THE MAHARAJAH DULEEP SINGH
WHAT IS THIS? by Eleanor Updale
I never found one in as good shape as this |
Now I want your help in identifying an object that has come my way. It was found by an enthusiast with a metal detector. I don't know where, and I don't know when.
I'ts a little container. I've photographed it alongside a 3-pin plug, to give you an idea of its size.
It's not very deep.
It's heavier than it looks (6oz/150gms) and not magnetic. Its weight, and shiny bits on the bottom and the underside of the lid, suggest it might be made of lead, but the greenish patina makes me wonder whether it could be a lead-copper alloy.
The underside of the lid (above), and the bottom of the box (below) |
I have made no attempt to clean the box up, because I like its tarnished look - but even so, you can see that some of the decoration on it is quite fine.
Although heavily marked by age, the box seems to be very well-made. The lid fits perfectly onto the base whichever wayy you turn it. The metal on the lid is cut out to make a pattern of leaves and roses, with a large central flower.
I wonder whether the openwork lid indicates that the box was intended to store something fragrant.
The floral design is repeated almost exactly on the inside of the base. The differences in that image are sufficient to suggest that it was not stamped or cut by the same machine, or cast in the same mould as the lid. Might the decoration be hand worked?
This interior detail would, of course, be seen only by the owner of the box, which implies that it might have been something special, intimate, and not just for show.
There are more roses and leaves around the edge of the base.
Have any of you seen something like this before? Do you have any idea how old it might be?
I keep earrings in it. What do you think the original owner used it for?
I love this little box. But is it ancient, a little bit old, or is it something I could have bought in a poundshop last week?
I bet one of you History Girls will know.
www.eleanorupdale.com
Stories that Float from Afar – Dianne Hofmeyr
Slipstreaming Celia’s wonderful blog Shadows in the Cave, I’ve kept to the realm of the cave with Stories that Float from Afar. |
An entrance into a coastal cave in the Robberg Peninsula in South Africa |
a cave entrance into the Pyrenees evokes a passage in another world |
The paintings have been linked to ritual moments that induce an almost hypnotic state of trance. One can imagine as Celia mentions in her blog the flickering shadows cast on the rocks from burning tallow, creating atmospheric affects. The animals must have appeared to come alive. The lighting, together with the music, drumming and dancing that accompanied the ritual, must have created what can now be seen almost as the first audio-visual representation of storytelling. In fact it has all the essentials of modern film… all very real.
Quoting from The Shaman of Prehistory –Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves by David Lewis-Williams retired Professor of Cognitive Archaeology and Jean Clottes, the renowned French expert on Rock Art:
Shamans from many parts of the world, acquire an association with a spirit-animal and the supernatural potency that it bestows. It is this potency that empowers them to heal the sick, control the movements of animals, change the weather and preform other shamanic tasks.
The eland - a southern African antelope has long been associated with potency |
sketch of above shows clearly shaman with same crossed-leg posture - his head transformed an eland |
The rock was starting to gleam. Layer upon layer of men and animals came floating up towards us. Surrounding us. Dancing and chanting. The cave wall had grown vaporous. I reached out to touch it. There was nothing there… only music filling the space.
‘Come!’ The word was more a pant than a word.
I stepped forward. Felt the strange weight of my flanks. Felt the heaviness of horns on my head. I flicked my head from side to side. Snorted the dust from my nostrils. The earth seemed to reel.
Much of what we know of rock art and shamanistic belief has come from discovering the stories of the San through the voice of a man called //Kabbo in the Lloyd and Bleek manuscripts. In the 1860’s – 1870’s //Kabbo was truly suspended between two worlds… captured for so-called sheep stealing from his home deep in the interior of Southern Africa, he was brought to Cape Town and committed to hard-labour building the new Victoria breakwater. His name //Kabbo means ‘dream’ and through him and the painstaking work of William Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, the first people to find a way of transposing the San spoken word into written English, he was able to tell of the beliefs of the early rock artists.
And in the words of //Kabbo explaining our place on earth:
‘Therefore we are stars –we must walk the sky because we are heaven’s things.’
And explaining the concept of story, or kukummi, as his people called it:
‘Story is like the wind, it floats from afar’.
tools of the trade - oyster shells and ochre, quills and feathers |
The Names of the Ladies of the Roses, by Louisa Young
'I should like to know the true identity of this Madame Lauriol du Barny who gave her name to such a sumptuous flower. I assume she must have belonged to the haute cocotterie of Paris. Or perhaps I am completely wrong and she was a perfectly respectable woman, the wife of a rose-grower from Lyons ….'Vita Sackville West
I've been wondering myself ever since I planted my own first rosebushes, years ago - Madame Gregoire Staechelin, Madame Albert Carriere, and Sarah van Fleet. Who were they? What did they do to deserve it? Why the men's names?
Who was Ghislaine de Feligonde? Who were Madame Isaac Péreire, Madame Plantier, Felicite Parmentier and Fanny Elssler and Zephirine Drouhin? Who were Bessie Johnson and Ena Harkness, Penelope and Albertine, La Belle Sultane, and Josephine? Was Dorothy Perkins named after Dorothy Perkins, or vice versa? Who were all those Duchesses, Montebello and Buccleugh and du Berry? And who inspired the Rosa Mundi?
So I found out. Well, I found out some. Let us start with Madame Isaac Péreire
1) The Rose
Madame Isaac is opulent of flower - very double - but scraggy, long limbed and prone to blackspot. Its colour has been described as 'rich pale crimson fading to lilac or silver at the edges'; bright fuchsia, raspberry, purplish rose madder, and 'strident pink … fights a losing battle against the inroads of magenta' (Jack Harkness). It is thorny with little buds, in clusters of up to five, and smells as fine as any rose you ever smelt.
End? What end? by K. M. Grant
Having answered this question in schools many times, it only struck me the other day, roughly a decade since my first book was published, that I never feel I've got to the end. I finish the book, certainly. I write the final line. But the book never feels quite finished, not because I don't type The End (does anybody?) but because every time I open the book, even when printed, I feel I could make a change: a sentence more precisely written; a better word chosen; a comma that's begun to irritate. Worse, and particularly with a historical novel, I absolutely dread finding something new about the period, something that would have been transformatory to include. As a defence, once a novel is finished, I studiously avoid any dangerous reference books or articles. Despite this, facts I didn't know contrive to slip into publications or conversations about something completely different - some snippet on armour in a piece ostensibly about garden hoses; an observation about sailing ships in a romance; a desert colour in a fashion shoot.
These little facts lurk with the sole purpose of leaping out to slap me in the face. 'Oh crikey!' I think more often than any reader imagines, 'I want my manuscript back'. Naturally, I contrive to forget the fact as soon as possible. It's the only way to get a decent night's sleep. But though I occasionally forget my dogs' names, reducing them to 'hey, dog', and almost always forget to empty the washing machine, those pesky unwanted facts stick. If I can't include them, my book seems more incomplete than ever.
Do other authors experience the same agitations and alarms? Even after proofs and copy-editors, more proofs and the application of the pedant's toothcomb, even, indeed, many years after publication, do other authors still feel their work is still wanting a final something?
My hunch is 'yes'. If you listen carefully to authors giving a public reading, you'll often find they don't read exactly what's written in the book. They 'improve' it. And why not? It's the author's work. I've seen authors take a pen and rewrite on the hoof. I do it myself. It seems that writers must learn to cope with never truly finishing until they're dead and buried, and even then I'm not sure they rest easy.
Despite the above, finishing writing a book, even if one never really feels it to be the 'the end', is a moment to mark. I'm marking such a moment now. My first foray into the adult world of fiction, the novel for which I, like my characters, have been learning the Goldberg Variations, is finished and, to my great joy, has been bought by Virago. 'Sedition' will be published in summer 2014. Then begins something new - the long road to the reader.
I've marked the ending of this stage in Sedition's journey as I mark all similar endings: by grabbing a saw. Hacking away at my manuscript is swiftly followed by a cathartic hacking away at unruly bits of the garden. The dogs look on with some concern. What will happen when the garden can be pruned no more? They watch me for a while, then creep back inside, counting their legs.
Two memorials
Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Photo credit: Saliko |
I first set foot in this (normally much more crowded) square when I was twenty, on the month in Florence that has shaped so much of my adult life and sensibility. I wasn't much less innocent than Lucy Honeychurch but fortunately witnessed no stabbing.
However, a violent death is commemorated in the Piazza della Signoria and tourists walk over the spot where it happened every day; not all of them stop and read the words on the memorial.
"Here, where with his fellow friars Brother Domenico Buonvicini and Brother Silvestro Maruffi, on the 23rd May, 1498, because of an unjust judgment, was hanged and burned Brother Girolamo Savonarola, was placed this memorial after four hundred years."
Although he was hanged before being burned, Savonarola (and his fellow friars) were still alive when dropped into the flames. As well as the ropes that hanged them, the friars hands were bound; the flames burned through the rope round Savonarola's right wrist and his hand appeared to rise in blessing.*
The three died convicted of heresy, Savonarola having been excommunicated by the Pope the year before. But his teachings have not died out and he has even been considered for Beatification by the Roman Catholic Church.
This is an almost contemporary painting of what many consider the martyrdom of Savonarola and his fellow-friars in the Piazza della Signoria, where the circular plaque above now sits.
Less than sixty years later, three more martyrs were burned for heresy and a memorial placed hundreds of years later. It happened in Oxford, my nearest city, and the victims this time were Protestants, tortured and executed by "Bloody" Mary Tudor.
This humble cross of stones marks the spot in Broad Street near enough to where first Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley and, five months later, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, were burned for their faith in 1555 and 1556. It was not until the 19th century that the Gothic Spire of the Martyrs' Memorial in St. Giles was raised.
It was recorded in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (2nd edition 1563) that Hugh Latimer said as he burned, "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." It sounds remarkably well-composed for someone dying in agony.
The burning of Latimer and Ridley from Foxe's Book of Martyrs |
Oxford is full of memorials to the three martyrs for Anglicanism. The tower you can see in the top right corner of Foxe's engraving is that of St. Michael at the Northgate in Cornmarket, where the door of the cell that housed all three men before their trials and death is said to be displayed. I must go and see it. Likewise this stained glass window:
It is in Christchurch Cathedral and commemorates all three martyrs, even though it is known as the Cranmer Window. They didn't die together but they are remembered together, unlike Savonarola's fellow-victims, whose names are not as well-known as those of Latimer and Ridley.
I never go to Florence, where I shall next be in April, without visiting Savonarola's plaque. I disagree with him about a lot of things, including Lorenzo de' Medici, the Bonfire of the Vanities etc. But his torture and death still move me and he must have been a powerfully charismatic figure. (I wrote about his followers in David, 2011).
The Martyrs' Memorial in St Giles leaves me cold but I do try to visit the little cross in the ground in the Broad as often as I am in central Oxford - I find it intensely moving.
*This information was provided by self-confessed "Savonarola-nerd" Anne Rooney.
I Thought All Was Over - Lucy Inglis
We are re-watching Band of Brothers. My husband loves it as he loves all military history but I find it morbid and difficult. However, one such remarkable account from the field at Waterloo has long stuck with me - that of Frederick Ponsonby, the brother of Lady Caroline Lamb. He was a career soldier, like others in his family, and he was 32 the year of Waterloo in 1815. As a cavalry officer, he was part of the charge of the Light Company and they overshot their mark, badly, after having made the charge downhill. The following is his account of what happened after that.
'In the melee I was almost instantly disabled in both arms, losing first my sword, and then my reins; and followed by a few men, who were presently cut down, no quarter being allowed, asked, or given, I was carried along by my horse, till, receiving a blow from a sabre, I fell senseless on my face to the ground.
Recovering, I raised myself a little to look around, being at that time, I believe, in a condition to get up and run away; when a lancer, passing by, cried out, 'Tu, n'es pas mort, coquin!' and struck his lance through my back. My head dropped, the blood gushed into my mouth, a difficulty of breathing came on, and I thought all was over.
Not long afterwards (it was impossible to measure time, but I must have fallen in less than ten minutes after the onset) a tirailleur stopped to plunder me, threatening my life. I directed him to a small side pocket, in which he found three dollars, all I had; but he continued to threaten, and I said he might search me: this he did immediately, unloosing my stock and tearing open my waist coat, and leaving me in a very uneasy posture.
But he was no sooner gone than an officer bringing up some troops, to which probably the tirailleur belonged, and happening to halt where I lay, stooped down and addressed me, saying he feared I was badly wounded; I said that I was, and expressed a wish to be removed to the rear. He said it was against their orders to remove even their own men; but that if they gained the day... every attention in his power would be shown me. I complained of thirst, and he held his brandy-bottle to my lips, directing one of the soldiers to lay me straight on my side and place a knapsack under my head. He then passed on into action...Of what rank he was, I cannot say: he wore a great-coat. By and by another tirailleur came up, a fine young man, full of ardor. He knelt down and fired over me, loading and firing many times, and conversing with me all the while. At last he ran off, exclaiming, 'You will probably not be sorry to hear that we are going to retreat. Good day, my friend.' It was dusk when two squadrons of Prussian cavalry, each of them two deep, came across the valley and passed over me in full trot, lifting me from the ground and tumbling me about cruelly.
The battle was now at an end, or removed to a distance. The shouts, the imprecations, the outcries of 'Vive l'Empereur!' the discharge of musketry and cannon, were over; and the groans of the wounded all around me became every moment more and more audible. I thought the night would never end. Much about this time I found a soldier of the Royals lying across my legs—he had probably crawled thither in his agony; and his weight, his convulsive motions, and the air issuing through a wound in his side, distressed me greatly; the last circumstance most of all, as I had a wound of the same nature myself.
It was not a dark night, and the Prussians were wandering about to plunder...though no women appeared. Several stragglers looked at me, as they passed by, one after another, and at last one of them stopped to examine me. I told him as well as I could, for I spoke German very imperfectly, that I was a British officer, and had been plundered already; he did not desist, however, and pulled me about roughly. An hour before midnight I saw a man in an English uniform walking towards me. He was, I suspect, on the same errand, and he came and looked in my face. I spoke instantly, telling him who I was, and assuring him of a reward if he would remain by me. He said he belonged to the 40th, and had missed his regiment; he released me from the dying soldier, and, being unarmed, took up a sword from the ground and stood over me, pacing backward and forward. Day broke; and at six o'clock in the morning some English were seen at a distance, and he ran to them. A messenger being sent off to Hervey, a cart came for me, and I was placed in it, and carried to the village of Waterloo...'
Happily, Frederick survived his seven wounds, was nursed back to health by his sister Caroline, married, fathered six children and went on to a successful career in the Army, but the British aristocracy would never recover from the battle of Waterloo - too many of its young men died in the field and the landscape of British society was changed forever. Frederick Ponsonby's experience of battle is timeless and universal to all those who have fought and continue to do so. That he survived to relate it is a testament to the human spirit.
History is annoying - Eve Edwards
Blast. Back to the drawing board. Following a trail of googled breadcrumbs, my dead end does a Maria Von Trapp (remember "when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window"?). Now that's even more interesting than what I thought happened. A new scene presents itself. The last fifth of my novel changes direction and a whole cast of minor characters pop up to people it.
This little episode above, just lived out in my study, is probably very familiar to anyone who has tried writing a novel set in the past. The problems of guessing what might have been where the historians haven't cleared the ground ahead for you is usually where these wrong turns happen. In my case, it concerned the treatment of enemy aliens in Britain during the First World War. There are anecdotes of attacks on German families (or even those with vaguely Germanic names) and information about the internment camps for men. Did you know that the Olympic Stadium is built pretty much on the site of one of them, an old Jute factory? I don't remember that being featured in the Opening Ceremony. Alexandra Palace was also used for this purpose. One of the prisoners was a decent artist and the Imperial War Museum has his pictures online if you'd like to take a look at life inside the wire. The Isle of Man became home during the war to thousands in several camps, including one near Douglas on the site of Cunningham's holiday camp for Young Men - splendid sounding institution to give young men of modest means a healthy and wholesome holiday! Obviously, being stuck in a tent for an indefinite period as a guest unable to leave was no picnic but that camp had a better reputation than the large one at Knockaloe. I imagine it was thought that the island itself provided a second barrier to prevent the German men getting up to no good (though most of them were a rather puzzled set of waiters, barbers and butchers who had lived for many years in the UK before war broke out).
That was all very interesting and relatively straight forward to find out, but what I could not discover was what they did with women. After researching and reading, I did find the answers but I was left with the impression that there is a gap in the market for a book on the subject if there are any historians reading this.
The urge to bend history as we write is inevitable. We have a story demand to fulfil and sometimes the truth is either too boring or too extraordinary to be believable. Let me give an example of the latter. In the same book, I'm writing about WWI pilots. In the brilliantly informative Fighter Heroes of WWI by Joshua Levine, he recounts a training accident where a pilot's belt gives way as he loops the loop. He free falls (they weren't allowed parachutes as it was thought to encourage cowardice) and naturally thinks he is a goner. The plane just happens to carry on its course to come alongside him and he manages to swing back into the upside down cockpit, right the plane, and glide to a perfect landing, having inadvertently strafed the airfield during his struggles to get back inside. Outside of a James Bond film, that is very hard to believe but it happened to Graham Donald in his Sopwith Camel. I thought about having an incident to echo that real life experience but in the end decided it would jettison my reader from the cockpit of the story and they may not be able to get back in. That door closed, obviously there were plenty of windows still open.
Fortunately everything went OK on my research flight! |
Have you ever come across anything like this too amazing to be fiction? Let me know in the comments below.
www.eve-edwards.co.uk
The Death of a Peer, or, Lord Lyttelton's Ghost - by Katherine Langrish
Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton |
Harriet Who? and the Education of Girls - Joan Lennon
I dipped into a Victorian biography, and Harriet's Autobiography, and downloaded a slew of titles by her onto my Kindle, googled about a bit - it was fun, but I was having trouble settling - until I started reading the un-prepossessing-ly titled Household Education (pub. 1848). I'll just skim through, I thought, but I didn't. I couldn't. I'd like to spend from here to summer quoting bits from it but I won't. In honour of this being a History Girl post I'll just share a little of what Harriet has to say on the subject of educating girls.
"The footing of women is changed, and it will change more. Formerly, every woman was destined to be married; and it was almost a matter of course that she would be: so that the only occupation thought of for a woman was keeping her husband's house, and being a wife and mother. It is not so now ... A multitude of women have to maintain themselves who would never have dreamed of such a thing a hundred years ago. This is not the place for a discussion whether this is a good thing for women or a bad one; or for a lamentation that the occupations by which women might maintain themselves are so few; and of those few, so many engrossed by men. This is not the place for a speculation as to whether women are to grow into a condition of self-maintenance, and their dependence for support upon father, brother and husband to become only occasional ... What we have to think of is the necessity, - in all justice, in all honour, in all humanity, in all prudence, - that every girl's faculties should be made the most of, as carefully as boys'."
She could be speaking to our world today as pertinently as to her own. Harriet Martineau - I salute you!
Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
* In celebration of Norwich becoming the first English UNESCO City of Literature, the writers' co-operative 26 has come up with another fabulous project - 26 Norwich Writers - in which 26 contemporary writers have been randomly paired with 26 writers from or associated with Norwich in its long history, and asked to write a response. Watch out for the results in the coming months!
P.S. I'm away from my computer some of this week doing World Book Day events, but will definitely be reading and responding to comments when I get home!
From Anne Frank to War Horse: children's historical books sell! - Katherine Roberts
So here's the million-dollar question: is it possible to write historical fiction for younger readers that hits the Top 100? (Which I assume is what the editor really meant by "sell".)
In the interests of research, let's analyse the best-seller lists. I began with the Kindle best-sellers, since I can do that lying in bed with no danger of heavy-historical-tome-reader’s-RSI.
one of my favourite books as a teenager |
So let’s get a bit more specific and find out what does sell to a younger readership.The current best-selling children’s books in fiction come up as:
The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom (picture books) by Julia Donaldson
8th most popular movie of 2012 |
1. The Avengers
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. The Hunger Games
4. Skyfall (James Bond)
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn
7. The Amazing Spider Man
8. Brave
9. Ted
10. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
I'd love to have done this list a few years ago, when historical fantasy such as Susan Price's fabulous tale of the border reivers The Sterkarm Handshake won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, and Celia Rees' Witch Child wowed the world. But these classic titles seem to have slipped out of the lists in favour of Michael Morpurgo's backlist currently riding high on the success of War Horse. Failing to pull up anything sensible by typing "children's historical fiction" into amazon's search box, I call up the list of bestsellers in children's books (general) and work through it by hand. Given that I'm not a computer algorithm, this is what I came up with:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Time Riders by Alex Scarrow
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
Heroes by Robert Cormier
Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Gladiator: Son of Spartacus by Simon Scarrow
, |
Climb on my back, if you dare... |
From which I can only conclude that the editor was wrong when she told me that children don't read history, because those books listed above obviously do sell, and I'd guess from looking at their rankings that they are not only selling, but selling enough copies to make their publishers a profit... although from the current children's historical list above, I suspect it helps if you are (a) male and/or (b) writing about a World War.
For a bit of fun, I'll leave you with some History Girl strategies to consider if you write historical fiction for young readers but the big sales are not happening for you yet:
1. Have a sex change (bit drastic maybe).
2. Use a male pseudonym - or better still, initials to keep everyone guessing.
3. Write about a horse (already done that!) in one of the World Wars (ah...)
4. Get on the adult Top 10 historical list first and then write a children's book (talk about making life difficult for yourself.)
5. Forget all of the above, and just write a damn good story!
*Top 10 book and Kindle lists courtesy of amazon.co.uk, correct as of 24th February 2013
Her Pendragon Legacy series about King Arthur's daughter is published by Templar:
Book 1 SWORD OF LIGHT
Book 2 LANCE OF TRUTH
Book 3 CROWN OF DREAMS
Book 4 GRAIL OF STARS (coming October 2013)
More about her books at www.katherineroberts.co.uk
Her unicorn muse blogs at http://reclusivemuse.blogspot.com
Twitter: @AuthorKatherine and @PendragonGirl
A Treacherous Likeness by Lynn Shepherd. Reviewed by Adèle Geras
Before you go on reading, do click on this link and especially on the little film at the end of the description of the book. Lynn Shepherd herself speaks for 8 minutes and tells us very well and engagingly all that we need to know about the book before we read it. It's a much better way of discovering what it's about than any synopsis I could provide.
http://www.constablerobinson.com/?section=books&book=a_treacherous_likeness_9781780331676_hardbackAlso before I begin, I will show you the three main protagonists. First, Percy Bysshe Shelley himself, Romantic poet, husband, lover, father and all round...well, I'll leave you to decide for yourselves and won't try and influence anyone. As a poet, he was one of the truly greats. "Ozymandias" I regard as one of the best poems ever. I love "Ode to the West Wind." I love "The Skylark." But one thing Lynn Shepherd's book brought home to me was that because we never studied him at school, I know very little about him and have actually read very little of his work.
This is his second wife, Mary Shelley, author of 'Frankenstein,' daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.
And here is Claire Clairmont, who travelled to Geneva with Percy and Mary and who figures large in the story.
Last year, a very good novel by Lynn Shepherd, called "Tom-All-Alone's" introduced us to a late nineteenth-century detective called Charles Maddox. He's everything you could wish for in a hero and when I think of him, I have someone like Benedict Cumberbach in my mind. (Actually I have BC in my mind when I'm doing a lot of my mental casting but that's another story!) She wove a tale of murder into the spaces left by Charles Dickens in "Bleak House" and the whole concept struck me as a brilliant idea.
Here the writer takes the well-known facts about the composition of "Frankenstein" (the ghost story telling night in the villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, everything that's documented about a ménage à trois that makes modern sexual mores look like a vicarage tea-party) and she manages to inject into the material an element of enormous mystery and suspense and a hypothesis that is both startling and plausible for everything that happened to these real people.
To do this as effectively as she does, Shepherd makes use of a technique that is a bit post modern, and which, it must be said, might annoy some readers. I loved it, though and I think it works in a very clever way. She's chosen to be there, in her own person as the writer of the novel, in a way alongside the story, commenting on various things; remarking on what is going on from a 21st century perspective. She does this unobtrusively and somehow the warp and weft of the narrative manages to hold and sustain these interjections.
There are a lot of letters, documents, accounts by one character or another at the beginning of the book and this, in addition to the 'case' that Charles Maddox is undertaking, makes the start of the novel one in which you have to keep your eye on the ball. But once it gets into its stride, there's no stopping it and the whole thing is a roller coaster of a ride. Both the characters from the past (Shelley's youth) and the present of the novel, set much later, are right there with you, and you care about every single one, especially Charles's elderly great-uncle, the first detective in the Maddox family.
On page 250 of the book, I found these words and because they describe everything so well, I am quoting them here. "He (Charles) thought he had the measure of these three - thought he had understood the coils of attraction and repulsion that threatens to drown them all in a wreckage of hearts, but it seems he is wrong: there are darknesses here for which even his experience cannot find a like."
I hope that lots of readers who visit this blog will enjoy "A Treacherous Likeness". I loved it.
'I Pronounced this Pig Guilty of Murder' by Karen Maitland
With horsemeat much in news recently, it’s made me think about way animals were regarded in past centuries and what it reveals a lot about how people viewed their world and their place in. Take, for example, the medieval animal trials.
In the Middle Ages, animals could be arrested and tried in court in exactly the same way as humans. In 1457 a sow was convicted in court of the murder of five year old John Martin and was sentenced to be hanged, but the prosecution could find no evidence that the six piglets, though blood-stained had actually assisted in the murder, so they were released on condition that they should be returned to court if their future conduct proved criminal. Likewise, of the herd of pigs that trampled a swineherd in Burgundy in 1379, only four were executed for leading the charge.
While in the 1200’s a lawyer, Henry de Bracton, successful argued that a horse was guilty of rape for having mounted a nobleman’s mare without consent and should therefore be castrated.
In the Middle Ages all kinds of animals were taken to court. The citizens of Saint-Julien-de-Maurienne in France three times sued a mass of flies which had ruined their vines. The townspeople lost their case when a lawyer argued that God had commanded the flies to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ therefore they were legally permitted to eat the vines. Other lawyers successfully defended rats, the animal not the human variety, using a similar arguments.
The Mentor & the Talisman by Caroline Lawrence
Pixar's masterpiece, UP |
four kids in the Roman Mysteries |
Before he got into mobile phones... |
In The Wizard of Oz, Glinda the Good Witch is Dorothy's Mentor. She gives Dorothy the Ruby Slippers as her talisman.
a great Talisman for a girl: power shoes! |
In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is Luke's Mentor. He gives Luke his father's light-saber as the talisman.
As you can see, the Mentor is often a man with a beard! |
But who is the Mentor in the Pixar film UP? And what is the talisman?
If you remember that Mr. Carl Fredrickson is the unlikely Hero who sets off on a fantastic voyage to South America, then the answer is obvious.
Even after she's gone, she's his mentor... |
The Mentor is the person who calls the hero to the Quest. So Carl's Mentor is his wife Ellie. He first met her when they were young. She made him a member of her club and gave him the talisman, a grape-soda bottle-top badge. It has no magical powers, but it is infinitely precious to Carl and when he passes it on to his Faithful Sidekick Russell at the end of the film, Russell's eyes shine with pride.
The Talisman doesn't have to be magical |
My fourth grade teacher was a Mentor. She read A Wrinkle In Time to us and got me excited about fiction at an early age.
Someone you've never met can be a mentor. Author Mary Renault started me on a journey as a historian and writer of historical fiction. In fact, my parents were my mentors, and her book The Last of the Wine was my Talisman!
I listened to Truby's tapes for a decade before I met him |
Script Doctor John Truby (above) was my mentor for ten years before I ever met him, thanks to a set of audio cassettes (my talisman!). Truby is the wise teacher who gave me the tools I needed to write a plot onto which I could hang my ideas.
A talisman can be a light-saber, ruby slippers, a Mockingjay pin, a Ring, a grape-soda bottle-top badge. But for many of us, our mentors are authors and our talisman is their book.
And just as we have benefitted from wonderful mentors, we can hope for nothing better than to be mentors ourselves!
Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for kids. Her latest book, The Thunder Omen, is out now. Find out more at www.carolinelawrence.com
Of saurs and simians and sudden death – Michelle Lovric
A Little Irish Mystery. by Laurie Graham
First I should make clear no actual crowns were involved. The so-called Crown Jewels were the regalia of the Order of St Patrick, a kind of Irish equivalent of the Order of the Garter, and the insignia were a badge and a star and a collar. Not to be sniffed at though. They were studded with diamonds, emeralds and rubies and by today's prices they'd be worth more than a million.
Until 1905 the regalia were kept in a bank vault and brought to Dublin Castle as required. Then it was decided that a designated strong room should be created at the castle to house a steel safe. When the building work was finished it was discovered - and perhaps this could only happen in Ireland - that the safe was too wide to fit through the door. It was taken to the library in the Bedford Tower and there it remained. Widening the strong room door seems never to have been considered.
At this point in the story I must introduce Sir Arthur Vicars, Ulster King of Arms, and sole key-holder to the safe and the library. Also Frank Shackleton, Dublin Herald, Francis Goldney, Athlone Pursuivant, and a large cast of friends and assistants. Then there was the cleaning lady, Mrs Farrell, who twice reported finding the library door unlocked and was told to get on with her mopping. On July 6th 1907, in preparation for a visit by Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, the insignia were sent for. The safe was found to be unlocked and the bling was gone. All that was left were the empty boxes and ribbons.
A vice-regal commission of enquiry was set up and, as so often is the case, the searchlight on a theft probed into darker corners. There were rumours of 'unnatural vices', wild orgies, debt and blackmail. Frank Shackleton was certainly in debt to money lenders and Vicars, with whom he lived, had stood as his guarantor. Shackleton was investigated in the matter of the disappearance of the jewels but never charged, though he later served time for embezzlement. Goldney too turned out to have been light-fingered with other people's objets d'art and at least one item he 'borrowed' later turned up in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Vicars clung on to his position, protesting his innocence to the end. The worst that could be said of him was that he was careless with his keys and fond of showing off the contents of the safe. A heraldic version of 'would you like to see my etchings?' Eventually he was sacked and made a memorable exit by refusing to hand over his keys. He retired to the country and in his 50s he married. Perhaps he found love. Perhaps he just needed to scotch those wild orgy stories once and for all.
The jewels were never recovered. The stories about their fate grew. They were buried in the Dublin mountains (the Gardai searched for them there as recently as 1983). No, they were buried under Vicars' house in Kerry. Vicars was assassinated by the IRA during the Troubles and his house razed to the ground. No trace of the jewels was found there. For me the likeliest answer is that they were broken up and the gems sold. One interesting whisper is that John Pierpoint Morgan, a friend of Goldney's, helped spirit them away to Amsterdam under the hood of his car. I point no fingers, but it is fair to say Pierpoint Morgan did have a taste for loot.
“Obscure the place, and uninscrib'd the stone,” by H.M. Castor
Portrait of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Princess Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick, by George Knapton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Fourth Time lucky: The year of the four emperors. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try again. And again. by Manda (MC) Scott
Hardback: publication date 28th March |
Antiques Museum in the Royal Palace, Stockholm. Bust of Galba from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber |
Otho from Wikimedia commons, no author attrib |
Vitellius: Wikimedia Commons, Source: Jastrow |
Vespasian Wikimedia commons: Source Shakko |
A Kid, Two Farthings and The East End at My Feet Catherine Johnson
I never thought it was a children's book really. And as it's at the bottom of one of our endless boxes of books that are packed and ready to go I suppose I won't find out. It felt too lyrical and sad.
This cover is the film tie an and it's utterly brilliant. I think the film is definitely worth seeing, it's by Carol Reed and stars Celia Johnson as the struggling East End mother (!!) alongside Diana Dors and David Kossoff.
Fast forward twenty years on the same streets to Farrukh Dhondy's
East End At Your Feet. It's the same streets with the same problems,
but this time I think there is less hope. There's already a kind of nostalgia in A Kid For Two Farthings which is missing in Dhondy's short stories of hard young lives in Whitechapel. I suppose there are some books for adults that deal with the area in more recent times, but this is set just pre Bangla town. On a Sunday there are National Front newspaper sellers and the whole area is on its knees, unwanted unloved, and empty. These stories are pure capsules of history.
This last picture is a bit of a cheat. It is of Brick Lane, Christ Church school, the tiny Victorian Building squeezed next to the Seven Stars pub. It's from a book of nursery rhymes called Mother Goose Comes to Cable Street, by Rosemary Stones and Andrew Mann, with paintings by local artist Dan Jones. This was painted in the late seventies, but the pictures are glorious.
Bye Bye Bethnal Green
Catherine Johnson.
Smugglers Ahoy!
I had a new book published on March 7th! No prizes for guessing what it's about.
Smugglers were so much fun to research. I began with my memory of the Rudyard Kipling poem A Smuggler's Song, which you can read here: http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/junior/literacy-hour/year-5/longer-classic-poetry, I worked my way through various novels, including Moonfleet by John Mead Faulkner and watched an old BBC series called Smuggler which reduced my sons to tears of laughter it was so dated. I enjoyed it nonetheless.
There were also plenty of non-fiction books to read about smuggling in various parts of the country. The problem for me with a lot of these was that they described the practice without clear timelines. It's no good writing about the smuggling of tea in 1720, when my book is set, because duty wasn't put on tea until 1724 Also I needed to be very clear about which laws were in force when my tale was set. Was smuggling a capital offence and when did that come into force? When was the law governing signalling ships at sea passed? When was the coastguard brought into existence?
And many quite surprising details aren't known. What uniform did revenue officers wear? What did the pennant look like that they flew from their ships? Not recorded. There are only theories.
And of course the history of the smuggling activities themselves are shrouded in a certain amount of secrecy. It was a clandestine trade carried on mainly on wild, dark winter nights with nothing incriminating written down. Fascinating stuff!
Enough has emerged from trials and confessions to paint a picture, though who can say how reliable this information is? And a great many stories have become local lore and legend, but much of this is even more unreliable.
One book, for example, devotes a whole chapter to debunking the myth that smugglers used long tunnels, pointing out the resources such tunnels would have required to build. And where did these intrepid engineers dump all the earth they supposedly dug out? Besides, no significant tunnels have ever been found. The truth is that in the early years of the 18th century especially, smugglers worked quite openly, sometimes even landing cargo in ports in broad daylight. The overstretched revenue officers simply didn't have the resources or manpower to prevent them. And when they began to tighten up a little, there were still so many hundreds of miles of wild, inaccessible coast to patrol. The smugglers, or free traders, still had plenty of options.