Quantcast
Channel: The History Girls
Viewing all 2764 articles
Browse latest View live

HARVEST by Jim Crace: to be discussed! by Sue Purkiss

February 15, 2014, 8:00 pm
$
0
0
Harvest, which I've just finished reading, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize last year. So it's well-regarded, a serious contender. The prose is beautiful - here are the first few lines:

'Two twists of smoke at a time of year too warm for cottage fires surprise us at first light, or they at least surprise those of us who've not been up to mischief in the dark. Our land is topped and tailed with flames.'

There's something about the rhythm and order of the words that tells us that this story is set in the past - or at least is not contemporary. 'First light' gives the same clue - it's easily recognisable, but not a common term for dawn: a little more formal than we are used to, perhaps a little biblical. The second sentence shows a delight in the sound of language, picking up on the alliteration which began the first. 'Our land' tells us that we are in a different, rural world, where there is a close relationship between tiller and tilled.

The content is significant too - for these two separate plumes of smoke set in train the disastrous sequence of events which leads to the destruction of the village at the centre of the narrative. At least, they're the triggers. The driver is really the process of enclosing land by the landowners and running sheep on it, which destroys the centuries-old way of life of the villagers.

One plume is from a fire lit by three newcomers. The second is from a fire which takes hold in the master's stable. The narrator, Walter Thirsk, is fairly certain that this second fire was accidentally started by two drunken villagers - but it's convenient to blame the newcomers. The two men are put in the stocks. The woman, daughter to one and wife to the other, becomes an object of fascination and lust to many of the men in the village, but she is enraged and her eventual revenge - her father dies in the stocks - is terrible. But there are others at fault too, chiefly the master's cousin, who actually has legal title to the land and cares only that it should make a profit. There are no heroes in this book. Walter is well-intentioned, but he dithers, and takes too long to do the right thing. The master cares for his people, but he's too weak to save them.

The author and his book.

It's a powerful book. It's not very comfortable, but I think it will stay in my mind for quite a while. I like that it's about ordinary, very fallible people, but I don't like that its message seems to be that, in the end, we're all weak, and so if we lose the world we have, it's probably our own fault. I like the way it's written - the prose - but I want the narrative to have more momentum, and I want to care more about the characters.

I suspect that Jim Crace would not call his novel historical fiction, and that interests me too. I can't quite put my finger on what makes it different from historical fiction - if, indeed, anything does. I'd like to hear what others think - has anyone read it?

Sue Purkiss
↧
Search
↧

AN ARCHER AT THE ARMOURIES by Penny Dolan

February 16, 2014, 10:00 pm
$
0
0


I’ve always hankered after a job in a Museum: one specific and rather showing-off sort of job. I’ve told stories in a couple of historical settings myself so I am fascinated by the people who step into role, interpreting history for all and every visitor.  This week, when the afternoon was wet and the audience few, I had a chance to meet an archer from Flodden Field. 

I wasn’t as far north as Flodden Moor, but I was definitely North. I was in Leeds at the Royal Armouries Museum, designed as an outpost of the Tower of London. 

If ever a museum called out for effective ways of explaining exhibits and putting them in context, it must be this imposing, fortress-like block on the banks of the Aire. The galleries are full of well-displayed and documented armour and weaponry, from the arrows and swords of medieval conflict through to dainty, discreet hand guns of the twentieth century.

For me, the museum has a problem. As visitors, we  comprehend things - like an embroidered baby’s cap, or a spit over an oven or even a weaving loom - because they relate to some aspect of our own lives. Buildings of all sorts cast their own spells. But how do we, for the most part, relate to weapons? 

Weapons sometimes appear inert, in dignified military parades, or else as split-second, on-screen action when no attention can be spared to check the truth of the thing. They are also evident in the damaged bodies in the news bulletins when the outcome is what matters. So how do you “explain” the contents of such a museum? How do you “explain” conflict?

Arriving mid-afternoon, I began at the Tournament section – did you know that people could choose the designs for their armour from pattern-books?– but then realised the only event left of the seven on offer that day was down as “Battle of Flodden.”
 
So it was I heard a Lancashire Archer’s tale. This famous battle took place in 1513, and was a fight between England and Scotland, when Scotland was an ally of France. Although the battle took place in Tudor times, it is known as the last medieval battle because it was the last pitched battle when men faced each other and fought wielding only hand-held weapons. Although the Scots had twenty cannons, there were no guns or pistols. There was no “English army” either, just men who left heir homes in the Northern counties to rally under their lord’s flag, and fight against the Scots.
 

Our Archer told us how he’d been lured away by the excitement of the fight, and how, despite there being no beer, no food, and fighting between the Lancashire and Yorkshire men on the journey, it became a different story as they began following the river up from Durham. From there, they came across villages ravaged by the Scots, and the tales of atrocities fired them up to fight once more. After his account of the battle and the power of the archers, and the joy of the victory, our archer also paused to tell of finding a dying lad, and helping the boy to a swift death rather than leave him as a victim for any wandering Scots. It was a fictional account that showed both the general and the particular, as Dorothy Heathcote, doyenne of educational drama, used to demand..  

When the tale was done, I talked to the “Archer.”, wanting to know more.

Where did he get this story from? The inspiration was the earliest recorded war memorial in England: a stained glass window in the church at Middleton, Lancashire. One panel shows the band of archers, arrows at their chests, and names inscribed above, who went to Flodden Field. Roles are often created through one person’s personal interest or area of knowledge and the study behind them is usually self-led. 




This kind of work is not for an actor with a set script; the role-player needs to adapt the story each time. Audience questions that can’t be answered lead to further study and searching and the Museum’s academic staff are there as support.

However, once the role has been created, it is changed by the audience. Sometimes, this is in the half-hour of delivery. The audiences at the Armoury vary in size. At weekends, there are large family crowds where loud declaiming (and maybe an ability to deal with heckling?) is welcome. Weekdays can bring local pupils studying a particular topic or groups like mine: a small audience of adults with a few wide-eyed pre-school children. 

In this afternoon’s version, the archer’s voice and gestures slid swiftly through the mention of raping and torture in the villages and the death of the boy. The two little ones would not have noticed, yet one did not miss the meaning. It was easy to see how for other groups, those moments could be amplified for a stronger effect.

The audience varies in this time afterwards, too. Sometimes all that people want to do is rush up, hold and pose with the weapons. At other times, the interpreter can face a single expert or a group of special interest enthusiasts who have travelled up from the South coast to get to the Museum.  All come with different needs, wanting different information or recognition.

Literature can lift a tale above the ordinary. At other times our “Archer” had created other characters:: a Spartan warrior at Thermopylae facing the Persians as described by Herodotus; an archer or a nobleman at Agincourt, hearing the St. Crispin’s day speech, or, inspired by Kipling’s poem, the story of a Roman soldier not wanting to leave what is now his home at Hadrian’s wall. As an author, I was glad to hear that the work was fed by a range of writing.

What other skills were needed for this work? Originally, the Museum had a large number of event staff, and was able to stage jousting, archery, falconry, historic combat displays and more in the purpose-built arena outside. This all went under cuts, but is slowly reviving. The Archer was brought up on a farm in the country,  riding horses from an early age, which made him able to take on any horseback roles. Later as an actor, he had trained in various forms of stage fighting. All the skills and knowledge made him adept in a variety of situations, small or large scale.

But what I most remember him saying was that he - this white man - was the only one of his family for six generations born in England. His people had lived in India and across the Far East, and in a way, he felt he was not far from being a foreigner himself. Despite the context of war and battle and conflict within the museum, he tried to stress this fact: all through history, England has become a home to foreigners. And how, after some performances, soldiers come up to him and the other staff and tell of their own experiences, knowing it is a place that understands and where they are not judged by the views of civilian society..

Finally, it was time to go. The visit was the kind that leads to another lengthier visit, maybe with some specific question or writing project that needs some precise details. There's something "live" every day:  Introduction to Armour; Whale of A Tale: Indian Treasures Tour; War Horse; Court of Henry VIII: Guns of the West and more right now. Talks and “interpretations” are not timetabled on the website – rather annoyingly – because they depend on staff being available for each particular topic. But, even so, if you are ever in Leeds, the Armouries may be worth a visit, especially if you can catch yourself an archer.

Many thanks to Andy – his real or stage name? – for his time and generosity in answering my questions, and to all the other staff, and apologies for any errors on my part. The work certainly sounded much harder than the role I’d imagined in my idle dreams.

Now, History Girls and Boys, are any of you re-enactors or interpreters? Can you add any more thoughts on how you prepare for your roles? Or how it helps your fiction?


Penny Dolan

↧

Women's Work - Celia Rees

February 17, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0



As all followers of the History Girls will know, we will soon be publishing an anthology of stories: Daughters of Time. It comes out in March, so excitement is mounting. My story, Return to Victoria, is about Emily Wilding Davison who died bringing down the King’s horse on Derby Day, 1913.

Emily Wilding Davison

Derby, 1913, Tattenham Corner
Did she mean to kill herself, or didn’t she? You will have to wait for the anthology to read my take on the controversy. Whether she meant to die, or to survive, Emily Davison paid the ultimate price.

Many of her sister Suffragettes suffered in pursuit of votes for women. They lost their personal freedom, were subject to imprisonment, force feeding, the iniquities of the infamous Cat and Mouse Act. Their suffering was not in vain but it took the action and sacrifice of millions of women to convince men that their sex should have to right to vote. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act (1918) was passed, enfranchising women over the age of 30. It would not be until 1928 that the franchise would be extended to all women over the age of 21.


Emily Wilding Davison was exceptional in her courage and conviction but it was the actions ordinary women that finally made her goal a reality. The women who took the place of the men who were fighting at the Front. The munitionettes, predominantly working class women who worked in the munitions factories, risking death from premature explosions and their health from the chemicals that turned their skin yellow. The land girls who donned breeches and worked on the farms. The VADS and Queen Alexandra nurses who went to drive ambulances and tend the wounded. The women who left their traditional jobs to go into heavy industry to work in foundries, like the women shown in Anna Airy's painting A Shell Forge at A National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London.

A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London - Anna Airy, Imperial War Museum 


Women can be seen working alongside men in this remarkable painting that glows with the heat of the foundry. It was so hot that the artist's shoes were burnt off her feet. Anna Airy was one of a handful of women artists, working without official Government support or sanction (unlike their male counterparts) who, nevertheless, recorded their own experience and the experience of other women, both at home and in France. 

Olive Mudie-Cooke had trained as an artist. She drove ambulances for the Red Cross and drew and painted what she saw, her experience of war, the experience of women like her: VADS, nurses, auxiliary helpers, ambulance drivers and stretcher bearers.

In an Ambulance A VAD lighting a cigarette for a patient, Olive Mudie-Cooke, IWM


Women artists did not just provide a record of what was happening, important as that now is to our understanding, they also record the fleeting emotions that are so so easily lost to us, as above in this shared moment of intimacy and compassion, or in Flora Lion's painting of girls in a works canteen in Bradford.

Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford, Flora Lion, IWM

This painting shows more than women in plain, practical work clothes, heavy boots on their feet, their hair tucked under blue caps, it shows their tiredness, patience, cameraderie, friendship and humour. It shares with the viewer what it was like to be working there.

These were women, artists and subjects, doing what had previously been considered as 'Men's Work'. Together they ensured that the work done by women would be recognised, the contribution women made to society rewarded, and that women would gain the vote. 

Emily Davison did not die in vain. 

Celia Rees

www,celiarees.com


↧

School Days, School Books

February 18, 2014, 4:25 pm
$
0
0


Theresa Breslin

Noticing a flurry of unusual early morning activity at my local primary school I realised that it’s about now that children are being registered to begin school in autumn of this year.
I do distinctly recall my father taking me aged four and a half to my first day of school. We went into a huge classroom where a red rocking horse stood in one corner, an abacus on a shelf, and a free-standing blackboard with easel. There were a dozen or so small chairs and tables. I remember feeling very pleased that someone had thought to make chairs the correct size for me to sit on. Our reception teacher was kindly, a plump motherly figure, who took crying children on her knee and read them stories. She kept a mechanical tin bank on her desk in the form of a man in a top hat. The money went to charity. If you had penny to spare you could put in the man’s outstretched hand, whereupon he would raise it up and the money would drop into his hat. I used to beg my mother for a penny so that I could play with the bank.    

On leaving the infant class life changed dramatically. Whether it was because class sizes became much larger or due to a different type of teaching ethos but higher up the school a much harsher regime was enforced. I was a meek biddable child - yes, truly, I was (then) - yet managed to incur the wrath of the dragon-teacher, and was punished for what I considered then and still consider now, a minor transgression. 


This involved being belted with a length of thick leather strap across the palm of my hand. I invite anyone in favour of corporal punishment to sample a taste of the school belt or tawse (coming from the word used to cure hide) This leather strap, cut into thongs at one end, was also known as a Lochgelly, that being the name of the town in the of Scotland where these vile instruments of torture were manufactured. Each one was stamped (and in case you question this I do hold the evidence) with the name of a Mr John Dick. It was a horrible and unnecessary violence wrought upon young children.


Looking at old school photographs reveals more than the chime of recognition of former classmates. It’s interesting to compare them to ones taken of pupils today. In mine the teacher’s hat and suit could almost be ultra-modern. Uniform is essentially the same, although, I notice that when I was at school, some girls were bold enough to eschew school shirt and tie for a ‘pretty frock’ on school photograph day. To me the most striking difference in school photographs from the past and present day ones is that now the children are actually smiling. Not only do they look happy to be at school they are obviously being allowed to show it.   

The great bonus for me was the access to books. We were members of the public library and we had books at home but my school books were a source of enormous pleasure. To this day I still enjoy reading through them.


Science books with intricate diagrams fascinated me. Yes, I have deliberately chosen the illustration re water management for this blog post – it may be that certain people should have paid more attention to books like this!

The Music books are unintentionally hilarious. I’d be interested to know if anyone else had to learn Good Morrow Gossip Joan. We were spoiled for choice with those songs in the completely non pc Oxford School Music Book.  Boney was a Warrior  and the quite startling Rosie’s Skirt:

Ro-sie has a new skirt, it’s ve-ry big and lum-py
But it fits our Ro-sie be-cause she’s ra-ther dum-py

When songs were being selected obviously no one thought ahead as to how a plump schoolgirl named Rosie might feel about hearing this sung loudly in chorus by twenty fellow pupils.   


The History books probably did as much to engender my love of stories as fiction books. Combined with liberal amount if Greek and Roman myths I soaked them up, not minding the lists of dates we were required to learn.  

The English dictionary … with exercises. I loved my dictionary. The drawings were intricate and it had pictures and quizzes and Fascinating Facts. I owe my championship status at Trivial Pursuit directly to this book.   

I’ve a passion for old children’s books but have only just realised that I might have actually stolensome of these school books. I’m hoping the dragon-teacher never finds out!

Images and Photographs Copyright:  © SCARPA
 http://www.facebook.com/Theresabreslinauthor    Twitter: @theresabreslin1  
http://www.theresabreslin.co.uk/ 

LATEST BOOKS
Spy for the Queen of Scots 
The Traveller (from dyslexia friendly publisher Barrington Stoke)
Divided City  Playscript now available.
↧

'Zulu - the Greatest Historical Novel that Never Was' by A L Berridge

February 19, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0


Last month saw an important historical anniversary. 22nd January 2014 was celebrated with features on the BBC and in every national newspaper, and marked in special blogs and posts on internet sites worldwide. 

So what was it?

Strictly speaking it was the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War – but that’s not what the fuss was about. What we were all celebrating was the fictionalized version of that battle, and the fiftieth anniversary of the release of a film called Zulu.


How can that be? Would we celebrate the anniversary of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan over that of ‘D’ Day itself? How can any reproduction – film, novel, documentary, anything – ever be more significant than the events it reproduces?

Well, obviously it can. Few would have even heard of the historical King Arthur without the literature of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and no-one would remember Lisa del Giocondo if da Vinci hadn’t painted the Mona Lisa. We can all dream of achieving such heights, but I think we’d all agree the benchmark is set pretty high.

A high benchmark
Yet Zulu has hit it. An ordinary commercial war film with no special effects, no sex, and virtually no blood, yet articleafter article discusses both its significance and its enduring grip on the British imagination. Zulu has done what we’d all like to do, and for that alone I think any historical writer would want to study it.

Zulu Exhibition at Cardiff Castle
Many of us already have. Indeed, in the world of military fiction and re-enactment, familiarity with the film is an essential password to prove one is serious in one’s love of the genre.  My own first re-enactment ‘gig’ was set in the Thirty Years War, but the ice was only broken with my new comrades when I was able to answer correctly the simple question ‘Which Victoria Cross winner at Rorke’s Drift was actually Swiss?’

All right, that sounds alarmingly ‘cultish’, but there are good sound reasons for the fascination. The 1960s were a golden age for historical films (Cleopatra 1963, Lawrence of Arabia 1962, Doctor Zhivago 1965) but Zulu was the first of the ‘British military’ genre, and its success immediately prompted a scramble for more. The Charge of the Light Brigade, Cromwell and Waterloo all followed within six years, but none hit the spot in the same way. What’s special about Zulu goes beyond its qualities as a film, and I don’t think its successors are to be found in the cinema at all. In fact I think they’re here, in the world of historical fiction. 

Perhaps even literally. The action-adventure school of historical fiction has been around for years, but the more realistic military genre only really starts with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and takes off with Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe. And the idea for Flashman only came to GMF in 1966, two years after the release of a film he later praised highly in his ‘Hollywood History of the World’ – Zulu. 



He’s far from alone. I’m not aware of any significant writer in my genre who isn’t a fan, and down at the insignificant end I know how much it’s influenced my own writing. Yes, it’s a film, it’s a Hollywood epic, but I’d say it’s also historical fiction of the finest kind, and gave birth to the genre so many of us read and write today.

That’s why the piece of advice I give most often to aspiring historical writers is to study Zulu. I don’t mean as a film, as it’s usually done – but from the point of view of a writer. I know I’ve learned a lot from it myself and think even some of its most obvious lessons are worth restating.

Take the battle itself, for instance. It’s from Zulu that I learned the most important part of writing battles is the tension of the build-up – something the film does so successfully that Peter Jackson claimed it inspired the Helm’s Deep sequences in his‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. It’s from Zulu that I learned to sustain long action sequences by dividing them into individual little ‘chapters’, each with their own defining moments. It’s from Zulu that I learned action means nothing unless we’ve already been given characters to care about. All obvious stuff, but how often do we read books or see films that don’t seem to know it?

Build up is all...

Or the world-building. True, a modern writer wouldn’t get away with that long opening sequence of Zulu dances, but once the action moves to Rorke’s Drift we are absorbed so quickly into the equally alien world of the Victorian military that we’re hardly even aware it’s being done. Since I’ve been studying Crimea I’m amazed at the authenticity of detail that’s so casually included here – from the overt Christianity of some British soldiers to the subtle rivalry between ‘regular’ Army and Engineers. Zulu is an object lesson in how to be accurate without letting your research show.

Or the language. That too is both natural and totally authentic – a wonderful anecdote to those who think Victorians all spoke formally, correctly and without contractions. Even the idioms are right, from ‘the fuzzies’ to ‘oh, my eye’, and every single character has his own unique voice. In the whole film there’s only one phrase I’m unsure about (Hook’s “Stuff me with little green apples”) and one line I think sounds unnatural – Bromhead’s comment “That’s a bitter pill” on being shot at with their own rifles.

Kerry Jordan as the cook
Or even just the humanity. The most obvious example is the proper respect shown to the Zulus (‘I think they’ve got more guts than we have, boyo!’) but I love the way we’re given insight into so many different little characters – such as the cook who’s laboured under the hot sun to make soup for a hundred men, and is then ordered to throw it on the fire. Zulu taught me what can be done with minor characters, and I try to remember it every time.

Stanley Baker as Chard
Not everything works, but I think we can learn from the flaws too. The character of Chard, for instance, does sometimes slip into modern attitudes – being anti-war, anti-colonialism, and sympathetic to the plight of the Boers – and every time he does it the film seems to ‘jolt’. It doesn’t ‘feel’ right, and a viewer will know that even if he’s never thought about historical fiction.

Then there are the ‘liberties taken with the truth’. The most obvious ones are making the Zulus salute the British as ‘fellow braves’ (which they didn’t), and the 24th (Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot a mainly Welsh regiment (when it wasn’t) – but there’s still a dramatic truth in both these things and at least they do no harm. Besides, take them away and we lose not only one of the best scenes of the film, but one that's been described as one of the greatest cinematic scenes of all time. 'Men of Harlech' has never been the same since.


What I do mind are the ‘liberties’ taken with real people, and I learned an important lesson when the descendants of Henry Hook VC complained about the appallingly unfair depiction of his character in the film. People do care when their ancestors are smeared, and I saw it again when the descendants of Murdoch complained about the way he was portrayed in Titanic.  There is simply no excuse for this. If we need a villain and there wasn’t one – then are we really incapable of making one up?

James Booth as Hook                             The real Hook

There’s one other real person I mind about – but you won’t see him in the film at all. His name was Private Joseph Williams of the 24th Regiment of Foot, and he actually performed the single most heroic action of the entire battle. When the Zulus began to spear their way through the outer door to the hospital, Joseph Williams left his loophole to brace the planks with his own body, and held  the entrance alone while patients were carried to safety behind him. He was killed and cut to pieces, but if the VC had been awarded posthumously he would most certainly have ben qualified to receive it. It saddens me that Zulu didn’t recognize him either.

But in the end it’s a film, and its job is ultimately to entertain. Few would disagree that it does that, but it’s in the way it does it that I think I can learn most as a historical novelist. Yes, world-building is important, and yes, historical context is crucial, but arguably the greatest aspect of Zulu is the way it can sweep away both. War is universal. When Hook says 'Did I ever see a Zulu walking down the City Road? No! So what am I doing here?' he may be making a historically relevant point about colonialism, but he is also speaking for almost any soldier in any foreign war.

As does Colour Sergeant Bourne in one of the most crucial scenes of the film. Nervous young Private Cole asks him, ‘Why is it us, sir? Why us?’ to which Bourne replies, ‘Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.’

Gary Bond as Cole

And that’s it. A soldier doesn’t need to know the rights or wrongs of the war he’s fighting – and neither ultimately does a reader. In the end there are only men we care about who must fight to survive. Not 1879, not history, but this moment, here and now.

That for me is the biggest lesson of Zulu. I’ll spend forever getting my research right and weaving my story in and out of specific and real events, but the best kind of historical novel is one where you can throw away the history – and still have a story.

***

A.L. Berridge's website is here, and is nowhere near as good as watching Zulu. Have a look at the scene above instead. 

And the answer to the question is (of course) Frederick Schiess of the Natal Native Contingent, from the Swiss Mounted Police.
↧
↧

Stained glass, black dogs and music halls by Imogen Robertson

February 20, 2014, 11:25 pm
$
0
0


I often get asked why I choose to write historical fiction and usually the question leaves me floundering. I think this is because it implies I had some sort of choice in the matter, whereas, to tell the truth, what I have is a series of post-rationalisations. It was what I wanted to write, so that was what I wrote. There was no study of the market place or check list of pros and cons between genres. I was reading a lot about 18th century history, largely inspired by the fresh light cast on the period by the work of Amanda Vickery, and I like reading books where Stuff Happens. Stuff always happens in crime novels and usually quite a lot of it, so I wrote Instruments of Darkness, a crime novel set in 1780.

So if you don’t really decide what you write, the question becomes ‘why do you write?’  I know the usual line is something about a need to communicate; an urge to create and share stories and in so doing stake a claim to some corner of a stranger’s mental landscape, but I don’t really buy that. If that was what writers wanted, wouldn’t we all want to be stand-up comedians?  Writers need to be happy spending most of their time alone, and though these days we are all encouraged to do as many events as possible and stalk about the internet letting everyone know how clever we are, most writers I know would rather be off in their towers with their imaginary friends. In fact most writers I know regard the phone as an instrument of torture and have trained friends and family to only ever communicate by email, or text in an emergency. 

You need to be driven to write, but driven by curiosity, I think, not by a need for fame and acclaim. Your subject, your story needs to be all absorbing for you. You need to be hungry for the research then obsessive about spending your time in the world you’re discovering. 

We are told, too often, write what you know. I’ve always thought that advice about as good as ‘if you want to get an agent follow them to parties with the unbound pages of your latest manuscript’.  It speaks to the stereotype of writer as show off who has a desperate need to share their story. A lot of us are shy bunnies and I have no great interest in sharing my story. I don’t think it’s that interesting. I write because I’m fascinated by other people’s stories, particularly those hidden by time and ironed out of history by the  grand narratives of wars and rulers. Write what you want to know about, that’s what I say. If you do that you’ll write something interesting.  

I did a talk with Liz Freemantle and Vanora Bennett this week and a question came up about the current interest in historical fiction. Liz made the very good point that it might be something to do with the fact that history itself is being written very differently these days. There’s an interest what everyone else was up to while the grand narratives rolled by in a haze of gunsmoke. Social historians, historians of folklore, the researchers going through the account books of the provincial music halls - those are the people feeding historical fiction now, and huzzah for that because I want to know the story of the artist who painted the glass in Westminster abbey, more than that of the king crowned underneath them, I want to know why devil dogs lope along the lanes of Britain, I want to know what it was to huddle in the galleries, eating fish and chips and joining in with the chorus of the comic songs, or what it was to step out onto the stage and sing them. I want to write these stories, because they are what I want to read and they are there, hiding in slim academic volumes or just out of view in the archives, the court records and account books, in the glass and under the stones lying along the old paths. You just have to want to go and find them.

↧

Fragrant Harbour by Kate Lord Brown

February 21, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0

Man Mo Temple - and the god of Literature

TEN VIRTUES OF INCENSE

It brings communication with the transcendent.
It refreshes mind and body.
It removes impurity.
It brings alertness. 
It is a companion in solitude. 
In the midst of busy affairs, it brings a moment of peace. 
When it is plentiful, one never tires of it. 
When there is little, still one is satisfied. 
Age does not change its efficacy. 
Used everyday, it does no harm. 

~Huang Tingjian Song Dynasty


The intoxicating smell of Hong Kong was described perfectly by Martin Booth in 'Gweilo': "Wherever I went, the air was redolent with the smells of wood smoke, joss-sticks, boiling rice and human excrement …'' Walking out into the night streets of Kowloon last week for the first time in fifteen years, the scent was exhilarating - rich incense, fetid durian fruits, meat roasting on roadside braziers, cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes. Much had changed since I travelled round the world with hand luggage, (not least that with two small children in tow it was now more noodles and an early night than Somerset Maugham and cocktails at The Pen). But the smell hadn't changed a bit.

The Chinese have used incense for over two thousand years, in worship and at home. From the pyramids of Egypt to the temple of Jerusalem and the giant swinging thurible of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, incense permeates our daily and spiritual human existence. Here in the Middle East you find small wood or metal 'mabkharas' burning Oud (agar wood) or bakhoor (woodchips moulded with resin, ambergris, musk, sandalwood, essential oils), everywhere from outside the doors of Carrefour to private homes. It's traditional for abayas and thobes to be perfumed by carefully standing over the mabkhara and allowing the incense to impregnate the fabric.

In Hong Kong I loved revisiting the Man Mo temple again, and it hadn't changed (unlike the rest of Hollywood Road, where junk shops and curio stores have given way to Ralph Lauren and chichi bars). That night brushing my children's hair, I could still smell the wonderful incense from the huge coils suspended from the ceiling above the gods of War and Literature. (That's the god of Literature's brass pen/brush top left - devotees light incense then give it a rub for luck or inspiration).

The most touching offerings are the small ones, like the tiny shrine (below), that someone had set up in an alleyway near Central. It reminded me of Bali, where you would wake to find offerings of flowers and incence burning in folded leaves in the door and gateways, or the spirit houses of Thailand where incense jostles with bottles of Yakult. Timeless, intimate acts of devotion whose origins are lost in history.

For those of you who write about the East, have you come across much about the history and use of incense? I wonder when it was first imported to Europe? I brought a bundle of joss sticks back, and burnt them on the first night home. Here, the effect sadly conjured more of my teenage purple tented bedroom than the exotic streets of the East. Perhaps this is one thing that is 'lost in translation', and I'll stick to my favourite 'Sacristy' candle for writing and inspiration: "THE STILLNESS AND BEAUTY WE FOUND IN AN ANCIENT CHAPEL. WOODEN PANELLING WITH YEARS OF BEESWAX POLISH, LEATHER-BOUND PRAYER BOOKS, PILLAR CANDLES AND A HINT OF INCENSE".


↧

RAGS BONES AND OTHER TREASURES PART TWO, by Leslie Wilson

February 22, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0


Last month I posted about the chiffonniers, the rag-pickers (or informal recyclers) of Paris and their lives: this month I am going to describe some of the processes by which the waste materials they collected became treasure, by which Louis Paulian, who documented these things in his La Hotte du Chiffonnier, meant usable items that could be sold for good money. Most of the money thus earned enriched the middlemen, of course, the humble collectors remaining at the bottom of the heap - and yet, there was always the possibility that they might move up the hierarchy and get as rich as old Harmon in Our Mutual Friend.
I can't précis all of the processes described in La Hotte without writing a pamphlet, rather than a blog post, so I am going to concentrate on bones.

fan parts from recovered bone
This handy diagram of the grinning cow is about the uses for the bones inside her, rather than the more familiar diagram of beef cuts, which it is assumed have been already taken, either for human or dog consumption depending on the animal's age. So: the omoplate or chuck-steak bone will be used to make buttons. The humerus is used for buttons and objets de tabletterie, which could be things like dice and counters for games. The radius is used for more tabletterie, also brush-handles - other uses for the bones include parts of fans and knife handles. So: your treasured antique fan or bone-handled knives quite possibly came from someone's thrown-out Sunday roast bone.
The chiffonnier cleaned off any remnants of fat and meat to be sold off; this fat was made into tallow candles and what was known as 'economical butter' ie, the kind of margarine you got in those days, though Paulian calls this 'inferior margarine', so there must have been a superior kind.
Getting down to the bones now; it is no longer possible for us to visit the splendid factory of Messieurs Dupont and Co at Beauvais, but these gentlemen employed more than fifteen hundred workers and who had outlets in Paris and branches in London, New York, Montreal and even Melbourne. Paulian did, and waxed enthusiastic about the process.
When the bones arrived at Dupont and Co they were boiled clean of all fat residues and then further cleaned with benzine; finally bleached in the sun. Then they were made into the desirable craft objects I have mentioned above.
Toothbrushes were another product, but buttons were perhaps the most important bone product. Machine-cut and carved into shape, they were then polished on a lathe; another machine pierced the holes in them.
lathe for cutting out buttons
As far as brushes and knife-handles went, France was not very good at conserving the large bones that were necessary to produce them, since French butchers tended to cut them up before selling them to customers. It was left to Britain, America and Australia, with their tradition of giant roasts, to supply objects made from these bones; though one praiseworthy butcher, the Maison Duval in Paris, boned its joints and thus was able to to keep the tibias and humeruses (or humera?) intact and sell them to Dupont and their competitors.
machine for making holes in buttons

Women sorting bones
The bones that were burned gave three products; fat, gelatine or glue, and noir animal, or animal blacking, which was used for pigments and black polish. Phosphorus was also obtained from animal bones, also from the trimmings when the bones were worked, and used mainly as fertiliser in agriculture. Tiny chips of bone were burned in a closed flask, treated with potassium carbonate, burned again, then cooled and washed with warm water to produce a liquid from which Prussian Blue was produced, for paints and printing.
Nowadays we think we are doing well if we can achieve a recycling rate of 50%, but in those days, in Europe (for the chiffonniers had their equivalents everywhere, as they do nowadays) what was left behind was mainly ash (which also had its use). The mesh of hair that the chiffonnier picked out of the rubbish was used to make switches for the same ladies to pin onto their heads, or else to make sieves for straining fruit juice. Rags were made into fine-quality paper, or shredded, sometimes to make new luxury fibres, sometimes to make felt (for hats, mainly) or shoddy, which is still used for mattresses.
fabric-shredding machine
The old red trousers of French Zouave soldiers were felted and sold to Near Easterners, who made colourful peasant hats out of them. Used paper, among other things, was made into ceiling-mouldings. Glass bottles were re-used (the chiffonniers were expert in knowing which factories to sell them back to) as milk-bottles used to be, which is by far the most energy-efficient way of recycling glass, only nowadays the manufacturers don't want to have the bother of paying for old bottles.
It could be easily done, of course; I am old enough to have been given bottles to take back to the shop, the bribe being, I got the deposit for extra pocket-money. Old tins, animal skins; there was a use for everything. Even snail shells. Fat from the sewers was reprocessed into soap; animals who drowned there were made into soap and glycerine. The chiffonniers were heroes of recycling and the 'progress' of twentieth-century municipal disposal systems that succeeded them meant that recycling levels plummeted (though a certain amount of reclamation, or totting, was still carried out by dustmen on their own account).
During the period when the chiffonniers were most active, the authorities made several attempts to suppress them or limit their numbers. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries they were seen as potential criminals - out at night with hooks, that could break into houses, baskets to stash the swag, and lanterns to case the joint with? This was the reason for the first lot of ID discs. The factory owners, resenting the money they had to pay them - three francs per chiffonnier per day, which added up to a considerable sum - proposed that all wastes should be municipally collected, sorted, and delivered to them. Their profits thus increased, they would pay the municipality a portion of the profit. The chiffonniers, having no more source of income, would have to seek (badly-paid) employment with the municipality. It is easy to see the logic of turbo-capitalism at work; you get taxpayers to subsidise you. However, the Prefecture of the Seine were enthusiastic about the idea - the figures clearly added up as far as they were concerned. The Prefect of Police opposed it, pointing out the social costs of increased vagrancy (chiffonniers who couldn't or wouldn't become employees) and of unrest fomented by angry chiffonniers, who preferred their independence.
The chiffonniers mounted a major PR campaign, enlisting journalists and politicians, and won. All the same, there was a law passed in 1884 that obliged householders to put their refuse into bins, and the chiffonniers found themselves racing the municipal collectors for the bins' contents. These poubelles, named after the Prefect of the Seine who introduced an earlier version, were cumbersome and difficult to lift, also had no lids, so they would have stunk and attracted vermin just as much as heaps of refuse on the street. Here is a rather Heath Robinson apparatus for loading them into the collection vehicles. I can almost hear the Paris street echoing to the crash of the dropped poubelle, and the curses of the collectors who would have to put all the refuse back into it, not to mention the one who would be hopping on one leg, and maybe be taken off to hospital because it had fallen on his foot.

An interviewer once asked my husband: 'Isn't it disgusting to see waste as a resource?' Clearly a lot of people think so, even to the point of finding it distasteful to separate their own waste into different receptacles. Put it away with your eyes shut and forget about it, and let someone take it away and never see it again. No doubt the Parisians of Paulian's time thought the same way, and they weren't aware, till he published it, that their wastes often did come back to them, looking handsome and desirable in shop windows, too. But if you find waste recovery and re-use disgusting - is it really cleaner to dump refuse into more and more holes in the ground, which may cause emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and will be a colossal waste of the earth's shrinking land-space and resources?
↧
Search

SHELLS AND KERNELS: The knowledge and the deep knowledge by Elizabeth Chadwick

February 23, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0
I admit to being a research nerd.   For the characters to feel real to me, I need their stage to be authentic and the characters themselves to possess believable mindsets and attitudes.  As I have researched down the decades, I have come to realise how much I actually don't know, which is humbling, frustrating at times, but also very exciting when that epiphany moment sends a beam through the murk. I have learned never to trust a source in isolation and that studying widely in my chosen genre is, for me, the only way to go.
Recently, when  reading M.T. Clanchey's wonderful book From Memory to the written word. I was struck anew by how a little knowledge can take you to a very different place from deeper knowledge. 


There is a tale dating to the late 13th century - one with which I was familiar from reading novels and general history, that the royal judges demanded to know by what right the barons held their privileges.  One earl, John de Warenne, produced a rusty sword.  
'Here, my lords, here is my warrant!  For my ancestors came with William the Bastard and conquered their lands by the sword, and by the sword I will defend them from anyone intending to seize them!'  That is fighting talk in anyone's language and one receives the impression of a belligerent warrior baron ready to cut down anyone down who got in his way.  However, while much of this is true, it was more than just a case of  sword shaking  in threat of violence. There's more to it than that; there's a deeper magic.
It all goes back to 1069 when William the Conqueror endorsed a gift of English land to a Norman abbey.  The transaction involved a charter which was witnessed by nine people on the charter itself and others gathered to witness. Crucially, the gift of a knife to authenticate the charter was involved.  The charter detail says 'This gift is made by a knife which the aforesaid king jokingly gave to the abbot, as if threatening to stab it into his palm saying: 'That's the way land ought to be given.'  The custom was a Norman one and used as an aid to memory.  In future decades conveyancing charters were made valid by the accompaniment of a symbolic transfer object. It might be a knife as in the case of William the Conqueror or his son William Rufus who gave one with an ivory handle to Tavistock Abbey.  It might be a rod of office, a helmet, a horn, a cup...or a sword. You can see a chirograph from 1148 with a knife attached here. chirograph with knife
So, when John de Warenne came marching before the judges with his rusty sword, dating back two hundred years, his claim was not just a fist-shaking threat, he was carrying legal authority.  His sword was his warrant both on the battlefied and in a court of law. Should I ever comes to write that scene in fiction myself, knowing this detail about the symbolic objects attached to writs, might make all the difference to the way I nuance that scene.

I found the research and nuance thing especially important when writing my novel A Place Beyond Courage about John FitzGilbert, the father of the great Medieval knight and magnate William Marshal.  As a child of about 5, William was taken hostage for his father's word of honour during the fight for the throne between Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen.  John, a supporter of the Empress had promised to yield his besieged castle at Newbury to King Stephen providing he first made it known to the Empress what he intended to do.  However, instead of commencing the surrender process, John promptly reinforced Newbury to the hilt.  Stephen promptly threatened to kill William because John had reneged on his word.  "Word came of this to his father, but he said he did not care about the child, since he still had the anvils and hammers to produce even finer ones."  William's life was saved because King Stephen was too soft-hearted to do the deed, and although he bluffed via threats of hanging, catapulting and tying to an attacking siege machine, eventually took young William away to his tent to play games with him. 
The incident has made strong historical mileage in our own century. How shocking that a father would say that about his own child. How callous. But that's to skim the surface.  The quote comes from a family chronicle - the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, which was a family celebration piece designed to put William Marshal and his family in an illustrious light. A poem of almost  two thousand lines, the Histoire was written to be read aloud on William's anniversary. It was commissoned by his son shortly after William's death in 1219 at the age of 72.
 The family view of John Marshal's actions would have been the acknowledgement of a man who wasn't going to be intimidated by anyone.  Anvils and hammers are the symbols of a marshal, so that quote is a pun on the name as well as being a euphemism for the male reproductive organs in virile function. It says that this man has the balls  to deal with any situation and no king is going to emasculate him. The Marshal family listening to the tale would have appreciated the riposte and perhaps even chuckled.  Was it ever actually said?  No one knows.  While the siege and the hostage situation itself is a matter of fact, those words only appear in the family history. There's a whole other context to them; they're not the casual utterance of an indifferent father, but a declaration of standing hard in adversity, and they appear in no other source.  Knowing this threw the door wide open to me  the writer. What really happened?  What was this man really like?

The same goes for smaller matters.  A couple of years ago I was reading a 12th century novel where a character wrote a letter and enclosed two marks of silver inside as payment of a debt.  The shell is knowing that one of the monetary  units of the time was the mark. The kernel is knowing that a mark was a unit of weight equating to 13shillings and fourpence, and since the only coin in the land was the silver penny, you'd need 160 of them to make up your mark.  Try putting 320 of them inside a letter!

Or the beautiful white stallion given the Medieval name Morel by his proud owner.  That's the shell.  The kernel is knowing that Morel  was indeed a horse name in the Middle Ages - but one always given to black or almost black horses - like morello cherries! A white horse would more likely go by the name of Blancart.

Details like this are going to go over most readers' heads, I admit.  It's the stuff of 'swots, letter writers and anoraks' to quote Julian Rathbone's note in his novel The Last English King. I suppose it is those traits in me that make me love coming across the nut in the first place and then cracking the shell to get at the kernel, which may look entirely different to the shell!  When that happens, it brings a whole different perception to my writing - and to history. Do we know what we think we know, and isn't the quest to find out illuminating and exciting!



↧
↧

ELECTRIC HISTORY by Eleanor Updale

February 24, 2014, 5:30 pm
$
0
0
In the orgy of television programmes about the First World War, one of the best things has been the archive film footage, some of which has never been seen before.  Now that digital technology allows the speed of playback to be adjusted, we no longer see figures from the early 20th century as jumpy marionettes. We can concentrate on the hope and fear in people’s eyes, rather than the comic jerkiness of their movements.

For reasons to do with my new book, I have been delving into an even earlier collection of films, made as the 19th century turned into the 20th.

Montmrency Returns set more than a hundred years ago, and it’s almost an historical document in itself.  Although just published, it has been on the stocks for a very long time. The title, Montmorency Returns, is a bit of an in joke for the many Montmorency fans who have written over the past few years asking where it was.  The fourth book in the Montmorency series, published in 2006, ended on a cliffhanger.  I always intended to bash straight on, but the publisher had other ideas.  Now here it is, at last, alongside all the other books in the series, which have been redesigned to match, with better paper and better print than ever.  You can get them all on Amazon by clicking here .
Part of my plot involves the early cinema – in the days long before Hollywood, and just before the New Jersey town of Fort Lee became the heart of the American film industry.
The great inventor Thomas A Edison was one of the pioneers of the industry (both as a developer of hardware and as a producer and marketer of films).  When I first started thinking about the book, it was hard to get to see original films from his time.  You had to go to special events at arty or academic cinemas.  It was difficult even to find out what had survived, and where. In the few years of publishing hiatus, a treasure trove of material has appeared on YouTube, and here are some samples.  You can find them all easily just by typing a few appropriate words into any search engine.  They may seem a little crude, but they are fascinating, and I should perhaps warn you that, for reasons of taste, a couple may be a little difficult for some people to watch.
First, here’s a very brief re-enactment of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, made in 1895.  It’s one of the earliest e examples of editing for dramatic effect.  Although a little indistinct, it’s worth watching for the way the head rolls away after the chop. 
MQS with her head on, just to the right of centre

MQS, head off.  The head is just to the left of centre
Then there’s a whole sequence of films featuring the career and assassination of President McKinley in 1901.

 
McKinley’s death, and its consequences, are at the heart of my story, and I not only used the films for research, but also built them in to the plot.
Although Edison’s cameramen followed McKinley around intensively on his last days - as he visited the World’s Fair in Buffalo in New York State - there is no cinematic record of the assassination itself, nor of the capture of his killer inside the Temple of Music on the exhibition site.
What we do have is studies of the crowd before and after the event – remarkable for the uniformity of dress (especially the men’s straw boater hats) and for the the sheer press of people.
The Buffalo Fair lit by electric light
McKinley’s killer, Leon Czolgosz, admitted his crime, and was executed in the electric chair. 


Edison staged a reconstruction of the execution, which is chilling in many ways – not least for the nonchalance of all those taking part in the event.

A couple of years later, and in another film which some of you may not want to watch, Edison again demonstrated the power of electricity to take life by showing the killing of Topsy, a circus elephant, who had killedone of her trainers and been sentenced to death by hanging.
Edison offered to electrocute the beast, partly at the behest of those who regarded hanging as cruel, but mainly to show the lethal qualities of Alternating Current (he was marketing Direct Current at the time).  If you really want to, you can see both execution films online.

Topsy dying.  Seconds later, she is dead

McKinley’s assassination, following on from anarchist killings of European leaders,

 such as King Umberto of Italy (see Montmorency and the Assassins) led to a boom in secret service activity.  In Montmorency Returns, the secret service men scan Edison’s Buffalo films for the faces of anarchist sympathisers. 

But not before they’ve had a little light relief from another 1901 Edison film.  It shows a lady gradually disrobing on a trapeze, flinging her clothes to a couple of excited gentlemen.  Here are some stills from that one.




 Not very dignified, but rather cheerier than the elephant film, I’m glad to say - though it’s an early example of women’s place in films for some time to come.    Mary Queen of Scots, by the way, was played by a man.

www.eleanorupdale.com

↧

FAIR PHOENIX BRIDE… ELIZABETH STUART – Dianne Hofmeyr

February 25, 2014, 8:30 pm
$
0
0
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
by Unknown artist
oil on panel, 1613
30 7/8 in. x 24 1/2 in. (784 mm x 622 mm)
Purchased, 1982
NPG 5529
What a painting – the sumptuous brocaded silk, the diamonds, the pearls big as doves’ eggs, (how many divers drowned gathering these?) the stiffened collar, (how many maids dismissed for spoiling the lace with too hot a tong?) the elaborate hairstyle, the nipped in waistline, the hint of a farthingale, the strands of pearl necklaces (perhaps the ones inherited from her aunt, Elizabeth I?) the face suggesting a certain expectancy, the hunt of a smile curving the lips, serious eyes, the long aristocratic nose with its slightly heavy bridge that is noticeable in all her portraits, said to have been inherited from her mother, Anne of Denmark – as the Stuarts had rather pudgy noses.

When I look at Elizabeth Stuart in this painting of 1613 (for those of you who like a timeline painted just 41 years before Fabritius’s painting in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch,) I sense it’s a face one no longer sees in the 21st century. Yet I searched through my own photo files and came across this 21st century girl in 15th century dress celebrating a pageant in Italy, who might have been her sister. The same mouth, the same nose, the same eyes and this changes Elizabeth Stuart into real flesh and blood for me.


The portrait of Elizabeth is particularly poignant as it was painted when, within the space of a few weeks she’d lost her adored older brother, Prince Henry, heir to the throne of England, and she’d married Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, a boy she was hopelessly in love with. Not quite Four Weddings and a Funeral but still a time of huge emotion for a sixteen year old – a beloved brother dead of typhoid, a new husband and a voyage to Europe which would take her away from England forever.

But Elizabeth was used to matters of life and death. She was nine years old when a group of Catholic radicals plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament to kill her father James I and her brother Prince Henry, and then planned to abduct her and put her on the throne as a Catholic queen. Fortunately their plans were foiled. In the portrait she is dressed with all the grandeur of a young woman who could well have become queen of England, albeit a Protestant one, if her sickly younger brother Charles, who limped from childhood rickets, stammered and was acutely shy, hadn’t lived to become King Charles I.

When I made enquiries about portrait NPG 5529 at the National Portrait Gallery, Catharine MacLeod
 Curator of Seventeenth-Century Portraits had this to say:
“The jewels that appear black in the painting, notably in her hair and in the large setting on her chest are most likely to be diamonds, which are conventionally shown as black in portraits of this period (partly because they were set in such a way that light did not pass through them as it usually does in the kinds of claw settings most commonly used today). The black oval on her shoulder appears to be a black enamelled locket, probably containing a portrait miniature; the black setting suggests that this might be a miniature of the recently deceased Prince Henry. “

I suggested that the white feather in her hair might have been a tribute to him as the Prince of Wales, but it appears not. She wears an armband of mourning and her standing collar and the lace around her neck have the lion and the unicorn, as well as fleur-de-lys and the royal coat of arms, all of which allude to her British (both Scottish and English) royal status.

My story, The Phoenix, for the anthology, Daughters in Time about to be published by Templar, draws on the poem written by John Donne to celebrate the marriage of Elizabeth to Frederick. Donne’s line: ‘Up then fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun,’ suggests her spirit.

For me this spirit is epitomised in a much earlier miniature of Elizabeth. painted by Nicolas Hilliard. I like to think of it as the one she might have sent to her suitor Frederick in Heidelberg via the English ambassador. I can’t prove this but why be a writer if we can’t imagine.

The portrait shows her looking directly into the eyes of the beholder wearing a simple velvet carnation­-coloured dress, her hair hanging loose and wild… as if to say: this is me… this is what you’ll get. 

One can believe that this is the true Elizabeth. Feisty and strong-willed. The girl who persuaded her father to choose not a wealthy old grump from a list of ten possible suitors but the young man she herself had fallen in love with. The girl who dressed as a boy in order to gain entrance into her brother’s forbidden sickroom. The sixteen year old who married – despite court protocol for elaborate hairstyles – with her hair wild and untamed down her back plaited with tiny jewels and pearls and walked up the aisle at Whitehall smiling into the arms of her beloved sixteen year old Frederick to become eventually the Queen of Bohemia.

www.diannehofmeyr.com

Read the story of Elizabeth Stuart in:
DAUGHTERS OF TIME
By The History Girls Edited by Mary Hoffman
£7.99 Paperback, 9 + years 978-1-84877-169-7 March 2014
Written by some of today’s most exceptional female children’s authors, Daughters of Time is an anthology that shines a new spotlight on extraordinary women in history.

‘“History is about chaps" is still all too true a saying. So it's up to the fabulous History Girls to balance this approach with stories of impressive and inspiring women and girls - we were spoilt for choice.’ - Mary Hoffman

History tells us that there have always been brave, challenging and inspirational women, but unfortunately their stories are often overlooked. Publishing in March 2014, Daughters of Time brings back to life the tales of these remarkable women, helping to inform young people of how women and girls have been important in shaping the world we live in today. Written by a collection of established and bestselling children’s authors who all blog with The History Girls.

↧

Brown Girls Collective, by Louisa Young

February 26, 2014, 4:00 pm
$
0
0
Today I am shamelessly promoting and thieving. Thieving to promote. I have discovered this lovely page, Brown Girls' Collective, which is full of History Girls from the Black/Brown/African-American/ Caribbean (and a bit of British) strands. 

One of its great joys is the habit of inviting people to send in pictures of their beautiful brown daughters, so in that sense it's pure pleasure. And there are plenty of people saluted who we know about.  But the meat of it is tales of women of yore, and there are some corkers. 


Here, for example, are Lt. Harriet Ida Pickens and Ens. Frances Wills, the first African-American Waves to be commissioned. from December 21, 1944.





Then there's the story of Rebecca Cox Jackson, born in 1795, near Philadelphia. Her father, who is unknown, died; her mother, Jane, was unable to care for her and died when Rebecca was 13.  She was a seamstress, and after God cured her of a terror of thunderstorms she became a preacher, much to her husband and brother's disinclination. Seeking alternatives the male-dominated churches around her, she visited a Shaker community near Albany, New York, in 1843, where, she recalled, "the power of God came upon me like the waves of the sea". She appreciated their pioneering stand on racial equality; they recognised her as a visionary. She joined the Shaker community and became a Shaker eldress in April 1859, and went on to establish a community of black Shakers in Philadelphia that survived for 40 years after her death in 1871. 
'In addition to her 40 years of preaching, Jackson's most noteworthy contribution to the world was her spiritual autobiography, "Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress," an amazingly detailed and compelling account for a woman with no education.' It was not published until 1981.


Here is 'educator, newspaper publisher and activist Charlotta Bass', born in South Carolina in 1874. 




Here is 'attorney, educator and activist' Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher 1924-1995: the first African American woman to attend an all white law school in the South. By this time she was married and pregnant with the first of her two children. The law school gave her a chair marked "colored," and roped it off from the rest of the class. Her classmates and teachers welcomed her, shared their notes and studied with her, helping her to catch up on the materials she had missed. Sipuel had to eat in a separate chained-off guarded area of the law school cafeteria. She recalled that years later some white students would crawl under the chain and eat with her when the guards were not around. Her lawsuit and tuition were supported by hundreds of small donations, and she believed she owed it to those donors to make it.'

                                                 





Here's 'musician and educator Ella Sheppard Moore, one of the original Fisk (University) Jubilee Singers', born in Nashville in 1851'. When she was a little girl her father was permitted to buy her for 350 dollars.






Ann Spencer, Poet. 




The adorable Florence Mills: 




                                                  And Angela Davis with Toni Morrison! 




And here is Leontyne Price, singing Aida: http://youtu.be/fTuvi2IgFSk


There are so many stories and so many women on this page. Doctors and dancers, sculptors and teachers, lawyers and campaigners and athletes and writers and musicians and actresses and four tiny Rwandan ballerinas and an Olympic fencer and Nina Simone and Alek Wek and Coretta King and Josephine Baker and a gun-toting postwoman from the wild wild west . . .  I'm not going to nick any more stories, because I want you to go there and read them, read and learn. It's a treasure trove. Every congratulation to the people who put it together. 


↧

Jan Karski, messenger from the past, by Clare Mulley

February 27, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0
When we think about the Holocaust today, we mostly remember the victims, perpetrators, bystanders and collaborators. We should also think about those who risked their lives to protect individuals, families and groups, or even in the attempt to end the genocide altogether. Last month, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, I attended an event at the London Central Synagogue organised in tribute to the Polish Catholic, Jan Karski, who attempted just that. After Rabbi Barry Marcus, Cantor Steven Leas and Polish Ambassador Witold Sobków had welcomed guests, Martin Smith’s short film Messenger from Poland was screened, in which Jan Karski told his own story. 


Rabbi Barry Marcus opens the Jan Karski tribute evening
at the London Central Synagogue. 

In the winter of 1943, Karski was selected by the Polish Underground State to alert the international community to the mass murder of the Polish Jews by the Nazis. The young former diplomat was already a veteran of clandestine war-work. Taken prisoner by the Russians in the early weeks of the war, Karski had been released in a prisoner exchange, thereby avoiding death in the Katyn forests. In August 1940, having escaped from a second detention, this time by the Gestapo, Karski served as an underground courier with the Polish resistance, smuggling information out of the country. 

Jan Karski, 1943

Eighteen months later he was chosen to bring news of the genocide to the outside world. It was felt that his diplomatic credentials, along with the fact that he was not Jewish himself, made him a strong emissary. To give him even greater authority, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto where he watched two boys from the Hitler Youth 'shooting mindlessly' into the miserable scene of ‘poverty, hunger and death’. Then, disguised as a Ukranian militiaman, he was taken to Izbica, a Nazi ‘sorting station’ where he watched ‘masses of Jews’ being sent to the Treblinka death camp for ‘liquidation’. 

Karski reached London in November 1942, where he put a simple plan to the Polish Government-in-Exile. Germany should be leafleted with details of the camps, Karski began, 'so the German nation could not say that they did not know'. The Nazi government should be directly lobbied to stop the genocide, and if they failed to do so the Allies should respond by bombing key sites in retaliation until action was taken. ‘In the name of common values’, the Pope should be called to publically intervene, calling on German Catholics to find their consciences. 'Who knows', Karski argued, perhaps if the Pope threatened to excommunicate those who did not protect the Jewish population, enough Germans might take a stand. Karski also wanted blank passports and hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, and the Polish resistance to operate a strict policy of execution for those who betrayed their Jewish neighbours. 

Republic of Poland report for the United Nations, 1942

Karski’s was not the first report of mass killings to reach the West but it was one of the most detailed, an eyewitness account, and considered very reliable. But despite his testimony, the Allies remained largely indifferent to the fate of the Jews in Poland. All those who met Karski gave various reasons why nothing could be done. The Pope took six weeks to respond, and then only stated that he had already done all he could. In Britain Lord Selbourne, who met Karski in place of Churchill, told him that no political leader would comply with the idea of providing hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, which would effectively mean subsidising the enemy regime. Roosevelt ‘looked like a master of humanity’, Karski felt, but seemed more interested in the fate of Polish horses than Polish Jews, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, possibly the most influential Jewish man in the USA, simply said he could not believe Karski’s report. When asked if he was suggesting that Karski was lying, Frankfurter replied only that not being able to believe was not the same as doubting the reliability of the source. 

Karski was horrified by the lack of action, despite his reaching the highest authorities. ‘I swore to them’, he told film-maker Martin Smith at the end of his interview, ‘as long as I will live, I will speak about it’. Karski was true to his word, but Smith felt that he seemed ‘weighed down by doubt and death’. Karski died in July 2000, believing to the end, Smith told me, that he had achieved nothing. In fact his constant lobbying had helped lead to the development of the USA’s War Refugee Board, an important achievement but not the goal he had set himself. In 1982 Yad Vashem recognised Karski as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. In 2012 he was honoured with the USA’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and this year, 2014, has been designated Jan Karski year by the Polish parliament. 

Film-maker Martin Smith talks with a member of the audience.


Important though such recognition is, Jan Karski has been honoured as a hero too late. Over drinks after the film, I asked why Karski’s testimony had been so largely ignored. The responses were diverse. Some felt that Karski had been treated by suspicion because he was known to be a socialist. Others, that the Western powers were fearful of giving too much weight to the Jewish question when there was so much general suffering caused by the war. Certainly there was also the refusal to believe, as expressed so starkly by Felix Frankfurter. Above all, however, the feeling was that no government felt justified in diverting any resources from the ultimate goal of defeating Nazi Germany. What everyone seemed to agree, however, was that if we remain silent, then we too, in a sense, are tacit.

During the Second World War, despite Karski’s unceasing meetings with journalists, authors, officials and MPs, and his own writing, the vast majority of people did not know the truth about the genocide until July 1944, when the first Nazi death camp was liberated. Those who did know had other priorities. Today the world has changed. Courageous reporters, and members of the public armed with mobile phones and internet access, have taken the place of brave couriers like Jan Karski, and there are few conflicts around the world where atrocities, state-sponsored or otherwise, go unreported. If anything people feel overwhelmed. General knowledge is not lacking, and nor perhaps is public conscience; what is lacking is clear solutions to these complex situations. What is certain, however, is the importance of constant vigilance and repeated challenges to those who abuse human rights. Perhaps the most significant lesson from Karski’s story is that without knowledge nothing can be achieved, but with knowledge comes both collective and personal responsibility.  
↧
↧

Cranky Ladies of History

February 28, 2014, 4:01 pm
$
0
0
Sometimes we have a theme running through our posts for a month. Since this March, International Women's History Month celebrates Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment, and March 8th, International Women's Day, has the theme Inspiring Change, we are linking to a site that is attempting to crowdsource a book on Cranky Ladies of History. The editor of the book will post about it here on 22nd March.*

Not all our posts will be about this and we have had some discussion about what "cranky" means and interpreted it in our own way.

It links in well with our launch of Daughters of Time, which I wrote about on the first day of the year. That contains thirteen stories by members of the blog suitable for young readers of nine years and upwards, about women in English history, some whom might have been considered "cranky" in their time according to one or other definition.

My own choice, Lady Jane Grey, was not, in my opinion the helpless pawn of ambitious men and their political manoeuvrings. She was stubborn as a mule. After all, she could have saved her life by converting to Mary Tudor's religion but refused to - a rejection of clemency which saw her executed in the Tower of London.

Other contributors will write about their own "daughter of time" this month and next.


And four of us will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival to talk about the women in our stories, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Emily Davison and the protesters in the Peace Camp at Greenham Common. If you're in the area, do make a date for 2pm on Sunday 30th March.

Here I am putting flowers on the grave of Aphra Behn, who features in the book in a story by Marie-Louise Jensen:
We did this a few days ago in Westminster Abbey, following Virginia Woolf's advice:

“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” (A Room of one's own) Seven History Girls came here with our publishers from Templar Books, who had organised the bouquet.

And we are pretty good at speaking our minds.

Eva Reckitt


But here I'd like to write about my own "cranky lady'" Eva Reckitt, in whose house I lived for four and a half years and who was a very influential person in my life. Obviously in that time I got to know her quite well, although she was eighty when I met her and I was twenty-five. But when I searched the Net for her there was only one rather unflattering photograph taken in her youth and some stern reports on how her phones were tapped and an official eye kept on her in the '20s because of her political affiliation.

For Eva was that oddity: a communist and a wealthy woman. Her fortune came from the family firm that made Reckitt's Blue - a phenomenally successful wash day aid used in lots of homes. Her older brother Maurice was an Anglo-Catholic writer and croquet player; her younger brother Geoffrey, known as "Bunny", was I think already dead when I met Eva.

She was born in 1890 and never married, though she spoke very warmly of the Socialist and academic G.D.H. Cole. Cole was married and indeed co-wrote many detective novels with his wife, Margaret Postgate. But I think Eva carried a bit of a torch for him.

Her main claim to fame, apart from generous donations to the Communist Party, was setting up the Collet's Book Shop in Charing Cross Road:


She was also on the executive of the LRD (Labour Research Department) and she was still going to meetings there when I knew her in the '70s. Her great friend was Olive Parsons and they shared a weekend cottage in Sussex. Olive, another committed communist and by then a widow, had also come under surveillance.

Olive's daughter-in-law was the poet Patricia Beer, whom I met in Eva's house and liked very much. (I remember staying up all one night in Eva's house to read Mrs Beer's House, Patricia's account of her childhood in a family of Plymouth Brethren, which antedates Oranges are not the Only Fruit by seventeen years).

So what was I doing in Eva Reckitt's house? I suppose I was her Companion. I got a free almost self-contained flat at the top of the house, in return for walking her cavalier King Charles spaniel night and morning and doing some gardening (always also rewarded with a curry lunch) and generally helping out.

We had breakfast together every morning, sitting under her painting by Roger Fry of Mediterranean rooftops. after I had taken the dog for a walk on Hampstead Heath. Later my husband-to-be also moved in and we were married from there, Eva coming to our very small wedding in Cambridge in a cold and frosty December.

I wrote my first book in her house. She taught me to have friends of all ages, so that one wouldn't outlive them all (Eva was 86 when she died, Olive 104). She introduced me to the Bookseller, a journal I still take every week, the Wine Society, William Morris - oh. so many things! Many a night she would invite me - later both of us - down to her living-room to watch a TV programme - a drama or an Arts documentary - while sharing a bottle of claret with her.

We still use some of her phrases and made-up words (she always went to the "hairmonger" for instance). She was both a thorn in the side of the British establishment and the most wonderful friend and companion. When she died, she left me a bowl by Lalique, a walnut bureau and a marble tiger, given her on a trip to China. To my husband she left her Nonesuch Shakespeare in seven volumes.

I loved her like a grandmother (I never knew a grandmother) and treasure her memory. So she is my "cranky lady," my woman of character, courage and commitment and one who inspired much change and development in me.

* Pozible Campaign
Roundup page on FableCroft


This post is written as part of the Women's History Month Cranky Ladies of History blog tour. If you would like to read more about cranky ladies from the past, you might like to support the FableCroft Publishing Pozible campaign, crowd-funding an anthology of short stories about Cranky Ladies of History from all over the world.







↧

Georgians Revealed at the British Library - Lucy Inglis

March 2, 2014, 6:13 am
$
0
0
Today I do the last of my walking tours for the British Library's Georgians Revealed exhibition, which examines eighteenth century print culture, from high life to low life. It contains so many things that are rarely brought together, such as pattern books for interior design, sales material, maps and even trade cards and racecards. With the rise of literacy (in reading, if not always in writing), printed paper came to play a far larger part in ordinary life throughout the century with everything from newspapers to sheet music being available even to the very poor for the first time. This exhibition shows what a tremendous variety of this material still remains with us, despite its ephemeral quality. It runs for another week and will close on the 11th of March. So go now while you still can!

Part of the exhibition’s remit was to bring in the wider landscape of Bloomsbury and a surprising amount of Georgian architecture remains, despite the devastations of nineteenth century poverty and the air raids of 1941. The walks today feature a mile tour, starting at the Library and passing through Georgian Bloomsbury, taking in Judd Street, The Boot pub on Cromer Street, where the Gordon Rioters met in 1780, through to Regent Square, so badly damaged during the Blitz. Regent Square retains only one side of its Georgian buildings; the other three sides were lost during the Blitz. It does however, have one of London’s best ghost signs on one outside terrace wall: Bates’ Cures for Wounds and Sores. After Regent Square we move onto the Foundling Museum, to discuss the work of Thomas Coram and the original governors and the process of being admitted as a foundling, plus the terrible social conditions of the period which sparked the need for such an institution. Gin, prostitution and identity all feature. In Hunter Street, we discuss to the work of the Hunter brothers, John and William, and how they contributed so much to Georgian medicine and to the modern science of obstetrics. In Handel Street we discuss the musician and his move from a German composer of Italianate opera to the master of English choral music, plus his work for charity on the side. Then it’s up to Cartwright Gardens for the work of James Burton the architect, taking in Burton Street; to Woburn Walk, London’s finest outdoor Georgian shopping ‘mall’. Finally, it’s back to the Library via Flaxman Terrace, named for John Flaxman, artist and sculpture (possibly the finest designer of the period - for my money at least). Back in the eighteenth century garden of the British Library, built for the exhibition, we discuss London’s growth, gardens, and of course, the Georges. These walks are huge fun and have been well-received, so much so that they were all sold out in November. However, should you wish to take part in this walk in your own time (it’s about a mile and takes around an hour) please email me here for a PDF version of it. (My address will be displayed in the browser bar and can be copied from there.)

If you have a whole morning or afternoon to take in the delights of Georgian London, the British Library have also had me create a walk which includes the Foundling Museum, Coram’s Fields, The Hunterian, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Soane Museum and Woburn Walk, and takes you along many of the remaining Georgian Streets of Bloomsbury. This walk is free to download from the British Library here and the walking itself takes a couple of hours, so add that on to the amount of time you want to spend at the museums. Free, paper copies of this walk are also available inside the Library until the end of the exhibition. If you're on social media and doing the walks, the hashtag for the exhibition is #BLGeorgians. Enjoy!

↧
Search

A Good German? by Eve Edwards

March 2, 2014, 9:00 pm
$
0
0
For me, part of being a historical novelist is challenging myself with the question: in this era, what kind of person would I have been?  On what side would I have fought?  Roundhead or cavalier? Whig or Tory or radical?  Mod or rocker?



Recently, thanks to a rummage through an Oxfam bookshop, I picked up Joseph Kanon's The Good German.  It is set in Berlin in 1945 and falls into the spy thriller category but also taps into some intriguing historical themes that go far beyond a good page-turner.  I can highly recommend it for its portrait of a ruined city and the early days of partition.  I was particularly fascinated because the Nazi round up raises one such difficult question for me. Had I had the misfortune to be born a Berliner in those years, what kind of German would I have been?  I hope that I would make all the right choices, but a good novel like Kanon's confronts me with the very real possibility that I would not.

It is easy to imagine everyone on the 'enemy' side was bad - it helps make the history books cleaner, more white hat/black hat as Hollywood prefers in its superhero movies.  But history isn't clean or simple.  Last week Deutsche Welt ran an article by Anne-Sophie Brandlin  - translated and reported in The Week under the strap line: Grow up, America - we aren't all Nazis.  The writer is tired of the lack of nuance with which the events of WWII are portrayed and argues that Berlin 'is packed with reminders of the past' whereas in Washington in the National Mall there is not a single memorial to non-American victims of the Vietnam War.  I don't know if that is true and the contexts are very different, but I get the point Brandlin is trying to make.  Most Germans are not slow to acknowledge their 20th century faults but they also need to be allowed to portray recent history in its full complexity without being accused of trying to bury ugly truths.

That was why it was intensely moving this week to read Clive James' essay on Sophie Scholl in his  Cultural Amnesia - an amazingly broad and erudite essays collection on 20th century thinkers.  If you thought he was only a TV critic, think again.

Sophie Scholl with brother Hans and Christoph Probst,
leaders of the White Rose resistance - photo from US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Back to Sophie.  Is her name familiar to you?  It wasn't to me, but she deserves to be up there with Anne Frank as one of our heroes.  She joined with her brother in the White Rose resistance movement - young Germans who knew the Nazis were evil and did what they could to register their protest.  She was executed at age 21 by the Gestapo in 1943, along with her brother and other members of the group.  The most remarkable aspect of her bravery was she was told she did not have to die - she could claim she was misled and be spared the guillotine. Instead she chose to stick by her principles and is reported by the chief executioner to have died more courageously than anyone else he had led to the block.  I'd like to declare her an unambiguous good German.

We are running a theme of cranky ladies this month on the blog but Sophie is too great to be saddled with that title. She was 'cranky' in the sense that word is often used to attack women: those who refuse to fit in, make themselves awkward for their society.  Good for you, Sophie. I can only hope I would display a fraction of your courage if ever I had to make such a difficult moral choice.

www.eve-edwards.co.uk
↧

In a Country Churchyard - by Katherine Langrish

March 3, 2014, 10:00 pm
$
0
0



The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
         The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
         And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
         And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
         The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
         Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'


History is all around us.  The nearest place to find a date, outside a book, is probably in a church or a churchyard.  On a recent walk through our village churchyard, I came across the memorial stone of one Joseph Lyford, pictured above.  He 'departed this life' in 1809,  and his stone is elegantly and gracefully carved with scrolls, flowers and cherubs. Perhaps he was a landowner: there is a hamlet called Lyford a mile or two over the fields.

The older part of the churchyard is all leaning headstones and ivied tombs. We certainly have plenty of owls, and Gray's 'moping' is a lovely word to describe the sound (if not the likely emotion) of any owl intent on hunting the mice and voles which undoubtedly live in the undergrowth.


Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
         Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
         The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
         No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed


Churchyards are supposed to be spooky places, but I like ours, especially on a sunny spring day with the crocuses and snowdrops blossoming on graves where they were planted years ago.




Gray's Elegy is set in the evening, of course, when thoughts would tend to melancholy.  I don't know if you've read it, or re-read it lately, but it's a long and beautiful poem.  Gray 'considers', as the modern poet Geoffrey Hill says, 'the outnumbering dead': and wonders not only at the way in which death levels all pomp and state, but also about the forgotten or unrecognised talents and abilities of those who lie beneath:


Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
         Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
         Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
         Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
         And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
         The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
         And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
 
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
         The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
         Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

'Some mute, inglorious Milton - some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood'! Marvellous and poignant: for the truth is that gravestones - set up for no other purpose than to commemorate the dead - can preserve so little.  Even the ones which haven't yet weathered or crumbled into illegibility have little room for more than a name and a date.   Churchyards are places of lost information as much as gardens of remembrance.



And yet:

... ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
         Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
         Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 



Like every churchyard, ours has its share of 'shapeless sculpture': but let's leave that unchronicled.  Instead, here are two recent graves, less than a decade old.  Plain and unadorned, especially compared to the elaborate Victorian tombstones. I never knew this couple, so I hope their family won't mind the photo appearing here.  But a gravestone is a public statement as well as a family monument, and to to my mind these are the most touching inscriptions in the churchyard. 

The first one reads: 

ALWAYS A GENTLE MAN                              
GEORGE OBERMAN
HUSBAND OF LAURIE

The second one reads:

LIFE WAS AN ADVENTURE
LAURIE OBERMAN, (NEE RIGUELLE)
WIFE OF GEORGE

They died within a few weeks of one another, aged ninety and ninety-one, and their stones celebrate a man's gentleness and a woman's courage. I can't think of a lovelier way to be remembered.


↧
↧

Mary Anning in My Mind - Joan Lennon

March 4, 2014, 4:30 pm
$
0
0
Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a fossil finder along England's Jurassic Coast, during the earliest days of the new science of paleontology. The theme on History Girls this month is Cranky Ladies in History, and Mary certainly had plenty of reasons to be unhappy, fed-up, angry, obstreperous, or, indeed, eccentric. (Tricky, these transatlantic translations ...) She had money worries, serious health problems, and more than her fair share of griefs, and she was under-valued by a scientific community made up largely of rich guys with beards. There are very few contemporary images of her other than the ones below:

sketch of Mary Anning by Henry De la Beche


painting by B.J. Donne (Mary is meant to be pointing at a fossil, not telling her dog Tray to stay)

Salt print photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot ("The Geologists" 1843) which may or may not include Mary Anning as the lump on the left (see Suzanne Pilaar Birch's article in the Guardian here.)

But the thing is, none of these images is a bit like the one of her I have in my mind.  I've been crazy for fossils for as long as I can remember, and I've had a soft spot for Mary Anning for about as long.  Which is why, when the chance to write a story about her in the History Girls' anthology Daughters of Time came along, I jumped at it.  I did my research.  I found out things I hadn't known before.  I felt sorry for all her troubles and trials and frustrations.  I was in awe of her (self)learning and meticulous skill in separating her fossils from the surrounding rock and her revolutionary understanding of their meanings.  But still that was not what I saw in my mind.  For me, Mary Anning will always be a figure running along a shingly beach, with a hammer in her hand and a dog at her side and the next amazing discovery waiting for her in the rocks just ahead.  The girl who could see things that other folk couldn't - exciting things - wonderful things ...  So that's how I wrote her.


Mary Anning:  Best After Storms


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.


P.S.  Back in 2010, the first Slightly Jones Mystery was published, all about the theft of the astonishing (and sadly fictional) dragonfish fossil from the then-new Natural History Museum in London - and this is the dedication:

Everybody's heard of Florence Nightingale 
and David Livingstone.  These books are dedicated 
to the Victorian heroes and heroines 
who aren't quite so famous!

This one's for 
Mary Anning, Fossil Finder


Prescient, eh?
↧

Time and Boudica's Daughters - Katherine Roberts

March 5, 2014, 5:00 pm
$
0
0
Tomorrow, Templar will publish our very first History Girls anthology Daughters of Time, edited by Mary Hoffman, with short stories from authors of this blog who write for young readers:


My story is first in the book by virtue of being about the 'daughter' who comes first on the historical timeline - Boudica, warrior queen of the Iceni - so I'm sneaking in here a day before publication to write one of the first posts on the book's blog tour.

Boudica's story is a brutal one, containing material at first sight unsuitable for younger readers - both her daughters were reported to have been raped by the Romans, but rape is obviously not something I could include in a children's book, so my first challenge was to work out how to tell the story without losing its power.
 
This is not the first time I've written a short story about the queen of the Iceni. My first attempt "Empire of the Hare" was published in a small women's literary fiction magazine QWF in 1998, when it was also shortlisted for the Library of Avalon Geoffrey Ashe Prize.


In this version, which was published for an adult readership, I used the elder daughter to tell the story and had her fall in love with the Roman tax collector, meaning that she had already lost her virginity behind the stables with her Roman sweetheart before the rape scene. This was long before the days of ebooks, when Boudica was spelt Boudicca (and sometimes still Boadicea - the spelling in common use when I first came across the red-haired warrior queen at school, and therefore always the most romantic one in my mind). I also named her daughters differently, since this was pre-internet days and no popular names existed to confuse people... or if they did, I was not aware of them. Historically, of course, the girls' names are not recorded, and neither is the queen's childhood name - she received her popular name Boudica, which means 'Victory', when she led her people against the Romans.

statue of Queen Boudica in London

The young readership Templar proposed for Daughters of Time gave me the perfect opportunity to use Boudica's younger daughter to give the story a new slant. In "Tasca's Secret", my heroine Tasca is removed from the violence before it begins by her young Roman friend Marcus, who sneaks her into his father's camp when the soldiers attack Boudica's village. The younger daughter is therefore held as a hostage but not mistreated. Later, when the queen captures Marcus to take her revenge, Tasca defies her mother to save her friend.

If you know a young reader has been inspired by Queen Boudica's story, here is a wonderful illustrated poem I discovered while researching this post, written for the same readership: History for Kids.

sample image of Boudica copyright History for Kids - fair use policy

To me, this is one of the joys of writing historical fiction. There is always a new way into an old story - whether it is a different viewpoint, or a fictional character (such as the boy Marcus in "Tasca's Secret") who can be introduced to breathe new life into historical fact, or a different style that can be used to tell it. There is even a bit of leeway with well-known historical characters, especially if their ages are flexible, as with Boudica's daughters.

I know the other History Girls who contributed to this anthology have taken their own unique route into their chosen stories, which they'll be telling you more about at various stops on the blog tour. I, for one, am looking forward to reading all the stories when the anthology is published tomorrow!

~~~

Daughters of Time (edited by Mary Hoffman) includes stories by Penny Dolan, Adele Geras, Mary Hoffman, Diane Hoffmeyr, Marie-Louise Jensen, Catherine Johnson, Katherine Langrish, Joan Lennon, Sue Purkiss, Celia Rees, Katherine Roberts, Anne Rooney, and Leslie Wilson.

Katherine Roberts writes historical fantasy and legend for young readers. Her latest series is the Pendragon Legacy about King Arthur's daughter also available from Templar. More details at www.katherineroberts.co.uk


↧

FIFTY YEARS ON: The Hang Down your Head and Die Reunion. by Adèle Geras

March 6, 2014, 11:00 pm
$
0
0


Back in September 2013, I promised that I'd write about the major theatrical event of my time at Oxford.   I had a stroke of luck in my first week and it changed the whole of my time at University. 

I went to audition for Braham Murray and David Wright in University College.  They wanted to put on a Joan Littlewood type show (remember 'Oh What A Lovely War'?) about capital punishment which in 1963 was still a sentence available to judges. My own father was a judge in  Tanganika, as it was then, and once the publicity machine started rolling, "Judge's Daughter in Anti-Hanging Play" was the kind of headline we were seeing.

 The production hadn't been written yet. David Wright was the 'writer' which meant that his job was to collate, arrange, adjust all kinds of input from members of the cast. This was to be a collaborative show. 

I was  chosen. I was one of the lucky ones. I think it was my version of Joan Baez's  'El preso numero nueve' which swung it. I have a voice that doesn't need amplification and the huge room we were in had a marvellous acoustic. Braham and David were practically blasted out of their chairs.

That was in 1963.  We had our run-ins with the Lord Chamberlain (who had to read all scripts and decide if they needed any censorship.) We had a simulated execution in the show which caused a bit of a problem, and it was touch and go at one point whether we'd be allowed the poster, which  depicted a hanging,  rather graphically. But in the end, the show when it opened in the Oxford Playhouse was a  huge hit and moved to the Comedy Theatre in London in March 1964. 





The first few nights coincided with some exams I inconveniently had to sit.   Oh, the  impossible things you can do when you're  20! As soon as I finished writing whatever exam it was, I ran out of the building, leapt into a waiting car  driven by a lovely medical student called John Godber, and straight to the Comedy Theatre where I was into my costume before you could say "The Show Must Go On." At the end of the performance, John was again waiting and back we went to Oxford where I climbed in, and sank into bed, sometimes not even bothering to take my make up off properly. You had to wear sub-fusc (black skirt, white shirt etc) for exams and by the time my papers were over my shirt was terra cotta all round the neck. Who had time to do the laundry?
This year marks 50 years on....about 25 of us met in London in February for a really marvellous lunch and session of reminiscence. We sang all the songs again. We chatted about what an unusual coming together of  talents it was at a particular time. Many who appeared in 'Hang' have gone on to make their mark in show business of one kind or another. Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Michael Elwyn, Richard Durden, David Wood, and of course Braham Murray (who is now  a Grand Old Man of the Theatre)  were all there. So was Paul Collins, who became a judge and never had to sentence anyone to death. And Viv Ault (now Wylie) Susan Solomon, Jasmina Hamzavi, and Greg Stephens, one of the musicians and still playing beautifully....they were all there. Also, Bob Scott (now Sir Bob!) who even when he was a very young man, had a paternal presence and a fabulous voice. We are older.  Peter Wiles, the Stage Manager was there and still seeing, along with David Plowright, that  everything ran like clockwork. Max McBurney who played banjo couldn't come but he did sent me a memory which may be of great interest to fans of guitar/banjo music. 

Several of our number are now dead: John Gould, master musician, Iwan Williams, who wrote the lovely 'Tripe Seller's Lament,' Tim Godden with whom I was in love at the time and who did the lighting. Hope McIntyre is gone but memories of her glamour live on. And David Wright, who was the most beautiful young man I'd ever seen.  I asked for some memories of those days and the pieces that follow are what I've been sent.

I'm starting with David Wood... his picture  is below.  He did more than anyone to set the tone of the show and has since then been the chief archivist and has kept brilliant records. Moreover, he's the one who organises reunions and we're all in his debt. 



To get such a meaty role in such an experimental production in my very first term at Oxford was a dream come true. For us then to receive such plaudits at the Oxford Playhouse that we transferred – first to the famous Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon and then to London’s West End – was a huge cherry on the dream cake. I remember the audition – I had to improvise a commentary on a public hanging as though it were a sporting event. I remember the rehearsals, trying things out, with Braham, our director, cleverly assessing our individual skills and finding ways to utilise them. I remember commenting that to use THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS as our ironic closing number was a great idea, but why not have a new song rather than an existing one. ‘Go away and write one, then!’, barked Braham. I did, and sang it to him next day. THE SHOW’S THE THING was accepted, I was asked to write more, and suddenly I was a songwriter. Thanks to HDYH, fifty years on I’m still writing songs for my shows. HDYH introduced me to musical genius John Gould, with whom I performed, wrote and ran a theatre company for forty nine years until his early demise in 2012. I’ll never forget, in the Opening Parade of our circus-themed production, running across the stage and jumping joyfully into the arms of dear Bob (later Sir Bob) Scott. Da Da!!! We both played clowns. And before every performance my treat was to visit the girls’ dressing room, where the lovely (and much missed) Hope McIntyre would backcomb my extra-long locks into a wild afro. HDYH gave me my first tv appearance – we were featured in the BBC Arts programme MONITOR. And I was even nominated as Best Newcomer to the West End in the VARIETY Critics’ Poll. All at the age of 20. What more could I, theatre-mad from the age of six, ever wish for? Two years later, the incomparable songstress Adele Weston, Bob Scott, John Gould and I were reunited and back in the West End in FOUR DEGREES OVER, our post-degree gold-plated entree into the real world. HDYH opened up for me a magical world I am thrilled to be still part of..
 David Wood OBE

SIR BOB SCOTT WRITES:


I remember a lot, like all of us trooping off to No11 Downing Street before a performance to have drinks with Reginald Maudling (his son was a friend of someone)and most of us arriving on stage drunk to the disgust of Braham. I think he was specially cross because he had not been at the party. I also remember Princess Margaret coming to the show one night and sitting Front Row Stage Left – literally below my feet when I sang Sam Hall. All went well for a verse or two until I got to the word “Parson” and my emphasis was on the “s” and suddenly a terrible glob of spit landed fair and square on the Royal lap. At which point she raised her programme either to protect herself or to find out the perpetrator`s name so that he could be taken to the Tower. I remember Michael Emrys-Jones (now Michael Elwyn)  making me corpse dreadfully once. I remember a whole group of us waiting for the Reviews after the First Night Party and opening the Mail to read Bernard Levin and being rocked back by the one word headline – BRILLIANT. It all seemed so easy and normal somehow. What a crazy thing for us all. 




DAVID PLOWRIGHT  writes: 

One memory of Hang in the West End which stays with me is the night when the communal flat was full and the only place I could find to sleep was the top floor bathroom with some mangy blankets. Not many people can say that they've caught crabs in Reginald Maudling's bath! 
(note for the young. Reginald Maudling was Chanceller of the Exchequer at the time. Hence the party at Number 11 Downing Street ...AG)



‘
MICHAEL ELWYN writes a characteristically witty piece which is pretending to be part of a historical novel!

An extract from THE SHADOW OF THE NOOSE by Michaela Jones

Oxford in the winter of  fifty years ago was  a cold, bleak city.  The rain knifed down the alley way outside the Gloucester Arms as a black leather clad figure emerged from the warm fug of the inn and made a run for the stage door opposite,  a Gauloises clenched in his nervous fingers.  The Lord Murray, Master of the Experimental Revels, was about to confront his destiny; and so were the merry band of youthful rogues and vagabonds who awaited him inside the Playhouse…
‘History was indeed made that February night.  The dreaming spires awoke from sleep to watch a tale of supreme dramatic  horror, laced with biting wit and soaring songs.  The audience applause rolled on and on, out of Beaumont Street, into the surrounding colleges  - where the quadrangles resounded to one of the  greatest theatrical triumphs Oxford had ever seen,  And outside the Playhouse, The Lord Murray, somewhat drunk with success, was suddenly approached by an elegantly dressed stranger. 
My name is Michael, Duke of Codron.  You may know that I am Master of  the West End Revels. Hang Down Your Head And Die is extraordinary. It must have another life  - on a larger stage. I propose we open  next month at the Comedy Theatre, London.’   For once, the Lord Murray was almost lost for words. ‘Yes’ he gasped. They shook hands.  And the stranger vanished into the night.



PETER WILES writes: 

I was in  my first year when I was lucky enough to get swept into the HDYH whirlpool of excitement. Val Myers who was stage managing was my mentor. She, along with the wonderful staff at the Oxford Playhouse, including the lovely Ken Bonfield, taught me a huge amount. I remember the professionalism of the show. To end us as a youngster 'on the book' in the West End was amazing. I think capital punishment was abolished in 1965. I suppose one can't estimate Hang's influence in helping to end the barbaric practice?





PAUL COLLINS (later a Judge in the real world)  writes: 

 I was parachuted in for the week in Stratford - a great thrill. I had been playing Toby Belch (in a production of Twelfth Night which was directed by Michael Rudman and starred Michael York) and unlike Emrys, couldn't do both at the same time! Unbelievably I had the no 1 dressing room with a balcony overlooking the Avon, with a hip bath. Similar luxury never repeated. 



MAX MCBURNEY, guitar player extraordinary writes: 


At the time when "Hang" was running in the UK, from February to April 1964, there was a whole new generation of British guitarists coming along on the folk/acoustic/roots scene, with a new way of playing.

Foremost among these were Bert Jansch and Davy Graham and I first bought their LPs in the year after "Hang". I hadn't heard of them at the time of the show.


The claw-hammer style they introduced is actually derived from five-string banjo playing, where the first finger picks up, the nails of the right hand drive down and the thumb follows through on the fifth string, a drone. By hammering on or pulling off notes, this creates a very satisfactory rhythm: bum-diddy, bum-a-diddy.

On the guitar, the thumb plays two beats in the bar on the bass strings, while the fingers play the melody line on the top strings. The little finger is normally anchored in front of the bridge. You can watch Mark Knopfler doing it at:


One of our fastest songs was "900 miles", with the tempo depending on what Greg and I decided at that evening's strategic planning session in the Hand and Racquet. Dickon  Reed would come out stage right and we would belt into the song, in E minor and G.

I used bluegrass picking for this song, a combination of first and second fingers with thumb that makes for a faster performance. It was the style that Earl Scruggs made famous.
After one performance, I think one of the hated matinees, two guys came rushing into the band's changing room at the Comedy, one asking "Who was the guy doing the fantastic banjo?" He sounded American. We exchanged a few pleasantries, no contact developed and I never saw him again.

However, many years later I picked up a CD with early pieces by Bert Jansch and was surprised to hear him doing the same song with classic banjo accompaniment on his second LP, It Don't Bother Me, in December 1965. 



It seems he had a tendency to adopt an American accent. Could it have been? 




↧
Viewing all 2764 articles
Browse latest View live
More Pages to Explore .....
Search

Latest Images

Nonprofit donates custom home in this East Bay city for Marine injured in...

Nonprofit donates custom home in this East Bay city for Marine injured in...

April 23, 2024, 7:00 am
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo...

New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo...

April 22, 2024, 6:00 am
Ukraine bans military from online gambling amid addiction concerns

Ukraine bans military from online gambling amid addiction concerns

April 22, 2024, 5:17 am
ಮಂಡ್ಯದಿಂದ ಸುಮಲತಾ ದೂರ; ಹೆಚ್‌ಡಿಕೆ ಪರ ಪ್ರಚಾರಕ್ಕಿಳಿಯದ ಸಂಸದೆ –ಬರ್ತಾರೆ ನೋಡೋಣ ಎಂದ...

ಮಂಡ್ಯದಿಂದ ಸುಮಲತಾ ದೂರ; ಹೆಚ್‌ಡಿಕೆ ಪರ ಪ್ರಚಾರಕ್ಕಿಳಿಯದ ಸಂಸದೆ –ಬರ್ತಾರೆ ನೋಡೋಣ ಎಂದ...

April 20, 2024, 8:08 pm
OCBC Bank Singapore Offers Up to 2.8% p.a. Fixed Deposit Promotion from 21...

OCBC Bank Singapore Offers Up to 2.8% p.a. Fixed Deposit Promotion from 21...

April 20, 2024, 12:38 pm
National Poetry Month 2024: Maxine Starr

National Poetry Month 2024: Maxine Starr

April 19, 2024, 9:56 am
Vegan Chicken Pot Pie

Vegan Chicken Pot Pie

April 19, 2024, 9:18 am
Firefox UX: On Purpose: Collectively Defining Our Team’s Mission Statement

Firefox UX: On Purpose: Collectively Defining Our Team’s Mission Statement

April 19, 2024, 7:03 am
New $4.5 million East Bay trail path will connect bicyclists, pedestrians to...

New $4.5 million East Bay trail path will connect bicyclists, pedestrians to...

April 18, 2024, 11:05 am
Photographer Gifts for Clients / Print Packaging / 4x6 Photo Box by...

Photographer Gifts for Clients / Print Packaging / 4x6 Photo Box by...

April 17, 2024, 6:48 pm