The History Girls

Sorry, I don’t really know what the secret is. Drink less? Sleep more? Retire to the woods with a lot of canned food and medical supplies and ride out the coming apocalypse among the forest creatures? Possibly. No, the click-bait title for this blog post comes from an advertising slip I just found in an old second-hand bookshop frenzy purchase. The book is Essays by Leigh Hunt, edited by A. Symons. And here is the slip:

Thanks to the wonders of archive.org, I did read some of The Secret of a Clear Head and so can tell you that it has something to do with ‘true and worthy forms of gratification’, ‘the priceless virtue of patience’, and also share the news that ‘it is a convincing token of nothingness and emptiness to be without resolute purpose and lacking in energy. Such people are nobodies and have nothing to hope for.’

Bummer.

Do feel free to read the rest here while I continue to enjoy ‘the essentially low tone of morals which forms the key-note of social enjoyment.’

Actually, if you have come here in search of a Clear Head, I do have one recommendation. More than that it's one of those hissing-and-clutching-your-lapels-and-staring-wide-eyed-at-you-from-uncomfortably-close recommendations my friends and family have learned to love - Deep Work by Cal Newport. It’s a possibly life changing book about valuing concentration and focus and switching off the distractions of the modern age. And if you can’t concentrate long enough to actually read it, you can listen to Newport discuss it on the Ezra Klein show while playing Candycrush and scrolling through your twitter feed for cat memes. I actually did that. Then I read the book and by following the advice I've doubled my daily word count, and even better it's beendaily.

But now I'm ferreting about on the internet, so I had a hopeful look at Why Smoke and Drink from the Every Day Help Series too. Unfortunately it turns out to be an anti-smoking and drinking tract. So anti in fact it provoked this response:

More appealing, but I think nowadays the scientific consensus is against both John Fiske and me.

Leigh Hunt, engraved by H. Meyer from a drawing by J. Hayter

Anyway back to the book in which I found the slip: Leigh Hunt was an essayist who introduced Keats to Shelly and was the model for Harold Skimpole in Bleak House.

Knowing that makes one read his essays in a different and harshly illuminating light, but they are pleasant, fanciful early 19th century easy reading. The introduction from Arthur Symons does some serious damning with faint praise though, saying ‘he is never quite without attractiveness’, which makes me a feel a lot better about some of my Amazon reviews. They are also full of certain turns of phrase and small domestic scenes which I think would make them a treasure trove if you are writing anything set in the 1820s.

I also noticed the address of the publisher, Walter Scott, was given as Paternoster Square. This pleases me as that the square was the centre of the publishing industry for centuries, so after a little light googling I can offer you the following.

1. This isn’t the Walter Scott. This Walter Scott was a wrestler from Cumberland who became a successful building contractor and then a publisher ‘bringing classic literature to the masses’.

2. As well as the ‘Every-Day Help’ series, and various elegant but keenly priced novels, essays and poetry, Walter Scott was one of the early publishers of Tolstoy and Ibsen in this country.

3. The short introduction to one of his Ibsen volumes was written by my great-great-grandfather, Philip Henry Wicksteed.

Now time to clear my mind, close all the open internet tabs and get back to the Deep Work with a Clear Head....

www.imogenrobertson.com

“But now I’ll rise to how things have to be.

The Queen is dead; Long live the King — that’s me.”

Tim Piggot-Smith as King Charles, BBC

"Mike Bartlett's play is a reminder that, even for Republicans, the Queen's death will loom large."This was the Guardian's comment on Bartlett's 'foreboding' play King Charles III, screened just a few days after a twitter melt-down over a Buckingham Palace press-statement so shrouded in anticipation that the Sun 'newspaper's' website pre-empted the news of Prince Philip's retirement with the announcement of his death. Sometimes you can't help but long for the days when even discussing a royal demise was treason and punished as such.

If you haven't had a chance to see the play (airing on the BBC in the UK and Masterpiece in the US), it is a remarkable thing. Written in blank verse to deliberately underline its Shakespearean-style machinations and betrayals, the play concerns the accession of Prince Charles and the consequent constitutional crisis which develops as he tries to find more meaning than mummery in his role. It is plausibly-played and, since it was written in 2014, seems to have found new layers of meaning as revelations have broken over the 'black-spider memos' and the two princes have spoken publicly about the toll their mother's death has taken.

The House comes tumbling down, BBC

Without giving too much away, the plot hinges on the United Kingdom's lack of a constitution and the ramifications of that

if a monarch decides not to play ball. The moment when the Commons realises how powerless they really are against the heavy knock on the chamber door is chilling and was not helped for me by my American husband's response to my horrified outrage: 'that's what you get if you base your country on a gentlemen's agreement.' Given the amount of stick he's taken over Trump and the idiocy of our failure to actually enshrine the "set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed [which] make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is” in writing, I had to suck it up.

Sophia of Hanover

Constitutional monarchy (where the monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a democratically-derived constitution) has its roots in the Magna Carta and was enshrined following the 1688 'Glorious Revolution' and the 1701 Act of Settlement which passed the crown to the family of Sophia, Electress of Hanover. In Europe,
Napoleon Bonaparte is considered as the first constitutional monarch as he proclaimed himself as an embodiment of the nation, rather than as a divinely-appointed ruler in contrast to the Divine Right following French Kings before him. The role of the British monarch is understood as a ceremonial and politically neutral one: the current Queen holds weekly (closed and undocumented) meetings with the Prime Minister and can suggest/advise on policy matters and she gives the royal assent to bills and to the appointing of prime ministers but, since the passing of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act in 2011, she can no longer use the royal prerogative to dissolve parliament.

Ah, the royal prerogative - a strange and wonderful beast sometimes exercised by ministers (it was used by Margaret Thatcher to go war over the Falklands) and still available to the monarch (although, obviously, we can trust them not to do anything silly with it). The royal prerogative has been described as a notoriously difficult concept to define adequately (Select Committee on Public Administration, 16 March 2004) and originates in the time of King Alfred as the personal power of the monarch as gifted by God. Curbing the extent of this prerogative in favour of a democratic voice has been a central theme throughout British history and tracing the efforts to stop the monarch dissolving the parliaments trying to stop the monarch is like watching a wonderful game of historical cat and mouse.

Political Cartoon 1832

The last monarch to physically march into parliament and dissolve it wasWilliam IVin 1831. William IV succeeded his brother George IV to the throne on 26th June 1830 at the age of 64. At that time the death of a monarch required a general election: Lord Grey was elected, began trying to push electoral reform through, was defeated and went to the King to ask him to dissolve parliament so it could be better built with his supporters. The descriptions of the King marching into parliament, putting on his crown as he went are astonishing: The Times said it was"utterly impossible to describe the scene ... The violent tones and gestures of noble Lords ... astonished the spectators, and affected the ladies who were present with visible alarm." Lord Londonderry was seen brandishing a whip, threatening to thrash government supporters and had to be forcibly restrained, violent riots erupted and the King's carriage was pelted with rubbish. Bartlett uses this episode as the precedent to Charles's actions in the play and and the spreading shock is palpable.

Could this happen again and art play itself out as history? It would be a risky move and the Windsors are nothing if not brilliant at survival. However, the extent of royal prerogative remains unclear and suspension and summoning seems still to be within the monarch's power even if dissolving is not. The current Queen is very adapt at keeping her feelings hidden despite the media looking for constant hints - the speculation over her attitude to Scottish independence stirred up a hornet's nest - but Charles is certainly a lesser-known, or perhaps too well-known, quantity. For outsiders and republicans like me whose interest in a royal family is purely historic, the relationship between Britain and its its royal family is a curious one. A lot of its 'loyalty' (as Bartlett uses in his play) seems to be tied up with the Queen herself - perhaps, given that 83% of us have spent our whole lives with her as Queen and she has kept well away from controversy, there is an inbred sense of trust. However, when the news blackout and the twitter-storm really does herald the big sea-change, I wonder how many of us will come to regret that those rather ambiguous powers were recorded as starkly as the black-edged announcement. We can't say we weren't warned...

Photo: Bundesarchiv

People keep saying: 'Hitler came to power by democratic means.' Well, did he? I'm grounding this blog on a reading of Richard J Evans's impressive book 'The Coming of the Third Reich,' published in 2003. I thought it was time to revisit the 1932-1933 era, and what I find is not what I expected, which shows that it's worth checking facts before rushing into virtual print. I had always understood that left and centre parties failed to grasp the threat Hitler represented, and to unite against him. That was an element in the problem, but the narrative is a good deal more nuanced and complex than that - and contains some frightening resonances with our own times.

The Wall Street crash and subsequent depression hit Germany's fragile economy harder than it hit others, partly because of the withdrawal of US money from Germany business. A fifth of the German male population were out of work: this is probably a conservative estimate, as women weren't included. If you want to read a fictional account of this situation and how hopeless it felt, you can't do better than Hans Fallada's 'Little man, what now?' Or else consider the photograph which I have seen of people queuing up to have their pets put to sleep (by a charity) because they could no longer even afford to feed their children. Consider the men who trudged along Germany's roads from city to city, in a fruitless search for work, sleeping rough, in growing despair.

Unemployed men, by Walter Maisak

Many of those workers turned to the Communist party, and the sudden rise of Communism, which saw the situation as a crisis of capitalism which might lead to its ultimate fall, terrified many middle-class Germans. At the same time, Nazism, which had been a small fringe party, also started to grow. The large number of unemployed men with nothing to do, were a reservoir on which the extremist parties could draw. Nazis and Communists clashed in street battles; the Nazis were at least as violent as the Communists, but the Communists often got all the blame. It has to be said, however, that the extreme left were just as keen to destroy the democratic system as the extreme Right were.

The Social Democratic party, the original workers' party, had lost credibility due to their cooption of right-wing forces, when they were in power, to suppress Communists. However, in 1930, when in coalition with the People's Party, the Social Democrats refused to support cuts to unemployment benefit which the People's Party wanted (because the country needed to try and balance the books). That was the end of the coalition, and it meant that the ageing aristocrat President Hindenburg and his political allies saw a chance 'to establish an authoritarian regime through the use of the Presidential power of rule by decree.' The army, which had previously reported to the cabinet, had been given the right to report directly to the President. This meant that Hindenburg, himself a World War 1 military hero, had the troops at his personal disposal. Evans sees 1930 as the beginning of the end of Weimar democracy. 'Rule by decree' meant that legislation could be imposed directly, by the President, without having to go through the Reichstag.

There was still a Chancellor, however, Heinrich Brüning, a monarchist (and not a constitutional one) and allied to the increasingly authoritarian Catholic Centre party. To clarify; he represented those forces in German society who had been hostile to democracy from 1918, when the German revolution unseated the Kaiser.

Heinrich Brüning: Bundesarchiv

By 1930, as the extremist representation in the Reichstag grew, proceedings were often unable to go forward because '107 brown-shirted and uniformed Nazi deputies joined 77 disciplined and well-organised Communists, chanting, shouting, interrupting, and demonstrating their total contempt for the legislature at any juncture.' In February, 1931, the Reichstag dissolved itself for six months due to the impossibility of carrying on.

'Power,' Evans says, 'drained from the Reichstag with frightening rapidity.' It shifted to Hindenburg's circle, and to the streets, where violence was escalating. My mother remembered, as a child, mattresses being put into the windows at her grandfather's house, because the bullets were flying in the street. My grandfather, who was a policeman, was regularly deployed to suppress these riots. (One thing Evans doesn't mention is that though in other parts of Germany the police tended to support the Nazis, in Upper Silesia, where my grandparents lived, this was not the case. Given that the Nazi vote was consistently low in that province, this is perhaps not surprising, and my grandfather found himself having to control his men when they wanted to beat up the Nazis. He was a Social Democrat himself, and firmly believed that the role of a policeman was to keep order.)

Meanwhile, Brüning was imposing savage cuts. One of Germany's problems was the payment of reparations under the Treaty of Versailles. However, in 1931, the Hoover Moratorium suspended those payments. This should have given the political leeway for government job-creation schemes, and now the far right couldn't assert that any tax increase would only go towards the reparations. But Brüning, obsessed with fear of inflation, did nothing, and continued with his programme of cuts, saying publicly that the Depression could be expected to last till 1935. He became known as the 'Hunger Chancellor.' Brüning's successor, Von Papen, was equally addicted to austerity.

The Nazi vote continued to grow, helped by an astute propaganda campaign masterminded by the propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. It had its effect - not surprisingly, when you consider that postwar advertisers studied Goebbels's methods. One can imagine what he would have done with the Internet and social media. 'What the Nazis succeeded in doing' says Evans, 'was to reduce political dialogue to a series of slogans. Voters were confronted 'with a stark choice: either the old forces of betrayal and corruption, or a national rebirth to a glorious future…Visual images, purveyed not only through posters and magazine illustrations, but also through mass demonstrations and marches in the streets, drove out rational discourse and verbal argument in favour of easily assimilated stereotypes that mobilised a whole range of feelings, from resentment and aggression to the need for security and redemption.' (Evans). They yelled about 'November criminals,''red bosses,''Jewish wire-pullers', the 'red murder pack.'

Goebbels: Bundesarchiv

Perhaps this sounds familiar? I find it deeply worrying, because it demonstrates how easily people can be morally stampeded by snap phrases, and manipulated through their fear of complex understanding and analysis. ''I'm delighted at Hitler's lack of a programme,'' one woman wrote in her diary, ''for a programme is either lies, weakness, or designed to catch silly birds. The strongman acts from the necessity of a serious situation and can't allow himself to be bound.'' At a time when 'strong stable leadership' is being offered to British voters as an inducement, it should give us pause for thought. Of course, Hitler did have a programme, as anyone who could wade through the turgid pages of Mein Kampf could find out, and as the world found out when it was too late.

ballot paper for Presidential election

However, when Hitler stood for the Presidency against Hindenburg, he lost (less catastrophically than the Communist, Thälmann, who got 10% in the final vote. Hitler got 37%, and Hindenburg 53%. The Social Democrats supported Hindenburg, because there was no-one else they could support. This did no good either to their morale or their credibility, nor did it help when, in order to support law and order in the country, they withdrew their opposition to the cuts. Meanwhile, the new chancellor was as determined to create an autocracy as Hitler was.

'Papen's self-appointed task,' writes Evans, 'was to roll back history, not just Weimar democracy but everything that had happened in European politics since the French Revolution, and re-create in the place of modern class conflict the hierarchical basis of ancien regime society.' One of his government's first acts, having abolished the guillotine as a means of execution and restored the axe instead, was to ban left-liberal and social democratic newspapers. They lifted a previous ban on the brownshirts, hoping that they would thus be 'tamed' and could be used as an auxiliary army. Instead the street battles quickly reached record new levels. When my grandparents looked at the situation, they must have thought the country was on the verge of civil war.

In 1932, Von Papen's government suspended the Social Democratic government of Prussia on the grounds that it was no longer capable of maintaining law and order (in the face of the brown violence that Papen himself had unleashed). The Social Democrats accepted this, mainly because it was against their principles to use violence. If the leftist Reichsbanner organisation (which the Nazis later accused my grandfather of belonging to; I have no way of knowing if he actually did) had taken up arms - well, they might have been smashed by Rightists. Or there might have been civil war. Easy to condemn the Social Democrats when you have the benefit of hindsight, and when you aren't facing that decision yourself. They tried to use the legal route to protest, and the law supported them in part. But they were restricted to representing Prussia in the Upper Chamber, to the irritation of the Right. In any case, the Social Democrats had suffered severe electoral defeat, and they knew they couldn't mobilise their trades union membership against Papen, because there were so many unemployed men who could have been brought in to break strikes.

'After 20th July 1932, the only realistic alternatives,' writes Evans, 'were a Nazi dictatorship or a conservative, authoritarian regime backed by the army.'

President Hindenburg

And yet, by election time in November 1932, Nazi support was waning. They had over-extended themselves and run out of funds, and, more dangerously as far as they were concerned, the Depression was bottoming out. Von Papen had resigned and had been replaced by General Kurt von Schleicher. 'By this time, the constitution had in effect reverted to what it had been in the Bismarckian Reich, with governments being appointed by the Head of State, without reference to parliamentary majorities or legislatures… Yet the problem remained that any government which tried to change the constitution in an authoritarian direction without the legitimacy afforded by the backing of a majority in the legislature would run a serious risk of starting a civil war.' And the largest party in the Reichstag were the Nazis.

So: did Hitler came to power by democratic means? I hope that this blog shows that it's a bit more complicated than that. The final decision to offer the chancellorship to Hitler (he had refused to take any lesser role in a coalition government) was driven by the realistic fear of a coup by the paramilitary Steel Helmets organisation (Stahlhelm), supported by landed interests and industrialists who wanted to continue wage and benefit cuts and feared a nationalisation of the steel industry by Schleicher. Some expected Schleicher himself to stage a coup, after he asked President Hindenburg to give him extra-constitutional powers to overcome the crisis, and was refused. Hitler's appointment as Chancellor did at least confer a shred of constitutionality on the decision Hindenburg made.

Hitler's cabinet. Goering is to his left. Papen standing to his right. Bundesarchiv

The Nazis did not fill this new government: Hitler was Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick was Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Goering was Reich Minister Without Portfolio and Acting Prussian Minister of the Interior, which gave him control over the police. This meant that the Nazis had control over law and order - or, as it soon turned out, lawlessness and violence. The Right felt that they could control Hitler. History shows they were wrong. But the real seizure of power followed the Reichstag fire, and the wave of terror that was then unleashed on Germany was anything but democratic.

Is there a lesson here for us? Over-simplistic parallels are the kind of things the Nazis dealt in, that Donald Trump, for example, deals in. But I would say this. By the time Hitler took power, Germany was already primed for him.In my lifetime, since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of Britain, I have seen politics move steadily to the Right, and the further they move in that direction, the more the mainstream political parties chase them rightwards. Policies which were once the preserve of the National Front are now mainstream conservative discourse. The Nazis' success was partly fuelled by sloganism and rabble-rousing, which also dominate the modern political scene. The other parties tried adopting punchy slogans and visual images, but they couldn't equal the Nazis in this respect.

Perhaps the principal lesson is that economic hardship and austerity bred Nazism; this should definitely serve as a warning to us today.

A footnote: Though the Nazis had a majority of seats in the Reichstag, this did not translate, ever, into a majority of the vote. The best they ever did was in the final election of March 1933, after the Reichstag fire, when voter intimidation was in full swing, and they polled 43.9%. But considering the authoritarian inclinations of some of the other parties, this would hardly indicate any great liberal resistance to Nazism. There were liberals,though, in the political, rather than the economic neo-liberal sense of the word. Many of them were dragged into camps and prisons, and many were murdered there. Some emigrated. A few went undercover to resist as best they could. We may honour their names, but the years leading up to 1933 were catastrophic, for many people who would otherwise have been decent human beings, either out of fear, or persuasion, or apathy, were sucked into supporting a filthy and murderous political system which was to lead to the death of millions. Most human beings are not as heroic as they'd like to believe they could be.

Social democrats in Oranienburg concentration camp. Bundesarchiv.

I began writing my first historical novel when I was fifteen years old. I had fallen for a knight on a BBC television programme titled Desert Crusader - dubbed from the original French where the series was known as Thibaud ou les Croisades. (you can find it at Youtube under that heading. For example Thibaud ou les croisades) It's available on DVD from Amazon France and I have my own copies now for posterity!

I began writing my own form of fan fiction which quickly developed a life and story line of its own that departed far from the TV original.

My story involved a European settler family in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The hero had a Greek mother and an Angevin father and was a knight in the service of King Fulke of Jerusalem and often employed on James Bond style undercover operations. He fell in love with the daughter of a visiting pilgrim family and long story short, returned to Europe with them when his father's brother died and he was the only living male relative. That first teenage novel turned into a four book series - all unpublished but a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining learning curve for the writer!

When I began writing, I knew very little about the period and the life and times. My inspiration was generally hormonal linked to a natural delight in romantic tales of adventure and derring do, and I didn't have much idea of the historical background. However, I wanted my tale to feel as real as possible and that meant I needed to embark on the research. For my Christmas present when I was 15 I asked for Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades volume 1. Although that work is now outdated and considered dubious in places, It still gave a marvellous overview to a 15-year-old and helped me to structure the novel by showing me the adventure in the political events.

However, it wasn't just the political history that I needed. I had to know what sort of clothes people wore and whether the clothes differed when it came to social rank. What colours did they wear? What were the dyestuffs? What was the difference in fashions between Europe and the Middle East? What did they eat? When did they eat? How did they eat? What were their beliefs about the food they ate?(the table of humors for example where if you were elderly it was viewed as not a good thing to eat pears or lampreys because they were so cold and moist on the table of food properties that they might put out your fire!) What were their social attitudes? How did they address each other? What was their attitude to marriage? To sex? To childbirth? What was their attitude to hygiene? How often did they realistically bathe? Did they immerse themselves? How tall were they? What sort of money did they use? How was it made and transported? Did they have pockets? What were their horses like? Their dogs? What sort of names did they give those dogs and horses? What sort of names did they give themselves? What were their swear words? And so on and so forth.

One of the first books I read to get me clued up on my hero's weaponry was the fabulous Archaeology of Weapons by Ewart Oakeshott. This is where I learned that a sword of the mid to early 12th century wasn't some great heavy weapon as I'd imagined from reading other novels and watching film and TV, but actually a balanced thing of beauty weighing no more than between two and three pounds. I discovered also that my hero's horse wasn't some magnificent beast standing 17 hands high, but far more likely to resemble a modern small, strong Andalusian horse or a Welsh cob. At every turn As I delved into the research material I was having my preconceptions knocked off their pedestals. Yes people bathed. No people did not use spices to disguise the taste of rotten meat - which makes complete sense when you think of how expensive spices were. The only people putting spices on their foods would be the well off, and no well off person was going to eat rotten meat. Yes, people drank water. Yes they wore colours beyond brown and grey.

It was one of the things I loved - having my preconceptions and the things I had been told at school or in popular history, challenged and either debunked or fleshed out with entire new vistas of information. The more I read and studied, the more I discovered and the more interested I became, and the more I wanted to write about my chosen period.

Historical novelists by the very nature of what they do Must have a wide ranging background knowledge of the period about which they write. The more that is known and understood, the closer to one's characters one becomes. The aim is to become a native speaker rather than a tourist passing through. Script writing guru Robert McKee says in one of his lectures on script writing that the author must know his or her imaginary world as well as they know the one in which they live and this is so true for historical novelists. It doesn't mean that an author should dump all the information they garner into a novel, but it does mean that their background knowledge will inform the choices made when writing the novel. The more an author knows about their characters - what they are likely to have thought and felt based on wide-ranging background research into their lives and times, the closer they will come to them and the more the readers will feel that connection. Awareness will flow organically to become a seamless part of the writing.

Rather than being specialists in certain areas ( although of course we may have those specialisations), we have to be Jacks and Jills of all trades and know a lot across a very broad spectrum.

I thought I would finish by posting 10 books from my research shelf of thousands collected down that years, that address some of the questions I posed in paragraph 3. You can never have too many books - although I could certainly do with more bookshelves!

Elizabeth Chadwick is one of the U.K.'s bestselling writers of historical fiction. Her latest work is a trilogy about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I came across this remarkable eccentric while researching eighteenth century Rome, where he spent the last ten years of his life. As a young man he was appointed Royal Chaplain to George III, who referred to him as "that wicked prelate". He later became Bishop of Derry and advocated religious tolerance and equality. He had a taste for mildly sadistic practical jokes and filled a vacancy for a curate by making the more overweight candidates compete in a race along the beach. Hervey was also a philanthropist who built roads in Derry and tried to relieve some of the poverty in the area. The Royal Society made him a Fellow in recognition of his interest in vulcanology and his scholarly work on the Giants’ Causeway. He built himself a magnificent house at Downhill, near the Causeway, and filled it with his art collection which included works by Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Dürer and Caravagio.

In the grounds of Downhill is the Mussenden Temple, which is an exact copy of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli - Hervey wanted to transport the original to Britain but the Pope refused to sell. Underneath it he built a room for Catholic priests to say Mass, a provocative decision during that time of anti-Catholic penal laws. He also became involved in the Irish Volunteer Movement and in 1782 led a triumphant procession from Downhill to Dublin. Theatrically dressed in a mixture of military and ecclesiastical costume, in a carriage drawn by horses ornamented in matching purple and gold, he seems to have fantasized that he would reign over a new, tolerant Ireland. At an Irish nationalist convention held at Dublin he indiscreetly spoke of rebellion, which almost led to his arrest by the British government. After that he appears to have stayed out of politics.

Hervey does seem to have earned his reputation for wickedness: he swore and blasphemed constantly and had many scandalous love affairs. He ill treated his wife, Elizabeth Davers, who stayed in Suffolk while he travelled all over Europe. Hotels where he had stayed often renamed themselves the Hotel Bristol, proud that they had been chosen by him for he was a famous epicure and drunk and only the best food and wine would satisfy him.

In his late forties Hervey inherited what was then a vast income of about twenty thousand pounds a year and was able to fully indulge his passion for art. In Rome he was regarded as a Maecenas and whenever he was in town artists flocked to his house on the Via Sistina. He doled out commissions generously but didn’t always pay for them: when John Soane was a penniless young architect in Rome Hervey engaged him to build a new dining room and a classical dog-house for Downhill. Poor Soane wasted months designing a kennel that looked like an ancient Roman temple - but it was never built. The Bishop had an unpleasant habit of disappearing from Rome just as all the artists he had commissioned work from were expecting orders on his banker.

Hervey was famous for his brilliant conversation and met or corresponded with Voltaire, Goethe, Benjamin Franklin and Boswell. This sophistication was combined throughout his life with outrageous behaviour; for example, on his last visit to Siena, he threw a tureen of pasta from the window of his hotel onto the heads of a passing procession of the Host. His house in Rome was said to be filled with pornographic frescoes and portraits of the wives of the artists he patronised as Venus in indecent poses. Catherine Wilmot, an Englishwoman who travelled in Italy and had an acerbic pen, wrote this description of him in old age:

His figure is little, and his face very sharp and wicked; on his head he wore a purple velvet night-cap, with a tassel of gold dangling over his shoulder and a sort of mitre to the front; silk stockings and slippers of the same colour and a short round petticoat, such as Bishops wear, fringed with gold about his knees. A loose dressing-gown of silk was then thrown over his shoulders. In this Merry Andrew trim he rode on horseback to the never-ending amazement of all beholders! The last time I saw him, he was sitting in his carriage between two Italian women dressed in white bedgown and nightcap like a witch and giving himself the airs of an Adonis.

For a man who had argued all his life for religious tolerance, he came to a very sad end. When the French invaded Italy they accused him of spying and kept him in prison in Milan for eighteen months. When he was released he wanted to return to Rome. On the way, in the country near Albano, he felt unwell & asked a peasant couple to shelter him for the night. They were afraid to welcome a Protestant - a heretic - in their house so they made him sleep in a cold, damp outhouse. Hervey was then seventy-three, worn out by his imprisonment and desperately anxious about his art collection. He died there and his body was brought back here to Rome. Hundreds of artists attended his funeral in Rome in 1803 and he was buried at his ancestral home, Ickworth in Suffolk, where there is an obelisk paid for by public subscription by the Catholics, Presbyterians and Protestants of Derry.

In this portrait of Hervey with his grand-daughter Caroline the Earl Bishop looks rather benign. The miniature below is of Hervey’s daughter, Lady Elizabeth Foster, known as Bess, who was much admired by Edward Gibbon and many other men. She was a great friend of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire - a friendship that seems to have survived even when Bess gave birth to the Duke of Devonshire’s child. The three of them lived together for years in a famous ménage à trois and eventually, after the death of Georgiana in 1809, the Duke and Bess were married. When the Duke died less than two years later Bess went to live in Rome where, like her father, she became a patron of the arts, particularly archaeology. She funded the excavation of the Forum, enabling the recovery of the Column of Phocas and the stones of the Via Sacra. In Rome, she also found the last love of her life, Cardinal Hercule Consalvi, the secretary of state to the Vatican.

We have a new President.
The whole world has learned by now that France has voted for Emmanuel Macron, the youngest man to step into this role since Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III.
Born in Paris on 20th April 1808, Louis-Napoléon became President on 20th December 1848.

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of Napoléon I, was the first head of State to take the title of President and he was the only President of the Second Republic. Barred from running for a second term, he organised a coup d'etat and took the throne as Emperor of France on 2nd December 1852. He remains the longest serving Head of State in France since the French Revolution, and died in exile in England in 1873 after the fall of his Empire in 1870.

Emmanuel Macron steps into the role of President at the age of thirty-nine and six months so just a tad younger than France's last Emperor, making Macron the youngest President in French history. Does his age matter? Yes and no. His youth and energy are seen here as a breath of fresh air. His beautiful wife Brigitte Macron is over twenty years his senior making him, I believe, a man with an individual spirit who follows his own path, his own destiny. I watched a clip of their wedding recently and was charmed by the way he spoke so openly about embracing their age difference. I find it quite remarkable when one considers the chauvinism so often shown in politics.

I, we, hope that this mindset will bring courage and a new way of thinking to French politics. Most here are saying that the country is in dire need of reform. Yes, there is much that needs to be addressed - our very high unemployment figures (around ten per cent), the weight of bureaucracy in the public sectors - both are two concerns regularly cited.
Another urgent issue is national security. We are a country that has been living in a state of alerte rouge since January 2015. Over the last two years, France has been the victim of several monstrous terrorist attacks. In these last two and a half years, close to 300 people have been murdered during or as a result of these attacks. Macron's opponent, the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has been suggesting measures which would alienate the large Maghrebian (north African) population here in France, would close down our borders, take us out of Europe and do away with the euro. Fortunately, Macron has opposed all these proposed policies. During the televised debate between Macron and Le Pen just days before the second and final round of voting, Macron stood firm against her accusations when she shockingly threw the word 'traitor' at him because he had visited Algeria and stated that France did not behave well during its years as an imperialist power there and that some of the acts perpetrated against French colonial citizens were crimes against humanity. It took great courage and integrity to stand firm on national television, peak viewing, to repeat his position. I agree with Macron. Like him I also believe that until France takes responsibility for its past, healing and social meshing cannot take place.

I have written about France and its Algerian history in other History Girls posts: http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/01/je-suis-charlie-carol-drinkwater_26.html and http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/02/a-potted-history-of-french-algeria.html

The terrorists who perpetrated the appalling attacks here, from Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 onwards, are, or were, members of and trained by ISIS/Daech. They are not necessarily directly related to France's colonial past except that many of the disenfranchised north Africans living, in most cases, in very difficult conditions on the outskirts of French cities have been easy pickings for the terrorist organisations. These second and third generation French citizen youths are without work, living on the fringes of our society, despised and looked down upon by a percentage of the population and their rights and needs are not always being met. How easy then to lure them into acts against the establishment, to stoke up within them the hatred and anger necessary to commit such atrocities. The solid impenetrable establishment does not want to hear that France owes a great debt and more than an apology to the citizens of its colonial past. Macron's words were not easy to hear for many and were outrightly denied by others, such as Marine Le Pen.
It is a breath of fresh air to hear a politician say that his nation must take responsibility for its crimes before any future can be built. I applaud Macron for not buckling at the possibility of losing votes because of the position he had taken.

My new novel, THE LOST GIR, to be published in just over a month on 29th June in the UK is set in two locations and several time zones. At its heart it is a contemporary story which begins the night of Friday 13th November 2015 in Paris. That night there were six terrorist attacks all within the eastern quarters of Paris. Over 200 people were murdered many of them youngsters attending a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall near Bastille.

How did this book come about? The evening of the terrorism in Jan 2015 really affected me and set the tone for my response to the 13 November attacks. My husband was in Paris when the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place. He was working at his office which in those days was one street away from the CH offices. Naturally, I was terrified when I heard the news before I knew the precise location. Once all was revealed, I learned from Michel, my husband, that he had worked with one of the illustrators who was murdered that late afternoon.
The fact that it was a colleague, someone just one step away, a man working in the arts, not a close friend of Michel's but a respected colleague, this really shook me up.
Freedom of speech, freedom to believe whatever one chooses as long as it does not cause harm to others, freedom to love whomsoever one chooses, as long as we are not talking about minors or unwilling partners. These are at the heart of French values, a cornerstone of this society. 2015 was a turning point for me in that I recognised how living in France has transformed me. I also realised that speaking out and mourning publicly for the victims was essential. I felt that I had to stand up and be counted.
THE LOST GIRL was in gestation, I see now, even before the night of 13th November.
That evening I switched on the television to see the news which is not something I am in the habit of doing. I was standing with my mother in the living room and together we watched the events unfolding. I was weeping. Mummy said to me, talking particularly about the young who were trapped as hostages within the Bataclan where two gunmen were shooting, picking off audience members one after another in cold blood 'Everyone of them is someone's daughter or son. Mothers are waiting everywhere to hear the news.'
My story was seeded, although I did not know it that evening. Several days later, I put aside the novel I was at work on and began to write ...

Kurtiz is an Englishwoman, a renowned photographer who has become estranged from her actor husband. Their marriage fell apart when their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, went missing from their London home four years earlier. Out of the blue, there is a sighting of Lizzie in Paris. Kurtiz's husband, Oliver, firmly believes his daughter will be at the Bataclan rock concert and he goes there in search of her. Kurtiz is waiting in a nearby bar for news, for a meeting, for a craved-for reconciliation.

THE LOST GIRL is a love story with plenty of drama. At its heart it is a tale of new beginnings, of second chances, of learning to forgive and to seize the moment and live.

France has voted, not for extremism and fascist knee-jerk reactions, not for closing down its borders, but for new beginnings, for building upon the knowledge that within its recent past, the nation, the ruling powers, have committed crimes. With an open heart, the long slow journey towards healing and creating opportunities for those who have been left out in the cold, can begin.
I am feeling optimistic.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

I wrote this blog and posted it at the beginning of this week. A day later, Manchester in the United Kingdom was hit. A suicide bomber waited to explode his foul ammunition on young people preparing to make their way home from a rock concert. First, my sincere condolences to those who have lost members of their families. R.I.P to those who lost their lives. I pray that those who were injured may recover speedily. Lastly, huge respect to the citizens of Manchester who handled the abomination with such compassion. During my time researching The Lost Girl I spent a month watching filmed material of the events of that night in Paris and the long harrowing days that succeeded it. One of the most remarkable things I took away from all that I watched was the generosity of the Parisians, the French. Blood was given, doors left open. Everyone was on hand to help do their bit to counter the ugliness of such an atrocity. In all the war zones I have visited for my work and travels, for the research for The Lost Girl and for all that I have read over these last few days from Manchester, I have been deeply moved time and time again by our ability to express compassion and generosity to others who are suffering. Man's indomitable spirit. Our kindness, our desire to reach out and offer a hand to another in need. I hope these qualities come across in my novel and I sincerely pray that these are the energies that will overcome these appalling waves of terrorism.

Benjamin Britten, Joyce Grenfell, Peter Pears at The Red House, June 1967

In 1947 the British composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, the singer Peter Pears, fulfilled their dream when they started the Aldeburgh Music Festival, in Suffolk. Aldeburgh is a pretty fishing town on the on the East coast of England, unchanged since its hey-day in the early 19th century. At first concerts and lectures were performed in local churches and village halls. The British writer and entertainer Joyce Grenfell (1910-79) and her devoted husband Reggie went every June for the music, the people and the bird watching. Joyce liked all types of music, as long as it was good: Bach, Beethoven, Britten, Gershwin and Rogers. ‘I would rather go to a concert than the theatre, cinema or an exhibition,’ she wrote. In 1966 she wrote to her friend the writer Virginia Graham: ‘All the usuals here, such as Lady Dashwood, in modern clothes and assisted brunette hair-do. June is a magic month in Suffolk & the drive over to Orford in a faint summer haze with long blue shadows was breathtaking. Ditches full of Queen Anne’s lace, wild roses, elder flower in full cream, and a nightingale sang in the church yard, as we were going in! Such production!
‘Lovely day ended with an accolade from Ben: “Will I do a concert here next year for the new concert hall and the 20th festival?” “Yes of course Ben,” I say. At once, sitting in the parish church hearing but I fear not listening to, lovely early Byrd, I started panicking about new material for the event.’
‘My Dear Ben,’ she wrote shortly after, ‘I feel truly honoured to be asked to be part of the best festival in the world. It is the compliment I am more proud of than anything that has ever happened to me. I mean this. Your music past and present - and future – makes me feel as if I had been taken into space. I always feel music, such as Beethoven’s late quartets, is already there from the beginning. With love Joyce. P.S. Please thank Peter, too, for his singing in Curlew River - oh and in the Schumann!’

Joyce Grenfell, circa 1945.

Joyce Grenfell was an unusual choice for this rather intellectual concert series. But Britten must have known that her comedy show would subsidise the more esoteric offerings. Also in that year's programme were the Vienna Boys’ choir, The Castaway by Lennox Berkeley, a new production of Britten’s The Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Plomer reading poetry, a talk on Anglo-Saxon Ship-Burials, and ended with Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Three events each day gave everyone time to enjoy each performance and the place, without having to rush. Joyce wrote two new monologues: about an intense American music student called Marty Winderhauer, and a new Shirley’s Girlfriend with her whistling from behind a pulpit. She and her pianist and composer William Blezard also wrote a song in praise of Britten. ‘I have never toiled, polished, worked on anything as I have on this ditty,’ she wrote. ‘I was praying that he would like it.’
In case Britten didn’t like it, Joyce and Blezard performed the song for Britten on the morning of the concert at The Red House where Britten lived with Peter Pears, just outside Aldeburgh. The song is one of Joyce Grenfell's most sophisticated - a recitative of puns set to Blezard's lively jazz accompaniment.
'How benevolent is the setting
Suffolk winds benignly blow
Benefitting all who came here
And to concerts go oh-oh-oh
Seats benumb on Parish church benches
But the benefited ear recognises benediction
In the wonders it can hear
Bene, bene molto bene.'
Joyce was amazed by Britten’s reaction. ‘I was quite flummoxed,’ she wrote to her friend Virginia Graham. ‘Ben ran to me and embraced me, weeping! He was very touched and moved. It was very dear and entirely unexpected.’
So fifty years ago, at the concert that night on 5 June 1967, in the Jubilee Hall, the song was rapturously received and the audience called out for an encore. But Joyce thought it was a ‘one occasion song’ and did not sing an encore, nor ever performed it again.
The next day Britten wrote to Joyce: ‘It was a joy to have you here, & we are grateful to you for the incomparably funny and wise evening you gave us - we were the honoured ones! Come back again, both of you, & do another such evening for us - ‘as near the bone’ as you like to make it. Love Ben.’ Joyce replied: ‘Dear Ben, Thank you for letting me be a small part of this 20th festival. There is something about the Aldeburgh Festival that makes one want to do far better than one has ever done before, anywhere else in the world. It is a challenge to keep up to the standard you & Peter give, that goes far beyond the line of duty!’
Back in London, Joyce and Blezard made a gramophone record and sent it to The Red House. Three years later, in 1970, Britten wrote: ‘I do hope this letter reaches you in a forgiving mood! Peter & I were hunting for an ancient record in a seldom used cupboard, & to our great surprise, then delight, & then horror, we found a record you’d sent us, away back in 1967, which neither of us had seen before. I can only imagine your handsome & delightful Tribute was ‘tidied away’. I somehow think you will forgive, for you are so grand a person.’
Joyce replied, ‘Of course I understand & of course I forgive! What’s more I can imagine the wave of horror you felt when you discovered the record and you have my deepest sympathy.’ And the record and the song were forgotten again.

Postcard from Joyce to Donald Swann, 1951

While I was researching the biography of Joyce Grenfell 15 years ago, I found Britten’s and Grenfell’s letters in separate archives. After I’d put copies of them together in chronological order, I started to look for the song Bene . But by then William Blezard had lost the manuscript; the Aldeburgh festival manager had just died; and the Britten-Pears archivist had never heard of it. Ten years later I tried again, and after some further searching at The Red House, the single gramophone record of the Bene song was found, mislabelled but still in perfect condition.
Not heard for nearly 40 years, it was broadcast for the first time on Joyce Grenfell at Aldeburgh Festival on BBC Radio 3 in 2005.
Joyce visited Aldeburgh Music Festival every year from 1962, until a few weeks before her death in 1979. Listening to a performance of an "advanced" piano piece, Grenfell composed her own obituary: 'She died from opening her mind too far'.

Click on this to hear the Bene song.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

Half of my professional time is made up of public speaking. I know that I am not alone in this. In these days of social media, we authors are expected to be out there, promoting our books, doing twirls at book festivals. We have to be erudite, charming and polite even when we are standing in a freezing cold marquee speaking to an audience of nine or ten, half of whom are festival volunteers. These events are often as not gratis even though, as Philip Pullman pointed out eighteen months ago when a row about literary festivals blew up, everyone else connected with events gets paid, from the technicians to the cleaners.

If a literary festival gets it right - and it is not hard - authors are very happy to speak to their audiences for as little as a warm welcome, a cup of tea or a glass of wine and perhaps a bed for the night if we have travelled for hours. One festival I went to provided absolutely nothing and I even had to pay 20p to go to the public lavatory to get changed into my festival garb. A high point of last year was Frinton Literary Festival which staged a wartime tea-party. Everyone dressed up for the event including the members of Frinton WI who came as 'Nippies', the name given to the waitresses who worked in the Lyons coffee houses in London in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Frinton Literary Festival 2016

Members of Frinton WI in their Nippy uniform

When invited I talk about my research, the subjects of my books and - occasionally - about the process of writing. I enjoy this side of my life enormously and by and large I seem to get positive feedback from my audiences, large and small. I am fortunate in that the subject matter seems to chime with history groups and, luckily for me, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, who pay their speakers. When I wrote Jambusters, the story of the WI in the Second World, I could not have imagined it would give me five years worth of lectures. The WI are great consumers of their own history. And rightly so. It is a remarkable one. The Second World War was in many ways their finest hour. They kept the countryside ticking by busting bureaucratic logjams, making copious amounts of preserves from surplus fruit, feeding the farm workers with millions upon millions of meat pies and advising eleven government departments on everything from national savings and housing to education and post-war reconciliation in continental Europe. The WI had the ear of the government and the eyes to see what was happening in rural communities in England, Wales and further afield owing to their excellent connections. Sometimes I speak to groups of twenty women in a village hall or a pub, at other times I find myself faced by more than a thousand eager pairs of eyes in a theatre.

The WI's National AGM 2016, Brighton

Some of my talks, however, are to other groups that comprise both sexes. The topics that go down well with men are of course those focused on the male-dominated aspect of my work: mountaineering and war. Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine, is a talk I have given hundreds of times over the last twenty years and its endless appeal seems to be the unsolved nature of the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time: did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit of Mount Everest 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing? I can't supply the answer but the romance of the story seems to capture people's imaginations even 90+ years on from the event.

Mount Everest from the north side.
Mallory and Irvine were last seen close to the summit pyramid on 8 June 1924

Similarly, the true story of the Bridge on the River Kwai has the armchair war enthusiasts leaning forward in their seats to check that I don't get my destroyer confused with a gun boat. If they can pick me up on a factual detail they will, but they are always courteous, especially if I can prove them wrong. Aficionados seem to enjoy being corrected as well as correcting.

An enthusiastic audience of historians and family members
of Far Eastern Prisoners of War at a conference in 2010

The trickiest group of people to speak to are luncheon or evening dinner clubs. And here I have almost come unstuck on more than one occasion. In December 2015 I was asked to prepare a 45 minute illustrated talk for a male-only club Christmas dinner where the wives were invited as a special treat. That was already somewhat uncomfortable but the invitation had come through a friend of a friend so I did not refuse. When I arrived I was given a glass of mulled wine and when I protested politely that I never drink before a talk the secretary raised his eyes dramatically to the male deities above. Seated between the president and the treasurer at dinner I was summarily ignored as they discussed the time-table for the evening, leaping up and down from the table to whisper an instruction in one or other member's ear. The programme was over-running and by the time it was my turn to speak the president asked me whether I could condense my talk to twenty minutes and do it without slides. It was the last straw as far as I was concerned. I asked to be allowed to powder my nose and collect my thoughts before doing my twirl.

As I was tweaking my pale cream skirt I suddenly realised I had an ace up my sleeve. Returning to my chair and without sitting down I indicated I was ready. The president called me down to his level and said in my ear 'remember, don't go over the time. You look lovely but they don't want to be staring at you in half an hour!' I whispered back: 'Indeed not. They might be worried. I wouldn't want anyone else to know this, but I'm wearing a pair of my husband's underpants.' I have never seen anyone blush and jump simultaneously. It was a sweet moment.

The cream silk skirt on its first public outing in 2008.

I spoke for 19 minutes. And for the record the club did not even pay my petrol. But I felt I'd won that night. I was wearing my husband's underpants, by the way. I have not had recourse to use them since but this one unhappy evening provided me with a good story to tell.

I am not advocating a rebellion but I urge any of you who go out to speak, especially if you do it for free, to remind the people who commission you to treat you with the respect they would wish to be treated with themselves. And if that calls for a little shock, so be it.

Our guest for May is Eloise Williams

Credit: Angharad Thomas photography

This is what Eloise tells us about herself:

Sixer of Pixies. Child of the 70s. Survived encephalitis, pizza thrown in face, a decade as an actor, school, endless years of Heavy Metal abuse from younger sister’s room. Lives in West Wales. Lives for the sea, love, repeats of ‘Murder She Wrote’, for as long as she can. 'Elen's Island' was Highly Commended for the T'ir na nOg Awards. 'Gaslight' is Eloise's second book.
www.eloisewilliams.com

My love of the theatre goes back to childhood.

One of my very first memories is watching Yul Brynner onstage at the London Palladium in ‘The King and I’. Of course, at the time I had no idea who Yul Brynner was but I can remember the excitement of the trip to the Big Smoke, the vivid colours of the costumes, the joke where Anna’s hooped skirt reveals her bloomers as she attempts to bow. I was hooked by the atmosphere, the magic of the lights, the glamour, the glitter, the applause. Who wouldn’t be?

I trained as a Drama teacher at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in my early twenties and was fortunate enough to follow a module on the history of theatre. I loved it all but was particularly drawn to the theatre of the Victorian age. I’ve always been a fan of the Victorian. Not the glorious dresses and the well-to-do side of things. More the ghosts of Jacob Marley and the Woman in Black. Gravediggers at Highgate Cemetery, foggy streets with cutthroats on every corner, and, of course, gaslights.

I could imagine Sir Henry Irving as another worldly creature onstage at The Lyceum in ‘The Bells’. I wrote my dissertation for the BA on Irving’s influence in Bram Stoker’s creation of Dracula, and talked of his face glowing green in the limelight, the long shadows his frame would have cast against the scenery, his stooped stance and otherworldliness. That period of history reached out to me.

When we talked about the Greeks letting people out of prison so they could experience the catharsis of theatre, I was impressed, but I couldn’t imagine it. When Oscar Wilde quips were thrown at me I laughed, and then immediately forgot them. There was something magical about the Victorian. Something that was already there in my psyche.

Don’t worry I’m not talking about reincarnation, or claiming that I was Ellen Terry in a past life. I think it’s more to do with my childhood. My doll’s house was Victorian, my actual house was Victorian, the woman I wanted to be when I grew up – Jean Simmons as Estella Havisham - was a Dickens creation, Narnia was navigated by a lamppost which looked pretty Victorian to me. The list goes on…

Gaslight came to fruition a long time later but if I really analyse it I’d been writing it in my head for about twenty years.

Cardiff is my birthplace and my first love as a city. You can actually feel the history there as you walk the streets. It’s a fascinating place of flat vowels (I proudly own them myself) and kindness. Close enough to The Valleys to have a feeling of community, on the Bristol channel, so the air is fresh and salty. I knew when I looked out of that lecture room window to the grounds of Bute Park below (I spent a lot of time staring out when I should have been concentrating) that Cardiff was going to play an important role in a story one day, I just didn’t realise I would be the one telling it.

With its theatres and castles, the sweep of the rivers towards the docks, the tunnel they were then building beneath Tiger Bay, the coal export, the fog, the dramatic tumble and dance of the city, I found the perfect place for a foundling to start her story.

My mother disappeared on the 6th of September 1894.

I was found at the docks in Cardiff lying like a gutted fish at the water’s edge.

Or, more accurately, you could say that the place found me. It just took me a while to listen.


The Hermit.

In today’s Cabinet of Curiosities we’re heading to the Italy of the mid-late fifteenth century.

Italy in this period was not one unified country, but was instead made up of a great constellation of city-states: some tiny, others wealthy, powerful and magnificent. The five great powers were Florence and Venice, the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal States and the Duchy of Milan.

The stories of the Renaissance most closely lodged in many people’s minds are those of the great trading republic of Venice, of the beauties of Florence and the power of the Popes in Rome. In contrast, the Milanese ruling families of the period, the Visconti and the Sforza, don't hold a prominent place in public consciousness. Yet they embody just as much of what we find fascinating about the Renaissance – the beauty of the art coupled with the brutality and corruption of its politics – as do the Medici or the Borgias. Leonardo da Vinci, after all, spent nearly 20 years in Milan and created some of his greatest masterpieces there.

There were smaller treasures, too. For example, the ‘Visconti-Sforza tarot cards’ demonstrate the wealth and artistry that the Dukes of Milan could command. They were created most likely in the mid fifteenth century, probably shortly after Francesco Sforza’s ascension to the ducal throne in 1450.

The pack is made up of seventy four hand-painted playing cards (four are missing from the original pack of seventy eight). They are large compared to modern playing cards (and to other, lesser-quality cards from the fifteenth century) indicating that they probably were produced as items for display and to demonstrate status, rather than as cards to play with. They are mostly painted by the same person, although six were made by a different artist (who also painted other extant packs of cards). They are stunning, tiny masterpieces of Gothic art: rich with gold and the jewel-bright colours of a master illuminator’s craft; saturated with the symbolism of what we would think of as the medieval world: with knights, kings and queens, swords and grails.


Knight of Swords

There is no evidence that tarot (from the Italian tarroco, plural tarrochi) were used at this point for divination or were linked to the occult. Instead they were playing cards: a mixture of suit cards, which will be familiar to all as the basis for modern playing cards, plus a series of ‘trump’ cards, including a range of Virtues, astronomical symbols (the sun, moon etc) and people – Popes and Popesses, the Hanged Man and others.

We know that card games – both played with and without trumps – were highly popular across Italy at this time, although there were regional variations in how the games were played. In Milan, the duchess Beatrice d’Este, wife of Ludovico Sforza reportedly won three thousand ducats at play at one point in 1494 (and spent her winnings on alms and embroidery, although her husband was at a loss to see how she could have spent all of the money on just those two things!)

It is a fascinating glimpse into a courtly world, perhaps all the more so because it was a world doomed to disappear, a fact foretold by the cards themselves. One of the cards shows the Wheel of Fortune. A man is depicted in four different states: destined to rule, ruling and then, his Fortune overturned, on his hands and knees, without dominion.

The Wheel of Fortune

Only a few years after Ludovico Sforza wrote so cheerfully to his wife about her gains at the card table, he would be imprisoned by the French, his glittering court destroyed.

But in a strange way, that court lives on, for it was the Milanese version of these card games, and not those of other cities, which was taken back to France by the victors, and thence on to other parts of Europe and beyond, and so into modern culture.

For me, therefore, the Visconti-Sforza tarot stand not only in their own right as works of art, but of links between a glittering past and our own world today.

(All pictures from Wikimedia Commons)

To win a copy of Gaslight by Eloise Williams, answer this question in the Comments below. Then please copy your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk

"What period of history has influenced your life in the way that the Victorian era has made such an impression on Eloise?" Please give reasons.

Closing date 7th June

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I often come at history by an oblique route - a painting, a novel, a piece of music. And so it was that I discovered King Roger of Sicily (the Second, though his father, also Roger, was never actually king).

The coronation of King Roger by Christ, Palermo

It was 1975 and Sadlers Wells Opera was putting on a production of the rarely performed opera by Karol Szymanowski. We saw it then and again when it transferred to the English National Opera. This clip of Roxana's Song is taken from the far less satisfactory Royal Opera House production of 2015, which we also saw. (YouTube wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye in 1975).

You can hear the whole opera on YouTube now in an excellent 2003 recording conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk, a fellow countryman of the Polish composer.

This is ravishing music and we were bowled away when we first heard it over forty years ago. It was premièred in Warsaw in 1926 so the work was already nearly fifty years old when I came across it. But the plot, as I have now discovered, is a perfect essay in historical fiction. Szymanowski's King Roger is married to the beautiful Roxana, who persuades him not to persecute as a heretic a mysterious Shepherd who appears in their court.

She is entranced by him and soon leaves Roger, to follow the Shepherd and his adherents, but this isn't a typical opera plot about jealousy and betrayal. Roger is jealous, of course - who wouldn't be if they heard their wife sing like that to a stranger? - but when he chases after Roxana, he himself falls under the spell of the Shepherd, who then undergoes an apotheosis into the god Dionysios.

Roxana and the Shepherd are teaching the king the lesson of joy and ecstasy, as if he had been a rather repressed sort of guy up until then. The whole opera is about the choice between the Apollonian and the Dionysian approach to life, as characterised by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy.

Nietzsche says everything that is part of the unique individuality of man or thing is Apollonian in character; all types of form or structure are Apollonian, since form serves to define or individualize that which is formed. Sculpture is the most Apollonian of the arts, since it relies entirely on form for its effect. Rational thought is also Apollonian since it is structured and makes distinctions.

The Dionysian is directly opposed to the Apollonian. Drunkenness and madness are Dionysian because they break down individual character; all forms of enthusiasm and ecstasy are Dionysian, for in such states people give up their individuality and submerges themselves in a greater whole: music is the most Dionysian of the arts, since it appeals directly to people's instinctive, chaotic emotions and not to their formally reasoning mind.

Dionysius' other name is Bacchus and the plot of the Polish opera is like Euripides' The Bacchae, but with a happy ending.

Not what operas are usually about, you'll agree!

I like works of art to be about real things and these ideas, together with the music of course, made King Roger an attractive proposition to me. Fast forward to last year and the Sicily exhibition at the British Museum. I went with a friend and came back raving about what I'd seen. Sicily had been on our bucket list for a long time and I said let's do it, let's book a visit now or we'll just end up going to Siena every year. (Nothing wrong with that).

So, we returned last week from seeing Palermo and Monreale, Taormina (in spite of G7) and Syracuse, Agrigento and Selinunte. My brain is a kaleidoscope of gold mosaics, ruined temples and amphitheatres, steep winding streets and the dominant presence of Mount Etna.

And now I know a lot more about King Roger.

12th century illustration from Liber ad honorem Augusti

He didn't have a wife called Roxana, that's for sure. His three successive wives were Elvira of Castile, Sibylla of Burgundy and Beatriz of Rethel. When Elvira died, he grieved so much and locked himself away, so that his subjects thought he had died too. He also apparently had many children by unknown mistresses too, so not the repressed old stick of Szymanowski's imagination.

But he was a truly remarkable ruler. His father had been Count of Sicily, a title inherited by Roger ll after his father and older brother Simon had both died. Roger was twelve at the time and his mother, Adelaide, acted as Regent. They were from the noble Norman family of Hauteville and young Roger eventually inherited all the family's possessions in Sicily and Apulia, being the only male descendant alive.

On Christmas Day 1130, Roger was crowned King of Sicily, though probably not by Christ as the mosaic in the church of the Martorana in Palermo suggests (first picture above). For the next ten years Roger was busy fighting in wars promoted by rival claimants to the Papacy, culminating in a failed invasion of the island by Pope Innocent ll. Acknowledging defeat, the Pope had to confirm Roger as king.

Roger developed the island's economy as a great Mediterranean trading post and introduced new coinage. Sicily also became the leading maritime power in the region. But, like the Medici in Florence three hundred years later, he also gathered into his court thinkers, scientists and artists. And he became famous for his tolerance - one might say multi-culturalism - hiring Greeks and Arabs, even an Englishman.

And he commissioned the lasting legacy of his reign: the churches at Monreale and Cefalu and the Palatine Chapel in the Palace of the Normans in Palermo.

If you think you don't know these works, look at this:

Familiar, isn't it? I came away from the BM exhibition with an Oyster card holder featuring these leopards calmly regarding each other under a tree.

And this?

The image comes from King Roger's bedroom in the Norman palace, which I now realise had seen a lot more action than Szymanowski had led me to believe. (It's not in Ortigia, the peninsula at Syracuse, but Palermo).

This is Monreale:

Ceiling of left chapel

Main altar

And the Palatine Chapel:

We had a traumatic time getting into the Palatine Chapel, where a service had over-run by 45 minutes and the Italian crowds waiting to get in were threatening to riot. There was loud booing of the clerics and the Knights of Malta involved. So by the time we got in, the crowds were intense and the feelings tense.

Nevertheless, it was like stepping inside a jewel box. It's quite small and completely covered in Byzantine technique mosaics, in which the tesserae enclose gold leaf or other materials between layers of glass. It lasts so much better than fresco, unless the little tiles fall off. The colour remains true to its origins nearly a millennium ago.

A very unwise decision was made in the 17th century to replace a window at the central apse with a awful mawkish Madonna with saints:

For me, that spoils the aesthetic of the Chapel.

Roger commissioned it soon after being crowned in 1130 and it was finished not long after his death in 1154. Compare that with the 75 years taken to complete the mosaics in the Baptistery of Florence, which is a much smaller space. Roger's heirs added to the decoration of the chapel but the basic design is that of the mid-12th century ruler, who applied his own melting-pot approach to life by mixing eastern influences with western ecclesiastical tradition.

Monreale was begun in 1174 by William ll, Roger's grandson, very much copying his illustrious grandfather's principles. The one at Cefalu is much earlier: legend has it that King Roger pledged himself to build it after he was washed up safe on the sure after a terrible storm at sea. True to his word, he began building the church, later a cathedral, in 1131. It too has wonderful Byzantine mosaics, including an impressive Christ Pantocrator, but they were "in restauro" and we couldn't see them.

The tesserae had been falling off the walls badly and the problem came to a head this Easter. We will just have to go back.

Roger wanted to be buried at Cefalu but his tomb was moved from there to the cathedral in Palermo in 1215:

His widow, Beatriz, who was pregnant with their daughter Constance at the time of his death, she who later became queen of Sicily, is here depicted grieving at Roger's very plain tomb:

So, who was King Roger? A cerebral, remote husband in need of lessons in joy? A reformer? A harmoniser of cultures? A devoted husband? A womaniser? A warrior king? A patron of the arts?

You can take your pick. But what is clear to me is that there are many such historical figures that we don't really get to grips with until we meet them through some form of fiction.

Do you have any such favourites?

I’m fascinated to find out different ways in which we learn about history, especially through fiction. One important way is through public events. If we go to a talk or attend a workshop or have coffee with someone at a conference we learn something quite different to what we might find out if we explore in libraries by ourselves. This is because the learning in conferences is influenced by the programme.

This month I thought it would be a very good thing to talk to someone who is in charge of the programme for a major conference and find out more about the history presented and the contexts that conference presents from her view. It’s not just what she does – it’s how she designs that programme and what her thoughts are about it.

Elisabeth Storrs is responsible for the programme for the Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) Conference. She loves history., That should go without saying, given what she does. She programmes the HNSA Conference from a position of knowledge and of that love, which is why I asked her if she’d answer some questions. She’s also an author (the Tales of Ancient Rome Saga) and has done a great deal over the years to support other writers. She used to be the Deputy Chair of the NSW Writers’ Centre and is the co-founder of the HNSA. All of this explains why she does programming for the HNSA and why it works out so very well.

One more thing you need to know about before we look at how Elisabeth approaches her work is what the HNSA conference is about and why it’s important to understand it. Conventions and conferences are a key link between readers and writers. They create communities of interest. The HNSA’s community includes readers of historical fiction, historians and other scholars, writers of historical fiction, and a range of people who work in publishing. At the very least, a conference can create a bond between their subject and those who love it through their approach to it. When the programming is done right, which it was last HNSA Conference as I reported here (which is why this interview, this year) new things happen to a genre.

Elisabeth doesn’t open the doors to history when the plans a conference, she does the carpentry so that the rest of us on the programme can open doors into our way of seeing things. When there are enough doors and enough people going through them, the whole atmosphere changes. Her vision provides the direction and our writing and research the content. Events of all kinds do this. They help shape the history we read and the way we think about the past.

Let’s get a bit of an insight into how she lays that groundwork.

Elisabeth Storrs

1. How do you choose your presenters and the role they play at the conference? Are there any people you feel are particularly necessary? Who are they? What do they bring?

How do I choose presenters? The HNSA 2017 Melbourne Conference in September features over 60 speakers. It’s a challenging juggling act!

There were various goals the HNSA wanted to achieve when designing the programme. Firstly, we wanted to explore a theme that would resonate with both readers and writers in terms of Australasian history; secondly, we sought to elicit ‘personal histories’ from award winning authors for the purpose of inspiring and informing a general audience; and finally, we believed it was important to provide insight and instruction to writers into the craft of writing and researching historical fiction. Overlaid onto this was a desire to provide diversity in the conference line-up by including authors from a variety of backgrounds, particularly indigenous speakers. Fortunately, the success of the inaugural conference in 2015 placed us in a happy position to extend the programme to run two concurrent streams in 2017 to achieve this vision.

With our aims sorted, I was then charged with the task of deciding who our speakers would be. Our conference theme is Identity: Origins and Diaspora as HNSA believes historical fiction plays an important role in interrogating how national identities have been forged by past struggles, injustices, sacrifice, survival, and clash of cultures. It was essential to secure the appearance of speakers who represented a range of perspectives to reflect this. Our round table discussion at the opening reception on 9th September features Arnold Zable, Hanifa Deen, Ngahuia te Awekotuku and Gary Crew who will discuss the role of the historical novelist in exploring first encounters in Australasian colonial pasts, the migrant experience underlying multicultural identity, and whether an author’s origins are relevant to the story telling.

The first stream of the Saturday programme will continue to highlight the theme with the keynote address from Lesley and Tammy Williams, authors of Not Just Black and White,followed by panels that will discuss the challenges faced in portraying the meeting of First Peoples with Europeans, and how historical novelists can breathe life into immigrant tales of prejudice, hardship, homesickness and adaptation. I chose authors who had produced books that directly addressed one or more aspects of the conference theme such as Nicole Alexander, Maxine Alterio and Kim Kelly.

The remainder of the first stream concentrates on introducing readers and writers to the personal histories of high profile authors such as our special guest, Kerry Greenwood, as well as conversations with Kate Forsyth, Sophie Masson, Deborah Challinor and Lucy Treloar. Insights into the secrets of ‘the long haul’ of producing multiple books or series will be provided by Juliet Marillier, Libby Hathorn and Anne Gracie.

The second stream required further difficult decision making. I chose to separate the sessions into three areas: research and technique, sub-genres, and trends in publishing. I matched authors to the topics using criteria such as prominent standing, favourable reviews, recommendations from HNSA patrons and committee members, and choosing some members from our HNSA Facebook group. Again, I hoped to achieve diversity in the panels. And my aim was to present authors who wrote across a range of eras and cultures while also including self-published writers with proven reputations. I was pleased to include a greater representation of New Zealand authors than in our 2015 conference.

The result is a wonderful array of panels including popular novelists Sulari Gentill and Robert Gott discussing how they’ve successfully created sleuths constrained by the detective methods of their era. I also thought it would be interesting to examine the difference between an historical romance and a love story. For this I chose Isolde Martyn whose work has been classified as both, and Lisa Chaplin who has gained a reputation as a romance writer (as Melissa James) but who now writes ‘straight historical fiction.’ The chance to dispel the assumption that writing fiction for Children and Young Adults is easy will be explored via experienced authors Pamela Rushby, Gabrielle Wang and Alan Tucker. I am particularly pleased that Kate Mildenhall and Melissa Ashley will be participating in a panel discussing ‘The Modern Voice in Historical Fiction’ given it is essential for an historical novelist to balance the readability of a novel for a modern audience with a commitment to authenticity.

Without effectively adapting research, history merely becomes a backdrop rather than an integral part of plot, place and character. There will be two panels discussing this: one on how to transmute research into compelling fiction which includes translator Stephanie Smee whom I thought would bring a fresh perspective to this topic, and the other debating the perennial issue of balancing authenticity against accuracy with Pamela Hart (Freeman) who has moved from predominately writing CYA to concentrating on adult historical fiction. I have included Tim Griffiths on the panel to discuss how he grappled with wrapping his imagination around the challenges of depicting the true story of the famous photographer Frank Hurley.

2. What sorts of limitations are there on your choices? Is there anything you would have loved to do but that was impossible?

Limitations? Those imposed by lack of funds! HNSA believes authors should be rewarded for their appearance at writing events. As such we compensate our presenters but unfortunately we are not in a position to offer travelling and accommodation expenses. There were many authors (over 20) who were unable to accept our invitation because they lived interstate or overseas.

HNSA’s next goal is to offer more to its authors at our 2019 biennial conference. This will ensure we achieve even more variety. And I have to extend a huge thank you to all our current speakers for their generous spirit and support, especially those who are prepared to wing their way across the Ditch or Australia for love of the genre.

3. This is the second HNSA conference. How did the experience of the first feed into what you’re doing now?

The 2015 HNSA conference in Sydney was a huge learning curve. By analysing feedback from our surveys, we were able to identify favourite panels and features. Hands down winners were the interviews, our ‘In Bed with History’ session, and our First Pages Pitch Contest where aspiring writers pitch their ‘first page’ anonymously to industry experts (Alison Green, (Pantera Press) Mandy Brett (Text), Sophie Masson (Eagle Books) who then provide a critique of chosen submissions to the general audience. We are once again employing Rachel Nightingale as an actor to read the excerpts. Hearing words spoken aloud definitely accentuates what grabs the attention of readers, publishers and agents from the very first paragraph.

Our 2015 ‘Tudorphilia’ panel was also very popular. In 2017, I decided to look at the appeal of World War fiction as I believe this is the current ‘flavour of the month’ among publishers and readers. Analysing why should involve an entertaining discussion between Paddy Richardson, Elise McCune, Julian Leatherdale and Justin Sheedy. And, of course, the weekend finishes once again with ‘Outside Your Comfort Zone – Writing Sex and Violence’ with less bashful authors Kate Forsyth, Luke Devenish and Anna Campbell.

4. How does the programme meet the needs of writers and of readers?

I wanted to avoid the conference being geared solely to writers. After all, readers are absolutely vital. This is why I developed a general stream concentrating on ‘In Conversation’ interviews as I believe both writers and readers enjoy learning how successful authors approach their craft and the steps on their publishing journey. However, our 2015 surveys revealed that the majority of attendees were aspiring writers. The second stream caters to those who wish to improve their craft and gain direction. And even the most experienced writers can learn new techniques by listening to different approaches so I hope the programme will be of interest to writers at all stages of their careers.

In addition, the conference aims to provide more advanced support than the panel discussions. HNSA has developed smaller one hour ‘super sessions’ where participants can gain tuition from established authors on a range of topics. In this way, people can learn how to use tools such as Trove (Rachel Franks) and Scrivener (Kelly Gardiner) or methods of developing a novel from family history (Eleanor Limprecht.) Lisa Chaplin offers a guide to successful pitching while Hazel Edwards provides practical advice about ‘The Business of Writing’. Attendees will benefit from high calibre authors such as Sulari Gentill, Anne Gracie, Isolde Martyn and Sherryl Clark in writing for specific genres. And a fantastic opportunity is available to a small number of registrants to attend master classes with Gillian Polack [me! Editor’s note – it was better for Elisabeth to talk about me in the third person than to tell me what I was doing, when I know what I’m doing and it’s readers who don’t know] on ‘Making History Come to Life through Research and Writing’. This involves her pre-reading 10,000 words of a manuscript so she can then provide in-depth feedback and practical writing exercises. Additionally, industry expert, Irina Dunn, will provide 1:1 manuscript assessments.

Our extended academic programme is open to all. These panels provide an excellent chance to listen to papers that deal with complex consideration of topics such as ‘Bio-fiction: Can you Defame the Dead?’ convened by Kelly Gardiner and Catherine Padmore, or ‘The Lie of History’ featuring Christopher Raja and Wendy J Dunn. We are also delighted to introduce the inaugural HNSA Short Story Contest with a prize of $500.

5. Can you explain specific approaches to history that you’d like the people attending the conference to experience and how you shaped the programme to reach this goal (if you did) or why you didn’t (if you didn’t)?

Apart from our ‘Identity’ theme that examines Australasian history, I made a conscious decision not to highlight any one era in individual panels other than those considered as trends. Instead, the sessions feature authors who may write across a range of periods whether they are medievalists (Robyn Cadwallader, Prue Batten), a fan of the 1920’s jazz age (Natasha Lester), an ancient world lover (Wendy Orr), or a devotee of C19th mystery (Greg Pyers). By not separating history into silos, I believe the audience can better compare and contrast the inspiration, strategies and expertise of historical novelists to interpret and convey the past.

Thanks, Gillian, for giving me the opportunity to tell you a little about the HNSA 2017 conference. Creating the programme has been a challenge and a pleasure. I hope all who attend will find something which appeals to them. More details are available on the HNSA website together with the complete speakers’ list including our wonderful chairs and academic panellists.

Henry Norman. The ladies promenading in the Yoshiwara, 1890.
Cambridge University Library.

English journalist Sir Henry Norman travelled to Japan in 1890 to write a series of essays, which he illustrated with his own photographs. Of the courtesans whom he discovered processing in the Yoshiwara, Tōkyō’s officially licensed pleasure district, he writes, ‘It is difficult to give in words an adequate notion of the extraordinary effect of this procession. The costly and gorgeous clothes… the exaggerated bow of her obi tied in front (the courtesan is obliged by law to distinguish herself in this way), the pyramidal coiffure, the face as white as snow… women servants walking solemnly behind… her slow and painful hachimonji [figure-of-eight walking]; her stony gaze straight before her, half contemptuous and half timid; the dense and silent crowd –– all these go to make a spectacle apart from anything one has ever seen…’

In fin-de-siècle Japan, these glamorous figures still generated a powerful mystique in spite of Yoshiwara’s decline from its heyday, when it was the shimmering essence of that arty, sensuous, extravagant urban lifestyle known as “ukiyo” or the “floating world”. By the time Henry Norman arrived at Yoshiwara, the floating world was sagging under the weight of its implausibility – but that a trace of the old magic still lingered is a testament to the forcefulness of the concept.

The Yoshiwara was an irresistible subject for Edo-era writers and artists, who flocked to record every aspect of its demi-monde. Gorgeous woodblock prints amplified the enclave’s appeal and turned the most prestigious courtesans into celebrities. Songs and poems wove webs of allusion that wrapped the reality of the Yoshiwara’s business – women trafficked and enslaved as sexual commodities – in elegant evasions. “Last night a peach was wetted by the rain” sounds rather more charming than “last night a fifteen-year-old’s virginity was sold to the highest bidder”.

Utagawa Kunisada. The courtesan Mayuzumi in the
Yoshiwara of Edo, c.1830.

The presentation of the pleasure district in poems and pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the very expression of determined glamour. Images and literary musings that took the Yoshiwara as their subject created a transcendent world, distant yet alluring, populated by unknowable beauties. They project the kind of dazzling glamour that causes things to appear other than they actually are.

Yoshiwara was constructed in 1617 as an enclave of 394 teahouses and 153 bordellos on a marshy plain two miles outside of the city of Edo (as Tōkyō was known then). In the first decade of the seventeenth century, the Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu had eyed with suspicion the kinds of loose establishments – tea houses and unruly houses of ill-repute – that might harbour political agitators and threaten his power. When a brothel owner petitioned authorities for a tract of land with the aim of securing a monopoly on sex-work, it occurred to the Shōgun’s government to establish a designated pleasure district, where brothels could be monitored and taxed. A restricted quarter of this kind would make it easier for the government’s taxation service to obtain revenues from prostitution and for secret police and informants, on whom the shogunate relied to keep political threats in check, to go about their eavesdropping work – since brothels and tea houses had always been a reliable source of intelligence about adversaries and criminals.

The business of the Yoshiwara was highly regulated fantasy, with sex as the consumable product. Even the quarter's name involved some dissembling in order to make it more attractive to customers. Yoshiwara meant “Rush Moor” or, equally prosaically, “Sedge Plain”. But a convenient switch to another kanji (character) transformed the meaning into something more felicitous – the “Moor of Good Luck”. The term "ukiyo" had got a makeover, too. Its original Buddhist meaning was "suffering world"– a place where chasing after desire inevitably results in sorrow. "Uki" was interpreted as "sad, gloomy" from the Chinese yuu, but in the upbeat, thrusting Edo period, "uki" was repurposed as the Chinese fu, which gave the sense of floating and cheerfulness and drifting on a pleasant current. Even in the matter of timekeeping, Yoshiwara was not exactly commensurate with reality. City regulations required bordellos to close at ten o’clock in the evening, but Yoshiwara’s brothelkeepers got around this inconvenience by calling midnight ten o’clock and having the night watchmen – who struck the hours with wooden clappers – alter the count.

Okumura Masanobu. Nakanochō in the Yoshiwara, c.1710-20.
Art Institute Chicago.

The pleasure district covered twenty acres of gridded streets. It was surrounded by a moat and barred by an imposing Great Gate. Booths outside the gate sold cheap straw hats that could be pulled down low to hide the wearer’s identity. The individuals sporting hats in the print above are probably samurai, who were technically forbidden to visit the Yoshiwara, but as the district grew in prestige, this regulation lapsed. A notice posted on the Great Gate prohibited persons other than doctors from entering in a palanquin or sedan chair, and long weapons were forbidden. Even the most illustrious of visitors must go unarmed and on foot into the Yoshiwara. He understood straight away that the conventions of ordinary society no longer prevailed and that the only mark of distinction a man might have, after passing through the Great Gate, lay in the amount of money he was prepared to pay for services. A representative of the lowly merchant class who managed to secure an assignation with a ranking courtesan might fancy himself a prince of the city – at least for twenty-four hours.

Utagawa Hiroshima. Cherry blossom time, Yoshiwara Nakanochō, c.1839-42.
Honolulu Museum of Art.

Yoshiwara was all about first impressions. From the outset it presented a beguiling face to the visitor. In spring hundreds of cherry trees planted in tubs along the wide central boulevard of Nakanochō offered a breathtaking display. The main thoroughfare was flanked by two-storied tea houses and “green houses” (the term comes from the Chinese custom of painting brothels green). Shops in the side streets sold sex aids, aphrodisiacs and love potions, and food and drink. The banners fluttering from tall bamboo poles, the sound of music everywhere, the countless flickering lanterns that lit this “nightless city" after dusk, and the sumptuous style of its denizens all contributed to an excited atmosphere, while strict rules of comportment added an air of refinement that justified Yoshiwara’s high prices.

Kitagawa Utamaro. Cherry blossoms at Yoshiwara, c.1793.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Chōbunsei Eishi. Courtesans at the Great Gate of the Yoshiwara: (right)
Utaura with kamuro Hanaki and Chidori; (centre) Misayama with kamuro
Wakaba and Teriha; (left) Shinowara with kamuro Takeno and Sasano, c.1792,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In the morning hours the courtesans exercised a semblance of liberty as they strolled the streets attended by young female pages, known as kamuro. When they turned thirteen or fourteen, kamuro might begin training to become prostitutes themselves, or shift into the role of servant or office administrator. Clerical work abounded. Transactions of the Yoshiwara were recorded in detail and encounters charged in time units measured by incense sticks. A ledger recorded the brothel’s sales based on the number of sticks burned for each transaction. Accounts were then made up for customers.

Japanese timekeeper with incense sticks and name tags.
National Science Museum, Tōkyō.

Yoshiwara was a sophisticated bureaucratic enterprise that prospered on finely honed time-and-efficiency principles. Every hour of the courtesan’s life was accounted for – she worked whether she was ill or menstruating. At twilight, as a tolling bell announced the evening display, crowds of sightseers gathered to watch the women take up seats in a latticed room at the front of the bordello. Higher ranked courtesans were not exhibited in this way, but they were in the minority. Potential customers might have consulted one of the many directories available, which contained practical information about the brothels, the women in their employ and a price list of services. Tea house girls arranged meetings with customers, who could buy company for a whole or half day or for periods of time known as “cuts” or “flowers”. High-class courtesans were generally listed at a day-rate basis only, while lower-ranking women were available for shorter sessions. It was assumed that the customer, while waiting a response from a woman of the first echelon, would spend generously on sake and entertainment. It was a drawn-out and expensive business masquerading as idealised courtship.

Okumura Masanobu. Courtesans in the Yoshiwara, c. 1710-20.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Most women in the Yoshiwara had been sold to brothelkeepers at a young age by poverty-stricken peasant families. News of natural disasters sent procurers rushing to the afflicted region, where desperate people could be persuaded to sign away their daughters. Every expense from then on, food, clothes, servants, and accommodation, was loaded on to the girl’s contract and indebted her for years to the brothel owner. The reality of her life was one of indenture with little hope of escape. No woman could leave the Yoshiwara without a police pass and even then she must be accompanied by a male attendant. Any attempt to flee was met with severe penalties.

Henry Norman gives an insight into the process of indenture in his dispatches to the Pall Mall Gazette. He recounts a visit in 1890 to Tōkyō’s Department of Police, where the Bureau of Prostitution allows him to watch the application process for a girl to become a licensed yujo, or “lady of pleasure” at the Yoshiwara. “Three persons appear in front of the officials,” Norman writes, “the girl, her parent or guardian, and the brothelkeeper. The girl is questioned, she replies automatically with downcast eyes; the parent is questioned, he replies apologetically, with many explanations; the keeper is questioned, he replies profusely, with practised fluency. The official makes many entries in an elaborately ruled ledger before him. Then the three retire, in a moment the sliding doors open again to admit another trio, and so on without variation, without emotion, formally and relentlessly the stream of victims is rolled on. I could not help being reminded of the automatic pig-killing at the stockyards of Chicago. Some of the girls are no longer young, but coarse in person and brazen in manner. Others are delicate and pretty and very frightened. Some look little more than children, bewildered.”

Once the girl signed her contract, the brothelkeeper would advance the parents the sum of money agreed – in 1890 that was somewhere between twenty and fifty dollars – and the girl was bonded to the keeper’s brothel until he had recouped his investment from her earnings. In fact the ever-expanding debt made it nearly impossible for the girl to leave the Yoshiwara unless a patron bought out her contract.

Postcard. Yoshiwara prostitutes, c.1910.

There was nothing very ideal about day to day life in the pleasure quarter. The mosquitos that thrived in the moat must have been a hellish nuisance in summer and when it rained the streets would have churned to mud. Typhoid broke out from time to time. Many lives were lost to fires – over a period of two hundred years Yoshiwara was burned down at least thirty times. At least a third of Yoshiwara’s women were dead by their early twenties of infectious diseases or from complications of childbirth. Others were slowly poisoned by the toxic lead makeup they painted on their faces and necks. The majority of them passed into death as anonymously as they had lived, their bodies wrapped in straw and dumped at the gates of the Jokanji temple – the Throw-Away temple, as it became known. A total of 25,000 prostitutes met this fate.

As the hour of the dragon arrived, and dawn began to break, Yoshiwara's customers came to the end of their sessions. In typically euphemistic style, this departure at dawnwas termed “the parting of the robes”, an echo of the courtly language used to describe the poignant separation of two lovers. The morning bell sounded and the Great Gate was pushed open – but not for the women within.

In ‘A Book of Folk-Lore’ (1913) the Devon folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould recounts three instances in which he and members of his family ‘saw’ pixies or dwarfs. I’ll let you read them:

In the year 1838, when I was a small boy of four years old, we were driving to Montpellier [France] on a hot summer’s day, over the long straight road that traverses a pebble and rubble strewn plain on which grows nothing save a few aromatic herbs.

I was sitting on the box with my father, when to my great surprise I saw legions of dwarfs about two feet high running along beside the horses – some sat laughing on the pole, some were scrambling up the harness to get on the backs of the horses. I remarked to my father what I saw, when he abruptly stopped the carriage and put me inside beside my mother, where, the conveyance being closed, I was out of the sun. The effect was that little by little the host of imps diminished in number till they disappeared altogether.

When my wife was a girl of fifteen, she was walking down a lane in Yorkshire between green hedges, when she saw seated in one of the privet hedges a little green man, who looked at her with his beady black eyes. He was about a foot or eighteen inches high. She was so frightened that she ran home. She cannot recall exactly in what month this took place, but knows it was a summer’s day.

One day a son of mine, a lad of about twelve, was sent into the garden to pick pea-pods for the cook to shell for dinner. Presently he rushed into the house as white as chalk to say that while he was engaged upon the task imposed upon him he saw standing between the rows of peas a little man wearing a red cap, a green jacket, and brown knee-breeches, whose face was old and wan and who had a gray beard and eyes as black and hard as sloes. He stared so intently at the boy that the latter took to his heels. I know exactly when this occurred, as I entered it in my diary, and I know when I saw the imps by looking in my father’s diary, and though he did not enter the circumstance, I recall the vision today as distinctly as when I was a child.

In spite of the vivid and detailed nature of these visions Baring-Gould didn’t believe he or his family had seen anything ‘real’. He continues stoutly:

Now, in all three cases, these apparitions were due to the effect of a hot sun on the head. But such an explanation is not sufficient. Why did all three see small beings of a very similar character? With ... temporary hallucination the pictures presented to the eye are never originally conceived, they are reproductions of representations either seen previously or conceived from descriptions given by others. In my case and that of my wife, we saw imps, because our nurses had told us of them… In the case of my son, he had read Grimms’ Tales and seen the illustrations to them.

Rational indeed – though still a little puzzling that sun-stroke or heat-stroke should in each case have brought on visions of dwarfs or pixies. Perhaps it ran in the family. However that may be, Baring-Gould acknowledges that this explanation only pushes the problem further into the past – ‘Where did our nurses, whence did Grimm [sic] obtain their tales of kobolds, gnomes, dwarfs, pixies, brownies etc? … To go to the root of the matter, in what did the prevailing belief in the existence of these small people originate?’ And he answers thus:

I suspect that there did exist a small people, not so small as these imps are represented, but comparatively small beside the Aryans who lived in all those countries in which the tradition of their existence lingers on.

The grim events of the 20^th century have taught us to beware of that word ‘Aryan’, liberally scattered in the introduction to many a 19^th century collection. Sir George Dasent, introducing ‘Popular Tales from the Norse’ (his translation of Asbjornsen and Moe’s 'Norske Folkeeventyr’) includes a section on ‘the Aryan race’ which according to contemporary anthropological wisdom had spread across Europe ‘in days of immemorial antiquity’. In 1905, citing the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley as his authority, Charles Squire in ‘Celtic Myths and Legends’ writes confidently of ‘certain proof of two distinct human stocks in the British Isles at the time of the Roman conquest’. He describes them: the early people who built Britain’s long barrows were ‘Iberian’ or ‘Mediterranean’ in origin: ‘a short, swarthy, dark-haired’ aboriginal race; but ‘the second of these two races was the exact opposite of the first. It was the tall, fair, light-haired, blue- or gray-eyed people called, popularly, the “Celts”, who belonged in speech to the “Aryan” family … It was in a higher stage of culture than the “Iberians”.’ In the illustration below from a history of the world published in 1897, we see how the heroic Celts were imagined, along with an account of the 'Aryan migration'. And they were supposed to have displaced a different race of indigenous people, driving them almost literally underground.

'The Celtic Vanguard' from 'Ridpath's History of the World', 1897

This notion of ‘two races, two cultures’ has been discredited. Archaologists and geneticists now agree that Europe has been a melting-pot of racial groups from at least the early Neolithic. European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were neither replaced nor suddenly shunted out; instead, over several thousand years, they assimilated both the culture and the genes of a gradually diffusing population of Neolithic farmers. It wasn’t until the Bronze Age (says Professor Barry Cunliffe in ‘Europe Between the Oceans, 9000 BC – AD1000’) that sea-faring and trading populations on the on the coasts of Europe, Britain and Ireland, developed the Celtic tongue as ‘an Atlantic façade lingua franca’. Isn't that wonderful? The Celts didn’t ‘come from’ anywhere: they were in place already. The Celtic languages evolved because coastal peoples travelled and traded and intermarried and talked to one another. Britain wasn't isolated, it was always an integral part of Europe.

So the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was wrong. There was never a distinctly different race of ‘little dark people’ living on the edges of a conquering population of tall, fair, confident ‘Aryans’. Nothing to give rise to a belief in a ‘hidden folk’ of pixies, dwarfs or elves.

You can see why he liked the idea. It seemed to answer a lot of questions, besides lending to folk-lore a kind of scientific gloss: anthropological ‘truths’ preserved in tales. Many a writer has been honestly misled by it. In Rosemary Sutcliff’s tremendous novel ‘Sword at Sunset’, the Romano-British and nominally Christian hero Artos, fighting off the Saxon invasions in the 3^rdcentury AD, takes as his allies ‘the little Dark People of the Hills’, who live half-underground in turf-covered bothies, use poisoned arrows and worship the Earth Mother. Their clan leader, the Old Woman, calls Artos ‘Sun Lord’ and tells him:

‘We are small and weak, and our numbers grow fewer with the years, but we are scattered very wide, wherever there are hills or lonely places. We can send news and messages racing from one end of a land to the other between moon-rise and moonset; we can creep and hide and spy and bring back word; we are the hunters who can tell you when the game has passed by, by a bent grass-blade or one hair clinging to a bramble-spray. We are the viper that stings in the dark –’

And in the same author's if-anything-even-more-magnificent ‘The Mark of the Horse Lord’, the half-Roman half-British ex-gladiator Phaedrus, masquerading as Midir, Lord of the Dalriads (actually a 4th century AD Scots-Irish Gaelic kingdom), lays down his iron weapons to call upon an Old Man of the Dark People who lives like a badger in ‘a tumble of stones and turf laced together with brambles’ with ‘a dark opening in its side’:

[Phaedrus] had heard before of places such as this, where one left something that needed mending, together with a gift, and came back later to find the gift gone and the broken thing mended; it was one of those things no one talked of very much, the places where the life of the Sun People touched the life of the Old Ones, the People of the Hills. Like the bowls of milk that the women put out sometimes at night, in exchange for some small job to be done – like the knot of rowan hung over a doorway for protection against the ancient Earth Magic – like the stealing of a Sun Child from time to time.’

This Old Man is ‘slight-boned … with grey hair brushed back from his narrow brow, and eyes that seemed at first glance like jet beads…’ Sutcliff was writing in the mid-1960s when the ‘two races’ hypothesis was still widely credited: she writes with great imaginative sympathy. I grew up with these stories and it was easy to be swept along by the idea: these Little Dark People, the Painted People, these remnants of the past clinging to the verge of cultures which had displaced them, were the historical origin of the fairies. I felt sorry for them. Even in Sutcliff’s sympathetic treatment, these imagined, marginalised archaic people are nearly powerless. Their magic – feared though it is – doesn’t really work on the more civilized Sun People. They are spies, not warriors: they creep through the heather with poisoned arrows, killing by stealth. In fact they’re natives, with all the baggage that implies in colonial and post-colonial Britain. They may help the heroes, but they can’t bethe heroes. Their time is past.

Writing in 1913 Baring-Gould doesn’t even allow them the skills to erect dolmens:

They were not, I take it, the Dolmen builders – these are supposed to have been giants because of the gigantic character of their structures. They were a people who did not build at all. They lived in caves, or if in the open, in huts made by bending branches over and covering them with sods of turf. Consequently in folk-lore they are always represented as either emerging from caverns or from under mounds.

This is to lend to folk-lore an authority far beyond its deserts.

Most of the nineteenth century collectors of the fairy tales and folk-lore which we all love so much were driven by nationalist impulses and racial pride. Each sought, as the Grimms did, the pure voice of their own ‘folk’. As the century progressed what they in fact uncovered was the inextricably interrelated nature of European folk- and fairy- lore. Despite the near-impossibility of claiming a particular version of any story as ‘original’, some went on to claim an ultimate ‘Aryan’ heritage for such tales, going so far as to assert that the Aryan master-race originated in Scandinavia – since, clearly, the Nordic peoples were the tallest, blondest and bluest-eyed of the lot. Most of these gentlemen intended only to generate pride in what they saw as their heritage. They did not recognise it as racism - the term had not yet been coined - but racism it was. As folklorists, as lovers of fairy tales, we need to be responsible for the ways we interpret the stories we tell.

While I was researching Mi’kmaq and Algonkin folk-lore for my book 'Troll Blood', I came across a salutary reminder of how untrustworthy some 19^thcentury commentators can be when discussing origins: in a compilation called ‘The Algonquin Legends of New England’ (1884) I found the anthropologist Charles G. Leland with a bee in his bonnet about what he claimed had to be a Norse influence on Mi’kmaq stories. Having decided that the Mi’kmaq tales were in effect too ‘noble’ to have been the product of Native American minds, he made the wildly unsupported assertion that the Norsemen must have told stories from the Eddas to the indigenous peoples of what is now Newfoundland and New Brunswick: that the Mi’kmaq culture-hero Kluskap (‘Glooscap’, in his account) ‘is the Norse god intensified … by far the grandest and most Aryan-like character ever evolved from a savage mind’. I almost dropped the book and was forced to regard it ever after as compromised and unreliable. If there was any contact at all between Norsemen and the Native American population in the 10^th to 13^th centuries (the likely duration of occasional forays from treeless Greenland for much-needed North American timber), the Greenlanders’ Saga suggests that it was violent and short. But that’s not the point. The point is the mindset which says ‘this is too good to have been created by [insert racial group]’.

The dwarf Eitri making the hammer Mjölnir.

Returning to the origin of pixies, elves and dwarfs – if they’re not a folk-memory of some once co-existing shy and inferior race, what are they? As Baring-Gould says, the notion must have come from somewhere. Well, Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe are dotted with burial mounds and barrows. The Irish story of the love of Midir for Étain states plainly that Midir is a king of the ‘elf-mounds’, the underworld, and the tale is full of instances of death and rebirth. As I argue more closely in an essay called ‘The Lost Kings of Fairyland’ in my recent book, fairies have long been associated with the dead. In a fascinating essay ‘The Craftsman in the Mound’ (Folk-Lore 88, 1977) Lotte Motz discusses the figure of the dwarf as a smith and craftman dwelling in hills, mounds and mountains, who may be heard hammering away in underground smithies. Pointing to the many instances of ‘legends of dead rulers who reside, sometimes in a magic sleep and often with their retinue, within a mountain’, she continues:

A relation to the dead appears to belong also to the dwarfs of the Icelandic documents; so the dwarf Alviss [‘All-Knowing] is asked by Thor if he had been staying with the dead, and a poem in a saga tells of a doughty sword which had been fashioned by ‘dead dwarfs’. I would… assert that the mountain dwelling of the smith holds, rather than temporary wealth, eternal treasures in its aspect as the mountain of the dead.

As if to emphasise his deathly character, like a ghost fleeing to its grave at cock-crow, the dwarf Alviss (the story is from the Poetic Edda) cannot endure daylight but turns to stone at sunrise.

‘The day has caught thee, dwarf!’ cries triumphant Thor, who like Gandalf in ‘The Hobbit’ has kept him talking…

It's always been thought dangerous to see fairies. Like the Furies in Greek mythology, if you talked about them at all, you used flattering circumlocutions – the Good People, the Seely Court, the People of Peace. They came from the hollow hills, the land of death, and it was wise to be frightened of them. Maybe the visions, the ‘legions of dwarfs’, the little green men or pixies which Baring-Gould and his wife and child separately saw signified something more sinister than folk-memories.

After all, sunstroke can kill you.

Picture credits:

Pixies - John D Batten - Wikimedia Commons

Nisse eating barley porridge - Wikimedia Commons

The dwarves Brokkr and Eitri making the hammer Mjölnir - Arthur Rackham - Wikimedia Commons

Alvissmal - Alviss answers Thor - Wikimedia Commons

The Celtic Vanguard - Wikimedia Commons
Dolmen, Jersey, 1859 - Wikimedia Commons

I live in a village up on the ear of the dog's head that is the Kingdom of Fife.

The Kingdom* of Fife - The Atlas of Scotland 1654

And the other day, I was wondering, as you do, why a particular street in my village has the particular name that it does, and I stumbled across an online resource - The Newport, Wormit and Forgan Archive. And in this online resource I found this:

Mortcloth Payments 1695 - 1835

The word "mortcloth" will be known to many of you, but it was the first time I'd come across it. So I was glad of the following explanation of the term:

Since there are no Burial Registers for Forgan Parish, the main documentary information about deaths and burials is that given by the Kirk Session records, principally in the form of ledger entries for the receipt of cash for the hire of the mortcloth. The mortcloth was a velvet funeral pall, bought and maintained by the Kirk Session and hired out for funerals. There were several different qualities of mortcloth, and a child's one.

Well, that was plenty interesting all on its own, but then I decided to have a browse of the entries ... and I was hooked. There were pages and pages of them, and again and again, in a few words, the nugget of a story, the seed of a scene, just kept leaping out.

I read:

15 Jul 1664 Samfort Nairne, in Fyffe, depairted out of this life att his dwelling howse, and was interred the 17 of Jul. after, att his parish church, in the night season

and those words in the night season brought the scene to mind like a painting. So why at night? What was the story behind that?

I read:

17 Feb. 1711 For whangs to the Mortcloath pock 6 [shillings]

and was utterly bewildered.

(Later on the same page, there was a quite huffy entry about administrative error (as perennial as ever), to wit:

18 Jun 1716 [i.e. 5 years later!] This day the session called for a sight of their register and ... found that the clerk has neglected to insert the price of the fine velvet mortcloath that was bought by the session in October 1711 and so had not given the session credit for the same.

That one ran and ran.)

I read about a public collection of £4 on 17 Jul 1771 for the distress & destitute circumstances of Widow Scot and Widow Mackie who in a sudden & unexpected manner lost their husbands in the Passage betwixt Newport and Dundee.

The currents of the Tay are still wicked.

Between 14 Sept and 10 Nov. 1740, the child's version of the mortcloth was needed 6 times for 6 different families in quick succession. What illness had happened?

And whose was the unnamed, unbaptized child buried on 9 June 1731?

I could go on and on - because I did! - but why not have a browse of your own? Have a look out for the archives of your own village or town or city, or just spend some time with mine. Entries of a few words will bring back the quiet dead.

Never did find out why that street was called that. Never mind. An archival wander for another day.

* so named because it was one of the ancient Pictish kingdoms.

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

Here’s another book to show you. It’s not old, and it’s not really about history, except in the way that all geography is sort of about history. I wish I had learned that sooner.

1981. I was in first form, eager in plaits and pinafore. But not – ugh! – about geography. It hovered too close to science for comfort, and we seemed to spend the whole year drawing cross-sections of sedimentary rocks. I had thought geography would be about learning about people in other countries, just as history was about learning about people in different times. I didn’t hate it as I hated science; it was just dull.

By the time we got on to doing maps, I had switched off from Geography. A great pity: as an adult I like maps, but as a child I saw the map of the world as something just to learn for the exam. I hadn’t bothered to learn it. There was a clump of islands somewhere off the coast of South America (I did recognise that it was South America.) The Bahamas, I labelled them hopefully. The Falklands, I found out when we got our papers back. How silly, I thought. Who’s ever heard of them?

The map of the world just – was. Europe, with the big stretch of Yugoslavia and the huge looming mass labelled USSR. This was how it was, and would be.

I know. I look back and wonder how an intelligent, curious child could have been so dim. After all, I myself lived in a country (state? province?) that had existed only since 1921 and whose validity was not accepted by all its citizens. And I knew that – remember I loved history.

I was charmed by old maps – loved visiting the reconstructed Victorian classroom in the Ulster Folk Museum and seeing its huge map of an Ireland not yet divided by the border, and bearing such forgotten names as King's County and Queen’s County. I think I must have thought that history was over: that the world wouldn’t go on changing its borders and its mind. Again, I look at what was happening around me in Northern Ireland and wonder at myself.

Not to mention what was happening elsewhere. When the Berlin wall came down I watched from my student bedsit. I visited a friend in Czechoslovakia a few months before it split into two states. I loved seeing the ‘new’ European states emerge from behind the Iron Curtain – names familiar to me from O level history – now I knew where Serbia was. I look at my old atlas – printed in 1988 – and smile at how out-of-date it quickly became.

Right now I’m aware – and not in a good way – of living through history that seems to be moving at an alarming rate. Never again will I take borders and maps and the status quo for granted.

Back to the little book, Whatever Happened To Tanganyika? by Harry Campbell. Described as ‘nostalgic geography’ by Alexander McCall Smith, it looks at places whose names have changed; places that have fallen off the map. There's a story about each one.

If this book had been written in the eighties, I might have come round to geography an awful lot sooner than I did.

I have wanted to visit Vienna for as long as I can remember. Everyone has a mental vision of the city, whether it be from watching 'The Third Man', reading 'The Hare with Amber Eyes,' or seeing Helen Mirren in 'Woman in Gold.'Everyone knows about Mozart, Klimt, Freud, Beethoven, and of course, Strauss. The strains of the Blue Danube waltz come into our heads. Midge Ure, singing 'O Vienna'perhaps...in any case, it's a place with a strong image.

Most people fly to Vienna but we (Judith Lennox and Helen Craig and I) took the train because I no longer take planes anywhere. We rattled through the night in our couchettes through a landscape, which I watched rolling by for the last hour of our journey. It looked as peaceful and green as you could possibly imagine. I reflected, while munching my delicious breakfast rolls with butter and honey, that this ground was actually blood-soaked from a history of more than 400 years of constant conflict.

My reasons for wanting to go to Vienna were many, and one of them was definitely CAKES, but seriously, they can be boiled down to two main ones. The most important was wanting to see in the flesh, as it were, Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust Memorial. The second was to see in real life the paintings of Gustav Klimt.

These, the Klimts, are housed in the splendid Belvedere Palace, above. Anyone wishing to know about Vienna's history ought to watch Simon Sebag Montefiore's three part tv programme about the city which must be still on Iplayer. It is very wide-ranging and informative and full of good historical gossip.

We got there early. For about twenty minutes, the three of us were alone in the Klimt room, in which hang about fifteen paintings. The famous The Kiss is on a wall by itself. It is huge. It is not a bit like the myriad reproductions that you can buy. I found it beyond beautiful. I was quite knocked out. So much so that I couldn't even buy a postcard afterwards because every variation on the original fell so far short. I've tried to ask myself what it is about this picture that is so amazing. I have no idea. The gold? There is lots of that and it glimmers and glisters in an extraordinary way. The poses of the two figures? I don't have the artistic vocabulary to pick apart why it's so brilliant, but it is. For once, BRILLIANT is an appropriate and not a lazy word. The painting simply shines. And the emotional impact of Klimt's other portraits is striking. He clearly loved women and pays attention to their clothes, their jewels, their expressions. The effect is miraculous.

His landscapes are beautiful, too. His work (The Beethoven Frieze) in the Accession Gallery is also mind-blowing. What can I say? I went to Vienna with an image of what Klimt was like and this has been so enhanced that he has now moved high up the list of artists whom I revere and love.

This, above, is the arena of the Spanish Riding School. We all three agreed that we wanted to see the beautiful Lippizaner white horses and I booked tickets online well ahead of time. Disappointingly, the arena was overbooked and even though we arrived in good time for the beginning of the rehearsal, all the seats were already taken and we had to stand. We left after an hour or so. The horses were lovely, and it was fascinating to see the way they went through their paces but we were, I have to confess, a bit disappointed. We repaired to a fantastic cafe called Demel's and had a lovely cake each and by two o'clock we were back for a guided tour of the Spanish School Stables. And that was wonderful.

The horses who live in these stables are the best looked after horses I've ever seen. Above is a photo of some of their equipment, which is all in tip top condition. I've never been in a stable before but I assumed they would be quite smelly places. This one was practically fragrant. It was the cleanest place I've ever seen. The waste, we learned, gets picked up every hour.

The horses go on holiday every year to green pastures; they retire to the country after they've done their stint. The Lippizaner horses were once used in the Cavalry. Now they are stars and part of the entertainment world, but looking at them close up they seemed very content. And we, the tourists, loved them.

Also living in the stables are two cats. Franz Joseph and Sisi. Of course, called after the Emperor and his Empress, Elisabeth. Below is Franz Joseph in a photo taken by Helen Craig. He was the fattest cat I've ever seen- so fat that he could barely waddle across the courtyard to be petted by our party. We, of course, thought he was lovely.

And so to the Rachel Whiteread Memorial. In a place full of intimidatingly Baroque buildings, wide avenues and clean, green spaces, I found History very much weighing on me. It's hard when you've read about it and seen it on film, thought about it and pondered it over decades, not to imagine vividly what went on in this place in the thirties and forties. 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed. It's very hard to think of the numbers but just bear in mind how devastated we are after the deaths of 22 young people. 65, 000. That's three Wembley Stadiums-full.

The memorial is situated in Judenplatz, which is the site of the ancient medieval synagogue. This was burned to the ground many hundreds of years ago. This part of town is lovely, full of small shops and modest restaurants and a market place. There are churches nearby. Trees in bloom. And in the middle of it all, a cube of concrete.

I'm going to quote from the booklet I bought there: "The double doors on the front of the memorial are also turned inwards and have no doorknobs. They suggest the possibility of coming and going, symbolising the destruction of intellectual life through the extermination of Austrian and European Jews."

Above is a photo of one side of the square. Below is the inscription on the front of the memorial with a text in German, English and Hebrew. All round the sides are carved the names of the death camps to which the Jews were taken. It's an incredibly moving place and a very apt memorial for the People of the Book: a library turned inwards.
The idea of having a memorial on this site was Simon Wiesenthal's and if I remember correctly, Rachel Whiteread had quite a struggle to get it made and installed. There was opposition in many quarters. The detail has escaped me from those days, and I don't feel up to researching it properly but I seem to recall trouble for the artist from all sides. But she won, and it's there and it's beautiful. And it isn't going anywhere any time soon. It looks as though it's there for centuries to come.

I'm very glad to have visited this place and glad to have travelled to Vienna.

Recently, some national newspapers reported on a story of a husband who was granted a divorce in Italy

'The Ecstasy of Father Jean Birelle,' painted 1626-32

by Vincenzo Carducci

because his wife was said to be possessed by the devil, evidenced by convulsions, throwing a pew in church and levitation. But in the Middle Ages levitation was considered to be the sign of a saint, so when did it become a sign of possession or witchcraft?

In the 10th Century, the Canon Episcopi condemned women who believed they could fly with the goddess in the nocturnal wild hunt. But it was the belief in the goddess to which the Church objected, not the flying. The medieval Church’s complaint against witches was not their magic, but that they made offerings to the old gods and goddesses rather than to the relics of saints.

During the Middle Ages, numerous saints were reported to be able to levitate or fly including Francis of Assisi and Theresa of Avila. Ironically, it was the very ability of the saints to levitate through the power of God that would later be used as proof that witches could do it through the power of demons.

St Joseph of Cupertino

Early medieval writers wrote about witches gathering to perform spells both for the good of the community, to end droughts or storms, and on other occasions to work mischief or even murder by magic, but whatever the reason, it was not suggested that they flew there.

But by the 16th century, both the Protestant Reformers and the Catholic Inquisition had decided witchcraft of any kind was heretical, therefore punishable by death. They constructed the elaborate myth of the witches’ sabbat. Prosecutors alleged that as many as 2,000 women would assemble at a remote location to take part. But how could they get there in a single night and be tucked up in bed at home by dawn? They had to fly.

And with the rise of both the Inquisition and Reformation even a saint’s ability to fly began to be regarded as a sign they might be a secret witch. St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-63) was denounced to the Inquisition because he could levitate. Levitating nuns were in even greater danger. Magdalena Crucia, Abbess at Cordova, who died in 1560, was persuaded by her confessors that her levitation was not a sign of her devotion, but proof she was a witch.

1681, a child levitating through witchcraft in front

of horrified witnesses.

But the question that troubled the Church was – did witches fly in body or spirit? It was a common medieval belief that the spirit left the body in the form of a mouse while the person slept. If you moved a sleeping person their soul might not find its way back, so the victim would die. St. Martin de Porres and the 20th Century saint, Padre Pio, were both credited with bilocation – the ability to appear in spirit in one place while their bodies were miles away. This became central to an outbreak of anti-witch hysteria in 1683, in Calw, Germany, when children swore they attended witches’ sabbats while their parents watched them sleeping.

But by the late 16th century, most theologians insisted witches could not travel in spirit, therefore their bodies must be flying. Only God could work the miracle of taking the spirit from the body then restoring it, bringing a corpse back to life. God certainly wouldn’t perform that miracle for a witch.

Woodcut 1508, Witch flying on goat

with pitchfork

So, witches were depicted riding fantastic beasts, demons or their ‘familiars’ such as cats, goats or foxes – animals associated with Satan. Women ‘bewitched’ neighbours’ horses and they would be found sweating in their stables having been ‘hag-ridden’.

Witches were also thought to ride shovels, pitchforks, distaffs and forked sticks. Brooms were already linked to magic. If a woman brushed the dust from the room outwards, she would be brushing away the fortune of the house. If she brushed in front of neighbour’s door, she would be stealing their luck. The broomstick probably became the favourite object to depict witches riding as they were associated with women’s work and were a phallic symbol used in peasant weddings, emphasising those sexual orgies of the witches sabbat.

The Witches Sabbath

1851-1896 by

Luis Ricardo Falero

As for that poor wife in Italy, if only she’d been born a few centuries earlier she might well have been canonised instead of condemned.

It is the morning of 9 June 2017 and I am beginning the final leg of a six-day fast. Fasting is usually defined as abstinence or reduction from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. Over the past thirty years I have fasted for a day or two (sometimes three or four) for health and/or spiritual reasons. I have also tried the 5:2 method and blogged about it HERE. But inspired by a new podcast called Fasting Talk I decided to attempt a longer fast. I wanted to try it for three reasons:

First, health benefits. According to recent thinking, fasting can bring hormones and insulin back into balance, as well as burn excess fat and encourage cells to heal themselves via the process known as autophagy (Greek for ‘self-eating’).

Second, for spiritual reasons. Many religions believe fasting can bring you closer to God, add power to your prayers or show repentance. I’ve been experimenting with meditative prayer and wanted to see if being in a fasting state helped.

My third reason is historical curiosity. I wanted to share in something that mankind has done for millennia, go without food for an extended time.

I chose a week when I had very little in the diary and could rest as much as I wanted. A week like this is a rare luxury so I decided to think of it as a mini-retreat at home. I would abstain from food, prayerfully meditate twice a day and investigate the historical background of fasting.

Here’s a short diary of my six days. N.B. Some bodily functions are mentioned. The squeamish may want to stop reading now.

Day #1 Sunday - In the morning I drank some weak black tea with lemon and in the afternoon I nursed a double espresso on ice. For dinner I sat with my husband and ate a bowl of thin bone broth with lentils. Before bed one of my eyelids was twitching so I took a spoonful of raw apple cider vinegar and the twitch stopped immediately. (This is a tip I got from my grandmother who also taught me that a spoonful of vinegar is the best cure for hiccups.) I only felt hungry a couple of times over the day and on one of those occasions I had the broth. I found it hard to focus during my prayerful meditations but I slept well that night.

Historical slant: The oldest homo sapiens bones have just been found in Morocco. They date to a staggering 300,000 BC. The bones were found with flint tools, gazelle bones and lumps of charcoal, probably from the fires over which these early men and women roasted their game. These ancient hunter-gatherers would have had periods of fasting followed by periods of feasting. The fatty meat would have been most desirable for survival. Three modern diets based on the idea of replicating this sort of existence are the Paleo diet, the LCHF (low carbohydrate, high fat) and Intermittant Fasting diet, (e.g. the 5:2 you fast for two days out of the week.) These have proved popular because unlike calorie restrictive diets they seem to work.

Day #2 Monday - My aim was to drink take only water with sea salt. As Megan Ramos from the Fasting Talk podcast says: ‘water and salt and not a damn other thing’… The doctors on the Fasting Talk podcast recommend fasting in conjunction with LCHF (low carbohydrate, high fat). Apparently, fasting and then ‘feasting’ on high fat, medium protein and limited carbohydrates and sugars puts your body in a state of ketogenesis where you burn your own fat. Another astonishing aspect of fasting is autophagy, where your body begins to burn or ‘eat’ its own damaged cells, thereby healing itself.

I felt quite sleepy at times during the day, so I rested or had a catnap. Whenever I had a hunger pang I drank some warm water with a tiny amount of sea-salt stirred in. I also listened to the Fasting Talk podcast as a way of encouraging myself. By doing this, I was able to go all day on just salted water. It was hard to meditate as I had strange images floating into my head.

Historical slant: I have been reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story in the world, and wondered if there was reference to fasting in it. The story of Gilgamesh recounts the story of a Sumerian king who is bereft by the death of his best friend Enkidu and travels to the underworld in search of immortality. Although the word ‘fasting’ is not specifically mentioned, Gilgamesh goes on an epic journey and it is never stated that he stops to eat. When he finally meets the tavern keeper Shiduri at the edge of the ocean, she is terrified of him because of his ‘hollow cheeks and ravaged features’. When he tells her he wants immortality, she gives him this beautiful advice. ‘Savour your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child that holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.’ The Epic of Gilgamesh, Steven Mitchell

Day #3 Tuesday - They say the third day is the hardest and that once you get past that you rarely feel hungry or tired. I woke up early (5am) with dry mouth, coated tongue, sticky eyes and a dull headache. I had taken a lot of water with sea salt in the previous day, but dehydration is still one of the biggest problems so I made sure to keep drinking water all day. I wanted to be aware of my body so resisted taking a painkiller and just drank water, either warm and salted or cold and sparkling. I also did a half hour guided meditation with a body scan. This helped a little. I dozed and had some vivid dreams. My headache in the late afternoon so I put two soluble aspirin in my warm salted water. For the first time I felt cold (though the temperature had dropped dramatically) and my lips were getting chapped. That night I had vivid dreams.

Historical slant: Not only was Jesus Christ a champion faster but he had lots to say about the matter. Most famously he doesn’t say IF you fast but WHEN you fast. (Matt 6:6). In the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, fasting is mentioned dozens of times. We know from the Didache, the earliest Christian document, that in the mid first century Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays whereas Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. (Didache VIII.1) In a rather nasty poem, the Roman poet Martial mentions the ‘fasting breath of the Jews’ in a list of unpleasant smells. (Epigrams IV.4) According to Suetonius, the Emperor Vespasian enjoyed good health thanks to massage, exercise and fasting one day each month. (Vespasian XX)

Day #4 Wednesday - This is the day when my body should start eliminating garbage in my body. I should also be burning my own fat stores by now. This is known as ketosis and is often accompanied by a fruity breath smell. I woke at 5am with sticky eyes, dry mouth and splotchy white coating on my tongue. I also did a movement, my first in two days. No headache. Meditated with focus and had a brief moment of ‘connection’. Felt vaguely hungry around 11am so added a teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar to my warm salt water. It damped my appetite and I only felt mild inclination to eat three or four times during the day. No hunger pangs at all. I nursed a double espresso over ice all afternoon but apart from that and the spoonful of vinegar I took only water and salt. The experts were right. I didn’t need to nap and although I wasn’t super alert I felt fine with almost no cravings for food, even when my husband tucked into a hearty dinner of toast, mushroom omelette and bacon. In bed by 11.30 and slept well apart from getting up to pee a couple of times.

Historical slant: Philosophers loved to fast. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived roughly five hundred years before Christ, believed that a fast of up to forty days increased clarity of thought. The followers of Pythagoras were vegetarians who ate no meat (and, incidentally, no beans, because they believed the transient souls of humans and animals could go into them.) The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca advises his friend Lucilius to ‘Set aside a certain number of days during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest of fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself “Is this the condition I feared?”… Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a pennyworth of food…’ (Seneca letters to Lucilius 18.5)

Day #5 Thursday - I should be clear, light and free of the distractions of the body. No demands for food, no worry about using the loo, just pure intellectual clarity. I wake at 5.45 less ‘sticky’ than previous days. Thirsty but no headache. Tongue still coated but not as bad as yesterday. No hunger. In fact my body feels very calm and still. No cravings or hunger pangs. No tyranny of desire. However I did feel sleepy and had a mid-morning nap. I woke with no hunger and no headache, but waiting in vain for the fizzing energy promised by some practitioners. I spent the day mostly writing and researching but went out for a short walk. (Today was voting day but I’d already cast my vote by post.) In the afternoon I had double espresso on ice, making it last over two hours and a spoonful of apple cider vinegar at 7pm when I had a mild hunger pang. (Roman soldiers drank posca, water tinted with vinegar. Not only did the vinegar kill bacteria in the water but it suppressed the appetite.) Slight runny nose in the evening puzzled me. My mediation was tinted with strange scenarios that kept drifting into my consciousness. Maybe I should use these as plot fodder.

Historical slant: Thirty years ago I did an M.A. in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. For a while I studied Syriac. I was amazed by the writings of Syriac-speaking Christian monks. The so-called Fathers of the Desert were strange ascetics who went into the desert or other isolated places to do spiritual battle with demonic forces. They were extreme fasters. One Syriac monk walled himself up in a tiny cubicle with a removable brick. Every other day his claw-like hand would emerge from the hole to grasp his sole meal, a small loaf of bread. Simeon Stylites stood on a pillar for nearly forty years without coming down. He fasted so often that I reckon he produced small hard stool, like a goat’s droppings. Fasting was so much a part of their existence that one monk warned that excessive practice could put you in danger of becoming proud of your ascetic achievements. This sentiment reminds me of the beautiful Bible passage about True Fasting: ‘Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen,’ says the Lord to Isaiah, ‘to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?’ (Isaiah 58:6)

Day #6 Friday – In bed at 12.30 last night, up twice to pee, got up this morning at 4.40am with only a slightly dry mouth and lightly coated tongue. Beautiful light mornings make it a joy to be up this early. My meditation this morning was focused and good. Wordless concentration on the breath and scanning of the body but also an awareness of the world around me. As for the past few days, I feel absolutely no hunger, just a quiet calm. I’m going to see a four-hour version of Hamlet this evening. One problem I often have at the theatre is the temptation to nod off. But with the promise of improved mental clarity I should be able to appreciate every nuance and line. (I’ll add a P.S. to this blog to report back.)

Historical slant: We are about midway through the festival of Ramadan when devout Muslims abstain not just from food but also from water during the hours of daylight, (i.e. a ‘dry fast’). That must be very challenging in higher latitudes like Britain when the sun rises at 4.30 and doesn’t set until 9.30. The hardest part of this practice must be lack of water or liquid. As with Christian and Jewish practice, the Ramadan fast is not just about giving up food and drink, but about abstaining from arguing, lustful thoughts and falsehood in speech and action. It’s about seeking a kind of spiritual purity. According to another source, ‘The period is intended to bring religious followers closer to God and to remind them of people who are less fortunate.’ Once again, a noble motive for fasting.

Day #7 Saturday – Tomorrow evening my husband and I are meeting friends at a restaurant, so I’ll break my fast around midday with a little bit of fat: a few olives or half an avocado. Because my body has already been burning its own fat this will keep me in ketosis while preparing my body for food later in the day. We’ve already chosen from a set menu so I know my starter will be roast goat’s cheese with smoked almonds, watercress and beetroot. For my main course I’m having grilled cod fillet. My final course will be cheese and a grape or two. Fatty but filling. Megan Ramos, one of the co-presenters of Fasting Talk podcast said she battled with her cholesterol from the age of nine, but it wasn’t until she started a low carb, high fat (LCHF) diet that it dramatically dropped to a safe level.

Historical slant: Last year, 2016, the Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to Dr Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries on the mechanisms of autophagy. In the introductory speech of his prize-giving, Professor Nils-Göran Larsson observed that ‘Impairments in the regulation of autophagy are linked to a variety of human diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, infections and severe disorders of the nervous system.’ And autophagy kicks in when we adjust our metabolism by fasting and starvation. This goes right back to Hippocrates the great physician of Classical Greece, who said ‘Everyone has a doctor within; we just have to help it work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.’

What have I achieved over this short week of fasting? I feel slimmer and lighter, obviously. But any healing that has happened has been internal. If anything, it made my prayerful meditation harder. Maybe that is why the Desert Fathers fasted while praying; they wanted a challenge.

But the main thing I’ve realised is how much time I have spent over the past year or so being distracted by thoughts of food. Recently my writing has been increasingly difficult because every time I get into the flow a little voice says ‘How about a snack?’ or ‘So-and-so would taste good about now.’ This is not every half hour or quarter hour but every ten minutes. Going on this fast has freed me for a short time from the tyranny of those thoughts and cravings. I now know what it feels like to be in control and not be plagued by thoughts of food.

The double bullies of stomach and brain can be conquered.

This is not at all what I was looking for during these six days but I am hugely grateful for it. I hope that by continuing intermittent fasting combined with a low carb high fat diet I will be able to maintain this focus and self-control.

A few days ago, as if in confirmation of this, an old friend on Instagram posted this about intermittent fasting and a low carb, high fat diet: Without trying I lost a stone and am back to my pre20’s weight - stayed stable for the last 18 months - no effort really not hungry - I cheat now and again but it’s usually because of accepting someone else’s hospitality. It’s easy when eating out…

Thank you, Fasting Talk, for putting me on this new road!

Disclaimer: Don’t attempt an extreme fast without checking with your doctor first.

Caroline Lawrence has written over 35 history-mystery books for children and is trying to stay fit and healthy so she can write lots more.

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