Maria Merian's Butterflies & Flowers by Janie Hampton

June 26, 2016, 4:10 pm

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I have always loved detailed, exotic flower designs such as William Morris's 'Pomegranate' wallpaper and Osborne & Little curtains. But until I visited the Queen's Gallery recently, I had no idea that they were all inspired by an extraordinary 17th century woman.

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in Frankfurt in 1647. Her father was Matthäus Merian, a successful printmaker and when he died only three years later, her mother married the still-life artist Jacob Marrel, who taught Merian to paint accurate and detailed flowers.

Pineapple with Cockroaches which Merian described  as  ‘the most infamous of all insects in America’.

While raising a family, teaching and painting, she also published books of flower engravings, as reference for embroidery and amateur painters.

From childhood, she was also fascinated by the life-cycles and habitats of insects. Merian's full colour compositions were not only elegant but also carefully observed and naturalistic. The caterpillars, chrysalis and adult butterflies are shown on the actual plants on which they fed. Most naturalists then still believed that caterpillars and butterflies were distinct species and Merian was one of the first to understand the metamorphosis of insects. Her pioneering work on the relationship between animals, plants and their environment, and that specific food was vital to the survival of each species, made her the first 'ecologist'.

After separating from her husband, Merian moved with her two daughters to a Labadist commune in Waltha castle in Holland. Choosing to live in simple austerity, she continued her studies including into the metamorphosis of frogs. When the commune broke up, she moved to Amsterdam, then a thriving centre of art and nature, and saw her first pineapple.

Ripe Pineapple (Ananas comosus)with Dido Longwing Butterfly (Philaethria dido), 1702-3. Merian noted that the wine made from pineapples had 'an unsurpassable flavour.'

Merian was also fascinated by the specimens of exotic insects that were arriving into Europe from South America. But as they were dead, she could not observe their life-cycles. In 1699, she sold all her paints, prints and copper plates, and set off with her 21-year old daughter, Dorothea for Suriname. A Dutch colony in South America, it had been called 'Willoughbyland' until 1667, when the British exchanged it for some swampy islands further North, now called New York.

Maria Merian lived in the capital, Paramaribo, with Dorothea and explored the surrounding forests for plants and animals to draw, and caterpillars to rear and observe. For two years she painted scientifically accurate illustrations, until her ill-health forced them to return home.

Banana (Musa paradisiaca) and bullseye moth (Automeris liberia). Merian commented that a banana ‘has a pleasant flavour like apples in Holland; it is good both cooked and raw.’

Back in in Amsterdam, in 1705 Merian published a luxury book of beautiful, hand-coloured etchings called 'The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname'. She also produced partially printed and  hand-drawn coloured plates printed on vellum to sell to her richer patrons. Merian, probably assisted by her daughters, inked sections of each etched plate and ran them through the press. While the ink was still wet, she transferred a reverse image onto a sheet of vellum. This ‘counterproof’ was then coloured by hand with watercolour mixed with gum arabic. Merian varied the arrangement of insects and plants so that each plate is a unique composition. She became one of the most celebrated natural scientists of her age and regarded throughout Europe as both an entomologist and an artist. She was also an astute businesswoman. ‘I had the plates engraved by the most renowned masters, and used the best paper in order to please both the connoisseurs of art and the amateur naturalists interested in insects and plants,’ she wrote.

Guava tree (Psidium guineense) with Army Ants (Eciton sp.), Pink-Toed Tarantulas (Avicularia avicularia), Hunstman Spiders (Heteropoda venatoria) and a Ruby-Topaz Hummingbird (Chrysolampis mosquitus). Merian showed a tarantula carrying off a hummingbird which may have led to the erroneous belief that tarantulas eat birds.

Merian died in Amsterdam in 1717. Three hundred years later her meticulous, brilliant works continues to inspire and excite artists and designers. Several plants, butterflies and beetles have been named after her, such as the Split-Banded Owlet Butterfly (Osiphanes cassina merianae). False Coral Snake and Banded Cat-Eyed Snake with  unidentified frogs. Merian shipped snakes from Suriname, preserved in brandy. This drawing may be by one of her daughters, Johanna or Dorothea who were also talented artists. Dorothea worked for Peter the Great in St Petersburg and left her mother's sketch books with the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1810 George III bought the set of plates from Merian's Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium which are now in the Royal Collection in London.

Kate Heard's book Maria Merian's Butterflies [ISBN 978 1 909741 31 7] is a treasure to behold and tells the story of Merian's life and work with 150 colour illustrations.
All illustrations copyright Royal Collection Trust/ Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2016.

www.janiehampton.co.uk  @janieoxford

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Standing Alone on the Edge of Europe by Julie Summers

June 27, 2016, 4:30 pm

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Earl Grey 1764–1845 © Lord Howick

I woke up on Friday morning in a strange house in an unfamiliar county with that lovely feeling of being somewhere new and exciting. That was until I went downstairs, passing the magnificent 1828 portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the second Early Grey, the prime minister who introduced the Great Reform Act of 1832. In the kitchen a television was blaring and with a sense of growing disbelief I heard that British voters had opted to leave the European Union by 52% to 48%. My city of Oxford had voted 70/30 in favour of Remain and so wrapped up had I become in the bubble that is our lovely city that I had not realised the enormous determination to leave that had spread to other areas of the country.

The campaign was fought on both sides with dirty tricks, lies and some of the most unpleasant rhetoric and scaremongering I have ever heard. Claims and counterclaims about EU funding, EU rules, an EU army, EU migrants flew around like swarms of angry bees. Amid the cries of joy, horror, sadness, despair, disbelief, excitement and any other sentiment you like to attribute to the sentence, a few thoughtful voices have been heard. I thought I might take time to reflect on one of those for my piece this month, rather than writing about 'the true cost of war' as I had planned. That will wait until next month when it might turn out to be rather topical if negotiations go badly...

Anthony Beevor is one of those rare historians who writes history that is both thoroughly readable and wholly to be trusted. He is a researcher par excellence and has an overview of history that is, in my opinion, almost unparalleled. He suggested that looking at history would be an interesting exercise in contemplating what Britain thinks it can achieve while standing alone. How will the country (or should it be countries because England and Wales voted out and Scotland and Northern Ireland vote to remain) defend itself in the future. He wrote:

'Ever since the late 17th Century, we have relied on continental coalitions to oppose the over-mighty oppressor threatening the peace of Europe. Britain alone was never strong enough in manpower to confront a major power alone on land.'

Howick Hall was used as a convalescent hospital for Other Ranks from 1941-1945. Over 11 different nationalities were treated there including Finnish, Greek, Polish, Czech, Dutch and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Fast-forward to the twentieth century and that was more evident than at almost any other time. I am currently writing a book about houses that were requisitioned in the Second World War and used for a variety of purposes, including of course the housing of troops. In 1940 Britain faced the full force of the German war machine on its own. France had fallen. Belgium and the Netherlands had been invaded and we were, as is so often repeated, completely alone on the edge of Europe. Heroic little Britain as we will be in the future. Except that we were not alone. The country was full of friendly fighters who supported us in our hour of need. There were 30,000 battle-hardened Polish soldiers and airmen who knew a thing or two about fighting the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. There were 5,000 Czechoslovak troops and pilots who had arrived in Britain in July of that summer. Pilots from both nationalities flew bravely in the Battle of Britain.

Canada had already sent thousands of troops to our shores in December 1939. They were joined by more divisions over the course of the war including the Canadian Royal Air Force. We had over three million American GIs in 1944 in the build up to D-Day, not to speak of Australian and New Zealanders who helped to defend these shores both on land and in the air. Far from standing alone, we were very much 'in it together'. Churchill knew that he could not win the war without Allies. He once said: 'There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.' That appears to be a risk for our future at the moment.

Anthony Beevor wrote in his article in the Mail on Sunday: 'No British politician will ever again dare to say that we are punching above our weight.' He concluded: 'We will be the most hated country just when we need to win friends.'

On this occasion I sincerely hope that he is wrong and that we will win back friends so that we have allies in the future but from this perspective and at this moment in time, it looks like we have precious few of either.

English Midwives in India by Julia Gregson

June 28, 2016, 4:01 pm

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Credit: Alex Pownall

Our guest for June is Julia Gregson. She says of herself:

In my career as a journalist I spent four days with Muhammad Ali in a boxer’s training camp in Pennsylvania, interviewed Buzz Aldrin in Houston; Ronnie Biggs in a Brazilian jail at midnight; president’s wives, film stars in Hollywood and several notorious criminals. All good grist to my story-writing mill.

I enjoy writing short stories and have had many published in places like The Literary Review, The Times, Good Housekeeping, and read on the BBC.

Orion published my first novel, The Water Horse, in 2005. I rode a horse across Wales to do the research- a wonderful experience- and then went to Istanbul and Scutari where the rest of the novel is set.

Writing East of the Sun and Monsoon Summer involved three research trips to India, A great highlight.

I’m married, have one daughter and four stepchildren and live in Monmouthshire with two chickens, two rescue ponies, and a collie called Jellybean.

Welcome Julia! 
 

It is day four of a midwife training course in Northern India. A group of dais, (midwives), have been given a piece of paper and a crayon and asked to draw the human body as they understand it. Here are two examples of what was drawn.

In another exercise , they are asked to describe the inside of a woman’s body. What follows, is a selection of their responses:

“There is a uterus, egg tubes and a passage for urine and menstruation, there are 900 blood vessels.”

“Three holes from the rectum, vagina and urethra.”

“There are seven layers in the stomach and the first is very hard, they are softened by age and each delivery comes from a softer layer.”

“Nobody knows what is inside the body, you can only see it by experience “


The images and the words come from  Birthing with Dignity, a fascinating and still timely handbook for training midwives and health workers , written in 2004 by the Canadian midwife Diane Smith, who went to India, to work with the village dais and share their experience.

It would easy to laugh, or be alarmed at the primitive drawings above, but Smith points out this would be both stupid and dangerous.

After seven years in India, she gained a deep respect for many of the local midwives and says, ‘’We learned from each other,” Western medicine, she says, “sees the body as a machine made up of moving parts, rather than a dynamic energetic form.” While Western knowledge can be helpful to a traditional Dai, particularly when handling the kind of life threatening complications, that require emergency medical care, Smith believes passionately, we ignore at our peril the other kind of wisdom, based on intuition, traditional healing methods, and centuries of watching, listening, and aiding women deliver their babies.

Her hope is that by listening and learning from each other, Eastern and Western midwives, can become happy bed fellows. ( Sounds like E.M. Forster’s famous dictum: ‘only connect.’)

There is a long tradition of Western midwives travelling East with their birthing kits, and knitted babies, and wall charts. From England. In the late 19th Century, The Countess of Dufferin sent many midwives to India, funded in part by Queen Victoria. Some were magnificent and brave, some, though well-intentioned were naive and misguided.

In my new book, Monsoon Summer, my heroine, Kit belongs initially, to the latter group, and walks into a minefield of dangers and difficulties when she travels to South India, in 1948, to help set up a midwifery school.

She discovers that there is no such thing as a typical Indian midwife. Some of her colleagues were exceptionally talented, better educated and far more experienced than she was , at the other end of the spectrum were dais who were considered the lowest of the low and were only allowed to cut the cord say, or do away with the placenta- some of these tasks undertaken with rusty knives and unhygienic rags. These unhygienic practices added to poverty, and poor transportation leading to some horrifying levels of maternal and infant morality.

She encounters difficulties familiar to any Western midwife, rolling up her sleeves in India, chief among them, the bewildering layers upon layers of caste complexity, and birthing traditions. Brahminical Hindus, for instance, regard childbirth as a polluted female act, and one in which the Dai’s role is seen as being one of the most menial and dirty jobs around. This makes recruiting educated women to their ranks a huge problem. Other dais are called on only to perform illegal abortions, or to dispose of newly born unwanted girl babies.

But things are changing in India: government policy makers are encouraging women to have their first babies in hospital. But the reality for the majority of people living in poverty - over half our world- is that many still cannot afford to go to hospital. The local midwife is their best, and only option.

So this urgent work continues today. A healthy baby after all, is what every woman wants, doesn’t matter where she’s from.

As for the midwives, we should celebrate them more. The best of them to quote from Diane Smith’s teacher, must be a healer, a physician, a magician, a politician, an actor, comedienne friend, acrobat, seamstress, nurse, doctor, shift worker, mechanic. It’s quite a list. I don’t think I could do it, could you?



Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson is published in the U.K. by Orion on June 30th

In the U.S. by Touchstone, in August 16th

 
www.juliagregson.net




Birthing with Dignity, a guide for training community level midwives and health worker. by Diane Smith, published by Jagori in 2004

June Competition

June 29, 2016, 4:01 pm

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To win a a copy of Julia Gregson's Monsoon Summer, answer the question below in the Comments section:

"Who do you consider to have been the greatest female health educator in history and why?"

Then email your answer to: maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that we can contact you if you win.

Closing date 14th July - you get a bit longer this time because of holidays.

We're sorry but our competitions are open to UK Followers only. 

Happy Birthday to Us! By Mary Hoffman and various History Girls

June 30, 2016, 4:30 pm

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Today is the fifth birthday of the History Girls blog and we want you to celebrate with us, so pull up a chair, pour yourself a glass of virtual bubbles:

Grab a slice of virtual cake:

and join us in celebrating the highlights since 1st July 2011.

A few stats first:

We have recently passed the 2 million mark as far as pageviews go! Most of our page views are now from the US, followed by the UK, Germany, France, Russia ... But some are from Ukraine and China.


The most popular post ever has been Leslie Wilson's on Maria von Maltzen, in our second year, which has had an incredible more than 92K hits. I keep telling Leslie she should write a book about this German Resistance heroine.


The History Girls are a shifting group and we have retained only twelve of the original twenty-eight members. We have lost Linda Buckley-Archer, Eve Edwards, Nicky Matthews Browne, Katherine Roberts, Teresa Flavin, Barbara Mitchelhill, Mary Hooper, Harriet Castor, Mary Hooper, Theresa Breslin, Louise Berridge, Emma Darwin, Essie Fox, Eleanor Updale, Dianne Hofmeyr, Louisa Young and Katie Grant, all to the demands of their writing schedules.


In the last five years others have come and gone, like Manda Scott, Kate Lord Brown, Laurie Graham and Tanya Landman. For a current list, see the About Us page.


We have had a stellar list of Guests (always the 29th of the month): Tracy Chevalier (twice), Hilary Mantel, Alison Weir, Helen Castor, Frances Hardinge and a bunch of History Boys including Kevin Crossley-Holland (our first), John Guy, Ian Mortimer and Dan Jones.


We have produced one book, Daughters of Time (Templar 2014) and I've lost count of the number of grandchildren. I'm hoping to put together further collections of essays and publishing them at my new independent house, The Greystones Press.


To celebrate our anniversary, some of the HGs are going to talk about a recently read or favourite historical novel or history book. This is mine:

Not a favourite in the sense I think I'll ever read it again but An Instance of The Fingerpost by Iain Pears is a novel I read recently. It's a long book and saw me through a coach trip, a plane journey, several bedtimes, the return plane and bus and as many bedtimes as it took to finish it.

In a sense, it's a murder mystery. It's set in Oxford in 1663, or rather that is when the events of the plot take place but they are told in four different accounts some twenty years later. They concern the death by poisoning of a don, Robert Grove, the investigation of his murder and the subsequent conviction and execution of a suspect.

With each new account we learn that almost nothing is as we at first believed. It is a masterpiece or convoluted storytelling and erudition, with 17th century post Restoration Oxford perfectly conjured up.

I could say more but it's time to hand over to the next History Girl. When you read this I will be sunning myself on the Island of Rhodes. I may or may not have WiFi and access to the site but I'll certainly raise a glass or cup of something in honour of our fifth birthday.


Catherine Hokin talks about …. Legacy by Susan Kay

I recently rediscovered my copy of this wonderful book which came out in 1985 - it was and, following the re-read, remains one of my favourite historical novels and I don't think it has been surpassed for its characterisation of Elizabeth I. The novel tells the story of Elizabeth and her relationships with the Earls of Leicester and Essex and William Cecil - three men whose destinies, as Kay puts it, belonged to her. These relationships, particularly the one with Leicester, are brilliantly drawn but it is the psychological study of Elizabeth and the impact of her mother's death that really elevate the story into something both gripping and terribly poignant. If you haven't read it, I urge you to - it's one of those rich, multi-layered books that will stay with you for many years


Adele Geras says of Broderick's Report by Philippe Claudel (also well-known as a film director)

[It] is a most unusual novel and completely unputdownable. A stranger arrives in a village, some time after the end of the Second World War. The whole village unravels around him, revealing secrets, horrors committed during the War, dreadful things happening in families and in the world. The setting is deliberately vague and this lends the book some of the atmosphere of a fairy tale, or a myth. It's an unforgettable (and now quite a timely) novel and you will thank me for having drawn it to your attention. I hope it's still in print!

Carol Drinkwater suggests: Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea

It is a sweeping saga of love, betrayal slavery and politics set in New Orleans, the Caribbean.

Allende is captivating. Her breadth of research and story-writing skills are on top form here. I read it while staying on the island of La Réunion which remains a part of France and was once an island of sugar plantations and slavery. So, the location added to the very evocative story.


Michelle Lovric says...

This is not my usual period (which is 18th century Italy) but I was enchanted by the new Chris Cleave novel set in Blitz London and on Malta during World War II. It’s called Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Everything about this book reeks of authenticity – the characters, the conversations and the preoccupations. The emotional engagement is searing. It’s not trying to impose anything on the era but has the effect of pulling the reader into the breathless vortex of the nightly destruction of London and her citizens.


We hope you enjoy these and many more wonderful books and much more history with us over the next five years! Thank you to all our readers and contributors for making the blog what it is.  We'll leave the final word to some of our guests:

Happy 5th Birthday, History Girls! I hope you will have jelly and ice cream. Probably port jelly, and ice cream made using a sorbetière and a spaddle...  Best wishes, Frances Hardinge

 Congratulations to all of you and well done. Charles Palliser

Sending very happy birthday wishes to the History Girls' Blog on your fifth birthday. Five years of bringing history alive and making it rock! All the best for the next five years and more, Alison Weir.

Treasuring history through fiction, by Gillian Polack

July 1, 2016, 4:30 pm

≫ Next: A visit to Little Moreton Hall - Katherine Langrish

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This month other History Girls are writing about favourite books. I did that recently, so I thought, to balance those posts, I’d give you some context. Those books that we read and that we treasure and that we remember are part of a gorgeous cultural pattern. Right now, that cultural pattern means that historical fiction is changing. I want to look at what exactly is happening. 

Photo: Gillian Polack, Sydney 2015

Two decades ago there was a vast gulf between historians and fiction writers. This hasn’t always been the case. It wasn’t so much the case in the time of Walter Scott. And it’s not the case right now. It’s now socially far more acceptable to read certain types of fiction as part of enjoying history. The way history is written into many novels has changed: it’s more sophisticated, more aware and far more researched.

Writers have changed. Some of the writers who changed are here, in the History Girls. They looked at the history they fell in love with and they said “We can do this better.” They researched and they learned and they understood and they brought to their novels a greater depth of understanding. It didn’t happen overnight, but if you look at any of the established writers here, you’ll find that, over the years, their work has developed.

I discovered how this happened when I started researching historical fiction writers. Historical fiction writers have always loved history (why would someone write a novel on a historical theme if that someone didn’t enjoy history, after all) but what I discovered was that their attitude to research is at the heart of the sea-change in historical fiction. Some talk to scholars on their specialist subjects. Some frequent specialist archives. So many historical fiction writers do site tours and understand the place the novel is set. 

When I looked at the different attitudes towards research that writers of different kinds of novels have (for a book, which is still a new release and which I am still celebrating), the attitudes of historical fiction writers were closer to those of academic historians than those of science fiction writers, even of science fiction writers who write time travel or alternate histories. There’s still a big difference between history and fiction, but in recent years, historical fiction writers have worked to diminish that gulf.

Next came the readers. I discovered this very personally when I suddenly became more popular at conferences and conventions. Readers wanted to talk about my fiction with me, but they were even more interested in understanding history. These active and questioning readers of novels don’t just pose their technical questions to the historians: readers can be a lot tougher on the history fiction writers use than they used to be. 

There have always been some readers who knew a lot and questioned a lot and thought deeply about the subjects of novels, but the sea change means that there are a lot more of them. I meet them when they want a signature for the Beast (aka The Middle Ages Unlocked, which I co-wrote with Katrin Kania), for they love checking out the sort of background their favourite writers might use. Their favourite writers are usually those same writers who have done so much extra work on the history for their novels.

Some readers will spend as much money on books related to the history in their favourite fiction as they spend on that fiction itself. I’ve been asked about my sources for Langue[dot]doc1305 so often that I put a list of them on my blog, and written articles about them. And I’m not alone in this. So many writers end up talking about their experience in archives or in exploring primary sources or establishing an accurate date for an event as much as they talk about the characters their readers love and love to hate.

Readers do not work alone. They often join groups with similar interests. The Historical Novel Society has been a critical component of this change in historical fiction, and so have organisations like the SCA and the Richard III Society. 

Popular history and serious history are no longer as deeply divided. This opens the door to readers who want to approach novels with more insight into the history and more of an understanding of what possibilities it holds.

Writers respond to their readers. Often, they share similar interests. Elizabeth Chadwick, for instance, is a member of Regia Anglorum, a re-enactment group. She doesn’t just write the Middle Ages: she researches it, performs it and comes to understand it on many levels and from many angles. She is not alone. I can think of at least a half dozen writers who delve into the past during their spare time and whose novels reflect this. The tales these writers tell are still easy to read, but the history in them is better understood and more carefully thought out. It’s part of a complex feedback loop that has led to where we are right now, where historical fiction is successful commercially while its readers and writers see its historical contexts more clearly. They create possibly the best bridging between history and the general public that we’ve had since Walter Scott.

Compared with the demands of writers and readers, the critical world is a step behind. This is because the critical world is undergoing changes of its own. As I love saying, this is another story for another time, but it’s worth noting here. It’s also worth noting that blogs like the History Girls will help the world of criticism catch up, as it becomes clearer and clearer what audiences demand from historical fiction and what writers are willing to give.

Yesterday the History Girls turned five years old. I’m hoping it has many, many good years ahead because it’s very much a part of these changes in the way we see history and think about the past. It helps bring the work of scholars out of the university and gives it directly to the reader, whether the reader is on the train, on the beach or sneaking in a few pages of a favourite book on an e-reader.

A visit to Little Moreton Hall - Katherine Langrish

July 3, 2016, 10:00 pm

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On a trip to the north of England at the beginning of June, we stopped off in Cheshire to visit Little Moreton Hall which as you can see is an utterly gorgeous Tudor manor house not far from Congleton. It sits amid green meadows on a little island surrounded by a moat...

... and in the moat, swim large, lazy golden fish: Golden Orfe to be precise, which are apparently the very fish the Tudors would have kept there. And indeed eaten, from time to time.

Various old portraits of Little Moreton Hall (can you have portraits of a house?) depict it in very different colours.  It seems that it was the Victorians who went in for the dramatic black and white colour scheme we now associate with Tudor buildings. Originally, the intricate oak timbering of the house would have been left to weather to a natural silver grey, while the plaster-work would have been painted ochre.  For most of its life, then, the Hall would have appeared not black and white, but a softly glowing silver and gold.

The earliest parts of the house were constructed between about 1504 to 1508 in the relatively calm late reign of Henry VII (he died 1509), so the moat was a status symbol rather than intended for defence.  Passing through a gateway, you come to an almost enclosed inner courtyard with ornate doors...

... and beautifully crooked windows.  "Richard Dale carpenter made thies windovs by grace of God".

Inside are oak panelled rooms with carvings such as this dragon. Standing under this beam close to the great windows felt rather like being in the cabin of the Dawn Treader.

Behind the mid 16th century panelling in the parlour earlier wall paintings were found which in fact mimicked the effect of panelling whilst being much cheaper.  The frieze along the top depicts the story of Susannah and the Elders from the Book of Judges; this was a Protestant house, and apparently this tale was a Protestant favourite.

In the big Withdrawing Room with its fine fireplace, the Moreton family's wolf's head crest appears in the windows, while upstairs...

... a little casement window opens on a garden reminiscent of the Sleeping Beauty.

Here is the very same window from the other side!

The glory of the house is its Long Gallery, nearly seventy feet long. This was an architectural afterthought and is one of the causes why the house, standing on shallow stone slabs on marshy ground, has gradually warped and twisted under its weight. It's a marvel - the place where ladies and gentlemen took their exercise on wet days, walking up and down or playing tennis - four early tennis balls have been found behind the panelling.

The slightly dizzy, wonky effect isn't the way I held the camera.  It's real: the floor rises and falls and slopes and creaks underfoot like the deck of a ship.  When it was first made, it would have been level.  At either end of the gallery, the gables are decorated with plaster reliefs featuring Destiny and Fortune. Here's Fortune gesturing to her wheel, along with the disapproving comment: 'The Wheel of Fortune, Whose Rule is Ignorance'. 

At the other end, we have Destiny wielding a pair of dividers to map out the world, with the approving words: The Speare [sphere] of Destiny, whose Ruler is Knowledge'. 

So there you go. Exercise, fun and games, and improving mottoes too. Little Moreton Hall is a delight, and if you find yourselves driving through Cheshire I heartily recommend a visit. It's run by the National Trust, and you can read more about it and its history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Moreton_Hall

Getting Dressed as a Victorian Lady - Joan Lennon

July 4, 2016, 4:30 pm

≫ Next: Island of Last Hope by Lydia Syson

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If you don't have a lot of experience of historical re-enactment, you might consider this video on the process of dressing in the Victorian age - I know I learned a lot!  For example, the shoes before corset rule would never have occurred to me.  Also, there's the efficacy of the bunny hop.  And if you fancied another video, you might want to have a look at How Did They Go to the Toilet? - the facing backwards ploy shows yet again the ingenuity of the Victorians.

Enjoy!


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

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Island of Last Hope by Lydia Syson

July 5, 2016, 4:01 pm

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Left to right, in the front row: Pilot Officer Mirosław Ferić, Flight Lieutenant John A Kent (Commander of ‘A’ Flight – Kent wrote out phonetically on his trouser leg the Polish words for every procedure involved in take-off, flying and landing), Flying Officer Bogdan Grzeszczak, Pilot Officer Jerzy Radomski, Pilot Officer Witold Łokuciewski, Pilot Officer Bogusław Mierzwa (obscured by Łokuciewski), Flying Officer Zdzisław Henneberg, Sergeant Jan Rogowski and Sergeant Eugeniusz Szaposznikow. In the centre, to the rear of this group, wearing helmet and goggles, is the infamous ace F.O. Jan Zumbach.

Last week this image of a group of fighter pilots - all but one of them Poles - walking away from a Hawker Hurricane in October 1940 was posted anonymously on the door of the Welsh Polish Association in Llanelli with the words: 'Thanks for being here then...still glad you're here now'.  The photograph - apparently taken after one of over a thousand sorties made in just the first six months of Squadron 303's formation during the Battle of Britain - has also been doing the rounds on Twitter, as part of the effort so many people have been making to combat the vile resurgence of xenophobia and racism unleashed by the Brexit vote. Yesterday Michael Rosen offered Nicky Morgan a draft letter outlining ways in which education could lead the way in helping the population understand that migrants are not to blame for the pressures on schools and public services:

"My door is open to hear any possible approach to stop this happening," he suggests she should write. "Perhaps we should be holding a Celebrate Migration week? Or should I be asking schools to develop teaching materials that make the connection between now and times in the past in Europe when minorities were scapegoats for economic problems they didn’t cause?"

Historical fiction can be immensely useful in making those connections, allowing young readers in Britain to see that such scapegoating didn't just take place 'over there' in Europe but on this island too. At school visits, talking about the reasons why so many international volunteers went to help the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, after a right-wing military coup that was backed by Hitler and Mussolini and happened eighty years ago this month, I show students pictures of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Nobody ever guesses the photographs were taken here, or that the Blackshirts could be British. And although there is always one who recognises the flag on this memorial as Polish, most young readers know very little about the part played by Polish airmen at 'our finest hour'.

For a long time after World War II a myth persisted that the Polish Air Force was destroyed on the ground within days of Hitler's invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939.  In fact, despite their outnumbered and out-of-date planes, Poland's highly trained airmen fought bravely for several weeks before accepting defeat.  By 17th September, the country 'first to fight' had been invaded for a second time, by Russia, and would soon be doubly occupied.  But for the pilots the battle was far from over. 

This poster was designed in 1942 by Marek Żuławski, a Polish expressionist painter and graphic artist who settled in London in 1936.

Descriptions of their departure from Poland make heartbreaking reading. Adam Zamoyski, author of The Forgotten Few, reckons that about 80% of the PAF survived the first Blitzkrieg of World War Two and managed to escape capture. 9.276 crossed the border into Romania (not all as easily as Henryk, in my novel, That Burning Summer), 900 fled to Hungary, about 1,00 escaped via the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, and another 1,500 were captured by the Soviets and sent straight to labour camps. The aim was to regroup in France.

In late December, 1939, Michal Leszkiewicz, a future Bomber Command pilot who had escaped from Poland via Rumania at the age of 23, was on the way to Beirut, though he did not know this when he recorded in his diary: ‘We’re probably sailing to Syria. A vague fear of the unknown – a purely human instinct. When you know what to expect, you don’t go to pieces. We have to – we must go on. The responsibility lies with us, the young people; they’re turning to us even in Poland – the innocent ones whom fate has wronged . . .we are their hope.’

Despite his great love and commitment to his homeland, Michal Leszkiewicz never again returned to Poland, and died in England in 1992. His diary made a huge impression on me when I was finding out about the odysseys so many airmen made before they reached Britain. I drew on his account for my descriptions of Henryk’s sea voyage from Bulgaria to Beirut, his arrival in the Middle East, the journey to France, and his frustration at the chaos there. On arrival, he found himself interned in miserable conditions in France with refugees from the defeated Spanish Republic.

By June 1940, France too had fallen. The remaining Polish airmen were evacuated to Britain. Arriving exhausted and battleweary in the only allied country left unoccupied in Western Europe, they called it ‘The Island of Last Hope’. On 18th June, Churchill famously declared: ‘Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.’ J.B.Priestley (‘That Yorkshire man on the radio – the one with the calming voice Aunt Myra loved to listen to’ TBS, p. 100) remembered the Germany he’d known and loved before the last war, and warned ‘any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all of its own most unpleasant types – the very people who, for years, have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in, and you will find that the laziest loudmouth in the workshop has suddenly been given the power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal, you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you’d always distrusted.’

The forty Polish pilots who took to the skies at the beginning of the Battle of Britain were scattered at first among a number of RAF squadrons. Most were among the 2,000 or so airmen who'd been kicking their heels in Britain for months already. When the earliest pilots arrived between December 1939 and February 1940, they were given a frustratingly slow induction into RAF life, involving English lessons, education in the King's Regulations, and endless parades and roll calls: it seemed they would never be allowed near an actual plane.

Co-operation across national boundaries is never easy, and a distinct clash of military cultures soon became obvious. Driven to distraction by British officers who seemed to be hiding their heads in the sand about the real nature of the threat from Germany, the Poles called their RAF colleagues 'ostriches'. Meanwhile, as Zamoyski writes, the British were disconcerted, to say the least, by the newcomers' manners: 'The Polish habit of saluting everyone, on station, in town, in restaurants, irritated the British officers, who found they could not cross the airfield or walk down a street without acknowledging several dozen salutes. "They were always giving you salutes even if it was their dispatcher handing you a cup of coffee," recalls an RAF officer. "The heel-clicking that went on was terrific," remembers one RAF fitter, "and they had a funny way of bowing stiffly, from the waist up, like tin soldiers."'

Despite this, the Poles did not take easily to the kind of hierarchical deference traditional in the British military. Group Captain A.P.Davidson, a former air attaché in Warsaw and the station commander at RAF Eastchurch, near Sheerness, where the first Polish airmen were based, was shocked and baffled by their attitudes: “Whilst on the one hand there exists a distinct class feeling between officers and airmen and the former often treat the latter with a lack of consideration unknown in our own Service, on the other hand, officers fraternise with airmen, walk about and play cards with them.”

Morale improved once the Poles were finally allowed to fly, but then they discovered that everything on a British aircraft was back-to-front, so all their reflexes had to be reversed. You had to push instead of pull to open the throttle, and even the toggle for opening the parachute was on the ‘wrong’ side. There was also the difficulty of judging in feet and miles, not metres and kilometres, and new navigational aids to master like radar (only just adopted, and still secret) and radios. The British tactic of close formation flying seemed suicidal to the experienced Poles, for pilots had to pay far more attention to not colliding with each other than looking out for attacking aircraft. Four tight ranks of three planes were supposedly protected by the middle plane of the last rank, known as the ‘weaver’, but 32 Squadron, based at Biggin Hill, lost 21 of these pilots in three weeks, each ‘picked off’ by the enemy without the rest of the squadron even noticing.

A myth that came to dominate war films and popular memory was that all Polish pilots were reckless and individualistic. The stereotype arose partly because they were trained to fire at much closer range than British pilots – almost at pointblank. (‘Those crazy Poles’, thinks Peggy in That Burning Summer.) This scene from the 1969 film The Battle of Britain (whose uncountable stars included Laurence Oliver as Hugh Dowding and Trevor Howard as Keith Park) is typical of British attitudes. 

(Incidentally, and somewhat chillingly, the German aircraft used in this film were provided by Franco’s Spanish Air Force: a mixture of Heinkels, still used for transport, and retired Messerschmitt 109s.)

In August 1940, two new Polish fighter squadrons were formed: No. 302, ‘City of Poznań’, and No. 303, ‘Kościuszko’. By 1941 a fully-fledged Polish Air Force was operating alongside the RAF. By the end of the war, Polish pilots had won 342 British gallantry awards, and 303 Squadron claimed the highest number of kills of all the Allied squadrons in the Battle of Britain yet its death rate was the lowest.

On 11th September 1940 at 16.15 hrs, Sergeant Stanisław Duszyński was shot down over Romney Marsh, not far from Lydd, while attacking a Ju 88. He was 24, and like Henryk in That Burning Summer, had initially been evacuated to Rumania in 1939. Neither his body nor his Hurricane were recovered at the time, although unsuccessful efforts, both official and unofficial were made in 1973 and 1996. Six months later, Pilot Officer Bogusław Mierzwa’s Spitfire came down in flames on the stony promontory of Dungeness, not far from the lighthouse. 

Another pilot of the 303 Squadron, Mieczyslaw Waskiewicz, crashed into the sea off the point and was never found. Both were returning from a mission to escort six Blenheims sent to bomb a fighter airfield in France. Mierzwa had been awarded his Pilot’s Wings in Poland less than two years earlier, at the age of 22, not three months before the invasion of Poland. For many years, a tattered Polish flag flew over the spot where his aircraft burned, next to a plastic garden chair and the rather makeshift memorial shown above.  It's now been replaced by this slightly less romantic but more informative noticeboard.

Between 1939 and 1945, well over 200,000 Poles fought in all the forces under British High Command. But for complex reasons, largely connected with post-war housing and job shortages, by 1946 anti-Polish sentiment in Britain had become so bad that ‘Poles go Home’ graffiti had begun to appear near Polish Air Force bases. Squadron 318 Spitfire pilot Stefan Knapp, a sculptor and painter who suffered from recurring nightmares and insomnia for years after the war, recalled the change in his memoir, The Square Sun (1956):

‘I was choking with the bitterness of it…Not so long ago I had enjoyed the exaggerated prestige of a fighter pilot and the hysterical adulation that surrounded him. Suddenly I turned into the slag everybody wanted to be rid of, a thing useless, burdensome, even noxious. It was very hard to bear.’

In the programme for the Allied Victory Celebrations in London a year later, you will only find a mention of Poland under one heading – the Central Band of the Royal Air Force. By this time it was Stalin, not Hitler, who seemed to require appeasement. The fate of Poland had already been determined around conference tables at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.

Find out more: 

Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II (1995, Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009)

Lynne Olson & Stanley Cloud, For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kosciuszko Squadron – Forgotten Heroes of World War II, (2004)

Robert Gretyngier, in association with Wojtek Matusiak, Poles in Defence of Great Britain, July 1940-June 1941 (London, Grub St, 2001)

Josef Zielnski, Polish Airmen in the Battle of Britain, 2005 (A very useful book, with a short chapter on every airman, but not easy to get hold of)

Kenneth K. Koskodan No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces in World War II (Osprey, 2011)

Arkady Fiedler, 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron (2010)

F.B.Czarmomski, They Fight for Poland: The War in the First Person, (1941 – Front Line Library)

Patrick Bishop, Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940 (Harper, 2003)

Jonathan Falconer, Life as a Battle of Britain Pilot (The History Press, 2007)

Battle of Britain monument…find out about the Polish airmen.

RAF Museum online exhibition on Polish Pilots

Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum

Commemorative site with information to help find all the cemetaries in the world where Polish airmen were buried during WW2

Battle of Britain heritage trail

Lydia Syson is the author of A World Between Us, about Britain and the Spanish Civil War, and That Burning Summer, the story of a Polish pilot suffering from flying fatigue (or 'Lack of Moral Fibre') during the Battle of Britain.  

www.lydiasyson.com

HISTORY IN THE MAKING, by Vanora Bennett

July 3, 2016, 1:58 pm

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Being a part of history in the making is never comfortable. 

I learned that in my previous life as a foreign reporter, covering the various coups, conflicts, and crises that afflicted the people whose countries I was working in.

In those days I was usually in a foreigners’ bubble (with my finances and livelihood protected, a safe place to live, and a British embassy down the road), so I was a bit less bothered than everyone around me by whatever shock news was in the headlines that day. But still, there was something both utterly gripping and utterly boring about having to live through whatever the crisis was, in real time, rather than look back on it through a book or film.

It felt as though time itself started behaving in unpredictable ways when a crisis set in.

First it would race along – and someone’s career or life or a whole country would be gone before you’d had time to draw breath. But then things would slow agonisingly down. The rest of the story always took so long to unfold. You’d need to wait for the next day, or week, or month, for the next instalment, resignation, currency collapse, invasion, or whatever. 

And you’d need to fill the hours by worrying through the night, or fretting with friends about what would happen next, or doing the ironing or making breakfast, all the time itching with the enforced passivity of not being able to fast-forward to the happy-ever-after bit where it all finally gets sorted out.

I have since discovered, on starting to write historical novels, that one of the ways in which being a fiction writer is incomparably superior to being either a journalist or a person actually living through a public crisis is that you never need to live through the boring bits. You’re looking back, so you are in control of time, and have the power to just jump your characters from one speeded-up action moment in history to the next. The slow times are left out as if they never happened – at most, abbreviated to three dots.

Now, I think it’s safe to say most people in this country haven’t personally experienced major historical crisis, even if historical novelists do it vicariously all the time. But living through the past few weeks of Brexit Britain keeps reminding me of how bewildering time can feel when you’re in the grip of one - when reality starts doing that speeding-up-and-slowing-down thing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

First came the time-flashing-forward bit. On referendum night, my very political teenager, who’d wanted to watch the whole vote-counting drama play out and the result be announced, finally conked out at 4am. We woke him up at 8 and told him that Britain had voted for Brexit and the Prime Minister had just resigned. “WOTTT,” he said disconsolately. He’d only been asleep for four hours, yet he’d missed the moment when his world had changed.

“Now what?” he said, once he had recovered. We couldn’t tell him. We didn’t know, any more than anyone else. And, for all the millions of words spoken and written about it in the weeks since, we’re none the wiser now. Because now we’re in the slow-motion bit. Waiting.

I think part of what felt so bleakly funny about the cropper Boris’n’Gove came more recently was the speed with which it happened. No need to wait for a punchline, it was on us almost before we’d heard the beginning of the joke. 

Another quick thing happening at last, hoorah! At last, something we could understand without waiting forever to get to the end of the story! At last, a break in the tension! 

I think part of the belly-laugh the nation gave was in sheer relief.

But it's worn off. Slo-mo is back. I’ve returned to fretting on Facebook and scouring the papers for clues, omens and portents, waiting for the next convulsion in the bigger real-life drama. 

I can’t help feeling that I’m behaving as foolishly as those fearful or exultant crowds that get an occasional three-line mention in historical novels, frantically checking out the comets or mumbling superstitiously about giant fish in the Thames while, centre stage, Henry VIII shrugs off Wife One and pulls out of Rome. 

But I can’t help it. Time – real time, not the time we novelists have the luxury of rearranging in our work – is hanging heavy on my hands, just as it did on those people’s. There is history in the air. And there’s nothing else to do.

Vanora Bennett's website

Perfumes....by Adèle Geras

July 6, 2016, 5:30 pm

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The cutting I've photographed above highlights the ancient art of soap making, associated for many centuries with Marseille. You can't see what it says but basically SAVON DE MARSEILLE is fighting to have themselves protected as a special product in the way champagne and certain cheeses are. They've been making soap from olive oil and ash for ages and ages and now upstart organisations like L'Occitane want to add perfumes to the original recipe, arguing that savon de Marseille might be authentic but it's brown and hard and does not smell very nice. Reading it made me think of France and smells and above all, perfume.


The serial VERSAILLES, which is on our televisions right now is one I haven't watched. I'm too overburdened with Scandi noir dramas and box sets of one kind and another to take on the story of Louis XIV with added bonking and English spoken throughout. But because I've read a little about Versailles (The Sun King, by Nancy Mitford and Pure by Andrew Miller to be precise) I do know one fact. The place stank in ways we can't even begin to imagine. No loos, no sanitation to speak of, people relieving themselves all over the place, behind hangings, in corners....I'm not going to describe it. Just stop for a moment and consider what it must have been like. Perfumes must have been more than a luxury. It's hard to think of going through those mirrored halls without some fragrant something clutched to your assaulted and flinching nose. Galimard Perfumes in Grasse was founded in 1797, so long after Louis could have made use of them, but they were doubtless still very much needed even after the Revolution and the Terror.


Grasse is a pleasant town on the slopes of the Alpes Maritimes. I have just come back from a week's holiday there, and can attest that roses, jasmine, oleander and many other flowers grow freely. Lavender is native to the region. Geraniums abound. The natural ingredients for making perfume are there, right on the spot and it has been home to the perfume industry for centuries.


Here I have to make a confession. I am a perfume fan. I have put a photo at the bottom of this post showing what's in my drawer at the moment. Chanel, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Frederick Malle, Jo Malone... I've had lots of other favourite smells in my (longish) perfume life: Calèche by Hermès, Ma Griffe by Carven, L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci, Oscar by Oscar de la Renta, Infusion d'Iris by Prada. A few Gucci fragrances. Must by Cartier. Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden, Quelques Fleurs by Houbigant and so forth.


My mother wore Arpège by Lanvin. Always. My daughter wears all sorts of things but I associate her with Shalimar by Guerlain. Perfume brings back memories, and reminds us of certain people. All this to emphasise that it's an important part of my life.


So when we discovered that it was possible to go to the Galimard perfume studio just outside town and create our own perfume, we couldn't wait to get there and it turned out to be a revelation and one of the best ways to spend two hours I've ever experienced. We all went: me, my daughter, my son-in-law, my granddaughter, my grandson and a friend who was holidaying with us. We each made a perfume, or an after shave. They were all wonderful. And the process was so fascinating that I have decided to link it to Versailles to give it a bit of historical context and write about it in my slot this month. To make this post even more historical, I will say that Hilary Mantel writes about perfume and if you Google her name and add 'perfume review' , you can read what she has to say. She's a brilliant perfume critic, which will come as no surprise to her fans.













We each sat in front of a kind of desk with lots and lots of bottles surrounding it. Our tutor, Maxim, explained that with fragrance, there are base notes, heart notes and top notes. The latter are the ones you smell first, when you open the bottle and have a sniff. The heart is what you get when the perfume you've put on has settled down a little. The base is the most important: what's left when all the other smells have gone. It's the one that attaches itself to your clothes, your scarves and so forth. It's what's left when everything else has faded.










Some quite big bottles were put in front of us from which we had to choose our four favourites. If we didn't like any of them, others were provided. These were our bases. We were told to write them down. Maxim then came round and wrote down on our 'recipe sheet' how much of each fragrance we had to drip into the long 100 ml container in front of us.









I noticed, by the way, that when you try on a Jo Malone fragrance, you get a little 'recipe' to tell you what you're actually wearing. This is her printed card for a perfume, and.....












... below is my recipe. Beside each fragrance, ( 4 base, 5 heart and 5 top notes) is the quantity of each that had to be added to the flask. Maxim, I daresay, would have pounced if he thought we'd chosen something that he knew would smell horrible but he seemed to like our choices.







We also had to choose a name for our perfume. Names are desperately important and we had huge fun the night before discussing our choices. We ended up with a good selection. Mine was LIERRE which is French for IVY and sounds good when you say it. The address of the house we were staying in was Chemin des Lierres, so that's the reason for my choice. My daughter called hers Dénouement, which is appropriate for a thriller writer. My granddaughter chose Floraison and my grandson Code. Our friend Chris chose Volte-face and my son-in-law, who's Welsh, chose Hiraeth which means 'longing for home.'












When you've mixed your own perfume, you choose the bottle. See above. Then they take away the recipe and put it on file. There's a number printed on the label which will enable you, if you feel like it, to reorder your personal fragrance when your bottle is finished. I reckon these below will be made redundant soon....I'm devoted to Lierre and am very happy to wear it for years and years. It was a memorable afternoon, and I loved every moment.

Perfumes....by Adèle Geras

July 7, 2016, 4:03 am

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The cutting I've photographed above highlights the ancient art of soap making, associated for many centuries with Marseille. You can't see what it says but basically SAVON DE MARSEILLE is fighting to have themselves protected as a special product in the way champagne and certain cheeses are. They've been making soap from  olive oil and ash for ages and ages and now upstart organisations like L'Occitane want to add perfumes to the original recipe, arguing that savon de Marseille might be authentic but it's brown and hard and does not smell very nice. Reading it made me think of France and smells and above all, perfume.

The serial VERSAILLES, which is on our televisions right now is one I haven't watched. I'm too overburdened with Scandi noir dramas and box sets of one kind and another to take on the story of Louis XIV with added bonking and English spoken throughout. But because I've read a little about Versailles (The Sun King, by Nancy Mitford and Pure by Andrew Miller to be precise) I do know one fact. The place stank in ways we can't even begin to imagine. No loos, no sanitation to speak of, people relieving themselves all over the place, behind hangings, in corners....I'm not going to describe it. Just stop for a moment and consider what it must have been like. Perfumes  must have been more than a luxury. It's hard to think of going through those mirrored halls without some fragrant something clutched to your assaulted and flinching nose.  Galimard Perfumes in Grasse was founded in 1797, so long after Louis could have made use of them, but they were doubtless still very much needed even after the Revolution and the Terror.

Grasse is a pleasant town on the slopes of the Alpes Maritimes. I have just  come back from a week's holiday there, and can attest that roses, jasmine, oleander and many other flowers grow freely. Lavender is native to the region. Geraniums abound. The natural ingredients for making perfume are there, right  on the spot and it has been home to the perfume industry for centuries.

Here I have to make a confession. I am a perfume fan. I have put a photo at the bottom of this post showing what's in my drawer at the moment.  Chanel, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Frederick Malle,  Jo Malone... I've had lots of other favourite smells in my (longish) perfume life: Calèche by Hermès,  Ma Griffe by Carven, L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci, Oscar by Oscar de la Renta, Infusion d'Iris by Prada. A few Gucci fragrances.  Must by Cartier. Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden, Quelques Fleurs by Houbigant and so forth.

My mother wore Arpège by Lanvin.  Always. My daughter wears all sorts of things but I associate her with Shalimar by Guerlain. Perfume brings back memories, and reminds us of certain people.  All this to emphasise that it's an important part of my life.

We each sat in front of a kind of desk with lots and lots of bottles surrounding it. Our tutor, Maxim, explained that with fragrance, there are base notes, heart notes and top notes. The latter are the ones you smell first, when you open the bottle and have a sniff. The heart is what you get when the perfume you've put on has settled down a little. The base is  the most important: what's left when all the other smells have gone. It's the one that attaches itself to your clothes, your scarves and so forth. It's what's left when everything else has  faded.

Some quite big bottles were put in front of us from which we had to choose our four favourites. If we didn't like any of them, others were provided. These were our bases. We were told to write them down. Maxim then came round and wrote down on our 'recipe sheet' how much of each fragrance we had to drip into the long 100 ml container in front of us.

I noticed, by the way,  that when you try on a Jo Malone fragrance, you get a little 'recipe' to tell you what you're actually wearing.  This is her  printed card for a perfume, and.....

 ... below is my recipe. Beside each fragrance, ( 4 base, 5 heart and 5 top notes) is the quantity of each that had to be added to the flask. Maxim, I daresay, would have pounced if he thought we'd chosen something that he knew would smell horrible but he seemed to like our choices.

We also had to choose a name for our perfume. Names are desperately important and we had huge fun the night before discussing our choices.  We ended up with a good selection. Mine was LIERRE which is French for IVY and sounds good when you say it. The address of the house we were staying in was Chemin des Lierres, so that's the reason for my choice. My daughter called hers Dénouement, which is appropriate for a thriller writer. My granddaughter chose Floraison and my grandson Code. Our friend Chris chose Volte-face and my son-in-law, who's Welsh, chose Hiraeth which means 'longing for home.'

 When you've mixed your own perfume, you choose the bottle.  See above. Then they take away the recipe and put it on file. There's a number printed on the label which will enable you, if you feel like it,  to reorder your  personal fragrance when your bottle is finished. I reckon these below will be made redundant  soon....I'm devoted to Lierre and am very happy to wear it for years and years.   It was a memorable afternoon, and I loved every moment. 

'Medieval Murder (Part 2) - How to Protect Yourself from Poison' by Karen Maitland

July 7, 2016, 4:30 pm

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This maybe be cupid, but  that's a bottle of poison he's holding

Last month I looked ten popular poisons of the Middle Ages. With so many ways to kill a victim it was little wonder people were constantly on their guard. People often fell ill from poor food hygiene, but with the symptoms of stomach bugs - severe cramp, dizziness and vomiting - resembling many other kinds of poisoning, it is little wonder that some people convinced themselves that an enemy had deliberately tried to kill them, especially if they had recently quarrelled.

So if you were a guest at someone else’s table in the Middle Ages, how could you be sure your host hadn’t poisoned your flagon of wine or the roast quail you were eating? Wary guests and travellers always took their own antidotes whenever they were invited to dine, and apothecaries and others made a fortune by selling them. Here are ten favourite medieval antidotes to poison  -

1. Toadstones– Toad secretions were one of the poisons medieval people feared, but toads also supplied the antidote to many poisons. Toadstones were thought to be found in the heads of fat and aged toads. The toad was said to vomit the stone out, if it was placed on a scarlet cloth. This was kinder than the alternative method of beating a living toad and putting it into an anthill, where the ants would strip it, leaving only the bones and the toadstone.

Stealing the toadstone from the toad.

Toadstones grew hot or changed colour and sweated when near poison, so were often incorporated into rings, so that the wearer could feel and see any changes if he picked up a poisoned chalice. Mary Queen of Scots always carried a toadstone in silver bottle. Pressed to venomous sting, the toadstone would also draw out the poison.

 To test if you had a real toadstone, you held it up in front of toad and it would leap towards the stone if it was genuine.

2. Confection of Cleopatra– This was an antidote to various poisons including arsenic, laurel, aconite, mandrake, sea-hare, leopard’s gall, cat’s brains and menstrual blood – all consider highly dangerous. Confection of Cleopatra was made by mixing strong sweet wine with mashed scorpions, musk and birthwort (aristolochia), a hallucinogenic plant used in childbirth and as an antidote to snake bites.

 

Cyclamen. Photographer: Meneerke bloem

3. Cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium) – This pretty little plant, known as Sowbread because it was uprooted and eaten by foraging pigs, was used as antidote to poison, as well as a love-charm and an aphrodisiac. If a man was going bald he could also stuff the herb up his nose which was thought to stop any more hair from falling out.

 4. Agate, serpentine and topaz were all stones thought to guard the wearer against poison, so were often incorporated in jewellery, rings or small amulets to be hung round the neck. These were popular with poorer knights and merchants most of whom could not afford our next antidote.

 

Narwhal that provided 'unicorn' horn.

5. Unicorn horns– The examples of 'unicorn' horns that have survived have proved to be the spiral tusks of narwhals (an arctic whale). The horns were fashioned into drinking cups and goblets as they were thought to offer powerful protection against poison, especially arsenic, and promoted general good health, although not, of course, for the narwhal. 'Unicorn' horn was worth ten times more than gold. A 'unicorn’s' horn presented to the French king in 1553 was valued at £20,000 when the king received it.



Mistletoe

6. Mistletoe (Viscum album) – This plant was known as All-heal because it cured many illnesses, protected the house from lightning, and from witches, demons, and evil spirits. The Elizabethans used mistletoe as cure for epilepsy and the juice was used as ear-drops. Mistletoe also calmed quarrels and brought fertility, in addition to being an antidote to poison – a very useful plant to have around during a medieval family Christmas with the in-laws.

 7. Bezoar– The name of this stone comes from the Persian pad-zahr, meaning an expeller of poisons. Bezoars were imported from the Persia or India. The bezoar is a calculus, that is, a lump of minerals and salts found in the intestines of wild goats, cows or some species of pigs. They range in size from an egg to a small nut, and are usually yellowish brown, though can darken with use and age.  These were known as Oriental bezoar. Another kind of bezoar is called the Occidental and comes from the Swiss chamois, a goat antelope, but they were never as highly prized.


Bezoar in the Treasury of the Teutonic Order, Vienna Photographer: Wolfgang Sauber

The bezoar were usually placed in a pierced cases of silver or gold which hung from a chain, allowing the bezoar to be dunked in liquid to neutralize any poison before drinking. Charles IX of France, keen to test one of these stones, offered a condemned thief the chance to walk free if he drank some lethal poison and then swallowed a few grains of the stone to see if it would counteract it. Unfortunately the stone didn’t work and the thief writhed in agony for seven hours before dying.

 8. Rue (Ruta graveolens) – This was known as Herb of Grace, but only if it was gathered before noon, after that it became rue again and was poisonous. But in its Herb of Grace form it was particularly effective against poisons that had been swallowed, and against the bites of serpents and all other venomous animals. Apparently every animal knew this, so if a weasel was going to attack a snake it would eat rue first to protect itself.

Rue or Herb of Grace

9. Charms– To charm originally meant to chant or sing and the famous Nine Herbs Charm against poison which was recorded in a 10th century Anglo-Saxon herbal would have been sung. The herbal was written during the Christian period, but invokes both Christ and the ancient god Woden. Part of the chant reads –

These nine attack against nine venoms.
A serpent came crawling and tore a man asunder.
Then Woden took nine twigs of power and struck the serpent ...

 The nine healing or protective twigs described in the charm are thought to be mugwort, lamb’s cress, plantain, mayweed or chamomile, nettle, crab-apple, thyme, fennel and Attorlaöe which might either be cockspur grass or betony. The herbs would have been ground up and placed in the mouth of the victim and on the site of the wound or sting, while the full charm was sung probably 3 times 3 in total, over the affected areas.

Wild Parsley

10. Parsley (Petroselium crispum) – Finally, have you ever wondered why sprigs of parsley are so often used in England as garnish instead of any other herb? Since this familiar herb was considered an antidote to poison, in medieval times it was placed on the dishes served up to guests as a sign and pledge by the host that he was not going to poison them and to reassure them that dish was safe to eat. It's a custom we still carry on today without realising it. When food is served at buffets or at meals when guests are present, many people still garnish the plates with a sprig of parsley. Just a thought to to cheer you at the next office party, but I'm afraid parsley doesn't protect against the knife in the back!

The Best Historical Novel Ever Written?

July 8, 2016, 4:01 pm

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by Caroline Lawrence

‘Be careful what you read; a book can change your life.’

That is how I often start my presentation when I talk to schoolchildren about my historical novels set in Ancient Rome.  

For some people, the inciting incident of their life – the moment that set them on their life’s journey – was an inspirational teacher. For others it might be a field trip to a place that inspired them. Or watching a documentary on TV. 

For me it was a book read on my gap year. 

Mary Renault’s historical novel The Last of the Wine didn’t just spark my interest in Classical Greece, it captured my imagination. It made me long with all my heart to travel back in a time machine to see if the ancient world really was like that. 

But I didn’t need a time machine. 

The book was a time machine. 

Because of this book, I majored in Classics at U.C. Berkeley.

Because of this book, I came to England to study Classical Archaeology and ended up making my life here. 

Because of this book, I have spent the past twenty years writing books set in the ancient world, trying to do for others what Mary Renault did for me.

That’s how this book changed my life. 

I have praised this masterpiece of historical fiction elsewhere, but as the History Girls have been asked to write about a favourite historical novel for our five year anniversary, I thought I would put down half a dozen short excerpts from it, just for the joy of sharing them. 

In the past I would have grabbed my battered copy and opened anywhere to find a passage of brilliance, but today I have been listening to the long-awaited audiobook. These are a few of the passages jumped out at me as I walked the streets of London. They illustrate the way Renault uses her scholarship, her imagination and the five senses to put you right in the world of fifth century Greece. 

The wind from the north blew our hair from our brows, and streamed our garments out behind us. The air was clear, keen and filled with light. It seemed to us that at our command the wind would have lifted us like eagles, that our home was the sky. We joined our hands; they were cold, so that in clasping them we felt the bone within the flesh. 

(Chapter 10)

On this he paused and drew his brows together, as if trying to recall what it was he had omitted. When his forehead wrinkled, the legs of the horse which was branded on it seemed to move. 

It had been a way of mine since childhood to throw back my head when I was angry. I did this now, and felt a strangeness; I was used to the weight of my hair and it had gone. It was as if a hand had been laid on me as if to say Remember you are a man. 

At home I had found laid out on my bed my man’s mantle which my mother had woven ready a long time back. It smelt of the sweet herbs she kept her dresses in. 

(chapter 16)

There is still a good way to climb on Acrocorinth after you have passed the walls. Being so high, the place is not so thronged as our own High City; it was quiet: so that one could hear the bees in the asphodel, the little clappers of the mountain goats and a shepherd piping.

At last voices approached; Sostratos stood in the doorway, speaking to someone over his shoulder. The ribbons tied on him made him look like a bull going to sacrifice. 

(chapter 17)

Reading passages like these inspire me to put myself in the world I’m creating: to go to that creative, meditative, inspirational place deep within, and let my subconscious tell me what is happening. 

This is the magic of writing historical fiction.

This is the closest I will ever get to time travel. 

Caroline Lawrence’s newest series is The Roman Quests, set in Roman Britain at the end of the first century A.D. 

A mole on the belly - Michelle Lovric

July 9, 2016, 4:30 pm

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Some years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a few days immersed in an old book at the British Library. This one was called THE Amorous Gallant's Tongue Tipp'd with GOLDEN EXPRESSIONS OR, THE Art of Courtship refined. It was published in 1741.

At the time, the only place to find a book like this was in the library, but now of course it exists as an Ebook too.

One of the things I liked about the Gallant was that it assumed a healthy interest in sex for both genders, reinforcing my private theory that the 18th century was a good time for women, a time when they were allowed to have a sense of humour and sensuality of their own. If you ask me (and don’t, unless you want hours of hectoring) it was Byron and the so-called Romantics who marginalised us as the bruised-flower victims or mothers of bad-boy heroes.

Because 18th century women could cope with laughing, the love advice in The Amorous Gallant was tailed with a bit of rough humour:- a Canting Academy Or the Pedlar's French Dictionary, a guide to unsavoury expressions.

Without googling, eighteenth century types bent on love had to find other ways to test the suitability, durability and sexual enthusiasms of their future partners. The Amorous Gallant suggested an examination of various physical attributes. Moles were a good place to start, although gaining access to all mole-sites must have entailed a certain amount of enterprise and an open mind, if not bodice and trouser.

According to our Gallant:

 A Mole on the lower Part of the tip of the Right Ear, threatens the party with drowning.

 A Mole on the Belly denotes Whoredom, Luxury and Gluttony.

 A Mole on the Lip signifies the Party to be much beloved and very amorous.

 A Mole on the left Buttock denotes a pleasing person and are very much delighted in the work of Generation.

 A Mole on the Eyebrow signifies speedy Marriage and a good Husband.

A Mole on the Ankle, in a Man, denotes Effeminacy; but in a Woman, a masculine Spirit, and that She shall wear the Breeches.

A Mole on the right Thigh foretells Riches and Advancement by Marriage; and on the private Parts it doth the like.
For further reading on this subject, the Wellcome Library holds a book by Richard Saunders, published in 1653: Physiognomie and chiromancie, metoposcopie, the symmetrical proportions and signal moles of the body, fully and accurately handled; with their natural-predictive-significations. The subject of dreams; divinative steganographical, and Lullian sciences. Whereunto is added the art of memorie. Below is an illustration from it. Perhaps our Gallant studied it before writing his own chapter.

The Gallant also suggested that the lover should pay attention to the Interpretation of Dreams:

To dream of long Hair, and being proud thereof, denotes Good to Women 

The hair of the Seven Sutherland Sisters, who marketed various quack preparations and were the inspiration for my novel The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters. As it happened, long hair did not make any of the sisters, real or fictional, very happy.

This was certainly not true of the bearded lady Julia Pastrana, pictured above, Julia's ruthless husband raised cash by sending her embalmed body on tour with various circuses after she died.

 To dream you have Hair like Hog Bristles denotes great Affliction and Trouble, not without Danger of Violence.

 To dream of having many Ears, Signifies the Obedience of Wife, Children and Servants.

 To dream that the Eyebrows are hairy, and of a good Grace, signifies good to all, but more especially to Women.

 For a fair Woman to dream of having many Eyes is unfortunate, and betoken she shall have more Admirers than real Friends.

To dream of having a large Nose is generally very good to all; for it betokens Vivacity of Spirit and Prudence in Management of Affairs, and Familiary with Persons of Quality.

If a Woman dreams she hath a Beard it denotes she shall quickly have a kind Husband that will make much of her.

For a man to dream that his breasts are hairy denotes strength and good fortune, but for a woman to dream so betokens widowhood and loss.

The golden age of quack medicine, as I have written before, coincided with that of cheap printing. The purveyors of such products often produced booklets with useful advice about health, housekeeping and husband-hunting.
Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup was one such product. Its nominal function: ‘for tonic and alterative effect. Laxative and cathartic’. It advertised itself as the ‘supreme remedy’ for ‘colic, wind, spasms and every possible ailment of the stomach, liver and bowels’. Moreover, it claimed to tone and invigorate every organ of the body, enabling the system to resist disease and lay the foundation of a happy old age.
 A chemical analysis revealed that the syrup was largely composed of treacle and water with dilute hydrochloric acid, tincture of capsicum and aloes.

Wildly successful, Mother Seigel was marketed all over the world. I have seen one brochure on its virtues – printed in 17 languages.

But, like all quack medicines, it promised a world of cures – on the working principle that sometime somewhere someone who bought this syrup might get better anyway. It was marketed from the 1880s. In my collection of quack ephemera is a booklet of general advice and problem solving published by Mother Seigal. (Most problems could be cured by the syrup, of course).

But Mother Seigel, who also ran to plasters and pills, additionally had advice for lovers.

She told her readers to look at the eyes and the fingernails. (Now that we are into the Victorian period, that was about all that a lover might glimpse of a mate before marriage.)

Here are some of her tips.

A weak constitution is indicated by thin eye-brows and long, curving lashes.

 When the eyes are wide open and set well apart the person who has them will have a rash disposition.

 Blue eyes are taken as a sign of weakness – of will.

Eyes that are upturned are said to denote devotion and sincerity.

 The very red (finger)nail indicates a person with a hasty temper.

The short, broad nail denotes and extravagant disposition, but usually the ability to earn plenty of money.

 Ridges on all the nails of the finger, together with numerous white spots, indicate sadness and an unhealthy state of the system.

 If the nails are long, tapering, and white, the person who has them is at times inclined to be quarrelsome and at times selfish.

Stubbornness, sulkiness and also great determination are said to go with very small nails lying close to the flesh and flattish on top.

Personally, I’m sticking to the Amorous Gallant’s dream manual. Recently my nights have been enriched with (medical doses of ) morphine, and I’ve dreamt of many hairy things …

Michelle Lovric's website.
The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters
 is published by Bloomsbury.

---

Anna Mazzola, Interview and Review by Katherine Clements

July 10, 2016, 5:00 pm

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Every now and then a debut novel comes along that stands out from the crowd. The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola is one.

Sarah Gale is a seamstress, prostitute and single mother, incarcerated in Newgate Prison, sentenced to hang for her role in the murder of Hannah Brown. Young, ambitious lawyer, Edmund Fleetwood, is appointed to investigate Sarah’s petition for mercy, yet she refuses to help him. Convinced that Sarah is hiding something, and unable to understand why she won’t act to save her own life, Edmund must discover what really happened on the night of the murder. In the process, he discovers some unsetting truths.

The exact details of the Edgeware Road Murder – a real murder case that became a press sensation in 1837 – remain shady to this day. Sarah, convicted of aiding and abetting James Greenacre in the gristly crime, refused to defend herself, stating only that she knew nothing of it.

Sarah Gale’s silence during her trial and incarceration is fertile ground for a novelist and Mazzola, a criminal justice lawyer, has clearly relished both the research and the possibilities. Real testimony and newspaper clippings are weaved throughout. Sometimes such embellishments can detract from a story but here they add depth to it. Mazzola’s legal background shines through too, especially in the character of Fleetwood, whose pragmatic approach to finding the facts is soon challenged.

It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel. Mazzola’s prose is wonderful and the characters are complex and convincing. The cleverly woven plot is revealed gradually with tension maintained right up to the closing lines. Sarah is particularly well drawn; fascinating, frustrating and sympathetic by turns, echoing Fleetwood’s experience of her as she refuses to help him prove her innocence.

I particularly enjoyed the gritty depictions of poverty stricken 19th century London and its injustices (reminding me a little of, among others, Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White or Sarah Waters’ Affinity). The depiction of Newgate prison, with its harsh conditions and reprehensible inmates, is particularly visceral. But for me, the book's message about the position of women at the time stood out as one of the strongest themes. Without legal or financial rights, many women’s lives were determined by men. As such, Sarah could come across as a victim, but Mazzola avoids this, ensuring that Sarah finds a way to choose her own fate, even if it’s a shocking one, as she offers up a plausible and satisfying solution to the mystery.

This is a novel that raises questions about the nature of truth, secrets and manipulation, the lies we tell ourselves and what we choose to believe. And it’s a gripping read. If you like your historical crime beautifully written, intelligent and genuinely moving, this is one for you.

Anna kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the book:

Where and when did you first come across the story of Sarah Gale and what was it that fascinated you about her story?

I first heard about James Greenacre and the murder of Hannah Brown in the Suspicions of Mr Whicher. The crime is mentioned only briefly, but seized my attention as it took place in Camberwell, not far from where I live. However, when I read the Old Bailey transcript, I realized this was Sarah Gale’s story. She was accused of helping Greenacre to conceal the horrific murder of another woman and yet she said virtually nothing throughout the entire trial. Her barrister gave a short statement on her behalf saying that she was not in Camberwell at the time of the murder and knew nothing of it afterwards. Very little is said to combat the various claims that are made against Sarah or to deal with the different pieces of evidence that are offered up. Given she was facing the death sentence, I thought that was very strange. What was really going on?

You must have done quite a bit of research into the case. Did you make any surprising discoveries or have any 'aha!' moments?

I did a huge amount of research – that’s always the most fun part, isn’t it? – and had quite a few ‘AHA’ and ‘OMG’ moments, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you about most of them without spoiling the plot. I was unnerved to learn that James Greenacre had left Sarah his spectacles. I suppose glasses at that time were valuable, and it was perhaps an act of kindness, but he doesn’t seem to have been a kind man. Far from it. I wondered if it could have been a message: a warning that he was still watching.

Sarah could be considered a victim – due to her treatment by men, the courts and the press – but she doesn't come across like that at all. Was the issue of women's rights or legal position at the time in your mind when creating her?

Yes, because I think it’s an important part of Sarah’s story and what ultimately happened to her. This was an era in which married women had no legal personality of their own, and when wives who had committed crimes under the influence of their husband were judged to have a defence due to apparently having no mind of their own. At the same time, women who committed crimes were judged to be particularly abhorrent as they were subverting the feminine norm. They were angels or demons – there doesn’t seem to have been much in between – and the other characters in The Unseeing have pronounced views on which they think Sarah is. Sarah of course knows that, and works with what she has.

Without giving away any spoilers, do you think your background as a lawyer helped or hindered you in creating a fictional solution to the crime?

It was definitely a hindrance. It took me a long time, and several beatings from my agent, before I was able to move away from the ‘facts’ and produce a narrative that anyone would actually want to read. I’m of course used to working with real cases where facts are all-important, so it was difficult for me to accept that I had to let go of factual accuracy in order to achieve a different kind of narrative truth.  It’s part of the reason that one of the key themes of The Unseeing is truth and deception.

What's next? Can you tell us what you're working on now?

I’m currently writing my second historical crime novel, which is set on the Isle of Skye in 1857. It’s about a young woman who goes to work for a collector of folklore and discovers that a young girl has gone missing, supposedly taken by spirits, although of course that’s not what she believes. Again, the idea was sparked by a real case, but given my difficulty with leaving ‘the facts’ I haven’t tried to base it on the case in the same way that I did with The Unseeing. I may, however, return to that format for book three. Just to make things difficult for myself.

The Unseeing is out on 14th July and Anna will be our History Girls guest this month. Look out for her post on 29th July!

www.katherineclements.co.uk

www.facebook.com/KatherineClementsBooks

@KL_Clements

BONES

July 11, 2016, 9:00 pm

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The last few days have been skeleton-heavy. Royal tombs and dinosaur bones have marked my over-enthusiastic start to the school holidays, which has left us all exhausted.

First was a trip to Windsor Castle, which, I am ashamed to admit, I have never visited. Fascinating, but so busy! I should be delighted that so many people are interested in our Royal story. But the visit was marred by the sense of being on an historical conveyor belt, with bored teens ticking off the Van Dycks and the codpieces. Besides, going with a hyperactive two year old was always going to take the sheen off things. I remember little about the State Rooms beyond my own plaintive shrieking: "Don't touch the armour! Don't sit on that chair! Don't go under rope. Do not go under..  Ok. Come back from under the rope. Please?"

One moment stands out. Traipsing through St George's Chapel, hemmed in like a disgruntled herring, I happened to look down at my feet.

And there was this:

In a Vault

Beneath this marble slab

Are deposited the remains 

of 

Jane Seymour Queen of Henry V111

1537

King Henry V11

1547

King Charles 1

1648

and

An Infant child of Queen Anne

I have blogged before about the shivering breath of history - those moments in modern life when we feel the past rising. I am reminded of The Subtle Knife - the Philip Pullman novel in which the knife of the title has the power to slice between worlds.

Bones are a powerful subtle knife. A plain marble slab, and beneath it, the bones of some of the greatest protagonists in our island story - and the tiny skeleton of a stillborn baby who could have been monarch. As my three healthy, beyond-exuberant kids skipped over the slab, I thought of Queen Anne and her 17 pregnancies and no surviving children.

Did she find comfort in the thought of her child's tiny bones lying with Henry and Charles the Martyr? 

As writers of historical fiction, we wield our own subtle knives. We put the flesh on bones. Joanne Limburg's A Want of Kindness, did a wonderful job of recreating Anne, in all her plump, pregnant vacuity. 

Jane Seymour is a bit of an enigma - a footnote in Tudor history, a successful Royal womb. Even Hilary Mantel can't quite capture her - she's eclipsed by her Boleyn nemesis in Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.

According to the sources, Henry V111 asked to be buried alongside Jane - the mother of his longed for son. She was in a temporary, plain tomb, Henry's will stipulated that they would both be rehomed in a magnificent new tomb - one he claimed as his own, but was actually started by Cardinal Wolsley. It was never completed, and Henry, that lover of pomp and magnificence, remains in his plain and unadorned tomb.

I cannot find any references to why Henry's will was never completed; does anyone know? Please comment if so. Was the failure to complete the tomb an accidental oversight during the political turmoil that followed? Or a deliberate snub by his unloved daughter Elizabeth, to her father and the wife who took her mother's crown? 

Charles 1 body presented a problem for the Commonwealth. The civil wars' victors understood religious symbolism. What could be more powerful to the King's Catholic-sympathising followers than a martyr's relics? And yet the regicides were not Republicans as we would later come to understand the term. Charles' bones deserved respect. He was shuffled quietly into Henry's temporary tomb - after the Commonwealth had sold off pieces of Henry's unfinished grand tomb to fill its depleted coffers. The thinking was that Windsor Castle's relative distance from London would limit the number of Royalist worshippers at Charles' bones.

(Incidentally, the date on the slab in the Chapel implies Charles died in 1648 - this is due to the old method of dating the turn of the numerical year on 25 March.)

Here's another question - why do we venerate the bones of dead protagonists in the history play? Why did my atheist self quiver in the presence of the remains? Why did I pause and feel a sense of awe at the resonating presence of Jane and Henry, Charles and the nameless progeny of Anne?

Is it the God gene, pushing me towards the mystical? Is there a catholicism bred in the bone from my Irish relic-worshipping ancestors?

My head believes that when we die, our self dies with us. Skeletons are empty of all the things that make up a life - love and blood and laughter. They are meaningless in themselves. So why does the thing that I cannot quite call a soul answer to the call of the bones?

Antonia Senior is the author of Treason's Daughter, a novel of the English Civil War and The Winter Isles, a novel of Somerled, the first Lord of the Isles. 

 "Passionate, wonderful, windswept writing," Manda Scott

 "Senior's fresh, forceful writing breathes new life and relevance into the most destructive dangerous era in English History," The Times

5 BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE GIRL IN THE GLASS TOWER – Elizabeth Fremantle

July 12, 2016, 10:00 pm

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Research for my novels comes as much from reading fiction as it does from reading historical sources. This was particularly the case when I was preparing to write The Girl in the Glass Tower. Here are five of the best:

ANGELA CARTER – THE BLOODY CHAMBER

As a teenager seeking ways to understand how society defined the roles of women, Carter's book of dark fairytales was a revelation. The biography of my protagonist, Arbella Stuart, with its themes of incarceration, escape and its wicked mother figure in Bess of Hardwick, seemed to me to chime with Carter's cruel world. I deliberately played up these ideas in my fictional scheme, imagining Arbella as a princess incarcerated in her tower, and also with my depiction of the poet Aemilia Lanyer (Ami) who, in my novel, is falsely accused of witchcraft.




STEPHAN ZWEIG – THE POST OFFICE GIRL

Zweig is a constant source of inspiration for me and this novel, which is a reworking of the Cinderella story, though without the happy resolution (Zweig is not by any stretch of the imagination a feel-good writer), gave me my epigraph that sets the tone of my own novel:
There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.


HENRY JAMES – THE GOLDEN BOWL

James is perhaps a surprising addition to this list but as a writer who forces you to concentrate as a reader, I greatly admire him. His themes of blighted privilege, particularly for women, are ones to which I constantly return in my own work. The Golden Bowl inspired me to focus on the central idea of woman as a vessel for others' interpretations, and the glass vessel, which is a central symbol in The Girl in the Glass Tower, was a direct homage to the 'bowl' in James's novel. Where his vessel is invisibly fractured, making it no less beautiful, yet diminished in value, my glass vessel is too fragile to be of any use.



OVID – METAMORPHOSES 

It is the story of Philomela and Procne, in Ovid's extraordinary collection of myths, that runs through my novel as a kind of chorus. I first came to it reading T.S Eliot, who alluded to Ovid with great effect in The Wasteland. In the myth Philomela was raped by her brother in law who cut out her tongue in order that she wouldn't speak of the crime. She finds revenge but at great cost and is finally transformed into a nightingale. For Arbella the story represents freedom, whereas for Ami, the poet, it is about finding her voice in a world where women are meant to be silent.




CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN – THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

This powerful articulation of a woman incarcerated and at the brink of her sanity, made a great impression on me when I read it as a child. Though published in 1892 its themes remain prescient to this day. The idea of a woman infantilised and locked away, supposedly for her own good, until she loses her mind, immediately sprang to mind when I was preparing to write The Girl in the Glass Tower.  It offers in particular a vivid and intimate narrative of madness.





Elizabeth Fremantle's novel THE GIRL IN THE GLASS TOWER is published in hardback by Michael Joseph

Find out more about her work on elizabethfremantle.com

Nice Frock! Globalism and cotton prints. Catherine Johnson

July 13, 2016, 10:10 pm

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This month's post is partially inspired by Joan Lennon's informative blog last week about Victorian dressing, the link is here. http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/getting-dressed-as-victorian-lady-joan.html

It's also inspired by the work of the artist Yinka Shonibare, whose work riffs on colonialism, class and heritage. This is one of his.

Dressing Down by Yinka ShonibareMBE 1997

It is gorgeous, isn't it, and at first glance looks like a mid nineteenth century Victorian ball gown. Look closer and one realises the fabric is a mixture of different African Wax Prints.

These prints which although popular in Africa, and sometimes called Dutch prints because they are exported through Holland,  are really European, and inspired by Indonesian Batiks. Why Indonesia? Well, Indonesia and Java were part of the once great Dutch empire.

I think the UK appropriated Indian paisley patterns in much the same way, as well as stripping India of it's textile industry in the nineteenth century by the application of trade tariffs in order to build up our northern cotton mills.

Wax prints are the brightly coloured cottons used in West African fashions. If you live in a big UK city you probably have a shop near you that sells these, although the internet has made everything available to everyone.

This trade, where goods zig zag across the world - the cotton might be grown in America or the Far East, the cloth is woven and printed in Europe, and shipped to another continent for sale is an example of a very global trade.

And it shows that globalism which has without doubt resulted in massive instability (hello Brexit!) has been around for as long as people have traded. Just this week, finds at a dig at near Peterborough dated 1000BC have included pots and beads from the mediterranean. And of course it is natural, to exchange goods and ideas and having one thing inspiring another. We are all mixtures of a million different influences, from French delis in Hackney to yoga retreats in Norway to Mexican pinatas at children's parties in Budleigh Salterton.

But some of the worst features of global trade strike me as a kind of hellish pyramid scheme where Britain has been happy to be a player until recently when it lost the whip hand (see what I did there) and got knocked off the top of the pyramid. We now seem headed straight for the lowest wage possible society where no one has any job security at all...

I am sorry this has seemed so muddled. There is I am sure space for an in depth study of all these wonderful fabrics. Some of the prints are phenomenal. But there was another reason for this post. I am at YALC (Young Adult Literary Conference) in London  on July 29th and have given in to dressing up pressure....as my book The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo is set in 1819 I thought a regency style frock in a wax print might just cut it....

If you're lucky and it's not too embarrassing I will post photos....

Amelia Bloomer, by Y S Lee

July 14, 2016, 4:01 pm

≫ Next: Egon Schiele: by Sue Purkiss

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Last weekend, I travelled to the village of Homer, NY, to do an author visit at the Phillips Free Library. While strolling down Main Street, I was delighted to come across this plaque:

"Childhood home - Amelia Jenks Bloomer - Writer, Speaker & Activist - Temperance, Abolition and Women's Rights - 1818-1894

Amelia Bloomer’s childhood home is still privately occupied (the four Victorian-era mailboxes, two on either side of the door, suggest that the house was converted into flats some time ago) and there wasn’t any further information to be had that day, but it got me wondering.

North Main St, Homer, NY

I’d never given much thought to the American suffragists as individuals. I knew the names of the most famous (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Victoria Claflin Woodhull, to start with). And I’ve mentioned Bloomer before, most recently in my post about women on bicycles.

Illustration of a woman wearing the Bloomer costume. Image via National Park Service

But looking at her childhood home, I realized I didn’t know much about Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894). Here are some things I’ve learned in the past few days:

- Bloomer had only a few years of formal education, and as a young woman worked as a schoolteacher and a governess.

- She turned to journalism when her husband, Dexter Bloomer, encouraged her to write for his newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.

- She began her public career as a temperance campaigner. Because temperance was a female-driven movement, she was thus exposed to other feminist ideas including women’s suffrage and abolition.

- The American women’s suffrage movement grew quite directly from the abolitionist movement: in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, they were denied seats on the floor because they were women. In response, they held the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY. As a consequence, Black abolitionist activists like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are also closely linked with women’s suffrage. The 1840s and 1850s must have been a heady time for progressive thinkers in America!

THE LILY - A monthly journal, devoted to Temperance and Literature - Published by a Committee of Ladies.

 - In 1849, Bloomer founded The Lily, the first newspaper published by women for women. (To my knowledge, the first feminist newspaper in England published by a woman was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon’s English Women’s Journal, founded nearly a decade later in 1858. Please do correct if me I’m misinformed.) The Lily began as a mouthpiece for the temperance movement but soon grew to encompass the matter of women’s rights. Many of its articles about women’s rights and the necessity of legal reform were written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Amelia Bloomer in rational dress, ca. 1852-58. Image via NPS

- Amelia Bloomer didn’t invent the Bloomer costume. The radical “reform dress” came into Bloomer’s life in 1851 when a visiting friend, Elizabeth Smith Miller, wore loose, Turkish-style trousers with a short overskirt to Bloomer’s home in Seneca Falls, NY. Bloomer adored the idea and popularized it – and even published sewing instructions – in The Lily. Circulation swelled from about 500 copies a month to 4000. A few months later, the costume was widely known as the “Bloomer dress”. (No word on whether Elizabeth Smith Miller was relieved or resentful about the mis-naming of her design. Bloomers were so widely ridiculed – its wearers were frequently heckled on the street - that even Amelia Bloomer gave up wearing them in 1859.)

Ted Aub's life-sized bronze sculpture, "When Anthony Met Stanton". Bloomer, at centre, is introducing Susan B. Anthony (left) to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both Bloomer and Stanton are wearing rational dress. Image via National Park Service.

Bloomer's home in Seneca Falls, NY (where she lived after marriage, now known as Amelia Bloomer House) may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad!

I've a lot more reading ahead of me but I can't help picturing a scene in which Harriet Tubman (a childhood hero of mine) and Amelia Bloomer meet...