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History keeps changing - writing The Fortune Keeper

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 By Deborah Swift


I was really interested to read this week, that the coded letters of Mary Queen of Scots have just been deciphered by modern computer scientists and decoders. Undoubtedly this will give us hitherto unknown insights into what we know about her and her life. Historians and historical fiction authors may need to change their views depending on the new evidence.

A similar thing happened to me when was writing the last book in the trilogy of books about Giulia Tofana, a woman who was renowned for inventing the poison Aqua Tofana, and was supposed to have poisoned six hundred men in Renaissance Italy. (See my Aspects of History article Poison and PowerI had already uncovered through my research that Giulia Tofana was probably an amalgam of three women, and not the single entity of legend.


Three women, not one


The mother, Theofania d’Adamo was executed for the crime of poison on 12th June 1633, but her daughter, Giulia (known as Tofana) survived. The third person in this triumvirate of poisonous women was Giulia’s daughter, known as Girolama Spara. Until recently very little was known about the daughter so as historical novelists do, I fictionalised her birth, assuming she was a blood daughter of Giulia Tofana and her (also unknown) husband surnamed Spara. I wrote about this before for Aspects of History

About half way through writing the third novel in the series, from the point of view of the daughter, new evidence arose about the women in Giulia Tofana’s family. In an old library archive in Italy, an American academic had unearthed the real-time transcript of the murder trial of Giulia Tofana’s daughter, Girolama Spara, (also known as Gironima Spara) and published it. The document was originally kept under lock and key by the Pope at Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo, and from there ended up in the State Archive where it lay uncatalogued and undiscovered for generations. You can find the document translated by Monson at the end of this article.

History evolves

Of course I trawled through the new information, discovering with growing concern that my fictional view of events differed widely from this new evidence. I was shocked to discover that Girolama Spara was a step-daughter, and not a blood daughter at all, and that Giulia Tofana had been married twice.

The ledger was in a poor state of repair, but Professor Craig A Monson had painstakingly resurrected it and translated it into modern English. The truth is less glamorous than the plot I had in mind for these characters, so what should I do? The past is both fixed and mutable. The two previous books were fixed, already out on shelves and readers were enjoying the story. The new information meant that I would need to be open to bending, or changing, the third book.

Would readers care? There are many schools of thought on this – on how accurate historical fiction should be, and it is debated endlessly by historians and novelists. From my point of view I was obligated to finish the story I had set up with the characters remaining consistent within the series, yet also to incorporate the new information. The rules I set for that world needed to remain in place so that the reader feels they are in a real and secure locale, no matter where the story went.

Whatever character I create can never be the real person. Anne Boleyn has had hundreds of interpretations of her character. The events I describe can never be ‘true’, just as contemporary witnesses to any crime will have different views. A novel can’t be ‘accurate’, just as someone trying to depict my life of yesterday could never be accurate, even with all the iphone technology and photography available now, and if my diaries were in front of them, because life is too complex to render completely. What I hope to achieve in my novels is a tantalising whisper of what it might have been like to inhabit another era.




History continues to fascinate

It is exciting that at last we know more about the actual trial and details of the life of Girolama. She is nicknamed Mia in my book, because having a similar name to her mother Giulia, she was often confused with her, and this led to many errors of attribution. Many of the crimes assigned to Giulia actually belonged to Girolama and vice-versa.

I used maps, academic articles and transcripts of primary sources to complete the book, as well as the translation of the trial documents by Professor Monson, and I like to include historical notes at the end of my books to make it clear where (for the moment) the historical evidence is pointing.

Is The Fortune Keeper a true re-telling of Girolama Spara’s life? Definitely not. Will it take you on a journey into the heart of a young woman in Renaissance Venice? I hope so. 

You may be interested in:

The Black Widows of the Eternal City: The True Story of Rome’s Most Infamous Poisoner by Craig A Monson

Coded Letters of Mary Queen of Scots https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64568222


THE FORTUNE KEEPER


Buy the Book – https://mybook.to/AquaTofana

#KindleUnlimited

Twitter https://twitter.com/swiftstory

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordeborahswift/

Website www.deborahswift.com

Pictures of 17thC Venice, The Ridotto gambling hall, and the fight on the Bridge of St Barnaba in Venice, all from Wikipedia.


Octopus dreams: Japan, Stonehenge, Knossos ~ by Lesley Downer

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takotsubo ya                Octopus pot
hakanaki yume o         Fleeting dreams
natsu no tsuki               Beneath the summer moon

                                                    Matsuo Bashō (1644 - 1694)

Minoan octopus vase,
around 1500 BC

Husband (in octopus tee
shirt) meets dogū at the
Heraklion Archaeological
Museum
Cultural echoes spring up tentacle-like in the most unexpected of places. Japan and Stonehenge, Japan and Knossos - who would have thought it?

This summer there have been exhibitions at Stonehenge and the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete, celebrating the parallels between the marvellous Jōmon culture of Japan and these two very distant yet in surprising ways not dissimilar island cultures. I was lucky enough to visit both.

Jōmon flame pot at 
Heraklion Archaeological
Museum (3000 - 2000 BC)
 

Jōmon - prosperous hunter-gatherers and the world's first potters
Fifteen thousand years ago the world was engulfed in an ice age. Much of the earth’s water had solidified into ice and sea levels had fallen by several hundred feet. What are now the islands of Japan were part of mainland Asia, connected to present day Siberia and Korea by vast tracts of countryside, plains and hills. It was cold and stormy. Huge long-tusked long-haired ‘Naumann’s’ elephants lumbered around, along with giant deer, horses, tigers, brown bears and wolves, trailed by hardy nomadic people looking for animals to hunt and fruit and vegetables to forage.

Around 14,500 BC, long before anyone else thought of doing so (except possibly the Chinese), some of these people took to moulding the clayey soil and making it into small pots, useful for carrying grain. This was a quite extraordinary development; pots are heavy to lug around when you’re on the move. Millennia later these nomads came to be called Jōmon - ‘rope design’ - after the patterns they impressed on their pots.
 
Jōmon flame pot at
Circles of Stone
exhibition 
at Stonehenge

Then temperatures began to rise. The ice melted and the sea levels rose, turning what had been the extreme edge of the Asian continent into a string of islands. The weather turned balmy. The descendents of those hardy nomads found themselves in a Garden of Eden, enjoying a lush temperate climate. Most lived not far from the sea where fish and seafood could be snatched straight from the water, collected or speared. 

There were mountains where animals roamed and forests overflowing with roots, fruits, leaves and berries. The Jōmon knew about farming; their neighbours across the water in Korea were farmers. But they themselves didn’t need to break their backs hoeing the soil day and night, for they had abundant food all around them. Most peoples didn’t settle down until the advent of farming; but these hunter-gatherers were so prosperous that many stopped wandering and formed communities.

dogū at Heraklion
Archaeological
Museum
Life was so easy that they didn’t need to send everyone out hunting and foraging. Specialist trades developed. Artisans stayed home and built houses or made pots. By now they were using the pots for cooking and serving large communal feasts. And the pots they made became bigger and bigger and more and more gloriously elaborate.

One settlement, at Sannai Maruyama in the far north of the main island, present day Honshu, made up of 700 large thatched houses built around fire pits, was occupied for 1500 years, from 3500 to 2000 BC. The inhabitants dined on mackerel, yellowtail, tuna, salmon, shark and shellfish from the sea, rivers and lagoons, and deer and boar which they hunted with dogs and with stone arrowheads glued to wooden shafts. They ate chestnuts, acorns, walnuts, wild grapes, kiwi fruit, gourds and beans and hunted rabbits and flying squirrels for their warm fur.

Ōyu stone circles
And from 2500 BC to 300 BC they also made amazing figurines - dogū. These were mostly female and may have represented an earth goddess or were used in fertility or healing rituals.

Some 2000 years down the line, these communities began to break up. Some of these smaller communities built stone circles. Around 2200 to 1700 BC, at Ōyu and Isedotai, not too far from Sannai Maruyama, people carried stones from nearby river beds and laid them out with great precision in concentric circles. 

Ōyu stone circles
Most were laid flat with standing stones in the centre that aligned with pillars at the outer edges to mark the sunrise at the summer solstice and made it possible to calculate the winter solstice and the spring equinox and the movements of the sun. Here people gathered to carry out seasonal ceremonies, conduct rituals and bury their dead.

Stone circles: the Stonehenge builders and the Jōmon
Around the same time, 3000 to 2500 BC, on another small island, Neolithic farmers were dragging massively heavy bluestones 180 miles, 290 kilometres, from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire to Salisbury Plain. 
Stonehenge

These two cultures on opposite sides of the globe had no contact between them yet had striking similarities. Both made stone circles, used flaked stone tools, had huge feasts and made beautiful pots. Circles of Stone, a wonderful exhibition at Stonehenge which closed on September 3rd, spotlit these cultures.

While the Jōmon were fishermen, hunters and gatherers, in Britain the weather was far less clement and life as a huntergatherer was rough. Around 4000 BC people started farming. The Stonehenge builders cultivated wheat and barley and had cattle, pigs and sheep. They ate beef and roasted pigs over open fires including piglets, which they ate at midwinter. They also gathered wild foods like their Japanese contemporaries.

They used far bigger stones for their stone circles and stood them upright with lintels resting on the top, akin to the torii gate at a Shinto shrine. Like the Jōmon stone circles they were laid out with great care. 

Minoan and Jōmon figures

Both the Stonehenge builders and the Jōmon, it seems, followed and celebrated the passage of the sun, particularly during the summer solstice, and gathered at these stone circles at key times in the annual calendar for festival and rituals. But the Stonehenge builders did not make human figures like the Jōmon dogū.

島国 shima guni, island countries: the Minoans and the Jōmon
The Minoans developed their civilisation a few millennia later, between about 2000 and 1000 BC. They didn’t build stone circles but huge and splendid palaces painted with frescoes. But as an island nation they had much in common with the Jōmon, who were still thriving across the world in Japan. Legacies of Beauty: Archaeological Treasures from Japan, a wonderful exhibition at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum which closed on September 24th, celebrates the parallels.

Minoan and Japanese haniwa 
horses (6th century AD)

The Stonehenge builders, the Jōmon and the Minoans were all island dwellers. The Japanese call it shima guni, 島国. Wherever you are the sea is never far away. You are well aware of the rest of the world out there and of cultural developments outside your own small community. Both the Minoans and the Jōmon traded extensively. The Jōmon traded with Hokkaido, Korea and China while the Minoans were the centre of an extensive trade network crisscrossing the Eastern Mediterranean.

Both cultures celebrated the sea. Octopuses coil their tentacles across Minoan pots while the triton shell became an essential religious implement in Japan. And both created images of life-nurturing women, probably used in prayers for safe childbirth and fertility.
Minoan goddess


For all their creativity all these cultures died out, leaving ruins large and small, as will no doubt happen to us too.

For more on the Jōmon there’s a wonderful British Museum catalogue, The Power of Dogu, Ceramic Figures from Ancient Japan, edited by Simon Kaner. You can also see Jōmon pots at the British Museum.

The Jōmon also feature all too briefly in my The Shortest History of Japan, to be published next June.

Circles of Stone ran from September 30 2022 to September 3rd 2023 at the Stonehenge Visitors’ Centre

Legacies of Beauty: Archaeological Treasures from Japan was at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum from June 2nd 2023 to Sunday September 24th 2023

The pictures of the Ōyu stone circles are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. All other pictures are by me, taken at the two exhibitions, at Stonehenge and Heraklion.

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and an inveterate traveller. She is the author of many books on Japan, including The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death, out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

The Man Who Slew Wat Tyler by Laurie Graham

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William Walworth is remembered chiefly as the man who slew Wat Tyler in an impetuous and possibly unnecessary show of concern for the safety of a fourteen year-old king, Richard II. It earned him an immediate knighthood, on the spot, at Smithfield. That was in 1381.

Ten years earlier, the Carthusian House of the Salutation of the Mother of God, had had less dramatic but nonetheless genuine reason to be grateful to Walworth. He had provided money towards the construction of the first cell for a choir monk.

The establishment of a Carthusian monastery just outside the walls of the City of London was an unusual project. Carthusian houses were traditionally built in isolated locations. But, the idea of a house of constant prayer alongside the place where so many victims of the 1348 plague lay buried was a popular one. It had the approval of the then king (Edward III). The Priory of St Bartholomew donated the land. The next thing that was required was money to start building. And so began a fund-raising campaign among the wealthiest Londoners. 

The driving force was Sir Walter Manny, a courtier and member of the royal inner circle. He had been Queen Philippa’s Esquire Carver and the Keeper of her Hounds. After many bureaucratic delays, Sir Walter recruited William Walworth to be a donor of funds. Walworth was, at this point in his life, on the up and up. He had prospered as a saltfish merchant and member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and had recently become Member of Parliament for the City of London.

Manny and Walworth pooled resources and in 1371, construction began on a cell for the monastery’s first Prior. Not, perhaps, the kind of monk’s cell you might imagine. More like a little two-storey cottage. That became known as Cell A, now lost, thanks to the depredations of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and subsequent repurposing of the site. The following year William Walworth paid for another cell to be built; Cell B, of which remnants - its doorway, tiled threshold and food hatch - have survived in what is now The Charterhouse. The floor tiles are Flemish, as was Walter Manny. Perhaps he gave his friend Walworth some decorating suggestions? 
The monastery took 60 years to complete and during that time Walworth sponsored a further four cells, either directly from his own wealth or by persuading acquaintances to leave bequests.

At the end of May 1381, with the population in revolt against a poll tax and Wat Tyler’s band of Kentish protestors heading to London, young King Richard bolted to the safety of the Tower. William Walworth, at that time Lord Mayor of the City, called out the City Guard, but the men of Kent pressed on and, on June 15th, assembled at Smithfield to make their demands to the King.

 

The meeting seemed to start well. The King was amenable. What happened next is contested. Did Wat Tyler become over-familiar with the King? Did he spit, disrespectfully, in his direction? Did one of the King’s entourage respond by insulting Tyler? In a heated moment someone made the first move, perhaps Tyler, perhaps Walworth who had ridden out to Smithfield with the King.

According to one version of the story, William Walworth despatched Wat Tyler immediately with the thrust of a dagger. Another version is that Tyler, seriously wounded, was carried into St Bart’s hospital, but was soon dragged from there by Walworth’s men and publicly executed. Whatever the actual timeline, Tyler perished and his dispirited followers went home. It was effectively the end of the revolt.

Was Walworth a dagger-happy oppressor of working men or a good citizen and brave defender of his monarch? Whatever the truth, he was rewarded with a knighthood and a pension and is today counted as one of London’s worthies. The north-eastern pavilion on Holborn Viaduct, linking the viaduct to Farringdon Road by stairs, is named after him and bears his statue.

 

And, at the Charterhouse, though his coat of arms has been erased, we still have the doorway to Cell B, whose occupants prayed for the mortal soul and peaceful repose of their benefactor, until 160 years of monastic life came to a bloody Tudor end. 





 

 

 

 

Caroline Herschel - by Sue Purkiss

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 I've been interested for some time in the network of artists and scientists who coalesced around the wealthy, charismatic and imposing figure of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks launched his career (which was initially as a botanist) first by voyaging to Newfoundland and Labrador to study their natural history, and then by travelling with Captain Cook, in 1768, to explore the southern seas. He later became a friend of King George 111, was instrumental in developing the botanic gardens at Kew, and, among many other interests and activities, became the President of the Royal Society (the national academy for the advancement of science).

He was very good at spotting and encouraging talent. And one of the young scientists who came to his notice was William Herschel. William was an astronomer - as was his younger sister, Caroline.

William came from a family of musicians in Hanover. He moved to England in 1757 and initially worked as a musician, first in the north and then in Bath, where he became organist at the Octagon Chapel and Director of Public Concerts. It was during this time that he invited his younger sister Caroline to come and live with him - his brother Alexander also shared the house, which is now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.

A silhouette of Caroline as a young woman.


The Herschels' house, now a museum. 

Caroline was seventeen when she arrived in England. She had been very close to William and must have been devastated when he left home - particularly as her mother, who really only had time for her oldest son, Jacob, neglected the child. Caroline was treated as a servant: she contracted typhoid as a child, as a result of which her growth was stunted; she was tiny, just a little over four feet tall. But things took a turn for the better when William came back to Hanover and rescued her. He taught her to play music and to sing - so well that she was offered a post with an opera company in Birmingham.

But by this time, Caroline and William were both becoming fascinated with astronomy. (I've noticed that there's often a connection between music and science, though I don't know enough about either to understand why this is.) William learnt how to grind and polish lenses, and built increasingly large telescopes which he used to sweep the night sky. Caroline was initially his recorder and note taker, but she progressed to making her own observations.

The garden behind the museum.

One day, a friend of Banks named William Watson noticed Herschel in the street in Bath, making observations with his telescope. Intrigued, he fell into conversation with the astronomer, and later brought him to the notice of both Banks and the Astronomer Royal, Neville Maskelyne. Not long after that, Herschel discovered a new planet, which was eventually named Uranus. This caused a great stir, not just in Britain, but further afield on the continenet too. Meanwhile Caroline was making her own discoveries in the night sky: she specialised in finding comets.

In 1782, they both moved to Datchet, and initially William, but later Caroline, came to be employed as astronomers by the King. Caroline was the first woman in England to be honoured with a government position, and the first to be given a salary as an astronomer. Imagine, for a child neglected by her own mother to have achieved so much, and in a country where she arrived not knowing a word of English - it must have felt wonderful!

But there was a shadow over this period of her life. Hitherto, Caroline had worked closely with her beloved brother, and had managed his house for him too. But now, William decided to marry - and everything had to change. Fortunately, Caroline's salary, though not large, allowed her to be independent. But these were difficult years for her; so much so that she later destroyed her journals for this period.

Caroline in later life.

But eventually, she became reconciled to the marriage, and to William's wife, Mary - and she delighted in their son, John, with whom she later collaborated when he too became an astronomer. She lived a very long life, dying at ninety eight.

The Herschels' house in Bath is now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, and I went to visit it a few months ago. It's not that easy to find - it doesn't really advertise its presence - but it's well worth seeking out: it's quite charming, and really gives you a sense of what life was like there for Caroline and her brother. Somehow, I feel very fond of Caroline. She must have been a remarkable woman to have achieved so much, after such a difficult start, and in a time when high achievers were generally men.

Mr. Keynes' Revolution and Mr Keynes' Dance by E.J.Barnes. Review by Penny Dolan

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The central character of E.J. Barnes’ two historical novels

is the economist John Maynard Keynes:  

‘transformative thinker, government adviser, financial speculator . . . and one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century.’ 


                                             Mr Keynes' Revolution: The compelling historical novel about one of the ... 

The first, MR KEYNES REVOLUTION, creates a picture of the clever, complex man at the centre of the intellectual Bloomsbury group. Maynard has close relationships with the artist Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, her lover Duncan Grant and others as they move between their busy lives in Edwardian London and the artistic freedom of Charleston, a secluded farmhouse on the South Downs. This circle of friendship is suddenly disturbed when the homosexual Keynes falls in love with his Lilac Fairy, Lydia Lopokova, a Russian ballerina. Lydia, who has fled the Revolution, is kind, practical and worldly, and the sisters feel little empathy towards her.

Alongside the dramas of these and other characters, the novel follows Keynes’ public life, from when he walks out of the International WWI Paris Peace Talks in protest at the punitive terms imposed on the defeated Germany. Returning to his academic life in Cambridge, with his parents close by, Keynes starts developing the economic theory that will bring him back to political and economic attention.

I particularly enjoyed the way that the novel flowed between these private and public lives, illustrating the social impacts of the political clashes of these decades. Although the conflicts E.J. Barnes describes are less 'heroic' than scenes of soldiery, she shows that Maynard Keynes’ battles for sound economic practices were also relevant to the lives of small ‘s’ society.

                                                      Mr Keynes' Revolution: The compelling historical novel about one of the ...

Ther second novel, MR KEYNES’ DANCE, follows the now-married Keynes and Lydia as they face all the changes of the post war years. I had been waiting for this second novel to appear, and I was not disappointed.The pair move into Tilton, a farmhouse not for from Charleston, where they keep pigs, garden and grow vegetables. Vanessa is too jealous and Virginia too troubled by snobbery for them to act as any more than social friends. Will the group ever be at peace again?

 Vintage 30s Maid Costume / 30s Servant Dress / Downton Abbey / 1930s ... 

Meanwhile, a contrasting thread continues through the interweaving the lives of the young servant girls, often moved between one or other of the ‘Bloomsbury’ homes. Lydia herself is often more at ease with servants than with Chartwell and company. Drawn from working-class backgrounds in Wales and London, the novels show the servants hopes and social awakenings developing during the decade.

The second novel takes place against the wider powerful political changes arriving between the wars: the General Strike, the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression and others. They all drive Keynes onwards, to working harder and harder, analysing fresh economic theories and solutions. 

                                                                                                         1926 United Kingdom general strike - Wikipedia

We see the world beyond Sussex and London: visits to Lydia’s mother in Russia show them that Stalin’s regime is far removed from the idealised dream of Communism and Keynes sees Hitler and the anti-semitic Nazi party taking control in demoralised Germany. Finally, as the century grows darker, Lydia and Keynes’ love of theatre, music and the arts become even more essential to them and to the futures of others.

I was really pleased to have read MR KEYNES DANCE and MR KEYNES REVOLUTION

Through her own economic studies and knowledge, E.J.Barnes has set each title neatly within an interesting historical frame, creating a warm, compelling picture of an unlikely marriage, and of a pair whose different pasts give a worldly and touching tolerance to their deep love for each other. Such a pleasure.

 Penny Dolan 

                                                  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ad/68/04/ad680445d0730cb647bcbb8544bceeb1.jpg 

                                                             Lydia as Petrushka

You can read my earlier History Girls interview with E.J. Barnes here.




Earth Mysteries - Torre d'en Galmés - Menorca - Celia Rees

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At the beginning of October, I went to Menorca on a Yoga Retreat. Weather perfect, lovely place and I love the Balearics. I've spent time on Ibiza, but I’d never been to Menorca. It is smaller than Ibiza or Majorca, less busy and less well known. 


Apart from the yoga and the prospect of a little sun before winter sets in and the storms start rolling in from the Atlantic, I wanted to see the megalithic sites that are unique to this island. I'd read about them years ago in a book about Earth Mysteries and they were on my list of places I'd like visit. We have plenty of megalithic sites in Britain and I've visited a lot of them, but so many have been worn away, degraded, ironed out by ploughing, their stones robbed for later building by people who had no respect or reverence for those who had occupied the land before them. 


Menorca is a small island and for much of its history sparsely populated, so much survives here. It was also isolated, at the far eastern end of the Balearic archipelago and distant from Continental Europe. The first settlers apparently arrived in the Early Bronze Age and by the end of the 2nd millennium, it had begun to develop its own distinctive culture with large settlements, roads, dwelling places and open spaces surrounding tower shaped monumental structures called talayots. 

Torre D'en Galmés is one such settlement. It occupies an extensive site and is the highest point on the island. It is on the southern coast, looking out to sea. All along this coast are similar sites. Apart from the tower-like talayots, there are stone enclosures, containing monumental structures, Taula (table in Catalan), huge slabs of stone topped by massive stone lintels, eerily reminiscent of Stonehenge and the even more mysterious  Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. What was their purpose? Table? Platform? Altar? Who constructed them? How? And most of all, why? The same mysteries surround these sites as swirl about so many other remnants of ancient cultures that have disappeared from our memory. They suggest many questions but answer very few.  

 

Very little is known about the purpose of these impressive stone enclosures and the significance of the monumental Taula that they enclose. Some kind of sanctuary where the community could gather to perform celebrations, ceremonies and rituals, but of what nature and to what purpose? There are so many enigmas - the massive size of the monolithic slabs which form the Taula, made of local stone but how did they get the stones there, how did they form them, how did they erect them? As with all these enigmatic remnants of the past, we don't know and will probably never know.



The mystery here might be to do with the positioning of the site. It faces due south and at night, particularly at a time with no light pollution, it would have had an unparalleled view of the southern night sky, Maybe it had something to do with the position of the stars, alignments with a constellation or constellations that the people here regarded as significant.

Eventually, of course, this distinctive culture disappeared. Maybe the stars they saw as so important, lost that vital alignment and the site was abandoned. Or maybe the process was more gradual; as the island became subsumed into the ever expanding Roman Empire, its distinctive difference was erased. The indigenous culture would have survived for a time but gradually the traditions and beliefs would have been lost and the purpose and function of these monumental structures would have receded, like so much else, into the enigma of the past. 

   

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com



Of a Cave Unknown By L.J. Trafford

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I have spent the past ten years writing about Ancient Rome. I’ve written four novels, three non-fiction books, three short stories and a total of 27 History Girls articles. Somebody really should stop me. After my last History Girls article about Ancient Rome got hit with a content warning, which I suppose I was asking for given the title; How Depraved was Ancient Rome? (the answer being depraved enough to twitch the antennas of Google’s sensitivity robots) I decided that for my next article I would write something much more wholesome, more family friendly, less likely to offend. Which pretty much rules Ancient Rome out as subject.

Instead, I have decided to cast a historical eye over my hometown of Royston. Nobody ever invokes the Google censor robots writing about local history, do they?



My Home Town.
Royston is a small town of around 17,000 people situated on the Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire border and it’s somewhere I have lived for the last 12 years. The sign that greets you on driving into Royston neatly sums up what my home town has to offer to the would-be visitor.




It’s a historic market town! It has some gardens and a historic church (aren’t all churches generally historical?) There’s parking and toilets and the possibility of eating, drinking and having a cup of tea. And then there is it nearly at the very bottom of Royston attractions, beneath the toilets (which frankly I do not particularly recommend) museum and cave. What says you? A cave? What do you mean a cave? Why would there be a cave in the heart of East Anglia, a terrain so flat that it’s version of hills are nothing more than a slight upward incline and is situated at least 60 miles from the cost?

And here lies a story, a real life mystery and one that really deserves a better more impressive road sign.


The Discovery of Royston Cave.

Scouring my local bookshop, Bows Books, I stumbled across a pamphlet about Royston Cave written by one Joseph Bedlam. Bedlam, a local Royston boy, is an interesting man. A one-time lawyer turned parliamentarian and campaigner against slavery, in his retirement he forged an interest in archaeology and wrote several pamphlets on finds in his local area. Including the one I picked up in Bows Books on the cave.

Bedlam’s account is written only 100 years after the initial discovery of the cave and it is quite marvellous. Take as an example the extremely diplomatic way Bedlam completely demolishes a certain academic’s stated view on Royston’s history:‘Camden was not quite accurate on that subject; and he may have been misled as to the origin of the Cross.’ Which is Victorian gentleman talk for Camden is both wrong and an idiot. Burn.

According to Bedlam it was in August 1742 that a gang of workmen given the task of erecting a bench in Royston’s butter and cheese market happened upon something curious. It was a round millstone with a hole in its middle only a foot into their digging. Obviously, it would have to be moved, else where would the bench go. But on prising the millstone up the workman found something strange underneath it, there was a shaft. A two-foot-wide man-made shaft that they discovered, by dropping in a plumb line, was at least 16 feet deep. Gazing down into their discovery the workmen noted the ledges carved into the sides of the shaft at regular intervals, they looked uncannily like steps on a ladder, but where did those steps lead to? There was only one way to find out. Send a small boy down there to investigate!

In defence of those workmen this is an era where it was commonplace and indeed expected to send small boys into narrow tunnels, because what are they good for otherwise? This small boy evidently proved himself a useless first responder since they then lower in a ‘slender man with a lighted candle.’ Beldam fails to mention whether the boy or the slender man willingly volunteered for this mission. Nor does he give the boy or the slender man a name, which seems jolly unfair since they are the first people to set eyes on what the workmen have accidentally uncovered.

The nameless slender man does a much better job reporting back than the boy, possibly because they’d at least given him a candle. He tells them the shaft leads to a cavity around 4 feet in height that is filled with loose earth. There was a moment’s pause as everyone digested the slender man’s report, and then a collective conclusion was reached: ‘The people now entertained a notion of a great treasure hid in this place,’ says Bedlam.

One can imagine the excitement of those townspeople, their day was turning out to be way more interesting than the daily purchase of cheese and butter. It must have been akin to how Howard Carter felt when he gazed upon the door of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Or the Italians as they began to slowly uncover the majesty of Pompeii. Or Indiana Jones in that bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they find the Ark. Although rest assured that nobody’s face melts off in this tale, thankfully.

It’s amazing the motivation the thought of riches beyond your dreams can inspire, the townspeople working together managed to extract 200 buckets of soil by nightfall. ‘They were quite exhausted by it,’ reports back Mr Bedlam. I don’t doubt it. But what was it? What was it that lay beneath that millstone? What had they uncovered?

Disappointingly it wasn’t a room stacked up with golden treasures like Howard Carter had found behind his door in 1922. What they had found was a cylindrical space 17 feet in diameter with a domed roof some 25 feet high. The most striking feature of this manmade cave, and one as worthy as Howard Carter’s discovery, were the walls of the cave. For on them were carved images, hundreds of images from the floor right up to where the domed ceiling began covering pretty much every spare inch of stone.

From Joseph Bedlam's book, a sketch of Royston Cave.
Wikicomms, public domain



The Carvings

We’ll let Joseph Bedlam have the first word ‘The various groups and figures we are now about to describe are irregularly distributed : they are of different sizes : refer to different subjects : are probably the production of different artists : and exhibit little unity of design.’ In other words Royston Cave is no Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, as Bedlam again bluntly puts it‘They harmonize chiefly by their general air of antiquity and the quaintness which belongs to the efforts of a rude and superstitious age.’

From Joseph Bedlam's book, a sketch of some of the carvings that adorn Royston Cave.
Wikicomms public domain.


This lack of artistry, skill and talent of whoever carved the images in the cave is informative in itself. It tells us what we are not looking at. We are not looking at the commission of a skilled professional artist the likes of whose works were visible in churches of the time. That different people at different times added to the images ad hocly and often not in keeping to the earlier styles hints that this is not a formal, recognised space.

But it is the images themselves that give us the biggest clues as to what Royston Cave was; they are all to do with Christianity. There is an image of the crucifixion, St Katherine, St Christopher, St Laurence, the conversion of St Paul, amongst many others that have been identified. Outside of the depictions of Christian martyrs who come handily with their own iconography that makes it easier for them to be identified, e.g. St Katherine is always pictured with the wheel she was tortured to death on, there are various figures that could be King Richard the Lionheart, King Henry II and his Queen Eleanor and one who could be Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Scholars examining the clothing and armour of the figurines have concluded that they belong to the mid 1300s. Possibly.

Further drawings of the Royston Cave carvings by Joseph Bedlam.
Wikicomms public domain


Given the nature of the vast majority of the carvings we can conclude that the purpose of the cave was surely religious in nature. But how exactly? And why had the cave been filled in, covered over and deliberately hidden from view? It was time to get the experts in.


Who's theory is correct? There's only one way to find out FIGHT!!!
The discovery of Royston Cave caused a sensation amongst archaeologists and historians of the day and they clambered to answer some of the questions the discovery of the cave had raised. These questions were the cause of an academic bust up that our friend Joseph Bedlam again uses his great tact to describe. ‘So great was the curiosity occasioned by this singular occurrence’ begins Bedlam meaning the discovery of the cave in 1742 ‘that it immediately gave rise to a warm controversy between two eminent archaeologists of the day, Dr William Stukeley and the Rev Charles Parkin, in the course of which though both parties displayed abundant learning and ingenuity, the cause of the truth suffered much from their mutual loss of temper and the too eager desire on both sides to establish a rival theory.’

Stukeley’s theory was that Royston Cave had been the private chapel of Lady Roisia from whom the town, Royston got its name. There is in Royston near the Jolly Postie Restaurant a large round stone known as the Royse stone which is said to be all that is left of a cross that stood there dedicated to Lady Roisia.


The so-called Royse Stone
Picture by John Patridge CC-BY

   
Parkin did not agree. His theory was that the cave was a hermitage, that is the home of a local hermit. A hermit was a man who had opted to live apart from society in solitude in order to concentrate on contemplating religious matters.
Parkin published his theory under the polite title An Answer to, or Remarks upon, Dr. Stukeley's Origines Roystonianæ.
Stukeley responded to Parkin’s theory in a paper entitled Discourses on Antiquities in Britain. Number II. Which caused Parkin to hit back with another paper, this time entitled A Reply to the Peevish, Weak, and Malevolent Objections brought by Dr. Stukeley in his Origines Roystonianæ
Meow.


The Fighty Monks
Another theory, and one that is killer popular on You Tube, is that the cave was a chapel/initiation temple for the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar get dragged into all kinds of conspiracy theories/mysteries which makes them perfect fodder for You Tube and the discovery of strange caves with odd carvings which don’t appear in any historical records.

Historically, in the proper sense that involves actual evidence for your theories, the Knights Templar were a religious order of monks founded in the 12th century. But these were monks with a difference; they were fighty monks! Originally stationed in the Holy land their role was to physically protect visiting Christian pilgrims. Later we find them being very fighty in the crusades. 
As well as being fighty, the Knights Templar were also extremely wealthy and it was this talent in making money that led to their downfall. King Philip IV of France having become indebted to the Templars sought a novel way to get out of paying back the cash he owed – he persuaded/threatened Pope Clement to declare that the Templars were heretics. With an accompanying demand that all the Christian monarchs under Papal influence should arrest the templars and seize their assets. It was a full scale persecution, with those who were captured being horribly tortured and executed. Unsurprisingly many Templars fled to parts unknown and kept themselves hidden.
Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Knights Templar, burnt alive as a heretic in Paris.
Wood Engraving by J David. From Wellcome Collection


That’s what we know about them historically from the surviving evidence. In recent times the Knights Templar have been the subject of numerous books of dubious research that claim they were the recipients of secret knowledge relating to the Holy Grail, the Ark of the covenant, the Turin shroud, the true nature of Christ, freemasonry and probably the solution to every single Wordle until the end of time. For many the idea that the Templars were sitting on dynamite info that could seriously damage Christianity is a more convincing reason why Pope Clement was so determined to wipe them all out, rather than Philip IV just didn’t fancy paying back his loans.

In the context of busily hoovering up cataclysmic secrets that they refused to divulge even when they led to their own destruction I can quite believe the Templars found the time to travel to a small Hertfordshire town to deliberately build an underground cave covered in mysterious symbols that they would leave no explanation for. It’s exactly the sort of maddening thing they would do, smugly, in the full knowledge that people would write about it for centuries to come.
On the other hand history is awash with stories of petty men whose pettiness accidentally delivers world changing events. So I can quite believe that Philip IV would happily watch Templars being horribly killed just because he thought their interest rates were crimininally unfair to him.



The Draw of the Cave
Treasure wise the townspeople of Royston were to be disappointed, for all that was recovered from the cave in the way of movable objects distinctly lacked value; there was the fragments of a drinking vessel, animal bones, a human skull and some bits of brass. Certainly not enough to construct a blockbuster exhibition out of that would tour the world.

But even if nobody was going to get instantly rich beyond their wildest dreams there was money to be made from the cave. In 1784 local builder, Thomas Watson dug the tunnel entrance to the Cave that is still used today, issuing this grand statement: ‘T. Watson respectfully informs the public in general and the antiquarians in particular, that he has opened (for their inspection) a very commodious entrance into that ancient Subterraneous cavern in Royston, Herts. which has ever been esteemed by all lovers of antiquity as the greatest curiosity of the kind in Europe. T. Watson hopes that all those who may think proper to visit the above Cave will have their curiosity gratified to the full extent. The passage leading to it is itself extremely curious, being hewn out of the solid rock. N.B. - It may be seen any hour of the day.’

Seen at any hour of the day for a charge of six pence per person.

One of the many mysterious carvings in Royston cave.
Wikicomms CC-by



Bedlam has the delightful story Watson’s wife who designated herself as some kind tour guide/seer to the cave and was ‘accustomed to descant on the exploits and piety of its heroes and heroines, mixing up the legends of saints [] and confidently supporting her statements by quotations from history, which she humorously called The Book of Kings’. Which had to be worth six pence

Bedlam also mentions ‘numerous, distinguished personages’ who visited the cave, including the French King Louis XVIII. For those of you not so hot on your King Louis’ (and by god who is given the huge number of them); Louis XVIII is the Louis who was brother to the Louis that got guillotined during the French revolution and who was brought in post Napolean when the monarchy was restored. It was whilst he was in exile in the years between his brother being executed and Napolean being defeated that he took the time to travel to my small home town to visit the cave.

Portrait of Louis XVIII by Angelique Mongez
Public Domain. Wikicomms

  


So what is Royston Cave?

We don’t know. But the not knowing is what makes it special. To write history is to trawl through literary accounts, local registries, endless inscriptions and documents. That such a cave could exist beneath a busy market without anyone knowing it was there is quite something. I get a kick every time I drive down Melbourn Road in Royston knowing that a few feet beneath my wheels is the cave, silent and empty and hanging onto its secrets. That’s it’s draw; that we don’t know why it was built or why it was destroyed. There hangs the tantalising prospect for every visitor to the cave that maybe they could be the one to finally solve the mystery.


P.S. I’m with Parkin and his hermit theory.

Recommened Reading:
Royston Cave by Joseph Bedlam
The Royston Cave website has lots of information on both the carvings and all the latest theories https://www.roystoncave.co.uk/
 


L.J. Trafford's latest book on Ancient Rome entitled Ancient Rome's Worst Emperors is available from 30th November.
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Medieval climate change by Carolyn Hughes

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A couple of weeks ago here in the UK, we put our clocks back one hour from daylight saving time. So now it’s more or less dark by 4.30pm. I know that some people suffer from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, brought on by the shorter days. I’m not one of them but, even so, I do always have a sense of descending gloom at this time of year, which I know won’t be relieved until the spring. 

But I do take pleasure in any splendid sunny days, such as the morning I am writing this, when the sky is utterly blue and the sun is bright, casting a glorious golden light on those deciduous trees in my garden and beyond whose leaves are turning brown. I suspect it is not all that warm outside but, later on, I will don my coat and maybe a scarf and gloves, and go for a reviving walk.

However, as so often when weather is on my mind, my thoughts turn to the folk I write about in my novels, people who lived in the fourteenth century. For us, shorter days may signal the arrival of a period of “hunkering down”, but we can to a considerable extent still get on with our lives without too much disruption. We generally have on-tap heating and lighting in our homes, and even travel and going to work are mostly manageable (in temperate climes like the UK, at any rate). But, for my Meonbridge folk, especially the poorer ones, shorter days meant fewer hours in which to work, especially outdoors. Obviously, rural peasants were farmers, so there would be work to do. They would wrap up as best they could to go out and harvest winter vegetables, fertilise fields, repair buildings and fences, collect fuel for fires and, if they had animals, feed them.

But then they had to retreat indoors, and it is hard to imagine, isn’t it, how restrictive life must have been? With only a wood fire burning in the central hearth, undoubtedly emitting a good deal of smoke but possibly not all that much heat, the long evenings and nights would often have been very cold and “hunkering down” might have meant wrapping yourself in every garment you possessed (which might not have been all that many), and huddling around the fire.

The lack of light too must have severely limited what people could do indoors. Spinning or sewing, or any craft or repair work, would have been difficult to manage by candlelight, or, worse, by rushlight. And, in the depths of winter, when bright sunny days might be infrequent, the days too would offer little opportunity for industrious activity. Windows in peasant cottages were few and small and, if shutters or blinds were closed to keep out the winter weather, it would be dark indoors, even at midday. If outdoor work was not required, then confinement inside must surely have been excessively tedious!

I don’t have any special insight into how such medieval lives would have been lived, or whether indeed people then suffered from SAD, not that they would recognise it, of course. But bringing my imagination to bear, as of course I do when writing my novels, leads me to assume that winter life would have been uncomfortable and dull for them at best. Not of course that they knew any different, so undoubtedly they did simply get on with life as best they could. 

If you’d like a little more insight into winter life in Medieval Europe, this article might be of interest: https://www.medievalists.net/2020/12/medieval-peasants-winter/

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP28, is scheduled to take place at the end of this month (November) in Dubai.  I can scarcely contemplate the difficulties the world faces in tackling the problems caused by centuries of industrialisation, but I won’t comment on that, as I have no expertise to offer on reasons or solutions.

But, again, because I spend my days “living with” people from the fourteenth century, I am bound to think about how their lives might have been affected by particularly challenging weather situations.

Recently, Storm Ciarán battered the southern counties of the United Kingdom. Some countries of the world of course suffer frequent violent storms, with horrendous winds and torrential rain, more or less as a matter of course, but we are less used to it here. As a result of the storm, there was a good deal of flooding, bringing misery and great discomfort to many people, not to say fear at what the rest of the winter’s weather might throw at them, for winter has barely started.

Unusual or extreme weather did not in fact often affect my Meonbridge people, for in the period in which my Chronicles are set, the middle couple of decades of the fourteenth century, the weather was, if hardly benign, not often especially extreme. In the early part of the century, there had been such torrential and unceasing rains, and flooding so widespread, that harvests were dire and animals died, and the Great Famine stalked the land for three years. This was the beginning of the “Little Ice Age”, an extended period of cooling, particularly in northern Europe, which lasted until 1850, with periods of relatively mild weather and others of more extreme cold.

However, frightening weather was not unknown even in the middle part of the fourteenth century. At the end of my book, Children’s Fate, an extraordinary wind that affected not only the British Isles but also northern Europe did cause great disquiet and, in some places, severe damage, disruption and death.

This is how I describe it in my Author’s Note:

“Plague left England in December 1361, though it was still in Scotland. In Hampshire, I think it would have passed on by the autumn. By Christmas, people were presumably beginning to think the time had come at last when they could move on from horror and disaster.

But, two weeks later, on 15th January 1362, came yet another cataclysm: the Saint Maurus’ Day storm, a wind – the “Great Wind” – one of the most violent extra-tropical storms ever to hit the British Isles and northern Europe. It was so strong that it toppled church spires, destroyed houses and mills, and caused huge damage to farms and forests across the south of England.

A chronicler of the time said it was “as if the Day of Judgement were at hand… no one knew where he could safely hide, for church towers, windmills, and many dwelling-houses collapsed to the ground”. Norwich Cathedral lost its wooden spire, Salisbury Cathedral was so badly damaged the bishop appealed to the Pope for funds, and St Albans Abbey was destroyed.

The storm was in fact much more damaging in the Low Countries, where the event was called the Grote Mandrenke, the “Great Drowning of Men”. Storm surges caused sea floods that washed away towns and villages, leaving tens of thousands dead.

But, following on from months of plague, one can perhaps appreciate why some people might have thought the end of the world had finally come.”

Storm in the Sea by Pieter Mulier, c 1690. In Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
 
And here is an extract from Children’s Fate showing my imagination’s take on the Saint Maurus’ Day storm:

“Eudo was humming as he made preparations as usual for the office of Vespers. It was already fairly dark but, chancing to look up at the great window behind the altar, he thought it looked beyond the glass more like midnight than late afternoon, albeit it was the middle of January.

It was then he noticed too that the brisk breeze of earlier seemed to be blowing harder. He could hear the wind quite clearly from the chancel, whereas normally the thick walls of the church stifled any sounds of weather. It was a while yet before the office had to begin, and he hurried to the porch door to look outside.

Unthinking, he lifted the door’s great latch, and was almost knocked off his feet, as the door, heavy as it was, blew open. The edge caught him in the chest and, for a few moments, he was unable to catch his breath. Holding fast to the door, he eased it open sufficiently for him to step out into the porch, then closed it carefully behind him, ensuring the latch had dropped. He moved towards the porch’s front, his feet shuffling through all manner of debris presumably whisked in by the wind.

It was indeed as black as midnight out beyond the building. Yet, as his eyes accustomed to the dark, he realised the churchyard yews were swaying wildly, and small branches of other trees, and objects he could not identify, were being tossed about, spinning through the air. He clapped his hands over his ears to muffle the din of it.

He had surely never heard or witnessed such a wind before.

Eudo turned and hurried back into the church. He had to lean hard upon the door to close it, and he again made sure the latch had fallen, and hoped the iron fastener was strong enough to hold.

He had no intention of trying to get home to the parsonage whilst this storm was raging. He suspected there would be no Vespers congregation now, for surely no one would venture forth in this? Nonetheless, he returned to the chancel to complete his preparations. He would of course recite the office regardless of the absence of any worshippers.

But, as he waited to see if any of his congregation did come, the wind outside seemed to gather force, and it fairly roared around the walls of the chancel. He recoiled as flung debris struck the glass of the great window, just feet away from where he stood at the altar, and his heart raced with anxiety.

When it was clear no one was coming, Eudo did wonder for a moment if he might give Vespers a miss. The wind was so loud, it was likely he would not even be able to hear himself. Yet, God would surely know if he did not perform his duty and, anyway, he really did not want to leave the safety of the church.

[Eudo tries to recite Vespers…]

Yet he made little progress with the office as the roaring swelled, and his heart thudded within his breast. His throat went dry and he could no longer speak the words, even if he could remember them. And his memory was now distracted by a new persistent noise, the clattering of what were surely tiles being torn from the church roof and thrown down onto the ground. Unable to concentrate, Eudo looked up towards the rafters, but the chancel candles cast too dim a light for him to see so high above him. Despite the raw cold inside the church, his face grew hot. What if all the tiles were stripped away? Would the wind then strip away the rafters too and invade the church? Of course he had no way of knowing.

But his efforts were undone when some object, much larger than the debris flung at it already, crashed into the great window, the only glazing in the church, and the glass exploded, showering Eudo with sharp and stinging fragments.

Eudo screamed and threw himself prostrate upon the floor before the altar, wrapping his arms over his head. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa,’ he cried out, weeping. ‘Oh God, forgive me, for I have sinned…’

For surely it was God who had sent this terrible wind…

Perhaps the pestilence had not been chastisement enough. God saw mankind had not learned its lesson, but had simply returned to their old ways… Such a wind as this could wreak destruction across the land, topple great oaks, rip up fields, fling beasts into the air, demolish houses and even bring down mighty churches. God had the power to destroy the Earth, if mankind no longer merited it…

Yet maybe it was not mankind…? Was God chastising only him? For continuing to sin, week in, week out… For promising to fulfil the penance, whilst knowing he would not do so…

Another roar around the chancel walls brought a swirl of flying debris through the shattered glass, small branches, twigs, dead leaves, shingle, and fragments of every substance, all scooped up from the ground and now tumbling down upon his back.

Eudo fell to sobbing, drumming his feet against the cold stone floor.

The Day of Judgement most surely was at hand. But was it for mankind, or for Eudo Oxenbrigge alone?”


The Last Judgement (detail) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1525/1530. In Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, USA.  Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons



The priest Eudo is a sinner, and is perhaps justified in his terror (even if his rational mind might realise the storm couldn’t possibly be aimed solely and specifically at him). But I’m sure it wasn’t only sinners who were terrified by the destruction caused by storms. For everyone assumed it was a punishment sent by God; indeed, bishops told them it was His punishment, and bid them to atone for whatever sins they had committed and to pray daily for God’s mercy. Amidst all their fear and agony, they believed what was happening was their fault: they had brought it upon themselves, and prayer was all they had to try to avert the punishment and expiate their guilt.

Coastal areas in particular across the world are today much threatened by climate change, because of rising sea levels. Flood defences are being constructed everywhere to try and mitigate the damage. The east coast of England has always been notorious for suffering from erosion, which has been going on since the end of the Ice Age, when sea levels rose dramatically from the effects of melting ice. Storms, particularly those at sea, can cause devastation to such low-lying areas. Many towns and villages have been lost over the centuries.

A famous one is Dunwich in Suffolk, an example of a once thriving town that almost totally disappeared in the late thirteenth century. Dunwich was a great port of medieval England, with several churches, hospitals and two seats in parliament. The town battled constantly against the sea. In 1328 a great storm blocked up the port and by the 16th century the town and its houses were regularly falling into the sea. Today all that remains is a quaint village with a tiny population, which is still under threat from the sea. In East Yorkshire, there used to be a seaport called Ravenser Odd. It was too a thriving place, with warehouses, and cargo ships and fishing vessels going in and out, customs officials, a market and an annual fair. But by 1346 already two thirds of this busy town had been lost to the sea from the effects of storms and erosion. Then, in that great Saint Maurus’ Day storm of January 1362, Ravenser Odd vanished altogether. 

The erosion of England’s east coast does of course continue, as melting ice at the poles once more threatens sea levels. And our present changing climate will continue to threaten us, even here in the temperate isles of Britain, with more storms, more floods, more grief for many.

Much like our ancestors, we know that we – aka mankind – are (at least partly) to blame for what is happening to the world’s climate. But even if we too have “brought it upon ourselves”, our accountability is obviously not the same as theirs. We do not believe our sinfulness is at the root of our culpability, nor that the change in the weather has been instigated by some wrathful divine being. Moreover, we have options other than prayer to alleviate our present situation, for we do understand its causes and have some notion of the sort of remedies required to try to mitigate its worst effects.

Yet, as always, what I find so thought-provoking is to recognise the differences between our medieval forebears and ourselves, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the similarities and connections.

 

The Deluge by Francis Danby c. 1840. In Tate Britain, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons



The Deluge by J. M. W. Turner, 1805, Tate Britain, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons









Tullia Minor - Rome's Murderous 'Bad Girl' by Elisabeth Storrs

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Tullia runs over the Corpse of her Father by Jean Bardin (1765)

In previous posts, I’ve told the stories of exemplary women of Roman legend such as Lucretia, Verginia and Tanaquil. In The Legend of Tarpeia – a  Roman Morality Tale, I’ve also related the fate of the greedy traitoress, Tarpeia, Today, I tell the tale of the ultimate ‘bad girl’ – Tullia Minor – the last queen of Rome.

The historian, Livy, described Tullia as ‘ferox’ - savage. What did she do to be branded so? Try sororicide, mariticide and parricide then add mutilating a corpse to her list of crimes!

Tullia Minor was the younger daughter of King Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome. A son of an enslaved Latin noblewoman, Servius ascended the throne due to the influence of Queen Tanaquil, a gifted Etruscan seer, who foresaw his greatness (see The Legend of Tanaquil and the Auspicious Flight of Birds). After Tanaquil’s husband, Tarquinius, was assassinated, she contrived to have the Senate appoint Servius as monarch in preference to her own two sons, Lucius and Arruns. Servius therefore became king without holding a popular vote (although he later called for one and was successful in the election.)

History records Servius Tullius as a visionary leader who introduced important reforms including the Census. This led to the division of citizens into 5 wealth classes each with the right to vote but also the responsibility to serve in war. Under his reign, the boundary of Rome was expanded to include the Quirinal, Esquiline and Viminal Hills. He successfully established a crucial treaty with the neighbouring Latin League, founding a shrine to the Latin goddess, Diana, on the Aventine Hill to mark their concord.

However, Servius’ popularity in expanding the franchise to the lowest classes of citizens raised the ire of the upper-class patricians. The simmering resentment which ensued paved the way to his downfall. But it was the hatreds seething within his own family that were to effect his demise.

To placate the ousted sons of King Tarquinius, Servius Tullius arranged marriages for them with his daughters. The girls, both named Tullia, (according to the custom of women taking the feminine form of their father’s cognomen) were extreme opposites in temperament as were the princely brothers. Unfortunately, the sweet natured Tullia Major was wedded to the ruthless Lucius, while the scheming Tullia Minor became the wife of the unambitious Arruns.

Determined to gain power, Tullia was frustrated by Arruns’ refusal to overthrow Servius and rightfully reclaim the throne. Instead, she turned to Lucius who matched her zeal. The pair conspired to murder their spouses resulting in brother killing brother, sister killing sister, and both committing homicide of their respective in-laws. Unaware of their part in the assassinations, Servius reluctantly then approved a marriage between Lucius and Tullia Minor.

Emboldened, Lucius embarked on a vicious campaign to undermine Servius’ authority and foment rebellion. Having convinced a block of Senators to support him, he proceeded to the Curia Senate House and sat on the throne, surrounded by armed guards. When Servius arrived to accost the usurper, Lucius hurled his father-in-law down the Curia’s stairs into the Forum. Dripping blood and abandoned by supporters, the old man limped along Clivius Orbius, the road to the Esquiline Hill.

When Tullia heard Lucius had seized power, she called for her carriage and sped to the Senate House, hailing her husband as king. She then urged him to kill her father lest Servius survive and raise an army from his remaining supporters. Lucius quickly dispatched assassins who slew the injured Servius and left his mutilated body lying across a small alleyway known as the Vicus Cuprius.

With chaos unleashed in the Forum, Lucius ordered Tullia to return home for her own safety. On the way, she came upon her father’s corpse. In a frenzy, she ordered her driver to force the horses to trample the body. As a result, Tullia arrived at her house with blood spattered clothes as ‘a grim relic of the murdered man... The guardian gods of the house did not forget; they were to see to it, in their anger at the bad beginning of the reign, that as bad an end should follow.’

The historian, Livy, pulls no punches when he describes Tullia as maniacally ambitious and transgressive. Unlike Tanaquil who quietly pulled strings behind the scenes, Tullia harangued Lucius into bloody deeds. ‘To Tullia the thought of Tanaquil’s success was torture. She was determined to emulate it: if Tanaquil, a foreigner, had had influence enough twice in succession to confer the crown – first on her husband, then on her son-in-law – it was intolerable to feel that she herself, a princess of blood, should count for nothing in the making, or unmaking of kings.’

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and Tullia were to become models of  regal depravity: venal, psychopathic and unjust rulers. But Tullia, as a woman, is held up as a shocking example of private and public impiety who is responsible, in great part, for her family’s exile. For ultimately, Lucius and his family were banished when the Romans could no longer stomach his tyranny, rising in outrage at the rape of the virtuous noblewoman, Lucretia, and her subsequent suicide. See Roman Honour Killings – Lucretia and Verginia. As such, the public actions of two women with diametrically opposed characters can be seen as catalysts for the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of the Republic.

Borghese Steps, Rome

As an interesting side note, the Via Cupria was dubbed Vicus Sceleratus – the Wicked Street – after Tullia’s desecration of her father’s body. In the early C15th century a grand staircase was built over it connecting the Esquiline to the Basilica San Pietro in Vincoli. The Palazzo that was built over these steps by the Cesarini family was given to Vannozza dei Cattanei, the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander V) and the mother of the infamous Borgia children; Cesare, Lucrezia, Juan and Gioffre. The steps became known as the Borgia Steps. On June 14, 1497, Juan Borgia left the family apartments through the heavy door to the stairway and was attacked and killed. His body was then thrown into the Tiber, remaining undiscovered for three days.

The identity of Juan Borgia's murderer remains an unsolved mystery. Was it his brother Cesare? Or a jealous husband or brother avenging their family’s honour? It wasn’t a robbery given his body was found with a coin filled purse. Whatever the answer, the scene of his death resounds with ghostly echoes of Tullia Minor’s crimes. Definitely a street to avoid after dark!

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Quotes from The Early History of Rome by Livy translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, 1971.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome saga, and the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia. www.elisabethstorrs.com / www.hnsa.org.au 


History repeats. ‘Almost pathological madness’: the monster cruise ships to return to Venice by 2027, guided in by Mayor Brugnaro - Michelle Lovric

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Luigi Brugnaro, Venice’s mayor, has never quite given up on the cruise ships – not even after they were banished to Marghera to the applause of the entire world, (apart from the cruise industrialists and that tiny tight ring of local entrepreneurs who scoop profit out of their operations). Now Brugnaro is endorsing a new plan to bring the monster cruise ships of up to 60,000 tonnes back to Venice's historic centre from 2027. The Titanic, to put the proposal in context, weighed in at 52,000 tonnes, fully laden.

This scheme treats the Venetian lagoon as a highway, not an irreplaceable living thing. In such contempt lies danger for flora, fauna, beauty and history. Cue cries of disbelief and outrage about the threat to the lagoon’s ecosystem, the danger of collisions and fuel spills, the menace to the foundations of Venice’s historic buildings, the shipwrecking of air quality – and a general sense of disbelief that Venice’s own mayor is backing something that goes against every instinct for what is right and good for the city. Brugnaro, of course, was elected by the votes of the mainlanders of Venice and largely rejected by the islanders. He makes no secret of his allegiances.

'What will happen if the cruise ships return'?
NGN poster
Environmentalists led by NoGrandiNavi (NGN) and AmbienteVenezia, political parties, researchers and residents have denounced the new schemes presented by the Port System Authority in September. Brugnaro’s pet projects are three: redevelopment of the Malamocco-Marghera canal (also known as the Canale dei Petroli), the excavation and enlargement of the Vittorio Emanuele III canal that leads to the historic centre of Venice, and the creation of an artificial island for the accumulation of toxic sludge from the digs.

In summary, the scheme would excavate great trenches in the highly polluted mud of the lagoon, deep enough to permit 150 massive cruise ships annually right back to the Stazione Marittima near the end of the Zattere. This plan, doubtless years in the brewing, probably explains why no new creative idea has ever been entertained for the Marittima since the cruise ships left by the national government decree that Brugnaro and his cohort feel no obligation to observe. The cruise ‘interessi’, it seems, were just biding their time, setting up their funding and working out how to market their idea to a sceptical world: in a breathtaking coup of doublespeak and greenwashing, they are calling their excavations, which will bring a world of pollution into Venice, ‘The Green Deal’.

The proposed dredging routes are shown in the map above: the Canale dei Petroli in red leading to Marghera and the Canale Vittorio Emanuele in blue leading to the Stazione Marittima near the Zattere. With thanks to AmbienteVenezia



Tommaso Cacciari, leader of the NoGrandiNavi committee, has described Brugnaro’s new moves as an "almost pathological madness".

I attended a sombre meeting at San Leonardo on September 29th, when Cacciari explained that NoGrandiNavi is remobilizing. But now the front will move to the Canale dei Petroli.

NGN and its sister organisation AmbienteVenezia are planning a double campaign … a ‘mobilitazione popolare’ and also a legal, procedural route. For example, City councillor Gianfranco Bettin (Venezia Verde Progressista), Luana Zanella (Green Party MP) and Franca Marcomin (Green Europe spokesperson) have announced that the European Green Party is drafting a document to protect Venice, to be presented to the European Parliament.

On September 29th, Cacciari set out his road map for protest but also listed the grim new obstacles for those who want to stop Brugnaro’s tide of massive cruise ships.

NGN, Cacciari explained, has already had a taste of the new problems facing the new campaign.

For a start, there's the turbo-charged greenwashing being deployed by the cruise lobby, as by so many other notable polluters. Expensively marketed greenwashing is hard to fight. The law is only just catching up with this double crime against the environment. Claims are made in contexts where no challenge is possible. Comments, for example, are disabled under articles and videos. Unarguable but absolutely irrelevant facts are grandly puffed. Unpalatable projects are sugar-coated with childlike cartoon graphics. In a pretty You-Tube video, also airing in English, many picturesque and comforting claims are made about the Port System Authority’s ‘Green Deal’, with a patronising lack of detail. There is no mention, for example, of the toxic waste leaked by Marghera’s petrochemical industry into the lagoon sediment for over a century – or what might happen if the heavy metals embedded in the mud are suddenly shaken and stirred into the living waters.


"Don't touch the lagoon - No to the new
excavations; no to cruise
ships back at the Stazione Marittima.
They want to destroy the lagoon.
They want to bring the cruise ships back
to Venice by excavating new channels."

Some of those heavy metals are at 120 percent of what is considered safe or acceptable by the scientific community. These deposits are the legacy of the Veneto’s millionaire-making 20th century rush into petrochemical, resin and chlorine production. Lead, dioxins, vinyl chloride monomer, polychrome biphenyls are described by journalist Ugo Dinello as ‘the fingerprints left at the crime scene that tell the story of Veneto's industrial development … . highly carcinogenic chemical compounds that remain in the environment with great persistence, so much so that they are defined as "eternal pollutants". Brugnaro plans to excavate 1,280,000 cubic meters of this sediment to facilitate the access of the cruise ships to Venice. Italy has no landfill site equipped for such volumes of poisonous waste. So what does not get ‘accidentally’ swilled into the water during excavations will be redistributed in the lagoon or deposited on the manufactured island known as the Isola delle Tresse, near Fusina.

Venetians of the lost Republic would never have allowed such imprudence – they knew to avoid deep dredging near Murano, for example, where arsenic and lead leaked from the glassworks.

Greenwashing is recognised by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority as not just moral but commercial misconduct. Those who falsely claim green credentials gain customers who want to do the right thing, and who will pay more for what they believe to be wholesome products or services. Entities that do not lie about their green credentials are thereby disadvantaged. However, everyone wants to hear good news about the environment. Good-hearted people want to feel that they can be part of a solution, making them easy targets for the greenwashers.

Also difficult for NGN’s new campaign is the fact that the visible outrage of the outsized cruise ships is no longer there to draw the world’s attention to the new problem. The cruise lobby is profiting from the fact that the world thinks, ‘mission accomplished’ in Venice. Gone and good riddance. It seems inconceivable that Venice, suffering from damaging numbers of tourists, would shoot itself in the foot by ushering in more, or expose the historic centre to the known danger of collisions and impacts such as the terrifying incident in June 2019 when the MSC Opera ploughed into another vessel and the embankment at the Zattere after a technical fault went unnoticed by the crew until it was too late.

In any event, the big ships seem to have gone. But in fact they are still in Venice’s lagoon, sending out toxic emissions, causing danger. The passengers, currently diverted to Marghera and other places, are still transported in to choke Venice’s overburdened streets without adding anything of much value to the city’s economy – profits are tightly palmed by those few who host, ferry for and supply the cruise lines. Cruise tourists the world over bring little economic benefit to the city they infest as their time is carefully engineered so that they do most of their spending aboard. Cruise ships in Venice, for example, stage special late-night dinners so their passengers don’t have to spend at Venetian restaurants.

How will NGN fight these twin problems of greenwashing and invisibility? NGN’s plans to highlight the absolute interdependency of Venice and her lagoon. Those who want to gouge the lagoon for the cruise ships will not be allowed to do so out of sight and out of mind.

NGN’s roadmap was set out at the meeting on September 29th. 

October 7: an Assemblea Cittadina informed the public and set in motion plans to get going with before the excavations start. NGN will take the campaign out to the lagoon, deploying the bricole (navigation poles) along the Vittorio Emmanuel Canal to signal the looming problem by ‘decorating’ them with NoGrandiNavi banners.

October 22: NGN made the new danger felt in the Venice Marathon (see photo below).


November/December: a conference at the university.

January: NGN will celebrate its birthday with a campaign dinner.

February: an NGN parade at Carnevale.

March 24: a large public demonstration will take place all over the city on foot and in boats. An island of boats, a floating protest, will stretch right out into the lagoon, pointing the way to the threat.

April: the launch of the Biennale of Art. NGN is working with various artists on a ‘super-proposta’ to make the idea of defending the lagoon both concrete and communicable.

NGN have already provided the international symbolism of a city that has resisted the cruise industry, Cacciari told us on September 29th. “Now the battle has moved to the lagoon and the polluted mud. We have to defend the lagoon from the greed of the boats and the authorities that collude with them.”

These maps were kindly provided by Luciano Mazzolin of Ambiente Venezia to illustrate what can only be described as the proposed routes of betrayal through the lagoon.
 
Meanwhile, NGN is hampered on another front – those with deep pockets continue to persecute members with expensive prosecutions. On that front at least, there was good news last week. The latest trumped-up charge against the NGN leader Tommaso Cacciari – initiated in 2017 – was dismissed by the Venetian courts on November 20th. Cacciari was accused of interfering with a police vessel during a demonstration against the cruise ships. The entire case was dismantled, having no factual basis. Here's NGN celebrating after the verdict.


 In London, the River Residents Group and other organisations continue to deal with the plans of the Oceandiva, Europe’s biggest party boat, which wants to operate on the Thames. Our members too have been subject to threats of legal action and indeed falsely denounced to the police for planning a non-existent large demonstration. We try not to waste time or energy on intimidations like this: it’s a well-worn tactic of large companies to try to neutralize activists this way. Nor was I surprised when the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) declared my safety questions about the Oceandiva ‘vexatious’ on the grounds that they took up too much time, also complaining about repeated questions - questions that had to be repeated because answers were evaded in the first place.

There is more than one way to endorse a monster. Here in London, it is being done tacitly. The Mayor of London refutes responsibility for decision-making into our own local monster, which threatens to change the landscape of the Thames. Because it floats, the Mayor disclaims any responsibility for the impacts of the Oceandiva, even though the emissions will travel from the piers, surrounded by residents, where it plans to charge and hold long, static parties. Because it floats, the Mayor disclaims any responsibility for the Oceandiva’s effects on historic views.

Like Brugnaro's 'Green Deal', the Oceandiva is trying to enter the city on a flood of greenwash. Its advertising – and that of its agents in the eventing world – boasts of being 100 percent carbon neutral and fully electric. It is in fact a hybrid, capable of running just three hours on its batteries, according to its own marine technician speaking at webinar in June. The rest of the time it will use Hydrolized Vegetable Oil, a form of diesel, which is linked to deforestation by virtue of its use of palm oil. Meanwhile all the associated emissions will be discounted via discredited carbon credits (VCA). And no mention is ever made of the embodied carbon in the £25,000 new build out of steel and aluminium.

We understand that the Oceandiva is currently restricted to the privately-owned Royal Docks and not allowed on the river because it has not gained its safety certification from the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA). The only visible manifestation recently has been a planning application to sanitize the unauthorised electrical infrastructure erected a year ago at West India Pier, in front of 750 residents, apparently to service a charging station for a large electric vessel. The pier is owned by Sunset Moorings Ltd which shares directors with Oceandiva Shipping Ltd.

Meanwhile, questions are now being asked– in an excellent piece of investigative journalism by the Byline Times– about both the roles and accountability of the Port of London Authority (PLA) and the MCA in the Oceandiva story.

With the PLA encouraging more and more cruise ships into the metropolitan Thames, London and Venice have ever more in common. London's River Residents Group continues to be inspired by and learn from NGN and AmbienteVenezia, both of which I think for the images in this post. Particular thanks also to Barbara Warburton Giliberti and Luciano Mazzolin.

It's a hard battle ahead for all of us. As NoGrandiNavi says – ‘We are on the right side of history and we will not stop fighting for the ultimate extermination of these monsters from our city!’

 

LINKS 

To join NoGrandiNavi, please visit their website. On this page you can donate to their cause:

Sostieni le nostre lotte – Comitato No grandi navi

The facebook page for AmbienteVenezia is here: (1) AmbienteVenezia | Facebook

More information about the chemical threat can be found on the website of Campaign for a Living Venice: Venice and the Poisons of the Small Canal. Study Reveals the Dangers of the Vittorio Emanuele Excavation – Campaign For A Living Venice

To join the River Residents Group, please visit our website: River Residents Group . You don't need to live on the river to be a part of this movement - you just need to care about the Thames. 

Michelle Lovric’s website www.michellelovric.com



Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours by Judith Allnatt

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 On 19th May this year I visited Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn's childhood home. It was on this day in 1536 that Anne was beheaded at the Tower of London following charges of adultery, incest and plotting to kill her husband, Henry VIII. Modern historians regard these charges as fabricated: the couple had failed to produce a male heir; several miscarriages had followed the birth of their daughter Elizabeth and Henry had begun to court Jane Seymour. In memory of Anne, on the 19th of May 2023, her precious Book of Hours was brought out from the archive and put on display at Hever, along with fascinating historical details that could be deduced from it.


A Book of Hours is basically a Christian prayer book designed to guide the spiritual life of a secular person. It often contains psalms, hymns, extracts from the gospels and prayers to be read at the canonical hours of the day from Matins to Compline. Affluent owners often had their books lavishly illuminated and sometimes they were wedding gifts given by a husband to a wife.  The books were  sometimes personalised through having the owners  themselves featured in the paintings or through featuring local saints; some have notes written in the margins, some were so much a part of daily life that they were hung from a woman's girdle, like her keys. In the case of Anne Boleyn's Book, the prayers in English show more wear, from kissing or rubbing the pages, than the Latin prayers. It is tempting to see in this the enthusiasm Anne had for promoting an English Bible for all to be able to read, as shown by her protection of those working on English translations. However, the Hever exhibition points out that after Anne's death the Book was owned by various Kentish women who may not have known Latin and whose use of the book would have left its mark. 

The English Schoolhttps://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/09/21/hever-castle/

Anne was originally a maid of honour to the Queen, Catherine of Aragon, but by 1527, the year of the book's printing, Henry was hotly pursuing Anne and was considering the annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Assistant creator Kate McCaffrey explains in the Hever exhibition that books from this printing were commissioned for the English court, including both Catherine and Anne, but that their copies are of different quality.  



The vivid colours used in illumination were made from sources such as charred wood (black)  lapis lazuli( blue) gold, cuttlefish ink (sepia), crushed insects ( crimson)  or limonite (ochre). Anne's Book of Hours is decorated with gold borders, red and blue corner patterns and oval borders with inscriptions, whereas Catherine's is plainer. Whether this was perhaps due to Anne, full of confidence as she moved towards becoming Queen, commissioning the books herself, or whether the books were gifts from the King  that reveal his  coldness to  Catherine and his passionate interest in Anne is a matter for speculation.



The rivalry between Anne and Catherine is further shown in a tiny illumination in Anne's music book in which her emblem, the falcon, is shown pecking rather viciously  at Catherine's emblem, the pomegranate.   



Leaving aside the machinations of Court, I was also intrigued to see an inscription in Anne's own hand at the foot of one of the pages of her Book of Hours.


In June 1528, when Henry was still married to Catherine and pursuing Anne, a 'sweating sickness' occurred in London that sent the court, in action all too reminiscent of the last few years,  scattering to the countryside to quarantine. Anne and her father at Hever became dangerously ill and Anne's brother-in-law died of the virus. Kate McCaffrey's research suggests that the inscription was written at around this time, possibly while Anne battled with the death-dealing illness. 

It reads:

 Remember me when you do pray

that hope doth lead from day to day

 - Anne Boleyn 

It  made me shiver to think about what lay ahead of her only eight years later. I reflected on the relief she must have felt on her recovery, the determination to seize the day and her opportunity to become Queen and how fragile human hopes can be. 



 

 

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 Queen Square by Miranda Miller

 



Most references to queens in London are memorials to Queen Victoria but this statue in the gardens of Queen Square is of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George 111 who was treated for mental illness by Dr Willis in a house nearby. The pub on the corner of the square, called the Queen’s Larder, is said to be on the site of the house where she stored his favourite foods in a cellar when she visited him. I should add that, like so many of the best stories, it’s quite possible that this is an urban myth; In Alan Bennett’s play and subsequent film The Madness of King George Dr Willis appears to have treated the King in the White House at Kew - but I’m a novelist, not a historian, and I was comforted by this touching story recently when I spent a lot of time sitting in the gardens after visiting a dear friend in the National Hospital for Neurology and Nerosurgery.

Judged by the rather low standards of royal marriages, George 111 and Queen Charlotte were in fact a devoted couple who lived together for 57 years. Here their modest lifestyle is mocked in a cartoon by Gillray:

The king dines off a boiled egg, using the tablecloth as a napkin to save money, while his wife tucks into a huge bowl of sauerkraut. Their own unpretentious habits made the wild extravagance of their oldest son, the Prince Regent, later George IV, particularly annoying and the King famously detested his oldest son who in turn despised his father.

What was the recurring mental illness the King suffered from throughout his reign? Doctors at the time simply said he was mad when he talked incoherently, had seizures and panic attacks and was quite incapable of ruling the country.  Later doctors thought that he was in fact suffering from a rare hereditary blood disorder, porphyria, and more recently many think his illness might have been a bipolar disorder. At different times the royal physicians entrusted the daily management of the king’s illness to specialist “mad-doctors," particularly to the Reverend Francis Willis and, later, to his sons.  

The Willises used a straitjacket to restrain the King, enforced his confinement and insisted on a strict medical regime to bring down his “fever” and “turbulent spirits”, including vomits, purges, bleeding, blistering, the application of leeches and regular doses of medicine.Although this treatment sounds harsh to us, they were considered kinder and more considerate than other “mad-doctors” in the 18th century. This is the medal Dr Willis issued when he believed he had “cured” the king:

 


An inscription on back of the medal declaims: Britons Rejoice, Your King's Restored, together with the date, 1789.  Sadly, twelve years later, King George suffered a relapse and his symptoms returned. 

 

In the 18th century Bloomsbury was considered a healthy place to live, being on the northernmost edge of London with views across to Hampstead Heath. The novelist and diarist Fanny Burney and her musicologist father Dr Burney lived in Queen Square. There was a girls’ school known as the girls’ Eton, where Boswell’s daughter was a pupil. The young ladies had a coach in their schoolroom so that they could practise getting in and out of a coach decorously.

The philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham had a house round the corner in Queen Square Place. He has been described as the spiritual founder of University College London, which now dominates so much of this area. When Bentham died in 1832, he asked in his will for his body to be preserved and his skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, topped by a wax head, now stands in a glass case on the ground floor of UCL's Student Centre. According to another irresistible story (which may or may not be another urban myth) Bentham’s “Auto-Icon” attends meetings of the College Council and is solemnly wheeled into the Council Room. His, or its, presence, is supposedly recorded in the minutes with the words:  Jeremy Bentham - present but not voting.

Many French refugees lived in Queen Square after the French Revolution and there were a number of shops selling books and prints. The square was also known for its charitable institutions, including the Roman Catholic Aged Poor Society and the Society of St Vincent de Paul. 

There seems to be an interesting feminist thread running through the history of the square from the mid-19th century; Joanna Chandler, a remarkable medical pioneer who cared for her paralysed grandmother as a child, founded the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, which is now the world famous National Hospital; the Royal Female School of Art  was in Queen Square from 1861 and Elizabeth Malleson, the suffragist, started the Working Women's College at number 29.  The London County Council Trade School for Girls was housed here from 1910, and later the Technical College for Women. There was also a women-only Turkish bath in nearby Queen Square Place. 

The Art Workers' Guild, which is still at number 6, was founded in 1884 by architects, artists and designers, including John Ruskin and William Morris, who lived in the square.

 


Now Queen Square is a surprising oasis of peace where you can sit in contemplation, just minutes away from the ferocious traffic of Southampton Row. The square is still dedicated to the pursuit of mental and physical health; the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine are here and Great Ormond Street Hospital for children is in the street which leads east from the square. As well as the statue of a benign looking Queen Charlotte there’s a plaque marking the spot where a bomb from a Zeppelin raid landed on the gardens in 1915. Luckily no one was killed. During the Second World War thousands of people slept in an air raid shelter below the square. There’s a little sculpture of Sam the cat, in memory of the nurse, cat lover, and local activist Patricia Penn, who lived nearby, and a very old water pump that has been converted into a lamp. On the benches in these quiet gardens, doctors, patients and their anxious friends and relations snatch a few calm minutes.



 

One Day in Dublin, by Carol Drinkwater

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                        One Day in Dublin


Due to Covid and work restraints, I hadn't been back home to Ireland since the beginning of the pandemic. It meant that my trip planned for late November of this year (2023) was intended to be a special one. I was excited about it. I was planning to spend a few days alone in the capital to walk the city, visit outlying suburbs, to take a look, from the exterior at least, of the house where my late aunt had lived, as well as various other places from my childhood where I had spent time with my mother and other members of the family. This was before hiring a car to drive south to the Midland region, which includes the counties of Laois and Offaly, where several members of my family still live on the 'McCormack farm', close to where my mother was born and where so many wonderful memories from my childhood had unfolded.

Added to the list of these plans, there was something else I wanted to investigate. A quest which I have left almost too long. The identity, destiny, of a family member who had taken part in the Easter Uprising of 1916. 

I booked a room at the Gresham Hotel in O'Connell Street, on the north side of the city. As a rule I stay south but decided on the Gresham because, as a child, my mother had occasionally taken me there for tea, and more importantly, it was only a few steps from the General Post Office, one of the main locations for the 1916 Easter Uprising. Staying in O'Connell Street fitted with my plan. The Gresham itself is also a building of historic interest, situated in one of the city's most important thoroughfares. Two Georgian houses at 21-22 Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) were bought by an Englishman, Thomas Gresham, who opened them in 1817 as an elegant lodging house, mostly for aristocrats and their families. 
Today, the Gresham is a Dublin city landmark and still retains the name of its founder. Thomas Gresham was an abandoned baby found on the steps of London's Royal Exchange. He was named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a merchant, politician and the founder of the Royal Exchange. 

The Gresham was burnt down during the Irish Civil War (June 1922 -  May 1923), but was rebuilt in 1926 and reopened in 1927. 


I found this postcard for sale on Amazon. A photo of the rebuilt Gresham Hotel posted in 1931 to an address in. Detroit.

My date of arrival was Thursday 23rd November. I was scheduled to land in Dublin on a late afternoon flight from Paris at around 5 pm. The horrors that I was to encounter later that day were triggered by a series of rather ghastly stabbings that took place at around 1.30 pm Irish time in Parnell Square East, north Dublin outside a primary school. The perpetrator, it was later announced, was Algerian. 
At that time, I was en route to Charles de Gaulle airport, blithely unaware of any stabbings or what was to follow once the news of the attacks had been made public.

The city riots began with an anti-immigrant protest. Unfortunately, the protests soon got out of control and grew violent.  I was in the plane and ignorant of what was unfolding. No announcement warned us passengers of the destruction, the looting and vandalism. It was not until I landed that I realised something was amiss. Outside the airport, there were several hundred people waiting for taxis to transport them to the city centre or other destinations. I had never seen such disorder there before. Even queuing at the airport, during my eighty-minute wait for a taxi, no one seemed to know what was causing the chaos and the lack of transport. It was my taxi driver when I finally managed to nab one, who at first refused to drive me to the Gresham Hotel declaring it to be dangerous, began to recount to me as he moved slowly towards the city, what was going on. He warned me that O'Connell Street, which is where the Gresham is situated, was barricaded off as was its neighbour, Parnell Street. 
'Why?' I asked bemused.
Three children had been stabbed and were seriously injured. An adult woman too, who was a carer and had tried to protect the children, had also been assaulted. They were being treated in hospital. At least one of them, a five-year old, was in intensive care, he explained. The assailant was not Irish; he was a foreigner residing in Dublin. An immigrant. It was this, the fact that he was a foreigner, that had unleashed the anger and the ensuing riots. Anti-immigrant agitators had taken to the city centre streets and to social media calling on others to join them, to swell the raging crowds shouting 'Ireland for the Irish'. Their messages vastly inflated the details, stating that the children were dead, (none have died), that the attacker was an illegal immigrant. He has lived in Ireland for twenty years and became an Irish citizen in 2014.  Demonstrators and hooligans carrying metal bars, some wearing balaclavas and hoods, letting off flares and fireworks, began to set light to cars, damage public transport, loot shops and to attack the police. Egging one another on, some were shouting, 'kill all foreigners', 'kill anyone you come across'. 
By this time Gardai were being bussed in from across the counties.
Public transport was suspended, which left many people stranded, caught up in the insanity with no means of reaching their homes. This, of course, added to the mayhem. It also explained why it had been almost impossible to get a taxi at the airport.

My driver dropped me a block away from the Gresham, by which time it was almost nine pm. I had been expecting to be in town around 6 pm. My driver, an Englishman who had relocated to Dublin a decade earlier because 'life is so much kinder here', apologised profusely for the fact that I would have to walk the rest of the way. 'A matter of a few hundred yards, not far.' A burly red-haired garda came to interrogate me. Only when he was satisfied that I was intending no trouble and there was nothing dangerous in my hand luggage, did he let me pass the barricade, warning me to 'mind yerself now'. As I turned onto O'Connell Street, my heart beating fast, the hot bright light hit me. It was a freezing evening, especially after my long queue, but I was taken aback by the light, the remaining flames. Further south towards the bridge, a bus had been set alight. Elsewhere a Luas train was also on fire. The street about me was littered with upturned chairs, broken bottles, sheets of glass from smashed shops and hotel windows. The air hung with an acrid smell. Petrol? Burning rubber? A few people, not many because they had been forced out of the danger area or arrested, were running to and fro. It was like a war zone. Gardai everywhere. I hurried to the Gresham and after brief questioning I was welcomed inside but warned that it was best if I didn't venture out again. I checked into my room and then descended to the bar, which was packed with local people taking refuge or hotel guests who, like me, had found themselves caught up in the fray. Everyone was in a state of shock, talking loudly. Someone was crying. I drank a glass of red wine, sat for a while watching people, taking on board what I had witnessed, the impact of it all, and then reluctantly took the lift to my room. The writer in me was urging me to go out onto the streets and investigate the situation further, get the fuller story, but the other Carol warned me off such a precarious adventure. By now, it was close to eleven pm. I switched on the hotel television and caught up on the news.

People watching the burning bus in O'Connell Street, Thursday 23rd November 2023



I have taken these images from the internet. No copyright is attached to them so my apologies for not acknowledging the owners of the images. Thank you for their use.

On the morning of 24th, I set out to investigate the city. In spite of a restless night, I was up and out reasonably early so the streets were relatively deserted. Little had been cleaned up. First I walked to Parnell Street where a Luas train was parked, obviously abandoned the previous evening, many of its windows had been smashed, seat upholstery ripped, but as far as I could see, it had not been scorched. Quite a few of the shops had been looted. I walked for possibly three or four hours roaming side streets and the main northern centre which mostly seemed down at heel, shabby. I went into Chapters Bookshop in Parnell, always a welcoming address, signed a couple of books and talked to one of the members of staff who told me that they would be closing early, at 3pm, to get the staff home safely before any possible further attacks took place. A demonstration had been announced for 4 pm. 
The bookseller thought it was to be an Anti Anti-Immigration Demo.
I crossed the Liffey River and made my way to the lovely Regency building that is The Clarence Hotel,  (once partly owned by Bono and Edge of the rock band U2), situated on the waterfront in Temple Bar. 
I have stayed many times at the Clarence, many times with my late mother too. She loved this hotel. Since my last visit there, the U2 musicians had sold their shares and the place has been refurbished. It is still elegant and trendy. The restaurant, where I have dined with my mum so many times in the past, was closed - it was still early, around noon - so I went to the lounge/bar. I ordered a cup of coffee and began to scribble notes on all that I had witnessed over the course of the morning. The manager of the hotel came over to say hello and welcome me back. I apologised that I wasn't staying there this time. It made no difference to the warmth of his greeting. When I told him I was at the Gresham, he shook his head. 'Good hotel but wrong location right now.' 
He himself had been working till five in the morning, he said, and 'back in again first thing'. He had been ferrying his staff home. No public transport meant the members of his team had no means of getting to anywhere in the city or the suburbs. But for his generosity, they would have been stranded. 
 'Almost all the staff here are immigrants,' he explained. 'These riots are not in my name, not in any of our names here. Ireland is an inclusive country.'
I was heartened by his kindness and his loyalty to so many who were from abroad working in Ireland and, as he described it, 'holding up the hospitality business'. As I shook his hand, promising to see him next time I was in the city, he warned me to get back to my hotel before dark. 'It could get nasty again.'
I spent that afternoon at the Irish Film Institute in Eustace Street in Temple Bar, and in various bookshops, not wishing to venture too far. I never reached Grafton Street that day, nor any of the other haunts I had written down on my memory trip list.  I decided to cut short my stay and go home to France. I will return to Ireland in the spring when it will be warmer and, hopefully, calm.

Before settling back at the Gresham, as the daylight was fading, I lingered outside the General Post Office, another historic landmark on O'Connell Street. Opened on this site in 1818, when O'Connell was still Sackville Street, this extraordinarily impressive building had served as the headquarters for the leaders of the 1916 Uprising. It was also burned down in the early twentieth century following the failed Uprising. It was rebuilt and then re-opened in 1929. 
I smiled. I speak barely a word of Irish except for a few prayers and the fact that my mother always insisted for some reason unknown to me that I should be able to say 'post office' in Irish:  Oifig an Phoist
I muttered it again then.

Alongside visits to my family over the upcoming days,  my quest had been to try to find out about the role of a relative - my great uncle? - in the 1916 Easter Uprising. Since a child, I had heard talk/whispers within the family of this relative, someone connected to my mother's father, my maternal grandfather - a brother? -  who I vaguely recalled had died in the Uprising. I had never gleaned the facts. This trip had been to learn something about this long disappeared relative. To me, a mythical family hero. Or perhaps not.
General Post Office, O'Connell Street

What part had he played, if at all, in the Easter Uprising, the Rebellion? I don't know. Aside from the family name of McCormack, I am not even sure of his identity. The Uprising was an insurrection that took place during Easter Week in Dublin in 1916. Republicans were fighting against British Rule. Their aim was to establish Irish Independence, an Irish Republic, and to force the British out, once and for all out of Ireland. Alas, the Easter Uprising did not succeed. After a week of fighting and too many deaths on both sides the insurrectionists surrendered.  Fourteen of their leaders were executed in Kilmainham Gaol. The executions were carried out over several days by firing squads at dawn. The bodies were then transported to Arbour Hill Cemetery for burial. (None carried the surname McCormack).



The green flag was flown over the General Post Office during the Uprising. Alas, it didn't get to stay there long. 


Few of my family who might be able to enlighten me about this unknown relative are still living. When I was younger, it had not seemed to be so important to discover the veracity of this tale. Now it does. 

I turned my head and glanced up and down O'Connell Street. Clusters of police had been gathering while I had been standing outside the Post Office, reflecting. They were present in significant numbers now. Expecting further trouble? What about the demonstration? I saw no signs of it here. A few pedestrians were walking the length of the thoroughfare, staring at the remains of the detritus still lying about from the previous day's rioting. I began to step slowly northwards to my hotel, passing by a circle of half a dozen Gardai on my way. A bullet-headed man in a crumpled jacket appeared from out of nowhere, from a shop doorway or side street to my right and skidded to a halt almost in front of me. He directed himself to the police standing in the centre of the street, shouting something, and then he spat. I was taken back, and shuffled to my right. One of the gardai swung to face him and yelled at him to go home, to cause no trouble. This incited the fellow who was dead set on a fight, it seemed. He began to cuss foully. Both men were well built, like a pair of rocks head on to one another, and they were but an arm's length from me. The garda was now at the shoulder of the shouting fellow. His arm was raised. The man turned south, the garda followed hard on his heels, both were shouting, arguing. I steered by them and speeded up my step. 
I felt profoundly sad. 

Because I don't live permanently in Ireland, because Ireland is for me an island mostly of memories both recent and distant, of family members dearly loved, many of whom have since passed on or I have lost contact with, I recognise that I have, or had, carried a romanticised perception of the country which is why these two days shocked me to my core. It is a fact that there is now a small but vocal extreme-right faction who have tainted the image of this peace-loving, welcoming nation. President Michael D Higgins, who for me epitomises much that is warm and intelligent about the Irish people, said in his speech after the stabbings: "This appalling incident is a matter for the Gardai and that it would be used or abused by groups with an agenda that attacks the principle of social inclusion is reprehensible and deserves condemnation by all those who believe in the rule of law and democracy."

Yes, indeed.

I was back in the Gresham by seven pm. There were no further incidents of violence reported. I left the following morning for France where I have made my home for thirty-seven years. I am also a foreigner living abroad!  All being well, I'll be back to Ireland in the spring of 2024, my quest not forgotten. 

Here in France we have Marine Le Pen and her supporterss to contend with, a worryingly larger faction than Ireland's extreme right. Europe has known refugees, immigrants, for centuries. Making room for the others is not easy. The principle of social inclusion can be challenging especially for those who have little to share although in my experience it is frequently those with little who share the more readily. 
Imagine though, for example, if the young nations of America and Canada had rejected the boatloads of Irish immigrants who were seeking refuge from famine and oppression ...

My most recently published novel, An Act of Love, is the story of a Polish Jewish girl, a young woman on the brink of adulthood, taking refuge with her parents in a mountain village behind Nice during WWII. The novel was inspired by the fact that, in 1942, the inhabitants of that mountain village voted almost unanimously to take in war refugees. It is a love story on many levels.

Peace on Earth.


©caroldrinkwater December 2023













Why did men wear Cod Pieces? by Vicky Masters

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I went to see the rock group Jethro Tull perform on several occasions when I was a lot younger. The front man, Ian Anderson, would stand on one leg playing the flute, which was fairly impressive, but what really drew the eye was the glittering codpiece he wore while doing so.

The next time I encountered a codpiece was many years later in a display case amongst the dressing up clothes at Stirling Castle. This was on a whole different level to Anderson's which seemed remarkably discreet by comparison. Indeed, to my 21st century eyes, it was so immodestly large and protruding I was embarrassed to be caught staring at it and moved swiftly on.


 When I came to write my first novel I debated whether my characters should don them or not and wondered if they were indeed commonly worn by the men of Scotland in 1546. I decided to delve, metaphorically, into the codpiece further.

Cod, in this instance, has nothing to do with fish but was the slang for scrotum. Codpieces began as something quite practical – a small piece of cloth to fill the space between tunic and hose, serving the function of the contemporary zip fly and preserving men's modesty. But as the fashion in doublets became shorter, greater covering was required and the codpiece became a fashion statement of itself, and a sign of virility in the early 1500s. 

They were inevitably the provenance of the wealthy, a statement of power and masculine bravado and, as such, were worn by the swashbuckler about town. They were not considered acceptable wear for the humbler members of society – although smaller twill versions have been found.


Often they were decorated with tassels, bows or jewels. Some were large enough to store coins, a handkerchief or even a handy snack. The increased padding provided protection from swords, lances and other implements of war. Here's King Henry VIII's armour, with protective appendage, which can be viewed at the Tower of London.



But the era of the cod piece was also the period when the pox was rife throughout Europe. Treating syphilis involved a range of herbs, sticky unguents and decoctions. Containing it all within a large codpiece helped protect clothing from stains, as well as keeping the poultice in place.

The sumptuary Act of 1562 raises 'the monstrous and outrageous greatness' of codpieces, although the new double ruffs worn at the neck also incurred disapproval. Both were categorised as inappropriate apparel for any but those attending court and the phrase 'aping your betters' was much bandied about.

By late 16th century the cod piece had had its day and was replaced by the well padded stomach, known as a peascod belly; the codpiece beneath gradually shrinking in size – as in this Portrait of a Gentleman below painted circa 1580 where the codpiece only peeps out.



 

As for why Ian Anderson sported one I suspect it was a piece of flamboyant fun that fitted with the overall romance of the clothes of the 1970s. And his was modest by comparison with the 'packages' some other rock stars were creating.

And did I have my male characters sport codpieces...  in my third in series The Apostates one does pop up, which I had some fun with…

Bethia turned to the man on her other side who was wearing a most alarming headdress, consisting of a number of ostrich feathers set in a metal ring around his bonnet. They were dyed in alternating red and green, drawing all eyes to him and making him seem much taller than he was. Each time he turned his head the feathers brushed against the side of Bethia's face.
     'Your plumes are most wondrous,' she said.
     He preened, proud as any cock. 'They are come from Matthaus Schwarz, for he is the king of such designs.'
      Bethia smiled politely.
      'You don't know of Master Schwarz? I thought you were recently living in Antwerp, and he works for the Fuggers who are much in evidence in that city.'
       'I do know of the Fugger Brothers for they are great merchants but I didn't go out much while I lived in Antwerp.'
      'You must be very happy to have left then,' said her companion and she couldn't stop the bubble of laughter escaping.
      They discussed ostrich feathers, and the delicate task of dyeing them so they weren't damaged, until the subject was exhausted at which point he moved onto cod pieces, standing up to display the thrust of his.
      'Look, I had my jeweller provide a few diamonds to make it sparkle and the tassels are of my particular design. It even cunningly holds this,' he said fiddling at his package.
      Bethia knew she should avert her eyes but somehow could not. She waited to see what would emerge. He tugged out a handkerchief, flourishing it to the applause of those around them. 

References:

Grace Vicary, Visual Art as Social Data: The Renaissance Codpiece

Ruth Goodman, How to be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Everyday Life

V E H Masters is the award winning author of The Seton Chronicles. You can find out more about her at vehmasters.com. and if you subscribe to her newsletter there are a couple of free short stories relating to her novels, available only for subscribers


 

The Turban in Fashion by Kathryn Gauci

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Doris Kenyon

We’ve all seen glamorous photographs of Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo looking stunning in her turban, yet Hollywood was not the first to make the turban all the rage. What began as a long piece of cloth wrapped around the head, usually fully covering the hair, the turban has a long and varied history. The earliest origins reach back as far as 2350 B.C. found on a Mesopotamian sculpture of Assyrian or Sumerian origin. From this time onward, it appears in artworks from India to Turkey, through Central Asia, and into Africa. It is known that the prophet Mohammad (570-632) wore one, known as Imamah, emulated by Muslims devotees, kings and scholars, thereafter. The Imamah consists of a cap with a cloth around it, often still seen in parts of Africa today. 

Luigi De Servi (Italian, 1863 - 1945) Portrait of An Arab Gentleman

 

For the most part, the turban is linked to religion, and a particular colour denotes the significance of a rank or tribe. In India, it is referred to as a pagri (headdress). Pink is associated with spring and worn for marriages; saffron is associated with valour and sacrifice, and white with peace.

 The Interior of the Chora Church, Istanbul

There are many examples of turbans worn in Byzantine times. Byzantine soldiers wore them and there are Greek frescos in Cappadocia with figures depicted in a style still worn by their ancestors centuries later. 

Giovanni Francesco Barbieribetter known as (il) GuercinoItalian Baroque painter (1591-1666)
    

In the United Kingdom, turbans were worn by men and women since the sixth century, but it is mostly through the great paintings of the Renaissance, and Dutch, Belgian, and German masters, that we really came to know them. This is due to intrepid travelers and diplomatic and trade exchanges with the Ottoman, Persian, and Mughal empires of the East – the spice and silk routes that brought us far more than the turban. 

One of the first and most famous images of the turban being worn as a fashion accessory in the west was in the iconic Dutch painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring by artist Johannes Vermeer painted  in 1665. The oil painting features a European girl wearing an exotic dress, a large pearl earring, and a turban tied around her head, thought to be inspired by Turkish traditions of the time.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by artist Johannes Vermeer

                                   

Eugene Francois Marie Joseph Deveria - Odalisque,1840
                                  

Eléonore de Montmorency
                                                           
 
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Giuseppina Grassini in the role of Zaire - 1805, detail
       

Niclolas de Nicholy, Melchoir Lorch, J.B. Vanmoor, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Miss Julia Pardoe, and La Baronne Durand de Fontmagne, took the oriental fashions back to Europe, eventually giving rise to what is known as Orientalism and which took the Western world by storm in the 18th, 19th, and earlier part of the 20th-century. Even though many Orientalist ideas are filled with Western ideals, there does remain some truth in the original fashions of the time.

Suleiman the Magnificent
 
The Ottoman turban went from being something enormous, as depicted by Mehmet I and Suleiman the Magnificent, to something much smaller and more practical. Women in particular wore them with grace and panache; the finest materials were often enhanced by a jewels or feathered aigrettes. 

 

  Turban with tall feather aigrette, designed in 1911 by Paul Poiret.
                      

Jewelled gold aigrette in the form of a carnation belonging to one of the Ottoman sultans. Aigrettes were attached to turbans as ornaments, and also presented as gifts by the sultans to foreign rulers and statesmen.
 

Whilst the turban itself, particularly in the case of a man, may have been plain, the cloth that covered them certainly was not. The Ottoman house had rooms had plenty of decorative wall niches and one was reserved for the turban. When not in use, it would be covered with an exquisitely embroidered cloth. The base could be fine linen, silk, or wool. Exhibits in the Sadberk Hanim Museum in Istanbul vary in size, but they are almost always square. 155x155 cm, 110 x110 cm, etc. 

18th century embroidered turban cover

                                                

Detail showing embroidery motif of a turban cover
 

The compositions show a highly decorative small round centre, and around that, in the body, are intricate repeating patterns, either singular, or intertwined. The embroidery thread is silk, white or gold metal-wrapped silk, and the stitches anything from running stitch, satin stitch, contour stitch, or tambour work. These were given as gifts and of the highest quality and beauty. It’s often possible to tell who they belonged to by the motifs. An admiral might have a cover decorated with ships, while a military pasha might have tents.

Mahmud II
                                                                        

The turban went out of favour in the 19th century when Sultan Mahmud II attempted to modernize the empire. It was replaced by the fez until the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1925. Sultan Abdülmecid, Sultan Abdülhamid II, Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, and SultanAbdul Hamid II followed suit.

Meanwhile, in Western fashion, the turban was gaining popularity. In her book, Women’s Hats, Headdresses and Hairstyle, author Georgine de Courtais traces its popularity among fashionable Englishwomen, saying, “For ‘full dress’… some kind of headdress or cap was considered almost essential... the turban in some shape or form was by far the most popular form of headwear (between 1790 and 1810).” Some women’s magazines in the 1820’s referred to them as matronly, but The Ladies Magazine would inform its readers that turbans, “continue in undiminished favour” as late as 1835.


From  a series of Costume Parisian fashion plates of  the 1790s to 1820s

             

Georges Lepape, Denise Poiret released from the golden cage at 'The Thousand and Second Night' party, 1911, gouache.


Despite all that went before, the glamour of the turban exploded with fashion designers like Paul Poiret, and the appetite for the “exotic” in the burgeoning film industry. Here, we also have to acknowledge the extraordinary splendor of the Indian Maharajahs with their rich culture and penchant for opulence, particularly when it came to jewels. 

  Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh.
   
 

According to an account by Alain Boucheron on his family business in the book “The Master Jewelers” that was cited in the Times: "The flamboyant Maharajah... arrived at Boucheron's in 1927 accompanied by a retinue of 40 servants all wearing pink turbans, his 20 favorite dancing girls and, most important of all, six caskets filled with 7571 diamonds, 1432 emeralds, sapphires, rubies and pearls of incomparable beauty.”

Lily Damita

Etta Lee (1906 - 1956) This Hawaiian-born actress had a successful career in early Hollywood spanning the 1920s - 30s,

Naturally, this explosion of cultures quickly caught on and was sought by the wealthy fashionistas of the first half of 20th century, who took it to glamorous heights. The couturier, Madame Grès, who created dresses for Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Vivien Leigh, Barbra Streisand, and many others, loved to decorate her head with turbans. Elsa Schiaparelli was another couturier who wore it.  

Madame Grès
                                                                      
 
Greta Garbo
                                                                      

From the 1900’s onward, thiswas also a time when there was a plethora of fashion and movie magazines, which showed how to wear it. Along with the popularity of sewing machines in many households, this now meant the turban look was possible for the less wealthy. Everyone aspired to look like a Hollywood glamour girl.

Lana Turner. The Postman Always Rings Twice
 
                                                      

How to tie a turban. 1920's tutorial

Even WWII could not stop the turban look. In France, the French milliner, Madame Paulette, (Pauline Adam de la Bruyère) is credited with reviving the turban, claiming to have been inspired by the designs she saw on French girls cycling the streets of Paris during the war. She later went on to create hats worn by Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich,  and Greta Garbo. Although the hat still remained popular in Europe throughout the war, the wearing of a turban was helped by the fact that women were working in manual jobs in factories and farms. The turban was a design that could be created with minimal sewing skills and helped to conceal the hair when access to hairdressers, shampoo, and even water, was limited.

"How a British Woman Dresses in Wartime Utility Clothing". Official wartime  photograph
 

The Ministry of Informationin the UK showcased a turban as part of a series of photographs to promote possibilities for wartime chic during a period when utility clothing rationing interrupted the traditional fashion industry. While DIY turbans were easy to construct – a wartime British Pathé film even demonstrated how to make a selection of designs with a couple of knotted scarves as part of its Ways and Means series – many materials used for making hats were excluded from the worst rationing strictures during the war, and this may help to explain the rise in whimsical hat styles for those who could afford them.

After so many changes, one might ask – is the turban here to stay? Will it become popular again? With all its designs, textures, practicalities, and global influences, I think so.



Ally Pally Prison Camp by Maggie Brookes

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Growing up in North London, Alexandra Palace has always been on my skyline. The first palace opened on Queen Victoria's 54th birthday, burning down 16 days later, but being immediately rebuilt.

When I was young, I would confuse the radio mast on top of one of its towers with the Eiffel tower. In my teens it was the place we went roller skating, fulfilling its original purpose as the 'People's Pleasure Palace'. As I grew up and went to work for the BBC, I equated it with the birthplace of television and a major TV production centre. It wasn't till much later that I read a paragraph in a local history book which told me it had been a civilian internment camp during the first world war. I immediately became interested, and my research was eventually published in a book which combined extracts of memoirs and letters with photographs, paintings and my own poems.


I discovered that at the beginning of the war it had been kitted out as a temporary home for the thousands of Belgian refugees who were flooding into Britain as the Germans over-ran their homeland. Then in 1915, after the sinking of the Lusitania, when anti-German riots broke out, about 42,000 German, Austrian and Hungarian men between the ages of 17 and 55 were rounded up and taken to internment camps, also known as concentration camps. 3,000 civilian men were imprisoned at Alexandra Palace in North London. The artist George Kenner was one of them, and this blog features his wonderful paintings.


Many of the men who were taken to Ally Pally in 1915 had left Germany as children, many owned business in England. Most lived in London and had English wives and children. They were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were taken to a camp at Stratford, run by a sadistic commandant.

They were marched up the hill where they were registered, queuing in the rain and having all their belongings examined. They were rich and poor, bankers and barbers, waiters and stockbrokers. The prisoners were divided up into three battalions, and because this was England, the divisions were based on their social class.



The skating rink was for Battalion C, the business and professional men like George Kenner. The Great Hall (now used as a vast exhibition space) was the sleeping quarters for Battalion B, the working class, and a thousand men slept there. Their beds were within an arms length of each other and there was no privacy. They kept their few belongings under their beds.

One of the men who slept in the Great Hall with the labouring classes was a Hungarian tailor called Benny Cseh, whose pitiful letters to his wife Mabel are in the Imperial War Museum. Much of their correspondence concerns a 2s 6d postal order which went missing, and the fact that she sent him pears which became squashed. He described his day: 'We get up at 6am, breakfast at 7am, go outside till 12. Dinner at 1, go out till 7, out till 9, bed at 10pm. Every morning, running round the horse race track.'

Another man whose letters are in the Imperial War Museum was the young RH Sauter, the nephew of John Galsworthy, and a Harrow educated aspiring artist. He lived in one of the towers with the upper classes, in far superior conditions.

The men occupied themselves according to their status and experience, running a post office, laundry, carpenter’s workshop, tailor's shop and barber's shop. Many were employed in the kitchens, where the great organ bellows powered the ovens. In 1915 the menu was reasonably good, including stewed meat, goulash, corned beef and herrings. Those with money could buy cakes, cheese, butter and jam.


The men could receive letters and parcels and were allowed a weekly visit, which seemed to range in time from 15 minutes for labouring men, to 2 hours for the upper classes. Benny Cseh describes the agony of the short visit: 'I was very much disappointed with your visit. Not with you my dear, but with the time, as I did not know how to divide that 15 minutes between you and Ilona. I have been told she was crying for me when you left.'

Paul Stoffa's memoir details the visits: 'It was pathetic to watch the painful excitement of the men whose visitors were due that afternoon. Long before three o’clock they assembled with their little bundles of flowers and toys for the children.' The visitors were 'elegant young women with engagement rings on their fingers, poor working women with a bevy of half starved children… None of the women visitors came empty handed: but their parcels had to pass the censor first. Whilst some of the well-to-do men received huge parcels containing all manners of expensive delicacies, the small packets containing perhaps only a pinch of tea and a diminutive piece of butter, bore eloquent testimony to the self-sacrificing affection in which these poor women held their husbands.'

As well as finding work to occupy themselves the men gave lectures, calling themselves the 'University on the Hill.' They used the theatre for Sunday services, started an orchestra and had a weekly cinema. Their favourite was Charlie Chaplin. In the summer they sailed boats which they’d made themselves, on the boating pond. One man, called Otto Weiss, was allowed to keep canaries in cages.


As the war drew on, the civilian internees where joined by prisoners of war billeted at Ally Pally on their way to other camps and even a group of missionaries, captured in West Africa. But not all the prisoners were what they seemed. One man had been taken from a German ship and was classed as an enemy alien, until someone realised that the language he was speaking was Welsh! There were even reports of an escape, during an Zeppelin air raid, though this is impossible to verify.

As time went on, conditions at Ally Pally grew more harsh, and the diet became 'rice, rice, rice, three times a day with swedes and turnips and salt herrings.' They were served biscuits which were broken and full of worms and maggots. They sent some for analysis but the report said the worms were harmless and they should eat them. More fights erupted over food than any other cause.


Two camp heroes emerged from adversity: the deputy commander, Major Mott, and one of the prisoners, the anarchist / socialist Rudolf Rocker. He managed to get many important concessions for the prisoners but became very ill during the harsh winter of 1917 when the heating in the Great Hall wasn't working and everyone froze. 'It was terrible at night; the coughing and groaning kept us all awake.'

The food and physical conditions became worse and worse, but there were things which caused more mental anguish. There was no welfare state of course, and the men had no means of supporting their wives and children. The Society of Friends, the Quakers, sold the toys the prisoners made and took food parcels and clothing to the wives and families.

The constant noise, and constantly being surrounded by so many people caused many men to have nervous breakdowns. So many in fact that a Swiss doctor studied the condition which he called ’Barbed Wire Disease.'

Throughout the war, the YMCA ran classes, Rudolf Rocker gave lectures about art and literature, and the men found something to do according to their class and habit. 400 allotments were cordoned off on the slopes of Ally Pally, and of all the ways of passing the time, this seemed to have the most positive effect.

Finally, the end of the war drew near, and the men spent the morning of November 11th 1918 in great nervous excitement, until, at 11am guns were fired, to mark the end of the war.

A little later, newspapers arrived, which set out the armistice conditions. RH Sauter wrote this in a letter on Armistice Day: 'I have just read the armistice conditions and now I see the real ideals for which the money-grubbing lawyers of the 23 nations have been fighting. Here one is living among the defeated … it is upon their fathers, their mothers, their relatives and friends that these conditions of slavery have been imposed. The whole of Germany, one great internment camp. I see the child of this very day, like a ghost, haunting the future, another war.'


When I first read that, I was so shocked and appalled that even on armistice day it would seem obvious to an ordinary young man that another war was inevitable, that I decided to end my book at that point. But for the men at Ally Pally, life went on. Slowly, slowly they were called to hearings, to decide who could stay in Britain. Many were deported back to Germany. Rudolf Rocker was deported, but was refused entry by Germany. George Kenner, the artist whose paintings feature in this article returned to Germany where two of his children died in the great depression, before he eventually went to America.

And the century rolled on, towards another war …



Huge thanks to Christa Bedford for permission to use the wonderful paintings by her father George Kenner.



When the Old becomes New Again, by Gillian Polack

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I have been saved from a post I didn’t want to write by an email on 1 January. Today, you see, is a national holiday in Australia. Australia Day embodies so many dreams and so many conflicts and so much hurt that it would be a very good subject to write about. Not this year. This year too many people hurt and I don’t want to write about people hurting. Or I could talk about the Birthday of Trees, which has just finished. Not this year, either. The Birthday of trees is a wonderful day, but it’s Jewish and it’s not that easy to be publicly Jewish in the world right now. Besides, that email changed everything. It gave me something good to write about, where no-one gets hurt. Except trees… some days I cannot win.

That email concerned a novel (Chocolate Redemption) that had been announced a few years ago. It had been delayed by COVID and by crises and by the world being generally Very Difficult. To start my year (literally, on New Year’s Day), I received the edits from the publisher and the knowledge that it’s finally emerging into daylight. I don’t know yet if the title will remain, but until the release date is announced, then I shall refer to it as Chocolate Redemption, because this is its name in my heart of hearts.

Chocolate Redemption is not just any novel. A long time ago, about the time The Middle Ages Unlocked was on its way, my readers asked me “Why don’t you write more fiction that uses your knowledge of the Middle Ages? You have a PhD in Medieval History and we like to read stories set in the Middle Ages. Write them, please.”

I wrote a time travel novel (Langue[dot]doc 1305) and my readers said, “That was great, but we need more. And it should be different to the time travel novel.”

I answered them, “Maybe one day, when I’m ready to explore the Middle Ages from a different direction.”

I had, to be honest, already started writing this novel. I was on a retreat in the Blue Mountains, at the wonderful writer’s house, Varuna. I finished Ms Cellophane, the novel I went there to write, and I began another. I wrote the first chapter there, and did a ll the research, and wrote an outline. After that, it took me a long time, because life kept getting in the way.

I hesitated to talk about it, too. It wasn’t really a proper fantasy novel. It wasn’t really fully a novel about our world, either. It broke so many genre models. I finished it, and then I put it on hold because I was worried about it. I didn’t think it worked. So I sat on it. And I sat on it. And I sat on it some more. I’m one of those writers who doesn’t always trust their own ability to carry a dream through. With this novel, which (just to be really clear) had amazing support from beta readers, I felt I had failed. So I sat on it some more.

While I sat, I refined it. I was worried about the black dye in one section. I’d included dying because of the place it was set (a town that produced much glorious fabric) but also because I wanted to make the same pun I’d made in Poison and Light. If one has a tenterfield and one is Australian, then the tenterfield needs a saddler. There are bad jokes like this in all my novels, little Easter eggs for readers who enjoy spotting them. Except that in Chocolate Redemption, the tenterfield uses the original definition and is for cloth dying. I wanted the black dye to be accurate, so I asked my textile archaeologist friend, Katrin Kania. I did this throughout the novel. I made sure that there was a basis of historical fact underlying all extrapolation and all whimsy. The invented world for the fantasy side of the novel is mostly Medieval rather than mostly invented, and even the inventions are based on extrapolations: that cloth was my reminder of how I had achieved this. I do that with all my novels. I leave reminders in of the path I travelled to get there.

Then I sat on it some more still. Along the way, I wrote a short story about dancing in a churchyard after the Great Plague, then I wrote another that was a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, so my patient readers were not left without any of my Middle Ages. They were just missing this one novel I had written and about which I was unaccountably shy.

Really, there’s nothing scary about this novel. I should not have put in on hold for years. It’s what a novel would look like if half of it were a fantasy Middle Ages with the fantastical was grounded in our actual knowledge of the Middle Ages, rather than in the Medieval themes we often read in fantasy literature. And yet it wasn’t an historical novel at all.

I had not quite emerged from The Middle Ages Unlocked (a non-fiction guide to Medieval England I wrote with <drumroll> Katrin Kania), so my approach to the history was precise. Where else did I get my knowledge? It helps, sometimes, to work with other writers and learn from them. I was working, at that moment, with Felicity Pulman, a marvellous Australian writer of Young Adult novels. She asked me for advice on Medieval Winchester for a detective series she was writing (the Janna Mysteries), and it was that advice that led me into my own approach. The town in Chocolate Redemption is loosely based on Winchester, as me doffing my hat to Felicity. If you’ve not read her writing before, Ghost Boy is particularly clever in its emotional force and its use of history.

Eventually I got over myself and Odyssey accepted the novel and then COVID hit and life went awry again. On January 1 this year I read the edits. Odyssey’s editor was ecstatic about the story and the characters and especially one particular love scene and… I felt very stupid about my lack of confidence.

The novel is about women’s lives. Small lives. Lives that the rest of the world fails to see properly. I love the richness of women’s lives. It was a lot of fun to write about an apothecary in a Medieval town and her Jewish best friend and her love and all her professional concerns, and her kitten, and floods and fury and all the stuff a town goes through in a year.

The Medieval section is about the lives of younger women. Old enough to be independent, but young enough to have big decisions in their immediate future. The Katoomba (modern Australian) section is about an older woman, whose daughter is in the middle of the big decisions and whose life has reached a quietly impossible point.

The novel includes chocolate, and it’s about mapping our streets and our lives.  

For me, it’s a bit of an oddity. It falls between genres. Lives of women do this, all the time. The mapping others do of our lives doesn’t actually match with the way we live. That’s the heart of the story.

I’ll put out an announcement on social media when Odyssey settles the release dates. In the meantime, if anyone wants to be included on the review copy list, send me a note and I’ll forward it to my publisher. Because Odyssey (the publisher) is in New Zealand review copies will be ebooks only. New Zealand is a long way from anywhere other than Australia and islands in the very south Pacific. Postage costs and time for the post to reach far-distant places are other aspects of those small lives I so enjoy writing about.

In the meantime, my January gift to myself is finally being able to talk openly about Chocolate Redemption. Bringing it out of hiding was a difficult thing. Watching others read it and form opinions is going to be exciting, but even more difficult. I shall buttress the emotions with chocolate.

THE LANGUAGE OF FANS ... by Susan Stokes-Chapman

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It exercises the office of the zephyrs, and cools the glowing breast. It saves the blush of modesty by showing all we wish to see, yet hiding all that we desire to conceal. It serves the purpose of a mask, covering the face that would remain unknown. It keeps off the rude beams of the uncourtly sun ... or from the fiercest ravage saves the brilliant eye and blooming cheek. It hides bad teeth, malicious smiles and frowns of discontent; stands as a screen before the secret whisper of malicious scandal; expresses the caprices of the heart, nay sometimes even speaks; in a word it has a thousand admirable qualities, and may justly be entitled one of the nobelest inventions of the human mind. 
Extract from: The Grand Magazine, London, November 1760


A fan is a lovely thing to have in hot weather or when you're cooped up in a stuffy room, but according to The Grand Magazine a fan had many other uses - it was the perfect foil for a woman who wished to hide themselves, whether that be because they were shy, or hoped to conceal bad breath and teeth, or simply avoid attention altogether! It was also said that the fan could be a powerful tool in other ways, enabling a lady to speak without forming the words on her tongue. In the edition of The Spectator published on 27th June in 1711, Joseph Addison stated that ‘women are armed with fans, as men are with swords’. One might presume from this rather pert comment that fan-wielding ladies could be extremely brutal in vanquishing an unwanted suitor. For instance, placing the fan on the left ear would indicate she wished to be rid of him; carrying the fan in her right hand would state the suitor is too willing; and to really hit the point home a woman might draw the fan through her hand which would very bluntly mean I hate you.

There were more positive forms of fan-made communication - making eye contact whilst carrying the fan in the left hand (but in front of her face) would suggest a lady was desirous of an acquaintance. If the handle was pressed to her lips she would be saying (rather forwardly) kiss me

These 'secret' communications have come to be known as The Language of Fans.

Lady Holding a Fan by Francesco Bartolozzi

It seems, however, that the likelihood of a gentleman actually understanding this vast mode of vocabulary is rather slim - there were, after all, over two dozen different moves and gestures to become familiar with - and it was Parisian fan maker Jean-Pierre Duvelleroy who ultimately sought to reveal the secret code. In 1827 he published a leaflet which revealed a comprehensive list of fan etiquette, which proved to be vastly popular.

The concept is rather romantic, isn't it? The Language of Fans. But the more unglamorous truth of it is that Duvelloroy hoped to  boost the sale of fans after they had fallen out of fashion following the French Revolution, and it appears the ploy worked for he later became a supplier of fans to Queen Victoria herself.


  
Artists Unknown

Still, it might be fun to try and master the code if you ever find yourself carrying a fan at formal gatherings (a Jane Austen re-enactment or a Bridgerton-themed ball) - just try not to inadvertently call someone cruel, or say you're engaged when you're not!


If you have an interest in 18th & 19th Century fans, The Fan Museum in Greenwich is the perfect place to visit. There you can view fans of all shapes and sizes in a glorious catalogue of designs - fans carved form ivory and tortoiseshell, leafs made from silk and gauze, embellished with embroidery or paint.

You can even find out how traditional fans were made (which was really useful for the short story I wrote for The Winter Spirits). Here are just a few of my favourites which I photographed during my visit back in August '23:





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My short story 'Widow's Walk' (set in the Georgian period) featuring a troubled fan maker, can be found within The Winter Spirits, published in hardback October 2023, and out later this year in paperback. You can order a copy by clicking the image below:

Twitter & Instagram: @SStokesChapman

Great Minds: 2500 Years of Thinkers and Philosophy (Haig, Lennon, Ducci) - Joan Lennon

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I joined the History Girls as a writer of historical fiction for 8-12 year olds, way back in 2012. 

And now I write historical non-fiction for 8-12 year olds. It's not as different to writing historical fiction as I used to think. You still do the research - you still get that big grin on your face when you unearth the diamond detail - you're still telling a story. And you're still spending time with compelling characters who quickly become as real, or realer, than your own family. They certainly occupy a lot of brain space.

In Talking History: 150 Years of Speakers and Speeches, the pattern was laid for the collaboration between the writers - Joan Haig and me - and Andre Ducci the illustrator. 


Our second book is about philosophy. In Great Minds: 2500 Years of Thinkers and Philosophy we spread the historical net even further. 


If you want to talk about philosophy, the 8-12 year old group is the way to go - low on preconceptions, assumptions and prejudices, high on curiosity, energy and questions. Which is perfect for an area of human endeavour based on looking at questions and then looking at answers. Questions like:

What does it mean to be good?

Who am I?

What is time?

How can we tell if something is true?

What makes something beautiful?

And dozens more.

In the book we looked at questions and answers from different countries, cultures and times. And we introduce the reader to the people who have shaped the way we see the world. 

Fascinating is an overworked word, but the back stories of these people are just that. 

Of course, each story is different, but it was interesting how many of them start with being mediocre at school, described as too shy, only average, messy, female or black or both (and therefore really shouldn't be schooled at all). A goodly number, like Gandhi and Marx, had terrible handwriting, though a notable exception was the Ethiopian philosopher Zera Jacob who made a living by his beautiful calligraphy. As often as not, they came from poverty or lived in war-torn times or experienced colonialism. But not always - there is no template for a philosopher!

Something that shone out for me particularly was how often these philosophers were also polymaths. The specialism of the present day is so sure of itself that it can blind us to how this has not always been the case. Ibn Rushd was also a medical doctor, a musician and an astronomer; Gandhi was a lawyer who also hand-spun cotton; Mary Midgley studied animal behaviour and raised children. Philosophy speaks to every part of life.






P.S. We've had some lovely reviews - thank you! And to learn more about Andre's fabulous work on the book, visit My Book Corner's Meet the Illustrator interview with him here.


Joan Lennon website

Talking History: 150 Years of Speakers and Speeches Templar Books (2022)

Great Minds: 2500 Years of Thinkers and Philosophy  Templar Books (2023)

The Slightly Jones Mysteries - Victorian detective stories for 8-12 year olds

The Wickit Chronicles - Medieval adventure stories for 8-12 year olds

A Gentle Meander by Sheena Wilkinson

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Like most History Girls I love reading – fiction, non-fiction, old favourites, new releases, whatever I’m in the mood for. Sometimes, especially if I’m having a vexatious time with the vagaries of the publishing industry, or if life is otherwise stressful, I tend to go ‘off’ fiction for a while. At those times, nothing appeals so much as a good dose of social history – I especially love twentieth century history about the lives of women and girls. 


my go-to bookshelf when I fancy a bit of social history 

Recently, for research for my forthcoming children’s novel set in a girls’ school, I reread Terms and Conditions, Life in Girls’ Boarding Schools, 1939-1979. This is the first of three books by the writer Ysenda Maxtone Graham. My edition is the first, an unassuming, deliberately retro-style cloth-bound hardback published by the wonderful Slightly Foxed in 2016. That the book did well is evident by its subsequent publishing history – it came out in paperback the following year, and since then Graham has published two similar books, British Summer Time Begins, which focuses on the long school holidays, and Jobs for the Girls, about women in the workplace. All the books, which are based round the reminiscences of living people,  range in scope from the 1930s to the 80s/90s, have sold well and been enthusiastically reviewed. 




As someone who writes fiction about the lives of girls and women, at work, at school and at play, these books have been wonderful research material, but also a great joy. Ysenda Maxtone Graham writes with humour and warmth, and the books certainly appealed to those who love a bit of nostalgia, but they are very sharply observed too. 

 

I particularly enjoyed Jobs for the Girls, where we meet women – and many teenage girls – at work in factories and offices of all sorts, often giving those jobs up on marriage as was expected. By writing about this aspect of women’s lives, Graham is really shining a light on society more widely. 




 

I’ve always loved reading and writing about women at work; my favourite bits of my novel Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau (Harper Collins, 2023) were the scenes set in the back office of the eponymous bureau. As a lifelong fan of the Chalet School series, I always loved the glimpses of the staff at rest in the staffroom, gossiping, smoking and eating chocolates. (The years I actually spent in a school staffroom, in my former life as a teacher, were less relaxing.)


 

In my adult reading, too, I love the little details of life in offices, on farms, in hospitals and factories. One of my go-to comfort reads (I am not alone in this) is the Cazalet saga by Elizabeth Jane Howard, and much as I love the relationships and adventures of the central characters, I also relish the domestic minutiae – how will the cook feed all those people and how can she stop the meat from spoiling in the heat? It’s the same instinct that takes me often to my granny’s old recipe books, even though I know I will never cook brains or rissoles.



Of course Howard was writing about the years of her own childhood, and Graham is mining the memories of her interviewees. What I love best are the incidental details in the fiction from earlier decades – how people lit their fires and polished their furniture and cleaned their typewriters and spent their wages at Woolworth’s. Dorothy Whipple’s books are all delightful, but one of her earlier novels, High Wages, though not generally seen as one of her masterpieces, appeals to me because the heroine works in, and gradually rises to own, a dress shop. 


 

This isn’t  a learned essay; it’s a gentle meander through some favourite books, but I make no apology for that. I’m a History Girl because I love those small domestic details, and always have done ever since I first read about the Fossil sisters saving the penny and walking to see the doll’s houses in the V & A, or about Laura Ingalls curling her bangs with a hot poker, or the Chalet School girls hemming sheets ‘sides to middle’ to increase their lifespan – the sheets’, not the girls’.

 

I was sad to finish the Ysenda Maxtone Graham books, and I do think many History Girls would enjoy them too. She has written about people, mostly women, at school, in the summer holidays and at work; I wonder where she might go next? Wherever it is, I can’t wait. 

 

Family Junk or Family Treasure? by Janet Few

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Having recently moved house, for what really must be the last time, I have become acutely aware of just how much ‘stuff’ I have. Much of this has accompanied me on my life’s perambulations from south London, via the Isle of Wight, to North Devon, with a short side spell in Buckinghamshire thrown in. Other items have joined the collection more recently, since I became my oldest relative, a sobering thought. These possessions, some of whose history stretches back four, or perhaps five, generations, come with associated stories, stories that have been diminishing with each retelling. There is the collection of artefacts that great-grandad brought back from India, or was it China? Or perhaps it wasn’t great-grandad at all but his father.

 



 There’s great grandmother Clara’s quilt that has been worked on by five, soon to be six, generations. 




Then there is grandad Frederick’s games box, a little dilapidated round the edges but still played with. 




The mixing bowl, that was a wedding present to my parents in 1947, has less history attached but it is still in use to make the annual Christmas cake and has a significance none the less. 




I fully appreciate what a privilege it is to have these treasures and I don’t take the responsibility lightly.

  
What makes these items of material culture, these ‘things’, transform into precious heirlooms. Why am I moving them from home to home and giving them room in my tiny house? It is the association. An heirloom is such because it reminds us of a person, an occasion or a place. It is something that has been, or will be, handed down in the family. A thing only becomes an heirloom, only becomes something that is likely to be treasured and passed on, if the significance of that object is known and handed on too. One of the ways in which I pass my time, is to participate in a project that seeks to preserve the stories of misfortunate women, whose lives might otherwise be forgotten. I am now on a mission to encourage others to record the biographies of their precious possessions, stories that equally might easily be lost.
 
Acutely aware that, when I am no longer around to be their custodian, my descendants might deposit these items that I treasure in the nearest charity shop, or worse still skip, I recently set out to record the stories behind these heirlooms. At least then my family will be aware of what the are discarding and at the very least, photographs and the stories will survive. So much of the oral history associated with these objects and their original owners has already been lost, I vowed that I would allow no more to disappear. I decided that I would preserve what I knew on what is currently a fledgling website. Eventually, I will ensure that the same information is recorded in other formats too.
 
I have the gold fob watch, given to my grandfather, Albany, for forty-five years’ service on the railways. This is a man who witnessed serious railway accidents, who took part in the General Strike and who, after a brief spell as a railway porter, chose to revert to being a cleaner because he didn’t want the responsibility that came with promotion. My mother’s wedding dress was hand-made by her from a silk parachute, as post-war rationing was still in force. Unless I tell the story, no one but I will know that what appear to be rust stains down the front are actually blood stains where she cut her hand on the wire holding her bouquet together. Then there is Jessie’s locket. Jessie, born in 1874, was my grandmother’s cousin. She left no descendants. If I don’t tell her story, who will?

 

 




We see china, jewellery and other artefacts in antique shops and on online auction sites that were once precious to someone; sadly this is no longer the case. Their stories have been lost. This diminishes them as an object; they are now merely items of material culture, to put it bluntly, they are things. Some are attractive, some are useful, some have a monetary value but they are no longer imbued with the essence of their owner.
 
Of course, everyone is perfectly entitled to do what they like with their family heirlooms. Not everyone will agree with me but personally, I cringe when I see people on television programmes selling grandad’s medals or granny’s engagement ring so they can renovate the kitchen or jet off on holiday. They may well sell and may even fund that dream holiday but no purchaser will ever have an emotional connection to those items; they will not be bound to the original owners by blood, by memory, or by an invisible chain of shared heritage.
 

If you are not fortunate enough to have inherited any family treasures, perhaps you have siblings or cousins who have. Seek out those items and make sure their stories are shared. If you are the current custodian, perhaps you too will take on the task of record the history of the heirlooms in your possession.

'Inigo Jones - Inventor of the Glitter Ball' by Karen Maitland

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Inigo Jones (1573-16520
Artist: William Hogarth (1697-1764)
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Today, we mainly remember Inigo Jones as an architect, but he actually got his first shot at designing a building, a shopping-mall – the New Exchange on the Strand, for Secretary of State and arch spy-master, Robert Cecil – after coming to prominence as a designer of costumes, scenery and special effects for the grand royal masques staged for James I and his Danish wife, Queen Anne. And the special effects Jones created for the stage were remarkable. 

Inigo Jones was born to a Welsh clothmaker in Smithfield in London in 1573. He travelled to the Court of King Christian of Denmark in the retinue of the Earl of Rutland and it seems likely that Queen Anne was introduced to Jones through her brother, Christian. Jones was first employed to design the sets and costumes for a masque for her in back in England in 1604, alongside the controversial playwright, Ben Jonson, with whom he had a creative but stormy relationship. 

Scene of Witches from 'The Masque of Queens'
By Ben Jonson
Artist: Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)
Yale Center for British Art

Royal masques were elaborate allegorical plays incorporating music and dances, staged to celebrate anniversaries and events such as Twelfth Night. The queen and her ladies took part, posing in classical costume or riding on the backs of mechanical animals, while professional actors spoke their lines, though the actors often got too drunk in the ‘green-room’ to remember them. But Jones’ audiences and royal patrons demanded that each masque should be even more spectacular than the last. 

The stage Jones devised for the first royal masque was four feet above the ground, forty-foot square and could be wheeled into place. Hand-operated machinery below the stage allowed the mechanical creatures to move. A curtain painted with landscapes, dropped to the floor to reveal a fairy court or the sea made to roll onto the shore by raising and lowering painted cloths. Actors appeared to be ride through the waves on giant sea-horse or shells carried by sea monsters.

Masque Costume - 'A Star'
by Inigo Jones
Using only candle flames, oiled cloth, coloured glass and prisms, Jones managed to create lighting effects that could suggest a nocturnal glade with twinkling stars, or a blazing desert with a scorching sun. He would make the audience gasp by suddenly switching from white moonlight to brilliantly-coloured torchlights. He sometimes had lights in glass cases lowered from the ceiling that moved around above the stage to distract the audience from scenery and prop changes 

He produced clouds that moved across a sky and fake trees which half sank into the stage before opening their branches to reveal the performers. He devised mechanical monsters, which appeared to move on their own and designed the most extravagant, often transparent costumes, some of which were worn by Queen Anne and her ladies. A Venetian ambassador attending a performance of ‘Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue’ in January 1618, was shocked to observe that several of the ladies’ costumes left them bare breasted.

Masque Costume
'A page like a Fire Spirit'
by Inigo Jones

By 1611, Jones had introduced side wings - scenery that poked out from the sides of the stage and were angled to create the illusion of perspective, as well as places of concealment for the actors. He also introduced shutters that slid in from both sides and closed together, and could be drawn in and out to reveal different scenes. 

From medieval times, English audiences had been accustomed to gods and angels being lowered down from the ceiling onto the stage, but Jones managed to produce chariots, clouds and giant birds on which actors could appear to fly right across the stage.

On one occasion, Jones had a specially mixed perfume puffed across the audience at a key moment – the original smelly-vision – and he even invented the glitter ball: a large, revolving, silver ball decorated with gold that hung above the dancers, sending sparks of light darting round the set. 

The cost for staging the masques varied enormously from an extravagant £3,000 in 1609, to around £719 two years later. Perhaps some costumes and devices had been recycled. Certainly, Queen Anne raided the vast numbers of sumptuous gowns left by Queen Elizabeth for fabrics, jewels and embroidered panels to decorate costumes for herself and her ladies. 

Inigo Jones and Ben Johnson were well paid for their efforts. For their work on one of the masques, each received £40 in fees, but not as much as the instructor who schooled the ladies-in-waiting in their dances for the same masque, who was paid £50 – about two and half times the annual salary of a skilled tradesman. But given the drunken antics of the court ladies and their outrageous flirting, perhaps the poor dance tutor had earned it.

Inigo Jones' costume design for
a nymph for'Tethy's Festival'
by Samuel Daniel

But Jones’s royal patrons were to prove his undoing, for when Civil War broke out, Jones was assumed to be a royalist, and forced to flee. He was finally arrested, and lost everything he worked so hard for, sadly dying just three years after the execution of King Charles I.

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For anyone interested in reading more about this remarkable man and his amazing and turbulent life, I thoroughly recommend the fascinating book ‘Inigo – The life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English Renaissance by Michael Leapman, pub. Headline, 2003 

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KJ Maitland’s final novel in her Jacobean quartet, ‘A Plague of Serpents,’ set in the aftermath of the gunpowder plot, will be published in April 2024.




a


"Hans the Most Famous"* by Mary Hoffman

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Hans Holbein the Younger, Self-portrait

Think of Henry Vlll and what picture floats into yoir mind? Or Thomas Cromwell, or Thomas More? The likely answer is an image painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, a German-Swiss Master who spent more than a third of his life in England and weathered the stresses of the king's marriages, religious reforms and and the many shocks that Tudor England was heir to. In fact you can't really think of the Tudors at all without the man who became known as the King's Painter.

There is an exhibition on till 14th April at the King's Gallery in Buckingham Palace (though it was still the Queen's Gallery when we visited it in January) called Holbein at the Tudor Court and it is well worth your time to go and see it. 

Young Hans was born in the autumn/winter of 1497 in Augsburg, Bavaria the son of Hans the Elder, who was also a professional painter. His older brother, Ambrosius, was a painter too and their uncle Sigismund (or Sigmund) seems also to have worked in Hans the Elder's studio. The boys would have been brought up in an atmosphere of portraits and altarpieces, of oil paints and book design.

Augsburg had been passed over by the plague that ravaged most of Europe in earlier centuries and, with access to the forests and rivers of Bavaria, had become a booming centre for timber, metal, paper and textile industries.The Holbeins lived in a three-storey building by a narrow canal, reached  over a little wooden bridge.

Hans the Elder's art was largely devotional, paintings and murals on religious themes, painting textiles and carpets in exquisite detail, a technical skill inherited by his younger and more famous son. 200 sketches survive from Hnas the Elder, mostly portraits. But art at the time was not valued in the way it became in later centuries. An "artist" was an alien concept in the Renaissance; even Vasari in 1550 wrote his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects without use of that term. The social position of the Holbeins and other what we would now call 'artists" in both Northern and Southern Europe was that of an artisan, someone paid for his labours as piecework or on commission.

But the prosperous merchants and bankers of Augsburg were keen to have their likenesses commemorated, whether in portraits or as donors on lavish altarpieces.

Ambrosius and Hans, drawn by their father
 

By his late teenage years Hans the younger had moved to Basel with his older brother Ambrosius, where they became apprenticed to another Hans, Herbster, Basel's leading painting of his day. They found work making woodcuts for use in book production in the young industry of printing and one of their first jobs was to drawmarginal pictures for a work by Desiderius Erasmus, the leading Humanist of BNorthern Europe.

A few years later it seems that Ambrosius might have died, since nothing more is recorded of his work. Young Hans, on the other hand, thrived, marrying a well-off widow, Elsbeth, who already had one sone and started bearing more children to her second husband. And in 1923, Hans painted his first portrait of Erasmus, who recommended the artist to his friend Sir Thomas More in England.

Desiderius Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger

 

Three years later and Hans quit Basel to seek his fortune in London but this was just his first foray into England. He went back to Basel for four more years, painting his wife and their two older children, in the time between many commissions. But Basel was a hotspot for Protestant Reform and the political upheavals there made the city a dangerous place for artists, whose freedom to paint whatever they liked was strictly curtailed.

Perhaps this is why Hans went back to London in 1532, where another kind of upheaval was soon to rock the Tudor court. By then Henry Vlll had convinced himself that the lack of a male heir from his wife Katherine of Aragon was God's punishment of the king for marryting his older brother's widow. At least, that was Henry's justification for wanting to divorce his wife and marry a young lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, in the belief she would bring forth a prince to inherit his crown. Henry was infatuated with Anne and took his case to the Pope and to anyone that would listen. To make a long and complicated story short, he solved his problem by splitting from the Church in Rome and becomiong Supreme Head of the Church of England - a strategem suggested by Thomas Cromwell, who was becoming the king's right hand man.

Useless then for Holbein to play his card of introduction from Thomas More, who was opposed to the king's second marriage, and he might have returned to Basel with his tail between his legs, since More resigned his role as Lord Chancellor in May 1532.

Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger

The coming men were of the Boleyn faction and Thomas Cromwell himself; Holbein lost no time in making himself known to them and it seems as if art won out over politics as this former protegé of More's gained favour at the Tudor Court. He started modestly, with portraits of rich merchants, which must have recalled his early life in Augsburg, but in 1533, Holbein painted what is probably still his most famous work, The Ambassadors, now in the National Gallery. Aristocrat Jean de Dinteville and  Bishop Georges de Selve were French diplomats for Francis 1, who were both in London at the time. 


This enigmatic painting, with the elongated skull in the foreground, has led to much speculation. It is said to combine the Arts and Sciences, religion and politics and its technical skill is beyond doubt. Maybe it was this that established young Hans, not yet forty, as the premier painter of the 16th century in England.

1533 was a momentous year for England and Henry. He had married his Anne but his divorce from Katherine had not been sanctioned by the Pope and he was excommunicated. Holbein was commissioned to paint a portrait of Anne Boleyn, but after her fall from grace and execution in 1536, all memorials of her were expunged from the record. This charming drawing of her in a night cap survives and is in the exhibition:


By 1536, Holbein the Younger was designated "the king's painter" (not the only one) and paid £30 a year by Henry for his services. Franny Moyle's magnificent book The King's Painter (Head of Zeus 2021) suggests that the king had a genuine affection for the artist and held him in great esteem. But it was a dangerous thing to be a friend of Henry's as Thomas More and Thomas Wolsey had found to their cost and Thomas Cromwell would in time experience. 

Earl of Essex (Thomas Cromwell) by Holbein the Younger
 

Holbein was not so associated with the Boleyns that he suffered for the connection after Anne's death and he continued to paint the prominent men and women of the court. In 1537, the king gave Holbein the commission of depicting his whole family in a mural for Whitehall and, although this work is lost, a copy of it is the origin of all our ideas of the Tudor monarch in his heyday, sumptuously dressed, legs apart in perhaps the first "power stance" of English politics.

Copy by Remigius after Holbein the Younger

 

The mural featured Henry's parents, Henry Vll and Elizabeth of York, behind him and Jane Seymour, his third queen, on the right. Holbein also painted a full portrait of Queen Jane, the sketch for which is in the exhibition.

Jane Seymour by Hans Holbein the Younger

As, surely, everyone knows, Queen Jane died shortly after giving birth to Hanry's only legitimater son and heir, who became Edward Vl. This was when things became perilous for Holbein, who was tasked with depicting the candidates to be Henry's fourth wife. One of the king's early choices was Cristina of Denmark, whose half-portrait is in the exhibition (a copy - for the dazzling full-length portrait you must go to the National Gallery).

Cristina of Denmark by Holbein the Younger

Henry's courtship of Cristina was unsuccessful - she is said to have valued her head too much to accept him - and a later candidate was Anne of Cleves. Hans painted a most beguiling portrait of her but Henry found it untrue to life. The disastrous marriage and annulment that followed might have cost Holbein his head, since it contributed to the execution of Thomas Cromwell, who had brokered the match. But Hans kept his head down, and attached to his shoulders. He had lost all his patrons - More, Anne Boleyn and Cromwell but he survived in the torrid world of King Henry's Court, to fight another day.

Anne of Cleves by Holbein the Younger (Louvre, Paris)
 

There is a miniature that might be of Henry's fifth wife, the ill-fated and short-lived Katherine Howard. Certainly many of Holbein's paintinhgs were copied as miniatures and circulated among Tudor nobles. The exhibition is full of these and many, many exquisite drawings - Mary Shelton, Thomas Wyatt, Thomas More, to name just a few. But you might want to supplement the experience with a an add-on trip to the National Gallery to see Cristina and the Ambassadors. And the National Portrait Gallery for Thomas Cromwell and a copy of Sir Thomas More. The shop at the Monarch's Gallery will sell you the catalogue but I recommend Franny Moyle's book in preference. It is lavishly illustrated and you should not skimp but buy the hardback, as the paperback is inferior.

What were the qualities that made Holbein ther Younger so prominent and his work so enduring in its appeal? Flattery certainly wasn't among them. The king looks powerful, yes, but his tiny mouth and meaty face are far from attrractive and Jane Seymour is positively plain. (Even Holbein's own self-portrait at the head of this post, painted in the year before his death, does him no favours). It is of course possible that standards of beauty/handsomeness have changed somewhat since Tudor times.  

Holbein's technical skills afre beyond doubt, whether in depicting rich fabrics, furs and lace in detail or the modest folds of a simple gown. His main strength seems to be an unsurpassed ability to present us with the sitter itself. Whether the figure is noble, distinguished, sly or "looking like a murderer." as a character in Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy describes his poirtrait, he or she looks out at us over the centuries, saying "this is who I am; take me or leave me."

Hans Holbein the Younger died in 1543, at the age of around 46, possibly of the plague that ravaged London in that year. His luck finally ran out but at the time of his death he was the "most famous" English painter (he had taken English citizenship so let us claim him as our own). Nearly six hundred years later his works are exhibited in a sell-out show, which you should try to see before it closes. 


 



* from a poem by Nicholas Bourbon




Stories in Flowers by Caroline K. Mackenzie

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Spring is on its way. It has been a long winter (or, at least, it feels that way) and the bursting of buds and arrival of flowers bring welcome signs of new life. In a former History Girls Blog, I wrote about Autumn: a celebration of nature’s golden season but, this year especially, I feel Spring deserves its own celebration. As each new flower appears, I have been delving into the stories behind the species and their names. Here are a few of my favourites:

Snowdrop

‘Brother, joy to you! I’ve brought some snowdrops; only just a few, …Cheerful and hopeful in the frosty dew’. Extract from 'The Months’ by Christina Rossetti. 

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

Snowdrops are seen as bringers of cheer and joy, given they are one of the first flowers to appear after winter. They may originally have been brought to Britain by monks in the fifteenth century (although the sixteenth century is usually cited as the earliest date). Frequently they are found in monastery gardens and churchyards and have been associated with the Christian celebration of Candlemas Day (2nd February), which gave them the name ‘Candlemas Bells’.

Their Latin name is ‘Galanthus’ which derives from Ancient Greek, meaning milk-flower. The common snowdrop’s name ‘Galanthus Nivalis’ ('nivalis' is Latin for ‘snowy’) alludes to its ability to thrive even in snowy conditions, its pendent blooms nodding gracefully above a blanket of white. An added bonus of this particular variety is its honeyed scent. 

Although we usually associate snowdrops with hope, there was a time when it was thought that to see a single snowdrop was a sign of imminent death. It was even considered bad luck to take a snowdrop inside one’s home.

Snowdrops have been used to treat headaches and other pains and, in modern medicine, an ingredient from snowdrops is being used in a treatment for dementia.

During the Second World War, British citizens nicknamed American soldiers ‘snowdrops’ due to their green uniforms with a white cap or helmet.

Narcissus

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

After the snowdrop, next appears the Narcissus, commonly known as the Daffodil. One of the best loved stories of the character Narcissus is told by the Roman poet, Ovid, in his 'Metamorphoses'. Narcissus is a beautiful young man who rejected the love of many admirers, male and female. One of those scorned hopefuls prayed that Narcissus himself might suffer unrequited love. The goddess Nemesis heard his prayer. One day, while out hunting, the handsome Narcissus lay down to relax on a grassy bank next to a clear spring. On noticing his own reflection in the water he mistakenly believes he has happened upon another beautiful youth. He smiles. The youth smiles back. He waves. The beautiful boy waves back. Narcissus is falling head over heels. But he soon becomes frustrated:

‘My love desires to be embraced for whenever I lean forward to kiss the clear waters he lifts up his face to mine and strives to reach me.’

Narcissus beats his chest with his fist, turning his milk-white skin crimson (‘like apples tinted both white and red’), and is dismayed to see that his beloved likewise appears battered and bruised. The torment continues until eventually Narcissus dies, consumed by his grief. Mysteriously, when his sisters prepare his funeral pyre, ‘The body was not to be found – only a flower with a trumpet of gold and pale white petals’.

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

Narcissus achieved immortality through his metamorphosis, living on through the ubiquitous daffodils springing up in March bringing cheer and colour. Perhaps less cheerfully, his legacy has also been left in the term ‘Narcissism’.

Fritillary

When the daffodils have finished, we can look forward to the blooms of Fritillaries. These were introduced into England in the seventeenth century by Huguenots, French protestants, fleeing from persecution by the Catholic tyranny. Hence, Fritillaries have long been seen to symbolise persecution. Their pendulous solitary flower perhaps reinforces this meaning.

The flowers are commonly known as ‘Snake’s head’ due to the scaly pattern on them resembling a snake’s skin. 

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

Another explanation is that the name derives from the Latin word ‘Fritillus’ meaning a dice box. The connection seems to be that games of dice can be played on a chess board, which the markings on the flowers resemble. 

Rosemary

In the Latin poem the ‘Aeneid’ (Virgil’s epic celebrating the founding of Rome), the climax describes fierce battles fought between the two sides led by the hero Aeneas and his great enemy, Turnus. The battlefield is described as being smattered with a ‘dew’ of blood. Commentators have noted the highly poetic use of ‘ros’ (dew) here. In another of Virgil’s poems, the 'Georgics' (a celebration of all things rustic), he uses ‘ros’ simply to mean rosemary, the full Latin name for which is ‘ros marinus’ (dew of the sea). Rosemary is thought to represent remembrance and perhaps Virgil had this symbolism in mind in his description of the victims on the battlefield whose lives were sacrificed as part of the destiny of the founding of Rome. 

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

The symbol of everlasting memories also explains why in Victorian times brides included rosemary in their wedding ceremonies - it demonstrated they were bringing fond memories of their former home into their new, marital home. Some brides today still include it in their bouquet to represent love and memories (both those to cherish from the past and those to come in the future).

Rosemary is a firm favourite in kitchen gardens, with purple flowers to add colour to the wonderful scent.

Iris

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

Colours are the basis of the story behind the beautiful Iris. Iris was the messenger of the Greek gods. When she flew down from Mount Olympus to deliver messages to the mortals, she would leave a rainbow in her trail. The colours of irises are as varied as the colours of the rainbow. A devilish red known as Lucifer and vibrant orange are just two of the colours found in Crocosmia, which are in the same botanical family as Iris, the latter shown perhaps at its best in a striking purple.

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

The kings of France used the iris in their royal emblem – we know it as the Fleur de Lis.

Water lily

France also leads us to our next flower, the water lily, magnificently celebrated by the French impressionist Monet whose beloved water lilies in his garden at Giverny inspired him time and time again.

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

They take their name, ‘Nymphaea’, from Greek mythology, where Nymphs (Nymphai) were minor goddesses or spirits of nature, many of whom were associated with springs and fountains. Water lilies were said to be found growing where nymphs used to play. 

Foxglove

Finally, a brief mention of a flower to look forward to in Summer. Foxgloves’ flowers stand tall, as if pointing upwards, and it is easy to see why their shape is described in their Latin name ‘Digitalis’ (like a finger).

© Caroline K. Mackenzie.

They have beautiful bells in pinks and whites but, a note of caution: the freckles in the bells have been said to be the fingerprints of elves, placed there as a warning that the plant is highly poisonous.

These are just a few of the stories which flowers and plants have to tell. Names, symbolism, uses and superstitions have evolved throughout history, culminating in a true garden of delights. I do hope you enjoy all the flowers which you see in Spring, whether in a garden, park, or simply by the roadside.

www.carolinetutor.co.uk

Post Script

The date of this blog coincides with the release of a video I recorded for Bloomsbury Academic as part of their campaign Where Can Classics Take You? The theme was what I love most about Classics and how the study of Latin and Greek can lead to so many fascinating places. ‘Mea culpa’: I forgot to mention one place where Latin, Greek and Classical mythology are alive and growing – the garden.

Watch the videos here: Where Can Classics Take You?

Bibliography

Aeneid (Virgil: Edited with notes by R. Deryck Williams)

A Latin Dictionary (Lewis and Short)

Cambridge Latin Anthology (Ashley Carter and Phillip Parr)

Cambridge Greek Lexicon (J. Diggle et al.)

Complete Language of Flowers (Sheila Pickles)

Metamorphoses (Ovid: Translated by David Raeburn)

RHS A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (Christopher Brickell)

RHS Latin for Gardeners (Lorraine Harrison)

Who’s Who in the Ancient World (Betty Radice)

www.ngs.org.uk

www.woodlandtrust.org

In Defence of Poland by Rebecca Alexander

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My first neighbours were a couple in their eighties from Poland. As time went on, they told me stories of life in childhood, celebrations, food, the Slavic language, the beautiful landscape and grand history. After Joe died, his wife Rosa started to tell stories of his journey through the war. 

Zygmunt Bieńkowski and Jan Zumbach present the first "trophy" of Squadron 303


On 1st September, 1939, as we all know, Germany invaded Poland. What is less commonly known is the scale of the invasion. 1.8 million German combatants poured across Poland from three sides, from Germany, East Prussia and Slovakia in one day. They brought the massive power of the Luftwaffe, which had some of the most evolved and heavily armed planes of that time. Hitler had ordered that the attack was to be carried out “with the greatest brutality and without mercy”. 

Sixteen days later, The Poles were beaten back and trying to protect Warsaw, when Stalin invaded the part of Poland ceded to him by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Poles were overwhelmed, and had lost at least twenty thousand civilians and more soldiers. Poland never formally surrendered but its government, navy and air force evacuated to London, seeking a place from which to win back their homeland. 

The Polish Air force had taken its outdated P11s with open cockpits and two machine guns against the faster, better armoured and closed in cockpits of the Me-110s, with four machine guns and two cannon. They fought gallantly and often successfully, but they were also outnumbered. Despite the disadvantage, Polish pilots far outnumbered their planes by 5 September, down to 120 aircraft. By the time the order came to evacuate on 17/18 September, pilots were reduced to flying trainer planes, unarmed civilian planes or their battered P11s across to neighbouring Romania. Despite their disadvantages, they had brought down 126 German planes, with more probably shot down and or damaged. It would now be a long and difficult journey to safety. 

Most of the Polish Air Force made their ways by circuitous routes to France, with the stated aim of defending the French then driving forward to liberate Poland. They stole planes and gliders, drove cars and lorries, caught rides on horse drawn cars and the last of the trains. The Romanians took their smart uniforms, exchanging them for their own clothes, stealing personal jewellery, boots and weapons when the refugees couldn’t hide them. The country was poor, the language unfamiliar, the only common language was French. Refugees were marched to an internment camp in Cernăuți, along with thousands of soldiers, ordinary people and other airmen. About eighty percent of the air force (over nine thousand air- and ground- crew) had got to Romania. Another thousand escaped through Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia or Hungary. Fifteen hundred were captured by the Soviets and sent to labour camps. 

Conditions in the Cernăuți camp were terrible. There was poor sanitation, little food or shelter, but security was very lax. Polish Air Force personnel escaped, travelling across nominally neutral Romania on foot, horse and cart or train to Yugoslavia or Hungary. A few secreted coins for bribes, and home-made documents got them through border checks, avoiding the odd Nazi sympathiser. On one occasion, realising they were being followed, two pilots caught and questioned a man speaking in German on a concealed radio, eventually making the decision to kill him as a Nazi spy. 

Many walked over the Carpathian mountains, some dying in the cold. The Hungarians were civil and helpful, despite having a very active fascist party and anti-Jewish legislation, and many were helped onwards toward Italy. General Józef Zając, a pilot, was stopped in Fiume, which was then in Italy, accused of being a Jew. Only his rosary and Polish credentials saved him. Pilots reaching the Black Sea were able to take ships to the Mediterranean and to French or British ports. Others struck out through Germany itself, walking into Belgium then across to France, knowing they could be shot if caught. 

The Polish personnel were incredibly resourceful. Three mechanics walked to the Italian border on the Yugoslav side and claimed they were Italians who had accidentally wandered across the border, the Yugoslavs sent them into Italy rather than fill out visa forms. After walking across Italy, they used the same ruse to get into Switzerland, from which they could legally travel into France. 

Polish pilots escaping north to Lithuania were not so welcome, and Latvians were cautious, not wanting to offend the Soviets. Polish agents in collusion with the British embassy helped many pilots escape by boat to Sweden, then on to Denmark or Norway here they headed for France. 

The Polish Air Force initially wanted to defend Europe by bolstering the French air defences. Bomber pilots were sent to England to start training but fighter pilots were accommodated, as they drifted in, at Luxeil, Le Bourget and dispersed around the French airbases. 

Many French politicians didn’t believe it would come to another war. The Polish pilots were placed on out of the way airfields with old Caudron Cyclones, defective planes that the French called ‘flying coffins’ were grounded by the French air ministry. The Poles couldn’t wait to engage the German Luftwaffe, and were happy to fly in the Caudrons. As on the first of September, the Germans attacked at dawn, blowing up French planes in their airfields and hangars while the Polish pilots chased them off as best they could. Six weeks after arriving at the airbase, the French surrendered and the Poles were off again, commanded by their leader General Sikorski, to flee to the coast and get, by any possible means, to Britain. 

Polish pilots stole planes, boats, rode trains, hitched lifts and walked to the coast, where thousands were rescued. Those in bases in the south of France fled to the Mediterranean coast. British steamers, Polish naval vessels that had joined the Royal Navy, and British warships transported them to Britain from ports as far away as Algeria and Casablanca. One had stowed away on a steamer going to Mexico, travelled up through the US and Canada and joined a unit coming to the UK. 

Altogether, 6,200 made the journey successfully. It was a heroic migration, but the fight had hardly begun. The Poles (and Czechs, Hungarians, Yugoslavs and French who had joined them) arrived just in time to adjust to the RAF regulations, learn the language and cope with the different culture before the onslaught of the battle of Britain. The Poles, who had experienced actual combat against the German forces, were horrified to be demoted to the lowest rank, pilot officers, and to have to practice formations and radio commands on bicycles on the runway. They were happier to be training in relatively advanced British planes and to be reunited with their ground support crew, who were so conscientious some only slept when their pilots were in the air. 

By the time Polish pilots flew their first missions in defence of Britain, they had survived their own rigorous training, months of dogfights against the power of the Luftwaffe in Poland and France, travelling across and increasingly hostile Europe, training in old biplanes at British training grounds and learning a new language and customs. They complained mostly about the strict rules within the air forces, and the food, but the locals were welcoming and the British were determined to fight off any invasion. 

Dunkirk had left the Royal Air Force short of 450 pilots, with a loss of another 300 a month as the German planes started incursions across the English Channel. The British knew the Polish pilots had been trained to use their own initiative over staying in strict formations or waiting for commands. It was easier to assemble pilots that hadn’t been integrated into the depleted squadrons, into their own, Polish groups. 

On 31 August 1940, the newly formed 303 squadron was operational, six of their Hurricanes defeating four confirmed and two probably Messerschmitt 109s, and they continued to have considerable success for the week up to the Battle of Britain. 

303 squadron pilots. L-R: F/O Ferić, F/Lt Lt Kent, F/O Grzeszczak, P/O Radomski, P/O Zumbach, P/O Łokuciewski, F/O Henneberg, Sgt Rogowski, Sgt Szaposznikow (in 1940)


By the 31 October 1940, the battle was over. Almost three thousand pilots of all Allied nations had taken part, destroying over thirty percent of the German planes, although at considerable loss to their own forces. 

British pilots on average took down 5 enemy planes per pilot lost. The Poles averaged 10.5, meaning they were able to fly many more missions for the rest of the war with tremendous success. Nearly two thousand Poles were killed and thirteen hundred wounded, winning 342 bravery awards. 

As the RAF’s Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding put it: ‘If it had not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say the outcome of the battle [of Britain] would have been the same.’ 

After the war, the Polish airmen couldn’t safely return to Poland, which was lost to the Soviet Union. A few who tried were either arrested and interned, or shot as traitors or spies. Most, like my neighbour, settled in Britain and many were offered permanent posts in the RAF when the Polish Air Force was disbanded. Taking Joe’s story of the journey to Britain and his burning desire to free Poland, I am presently writing a book based on a fictional pilot which comes out January 2025 with Bookouture.

If you are interested in reading more about this subject, I can recommend: The Forgotten Few; The Polish Air Force in Word War II by Adam Zamoyski (2004) and Truly of the Few; The Polish Air Force in Defence of Britain by Dr Penny Starms (2020)






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