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MAGNA CARTA By DAN JONES: Some thoughts from Elizabeth Chadwick

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Front cover 
June 2015 sees the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede and in this book Dan Jones presents a useful guide to bring the general reader up to speed. Dan Jones is of course, the author of the bestselling non fiction work THE PLANTAGENETS which sets out the dynasty's rise to power and eventual ruin over several centuries of medieval British history. The work is also the basis for the recent TV series, written and presented by the author.

The following blurb is from the inside jacket of MAGNA CARTA and an excellent summary of what the book is about:

 '"On a summer's day in 1215, a beleaguered English monarch met a group of disgruntled barons in a meadow by the River Thames  named Runnymede. Beset by foreign crisis and domestic rebellion, King John was fast running out of options. On 15 June he reluctantly agreed to fix his regal seal to a document that would change the world.
A milestone in the development of constitutional politics and the rule of the law, the 'Great Charter' established an Englishman's right to Habeas Corpus and set limits to the exercise of royal power.  For the first time a group of subjects had forced an English king to agree to a document that limited his powers by law and protected their rights."

This book  is a joy to read, not just for a medieval-obsessive like myself, but for anyone with a general interest in history. It's one of those reference works that should be on every non fiction bookshelf.
The writing style is clean and accessible, edged with dry humour  and has broad appeal. Dan Jones educates his readers without patronising, and he never dumbs down the content. The history is straight, clear, and unfudged.  Oh what a joy and a relief this is to come across.  I have studied the Angevin period for more than forty years.  I'm not university trained, but I am very well read in non fiction works of this era (12th and 13th centuries). Often the academic studies are dry and soporific. The eyes glaze over, the same 5 pages take an hour to read and the information doesn't stick, but  unabsorbed, just passes through.   Unfortunately the popular books with a less dense writing style are frequently unreliable and have to be double-checked and taken with large pinches of salt.  Dan Jones, however, walks a perfect line between the popular and the academic. He puts over the need to know material with depth and complexity while telling it in a vibrant way that hold the reader's attention. That's a very rare talent indeed.

The book itself is a tactile thing of beauty.  It's ornate, with gold embossing on the cover to give that added luxurious feel of holding the real thing in your hand.  The paper is of thick, fine quality,perhaps gently hinting at parchment.   The rich ornamentation and fabulous illustrations  are put together in an uncluttered way that means the book is simple and practical to use.  It is divided into ten easily digestible chapters beginning with an introduction that sets the scene and discusses the fame of Magna Carta and then continues to the historical background including an assessment of the reign of King John, not forgetting the input of his predecessors.  He might have brought about Magna Carta by his policies and the way he dealt with his barons, but he wasn't acting in a vacuum and Dan Jones takes us through the wherefore and the why.
There is a section on what happened between 1215 and now, and a couple of wonderful quotes from David Cameron and Winston Churchill which made me laugh - albeit wryly. Dan Jones has a wicked sense of humour and appreciates the ironies.
Section heading from the contents.
Having guided us through the history, the book follows with several appendices including the full text of the Magna Carta in the original Latin with an English translation alongside so the reader can see the exact wording for themselves. There are interesting short biographies of the barons involved in witnessing and enforcing the charter, and a timeline of the charter from its origins to where it sits now.

By the end of the book the reader has been given an in depth history lesson but in such a way that there's not a single moment of eye-glaze or stodge. Hooray!   There are copious illustrations and page breaks that will suit those with shorter attention spans but at the same time, those who prefer a meaty read will not be let down. There's a lot of learning crammed into these 190 pages.

Any caveats?  I suspect that there may be a few raised eyebrows among those in the know about the comment accompanying the illustration of King John's tomb in Worcester cathedral. The caption says it's made from 'carved wood' when it fact it's Purbeck marble.  It seems a pity for that one to have slipped through the editorial net when King John is one of the major players.  However, that really is a nit-pick when compared with the rest of the book's excellent content.
Highly recommended.  Everyone rush out and get a copy for your bookshelves. It's one of those heirloom reference works that will stand the test of time - a bit like the charter itself!
Detail from the back of the book




A HUNGRY CHRISTMAS By Eleanor Updale

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Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope you are enjoying a stupendous feast today.  Of course, this year -perhaps more than most -  people are going hungry because of sickness or conflict.  So I thought I’d take a look at one such Christmas, if only to give us all a break from that 1914 football match which seems to have taken over all media outlets this week.
From September 1870 to January 1871, Paris was under siege by Prussian forces.  Almost fifty thousand civilians died, many of them through starvation. 
Several foreigners were trapped in Paris when the Prussians swooped and, fortunately for us, an English language account of conditions in the city was published shortly after the war.  Henry Labouchere, a wealthy British journalist and former MP sent regular reports to his mistress during the war, and brought them together to form The Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris, published in 1872.


All the railways had been disabled, and the roads were blocked, so the only way to get letters out was by carrier pigeon or hot air balloon.  The useless railway stations at the Gare du Nord and the Gare d’Orleans were transformed into balloon factories, and by the end of 1870, a daring postal service with fees and collection routines had been established, and Labouchere made extensive use of it.


Here is part of  Labouchere’s account of Christmas Day, 1870

We are not having a “merry Christmas” and we are not likely to have a happy new year. Christmas is not here the great holiday of the year, as it is in England.  Still, everyone in ordinary times tries to have a better dinner than usual, and usually where there are children in a family some attempt is made to amuse them… Since the Empire introduced English ways here, plum-pudding and mince pies have been eaten, and even Christmas-trees have flourished. This year these festive shrubs, as an invention of the detested foe, have been rigidly tabooed. Plum-puddings and mince pies, too, will appear on few tables.  In order to comfort the children, the girls are to be given soup tickets to distribute to beggars, and the boys are to have their choice between French and German wooden soldiers.  The former treasured up, the latter will be subjected to fearful tortures.  Even the midnight mass, which is usually celebrated on Christmas-Eve, took place in very few churches last night.

And he spoke of his fellow ex-pats:

The English here are making feeble attempts to celebrate Christmas correctly.  In an English restaurant, two turkeys had been treasured up for the important occasion, but unfortunately a few days ago they anticipated their fate, and most ill-naturedly insisted upon dying.  One fortunate Briton has got ten pounds of camel, and has invited about twenty of his countrymen to aid him in devouring this singular substitute for turkey.  Another gives himself airs because he has some potted turkey, which is solemnly to be consumed to-day spread on bread.  I am myself going to dine with the correspondent of one of your contemporaries.  On the same floor as himself lives a family who left Paris before the commencement of the siege.  Necessity knows no law; so the other day he opened their door with a certain amount of gentle violence, and after a diligent search, discovered in the larder two onions, some potatoes, and a ham.  These, with a fowl, which I believe has been procured honestly, are to constitute our Christmas dinner.

Did you noise the reference to camel?  This wasn’t a joke.  The citizens resorted to killing and eating the animals in the zoo - thereby addressing the two problems of how to feed them, and how to feed the human population.  For the rich, this might mean an extremely exotic Christmas dinner.  Here is the menu for one:



You will note the references to rats, kangaroo, and to ‘Elephant consommé.  The zoo's two crowd-pulling Elephants Castor and Pollux had been killed for food.

The killing of Pollux and Castor - Illustrated London News
Eventually, Labouchere got to taste them:

Yesterday, I had a slice of Pollux for dinner.  Pollux and his brother Castor are two elephants which have been killed.  It was tough, coarse, and oily, and I do not recommend English families to eat elephant as long as they can get beef or mutton.

It is clear that, for a price, rich people could still eat.  But Labouchere, for all his wealth, was aware of the plight of the  poor:

It is very strange what opposite opinions one hears about the condition of the poor.  Some persons say that there is no distress, others that it cannot be greater.  The fact is, the men were never better off, the women and children never so badly off.  Every man can have enough to eat and too much to drink by dawdling about with a gun.  As his home is cold and cheerless, when he is not on duty he lives at a pothouse.  He brings no money to his wife and children, who consequently only just keep body and soul together by going to the national cantinas, where they get soup, and to the Mairies, where they occasionally get an order for bread.  Almost all their clothes are in pawn, so how it is they do not positively die of cold I cannot understand.
As for fuel, even the wealthy find it difficult to procure it.  The Government talks of cutting down all the trees and of giving up all the clothes in pawn; but, with its usual procrastination, it puts off both these measure from day to day. 

Labouchere’s account is lively and amusing.  It’s hard not to take to him as you read.  


Some years after the siege, he returned to Parliament, and campaigned against fraud and corruption in public life.  However he was also profoundly opposed to women’s suffrage, and is credited/blamed, for the parliamentary amendment which outlawed consensual homosexual acts.  He lived in Pope’s Villa at Twickenham - rebuilt in High Victorian style, and still a splendid sight from the river today.  



So we know that he recovered from his plight, but even so, It’s hard not to pity him, today of all days, when he wrote this, four days after Christmas 1870:

At my hotel, need I observe that I do not pay my bill, but in hotels the guests may ring in vain now for food. I sleep on credit in a  gorgeous bed, a pauper,  The room is large,  I wish it were smaller, for the firewood comes from trees just cut down, and it takes an hour to get the logs to light, and then they only smoulder, and emit no heat.  The thermometer in my grand room, with its silken curtains, us usually at freezing point.  Then my clothes - I am seedy, very seedy. When I call upon a friend the porter eyes me distrustfully.  In the streets the beggars never ask me for alms; on the contrary, they eye me suspiciously when I approach them, as a possible competitor…As for my linen, I will only say that the washerwomen have struck work, as they have no fuel…For my food…Cat, dog, rat and horse are very well as novelties, but habitually, they do not assimilate with my inner man. 

Whatever the less attractive aspects of Labouchere's character, today of all days we should rejoice that when the siege ended, he got away to Versailles:

I am not intoxicated, but I feel so heavy from having imbibed during the last twenty-four hours more milk than I did during the first six months which I passed in this planet, that I have some difficulty in collection my thoughts in order to write a letter.  Yesterday I arrived here in order to breathe for a moment the air of freedom.  In vain, my hospitable friends, who have put me up, have offered me wine to drink, and this and that delicacy to eat - I have stuck to eggs, butter, and milk.  Patts of butter I have bolted with a greediness which would have done honour to Pickwick’s fat boy.

Which brings us back to a more traditional view of Christmas.  And here in your cracker is Mr Wardle's song from The Pickwick Papers.  Just to cheer things back up:

     But my song I troll out, for Christmas Stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!
We'll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart,
And we'll keep him up, while there's bite or sup,
And in fellowship good, we'll part.
In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard-weather scars;
They're no disgrace, for there's much the same trace
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I sing till the roof doth ring
And it echoes from wall to wall—
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all!



Merry Christmas!


www.eleanorupdale.com








All Quiet on the Western Front - Christmas 1914, by Carol Drinkwater

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On Christmas Eve 1914 in northern France a frost set in. It had been raining for weeks, filling the trenches to waist height with water, soaking spirits, drowning hope. So acute was this drop in temperature, that it froze solid the soldiers’ great coats and hardened their boots. The men themselves were "frozen to the marrow".

Christmas morning rose foggy and then turned into a freezing day.
Along certain sections of the front, a truce was called. The Germans seemed to have made the first move.

An Irishmen from the Royal Irish Rifles wrote in his diary of the previous evening: “Nothing of importance happened until 8pm when heralded by various jovialities from their trenches the Germans placed lamps on their parapets and commenced singing.”

Soldiers from both camps rose cautiously from their trenches, climbed up and started to walk in No Man’s Land, unarmed, some bearing white flags. The frosty weather had dried the filthy mud solid. It facilitated the soldiers' passage across the free zone.

Exiting their trenches was counter to the orders given by many, although not all, superior officers on both sides of the war – “no fraternising’ - but the men were ready for respite, a few hours of peace. It was Christmas, after all, and it seemed a perfect moment to remember those who had died or were missing and loved ones back home.


                       Meeting in No Man's Land The Illustrated London News 9th January 1915

They shook hands with their enemies, then smoked cigarettes or cigars, sipped schnapps, sang songs - ragtime, Christmas Carols, Music Hall ditties, and even played football (in some cases using sandwiches for balls). Allies and Germans together. Peace for a few hours. Some exchanged gifts (chocolate cake, tobacco). One unit was offered a gift of two barrels of French beer by the Germans which they rolled back to their trench and consumed. Later, the Germans called out to the Tommies. How's the beer? They and their enemy were in agreement that the French beer was lousy.
Some shared thoughts of their families, showed photographs of their sweethearts back home, waiting and praying for their safe return. Others enquired of the status of certain of their comrades. The Germans were able to confirm that this soldier or that officer had died and had been buried, or they, Brits and Germans, gave permission for their enemies to bury their dead. There were bodies strewn everywhere about them, lying in the hoar frost.

These hours were precious. Moments of humanity in a chaos of destruction. I have read accounts - extracts from letters, diaries, witness statements - stating that this day, this truce, was one of the most abiding and for some, haunting, memories of the war.

Boxing Day, the men were mostly back in their positions, rifles at the ready, to shoot one another again. A few held off, not wishing to be the first to fire.

An interesting historical fact. Not one single soldier of any rank was disciplined for having taken part in the truce. However, the following Christmas it was made clear that no such fraternisation would be tolerated.

Politicians and soldiers alike had been certain that by December 1914 the war would be over. Instead, hundreds of thousands of men from both sides were still in France, stuck in the trenches, frost-bitten, shocked by the number of lives already lost and those that had gone missing in action. It was evident that this war was certainly not going to be a ‘couple of months affair’. 

                                            Princess Mary's royal gift box with her embossed head.

This first wartime Christmas was marked by the British royal family posting out gifts to members of the British, Colonial and Indian Armed Forces, fighting on land or at sea. The gifts arrived in brass tins and were embossed with the head of Princess Mary. Seventeen-year-old Princess Mary, third child and only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, was the founder of the Sailors and Soldiers Christmas Fund. She organised a public appeal to raise sufficient funds to ensure that ‘every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front’ receives a Christmas present from the nation. The appeal was so successful, raising £162,591 -12s - 5d, that the eligibility for the gift was widened to include every person ‘wearing the King’s uniform on Christmas Day 1914’. This embraced over two and a half million men and women.
But such a vast number of gift boxes could not be made ready in time for Christma Day. So, the recipients were divied into three classes. Class A received their gifts on or about Christmas Day and each box included a Christmas card. Classes B and C were sent out in January 1915 and included a Victorious NewYear card. 

                                                                       Princess Mary

Each box contained one ounce of pipe tobacco, twenty cigarettes, a pipe, a tinder lighter, a Christmas card from the King and Queen and a photograph of, in my opinion, the enormously inspiring young Princess Mary. Non-smokers received a box containing a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case containing pencil, paper and envelopes together with the Christmas card and photograph. The Indian soldiers received boiled sweets in their brass 'hampers'.



  Included in the gift boxes: sterling silver bullet pencils contained within a cartridge, tobacco, cigarettes

There is a marvellous letter on the website of nature writer Henry Williamson, most famous for his 1927 classic, Tarka the Otter. It was penned to his mother on Boxing Day 1914, as the truce was ending and after he had received his tin containing a pipe from the royal family.

http://www.henrywilliamson.co.uk/first-world-war/57-uncategorised/158-henry-williamson-and-the-christmas-truce

It begins: “Dear Mother,
I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say.
But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Ha ha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench.
Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench.
...
“On Xmas eve both armies sang carols and cheered & there was very little firing. The Germans (in some places 80 yds away) called to our men to come and fetch a cigar & our men told them to come to us. This went on for some time, neither fully trusting the other, until, after much promising to 'play the game' a bold Tommy crept out & stood between the trenches, & immediately a Saxon came to meet him. They shook hands & laughed & then 16 Germans came out.”



Unbeknownst to Williamson, his letter was sent by his father to the Daily Express who published an abridged version of it in early January.

Henry Williamson survived the war but never enjoyed Christmas again. It was a torment for him;  every year he relived that 1914 Christmas Truce, when he had spoken to German soldiers and discovered that their hopes and fears were the same as those of himself and his English comrades, and that German soldiers dying in agony cried out for their mothers just as did the English Tommy.

During this WW1 centennial year, Scholastic published my YA novel, The Only Girl in the World. It is the story of a young soldier, Dennis, from London and a French café owner’s daughter, Hélène, from the Somme region who meet and fall in love in 1916. Their story ends in tragedy as Dennis is killed before winter breaks. He does not live to see Christmas. No gift for Dennis from the royal family. A Christmas that Dennis, along with almost every other soldier, believed would be celebrated back home with his family. The third Christmas of that war and the troops were no closer to home. Life in the trenches was endured, as we know, until 1918. The extraordinary spontaneity of that Christmas Truce 1914 was never repeated. 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described it as "one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war".



To all reading this, most especially Mary Hoffman and her tremendous line-up of History Girls, I wish you Happy Holidays and a very wonderful and healthy 2015. 
To all of us everywhere, I pray for Peace on Earth.

December Stillness, by Siegfried Sassoon - Louisa Young

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These quiet days, between one set of sparkliness and another, are one of my favourite times of year. Nothing showy for you today, just this, sent by a friend when my mother died, four weeks ago.


December stillness, teach me through your trees
That loom along the west, one with the land,
The veiled evangel of your mysteries.
While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down
Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand,
With grave diminishings of green and brown,
Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;
And let me learn your secret from the sky,
Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds
In lone remote migration beating by.
December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,
Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.


Blue Plaque-tastic! by Clare Mulley

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This week I was thrilled to learn that Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent during the Second World War, and the subject of my last biography, The Spy Who Loved, has been short-listed for a blue plaque in London. English Heritage, who run the scheme, have not confirmed the date or location yet, but have said that I may spread the word. I find it hard to imagine that anyone would not be pleased to have their building associated with such a heroine, so hopefully I will have good news soon, but these things are never guaranteed… 

'Blue Plaques' is the title of the last chapter of my first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children, a biography of Eglantyne Jebb, the inspirational founder of Save the Children. In it I looked at all the memorials that have gone up to this remarkable woman. These include a community sports hall in her home-town of Ellesmere in Shropshire, the thriving village of Xheba in Albania, an English rose, and one of the better-known dogs belonging to HRH, The Princess Royal, Princess Anne - the Princess is the President of Save the Children, and one of many to admire the charity’s founder.


The Eglantyne Jebb memorial lamp
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Eglantyne had a wonderfully dark sense of humour, and I think that this rather eclectic assortment or memorials would have amused her. As would the glass chandelier that hangs in the chapel of Lady Margaret Hall, the Oxford college where she had once read history. Each pendant is in the shape of a ‘white flame’, reflecting the nickname that she had earned for her burning passion for her work, as well as for her prematurely white hair. The chandelier was paid for by subscription among Eglantyne’s former college friends, but it has always amused me that among her papers I found a letter that Eglantyne wrote to her mother during her college days, bemoaning the dullness of her fellow students. If the new intake were as tedious next year, she joked, she would liven things up by putting a bomb in the chapel. And now she is remembered there with this very pleasant, if not wildly exciting, glass chandelier.


Blue print for the memorial seat to Eglantyne Jebb


After Eglantyne’s death in 1928, blueprints were also produced for a stone bench, featuring Save the Children’s original logo, the swaddled babe, to be placed at the top of Mount Saleve outside Geneva in Switzerland. Eglantyne spent her last ten years in Geneva establishing the International Save the Children Alliance, and developing the five-point statement of children’s universal human rights that has now been enshrined as the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. Permission was given for the bench, but when Eglantyne’s sister, Dorothy, discovered how expensive it would be, all donations were reallocated to support children in need in Ethiopia instead. No doubt Eglantyne would have approved.

Of course Eglantyne’s real legacy is not a stone bench, a sports hall, or glass chandelier; it is the wonderful work of Save the Children, saving the lives and improving the life chances of millions of children every day, and the value of the UN Convention, by which institutions, and even governments, may be held to account. However, I was delighted a few years ago when a Blue Plaque was put up at 82 Regent Street, in Cambridge, to mark the building where Eglantyne once worked for a local charity. 

Eglantyne's blue plaque
before it was mounted at 82 Regent Street, Cambridge

The photo above shows Eglantyne’s Blue Plaque, with her dates being pointed out by her great, great, great nephew - who was marvelous at the event, suggesting we used it as an opportunity to raise some funds for the charity. He himself brought some pumpkin seeds to sell, which I duly bought and potted out with my own children. I am afraid to say that the seeds grew into marrows, so he may be considered a swindler, but absolutely the nicest I have met.

So it was with great disappointment that I learned recently that Eglantyne’s blue plaque has been removed. The building has been sold and the developers feel it reduces the value of the site! Save the Children has certainly had a bad couple of weeks since the US arm of the organisation decided to award their annual ‘global legacy’ prize to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his work tackling child poverty while in office. During this time Blair led the G8 nations at Gleneagles to agree to a doubling of aid to Africa, debt cancellation and universal access to Aids treatment. However, Blair’s public legacy has since been overshadowed by his role taking Britain to war in Iraq, actions that Save the Children UK strongly opposed at the time. Hundreds of the UK staff, and thousands of others, have called for the prize to be rescinded, and meanwhile the charity, its many supporters and, most importantly, the children assisted by projects around the world, are facing a serious crisis in terms of support. However, I doubt that this is what the Cambridge developers were concerned about.

Blue plaques are street signposts that operate in another dimension. Instead of showing the way to the motorway or market, they point back in time to the special agent or humanitarian who once lived or worked in that spot – stories that enrich us all as we pass by. I will keep working to try and get Eglantyne Jebb’s plaque replaced. Perhaps the owner of the building opposite might let us project an image of a plaque across the street? Or, once the building is sold again, we might have better luck with the new owners. I will also be keeping my fingers crossed for Christine Granville’s proposed plaque to make it through the final stages at English Heritage.



In the meantime I was hugely cheered to see this 'blue plaque' sticker, marking the door of the flat where the History Girl bloggers met for our Christmas party last week - and it was reproduced on one of the cakes too! With signs like these still being made and appreciated, I feel there is hope yet for Eglantyne’s plaque!


The History Girls: Blue Plaque-tastic! by Clare Mulley

Magna Carta

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We are delighted that this month’s guest post on The History Girls comes courtesy of Dr. Dan Jones author of The Plantagenets and presenter of the recent Channel 5 series about them called "Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty." He was kind enough to take some time out of a hectic schedule to answer a few questions posed by Elizabeth Chadwick on his excellent new book about the Magna Carta. 



This is what his publisher, Head of Zeus, has to say about him:


Dan Jones is the author of The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown, both of which were Sunday Times bestsellers. As a journalist he writes regularly for The Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, Spectator and is a columnist at the London Evening Standard. He has presented television programmes for the BBC and Channel 5 – most recently ‘Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets (2014) and ‘Great British Castles’ (2015).

Jones is a prospective trustee of The Great Charter Foundation – a charity established to further the principles enshrined in Magna Carta. In 2015 as part of the 800th anniversary celebrations he will be taking part in the British Library’s exhibition of the charter, appearing in events nationwide, and giving a TED talk on the subject. He lives in London with his wife and children and tweets as @dgjones.


Elizabeth Chadwick: In the summer of 1214, the year before Magna Carta was signed, a very significant battle, still commemorated by the French was fought near a place called Bouvines. King John was attempting to regain the continental dominions he had lost to the French almost ten years earlier. John and his allies suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the French. If there had been a different outcome to the Battle of Bouvines, or if King John had had a slightly less difficult character, do you think Magna Carta would not have happened - or was it inevitable?

Dan Jones: I guess this strikes right at the heart of Magna Carta: it was both a complaint against (and an attempt to correct) King John himself, and a howl of protest addressed at sixty years of Plantagenet (aka Angevin) government, going back to the accession of Henry II in 1154. The catastrophic loss at Bouvines certainly made things awkward for John in the autumn of 1214, and although John struggled against it for nine months into the spring of 1215, I think that some form of serious reckoning was inevitable after that loss. John’s personality certainly contributed substantially to his problems. It wasn’t that he was massively more monstrous than his father or his brother Richard I – but he lacked many of their redeeming qualities, AND he was thrust into much closer contact with his English subjects than either of his predecessors, because he had lost Normandy. To put it crudely, he was up in their faces all the time. Can we imagine a more benevolent, more militarily successful king John, who would have died in 1216 having driven the controversial Angevin system of government for a decade and a half without having been forced to agree Magna Carta? Yes, easily. But then I should think that the reckoning would probably have come during the reign of John’s son, Henry III.

Elizabeth Chadwick: Magna Carta often mentions the ‘ancient customs’ of the realm. Just how far back in the mindset of the barons involved in creating Magna Carta did these ancient customs go?

Dan Jones: People love to bang on about the good old days, don’t they? When your money went further, and the summers were hotter, and there weren’t so many foreigners… Those complaints (minus the stuff about the summers) were as common in 1215 as they are today. If we were going to put a date on it, then the barons were looking to the days of Henry I (1100-1135) for their inspiration – Henry I’s coronation charter was well known and was actually included in draft treaties that were drawn up for debate in the months and weeks before Magna Carta. But this isn’t the same as saying that the barons wanted to turn the clock back 115 years to 1100, and be done with it. Magna Carta was looking for reform in a partially imagined past, and its ‘ancient customs’ were not necessarily or wholly ancient.



Elizabeth Chadwick: The Church clearly placed itself in prime position with regard to the Magna Carta clauses and also ensured that the charter both began and ended with matters of ecclesiastical importance. Were the other clauses in the charter arranged in order of importance or just as they were thought about?

Dan Jones: You’re right – the hand of Archbishop Stephen Langton can be felt all over Magna Carta - the freedom of the Church is given pride of place and is restated at the end. Is there a logical flow to the rest of the 63 clauses (or chapters)? Not really – clauses are grouped together thematically, but when you read the charter aloud in its entirety (as I just did for the audiobook) you also get the powerful sense of this charter as unfinished business – slightly ragged, swarming with competing agendas and full of compromise. It was, after all, a peace treaty.

Elizabeth Chadwick: Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury was the ‘chair’ of the committee so to speak, but do we know which of the barons were most instrumental in bringing about the wording and content of these clauses? For example, I know that father and son Roger and Hugh Bigod had a good grasp of the law, the former having been an itinerant judge hearing pleas in the reign of King Richard and being a man with a keen eye to his own rights and personal advancement. I just wondered if there were any pointers to who the biggest movers and shakers were among those who hammered out the wording of Magna Carta?

Dan Jones: We absolutely do know who was involved in drawing up Magna Carta – and on both sides. The charter names more than two dozen men who advised the king – they include the great knight-turned-baron William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, the king’s half-brother William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, and a large number of English and Irish clergymen, including the archbishop of Dublin and the Master of the Templars. On the barons’ side, we have a list of the twenty-five noblemen who were appointed as enforcers of the charter – this was preserved by the chronicler Matthew Paris. You’re right to mention the Bigod family. Other notable figures included Robert FitzWalter, lord of Dunmow and Eustace de Vesci – two barons who had been agitating against John since 1212 when they had been at the heart of a plot to assassinate him. They also included the earls of Oxford, Clare, Essex, Winchester and Hereford, and the Mayor of London, Serlo the Mercer, who was presumably one of those who lobbied so hard for the explicit recognition of London’s liberties in Magna Carta.

Elizabeth Chadwick: Do you think that if Sir Edward Coke had not ‘rediscovered’ and promoted Magna Carta in the 16th century during the reigns of James I and Charles I that it would have sunk further into obscurity? Obviously he revived it and used it to boost the efforts to bind the Stuart kings to principles of government, but how much awareness was there of the document at that time among his peers?

Dan Jones: Well, by Coke’s time Magna Carta had been circulating in printed form for more than a century (it was first printed by Richard Pynson in 1508), but it had understandably not been very popular during the Tudor years. All that stuff about restraining kings and guaranteeing the freedom of the English Church was a bit… risqué. Look at Shakespeare’s King John, written probably in the 1590s – no mention at all of Magna Carta there. So the charter owes much to Coke for reviving it and making it a symbolic part of a political argument far removed from the circumstances of Magna Carta’s creation.

But the whole story of Magna Carta – in a sense, right from the first reissue in 1216 – is of it being revived, turned to another purpose and consequently mythologised. Coke was perhaps the most important figure of all in this process, along with our American cousins who adopted Magna Carta as their model as they thrashed out the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. But the process rumbles on even today, when Sir Tim Berners Lee calls for a Magna Carta For The Web, or Jay-Z uses ‘Magna Carta’ as the name of his album to suggest himself rewriting the rules of the music industry.


King John "signs" Magna Carta Bill Nye 1906
Elizabeth Chadwick: Although clauses 39 and 40 are the most well known and most often quoted – for example number 40: “To no free man will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice” - do you have a favourite clause of your own or one that especially interests you? If so will you tell us about it?

Dan Jones: I love the clause banning fish weirs in the Thames and Medway. (Clause 33). Partly because it speaks to the arcane and peculiarly ‘medieval’ nature of so much of Magna Carta’s content. And partly because as soon as you think about it, you conjure up a clear picture of the world of Magna Carta: wooden fish-traps placed along the rivers were a blight to the boats that relied on the south-east’s main waterways. There – now we’re out of the dusty world of ink on parchment and aboard a boat working its way along a tidal river. That’s the humanity that throbs beneath Magna Carta.

Elizabeth Chadwick: You have very clearly delineated the mass influence of Magna Carta up to this point in history. How do you see its influence progressing into the digital age for future generations?

Dan Jones: Big question and in a sense above my pay grade, but when I consider the circumstances that threw up Magna Carta and the big issues concerning our digital future, I mainly see masses of questions and no easy answers. How do you check massive companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and so on, whose wealth and power is starting to exceed that of some nation states? How do you regulate the regulators? What rights and liberties do we really all have in common? Who’s going to get rid of the fish-traps on the Thames and Medway? No, wait, I think we sorted that one.






The Cabinet of Curiosities: The Human Heart - Louisa Young

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My proposal for the Cabinet of Curiosities is one of the most curious items I have ever come across: the human heart. We all have one; most of us will never see one. We all know what it is, very few of us can explain how it works. There exists a universal fascination with it which no other organ shares, not even the brain, so complex and mysterious, and only now beginning to give up its secrets. The future may belong to the brain, but the past belongs to the heart.

When I first wrote about the heart, in The Book of the Heart (2001), people would say 'Oh - the physical heart? Or the emotions?'

'Both,' I would reply, because the heart is above all two things at once: full and empty, moving and still, left and right, ventricles and atria, physical and spiritual, red and blue, oxygenated and non-oxygenated, body and soul, sacred and profane, god and man, hard and soft, recipient and creative, male and female, suction and expulsion. It is a muscle, a pump for blood, and yet it is the home of love, courage and religion; it is full of blood and of symbolism. Every age, every culture and every religion has ideas and beliefs about the heart which support, overlap and undermine each other; we have always known the heart's vital importance, and assigned similar reasons for it.

Here is an anthropomorphic Olmec heart, 5000 years old:



I divided the book into four sections - like the four chambers - and filled them with Anatomy, Religion, Art and Love, but they kept overlapping.

But why the heart? Imagine you are a neanderthal. . .  what do you do? Go hunting? Your heart twitches when you see your prey - a mammoth, say. It beats faster and faster as you run after your mammoth. When you shoot it, where do you aim? You know an animal shot through the heart dies; you know when it dies the beating stops. You drag the mammoth home, heart thumping away with the effort of work. You give it to your family to eat and your heart glows with pride. Your wife takes you aside and makes beautiful love to you in gratitude for having brought home the mammoth bacon; again, your heart makes its presence felt. Little wonder that the most ancient cave paintings - in the cavern at Pindal - show a heart (on a mammoth, as it happens) and the earliest written story, Gilgamish, tells of the hero's heart being full of courage as he sets out, and full of affection for his friend.

In ancient Egypt, after you died your heart was weighed against the feather of truth, in front of a jury of fourteen gods, and if it were found wanting it was eaten by a demon called Ammit, part crocodile, part lion, part hippo. The process of judgement was governed by the Book of the Dead; here are some prayers listing some of the 42 specific sins which had to be denied by your heart, to specific gods:
'Oh Wide-of-Stride who comes from On, I have not done evil.
Oh Shadow-eater who comes from the cave, I have not stolen.
Oh Lion Twins who some from Heaven, I have not trimmed the measure.
Oh Cave-dweller who comes from the west, I have not sulked.
Oh Backward-faced one who comes from the pit, I have not copulated with a boy.
Oh High of Head who comes from the cave, I have not wanted more than I had.

'I have not mistreated cattle, I have not sinned in the place of truth, I have not deleted the loaves of the Gods; I have not eaten the cakes of the dead, I have not held back water in its season, I have not quenched a needed fire . . .'

And there were prayers to the heart itself (both hearts the haty and the ib - the Egyptians had separate names for the emotional and physical hearts) asking it not to lie about you, or get you into trouble:
'Oh my heart of my mother
Oh my heart of my mother
Oh my heart of my being
Do not rise up against me as a witness
Do not oppose me in the tribunal
Do not rebel against me before the guardians of the scales . . . '

Here is the Psychostasia of Hunefer - heart on the left, feather of truth on the right, Thoth commanding the proceedings, Ammit lurking:


which led directly to this sort of thing: St Michael weighing a soul 
(depicted here by Hans Holbein the Younger)




I had an entire chapter on the pre-biblical origins of Country and Western lyrics, with a section on Hank Williams's Your Cheatin' Heart -  'Your cheating heart will make you weep, you'll cry and cry and try to sleep, but sleep won't come, the whole night through - Your cheating heart, will tell on you . . . ' You can't tell me that's not about Osiris.

The ancient Egyptian and Babylonian reverence for the heart swanned through the Old Testament into Judaism and Christianity; segued into Islam (where the heart must be clean and pure as glass to reflect God back at himself - god lives in a clean heart - cue Blondie, Heart of Glass - and here is a heart of glass, full of animals, with Jesus holding it up (while spurting blood from his heart into a cup - the original suit in cards, which became Hearts, was Cups, as in Tarot and the old Italian Scopa cards):




and cue also this - a dear little Jesus sweeping all the evils out of a cosy clean heart: 


Which leads to all kinds of things . . . . Here is a piece of work by an anonymous nun of the late 15th century. Forgive my bad photograph. The heart is a house; the aorta is a chimney (with the Lamb of God sitting on top). Steps lead up to the door and inside the nun sits on Christ's knee, with God the Father embracing her and the Holy Spirit perching by her. She has even let her hair down and taken off her veil. Top right you may make out St Walburga and her host of 144,000 virgins arriving on a cloud. A tiny dog protects the doorway. It is truly a heart full of love, a safe place to spend eternity.


The same nun made this: The heart of Christ on the cross. The ladder leading up is labelled step by step with virtues you need to have in order to reach the happy state of union with God inside his heart. 


Here's another couple setting up home in the heart of god: 
Rama and Sita, inside Hanuman




Here is the most wounded of wounded hearts, that of Mary, with her seven sorrows, each one a blade: this is a 17th-century Italian depiciton. She would have had a wig and a skirt. 




A heart is a container of God, his love, and his word: 
here it's a vine bearing grapes full of blood/wine/Holy Communion for the lambs to drink (see also heart-of-glass Jesus, above) 



Here it's a pomegranate, split open to presage Christ's passion on the cross, when his heart was pierced by the spear of the soldier Longinus (knowing this would happen is one of Mary's sorrows, see above). Broken hearts of course had a chapter to themselves.



Here the heart is a book 
(cf Moses, the two tablets of the law, the law written on the hearts of men . . .)


and here is Jesus (or Amor, depending) writing in it


which brings us to this:




If it can be a book it can be a map. Eat your (sorry) heart out, Grayson Perry:



or a song . . . .



or a musical instrument. See those heartstrings go Zing. . . .




Or it can be a locket to keep a real heart in.
This one contained the heart of Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinloss, who took exception to Sir Edward Sackvile's contention that Scotsmen were beggarly, and as a result died in a duel at Bergen. 
There's a reason why it's upside down, by our standards. I could tell you why. I could tell you why the heart has a pointy bottom and scallopy top, too, despite looking in reality like a meat whoopie cushion. And why it has two sides. And  . . . all kinds of things. If truly 'the heart of him that hath understanding seeks knowledge' (Proverbs, 15.14), just ask.  



Have I convinced you? Is the heart curious? Does it not deserve a place in our cabinet? 













December competition

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Our competitions are open to UK readers only - sorry!

To win one of five copies of Dan Jones' Magna Carta book, just write your answer to this question in the Comments box below:

"If you were designing a Magna Carta for today, what would your first clause be?"

Please also send your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that I can contact you if you win.

History Girls Old and New or the Great History Cake-off by Mary Hoffman

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We thought it was time to update the photo on the About Us Page, because there have been a lot of comings and goings in the History Girls since we began this blog three and a half years ago. We have lost Mary Hooper, Linda Buckley-Archer, Harriet Castor, Barbara Mitchelhill and Theresa Breslin from our original list. Several other names have disappeared since we started: Essie Fox, Lucy Inglis, Emma Darwin, Katherine Roberts, Di Hofmeyr, Nicky Browne, Manda Scott, Julia Golding (Eve Edwards), Katie Grant, Jane Borodale and Louise Berridge. So many great writers and good friends who have succumbed to the pressures of work or family.


On the plus side, we have gained Karen Maitland,  Laurie Graham, Joan Lennon, Clare Mulley, Kate Lord Brown, Liz Fremantle, Elizabeth Chadwick, Lydia Syson, Carol Drinkwater, Tanya Landman, Ying Lee, Ann Swinfen, Clare Letemendia, Christina Koning and Gillian Polack.

Above is a goodly portion of us, taken in December, at the same venue as three and a half years ago in Michelle Lovric's Thameside apartment. That's Michelle front right but you can't see that she is holding her latest novel, The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters.

On the left are Joan Lennon and Marie-Louise Jensen, on the right Imogen Robertson. Behind Michelle is Elizabeth Chadwick with Lydia Syson and Catherine Johnson on the right as you look and me on the left. Left of me is Celia Rees. Behind that it gets hard to see us properly.

It's darker in December than when we were last photographed and I think there were more of us this time, so we divided up and had some half and half shots too:

Here, Catherine Johnson is in front with Adèle Geras behind her and Kath Langrish on the left and Louisa Young on the right.On the right of Adèle is Liz Fremantle. On the left behind them you can see Leslie Wilson, Penny Dolan, Michelle Lovric and Elizabeth Chadwick. Celia Rees is peeping out from between books. On the right are Sue Purkiss, Joan Lennon, Caroline Lawrence and Clare Mulley.

This one is the "other half" of us, with some of the same people again. Michelle is front left this time with a rare shot of Anne Rooney, out technical support guru, on the right. I am between them. To the left Imogen Robertson and to the right Marie-Louise Jensen and a clear view of Joan Lennon.

I had forgotten to bring my latest book to hold but if I had remembered it would have been this:



And we even managed to get some of our invaluable Reserve History Girls Along:

L to R: Rosemary Hayes, Sarah Gristwood and Liz Laird

 We were gathered partly to have new photos and partly to celebrate keeping the blog going for three and a half eventful years involving many new books, gains and losses of nearest and dearest, weddings and funerals. (I myself have become a grandmother - twice- since July 2011).

Since the History Girls site was set up at Michelle's we also indulged in a little blue-plaquery:





And the theme continued into our tea-party:

That was a fruit cake made by Adèle and there were lots of other goodies too:



British Bake-off, eat your heart out! I had the honour of cutting Adèle's cake while Leslie wilson cut her own chocolate and chestnut one:


You can read all about the new History Girls on the About Us page, including the Reserves, who also include Maria McCann, Ann Turnbull and Susan Price. Some - Laurie Graham, Ying Lee, Carol Drinkwater, Kate Lord Brown, Clare Letemendia, Gillian Polack - do not live in the UK and were unable to join us. But we felt they were there in spirit.


All the photos shown here were taken by the History Girls present or by honorary-HG-for-the-day Isabel Adomakoh Young, Louisa's stunning daughter. Someone managed to catch Isabel doing her stuff:






As we enter on to another year of history and adventures, we are thrilled to have so many talented writers on board and hope you will continue to enjoy their posts.



www.maryhoffman.co.uk





William of Orange - by Gillian Polack

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I promised you a touch of romance and some stories. The story begins, of course, with 'Once upon a time...'

Once upon a time, a teenager fell in love with a character in a series of stories. Being a geekish type (before there were computer networks to shape this love) it was a quiet and gentle addiction. The character’s name was William. Or Guillaume. Or Guilhem. 

I met him first in 1980, when Anne Trindade introduced me to my very first Old French epic legends. 

Old French epic legends rock. They have so much going for them. They're politically incorrect, violent, funny, tragic, and addictive: I’ve never got over them. 

William appeared in a range of epics, so my teen self had a William for every mood. There was a politically incorrect William, who terrorised Saracens, and he was the violent William as well. There was the romantic William who won his bride and the humorous William who stood patiently outside the gate of the city trying to convince his wife to let him in “Why should I?” she asked, quite reasonably. “How do I even know you’re my husband? He’s been away so long I’m not sure how to recognise him.” There was the political and charming William, who was counsellor to an old king and supporter of a young one.

If I’d been a normal geek, I probably would have found Roland (with his stupid bravery) or Olivier (who was wise, but far too trusting) more interesting. When I was in my late teens I found that it was far more tempting to fall in love with someone who had his life under control and whose sense of humour was somewhat warped and who was complex. I wasn’t at all tempted by the simple idiot who died in the pass at Roncesvals because he was too vain to blow a horn for help. My hero was the miracle worker who defended himself against false-brigands by ripping the hind leg off his transport, and put the leg politely back on (no harm done to any except the thieves) when he was finished. William was a hero, with all the wrong (killing is still killing) and right (bravery, cunning, and a late-in-life tendency to miracle working) that made his legend what it was. He also had that wife to keep his ego in check. She mocked his nose and locked him out of his own town. She made sure his whole army knew that a marriage needed work from both sides. 

William wasn’t just a figment of the Medieval imagination. He was real, and the monastery he retired to is real, and I’ve visited it. Here, have a picture of it.



Who was the man who founded that monastery? Why did he inspire all those amazing stories?

In Languedoc, his name is Guilhem, and he is a saint (feast day, May 28). He did indeed found that monastery and, in just in a moment, I’ll give you a picture of his bones which can still be visited in the church he built.

Before he retired, he was one of the most important men in western Europe. He was part of Charlemagne’s big reform movement in Europe in the second half of the eighth century. He actually fought those Saracens: he was a leader of the Christians who fought back against the Muslim holy war. Still not politically correct (for it was outright war, on both sides), but he was one of the main leaders who drew the geographical border between Christianity and Islam. 

He did much more but this, and the founding of the monastery are what gave rise to the romantic and violent tales, a couple of centuries later. The first story about him is the English Song of Willame: the earliest bits of it may date as early as the eleventh century. It’s possible that one of the two wives apparently mentioned in his will (which I haven’t seen, and I’m curious about) was actually a convert from Islam and that the heroine who refused to let him enter his own home until he realised what an idiot he had been, was very real.

William (the real one) retired to Gellone around 806 and he died there. Let me introduce you to him. Reader, meet William.



I chose the location of my novel Langue[dot]doc 1305purely so that I’d have an excuse to visit William. The town he founded is exquisitely beautiful. Sometimes our teen crushes are very fortunate.

Bikes, Bars, and Bloomers, by Y S Lee

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Living in southeastern Ontario, I count on having white Christmases. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, this year’s was warm and browny-green, so my family and I made the best of it by riding our bikes often along a waterfront path that follows the curve of Lake Ontario. I seldom spare much thought for my riding gear (apart from wearing a helmet) but in the past week, I’ve been consumed with appreciation for the women of the Rational Dress Society.

In her Bicycle Book, Bella Bathurst quotes early American feminist Susan B. Anthony as saying, in 1896, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world”. As Bathurst notes, “It was a surprising claim.”

The earliest bicycles were called velocipedes. They were mass-produced from 1857, but it took a hardy and determined cyclist to appreciate the ride they offered: velocipedes were built of wood, with the later addition of metal tires. When pedalled over patchily paved roads, it’s no wonder they became known as “boneshakers”. The velocipede evolved into the penny-farthing bicycle of the 1870s, with its enormous front wheel. Gears had yet to be invented, so the big wheel enabled the cyclist to ride quickly while pedalling at a reasonable rate. It also improved the ride quality. 

Two men on pennyfarthings, California, 1866. Image via wikipedia
 However, women of the 1870s were still trapped in highly structured skirts with bustles – possibly an improvement over the huge crinoline of the 1860s, but still terribly cumbersome and constricting.

Detail from "Too Early", by Tissot. Image via wikipedia.
It’s impossible to think of athletic activity in such clothing, or even what we now consider a normal range of motion. Contrast the lines of Tissot's gowns (above) with this recent instructional video, which shows how tricky it is to mount and dismount a pennyfarthing.

 
Some women of means briefly considered the tricycle. According to Bathurst, “While out in her carriage one day at Osborne, Queen Victoria spotted a lady on a trike at a distance. Intrigued, she ordered her driver to speed up. The trike rider looked round, realised who her pursuer was, panicked and took off. Sadly, the Queen did not succumb to the temptation to give chase. Instead, she asked to meet the trike’s inventor, James Starley… [and] was pleased enough with the trike to order two. Even so, trike fever never really caught on. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with them, but because the bicycle was better.” It was only with the invention of the safety bicycle in the late 1880s that women began to embrace the machine.

A tandem tricycle, 1882. Image via the Women's History Network.
With the safety bicycle came an immediate and predictable public uproar at the spectre of ladies sitting astride a bike, revealing the existence of legs and possibly damaging the “feminine organs of matrimonial necessity” (quoted in Bathurst)! And there was the very real problem of riding whilst wearing a corset and some 20 pounds’ worth of clothing. It was at this moment that cyclists and clothing reformers found common cause.

"Ladies safety bicycle" from 1889. Image via wikipedia.
Bloomers had been worn – and ridiculed – since their invention in 1851, by the American activist Elizabeth Smith Miller. It required huge confidence to wear bloomers in public: even Amelia Bloomer, who lent her name to the garments, had given up on bloomers by 1859 in favour of undergarment reform. Despite the founding of the Rational Dress Society in 1881, the wearing of bloomers or rational dress (ample trousers overlaid with a shorter skirt) was still considered eccentric and even morally suspect. 

Woman in bloomer costume. Image via National Park Service.
For example, dress reformer and bicycle enthusiast Lady Harberton was refused service in the ladies’ lounge of the Hautboy Hotel in Surrey on the grounds that she was wearing bloomers. She was directed to the bar, where the only other women were prostitutes. When Lady Harberton sued the hotel, the jury found in favour of the landlady.

Despite such setbacks, the bicycle offered just the necessary incentive for the rational dress movement to stick. Bathurst quotes Rose Macaulay's description of the sensation of bicycling as “glorious; the nearest approach to wings permitted to man and woman here below”. Speed, independence, and the sensation of flying? In the long run, the bustle didn’t stand a chance.

Of Ships and Suns - by Katherine Langrish

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In all kinds of mythologies there are stories about sailing across the sea to a mystical land.  Maybe peoples of all races and all times have this in their blood: anyone who’s ever stood at the seashore and seen the sun rising or setting over the ocean must have wondered, like young Peer Ulfsson in my historical fantasy ‘West of the Moon’, what it would be like to find the lands beyond the sun:

He clambered across the cargo and up the curve of the ship into the stern, where he stood for a moment holding the tiller and gazing out westwards.  The sun was low, laying a bright track over the water: a road studded with glittering cobblestones.  It stung his heart and dazzled his eyes.

He felt a surge of longing.  Life was a tangle that tied him to the shore.  What would it be like to cut free, shake off the land, and go gliding away into the very heart of the sun?

That ships and suns go together can be seen from the Egyptian sun god Re with his two boats: the sun boat or Mandjet (Boat of Millions of Years) which carried him from east to west across the sky accompanied by various other deities and personifications, and the night boat, the Mesesket, on which the god travelled through the perilous underworld from west to east, to rise again in the morning.  

How old is Re?  Well, judging by the dates of temples dedicated to his worship, his cult rose to its zenith in the 5th Dynasty, beginning approximately 2500 BCE.  The dead were expected to spend eternity travelling with him across the sky. (Later his cult was superseded by the resurrection cult of Osiris.)  The photo above this paragraph shows the full-size Egyptian ship known as the Khufu ship, 143 feet long and built of Lebanon cedar, which was sealed into a pit at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza: the remains of many other solar boats have been found in different locations in Egypt.



Rock engravings in Scandinavia, dated to the Bronze Age any time between 1500 and 400 BCE show the same correspondence between ships and suns.  Here are some examples, reproduced in ‘The Chariot of the Sun and other Rites and Symbols of the Northern Bronze Age' by Peter Gelling and Hilda Ellis Davidson, showing ships embellished with sun discs and spirals. 



But people have been heading out to sea for literally hundreds of thousands of years.  Here’s a link to an article which seems to show that even before we were modern humans, hominids such as homo erectus ‘used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from Northern Africa to Europe’ – island-hopping as they went and leaving stone hand axes on Crete dating to at least 130,000 BCE.   How amazing – how utterly mind-blowing is that?  Modern humans crossed to Australia 60,000 years ago, and to North America earlier than 13,000 BCE. 

Whatever drove them to make these discoveries?  A nomadic hunter-gathering lifestyle is one thing: but setting off in a boat or on a raft on a one-way trip into an unknown ocean is quite another, especially with no population pressure pushing you on.  I can’t help but wonder if there was maybe a religious, a mystical element to these early voyages of discovery.  Maybe, standing on the sea shore, gazing at the sun rising or setting (depending which side of which continent they were), early peoples believed themselves to be embarking on journeys to follow the sun to the land of gods and the happy dead?  

And those left behind, watching them depart, must have felt a huge sense of awe, wonder and mystery about what befell the seafarers. As it says in ‘Beowulf’, when the dead king Scyld Scefing is set adrift in his ship-funeral:

Then they set up / the standard of gold
High over head: / let the sea bear him:
Gave him to the flood / with sad hearts
And mourning minds.  / Men cannot
Say for certain, / neither court-counsellors
Nor heroes under heaven, / who received that cargo.  

Who received that cargo?  By the time the Beowulf poem was written down, England was Christian.  But the poem leaves us in doubt as to the eventual supernatural landfall of a pagan king: it was an age which could still hold Christian and pagan beliefs in relatively comfortable simultaneity – an age which, maybe, knew it didn’t have all the answers.

And people down the centuries have been buried in ships, like the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo ship, dating from the early 7th century AD, and the Oseberg ship, circa 800 AD,  which carried the bodies of two women, priestesses or queens, and the Gokstad ship, built of oak felled around 890 AD, sheltering the body of a man, perhaps a king.  The 10th century Muslim traveller Ibn Fadlan wrote an eyewitness account of a Viking ship-funeral in Russia: a chieftain interred in his ship along with many grave goods and sacrifices, including that of a slave girl who ‘saw’ into the land of the dead in a kind of drugged trance, after which she was strangled and stabbed and laid beside him to accompany him on his mystical voyage.  According to Ibn Fadlan’s account, she had voluntarily offered herself as the sacrifice, and we needn’t be too sceptical.  In all probability she utterly believed she would be accompanying her lord to the Otherworld.  He was her passport to immortality.  

So ships and suns and voyages into the west have been part of the human imagination for many thousands of years.  After Re the sun god, there came Odysseus, Jason, Maelduine, Brendan, Oisin and many a nameless adventurer with them.  There came the Christian hermits who sailed out to remote islets in the Atlantic, and the saints who founded monasteries on Holy Islands like Iona and Lindisfarne. 

So let’s set sail for the western isles, the land of the gods, the land of the dead, the land of the ever-young.  Bid farewell to Middle-Earth.  This way to Aeaea, Avalon, Tir na n’Og, Valinor, Eldamar, the Hesperides and Hy Brasil.  Hush! Can you hear the seagulls crying?   

Flatulence, Indigestion, Black Death, not to mention Acne ... by Joan Lennon

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The season of excess in food and drink is still strong in our memories, as are thoughts of ensuing digestive difficulties.  (If you type "Healthy January" into Google, you get something like 530 million links to click on.)  Indigestion and the "expelling of wind" were topics which also exercised the minds of medieval medical types considerably.*  Here are a few of the cures they proposed for those gut feelings:

- powdered bay leave taken with honey
- feverfew fried with wine and oil and applied to the belly
- the ingestion of mint, valerian, hemp seeds, cardamon seeds, fennel, cloves ... 
- borage, which had the added advantage of also being good for melancholy (Being overly windy can be depressing.)

A quite interesting thing about these cures was that they were also prescribed for plague**, acne and the bite of a mad dog.  The up side to this was that anyone unfortunate enough to be suffering from all these conditions simultaneously wouldn't have to spend time and money on taking different medicines.

I think I might just consider a bit of moderation.



* I thought this should perhaps be an image-free post.  You can thank me later.
** Other medieval cures for the black death included drinking powdered emeralds or molten gold, eating a spider inserted into a raisin, and the toad cure.  This involved a number of dead toads which you dried in the sun and then placed on the victim's boils.  The toad would swell up and burst, and you would then apply another, continuing until the patient got better*** or you ran out of toads.
*** Or, you know, died.

(To find out more about the delights of medieval medicine, join me at the back of The Wickit Chronicle books where I get to include much that is gruesome and revolting from the Middle Ages, just for the fun of it.) 

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



Undress your mind by Lydia Syson

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Ella Fitzgerald introduced me to sexology.  I was probably eleven or twelve when I fell in love with the Cole Porter Songbook, though it was years before I realised exactly what Ella was singing about. Alfred J Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male was published in 1948, and copies of his ground-breaking survey of contemporary sexual mores, based on thousands of extraordinarily intimate interviews, sold as fast as Gone with the Wind. By December, the first sexology bestseller had made it to Broadway, via Cole Porter’s sensational musical Kiss me Kate:

According to the Kinsey Report,

Every average man you know

Much prefers his lovey-dovey to court

When the temperature is low…’


(If you know the song ‘Too Darn Hot’ through Ann Miller’s superb rendition of it in the 1953 film version, you might notice that Kinsey has become ‘latest’…I’d love to know exactly why.)




Kinsey is just one of the leading sexologists whose ideas and techniques are currently 'laid bare' at the Wellcome Collection in London.  The Institute of Sexology: Undress Your Mind isa free exhibition which sets out to explore “the big questions of human sexuality.” It does so with admirable candour and breadth, using a combination of Henry Wellcome’s original collection of global erotica, recent and contemporary art, photography old and new, video, live performances and a great deal of discussion.  Don’t be put off by the fact that it has been designed as an evolving, participatory exhibition, which may well change in the course of the ten months for which it will run.  You can quite easily enjoy it without leaving a trace of your thoughts behind, and I'm sure it will be worth revisiting.  


Less well known than Alfred Kinsey but equally pioneering was the German physician Magnus Hirschfeld: in America he was dubbed the Einstein of Sex.  The Wellcome exhibition and the book of the show borrow their name from the Insitut für Sexualwissenschaft which he established during the liberal years of the Weimar Republic. One of the most shocking things you’ll see, almost as soon you come in, is not one of the hundreds of erotic items on display, but news footage of the burning of the contents of Hirschfeld’s library in May 1933, just three months after Hitler came to power.  


Hirschfeld was both openly gay and Jewish, and he was also an activist, promoting scientific knowledge about homosexuality because he wanted to change people’s attitudes to sexual minorities.  Most importantly, he wanted to change the laws governing sexual behaviour, specifically Paragraph 175, which not fully repealed in Germany until 1994. (And here I can’t resist adding the fact that the always admirable Conrad Veidt, star of the film Contraband(1940) which features in my novel ‘That Burning Summer’, and more famously Casablanca, played one of the first sympathetic homosexual roles in film history in Hirschfeld's (and Fassbinder’s) 1919 polemical drama Different from the Others (Andersals die Andern)) 



Despite its faintly titillating subtitle, this exhibition doesn’t so much undress your mind as send it scuttling down an almost bewilderingly vast variety of different pathways. The range is absolutely huge – you’ll see Marie Stope’s careful analysis of her own sexual feelings on a day-by-day basis alongside the symbolic bronze porcupine model Freud kept on his desk to represent the challenges of human intimacy. From a nineteenth-century manuscript of an Indian flying phallus, a Nepalese version of the Kamasutra and a viciously-toothed steel anti-masturbation device for young European men, you pass quickly to material from the archives of anthropologists Bronislaw Malinoswki and Margaret Mead and then on to a replica of Wilhelm Reich’s mythical ‘orgone accumulator’ (parodied by Woody Allen as the Orgasmatron in Sleeper). It would be unrealistic to expect a show on this scale to be able to hold your hand all the way down so many divergent routes, and you are frequently abandoned before you reach the foothills of an idea. But the galleries certainly set the mind roaming.


Several things struck me.  One relates to my age - less than half a century - but how quickly memories become redefined as history!  I reeled a little from a label describing a diaphragm as a popular method of contraception in the 20th century. Later, and for the first time since they dramatically appeared in tube stations when I was a student in the late 1980s, I was confronted by the unforgettable AIDs ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ posters, which rightly corrected the government’s initial emphasis on homosexuals and drug users as transmitters and ‘victims’ of HIV.  A few years after this campaign, in 1989, the same government tried to suppress the very first NATSAL (the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles) by withdrawing Department of Health funding.  The Wellcome Trust’s instant response to Thatcher’s intervention was to take on the full cost of funding this ground-breaking research itself, and this story is told in the exhibition too. Politics are rarely far from sexology.


The Institute of Sexology bills itself as the first British exhibition to bring together “the pioneers of the study of sex".  I must confess I’m sorry it only covers the last 150 years, and hasn’t therefore included the very first and most colourful of these pioneers, and my own favourite, Dr James Graham.  His Temple of Health was something of a precursor of the Wellcome Collection itself, very much a ‘destination for the incurably curious’.  Wellcome co-curator Kate Forde is quoted as saying “It makes sense to start from the point where people wanted to legitimise sex by looking at it as science.”  I argued in Doctor of Love: James Graham and His Celestial Bed (Alma Books, 2008) that this is precisely what this eighteenth-century medical entrepreneur was trying to do, harnessing all the latest innovations in science, music and mechanics to improve marital relations and produce perfect babies, explaining his thinking in considerable detail in eye-opening lectures ‘On Generation’. 

Graham was attempting all this at a time when scientists were still called natural philosophers, and anyone operating on the fringes of the medical establishment was denounced as a quack.  The Electric Doctor was a man who perfectly exemplified his spectacular, speculative era.  He was hugely progressive in multiple ways, but he didn’t spawn followers, and left sparse records behind - not even an image of his famous bed.  Controlled trials were in their infancy at this point, so even if reliable accounts remained, they would lack rigour by twentieth-century standards.  Even more to the point, exhibitions are primarily about objects, and, sadly, I should think it would take several times the budget of this show to build an accurate reconstruction of the Grand State Celestial Bed, which would be the best way to do the doctor justice.  The original certainly bankrupted Graham in 1781.


The showcase ‘medico, magnetico, musico, electrical bed’ - re-imagined above by Tim Hunkin - was huge: twelve foot by nine.  Its vast dome, decked in musical automata, was festooned with fresh flowers and topped with a statue of Hymen, the god of marriage, holding aloft a torch ‘flaming with electrical fire’.  Live turtledoves nesting on the bed were soothed by oriental fragrances and ‘aethereal gases’ (probably nitrous oxide) which wafted from a reservoir inside the dome.  Organ pipes breathed out sublime ‘celestial sounds’, intensifying with the ardour and movements of the bed’s occupants, who were reflected in overhead mirrors while streams of light played over their pillows.  Coloured silken sheets covered a mattress stuffed with horse hair from the tails of the finest stallions. Every element of the bed was conceived to evoke fecundity and promote fertility, down to the magnets which rotated beneath it, supposedly providing a ‘sweet undulating, titillating, vibratory, soul-dissolving, marrow-melting motion’.  (Their power must have surely been more symbolic than scientific.)  A tilting inner frame allowed the ‘gentleman’ to ‘follow his lady downhill’ to help conception, and at the head of the bed, in the eighteenth-century equivalent of neon lights, a single sparkling slogan in electrified burnished gold commanded: ‘Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth!’

This bed was the final and most elaborate incarnation of an idea the doctor had been exploring since he first began to experiment with medical electricity in the American colonies.  In time, Graham hoped, every husband and wife would have a version at home.  In my book – and also in Roy Porter’s Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660-1850(1989), where I first encountered Graham - that certainly qualifies him as a pioneer in the field of sexology. 





Lydia Syson also writes historical, political novels for young and older adults. You can hear a recording of her lecture on Dr Graham at the Royal College of Surgeons. 


FROM BATS TO BEDS TO BOOKS by Adèle Geras

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I live in a village just south of Cambridge. My house is the fourth on the left as you 'cross the border' (the sign saying Great Shelford) from Cambridge. Indeed I can see the sign saying 'Welcome to Cambridge' as I turn out of my drive. I vote in Great Shelford; I go to the Memorial Hall on a Wednesday for the WI market, and I meet my friends in the Deli. I wrote a post on this blog about the Church at the other end of the village. 

We are very lucky to have a wonderful little library in Great Shelford: modern, well-stocked and run by very pleasant people. I often go in there to look around and the last time I did I found a book which I think must have been privately printed.  I picked it up because I liked the name of the author: PHILOMENA GUILLEBAUD. The title looked fun too: From Bats to Beds to Books. 






 The writer had thoughtfully provided an email address and I wrote to her at once to ask her permission to write this post. I haven't had an answer, so if anyone reads this who knows her, or who knew her, I'd be most grateful if they could get in touch with me and give me a kind of retrospective license to write about this delightful volume. I'm also going to risk photographing some of the illustrations and if anyone knows that I am breaching their copyright, then again, please get in touch with me on adelegerasAT adelegeras.com and tell me and I will remove them.  They all seem to have acquired a blue tinge in one corner that I'm too incompetent to remove but I hope everyone will forgive me for that.

But I'm starting with a photo of Cambridge University Library which is in the public domain. 



To my  mind, it's not a building of great beauty, but it is a wonderful place in many ways and the history of the site on which it stands is astonishing....at least I found it so.

Here is the story I uncovered when I took Philomena Guillebaud's fascinating book out of the library.

Anyone who's been in a modern hospital knows that one thing you can depend on is an even temperature which strikes the visitor as MUCH TOO WARM.  In Maternity Units, the excuse is that babies need warmth and that's fair enough. But even on medical wards, it has always struck me that hospitals tended towards the over warm rather than its opposite. 



It was not always thus. I am not going to make a précis of Guillebaud's excellent text but the narrative tells of a cricket pitch, shared between King's College and Clare College which was requisitioned by the Army at the beginning of the Great War and ploughed up to accommodate a hospital for the Territorial Force. This was called  the First Eastern General Hospital and when you read how speedily it was put up, complete with sewerage, electricity, gas, and medical equipment etc you wonder how slow we have become in the years since 1914.  Till it was ready, Trinity College set up wards in the college  quads (see the photo above) 

One of the driving forces behind the setting up of this new hospital was  Colonel Joseph Griffiths. He was a doctor and he had very firm views about how hospitals ought to be. To read Guillebaud's account, it seems that the organisation was extraordinarily efficient. There was food on site. The site map shows a space for a cinema.  The  hospital was on this site till 1919. Till then, staffed by doctors and nurses from nearby Addenbrooke's hospital, as well as many volunteers, VADs and others, it did good work in curing and tending the sick and the wounded. And, here's the thing: IT WAS AN OPEN AIR HOSPITAL. Read that again. It was an open air hospital. Think about it, now that the frost is on the windows and the skies sometimes full of rain and snow. OPEN AIR. One side of the ward had no windows. Griffiths, a doctor who had treated TB very often, believed in the efficacy of fresh air.

My thought when I read this was: 'well, yes, fine in the summer, but in the winter?' I was, to put it mildly, gobsmacked. I thought of the nurses, on duty on a freezing night, who referred to conditions as 'chilly' and who were delighted when they were given permission to wear.....wait for it....A CARDIGAN to wear over their uniform! Clearly, folk were made of sterner stuff then. The patients at least had their blankets. They were sometimes allowed four of these, but still, their heads were above the blankets and (though Guillebaud doesn't mention this) they must have had to get up to go to the lavatories. How did that work?  The winter of 1917 was fierce. The Cambridge winds are famous for their sharpness. It makes me shiver just to think of it. Also, of course, all the nourishing food that the kitchens provided must have been ice cold by the time it got to the wards.  Below are two photographs of an open ward, one of the interior of the ward and the other taken just outside.  Everyone looks quite happy and relaxed and not a bit cold but of course the images are   clearly taken in the summer.






 The site after the  end of the war became (again, very quickly indeed) housing for families who needed accommodation urgently. The colleges wanted their cricket pitches back. But the University was in discussions about using the land for a much-needed Library. By 1929, newspapers carried photographs of the homes on the site being vacated. The Cambridge University Library was on its way to being built. 





The last photograph shows the operating theatre in the Hospital.  I am thinking of those patients being wheeled along the corridor to a ward whose temperature doesn't bear thinking about. Still, no one died from cold, and most of the men who were treated there were cured. Colonel Griffiths believed passionately in the fresh air treatment. What's your opinion? I suspect that  open air wards would be a common feature in hospitals today if being in one was really efficacious. I'm  glad that Addenbrooke's, which is down the road from my house, is nice and warm but I admire and salute the men and women who served in the First  Eastern General Hospital and I loved the book Philomena Guillebaud has written about it.





November Competition

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The winners of  Five Children on the Western Front are:

Ruan Peat
Clare Mulley
Linda Lawlor
Young Historian (Lauren)
Jax Blunt

You can get your prizes by sending your land address to Hannah Love at Faber:  hannah.love@faber.co.uk

Congratulations!

THIS LITTLE PIGGY by Karen Maitland

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I don’t know about you, but pigs are the last animals I ever expect to encounter as ghosts. They seem such solid, down-to-earth creatures. But there are a surprising number of accounts of ghostly pigs who appear around about this time of the year. At Andover, Hampshire, a ghost or demon pig appears at New Year, but is also seen whenever there is a bad thunderstorm. (Perhaps because pigs are supposed to be able to predict a storm and run around with straw hanging from their mouths when they sense it coming.) A litter of ghostly piglets are said to run across the road on Christmas Eve at Culcutt, Wiltshire and ghostly sow and piglets appear on All Souls Eve in Bransby, Lincolnshire and also at Merripit in Devon.

The Isle of Man has several legends of faery pigs, while both the church of Winwick and Burnley occupy their present sites because of demon pigs. According to legend, while they were being built, a pig kept moving them during the night to a new location, until eventually the villagers surrendered and left the churches where the pig had put them. The origin of these legends maybe the carvings of pigs on the walls of these two churches which may indicate the churches were built on an ancient sacred site. The boar was the most frequently sacrificed animal among the pagan Saxons. It was seen as a fitting gift for the gods because of its strength, bravery and fearlessness. In Viking, Celtic and Saxon cultures it symbolised strength and resolution.

Salted or smoked pork and bacon were the vital food that enabled peasant families to survive winter in the Middle Ages. It was food for free. In summer pigs, were fed on food scraps, waste from crops and even seaweed, and in autumn they were let loose in forest to fatten on the ‘mast’ which included beechnuts, acorns and roots. When the Normans prevented Saxon pannage by closing the forests to keep them just for hunting, they were condemning many families to starvation. The impression we get from Robin Hood movies is that it was being banned from hunting in the forest that the Saxons resented, but this was minor irritation compared to the life or death issue of the Normans preventing domestic pigs foraging in the forest. Not surprisingly the villagers’ right to pannage was bitterly contested right up to the reign of King John and with good reason.

Even in medieval towns, pigs would roam the streets feeding off the middens and market waste. There were attempts from time to time control this, but, after every crack down, the pigs would end up back on the streets. Officially, the only pigs which were allowed to forage freely in towns were St Antony’s pigs.

St Antony. Photographer: Andreas Praefcke
Around 1100, an Order of Hospitallers was founded at La Motte and named after St Antony of Egypt who died in 356. The mother house became a place of pilgrimage for those suffering from St Antony’s Fire which we know today as ergot poisoning. But the order soon spread. The Hospitallers, wearing distinctive black robes and the blue Tau (T-shaped cross), rode around ringing bells to collect alms. The pig was the saint’s emblem, because according to legend either St Antony was once a swineherd or a pig kept him company during his life as a hermit.

Householders would give the Hospitallers the runts of their litters, in exchange for their blessing for the health of the rest of their pigs. A runt became known as a tantony. These pigs were hung with a small bell, like their masters, and legally allowed to roam the streets of the towns being fattened by the scraps from the community. (Tantony also became the name given to the smallest bell in a peal.)
A tantony pig. Photographer: Wolfgang Sauber


So important were pigs in the Middle Ages that many laws were brought in to safeguard the meat, for example, it was illegal to drive pigs using a holly stick because, being inflexible it could bruise the flesh, which then would not take up the salt when being cured.

Villagers’ cottages and byres were often built so low that a pig carcass was too long to hang from the beams, so in many villages, the bloody dripping pig carcasses were hung in the church porch after slaughter.

As well as being used to cover jars, the bladder of the pig was one of the earliest emergency pluming tools at a time when many pipes were wooden. It would be floated down the pipe to the site of the leak, then blown out to inflate and seal the bore hole. Centuries later, the pig’s bladder was used for the same purpose in the early days of gas pipes.

But to end with another tale of ghostly pigs – most of us are familiar with the legends of a hell-wain drawn by black horses and driven by a headless coachman being an omen of impending death. But in Durham, John Burrow was said to have been warned of his death when he saw a black coach drawn by six black pigs. Maybe the pigs were finally getting their own back.


12 Reasons to see this Sherlock Exhibition

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by Caroline Lawrence


Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget
Readers of my posts will know that like many others I love Sherlock Holmes in all his manifest forms and permutations. I first came across the famous stories by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle when I was growing up in Bakersfield, California. We didn't have a TV and one hot summer afternoon my mother started reading The Hound of the Baskervilles in the cool shelter of our garage. Soon all the other kids in the neighbourhood gathered to listen. Despite the 100º heat we were deliciously chilled by the enthralling tale. 

Later, when I started writing my Roman Mysteries books for kids, I got lots of good ideas from the Sherlock Holmes stories. So why has it taken me three months to go along to the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition at the Museum of London?

Elementary, my dear reader: inertia!

But I finally went along earlier this week... and loved it. 
Here are a dozen reasons why: 

1. Figures from a Sherlockian code!
1. The dancing stick men on the outside of the Museum of London are figures in a code solved by Sherlock Holmes in 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men' from the December 1903 issue of the Strand Magazine. 

2. Can YOU find the way into the Sherlock Exhibition?
2. Once inside the museum, the entrance to the exhibition is via a bookshelf. You have to find the secret way in. (Luckily the staff will help you if you can't figure it out.)


3. Some of the great adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories
3. As soon as you find your way in, you are faced with a bank of screens showing clips from the oldest Sherlock Holmes movies to the latest episodes of BBC's Sherlock. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's fictional detective has provided lucrative work for literally thousands of writers, actors and film-makers over the past 125 years.

4. One of many posters
4. Vintage posters remind us that Sherlock has been a staple of the theatre, too.

5. Dr Joseph Bell in 1860
  
5. The exhibition traces the genesis of the character Sherlock Holmes, from the name Conan-Doyle first thought of – Sherrinford Holmes – to the man who inspired him, Dr Joseph Bell. 

6. Hear and see a rare interview with Conan-Doyle

6. In a vintage film interview, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle tells how he came up with the idea for the first scientifically deductive detective. 

7. The first lines of A Study in Scarlet

7. You can see the first lines ever to be written about Sherlock Holmes.

8. photo of a Hansom Cab driver from the exhibition
8. Before I went, I
 wondered why it was being held at the Museum of London. As soon as I went in, I saw why: Sherlock Holmes IS London. The exhibition is full of evocative paintings, photos and maps of London in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

9. Tracking the movements of Holmes and Watson
9. Three maps track the trail of Holmes and Watson in three different cases, using colour-coded pieces of string: yellow for travel by foot; red for by Hansom Cab and blue for by train.


10. One of many atmospheric paintings in the exhibition

10. This Gothic rendition of the Houses of Parliament by moonlight is one of my favourite paintings in the exhibition. It was painted by John Anderson in 1872.

11. Benedict Cumberbatch's coat from Sherlock

11. There are cases and cases of paraphernalia from the actual period, the movies and the TV series... including this coat worn by Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes!

12. Don't forget the gift shop!

12. The gift shop sells Sherlock Holmes mugs, tote bags, chocolate, replica pipes and, best of all, Sherlock and Watson teddy bears!
 
Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die
So if you are in London, I highly recommend that you make your way by Hansom Cab, omnibus or underground train to the Museum of London before 12 April 2015. The game is afoot! 

From Aldo to the Reader, with love - Michelle Lovric

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The Aldine Press's anchor and dolphin logo
We have many reasons to thank Aldo Manuzio of Venice’s famed Aldine Press.


Not least for his limpid Bembo font, one of my favourites, and the lasting legacy of Aldo’s great project: the translation of the printing trade to an art form.


I personally thank Aldo for the process that led to me being able to type this blog straight into the computer, as lately I’ve been transcribing the contents of my Venice notebooks. Being a doctor’s daughter, I have inherited terrible handwriting, in a Lamarckian kind of way. So this week I needed Mary Hoffman of this parish to help me out with what looked like ‘Aretino bisexual corn’ in my impenetrable scrawl.


So I was delighted to receive an invitation to a press conference just before Christmas to launch a whole year of Aldo-related events in Venice to mark the 500thanniversary of the great printer’s death. Appropriately, the conference was held in the sculpture-lined vestibolo of the Libreria Sansoviniana. Here is the view of the Palazzo Ducale from one of its windows.
The events of the anniversary have been curated by the wonderful Tiziana Plebani, author of many essential books about Venice’s publishers and readers, including Il genere dei libri. Storie e rappresentazioni della lettura al femminile e al maschile tra Medioevo ed età moderna(Milano 2001) and Venezia 1469. La legge e la stampa, (Venezia 2004); on Aldo Manuzio: Omaggio ad Aldo grammatico: origine e tradizione degli insegnanti stampatori, in Aldo Manuzio e l'ambiente veneziano(Venezia 1994). But Tiziana does not live solely in the golden past of Venice’s readers. She is also one of the key contributors to the project to save Venice’s dwindling bookshops, about which I posted here last year.




Aldo, courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons
The personality of Aldo Manuzio is key to 2015's cycle of celebration. His character is writ large in his works, in his writings and in the way he set up his business. Aldo was no dreamer. He was a man of word and deed. He inhabited no ivory tower but instead a busy office where he also managed a vast correspondence and a network of professionals in the learning business. Books, he always said, should be paid for, because without money he could not print more books.


He felt that books united people in friendship. He wanted, above all, to encourage a love of reading, from a young age. He urged teachers to do their work with affection, like parents, taking care to encourage little boys to develop pleasure in and not aversion towards the written word.


To keep that love of reading alive, Aldo insisted on publishing books that were written both readably and elegantly. He invented the small format that could be carried about easily so no one needed to be parted from a beloved volume but could literally tuck it up their sleeve (in the days before pockets). He cut fonts that were a joy to the eye. He invented italics to give relief, diversity and more expressiveness to the page. He standardized punctuation so that a reader never had to ponder what the writer meant. Aldo gave us the large gutter, providing focus to each page. Indeed, he even gave us page numbers. So much did Aldo Manuzio love his reader!


Aldo'sDe mulieribus Claris courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
All these innovations were not for the sake of technology or commerce. They were designed to put the idea on centre stage. In fact, Aldo’s mannerly interventions are so discreet that they almost disappear from our consciousness, as they were designed to do, so all the reader needs to do is apply a happy eye to the page.


This is why Tiziana Plebani’s event cycle is called ‘From Aldo to the Reader’. It aims to get inside the mind of the Renaissance reader – that person Aldo so much wished to nourish with his work, a person to be cultivated, indulged and fed with words that were good in conception and execution.


The speakers in these lectures will introduce us to readers of Aldo’s time. What did they love to read? What could they afford to read? How did they acquire books? The Titanic bookshops (real and virtual) of the twentieth century where of course unknown. Many people bought books from itinerant pedlars, who also sold song sheets and printed art. Or they came straight to Aldo’s press and pestered him, as he recorded in one of his charmingly irascible letters.


Here are some of the events of the year, just in case you can make it to Venice at these times:




February 19th: Neil Harris will talk about the typical printing studio of the Renaissance.

On March 12 he will speak about the Italian reader of the same period – giving a profile of the book consumer.

On April 1st, James Clough and Alberto Prandi will present Aldo Manuzio: che carattere! Come un carattere di Aldo ha fatto, da solo, la storia della tipografia fino ai nostri tempi.

On May 20th, Federico Barbierato will talk about images of dolphins, lilies and phoenixes as used by European publishers.

September 9th sees Giulio Busi speaking on Aldo’s Polyglot Lagoon – Hebrew, Arabic and other exotic languages at the Aldine Press

Mario Infelise offers on September 17th, a talk entitled What we don’t know about Aldo Manuzio and what would be interesting to know.

On  25th November there will be a round table discussion coordinated by Alessandro Marzo Magno on The world of the book, yesterday and today, for publishers, curators, authors and readers. Participants include Mario Andreose, Cesare de Michelis, Tiziano Scarpa, Guido Guerzoni. I was delighted to meet up with Alessandro at the press conference – and he was particularly resplendent in a gold and black lace waistcoat, perfect for the occasion, and for the man who wrote L’alba dei libri. Come Venezia ha fatto leggere il mondo (Milano 2012).

This is just a small selection of the events. If you are making a visit to Venice, please remember to have a look at the website, from which the various illustrations above are also taken, with thanks.


P.S. As Mary Hoffman realized, I meant ‘Aretino bisexual porn.’ Of course.
Michelle Lovric's website

 

Michelle Lovric’s latest novel, partly set in Venice and about a writer, is The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, published by Bloomsbury.


Alessandr0 Magno Marzo’s book is happily translated in English: Bound in Venice : The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book

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