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Talking About Our Generation by Kate Lord Brown

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How do you define historical fiction? Is it fiction set in the past? Over thirty years ago? Or set before the living experience of the writer? I've just finished the new draft of a novel set in the 1970s - so it is 'historical' if you use the 30 year rule. It is certainly ancient history to a group of schoolchildren I spoke to recently about 'bringing the past to life' - I showed them pictures of a penny farthing and a Chopper. Guess which one they thought we rode in the 1970s.

Yesterday involved a long, hot visit to the phone souq, thanks to a catastrophe involving an end of term pool party and an iphone, and there was plenty of time to ponder how accelerated our lives are now, and the rapid advances in technology. The display case in the photo above caught my eye. Nothing dates a work of fiction whether it's a novel or a film quicker than the technology used. The 'History' display reminded me of my first mobile, bought for my first job driving hundreds of miles around East Anglia for an arts festival. 'Brick' is an apt description. Researching old phones last night I came across these curious clips from 1928 and 1938 which claim to show early (or time travelling?!) users of mobile technology. A relation of the young woman shown has come forward recently to say that the factory was developing early wireless technology:


Anachronisms are the bane of historical fiction writers' lives - it is so easy to slip up, and there is always a kind reader ready to point out mistakes. Thinking of History Girls of the future, I feel for them, trying to keep track of  which phone, or computer, or tablet was around at the time their novels are set. Everything is changing so fast. I began my writing 'career' penning love letters on the Exe Valley school bus for friends to send to their boyfriends at the local boarding school, and still prefer pen and ink. My children are still taught cursive script at school, but are far more adept at keyboard skills. Dad's first computer, a huge Commodore that took up half his office in the 70s probably had less power than the dear, departed waterlogged iphone. Learning to type on huge clunky manual typewriters in the late 80s under Mrs Leach's formidable eye, ('I typed Le Carre's novels, girls'), early green screen computers were used for the 'word processing' Pitman's certificate, rather like those in 'Jumpin' Jack Flash':


That script, with Jonathan Pryce's delicious voice bringing the typed words to life, was one of the more successful uses of technology in fiction - but boy does it look dated now. 

One of the best things about writing historical fiction is that the need for suspense is supported by the lack of technology. Waiting for a letter is endlessly more romantic than the instant gratification of an email or the ping of a text. Ink and paper or an 'I luv u', which would you choose? If we are, as some believe, heading towards an Omega Point of singularity in 2040, a convergence of technology and humanity, I wonder what lies ahead for future History Girls. It is enough to keep you awake at 4am, but as long as even Apple's finest is fragile enough to be thwarted by a pre-teen diving into a pool with it in her pocket, perhaps we have a few years yet to ensure the future is bright. 


NEWS ITEMS ON THIS DAY IN 1914 by Leslie Wilson

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Local  pre-war cricket heroes
source;wikimedia images

You might have read in your newspaper, a hundred years ago today, that Black Jester had won the St George's Stakes at the Liverpool Races; Yorkshire had beaten Nottinghamshire at Leeds, by 97 runs; rain had spoiled play in the Hampshire v. Sussex match at Southampton. The game ended in a draw. Source: Daily Herald© Trinity Mirror.


Also in the Daily Herald you could have read:


SUFFRAGIST STOPS HER TRIAL.

Belfast Judge Powerless Before Her Protests

Lively scenes were witnessed in the Belfast Assize yesterday when Miss Dorothy Evans*, the Suffragist organiser, refused to allow her trial to proceed. The judge asked her to remember she was a lady, whereupon she declared she stood there as a woman. The accused interrupted so frequently that the case had to be adjourned. On resuming she informed the judge that she did not intend to allow the trial to go on. The judge then adjourned the case to the next Assizes, ordering the accused to be kept in custody.
Cartoon from Punch magazine, 1910, by Arthur Wallis Mills
















The Devon and Exeter Gazette informed its readers where they could get the paper on holiday: in Bovey Tracey, from Miss A.M.Pook at the Post Office. In Budleigh Salterton, from F.W. Dalgliesh, bookseller; there were details of outlets among others in Lynton and Lynmouth, Lyme Regis, Ilfracombe, Paignton, Teignmouth and Tavistock. Alternatively, 7d (old pence) per week would get them copies forwarded post free. © Local World Ltd

The Cornishman reported that the United Methodist Band of Hope (a temperance organisation) of Marazion held their annual outing on Wednesday, and to the number of 80 visited Carbis Bay'. in jersey cars(??) furnished by Mr R.J. Hutchens of Penzance. It further reported on the sudden death of Mr Richard Sedgeman, aged 40, of North Road, Goldsithney, who was planting broccoli in a field when he 'fell on his knees and expired almost immediately.' The lad who was assisting him asked him what was the matter, and 'deceased only said, 'Go after some more plant.' He did not speak again'

The Cornishman further reported the annual 15-day training of the Cornwall R.G.A 1 and 2 Heavy Batteries, which 'obtained very useful results by practice over the ranges, which offer peculiar facilities for observation of fire, and much valuable knowledge has been gained by officers, non-com officers, and men.' The weather had been 'very favourable..on no occasion has firing been interfered with by mist and rain.'© Local World Limited.

The Birmingham Daily Mail told its readers about a workmen's strike in St Petersburg, and battles between police officers and strikers. Barricades were erected, police were wounded, and shops were shut. Tramway services in the capital were suspended. In addition, a band of strikers held up a passenger train from St Petersburg, forcing the driver to leave the locomotive and the passengers to leave their carriages. They then knocked down the telegraph posts and blocked the line. However, gendarmerie and troops were sent out to guard the line; subsequently every train was followed by an engine with an armed escort. Workers in Thornton's cloth mills and other factories belonging to British firms went out, and the strike was said to be of a pan-Russian nature. Meanwhile, the French president, Poincaré, was visiting the Emperor at the Peterhof Palace, and Sweden was said to fear an attack by Russia, 'and is reinforcing its army with a view to removing this misunderstanding.' M. Poincaré was to visit Sweden on Friday, and was supposed to explain that Russia did not intend to attack anyone. Meanwhile, M.Sassonoff and M. Viviani 'have examined the Balkan question.'
Drawn by unknown Austrian newspaper artist:
Wikimedia Images
The paper further reported that the view of 'official circles in Berlin' on the situation between Austria and Servia (as the country was then called) after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, was that if there was an armed conflict it could and ought to be localised. Count Reventlow, then a journalist writing in the 'Tageszeitung' (German Daily News) asserted that 'the tendency of German policy is not insistently warlike and..Germany does not wish an armed conflict between Austria and Servia' but that 'public opinion in Germany is without limitation on the side of our ally, and only desires that she may vigorously safeguard her rights and legitimate interests, stand fast, and not allow herself to be intimidated.'© Trinity Mirror.

But it was late that same afternoon that Count Giesl, Austria-Hungary's ambassador in Belgrade, visited the Serbian Foreign Ministry and read out to him the ultimatum to Serbia, which had been carefully composed so that Serbia would under no circumstances feel able to comply with its demands. The situation was one that we might recognise; a Great Power, feeling threatened by a terrorist outrage and determined to do something decisive, wanted to wage war, though there was scant evidence that the country concerned had anything to do with the act of terrorism. 9/11 and Iraq, anyone? The Dual Monarchy thought they could knock out Serbia, and if the conflict did spread, there was a fatalistic feeling both in Vienna and Berlin that war would have to come some time and it might as well be now. There was an Emperor in Berlin who was eager to prove himself in conflict (like George W.Bush).
Photo: Studio
Thomas Heinrich Voigt, court photographer

The ultimatum 'accused the Serbian government of tolerating criminal activities on its soil and demanded that it take immediate steps to end them, including dismissing any civilian or military officials Austria-Hungary chose to name, closing down nationalist newspapers and reforming the education curriculum to get rid of anything that could be construed as propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary.' In addition, Serbia 'was ordered to accept the participation of the Dual Monarchy in suppressing subversion within Serbia's borders and in the inevestigation and trial of any Serbian conspirators responsible for the assassinations.' (The War that Ended Peace, by Margaret MacMillan, Profile Books 2013)

Serbia was given 48 hours to respond.

On 25th July, the Daily Herald reported


WAR IMMINENT AGAIN IN SERBIA.

The German government, it reported, was 'using its influence to localise the conflict.'© Trinity Mirror.

But the match had been applied to the cord and the flame was licking along to the powder-keg. On the 28th July, Austria declared war on Serbia.

*Dorothy Evans was arrested for possession of explosives, following arson attacks.

Newspaper quotes all obtained from the British Newspaper Archive.








Monkey Business by Elizabeth Chadwick

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In 1158, Thomas Becket, chancellor to King Henry II set out on a diplomatic mission to France aimed at promoting a marriage alliance between the two royal firms, and also one suspects  playing a game of 'mine's bigger than yours' between Henry II and King Louis VII.   Rather like modern commercial trade promotions, Becket arrived in France with a cavalcade that reflected all the riches of the empire over which his master was lord.  The circus had come to town and announced its arrival with music and fanfares.

The entourage consisted of over two hundred mounted followers to add dignity to Becket's standing, among them knights and pages, clerks, stewards and servants, all of them arrayed in costly garments. Becket himself had twenty four changes of clothing, most of which were worn once and then bestowed as gifts. He had several packs of hunting dogs with him and various birds of prey from his mews.

There were numerous baggage wagons each pulled by five horses in line. Each horse had a groom and each groom had a mastiff dog as big and strong as a lion to guard the wagon.  Two of the wagons carried barrels of  ale for handing out to French bystanders who were not familiar with such a beverage. The rest of the wagons contained more food and drink, cushions, bed linens, furnishings, and various other items of household paraphernalia - all high status and embellished.

Beyond the wagons came a caravan of twelve packhorses laden with the most valuable items - books, gold and silver plate, the items of Becket's chapel, basins, spoons, salt cellars, rich vestments.  Each packhorse once again had its groom, and on each pack animal's back, a monkey had been trained to sit like a little jockey.  The monkeys themselves were intended as gifts for the French high nobility and clergy.

UK publication
September 2014


While researching and writing my forthcoming novel THE WINTER CROWN due out in September, I tried to imagine what it would have been like for the people who had to gather together this menagerie - the sheer logistics of assembling all the different aspects, and then transporting it across the Channel.  It must have been daunting but from reports in the chronicles, it appears to have succeeded and been one of the wonders of its age.

A scene in the novel required me to write about one of Becket's monkeys.  Not being a subject I had covered before in my research, it was interesting reading up on the background of such creatures in medieval daily life and I thought I'd share some of the information I came across.

When Medievals referred to monkeys they meant both the tailed and the untailed - they didn't differentiate between monkeys (tailed) and apes (untailed) as we do.  Tailed monkeys were the one of choice though and seem to have been widely available in Western Europe in the twelfth century.  They were popular bets, especially among members of the clergy, although not everyone was enamoured, and Hugh of St. Victor was of the opinion that they were 'filthy' and 'detestable.' Scholar Albertus Magnus in his De Animalibus opined that while monkeys might play with other pets, they should never be viewed as completely tame and could be dangerous.  He calls it 'a trickly animal with bad habits.' He describes monkeys as eating vermin  found on people's heads and clothing.  However, when not dining off their owner's parasitic occupants, monkeys would be fed a variety of foodstuffs, but nuts were a staple. Chronicler Richard of Durham reported on Robert of Coquina, Bishop of Durham 1274-83 who kept two spoiled pet monkeys that he fed on peeled almonds from a silver spoon.


Monkeys could be tamed by being chained to a heavy block, and they invariably wore a collar and chain. They were, of course, a high status pet to have and were frequently given as gifts, being seen as particularly suitable for clergy and women.

I was also interested to find out that animals in the Middle Ages, while having personal names, also had generic ones.  Redbreasts were called Robin, pies were called Mag, Wrens were called Jenny.  Tomcats were Gyb and monkeys were Robert.  I enjoyed making use of that detail in the novel!

Monkeys are ubiquitous in medieval imagery where frequently it is a symbol of sin, malice, cunning and lust -all the baser elements of humankind. They also stood for folly and vanity.- although none of this prevented them from being the popular pets of clergymen - perhaps as a constant reminder of the sins and follies of mankind!  It is ironic that Thomas Becket, a future Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr-saint should have travelled to Paris with twelve such in his entourage!

Dancing Homer by Caroline Lawrence

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Zeus's box of trinkets and props
Last week I saw two dramatic stagings of Homer's Iliad. The first was Simon Armitage’s The Last Days of Troy at the Globe. It was interesting, but never gripped me. I felt that sense of detachment I usually get at the theatre, that I am just watching actors play a role. I also found the production far too ‘British’ for my taste, with the red-haired model Lily Cole as Helen and one of my old Cambridge professors as Zeus. OK, it wasn’t really one of my old professors, but Richard Bremmer might well have been. He portrayed the king of the gods as a rake thin, absent-minded intellectual in linen trousers and sunhat with a box of trinkets for sale. 


The second interpretation took place a few days later in the basement of the cruciform building at UCL (which required the help of Ariadne and her ball of thread to find.) On one of the hottest days of the year, about forty people filed into a lecture hall usually devoted to medical lectures in order to watch a reading and dance called 'Dancing Winged Words'. 

Then a slightly sweaty Greek professor began to read passages from Richard Lattimore's translation of the Iliad while an androgynous woman in her mid-thirties danced it out. 


The effect was electric, like a punch in the stomach or a hand around the throat. Not usually one for tears, my eyes welled up again and again. There was something incredibly powerful and primal about the combination of Homer’s poetry and a single dancer inhabiting half a dozen different parts. Deb Pugh moved fluidly between depicting fiery Achilles and dour Hector, between fickle Aphrodite and vengeful Hera. She flickered from god to mortal, man to woman, alive to dead. She wore a tunic the colour of a bloody liver and her wiry limbs and boyish physique made her equally believable as a warrior as goddess. Barefoot and grunting – without props of any kind – she swung a sword, lifted shield, fired arrows, died and lived. Once or twice the reader, professor Antony Makrinos, wandered into the action and allowed her to cling to him or cover his eyes. Sometimes spare but moving piano music played. 

The whole thing was even more artificial than the Globe version but for some reason it worked. Perhaps it was the simplicity of the production, combined with the skill of the reader, performer, musician and director that gave this low-tech interpretation of Homer’s great epic its emotional impact. 


During the performance, part of UCL's one-week Summer School in Homerit came to me that I was watching something close to Roman pantomime. The only real difference was that the dancer was female not male and not wearing a mask, and that the music was pre-recorded piano rather than the usual small group of wind, string and percussion instruments. 

I have always found it fascinating that of the three most popular types of entertainment in Imperial Rome, one is quite forgotten. 

The most popular entertainment was the chariot race. Not everybody enjoyed beast fights and gladiatorial combats (Seneca for example) but almost everybody loved the racetrack or ‘circus’ Hence the famous phrase of Juvenal ‘bread and circuses’, referring to the food and entertainment that will keep a populace happy.

But the forgotten entertainment is pantomime. Not what we think of as pantomime today (a guy in white face trying to get out of an invisible box), a Roman pantomime troupe usually consisted of one male dancer (the pantomimus), a small chorus and a few instruments consisting of wind, string and percussion. The singer sang the story while the pantomimus danced it out. He wore a mask, often two-sided, so he could show different profiles to the audience, and with a closed mouth as he did not need to speak. The troupe mostly acted out stories from Greek mythology and were therefore slightly more highbrow that mime or comedy. 

I give my readers a glimpse of pantomime in my fourteenth Roman Mystery, The Beggar of Volubilis, where Flavia Gemina and her friends fall in with a small travelling troupe consisting of one dancer, one female singer and two musicians. 

When I was researching pantomime for my book, the source I found most useful was a succinct article by the German scholar Wilfried Stroh in the book Gladiators and Caesars (translated by Anthea Bell). Stroh emphasises how popular Roman pantomime dancers were, often filling Roman and Greek theatres. Their skill, claims Stroh, was probably superior to anything we can imagine in dance today. It is strange, he concludes, that no modern dancer has yet tried breathing new life into the fine artistic genre of Roman pantomime, which integrated as it did music, dance and poetry. 

Last week I caught a glimmer of what Roman pantomime might have been like and I think I understand its great appeal. I hope that Professor Makrinos and his team – and/or others – will go on to explore this forgotten but powerful form of storytelling.

Caroline Lawrence's Roman Mysteries for kids 8+ are all available in Kindle or eBook format. 

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUMS by Eleanor Updale

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It was only an hour, but what fun. With a little group of local history fans, I was allowed into the store where Edinburgh Council keeps the exhibits for which it can't find space in the city's many museums.
Like so many publicly-owned facilities, this store is the victim of cuts, with hardly anyone left to look after it, but it is in good hands. Paul McAuley is one of
life's great enthusiasts, a skilled archaeologist and conservator, and probably a natural hoarder, too.
Once I got over my shock at the number of 20th century domestic objects that looked rather too familiar, I was hooked.
There was everything from fragments of wartime bombs to textiles, toys, ceramics, clocks, a Lord Provost's fancy chair,
and objects accidentally broken while on display.
This student from France was painstakingly restoring a pot from Lauriston Castle,smashed when an owl landed on a mantelpiece.
Mr McAuley himself has recently cleaned this ornate memorial to George Meikle Kemp, the self-taught architect who designed the Scott Monument.


 Under a table nearby was the bust on which the framed portrait was based, itself the victim of an accident, waiting for help.

The store was a glorious mixture: This is an 18th century overmantel depicting a local legend featuring a ghostly dog.

It (the picture, not the dog) was rescued from someone's coal cellar and donated to the city.
Not far away is a set of pantomime costumes -- so many were sent in by a theatre that many more have been passed on to local drama groups.
There are model stage sets sitting on top of a cupboard
alongside this evidence of a rather enlightened (to my eye)
policy towards youth employment.

The numbers, by the way, should read 15 and 18 - some wag long ago blanked out the1s.  And the dead arm hanging over the rail alongside belongs to a mannequin from a defunct display.
Round the corner is a seventeenth century sign for the guild of Hammer-men.


On the shelves behind that, there are radios, elderly computers, and even brown cardboard boxes of human bones dug up when they were preparing for the tram (which, incidentally, has no ventilation, is like an oven in the summer heat and - thanks to the scandalous budget over-runs - doesn't go anywhere near the burial ground that was disturbed to make way for it).

If I wasn't so old, I might have mistaken these hairdryers for ancient instruments of torture.

The council is still being given wonderful things. The original designs for the grand
Usher Hall have arrived from an architect's office in England. We were told that they include fine drawings for even the smallest detail of door furniture. They will go to an archive where they can be curated properly, and perhaps even (as originals or digital copies) displayed in the hall itself.


Of course, the city of Edinburgh is not alone in having so many exhibits that can't be shown. I wonder how much is in store at the National Museum of Scotland, which seems to pride itself on having acres of empty space, in the current fashion brought on by generous capital grants from the National Lottery. This money seems to have resulted in lots of exciting work for architects, but little for the back-room staff who might fill those spaces with interesting things...
But I'm a dinosaur. I like museums to be stuffed with the unexpected, and graced with labels explaining what you are looking at, where it came from, and why it's there. In the new world of cafes, push buttons, am-dram re-enactments and play areas, I have no hope of seeing that style of display come back in my lifetime, but I bet it will one day, along with employment and respect for the people who know about, and look after, the contents of our museums.
Until then, I'll rely on places like the Edinburgh Collections Store to cheer me up.

www.eleanorupdale.com

The Tree of Peace by Carol Drinkwater

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I live on an olive farm in the south of France. Our property and its 300 olive trees have been an on-going source of inspiration for me and my writing for more than two decades. Four books (The Olive Farm, The Olive Season, The Olive Harvest and Return to the Olive Farm) recount episodes from my life on the farm while two others, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree are the result of a seventeen-month solo journey I made around the Mediterranean in search of the history, the secrets and the mythology of this most sacred of plants.

The olive tree and the oil that is pressed from its small stoned fruits have been the cause of many wars; olive culture and its trading earned ancient seafaring peoples shiploads of gold that was used to found empires. The fabulous city of Carthage, situated in modern-day Tunisia, was built by the Phoenicians on money earned through trading, and much of what they traded was olive oil. The Romans partially paid their soldiers in olive oil. Greece and Rome created a slave trade out of Africa to man their massive olive estates. King David hired armed guards to protect Israel’s olive groves as well as the warehouses where the nation’s precious oil was stored... I could cite stories from now till next year detailing the importance of the olive tree in the lives of Mediterranean people, a dominant weave in the historical tapestry of those who live on the banks of this shimmering sea.


One of my quests during my Med travels was to try to discover who, which nation, first cultivated the olive tree and pressed its fruits into rich golden oil. Who first plucked those bitter drupes and thought to squeeze them into an oil that has become a food, a cosmetic and a medicine? Olive oil was described by Homer as ‘Liquid Gold’. The Greeks jealously claim it as their heritage. The Israelis believe they own this ancient tradition. While the Phoenicians were largely responsible for the transportation of its agricultural knowledge to all points across the Mediterranean and even sailing beyond the Pillars of Hercules out into the Atlantic Ocean, turning both north and south to the wilder coasts of Portugal and Morocco. I like to imagine that, as well as the tall clay amphorae brimming with oil they were carrying on board their oared ships and the horticultural knowledge they were offering to barter, those vessels might have been chock-a-block with young silvery trees waving in the winds, rather like sea-faring nurseries.

There are some who argue that perhaps the Minoans of Crete were the first to create perfume, which they sold to the Egyptians to place in the tombs of their Pharoahs, by infusing olive oil with herbs and scented plants. Later, in the first century AD, Pliny the Elder (who died in the eruption that destroyed Pompeii), boasted that southern Italy produced the finest olive oil in the world. Of course, back then his land was not Italy and the 'world' to which he was alluding was the Mediterranean basin.


I have found clues and several plausible answers to my question, but no water-tight identity.

However, it seems more than reasonable to assert that the Middle East, in particular the swathe of fertile lands between what today is the Syrian-Turkish border all the way through Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, to the coast of Aquaba across to Eilat and into Egypt, gave birth to the industry that today has become a cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet and one of this region’s most lucrative comestible businesses. These were rich lands, warring lands where the tree of peace grew in abundance. It still grows in these parts in abundance. It remains a vital part of these countries’ diet and economy, but it has also become a weapon of war.


I began my seventeen-month quest in Beirut, the capital of modern-day Lebanon. Serendipity put wind in my sails and within my first two or three weeks on the road I had discovered in the mountains up behind the ancient port city of Byblos, two tiny groves of 6000-year-old olive trees. They are not wild trees, these are cultivated trees, and still fruiting.


This is one tree. Its central trunk has disintegrated over the centuries.
They were planted on manmade terraces bolstered by dry stone walls, which is a very common sight around the Mediterranean and is one of this region's oldest methods for preserving water, for keeping the soil irrigated. Standing alongside these sprawling ancients was an epiphanous moment for me. I had been hoping that my quest might unveil clues, facts, witness statements that would take my story back 2,000 years, but SIX thousand... This put a whole new perspective on history. These trees were planted by someone or a group of farmers before western man had an alphabet, before we could read or write. None of the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity or Islam – had come into being at that stage. Those trees gave me a benchmark. What if they could talk, I asked myself. What stories could they tell me? The history of the Mediterranean, was my answer.

In the light of this extraordinary find, I set out to trace the eastern basin of the Med, followed in book two, The Olive Tree, by the western Med. That first book, The Olive Route, ended in Palestine/Israel where I hooked up with a group of Jewish activists who took me into the West Bank to plant sapling olive trees on farmland that had been destroyed, uprooted by Israeli extremists. The trees were funded by these peace-seeking Israelis, most of whom were from Tel Aviv. We travelled in a convoy of coaches, passing through checkpoints until we found ourselves in a small deserted Arab village riven in two by the Separation Wall. By the time we reached the groves where the Arab olive trees had been uprooted and the acres had been turned into a rubbish dump, we probably numbered over three hundred. Men, women, children and dogs. It was March, Spring, almonds in blossom, and the sun was shining. Our trees were perhaps six months old.





Each of us dug a hole and planted a tree while beyond the barbed-wire fencing, IDF Hummers were cruising, watching us. Soldiers called through their loudspeakers. “You are wasting your time. We’ll dig those trees up again tomorrow.” Letters, words in Arabic and Hebrew were hastily painted in red on old torn sheets: ‘You dig, we plant, and we will plant again.’
It was an unforgettable day. It was history in the making, peopled by those living on the ground in a time of war. Only a dozen Arabs were allowed out of their village for two hours to plant with us. They arrived in a broken-down van laden with food prepared by their women who we never even glimpsed. We picnicked in the sunshine. Speeches were made. Fortunately someone translated for me.

I would have travelled on from the West Bank into Lebanon to complete the circle, to the village where I had begun with the 6,000-year-old trees, but this is a war zone; I could not pass through.

I said to my sapling as I placed it, a little wonkily, in the earth, ‘May you live to be six thousand.’


The first seeds of the next millennium of history were being sown.

History, like war, has many faces.









Something to Do, by Septima - by Louisa Young

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 Did you have this? Did you? 


I looked at it today for the first time in decades and I realised: I am history. Things are not now as they were when this fat, heavenly book was normal. (Also, can you see what I did, when looking for something to do? I coloured in the Os. Of course I did.)



And if you had it, did you have one of these inside? Not with my name, obviously - but did you have the Puffin Club Bookplates? Where you a Puffineer? If I say 'Sniffup', will some ancient tribal voice within you cry out 'Spotera!'? Are you interested in my red-plastic-foldered full set of Puffin Post? If so, please be in touch.



And this history is important history, to me at least. It concerns dates. According to the bookplate, the book belongs to Louise Young. But then, in the same writing, we have Louisa Young, written five times, all around it like a garland. Five times! 'How must she have felt, when writing that? Why did she do it?' Well, I can tell you. I remember it clearly. I was changing my name. There was a new girl at school, called Louise. I didn't like her. I didn't actually like the name Louise, either - sounded like wheeze. I had been waiting for my chance, gathering my courage. I remember writing the new names many times, so it would be strong enough to outweigh the old name. I remember writing it in different pens so it would look as if it had been written on different occasions, which I felt would give further strength to its case. I misspelt my surname, so as to give variety within the evidence. I think I was already reading Agatha Christie, though it seems unlikely with that bad handwriting. I had definitely read the Tales of Ancient Egypt (Roger Lancelyn Green? A Puffin Book, anyway) and I knew that Isis had power because she knew Ra's real name.

I think I may have been doing different writings on purpose too. To mystify anyone who might  investigate, and find that my real name was, in fact, Louise, and would charge me with the crime of misrepresentation, or cart me off to a dungeon or make me get rid of my new beautiful romantic dashing Italianate fraudulent A.

And now, a little more historical analysis gives us crucial information about this important ontological shift: the date. 'To Louise' (old version, nb) 'with love from Nannie, Christmas 1967'. Nannie had not yet got with the programme re the new name, and her handwriting is of a generation which by now often, can't write anymore: a handwriting learnt in the 20s and 30s. Nannie is 92 now. She does write, though she's largely blind and its largely illegible. I can read it though, because mostly she says the same things: thank you for the - , it was so lovely to see -, my leg is - , God bless and love to you all. The were six of us, and Nannie was the extra mother.




But back to the book. 




Undoubtedly I was a terrible nuisance, but I loved the book and I'm sure it shut me up.

Things to make!  I made these, mostly as presents for the adults who wouldn't play with me, so that they would suffer: 


They weren't very good, though I was excellent at pomanders to hang off them. I had a box, full of things to make things out of. I might have made the box, come to think of it. There was a lot of cutting and folding, and tabs, and glue. Cotton wool. Pompoms made of wool I never got the hang of. But carnations made from tissue paper, or paper hankies! Oh, and it was the sixties, there boxes of paper hankies in which the paper hankies were all different colours. Violet, lemon, pistachio (were there pistachios then? Perhaps not) rose and tangerine. I think my mother was a little annoyed. The bouquet of carnations was adorable though.

I wore this. 


Note there is no nonsense about this being an outfit for boys. Nothing was gender related. It was sewing, cooking, building, playing in bed (February, month of colds - I can still make a delightful mouse out of  a handkerchief, and I know how to make him jump). This Month's Pet - April, a Muscovy Duck. Weeding,with a lovely little chart of illustrations: Sowthistle, speedwell, plantain, scarlet pimpernel. Oh, and the illustrations are by Shirley Hughes! Colouring in, again, by me.

 


 I still don't know who wrote the book. Here is the mysterious introduction. Once I got round to reading it (several years later I suspect - what nipper reads introductions?) I realised Septima was not some Roman lady so grand she had no surname. For a while I examined each family I met, seeking to match up the children's names, the Julias and Davids, Simon and Ian, with the list here, just in case, to see if I might catch them out. Nancy Shepherd was the editor. But the seven who add up to Septima remain a mystery.




The advice they gave was good, it encouraged us to think for ourselves, and remains in my mind as the kind of thing I think I have always known, like a Dylan melody or a Shakespeare quotation. But I must have learnt all those things somewhere.



'If you do light a fire - '! Lord, the nostalgia for back then when children were treated reasonably. My friend Chris bought a combine harvester when he was fourteen, and hired himself out with it in the summer holidays.  Many years later Puffin, who have always been a lovely publisher to me, went into a bit of a tailspin because in my ancient Greece book, Halo, I wanted to give instructions on making a bow and arrow, and how to cook baklava. Everything had to start with 'first find a grown up'. Pah. 


There is one thing that I do it to this day. Seeing the diagrams again brought tears to my eyes. 
The little legs! The little fat conkers! They look like tiny good-tempered spaceships . . .



And I adjusted it. Behold: the Champagne Cork Chair. 
You will need: a bottle of champagne (make sure it's the good stuff), and a pair of tiny pliers, though you can do it with a pair of tiny hands and your teeth if you're strapped for pliers. 

1) Open the bottle and drink the contents, with friends (the easy bit). 
2) Unravel the wire from round the bottom of the cage, and slither it out through the loops (the tricky bit).
3) Bend it into a chair-back, using the existing curves to make a slight 18th-century feel.
4) Twist the ends tightly and neatly round the legs (the other tricky bit). 
5) Accept lavish admiration (the other easy bit.
Here's one I made earlier.



Look how loved this book was, and how well used.  


Tomorrow, I might make some things. Or just think about how much I learned.
This is what it says on flower arranging, and I do believe this is extremely good advice for any child on how to exist at all. 
It may actually be my philosophy for life: 
'Think about each thing and when you have studied carefully how and where it grows, then you will have a feeling for it and know how to use it'.  




A Comic Strip War, by Clare Mulley

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Can war be seriously examined through art inspired by American comic strips? As a biographer I am fascinated by the different ways in which human stories from the past can be effectively examined and presented, particularly when this touches on my own current area of interest, the Second World War. So I was captivated when a friend and neighbour, Brian Sanders, published a stunningly beautiful and evocative picture book memoir, Evacuee. Sandy, as I know him, is now working on the sequel, about his life in post-war London, and invited me over to have a look. 




If you are as stunned as I was by the cover of Evacuee, I should perhaps mention that Sandy has had a wonderful fifty-year career as a professional artist with commissions ranging from magazine illustration, Penguin book covers and postage stamps to being the official artist portraying the making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey during 1964-65, and designing the advertising poster for last year’s acclaimed television series, Mad Men. However, it is Sandy’s work portraying war, and the impact of war on lives, that fascinates me most.

As a young man, Sandy served in 45 Commando Royal Marines during the Suez Invasion and later in Cyprus. His irrepressible talent for capturing the scenes around him was soon noticed by the intelligence officer, and he was recruited into the Intelligence Section to record events, the movement of people and so on, as well as producing occasional private portraits. When he returned to Britain all his drawings were in his sea-kit bag, and had been stolen before he arrived. The only piece he has from this time is the one published in Soldier magazine, below, showing how far from reality the public image of life in the Libyan desert was at the time:


Tripoli 1957 


Sandy never sought a career as a war artist but commissions for various publications, and several series of stamps including those commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Second World War, naturally followed his experience and the trust placed in him as an artist who, as he put it, ‘had been there, and understood what war was’.


Some of Sandy's stamps commissioned to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the Second World War


Now a pacifist, Sandy has always aimed to report historically rather than comment through his art, letting events speak for themselves. ‘I wouldn’t glorify war’, he told me, but ‘in fact I have advertised war, I have done pieces for Officers Magazine and so on’. It was only when he came out of the Royal Marines that he gained a new perspective on Britain’s involvement in Suez, and his attitude started to shift.

After a rich career in what is called ‘lifestyle illustration of the 1960s', Sandy is now taking a very different look at the Second World War, focusing on his own childhood as a London evacuee in Saffron Walden, a market town in Essex. Free from the constraints of commission or briefs, this is a very personal project, the impact of which comes from both its clear sincerity and its wonderful evocation of time and place.   






Sandy told me that his great blessing is that he has always known he had to draw. The Evacuee project began with loose sheets of pictures drawn from memories, and collected in a small black folder until he suddenly realized there was a book there. He found no problem remembering what he saw, and felt, as a child; ‘my problem is eliminating pictures, not finding them’, he told me. Soon he realized that the book was naturally going to be told from the perspective of his younger self in the form of the American comics that he had collected during the war, and long afterwards. In this way the book speaks directly to ‘children of all ages’, from three or four, up to 65 or 70; ‘the people who were there’. As a result Evacuee is great fun, with hundreds of wonderfully evocative visual details, and the echoing refrain that rang in his ears as a boy; ‘because there’s a war on’. And yet although Sandy’s own father survived the war, he makes a point of recording without unnecessary elaboration that those of two of his friends did not. 

Evacuee is an honest book and this, combined with the stunning art-work, is where its power lies. ‘It’s about the people that I love, that I loved at the time’ Sandy says simply. Although increasingly conscious from readers’ reactions that the book is seen as a much-loved contribution to social history, his intentions were always just to record and let the pictures speak for themselves. This is a world beautifully observed by a child and reproduced by his adult self, which is at once deeply personal and yet also gloriously familiar. ‘It is deliberately for everyone’ Sandy told me, but because it is his own story it is also compellingly authentic. Surely this is social history at its best.

Sadly Evacuee is currently sold out, but the good news is that as I left Sandy this afternoon he was heading to his studio to work on the sequel about his life in post-war London and Saffron Walden holidays. I will let you know when it is out, but here is a sneak preview of a page in progress:




Life and Love during the Occupation, Amsterdam - by Sue Reid

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 Our guest for July is Sue Reid, whose work is always triggered by a historical event or character.

Sue Reid has always had a passion for history, and for writing stories about it, but it wasn’t until she had grown up and tried several careers that she  decided to try and get a story published. Her first book, Mill Girl, was published by Scholastic in 2002. Since then she has written a number of short stories and dramas for schools radio,  and  has had several more books published.




First love. Surely we can all remember it - its pain, its heartache, its joy. My book By My Side is about first love, between two teenagers living in Amsterdam. But unlike most of us, these two teenagers had to contend with issues that went far beyond the usual teenage romantic ones - Katrien was a Gentile, and Jan Jewish – and the time and place they lived in was the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands in WW11.

What made me choose such a time and place for a love story? I’m not sure that I can answer that easily. Maybe it’s the stories that choose us, rather than the other way round.

I’d often found myself thinking about the Nazi Occupation, and wondered what it must have been like to live through it – a fate we in Britain were fortunate to escape. And when I thought of the Occupation in Europe, it was always Amsterdam that came to mind.

Photo credit: Massimo Catarinella

I’d visited Amsterdam many years ago, and been bewitched by it – its beauty, its culture and the friendliness of its people. It was in Amsterdam too that I encountered one of the most poignant memorials to Nazi persecution I know – the annexe in the canal house on Prinsengracht, now a museum - a short walk from Herengracht where I was staying - where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. Since I visited it the museum has expanded and recent pictures of the exterior show long queues waiting outside. There was no queue the day I went, and it wasn’t crowded inside, but the atmosphere was so overpowering that I found I couldn’t stay inside it for long. The annexe had a profound effect on me then and I can recall it even now.


Round the corner from the house is the famous life-size bronze statue of Anne Frank, sculpted by Mari Andriessen. It stands in front of the famous Westerkerk, surely one of the city’s most beautiful churches, inside which fittingly the artist Rembrandt is buried. The regular chiming of its tower clock comforted Anne - its familiarity a reminder of another time, a safer time.

Photo credit: P.H. Louw

Other memorials in Amsterdam remind you of the Nazi Occupation – in Jonas Daniel Meijer Square, in front of the Portuguese synagogue the statue of ‘De Dokwerker’ stands framed by trees. It too was cast in bronze by the sculptor Mari Andriessen and unveiled in 1952 to honour all those who took part in the General Strike of February 1941. It was in May 1940 that the Nazi ‘Blitzkrieg’ had overrun the neutral Netherlands and imposed a policy of ‘Nazification’ and anti-Jewish decrees on the country, beginning with the gradual dismissal of Jews from public life. The strike was organized by the Communist party – banned by the Nazis like all other Dutch non-Fascist parties - as a protest against the treatment of the Jews and the forced labour draft that sent young men to work in Germany. There is nothing idealized about the sculpture – it shows a rather portly man, stomach bulging over the waistband of his trousers - and to me is all the more affecting for that. The strike, which began in Amsterdam and spread to other Dutch towns and cities, was the first organized protest against the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in Occupied Europe. Reprisals were harsh, but in spite of this two more strikes were to follow, though resistance after this was mostly conducted covertly, underground. Each year now the town’s officials and members of Holocaust organisations march past the statue, in remembrance of the strike, on its anniversary, 25 February.


Photo credit: P.H. Louw

In the heart of the Jewish Cultural Quarter stands the Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theatre), its façade restored, now a teaching centre, and memorial to the many Jews who were held there, while awaiting deportation.

Memorials like these help keep a city’s past alive - the stories of the people who lived there woven into their bricks and mortar. Stories like Katrien’s and Jan’s – two young people brought together and divided by war. I didn’t know when I visited Amsterdam that I would write about it one day. That Katrien and Jan would walk down the streets I walked down, gaze over the canals I gazed over, wake like me to see Herengracht muffled by winter fog. I begin their story early in 1942, when a chance meeting with a courageous boy who goes to the aid of an elderly man inspires Katrien to begin a diary. Her unfolding friendship with Jan she tries to keep secret – within the pages of her diary - to protect him and their relationship. A diary written now about a long gone time. But I hope there is something of the feeling of that time and place in its pages, of the poignancy of first love experienced under such difficult conditions.


Of course there are many other places where the past is preserved. When I was researching my book I spent hours listening to recordings, reading newspapers and obituaries, diaries and other personal accounts written by people who lived through that time, discovering tales of heroisim like Jaap Penraat’s, who safely marched hundreds of young Jews out of the city at the height of the Occupation – a real-life escape I model my fictional Jan’s on. But there is I think something particularly affecting about walking about a city and suddenly being brought face to face with its past. A monument maybe. Or an old building. The atmosphere in a house. It lingers in the mind, helps us to remember. And it is important that we do. The past inspires us. Teaches us. Warns us. In a year like this, when we remember an earlier world war, when the ugly spectres of extremism, racism, fascism, are rising again, its messages are timely.

Sue's website is: http://www.suereidauthor.com

Cabinet of Curiosities, by Laurie Graham

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This
was a tool of my grandfather's trade. Any guesses?


My childish impression of my grandfather was of a man who knew lots of people, most of them with funny names, and that he sometimes had rolls of banknotes in the inside pocket of his commodious coat. I had no idea he was a criminal.

Between 1853 and 1961 the only legal way to bet on a horse race was at the track, and that was no use to the working man, stuck at his factory bench for fifty weeks of the year. Necessity being the mother of invention, the bookmaker's runner was born.
 

I can see that my grandfather had all the qualities required in a bookie's runner: sociable, reliable, discreet. His betting slips were written on scraps of envelope or the back of a cigarette packet and the punters' names were disguised. That's why he knew all those men with names like Nobby and Bandy and Half-Pint. He also  -  how clear it becomes now  -  was very friendly with the local policeman, who I suppose should have been nicknamed Blind-Eye, and had a slightly more formal relationship with the only man in the neighbourhood who owned a car. Mr Taylor.  He was the bookmaker and Grandad was his runner, earning a nice but illegal little commission.
 

The bets went into a leather bag which was secured with a time-lock before the race started. That little gadget ensured there could be no betting after the Off. Some bookie's runners worked on street corners. My grandfather was more of a Lounge Bar man, but he also did business in the kitchen while my grandmother pretended to polish the front door knocker and, I now realise, kept an eye out for snoops or zealous new bobbies. Sunday morning was pay-out time for those who had winnings and I recall one week when the kitchen floor was carpeted with enormous white £5 notes. A bad day for Mr Taylor, but my Grandad seemed to have done all right. The following week I accompanied him into the big city where he bought me a knickerbocker glory and a fountain pen and treated himself, ever the Dapper Dan, to a very expensive Crombie overcoat.
 

He died in 1959 and so didn't live to see his role disappear when off-course betting was legalised in 1961. I wonder what he'd have done with himself after betting shops appeared on every High Street. And I would dearly love to know what became of his clock bag.

July competition

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Give a good answer to this question in the Comments below and win one of five copies of July guest Sue Reid's novel, By My Side.

What place, monument or building most inspires you with a sense of its past?

Were afraid our competitions are open to UK residents only.

Closing date 7th August.

The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez review by Mary Hoffman

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Ann Swinfen is no stranger to this blog; indeed she has become one of our invaluable team of Reserves - that group of stalwarts who write "anytime blogposts" which we can use if there is an emergency or a regular contributor needs a scheduled month off.

So it's a great pleasure to be able to review Ann's - I was going to say "latest" book but she is so prolific and quick that the sequel is already available and the third book coming soon.

To return to the first book, The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, England in 1586 is a dangerous place. Queen Elizabeth the First has been on the throne for nearly thirty years and, at fifty and without an acknowledged heir, is now the subject of many plots to replace her with a Catholic monarch. Her chief Secretary is also her spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.

In London, where William Shakespeare is shortly to arrive and the life expectancy for men is 29 years, lives a sixteen-year-old boy and his father, the physician Dr Baltasar Alvarez. They are Portuguese Jews in flight from an appalling family catastrophe at first only hinted at.

Christoval, known as Kit, is learning his father's mystery, how to treat and heal sickness and injury. One night a young Player from the Earl of Leicester's Company calls for the doctor to come and treat a man in the Marshalsea Prison but Baltasar is away and young Christoval takes the case (which might have been poisoning but turns out only to be caused by bad oysters).

From that night, his adventures multiply and Christoval ends up in employ of Walsingham as a code-breaker and spy.

"The plot thickens" is a cliché but this one really does. Christoval has a secret of his own and a past filled with horrors, which we occasionally glimpse. But in his new life as one of Walsingham's "eyes and ears" he finds himself in greater danger than if he had stayed in Portugal.

Tudor buffs will recognise the date of 1586 and guess what plot Christoval might have a hand in unearthing. But the man he purged of oysters at the beginning of the book has not yet passed out of the story and the reader feels instinctively he will be back with more plots and dangers.

The second book is just out so we won't have long to find out.





Ann Swinfen wears her learning lightly but there is clearly rigorous research behind these novels. Not just the events of an eventful but well-known reign but the properties of herbs and roots as medicine, the types of code used in conspirators' letters and what happened to the Jews in Portugal. I imagine we will gradually piece together exactly the fate of Christoval's mother and sister and it won't be good.

The third book, The Portuguese Affair, will be out before summer is over.

And an elegant trio of books completed.


Ann Swinfen's website




A Witch Queen in The Gods' Mound? - by Susan Price

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The Oseberg Ship
A guest post today from one of our valued History Girls Reserves, Susan Price. It will fascinate anyone who has seen the reconstruction of the longship at the Vikings exhibition in the British Museum.

This, the Oseberg ship, has been called the most beautiful ship ever built.

          Today, of course, it’s priceless. When it was built, it was, to say the least, ‘a high-status artefact.’ But it’s hard to form an idea of just how valuable it was when first made.

          In the Viking Age, cold and hunger, even starvation, were always near: just one bad season away.

          To keep hunger at bay, the time and labour of many people was needed. Fields had to be planted, weeded, harvested. Animals had to be tended, fish and game caught. Fuel was constantly needed, for cooking and brewing, and had to be found or cut, and stored for winter. Food had to be carefully stored, to preserve it: smoked, dried, salted. Milk had to be turned into cheese and butter. Wool and flax had to be spun into thread and woven into cloth. Barns had to be kept in repair, walls and tools mended.

          This ship represents months, perhaps years, of labour that produced neither food nor fuel. Indeed, it consumed food and fuel, as the shipwrights had to be fed and housed by the labour of others. A ship of this quality wasn't built by farmers in their spare time.

The prow
          The Vikings were expert shipwrights, but the Oseberg isn't merely utilitarian. It's exquisite, almost an art object. Look at the lines of her. Look at that beautiful prow, like a piece of sculpture. Look at the carving, probably once painted and gilded.

The carving
          This ship was an expression of staggering wealth, status and power. They built her, at all this expense, and then they threw her away: – they buried her.

          Oslo's other great ship, the Gokstad, was a working warship before she was used in a ship-burial, but the beautiful Oseberg doesn't seem to have been much used. (Though, as ever, interpretation changes. It used to be said that the Oseberg wasn't sea-worthy, because a 1980s replica sank when taken into open sea. It was argued that the ship was merely 'a pleasure yacht,' intended only to cruise up and down a sheltered fjord. However, the replica was based on the original reconstruction, done soon after the ship’s discovery in 1904. As with the first reconstructions from dinosaur bones, mistakes were made, and pieces discarded because they ‘didn’t fit.’ A modern replica is now being built, based on far greater knowledge of Viking ships learned from Roskilde. This new Oseberg is confidently expected to be as sea-worthy as any other Viking ship.)

          When excavated, the Oseberg was found to hold everything needed by a noble household: wooden brewing tubs, for instance, bound with iron, and the kind of small wooden bucket from which drink would be ladled into horns at table. Ladles. Cauldrons. Tapestries. A loom. A large bed. Carts and sledges. Horse equipage.

In a further expression of power and wealth, fifteen horses, four dogs, two small cows and some pigs were buried in and around it. All had been beheaded.

One of the wagons
          What great king lay at the centre of this wealth? None. The ship sailed for the Other World carrying two women.

          One woman was originally thought to have been aged between 25 and 30 at her death. Her skeleton had been damaged and some parts were missing. She had been clothed in a fine red wool dress with a lozenge pattern, and a fine white linen headdress.

          The other, complete, skeleton had been a woman between 70 and 80, about five feet tall, with a crooked spine. Her bones showed signs of arthritis. She was dressed in plain blue wool, with a headdress of wool. These differences in dress arguably show a difference in status.

          The original excavators reasonably concluded that at least one of these women had been extremely wealthy, possibly a queen. Since the ship dated to about 834 AD, it was suggested that she was Queen Asa. The name of the mound, Oseberg, was, it was suggested, possibly derived from 'Asa's Mound'.

          The younger woman was supposed to be the queen's handmaid, possibly a slave who volunteered to join her queen in the grave, or was killed to accompany her. (Several Viking graves have been found where one occupant had been murdered – or sacrificed, depending on your point of view.)

          In support of this theory was the fact that the younger woman's skeleton was damaged and her collar-bone broken - injuries possibly caused by a violent death.

          This explanation never satisfied everyone. 'Oseberg' means, some maintained, 'The Gods' Mound.'

          The bones from the ship were re-examined in 2007, and the new report said that the younger woman had not been 25-30, but nearer 50. Nor had she been violently killed. Her broken collar-bone had been healing for several weeks before she died. The other damage to her skeleton had been post-mortem.

          Both women's diets had included a high proportion of meat, rather than the more normal diet for their time and area, with the protein supplied mostly from fish. The younger's teeth showed signs of wear consistent with her having used a metal toothpick - a luxury item. This suggested that both were of high status.

          Were they mother and daughter? Not enough DNA could be collected from their bones to settle this question, but the older woman's bones showed that, besides arthritis, she had suffered from cancer, which had probably killed her. They also showed that she'd had a hormonal disorder, Morgagni’s Syndrome, which would have given her a masculine appearance, perhaps even a beard.

          The theory that the older woman had been a queen, and the younger her slave was further weakened by the fact that the grave had been robbed during the Medieval period, and all metal items stolen. It was during this robbery that the younger woman's skeleton was damaged. Surely her skeleton had been broken by the robbers because it had been decked in jewellery of precious metal? Which would indicate that she, rather than her older companion, was of the higher status during life.

          Other details: the two women lay on a great bed, itself a high status item. It had been carved with horses’ heads. One woman had a leather pouch containing cannabis seeds. Among their equipment was a long distaff – a tool strongly associated with women, it’s true, but also, for that very reason, with the Goddess Freya and the volvur, the pagan priestesses.

Carving on the wagon
          The carts and sleighs on the ship had been assumed to be practical, working equipment, something needed by a great household. Researchers taking a new look at the grave goods pointed out what had always been plain: they were too small and shallow, and too highly decorated, to have ever been practical.

          Such carts, however, have a long association with pagan gods. The Romans recorded that the Germanic Goddess Nerthus was driven in procession in a sacred cart. The sagas mention a priestess of Frey accompanying an image of the god, which is carried in a cart. Think of the many religious ceremonies today, where a figure of a deity is drawn in procession on some highly decorated vehicle.

          So were the women in the ship priestesses? And if so, who did they worship?

Replica tapestry from Oseberg
          A grave chamber was originally built over the women, and the walls were hung with tapestries – another declaration of status and wealth. The tapestries show women driving carts. Another image showed nine men hanging from trees, with three female figures standing nearby.

          It's recorded that, in the sacred grove at Uppsala, a festival was held to celebrate the Disir, the divine female powers. Every nine years, we are told by a Christian source, for nine days, nine males of every available species - including human - were sacrificed by hanging from the groves' trees.

          Does the tapestry depict this scene? And if so, does it give us a hint about the women in the ship? It's hard to believe so much effort went into making a tapestry of men being hung simply because it was thought to be something pretty to hang on a wall.

          The hung men immediately suggest Odin, the god who sacrificed Himself to Himself by hanging from the World Tree. Sacrifices were offered to Odin by hanging.

          But those three female figures standing by… Priestesses? Goddesses? The Norns, or Norse Fates?

          The Uppsala sacrifices were held in honour of the female powers, the Disir, and the Goddess Freya was the first of them. She is usually represented as a gentle, loving woman, but She had Her fiercer side: She is said to have 'shared the slain with Odin.' Were the women in the ship worshippers of Freya rather than Odin?

          There are suggestions of it. One of the carts from the ship is carved with cats, which were associated with Freya - her cart was drawn by them. (A means of transport only available to a Goddess: imagine trying to drive a team of cats.)

          The great bed is adorned by horses' heads, and horses were sacred to Frey. Horse fights were held in his honour. Are the horses' heads a reference to Frey and His powers of fertility?

          Other historians have pointed to the number of things in the grave carved with serpents, which associate them with the Midgarth Serpent who coils around the earth, and with the giants. The Midgarth Serpent was one of the children of the god Loki and a giantess. Giants were worshipped in the Viking Age. Jord, or Mother Earth, was a giantess, and the mother of the God Thor.

Such Earth goddesses were linked with death and the Underworld, as well as with life and birth.

          And what of those cannabis seeds? Nothing in the ship was made of hemp. It's been suggested that the seeds were in the pouch simply because they were rare in the North, and therefore precious. In view of the age-old use of cannabis to produce altered states of mind, I find this hard to believe.

          It's known from the sagas that the Nordic witches, or priestesses, practiced a kind of shamanism called seidr, (pronounced something like 'say-th,') which involved trance states. It's known that they travelled from place to place, as a modern preacher might travel around his or her parish. And the practice of seidr seems to have involved a certain sexual fluidity. The gods most associated with it, Odin and Loki, both spend time as women. Loki goes so far as to give birth.

          The ship-burial in itself may be significant. The easiest way to travel about Norway, even now, is up the coast by ship, so a travelling priestess might well need a ship.

          Ship burials are themselves rare; and it’s even more unusual to find a woman buried in a ship. Grave goods are usually indicative of the gender of the person buried with them: weapons with a man; jewellery and a woman’s tools with a woman. In the Oseberg, the goods are much less specific: as if the grave’s inhabitants had somehow, in life, escaped such clear-cut definitions of gender.

And the older woman, if we believe the theory, had a masculine appearance and a beard.

          Anne Stine Ingstad, the respected archeologist who excavated Viking settlements in Newfoundland, suggested that the younger woman may have been honoured, during life, as an incarnation of the Goddess Freya, while the other was a priestess who chose to follow her Goddess into death.

          It's possible that, once the great mound was raised over the ship, the mound itself served as a place of worship: Oseberg, the Gods' Mound. And it’s possible that the mound was raised in honour of a woman who was both queen and priestess. The sagas mention royal women who were priestesses.

          I’ve always been interested in the Oseberg, but researching this blog has set an insistent vision playing in my head: the ship sailing on dark currents into the earth, into the Underworld. Have its passengers, lying side by side on their great bed, reached their destination yet?


The Oseberg when first excavated
           Susan Price is the Carnegie-winning author of The Ghost Drum.

          Her book, Overheard In A Graveyard includes a short story, 'Overheard In A Museum' inspired by a visit to Oslo's Viking Ship Museum. The ship in the story, however, is the Gokstad, not the Oseberg.

'Gentlemen, we are at war' - the Great War begins - by Eve Edwards

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Winston goes to war
How do wars start?  Usually, far too optimistically.  On 4 August, a hundred years tomorrow as if you needed reminding, when Germany failed to reply satisfactorily to Britain's request that Belgian neutrality be respected, the United Kingdom entered what was to be called the Great War.  Winston Churchill gives a vivid account of the moment:
“It was eleven o’clock at night – twelve by German time – when the ultimatum expired. The windows of the Admiralty were thrown wide open in the warm night air. Under the roof from which Nelson had received his orders were gathered a small group of admirals and captains and a cluster of clerks, pencils in hand, waiting. Along the Mall from the direction of the Palace the sound of an immense concourse singing ‘God save the King’ floated in. On this deep wave there broke the chimes of Big Ben; and, as the first stroke of the hour boomed out, a rustle of movement swept across the room. The war telegram, which meant, “Commence hostilities against Germany”, was flashed to the ships and establishments under the White Ensign all over the world. I walked across the Horse Guards Parade to the Cabinet room and reported to the Prime Minister and the Ministers who were assembled there that the deed was done.”
 His account picks up on the almost holiday atmosphere of the moment.  No one could anticipate the years to follow. It is so much easier to start a war than to end one.


When writing about the war in my two-part series, Dusk and Dawn, I spent a lot of time pondering what it must have felt like to live through it.  The historical novelist is obviously working with hindsight.  You want to shout 'don't do it!' at the governments because you know what is to come.  But the skill is to throw off that problem of too much information and imagine the moment as lived.

Think about 'now' as you read this.  I often picture the present as being like the bow wave forming at the prow of a ship, soon to become the wake at the stern.  No sooner do you see it than it is past.  That's what you have to capture when writing about other times.  Of course, in 1914, it was reasonable to sing songs on the Mall and imagine that this would be glorious.  Problem was the guys on the other side were probably doing the same in Berlin.  Two juggernauts were about to smash into each other, carried along by the same wave of patriotic fervour.

So that's how wars often start.  The news is grim at the moment with a freezing of relations between Russia and the West but perhaps on this day of all days it is worth just thinking about what happens to the people in the path of juggernauts and not rush to raise the tension.

On a cheerier note (!), this is my last posting for a while for the History Girls blog.  I also write as Joss Stirling and Julia Golding and for the moment those names are taking up all my time.  So to Mary, our captain, and the others on the blog, God bless HMS History Girls and all who sail in her.  See you again soon!

Eve

A Man Who Looks On Glass - Katherine Langrish

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A hymn we sang at school was George Herbert's poem 'The Elixir,' set to a simple tune.  One of the verses which always stayed with me was this:

A man that looks on glass,
         On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
         And then the heav'n espy.

I liked the deceptive simplicity of the verse, the obviousness, it would seem, of the notion: you can look at glass or through glass.  The success of Herbert's poetry is partly in his ability to articulate things we feel we have always known but never said so well. Light can pass through glass, yet glass can also obscure what is behind it. St Paul's words  'now we see as through a glass, darkly: but then face to face' must surely have been in his mind as he wrote that verse. For Herbert, God was the light behind the glass, the light which illuminates the world.

Central apse window, Moreton Church


Last September I visited for the second time St Nicholas' Church in Moreton, Dorset, which has a complete set of windows engraved by Sir Laurence Whistler. The church was almost destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War and had lost all of its original stained glass windows.  After the war the church was rebuilt and the windows replaced by opaque, coloured glass panels, which the congregation disliked. Here is Whistler's own account:

"I believe that the first external windows on a church to be filled with engraving were those to my design put into the apse at Moreton, near Dorchester in Dorset, in 1955. The origin ... was a visit to Moreton by Howard Colvin, the architectural historian, at a moment when there was a debate on how to replace the ugly semi-opaque glass installed during reconstruction after the chance bomb of 1940.  He had discovered in two Oxfordshire churches (Great Coxwell and Pusey) small panels engraved with coats of arms, unaccountably inserted into old windows in 1795, and unique in window-history. Because the surroundings to Moreton Church were delightful, he suggested that I should do something of the sort; however, I proposed a full-scale treatment.  The architect was all against it, and in favour of stained glass.  The parochial church council was ultimately for it, by a single vote, it emerged - one member of the opposition having gone to Dorchester to shop, that afternoon."

By such a slender margin these beautiful windows were born, and Whistler worked on them over a period from 1955 to 1984.


The Trinity Chapel window, Moreton Church




In the beautiful Trinity Chapel window, above and (detail) left, the theme is "fruitfulness in sunlight. In groups of three, blossom, insect-life and animal-life expand under strokes of sun and rain. These slants form an X, turned by two vapour-trails into a chi-ro, the first letters of Christos.  For the window commemorates an RAF pilot shot down in the Battle of France in 1940.  Salisbury Cathedral, near where he was stationed, and his cottage-home are seen from the air, with the English Channel and the French coast beyond.  Two pairs of initials and the years of a brief marriage are inscribed on the broken propeller."







"No general scheme was formed at the outset," Whistler wrote, "but light was always the theme, in the form of candlelight, jewel-light, starlight, lightning; while over the years the instances of light showed a certain thematic expansion - as from candles to a spiral galaxy - and this was matched by a certain loosening of style."






In this photo you can just about see the great spiral galaxy in the west window: the sunshine came blazing through it in a way which made it glorious to view but difficult to photograph: and though the black and white photo below shows the design more clearly with its Alpha and Omega...


...it can't do justice to the light.  But here, looking up from the foot of the window, you can see the shadow-patterns of the galaxy thrown on the stone.


While below, first in black and white  and then in my colour photograph, is the window which references the devotional medieval poem 'The Dream of the Rood,' in which Christ's Cross weeps tears and precious jewels:






Whistler modestly wrote that engraved glass could never compete with stained glass "for the power and the glory. But it has its advantages. It does not reduce light in the kind of church where light is an asset. ... Then also it does not block a view where a view is worth keeping.  The reason for this is that the eyes, like the camera, cannot give the mind clear intelligence of near and far simultaneously. When focussed on the glass, they record a blurred background. When focussed on the background, they look straight through, hardly noticing a picture that is always composed more of nothing than of something, more of gap than scratch."


 Teach me, my God and King,
         In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
         To do it as for Thee.

A man that looks on glass,
         On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
         And then the heav'n espy.

All may of Thee partake:
         Nothing can be so mean,
Which with this tincture—"for Thy sake"—
         Will not grow bright and clean.

 A servant with this clause
         Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
         Makes that and th' action fine.

 This is the famous stone
         That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
         Cannot for less be told.




Picture credits: Colour photos copyright Katherine Langrish.  Black and white photos and all quotations from Sir Laurence Whistler are taken from his book 'Scenes and Signs on Glass', The Cupid Press, 1985

Of arms and the man I sing by Mary Hoffman

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This week and month, we are bound to be thinking of the onset of the Great War a hundred years ago. At a time when hideous atrocities are being committed against civilians and combatants  in many parts of the world, the old question is being asked: have we learned anything about the nature of war and what alternatives there are to it in the last century?

The answer is too bleak to give here. 1914-18 was supposed to be "The War to end all war," and we can't now put ourselves back into the frame of mind that could possibly believe that to be the case. So fast forward thirty years.

A week ago I was in Normandy, as a guest of the airline Flybe and the Normandy Tourist board. Two months ago President Obama and Queen Elizabeth also landed at the tiny airport at Caen, to join other dignitaries arriving to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day, or as it is known in France, "Jour-J."

Caen airport where President Obama and I both landed
I had flown from the equally tiny airport of London Southend, hopping over the channel in less than an hour. After a five minute wait at the single luggage carousel, we went straight to the spectacular Memorial Museum, which is currently hosting an exhibition of 100 Objects from the Battle of Normandy.

Those are "Compo boxes" in the background, which carried British soldiers' rations; in the foreground a Hispano cannon from a British Spitfire.

The museum was opened in 1988 and is built on top of the bunker where General Richter directed German operations. As you enter the permanent collection, the first thing you see is the statistic that 10 million people died in the First World War, with 21 million wounded or unaccounted for.

It takes you through the twenty-one years between one war ending and the next beginning, putting most of the blame firmly on the Treaty of Versailles.

I hadn't realised how long the "Battle of Normandy" lasted. All the books say 100 days and that takes you to almost mid-September if you reckon it from D-Day on 6th June 1944. But many commentators take it only to 25th August, when Paris was liberated by the Allies. I also hadn't realised how much destruction the bombing caused: 73% of Caen, for instance.

And the average age of the Allied combatants was only 24. Only 25% of the troops in Normandy on the German side were actually Germans by 1944, which clearly must have had some effect on morale.

The Allies pressed forward to take Caen as soon as they had landed on the Normandy beaches but were not completely successful until 19th July.

The first death in Operation Overlord was of Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, whose glider landed near the bridge over the Caen Canal at 6 minutes after midnight on 6th June. He led his Platoon over the bridge straight into German machine-gun fire and never recovered from his wounds.

He was twenty-eight years old and two weeks later, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Margaret. I'm recalling him here because I am lucky enough not to have lost any family member that I am aware of in either of the last century's World Wars.

But each death carried a story like Lieutenant Brotheridge's; each person had a family, a past and a future that was snatched away. Just as each person in Gaza, Israel, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan and every other country at war has a history without a future, unless we remember them.


These ceramic poppies are planted outside the Museum in Bayeux that houses a "tapestry" portraying a war even further off than the one we commemorate this year - nearly ten times further in the past (You can read about it in Adèle Geras' post on 7th August). They mirror the ones flooding the moat of the Tower of London at the moment.

Each tiny act of Remembrance, whether it is lighting a candle, wearing a poppy (white as well as red), looking at an old photograph or reading a diary or memoir is a small step away from war and towards peace. It is not enough - but it is a start.

Historic Heart of the English Riviera - Katherine Roberts

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You can travel halfway around the world to see historic sites, yet it’s all too easy to ignore what is on your own doorstep. Since my home town of Paignton has just been rebranded the “Historic Heart of the English Riviera”, I thought I’d take a walk with my camera and see how much history I could find.


Paignton is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Sometimes written Peynton or Paington, its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon settlement Paega's Town. It was originally a small fishing village, but became a popular Victorian seaside destination with the arrival of the railway link from London. A huge Paignton Pudding (a tradition dating back to the 13th century) was baked for the occasion, causing a riot as everyone scrambled for a piece. These puddings are still baked today to mark special events.


Bishop's Tower door (street level)
Most of the grand hotels along the seafront date from the Victorian period, but the oldest part of town is centred around the Parish Church and nearby Bishop's Palace, so I'll take you there first. The Bishop's Tower, complete with its blue plaque, provided inspiration for these decorative street bollards found in the original part of town:


Behind the tower, turning left along Church Path will bring you to the ruins of the Medieval Bishop's Hall, believed to date back to the 13th century.


excavation of the Bishop's Hall - Parish Church in the background

A plaque beside these ruins tells the history of the excavation, so I'll include it here... though you might need a magnifying glass to read it!


Coming out of Church Path, you'll see a narrow entrance on your left into the wickedly twisty Crown and Anchor Way, where the town slaughterhouse used to be (and where if you are in a car your Satnav will insist upon directing you to find out how good a driver you are. WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS ROUTE IN ANYTHING LARGER THAN A MINI IF YOU VALUE YOUR PAINTWORK!). On foot, you can take the safer pavement route past the original Old Family Butcher's shop to one end of:


 Here, you can go antique shopping – some brilliant bargains to be found!


You might like to pause at the Oldenburg Inn for a pint of real ale, before making your way via. interesting independent shops to the other end of Winner Street, where you'll find a plinth with a mermaid on top guarding the junction.


This statue, installed a few years ago as part of a general spruce-up of the town, incorporates Paignton’s heritage as seaside town, zoo, geopark and holiday destination. Here's the mermaid on top from a better angle:



Heading back up Winner Street towards the church, you can take a short walk down Well Street past the funeral parlour (where you will sometimes see a hearse drawn by two plumed black horses). Turn right at the end past a pretty thatched cottage, and you'll come to the old salt marshes where you can find the medieval:


I’d like to show you a picture of the original street door and mullion windows, but there was a white van parked right in front of it so I took this picture of the plaque beside the door instead. For interior shots follow this link: Kirkham House. The house is occasionally open to the public, but best to check before you visit because it was closed when I passed.

So there is a fair amount of history if you look for it among the Victorian and newer buildings, and Paignton is indeed the heart of Torbay at the end of the mainline railway, where steam trains take over to carry visitors down to Kingswear and the Dartmouth ferry. The coastline dates back to Paleolithic times with its red sandstone cliffs and distinctive red beaches, so there is more fascinating history to explore including the picturesque harbour area and Oldway Mansion (home of the Singer family who made the famous sewing machines) - but since it's holiday time, I can't really leave you without a picture of the sea.

This is Paignton Pier taken from an unusual angle at low tide, showing the castle-like Redcliffe Hotel in the background, where author Dick Francis loved to stay. (I am standing on wet sand here, not walking on water, though you can get some strange effects on a misty day in winter!)



PS. That red sand is officially the best sandcastle-making sand in Britain - see you on the beach!

*

Katherine Roberts writes fantasy, legend and historical fiction for young readers. Her first novel Song Quest won the Branford Boase Award for children's debut fiction. Her latest series is the Pendragon Legacy quartet about King Arthur's daughter, published by Templar Books.

All of Katherine's backlist titles are now available as ebooks for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Apple i-devices. Prince of Macedonia (part 1 of her Great Horse serial project) is FREE today for Kindle.


THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY....which is not a tapestry. BY Adèle Geras

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Most people know the main facts about the Bayeux Tapestry. First, that it isn't a tapestry at all but an embroidery. It was made, probably near Canterbury in the years between 1066 and 1077 when Odo, William the Conqueror's half brother and bishop of the Cathedral in Bayeux, released it (I use the word advisedly) as a magnificent piece of Norman propaganda.  The spin (again advisedly used) he put on the story of Harold's death and the subsequent triumph of his half-brother was a firmly pro-Norman one.  During the Middle Ages, it was unveiled once a year to the congregation in  July on the day known as the Fête des Réliques.

Scholars think it was made in England, but no one knows exactly who stitched it. It is made up of 58 scenes (the last few scenes are missing) and is about 70  metres long. It's composed of  nine linen bands sewn together.   The story it tells runs from left to right, like a long, long comic book strip. It is, if you like, a graphic novel in wool.

There are eight different shades of the woollen yarn, dyed naturally by madder, woad and the like. 







The pictures I've put up here show some of the action, and action from beginning to end is what this story is. There are sea voyages, equipping and providing for an army on the march, funeral rites, cooking and much else. There is feasting, and fighting and dying.  There are ships, buildings and landscapes. There are soldiers, priests, women, men in every imaginable position and some of these can not be reproduced in a family blog. All Human Life is There, the News of the World used to proclaim and it's as true of this embroidery as it is of the now-defunct  newspaper. 






The natural world is here too: the sea, animals both real and imaginary, and many trees. The ones shown in the picture above are typical. The intertwined branches of the tree appear over and over again:  a  stylised and extremely beautiful shorthand that says TREE. I am not sure when the municipality of Bayeux chose this image as a kind of symbol, but you see it everywhere in the town  on round  brass plaques set into the pavement. There's a motto that goes with it, too:  La qualité a ses racines.   I'd translate this roughly as : Class doesn't come out of nowhere, and in Bayeux it's true: there has clearly been beauty here from the moment the town was laid out,  centuries ago, and the embroidery is a huge part of that. The Museum is a World Heritage site.







I've chosen two photos, above and below this paragraph, to show off the horses. They are a  striking feature of the whole 70 metres and are seen in such wonderful detail that there is a difference between how they look when they're trotting, walking and, as above, galloping into battle. In the picture below this paragraph, they are falling down in the midst of the battle and the detail throughout is such that in another scene, there's a horse getting out of a Viking ship....leaving one of his legs behind till the last moment. In the 11th century, perspective isn't yet fully there, but still the things and people further away are shown as smaller.  I also noticed that the borders were used in all kinds of modern ways....the dead shown along the bottom of the battle scenes reminded me of  scrolling headlines on television news channels.






Two things struck me as I walked past it twice, very slowly. The first was simply what an enormous undertaking this was for the women ( or maybe men too...monks, perhaps) who made it. It must have involved large numbers of people, each working on a section. That's clear, but something that I also thought was that this was a work of art that had an overriding artist, or designer behind it. Someone. ONE person. An organising intelligence worked everything out in advance. Then, the vision was transferred (by whom? Might it have been Odo?)  into drawings on linen, which was then stitched by the needles of many, many anonymous embroiderers on to its écru background. The writer Sarah Bower has written a  novel called THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD which is a wonderful imagining of what might have happened and I will have to read it again because I have forgotten the details, though I remember liking it a lot. There is also a book by Carola Hicks called THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY: history of a masterpiece, which I have only just started reading. She seems to propose  a very convincing argument for the role in the creation of the embroidery of Edith Godwinson, widow of King Edward, sister of Harold and friend of King William of Normandy.  I was very glad to read about Edith, and the other highborn women of the time, because what  I felt most strongly as I walked around was that there was  one person behind the whole thing. One artist, before the many makers came along, who saw the embroidery whole in her head, (and for the moment I've fixed on Edith)  and who could then supervise the putting of this picture on to the linen for others to bring to life. 

It is worth saying that England (and Scotland too. Queen Margaret was also  a very skilled embroiderer) was famous for its embroiderers and stitchers at this period. Then there must have been those who undertook to deal with  the uniformity of the stitching and the colours: medieval continuity girls who saw to it that what Odo was wearing in one scene matched the clothes in another. That Norman hair was cut short at the back and that the English had mustaches, etc. That the horses were the right colour. And those trees....that they were always depicted in similar fashion. Here they are, below in one of the brass plaques I mentioned. They are supremely beautiful. Someone more recently saw them and created a kind of 'brand' for Bayeux, apart from anything else. Gold star to whoever that was...it's a perfect symbol.








So in conclusion, what can I say? I would urge anyone interested to go to Bayeux and see this masterpiece (not so much a work of art - more a Wonder of the World) for themselves. The Museum that contains it has many fascinating accompanying exhibitions and a film to make a visit even more interesting. It's a model of efficiency and comfort and how to display a real treasure.






This is the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame where the embroidery was first unveiled by Odo. It's most beautiful. I would like to have been in the congregation that day.




And this is the entrance to the Museum. A lovely bank of hydrangeas to welcome you if you decide to go. 

The story of the Bayeux Tapestry continues. On our way out, I picked up a handout about The Alderney Bayeux Tapestry finale, which described how Kate Russell of  Alderney oversaw the making of an embroidery of Jan Messent's Finale to the Bayeux tapestry. She organised the whole community to help to do this and there's even a photo of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall having a go at stitching themselves. It's a wonderful idea, I think and a fitting ps to the story.

I could go on at great length. To say I was bowled over is putting it mildly. The other phrase that came into my mind as I looked at it, and imagined that congregation of 1077 seeing it for the first time was: rolling news.  All I can say is: BBC, eat your heart out!

'Punishing the gods' by Karen Maitland

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Revering gods in a Chinese Joss House
I have just been reading the wonderful novel ‘The Good Earth’ by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. Pearl Buck also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. The novel concerns a peasant family's struggle for survival in a China before World War I. It is so moving it is said that the novel influenced Americans to regard the Chinese people as allies in the coming war with Japan, because it engender such compassion among readers for the characters and their heart-wrenching story.

One of the passages that really struck me was near the beginning of the novel, when Wang Lung, the farmer and the whole village is starving during a widespread famine. Pearl Buck writes –
Malaysian Chinese gods


Once he (Wang Lung) walked, dragging one foot after another in his famished weakness, to the temple of the earth, and deliberate spat in the face of the small, imperturbable god who sat there with his goddess. There were no sticks of incense now before this pair, nor had there been for many moons, and their paper clothes were tattered and showed their clay bodies through the rents.


This passage reminded me vividly of the way the statues of saints were treated in Medieval Christian Churches. Normally the statues were treated with great reverence. They were clothed in fabric capes, ornamented with crowns or jewels. Candles and incense were burned before them and they were honoured in colourful processions, as they often are in Europe today, by being carried shoulder high through the streets to bless the people, town, fields and boats.

But during the Black Death of 1348, and the floods and famine of that year which killed more people than the plague itself in England, there are many recorded incidents of the statues of the saints being punished by the Christian population for their failure to protect them. It was not simply that people could not afford to buy candles or incense to burn or that people, desperate for money, stripped the saints’ images of valuables. 

Many statues of the saints, were deliberately stripped of their cloaks and garlands, taken out of the church, whipped, beaten and ceremonially drowned, for their perceived failure to save the people. The faithful parishioners dragged the statues out of the churches themselves and punished them in an act of revenge, venting their fury on them, in much the same way we see people doing now to statues of political leaders when the regime is overthrown.

Maybe this shows us that human psychology never changes. We can never accept that something is a natural disaster or an accident. We always seem to need to find someone to hold responsible, someone to blame, even for events like flooding or famine.


Curiously, once the first wave of the Great Pestilence was over people went back to revering the same images of the saints just as they always had, either retrieving the exiled saint from the muddy ditches and ponds where they'd cast them and restoring them to the churches and shrines, or if the statue was too badly damaged commissioning new one of the same saint. Their allegiance had not changed.




July competition winners

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July competition winners:
Sue Purkiss
Paul Whitfield
Ruan Peat
Roz Cawley
Alayne Barton 

To claim your prizes, please send your land addresses to David Sanger: dsanger@scholastic.co.uk

Congratulations!
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