm afraid I don't know the source of the image of the cat dancing in the dark, but happy to add credit if someone can identify it.

My father's war: "They alone did not surrender."

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“Little known but great in spirit are the men of Timor,” said Winston Churchill. “They alone did not surrender.”

My mother became a war widow in 1963 when Dad succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of 42. His death was related to his experiences during the war, as certified by Dad's former commanding officer, Major Spence, and army medical officer, Dr Dunkley. They helped my mother to navigate the red tape and receive the war-widow's pension, which meant free medical and dental care for our family and free education for myself and my brothers. But we grew up without a father. And sometimes it was tough because of that.

My father died when I was four years old. I have few memories of him, but one that stands out is when he gave me a silver bangle in the shape of a snake. It must have been just before he died. The bangle was obviously hand-crafted and was a little big for me, which is probably why I lost it when I was playing one day at primary school when I was seven. My mother was distraught, and we asked the school to search for it, but it was never found.

I had been told that that the bangle had been given to my father by a Timorese native when Dad was "trapped on Timor in the war". It was a family story, but it didn't mean much to me at age seven. It was later that I realised the extent of my loss: the bangle had been such a tangible connection between me and my father when he was young and fit and fighting for Australia in a war that would eventually kill him, many years later.

I grew up hearing stories about my father's war experiences from my mother, who was enormously proud of him. 

My father was one of the 2nd Independent Company (later the 2/2 Commando Squadron), which was itself part of a small, hastily assembled force that Australia had rushed to defend Timor late in 1941. Although trapped and massively outnumbered when the Japanese invaded in February 1942, the men of the 2nd Independent Company continued to fight a guerrilla war, even when wholly cut off from supplies and support from Australia. It is an amazing story, and it was only when I began to write that I realised how influential my mother's stories and my own sense of loss at his early death had been on my writing. All my novels - six, with two more on the way - have been set in the Second World War.

The story of the 2/2nd begins in 1941 when about 270 officers and men, including my father, were trained at a secret army base at Wilsons Promontory, Victoria. It was intended that they would be sent on secret missions into enemy-occupied territory in Europe. Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 changed all that.

Dad had had an interesting childhood, born in New South Wales on 1 September 1921, the third child (second son) in a family of eight children. His father was the sort of dreamer who embarked on get-rich quick schemes such as gold mines, hotels, gambling. My uncle tells me that one year they’d be in a fancy house with a governess, the next in a tent by the river bed. It taught the children to be tough and resilient and to depend on each other.

He joined the Army on 21 May 1941, when he was nineteen. He’d been working with his father and brothers on a gold mine out of Kalgoorlie, but was getting sick of the work. So he took off on his motorbike and headed to Perth, where he put up his age and enlisted.

In July 1941, when he was still in army training camp he was intrigued by a call for soldiers to join a secret group. He wrote in his diary:
It was voluntary to join and its secretness aroused my curiosity and I joined. We were not told anything other than we were to receive special training.
The selectors wanted men who were fit, tough and adaptable, who were used to living in hard terrain. Men with mining experience, like my father, were sought after, because they knew about explosives. The selectors didn’t mind a rebellious streak, but they preferred single men. My father fit all the criteria and was chosen.

The men were trained at the Guerrilla Warfare Camp in Victoria by a special mission of British officers who came from the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE). They included the legendary adventurer and mountaineer, Freddie Spencer Chapman (whose son, Nick, is now - coincidentally - a friend of mine). His photograph is below.
Freddy Spencer Chapman
Exercises were undertaken in full battle dress with full packs, using live ammunition and simulating war conditions. Soldiers were taught to blow up buildings, bridges and communications facilities and army vehicles as well as use field radios and coordinate activities with air drops of food and ammunition. Camouflage, ambush, commando techniques and infiltration techniques were taught.

The training was in very isolated rugged conditions, often on deliberately low rations. Those who were not tough enough were gradually weeded out.

After a long hard exercise when they struck the road about five or six miles from the camp, trucks would be waiting there. The men would be told, ‘If any fellow is a bit knocked up, hop on the truck, and we’ll take you back to camp.’ Any of those who hopped on the truck just stopped long enough at camp to pick up their pack, and were sent back for reposting.

The Prom was "ideally suited for training troops who might fight anywhere from the Libyan deserts to the jungles of New Guinea, the only drawback being that in winter … the climate was often more polar than tropical," as Spencer Chapman wrote later. Dad had come from the hot Western Australian desert; in his diary he wrote:
We were well clothed, but it was bitterly cold at that time of the year and try as one would you could not get warm.
Dad later told my mother about the forced marches, wading through swift rivers with full packs held above their heads, mountain climbing and training in unarmed combat, sharp-shooting and living off the land. All these skills later allowed him and his mates to survive against the odds.

When they marched out of “The Prom”, wearing their distinctive double-red diamond patch, they were known as the 2nd Independent Company. Later in the war they became the 2/2 Commando Squadron, but they were more often known as “the 2/2nd” or the "double-reds".

After training the company was transported north to Katherine, Northern Territory, where they were stationed until Japan entered the war following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya.

The following day, 7 December 1941, at camp in Katherine, they were got up at 0300 hours.
There was a mad rush for the parade ground. We were fallen in and given over to the major Albright. He said “You have been growling about inactivity! Right you will get action and get it now. Be ready to march of at 0800 hours”. As the major finished there was much cheering. The boys had got what they wanted, so we started off for parts unknown once again, at 0800 hours.
Timor lies only around 400 nautical miles from the Australian coast and was of great strategic importance to Australia. Amid fears of a Japanese advance towards mainland Australia, the 2/2nd was sent to Timor, as part of "Sparrow Force". My father's company were ordered to protect Dili airfield in east Timor (now Timor-Leste).

The 2/2nd commandos spent their time traversing the country with map and compass, recording every detail and reporting to HQ, working around the clock, sleeping out and getting local knowledge. But they had been so badly equipped that, after a short time, nine out of 10 came down with malaria.

By 23 December, Dad was becoming ill with the disease that would plague him until his death in 1963. 
On Christmas Day he still had aches and pains in every joint: "It certainly knocks you." On 30 December he wrote:
I have again had a touch of Malaria. One’s head seems that it will fall off any moment. By Lord, it hurts.
By the New Year almost the whole unit was struck down. As Dad wrote on 3 January 1942:
At present most of C Platoon is down with Malaria, but what could one expect from camping in a swamp.
There were some moments of pleasure however, such as bargaining in the Dilli markets and one night, on 3 February, he saw "a most beautiful sight":
The sight was probably something like this.
There were 3 trees and they were almost alive with fireflies and the light which was given off was green in colour. It looked first like a gigantic jewel, with a light played upon it. It was most beautiful. I am feeling ok again. Malaria has left me.
When the 2/2nd heard of the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, they grimly prepared for Japanese invasion. Stores of ammunition and other equipment were buried at secret dumps in the hills. The men walked barefoot to toughen their feet against the day their boots gave out.

They didn't wait long. The Japanese began their attack with the bombing of Darwin on the morning of 19 February 1942, killing an estimated 250 people. That evening, about 6,000 Japanese troops landed on east and west Timor.
Japanese paratroopers landing in Timor

On 20 February, Dad wrote:
This morning looking out to sea, we behold 4 ships. So far their identity is unknown.
Later there is the bald statement:
They were Japanese ships. 2 Destroyers and 2 transports.
At 1400 hours he wrote:
The Japs have taken Dilli. There are 5,000 Japs in Dilli, as the report states. Our section was the first to investigate this. This morning ... 14 men of 7 section and two others, went into Dilli in the utility truck. The worst is feared for these men, also Pinocchio, the motor bike mechanic [who] passed us bound for Dilli. He is gone I think. We are back in the mountains. We have learnt that Koepang is also occupied by the Japanese. The 2/40th is in the hills somewhere. We may meet up with them some time, I’m hoping. ... A Platoon is, or was, down on the aerodrome. I wonder what has become of them? There are some Japs in the hills looking for us. They will have a job getting us.
That last sentence was quite the understatement.

The Australians in A Platoon who were guarding the airfield engaged in heroic action to hold off the Japanese advance. Pte Poynton won the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Dutch Bronze Cross. In 1943 his actions were portrayed in a comic strip:


Later, Dad described what he was told about the battle for the aerodrome:
There were 20 Australians on the drome, when the Japs landed They blew the drome with success, and so far there has been 11 men returned. The stories they tell are “we never knew anything till the ship search light lit up the drome bright as day and then they started shelling us. Then we started fighting the Japs. They came down the road through the bush in droves. They say that they would estimate the Jap losses at 200 or over. It was a great piece of work. 20 men against 2,000 Japs, fighting, they held them off for over an hour and then had to run for it. Out of the 11 men there wasn’t one wounded. Very good.
He was right to fear for the men on the utility truck, and Pinocchio was never seen again. Dad wrote some days later:
The 16 men who went into Dilli by truck were tied up and machine gunned. 2 escaped. One is nearly dead and the other wounded but OK.
The one who was 'nearly dead' was Private Keith Hayes, who had just turned 21. He survived the massacre because the Japanese assumed he was dead; he had suffered a bullet wound to one side of his neck and a bayonet wound to the other. Badly wounded, he was found by two Timorese native boys. At great risk to themselves, they carried him to their village where their mother, Berta Martins, cleaned his wounds and dressed them with paste of local herbs wrapped in banana leaves. Not one of his wounds became infected. Later, again at great risk to the villagers, he was reunited with his comrades. When the 2/2nd's doctor saw the way Berta had treated Haye's wounds, he said he could not have done a better job.


One other soldier, Peter Alexander, was taken to Dilli as a prisoner for interrogation. He survived both Changi Prison and the Burma Railway .

The massacre of the men on the utility truck was one reason why the 2/2nd never considered surrender. (At subsequent war crime trials two Japanese were sentenced to death for their part in the massacre. Two received life imprisonment and another was given fifteen years imprisonment.)
In Dutch West Timor, the 2/40th Battalion had fought bravely, but was running low on ammunition, exhausted, and carrying many men with serious wounds. 

Their commanding officer accepted a Japanese invitation to surrender at Usua. The Battalion had suffered 84 killed and 132 wounded in the fighting; more than twice that number would die as prisoners during the next two-and-a-half years.

My father Jefferson (Rocky) Williams is on guard at the far left.
The 2/2nd met up with some of the 2/40th who had not surrendered, which meant that around 300 Australians on Portuguese Timor faced a force of 6,000 Japanese. Morale was high and because of the policy of carefully distributing ammunition to hiding places, they had a large reserve of ammunition. 

But in order to survive they had to hold territory, and that meant aggressively patrolling and attacking, whatever the odds. Two or three raids against the Japanese were launched every week, often small in themselves but with a huge cumulative effect.

On 13 March David Ross, the British Consul General came to the commandos with a Japanese surrender demand. It said that if the remainder of Sparrow Force did not surrender they would be treated as brigands and executed. Their commanding officer, Major Spence responded: "Surrender? Surrender be f****d!" Ross was told to tell the Japanese:
We were still a unit. We were Australians. Australia was still fighting and so would we.
Their guerrilla campaign was amazingly successful in tying up Japanese men and resources. The Japanese sent seven battalions, together with tanks, artillery and search units, to deal with 300 (later 700 when reinforcements came in) Australian commandos. There were around 10,000 Japanese troops on Timor in 1942 and by the end of the war Japanese officers put their numbers on Timor at 20,000. These were men and resources that would otherwise have been available for the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, or to fight the Americans at Guadalcanal, America's first victory in the Pacific.

Australian commandos in Timor 1942

For almost three months Australia believed that the 2/2nd had been captured along with the 2/40th Battalion. The unit was officially listed as missing by the Australian Army when no word came from the Company.
On patrol. My father is the last on the left, bringing up the rear.

The problem was that the 2/2nd had no working wireless with which to contact Australia. But these men were ingenious. They cobbled together a wireless transmitter nicknamed Winnie the War Winner on the back of a four-gallon kerosene tin, using parts from several failed radio sets. Some parts were obtained via night raids into occupied enemy territory.
Winnie the War Winner
Using Winnie to radio Australia

On 19 April 1942 they managed to radio Darwin. The first communication between Sparrow Force and Northern Force Headquarters in Darwin was:
  • Sparrow Force: "Sparrow Force Timor calling Northern Force Headquarters Darwin. Anyone there, over?"
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "Who are you?"
  • Sparrow Force: "Jack Sargeant."
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "Do you know George Parker?"
  • Sparrow Force: "Yes, he is with us."
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "What is his rank? Answer immediately."
  • Sparrow Force: "Captain."
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "Is he there? Bring him to the transmitter.
  • (Pause.) What is the street number of your house?"
  • Sparrow Force: "94."
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "What is your wife’s name, Jack?
  • Sparrow Force: "Kathleen."
  • Northern Force Headquarters: "This is Northern Force Headquarters.Sparrow Force, what is your situation?"
  • Sparrow Force: "Force intact. Still fighting. Badly need boots, quinine, money, and Tommy-gun ammunition."
    The news that the 2/2 was still waging guerrilla warfare against the Japanese was stunning for Australia. It arrived at the country’s darkest hour, after the capture of more than 22,000 men in Asia from Japanese victories in Malaya, the Philippines, Rabaul and the Dutch East Indies. The news that one band of men was still fighting proved to be tremendously valuable both in strategic terms and in terms of morale.







    Damian Parrer, the Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker, spent time with the 2/2nd in November 1942 and said:
    Damien Parer
    These men of Timor are unique in that they remained an organised fighting body all through the lightning Jap successes. … These lads are fighting an epic of guerrilla warfare.
    Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, wrote:
    PM John Curtin
    Our guerrilla forces in Timor have been doing bold and courageous work. Though the spotlight has been more on New Guinea because of the larger forces engaged, the people of Australia should not overlook the importance of Timor as a base for operations against the north-west of Australia.
    For this reason, MacArthur refused to allow the ill and war-weary men to be withdrawn, but ordered them to continue the campaign of ‘harassment and sabotage’ against the Japanese.

    The commandos became legendary in Australia, and even comic strip characters reinforced their toughness.




    But food was no laughing matter on Timor. The men had starved for months and in addition to battle-wounds, they suffered malaria, beri beri, dystentery and all the other tropical ailments.

    Things improved when supplies were air-dropped and later brought in by sea and Dad wrote in his diary for 11 May 1942:
    Today we were issued with the first lot of comforts which are very few, but very nice. I received 1 tooth brush, cake soap, handkerchief, 1 ounce tobacco, 1 pkt papers, and some shaving soap. As we were out of everything I also received a pair of boots. All these things were dropped by parachute.
    The first Navy men to make contact with them did not recognise the gaunt, haggard, bearded men dressed in rags as Australian soldiers and assumed them to be local mountain tribesmen. Most of the men grew beards because of the lack of shaving gear and also as a means of camouflage in the jungle.
    The Japanese on Timor were becoming desperate. From the end of April scattered and largely unorganised patrols of commandos began hitting the enemy every two or three days. Most attacks were carried out by only a few men. They’d hit hard and then pulled out before the enemy could bring superior forces and firepower to bear. It was effective and the Japanese morale was suffering. 

    In May they began striking the Japanese in the camps and outposts, taking advantage of poor security at the perimeters. C Platoon (Dad's platoon) was attacking them in the hills to the south-west of Dilli:
    The natives around Dilli say we are Lubic (Gods) and we come up out of the ground, kill Japs and then disappear back into the ground. It must seem like that, as in the last 6 raids, not one Jap has seen an Australian. The natives say that the Japs are pretty scared of the Australians.
    The skill and calibre of the men in the second-second was obvious, but it was the support of the Timorese that enabled this small force to be so successful, and lose only ten men in combat.

    Because the commandos lacked supplies and local knowledge they relied heavily on support from the ‘Criados’ - young East Timor men and boys who volunteered to help at great peril to themselves and their villages.




    Mostly aged between nine and 15, the Criados carried packs, shared food and shelter, educated the Australians about the landscape and acted as their eyes and ears, reporting on the Japanese movements and attacks. But the Timorese paid a heavy price for their loyalty. The Japanese carried out a series of reprisals against the civilian population of east Timor in order to reduce their support for the Australians, and things became worse after the Australians left. Between 40,000 and 60,000 Timorese perished during the Japanese occupation.

    On 5 June 1942 Dad wrote:
    We now have prices on our heads. A private is worth $50, 2IC $500 , Major Spence and the Colonel $5,000. $1.00 is worth 1/8, so we are pretty valuable. The Japanese are offering this to the Timor natives for each Australian they capture, dead or alive.
    During August, the Japanese launched a major offensive against the guerrillas and carried out a series of reprisals against the civilian population of east Timor in order to reduce their support for the Australians. By late-November 1942, it was clear that the Australians could not sustain their campaign because of the extreme ill-health amongst all the men, the ever-increasing number of Japanese reinforcements and reduced food supplies. At last the 2/2nd could come home,

    At the end of the war, the 2/2nd  Commando Squadron had been in contact with the enemy longer than any other unit in the Australian Army.

    The second-second became famous again when the renowned documentary film maker, Damian Parer filmed “Men of Timor”in November1942. In Parer’s filming notes he reported being told by my father, whose nickname was "Rocky":
    There’s no doubt we’ve got the pick of Australia in this bunch. It’s not just because I’m one of them myself.
    When I showed that to my mother, she replied dryly:
    That’s just the sort of thing your father would have said.
    Mum and Dad, engaged, in 1948

    On Time

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    by Antonia Senior

    Amid a cacophony of fiction, there are two non-fiction books on my bedside table. Both brilliant, both about Time with a capital T - and both radically altering the way I view reality, history and the nature of the present.

    The first looks at Time from a scientific perspective: Carlo Rovelli's extraordinary The Order of Time. Rovelli is that rare thing - a theoretical physicist who writes like an angel. I would love to understand deep maths, and magically gain the ability to understand a universe in which reality is entirely at odds with human experience. Without maths, we can only approach the subject through metaphor. Language is a loose and inadequate way of approaching the mysteries of a quantum universe, but it's all I've got. Rovelli is a brilliant guide and metaphorist.




    The second book is Christopher Clark's Time and Power. Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Year to the Third Reich. A disclaimer: about 100 years ago, Clark taught me for a term at university and was my favourite and most memorable supervisor by some margin. His last book The Sleepwalkers, a rare blockbuster history book, was a brilliant survey of the origins of World War 1.

    Clark's new book takes four epochs in German history and examines how attitudes to time and history shaped, and were shaped by, the exercise of power. Clark has introduced me to a new movement in historical studies which analyses temporality - a notion he describes as 'a feeling for the motion of time'. He asks these questions: how closely do the past and future breathe upon the necks of those in power? In the eyes of the powerful, how stable or fragile is the present? How do these perceptions frame, shape and legitimise the exercise of power? And how does power itself alter the perception of time?


    Christopher Clark: A bit of a genius. 


    Here is a quick and entirely inadequate introduction to two different books which share one pre-occupation: that time is actively perceived, rather than passively experienced.

    We think of time as linear. We experience it as a progression. Our beetling minds move from past to  present to future without pause. We can listen to the tick-tock passing of time, and understand it.

    The problem is that time does not really exist. The exact workings of Time remain a mystery - but we know that it does not march across the universe in the way that we experience it. The most simple rebuttal of that fallacious view is the measurable fact that time passes more slowly at the top of a mountain than at sea-level.

    Beyond what a  hugely accurate clock can measure, there is a universe as understood by physicists. According to Rovelli (he builds his argument slowly and carefully - I am jumping to the conclusion) - "In the elementary grammar of the universe there is neither space, nor time - only processes that transform physical quantities from one to another, from which it is possible to calculate probabilities and relations."

    At a fundamental level, in the universe, there is no difference between the past and the future. This leads to the obvious question - if time does not exist, why is the sense of its passing so fundamental to being human?

    I am still wrestling with Rovelli's answer, and am obviously entirely lacking the skills to judge its veracity. It sounds convincing and is based upon the fact that our interaction with the universe is partial. We drink a glass of water, and interact with the water itself, not the molecules. We see solid objects as solid, when in fact they are explicitly and permanently not solid on a quantum level.

    In other words, our view of the universe is blurred. We are squinting at one level of reality, wearing fogged spectacles. Rovelli then comes close to losing me when he argues that what we experience as the flowing of time is the actual blurring itself - our brains' interaction with entropy (the movement of things towards disorder) and quantum indeterminacy (the necessary lack of measurability of things - the world according to quantum physics is made up of events not things). But the important concept to grasp is that what matters to humans is perspective. "Temporality is profoundly linked to blurring. The blurring is due to the fact that we are ignorant of the microscopic details of the world. Time is ignorance."

    In Clark's lexicon, temporality is a slightly different animal - but equally locked in an endless tango with human perceptions. The book opens with the memorable line: "As gravity bends light, so power bends time."

    Clark's concern is with the point at which perceptions of the nature of time collide with the exercise of power. He explores the notion of "chronopolitics" -  the idea that decision making is influenced both by differing perceptions of time, and varying beliefs in how change occurs within that flow of time. The chicken meets egg dance between temporality and historicity. This matters, not least because as Clark says: "this was the place where the political rationalisations of power expressed themselves as claims about the past and expectations of the future."

    So, for example, Clark examines Nazi attitudes towards time and historicity. Italian fascists and the Soviets both saw history and time as a triumphant, linear march forward towards the apotheosis of civilisation, as represented by their respective ideologies.The Nazis, on the other hand, intuitively rejected this linear progression. Hitler idealised a remote past - centred around racial theories and the power of the volk.

    Clark argues that the Nazi had a notion of temporality centred on the Volk as a sort of racial essence that transcends history and time. This, by its nature, was non-progressive and non-linear. "Underlying the dictatorship's vision of its place in time was a radical rejection of 'history' and a flight into a deep continuity with a remote past and a remote future.'

    This was an important part of the Nazi storytelling - this appeal to imagined timescapes. In Rovelli's book, he talks with a philosopher's zeal about the idea that time is not a one way street. We do not just perceive time; on a fundamental level we create it in the action of perceiving it. "It is with respect to which physical system to which we belong, due to the peculiar way in which it interacts with the rest of the world, thanks to the fact that it allows traces and because we, as physical entities, consist of memory and anticipation, that the perspective of time opens up for us, like our small, lit clearing.

    It takes a physicist to reveal that we are in the small, lit clearing. It takes a historian to remind us that within the small, lit clearing there are shadows and flickers and falsehoods. It is part of the essence of history to remind us of the multitudes of perspectives. Sand falls through the timer; we watch it fall imprisoned in our own vivid melee of memories, beliefs and superstitions.

    In his conclusion, Clark projects his mode of temporal analysis onto the present. He argues that we are in a period of flux - between the optimistic futurity of modernity and something more strained, and pessimistic. He says that there is a 'sense that the present is in transit from the futurities of the modern to something more recursive, chastened by the collapse of past human projects and deferential to the voices of "elders".'

    He points out that liberal democracy is underpinned by a linear understanding of history that is no longer automatically assumed. We are in a period of "temporal uncertainty", he says. It's a convincing analysis of the pervading unease we feel. I had already noticed that my left-wing friends have become convinced that the end times are nigh and the present is hopeless, while my right-wing friends have lost their emphasis on the imagined, happy past and are more interested in emphasising the soon-to-be-lost glories of the present. Clark seems to posit temporal uncertainty as a cause, not an effect. I'm not sure about this - there are solid economic and demographic reasons for both our unease and our shifting temporal perspectives.

    But, if thinking about physics and history in the same ((but non-existent obvs!) space has taught me anything, it is that cause and effect can sometimes be the same thing. There are no things which have properties, just events which appear as things. As Rovelli says: "The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming."

    My big kitchen clock. Lying to me, the bastard. 

    Where does this exploration of time as a thing perceived leave me as a historical novelist, and a thinking human? I'm not sure yet. I'm still digesting it all. My head hurts. I'm sitting at the table writing this, listening to the tick-tock lies of the big kitchen clock, wondering - what next?




    Reading Aloud - an activity for grown-ups

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    Is there anyone else out there that reads whole books out loud to their adult partner? Is it really an activity for grown-ups?

    Well, my partner and I have taken to doing this, and it is a great way to share a story. The tricky part is finding something you will both enjoy and are both willing to invest the time in, as reading aloud to someone else is much slower than solo reading, and it can take more than a month to finish the book. But the rewards for a writer are that you develop a sense of hearing how the story flows, and of finding out what sort of language really triggers the imagination. You become more aware of the sound and texture of the language, and less concerned with writerly devices. You also become much more aware of how historical words or terminology, or unpronounceable names can trip you up.

    Reading it yourself is much more active than listening to a "talking book" as you have to make your own decisions on tone of voice, pauses, and dramatic interpretation. It improves fluency of reading, and the ability to listen and take in a story. It is also lovely to be read to by someone you know well, to be delighted by their characterisation and to delight them in return. It gives some shared memories and shared ideas about history, and something to discuss after each 'reading.' We have fond memories of scenes from the books we have read.

    Choosing books that we both fancy reading leads to interesting discussions (dare I say arguments) in bookshops, whilst we pick our next choice. We rarely read kindle books because there's something nice about handing a physical book over, at a cliffhanger, and saying, gleefully''Your turn.'

    We have had one disaster - we read one Booker winner which had rave reviews and it started out with us both loving the language. But unfortunately it seemed to be all writing and no substance, and very repetitive and dull when it was read aloud, and we had to force ourselves through gritted teeth to read to the end. Mind you, hating something is as much a bonding experience as loving it, when it's shared.

    Often we will turn to our shared book instead of TV, as it can be picked up and put down at any time that suits us, and packed in the luggage when we go away.


    Much more enjoyable than the Booker nominee (which will remain nameless) were Lindsay Clarke's two books about Troy, The War at Troy and Return from Troy which, despite their weight, were gripping, readable, and fun to read out loud. Once we had read the first, then we had to have the second, and it did not disappoint - a cast of gods, heroes and ordinary mortals against the seething background of the ancient world. Jealous gods throwing thunderbolts about led to hilarious use of our rather amateur acting skills, but good writing drags you in, no matter how ham our readings might be.

    What works best for us are historical novels where the history does not outweigh the plot, and books where we have a chance to employ the voices of multiple characters. (Though I must admit we always have varying pronunciations of all the names ...)  We are both a little hooked on the ancient world of Greece and Rome, and can recommend The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault. This was superb, and had us both in emotional knots by the end of the book. So much so that we were both really sad to see the last page. The prequel to that, The King must Die is also a great read for reading aloud. This year in a similar vein we have read Stephen Fry's two books Mythos and Heroes.

    Books with short sections or chapters work particularly well, so we don't wear out our voices, though of course tea or wine add to the experience.

    Over the past few years we have varied our diet by reading some light-hearted reads  such as The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson and one of our other reads this year was The Order of Time which coincidentally is discussed in the previous post by Antonia Senior.

    Other books we've enjoyed reading aloud, and that might appeal to history fans are books about language, such as The Story of English in 100 Words, and The History of the World in Six Glasses (which includes the history of tea, beer etc.) As well as these, we've read books on our common interests in martial arts, crafts, philosophy and poetry. We've been doing this since 2010 and our most prolific reading year was 2012 where we read 11 books together. (apart from our own other reading). In 2016 we only read three, but we will beat that paltry record this year as we've already read three and its only April. But apparently we are not the only ones doing this -  reading aloud for adults is having a resurgence, here's another article about the benefits from The Guardian.

    And here on Atlas Obscura, a great article about testing the 19th Century's favourite dating tactic - Reading Aloud. The  couples read Modern Painters by John Ruskin and the results of the experiment are worth reading. (even if not aloud!)

    So - if there is anyone out there who can recommend suitable reading aloud books, it would be great to have some more suggestions. Do comment with yours!

    Find me and my books on my website www.deborahswift.com
    Emile Munier - Reading Lesson
    Pictures from wikipedia

    A Samurai in Seville - by Lesley Downer

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    Hasekura in Rome. Portrait by Claude 
    Deruet (1588-1660), with his galleon, 
    the Date Marubehind.
    On October 28 1613 a samurai called Hasekura Tsunenaga set off on an epic voyage to an unexplored and little known part of the world - the land of the Southern Barbarians. He crossed the Pacific and travelled by way of Acapulco on a succession of magnificent galleons with gilded prows and billowing sails, and arrived in Spain on October 5th 1614. There he met King Phillip III, was baptised, and eight months later went on to Rome where he had an audience with Pope Paul V. All in all he was away for seven years.

    The conquistadors and Japan

    This was the era of the conquistadors, little more than a century after Columbus. The Spanish now ruled much of Central and South America, had colonised the Philippines and were eying up Japan.

    But the Portuguese got there first. In 1543 they were already selling matchlock rifles to the warring Japanese clan lords. Shortly afterwards, in 1549, Francis Xavier and his Jesuit missionaries arrived and started converting sections of southern Japan. The Japanese realised that the Jesuits were the thin end of the wedge and that invading armies might follow, but they felt able to hold their own.

    Portuguese with big hats enjoying very early female kabuki dancing
    in Japan around 1603
    In those days Spanish galleons plied the Pacific carrying Mexican silver to Manila where they loaded up with spices and goods from Asia to take back to Acapulco. In 1609 one of these galleons, the San Francisco, was wrecked on the coast of Japan near the booming city of Edo, present day Tokyo. The captain survived and went on to meet the retired shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and set up a trade treaty. The Englishman William Adams, model for James Clavell’s Shogun, had arrived 9 years earlier and become Ieyasu’s right hand man and the British East India Company had set up a factory (trading station) near Nagasaki.
    Hasekura with his samurai sword as
    depicted by Scipione Amati,
    a German artist, in 1615

    The One-Eyed Dragon of Oshu

    Japan had recently come to the end of half a century of warfare and was now unified under the rule of Ieyasu but up north the formidable warlord Daté Masamune - the ‘One-Eyed Dragon of Oshu’ - had different ideas. He was interested in the Southern Barbarians and their Christianity and could see a way of using them to increase his own influence and perhaps escape from under the thumb of Ieyasu. So he decided to send a mission to the west. With Ieyasu’s approval he commissioned a splendid galleon, called the Daté Maru in Japanese and the San Juan Bautista in Spanish.

    Hasekura’s adventure

    Hasekura Tsunenaga was a samurai with a somewhat chequered background, but Daté decided he was the man for the job. He headed a delegation of thirty samurai plus 120 Japanese merchants, sailors and servants together with 40 Spanish and Portuguese. His brief was to negotiate trade treaties. This was Japan’s first official venture to Europe and he was the ambassador.

    After three months at sea the galleon arrived at California then followed the coast to Acapulco where they stayed for two months. They were received with great splendour in Mexico City, then boarded another galleon, the San Jose, to cross the Atlantic and reached the port of Sanlùcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river Guadalquivir, in Spain, on October 5th 1614.
    Seville in the 16th century with the river full of galleons and the cathedral
    rising behind: Vista de Sevilla attrib. Alonso Sanchez Coello, d 1588
    And so they arrived in Seville, the jewel in Spain’s crown. "The Japanese ambassador Hasekura Rokuemon, sent by Joate [Daté] Masamune, king of Boju [Oshu], entered Seville on Wednesday 23rd October 1614," reports a contemporary Spanish text. "He was accompanied by 30 Japanese with blades, their captain of the guard, and 12 bowmen and halberdiers with painted lances and blades of ceremony."

    Seville, Seville

    The Alcazar gardens with cathedral behind
    Seville was the greatest and most glamorous city in Spain. It was the European port of departure for the Americas and had a monopoly on all Spanish trade with the new-found continent. Day and night galleons laden with American gold and silver and treasures from the Indies plied their way up the Guadalquivir, unloading their bullion at the Royal Docks. Seville was the hub of world trade, a cosmopolitan melting pot of money seekers, where merchants from across Europe flocked to acquire goods from the New World. Much of the bullion was spent on Seville’s glorious architecture and there was a huge flowering of the arts. Velazquez was starting his career, Cervantes was working on the second part of Don Quixote.

    Gentleman in padded breeches -
    Seville Cathedral
    Hasekura must have enjoyed this magnificent city of golden stone, so different from the wooden and bamboo cities he knew with their towering white-plastered castles. He no doubt visited the cathedral, completed a hundred years earlier, and marvelled at the ornate carving of the spire. Such a high-ranking envoy was probably invited to the Real Alcázar, Philip III’s residence in Seville, and must have admired the gold ceiling and intricate stone fretwork of the Salón de Embajadores and the lavish gardens, so different from the gardens of Japan. He also must have enjoyed the orange trees, which perhaps reminded him of the orange groves of Shikoku, and the streets crowded with fashionable ladies in ruffs and enormous bell-shaped skirts and gentlemen in doublets, padded breeches and hose.

    Homecoming

    Hasekura went on to Madrid where he met King Philip III on 30 January 1615 and delivered a letter from Daté Masamune proposing a trade treaty. He was baptised on Feb 17 1615 by the king’s personal chaplain.

    In all he and his colleagues spent eight months in Spain, being treated with all the honour due to visiting dignitaries.
    Hasekura meets the Pope in Rome, 17th century Japanese painting

    Then they sailed on. They were forced by the weather to make a three day stop in Saint Tropez, where they caused quite a sensation. From there they went on to Italy where Hasekura had an audience with Pope Paul V, just as Galileo was formulating his theory that the earth circled the sun, not the sun the earth.

    In April 1616 they were back in Spain and in June 1616 left Seville for New Spain (Mexico) on the first leg of their journey home. Six samurai stayed behind and in the little town of Coria del Río, just outside Seville, seven hundred of the 25,000 inhabitants now bear the surname Japón, marking them as descendants of the expedition.
    Seville orange tree

    But when Hasekura and his colleagues got back to Japan after seven years away, like Urashima Taro, the Japanese Rip van Winkle, they discovered everything had changed. The retired shogun Ieyasu had died and his son, the shogun, had decided to eradicate Christianity and persecute Christians. The treaties Hasekura had worked so hard to negotiate were useless.

    Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic tale of nineteenth century Japan and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.


    Old pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. New pics author's holiday snaps.
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