Women who Dared

Badby bound
Regular readers will know I consider an “egg-shell” in Northamptonshire a second home – and so we were there recently, snuggled in village living, bathed in hospitality, chitty-chattering away and rummaging through nature prior to the explosion of Badby Wood bluebells which are on the brink of blooming. When we are fully assembled, there are six women to three men – the elder stateswoman was gallivanting on another trip on this occasion – so, with double the oestrogen, it was an apt time to visit the Bodleian library exhibition about the women’s movement. 100 years since The Representation of the People Act allowed votes for (some) women!

Badby Woods

Sappho to Suffrage: women who dared
Bodleian staff members regularly delve into their archives for artefacts to display. If you haven’t visited, I’d recommend checking out their website’s What’s On. Until February 3rd 2019 they have an imaginatively-presented collection showcasing the achievements of women who dared to do the unexpected. You can see fragmentary scraps of poetry by the remarkable poet, Sappho, engravings of pirates like Anne Bonny, accounts of cross-dressing female soldiers getting military pensions; records of explorers, scientists, mathematicians, writers (a manuscript of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for goodness sake!); photographs, banners, musical scores, medieval book-bindings and even a Suffragette board game!

Oxford, Badby, Women who Dared....

How’s your Dad these days, Lizzy?
The object that startled me most was Elizabeth I’s prayer-book embroidered (when she was a child) with her step-mother’s initials, KP – Katherine Parr. Astonishing! Poignant! If you could only visit Elizabeth when she was stitching those initials and ask her about her dad, her mum, England at the time, her hopes for the future…. 

The First World War
Until you see material assembled like this it is easy to forget that the achievements of women have often been left out of the history books and the national memory. A significant contribution to victory in Britain during the 1914-1918 war was the willingness of women to enter the laboratories, factories, hospitals and services that were essential to keeping the Home Front going and feed the engine of war abroad. The authorities had no choice, after the war-time contributions of women, other than to allow property-owning women over the age of 30 to vote in 1918, a step towards equal voting rights in the UK.

Suffragists and Suffragettes
The courage and determination of the women of a century ago should never be forgotten. The recently-erected statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square has been a welcome addition to the cavalcade of bronze throughout London. Fawcett was a suffragist (one of those who advocated peaceful protesting and constitutional campaigning) but more controversial were the suffragettes who escalated from banners to marching to being chained to railings to smashing windows, to setting fire to letter boxes to attacking government ministers. Without their courageous violence, would change ever have occurred? (History suggests not….) The exhibition makes clear that the boundary between suffragists and suffragettes was blurred with many women belonging to groups taking dual approaches.

Force-feeding in prison
Lady Constance Lytton gave a sobering account of her own experience of force-feeding in prison:

Two of the wardresses took hold of my arms, one held my head and one my feet. One wardress helped pour the food. The doctor leant on my knees…. he explained the steel gag would hurt and the wooden gag would not….he broke into a temper as he plied my teeth with the steel instrument….the pain of it was intense and at last I must have given way for he got the steel gag between my teeth. Then he proceeded to turn it more than necessary until my jaws were fastened wide apart, far more than they would naturally go. Then he put a tube down my throat which seemed much too wide and about four feet in length…. the horror of it was more than I can describe….

Feminist men
I’ve written about this idea before but don’t apologise for writing it again: anyone of any age, any gender, any ethnicity, any class or any creed who doesn’t self-identify as a feminist doesn’t share the same definition as me. I’ve heard Juno Dawson explain succinctly that if your answer to the following two questions is “yes” then you are a feminist. Should a woman have the same equality of opportunity as a man? Should a woman and a man be paid the same salary for the same job? If you can’t answer “yes” to those two questions, then you have different values to me.

Mother, brothers, sister.... impossible not to be a feminist if you've half a brain....

Mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters, girlfriends, wives, colleagues
Everyone has had a mother. Not everyone experiences the other range of relationships you can have with women. But as a tutor in a secondary school I tried to transmit to teenage boys that they shouldn’t treat girls or women any differently than you would want your mother or sister or daughter to be treated. (The same applies, of course, to fathers and brothers and sons.) As humans it’s nigh on impossible to avoid interaction with both genders and mutual respect has to be the future for the next stage of evolution. Thank you, Suffragists and Suffragettes from history and all who continue to fight for a better civilisation.

Back "from" the Future

Happy Birthday, the Unforgettable Rosie....

Selby’s Escapologist
One of my teaching chums had a birthday recently at the Steampunk-themed bar in Selby. Was there drink? Oh, yes there was. Were there spectacular chocolatey cakes? Why, certainly, my lord. And did you get out of the Back from the Future Escape Room? Maybe not…. but that’s not my fault. I’d already had a little fizz at that point. And my other excuse is that my previous two experiences of Locked-In games were accompanied by whippersnappers in their twenties and here I was stuck with geriatrics wearing Doc Brown wigs and bow ties…. Also, to be fair, I don’t think my brain cells are what they once were…. but many thanks to Rosie for a memorable Easter Monday. I think the other members of the party (Anarchy of the Seas and World of Wizardry) got more clues right but still weren’t fully freed….

World of Wizardry, Back from the Future, Anarchy of the Seas

Film costumes on Easter Sunday
A day out in north Lincolnshire had an awesome surprise in an unexpected place. I thought we were visiting a medieval hall but didn’t expect to see a display of costumes as worn by the stars in famed productions. See if you can identify in the collage below the costumes worn by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, Kristen Scott Thomas in The Darkest Hour, Emily Blunt in Young Victoria, Helena Bonham Carter in Suffragette, Daniel Craig in Moll Flanders, Sean Bean in the Sharpe series, Aiden Turner in Poldark, Robert Downey Junior in Restoration, and from Shakespeare in Love: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes and Judi Dench. Most thrilling for me was Kenneth Branagh’s battle costume from Henry V. The “Historical Hall of Fame” exhibition is on until September 2nd so if you’re anywhere near Gainsborough, have a gander.

Historical Hall of Fame film costumes at Gainsborough Old Hall

Gainsborough Old Hall
Built by the Burgh family in the 1400s, Gainsborough Old Hall turns out to be spectacular in itself, whether or not it happens to be housing an enticing costume exhibition. After the Burghs, only the Hickman and Bacon families inhabited it, so it retains a great number of original features despite at various times being a theatre, a meeting hall, a Masonic temple and a pub. The restoration work is sympathetic and the wooden-beamed Hall is a wonder to behold.

Audio-Guide
Audio-guides can be hit or miss but on the whole I think English Heritage are doing a great job with all the ones I’ve heard recently. The one here includes dramatised monologues bringing different rooms to life, for example the ghostly corridor in the East Range and some different important visitors: Richard III (gotta love him), Henry VIII (gotta hate him) and Katherine Howard (gotta take my hat off to her.)

Living History
Most memorable after the Great Hall is, in my view, the original medieval kitchen complete with immense chimneys and lively interpreters actively doing kitchen stuff in front of your eyes. And busy antechambers with resident pompous Clerk, giving a sense of how the house must have been teeming with social (argumentative and smelly) interactions. I much prefer, as I’ve blogged before, this rough-and-tumble imaginative and social view of history, rather than any dry rendition of documents.

Catherine and Guy

Catherine Wheel
It was a shock to learn at some point when I was a child that the whizzing firework of a Catherine Wheel was named after a saint who was imprisoned, tortured and finally martyred by being beheaded. At first the (male) authorities tried to “break” Catherine of Alexandria on a “breaking wheel” but, according to history/legend, the wheel shattered and pieces flew everywhere, hence the design of the firework in later years.
Margaret Clitherow
Saint Catherine was one of many characters parading through my brain at Primary School. Her strength of purpose was an inspiration, as was the pregnant St Margaret Clitherow who was stripped, laid on a large sharp rock and covered with the door of her own house. The door was then piled with an immense load of rocks until the sharp rock beneath broke her back…. can anybody really believe the past was the “good old days”?…. and I’m sorry to report that Margaret met her fate in one of my favourite cities, York.

Saints Margaret Clitherow, Joan of Arc, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Bernadette, Hilda of Whitby, Peter, Christopher, Anthony of Padua, Joseph, Sebastian, Francis of Assisi and books from my childhood: Butler's Lives of Saints

Saints on the brain
I’m prepared to admit that, as a young boy, I thought the sensational lives of the saints were fascinatingly gripping. In some cases the manner of their deaths lit an imaginative fire (fuelled by some statues and paintings in school and on church walls that at times revelled in the martyrdoms.) In other cases the humanitarian efforts of the saints, often in extreme poverty and violent opposition, left me awe-struck by their bravery and compassion. So, without too much agony, here are my top dozen saints, six women and six men who have become symbolic of particular ideas and impulses.

• St Catherine of Alexandria (the Catherine wheel inspirer)
• St Margaret Clitherow, the Yorkshire lass whose stubbornness killed her (would I have caved in? yes I would)
• St Joan (of Arc) who features (as a villainess) in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part One but is sensationally sympathetic in GB Shaw’s play Saint Joan and who received visions from both squashed Saint Margaret and firework-famous Saint Catherine. Joan inspired the French to raise the siege of Orleans and gain successes in the Hundred Years War against England but she was ultimately burned to death at the stake (with the agreement of both France and England as an act of political expediency)
• St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who faced her end in the gas chambers at Auschwitz
• St Bernadette who faced bullying and disbelief in her home town of Lourdes when her chats with Mary the mother of Jesus were doubted, despite her ability to summon up rushing holy water springs that would help the town become a major tourist attraction
• St Hilda (of Whitby) is admirable in my book because she was a phenomenally powerful figure in 7th Century Northumberland having started her life in France. Anyone who can run abbeys in Hartlepool and on the cliffs of Whitby has my respect
• St Peter, the tragic cock-crowing denier, fated to be the first Pope but who paid a high price by being horrifically crucified upside down
• St Christopher, the “Christ-bearer”, braved raging rivers to help travellers to safety
• St Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost items and lost people (and sometimes fish and fishermen) died peacefully but after a long period of hardship and poverty. He makes my list because I was named after him (without an ‘h’)
• St Joseph, Jesus’s daddy, an excellent carpenter according to tradition and I always rooted for him because his son and the mother of his son (wife?) got far more attention than he did
• St Sebastian, favourite of classical artists, riddled with arrows after disobeying his superiors in his role as captain of the Praetorian Guard (sadly the truth is that he was probably clubbed to death and dumped in the Roman sewers rather than shot with arrows but artists chose the latter image)
• St Francis of Assisi, wolf-tamer, beloved of conservationists and the first true hippy

One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter

Penny for the Guy
Bonfire Night was a time of private conflict for my childhood brain. Although I loved everything about the fire, the food, the fireworks, I felt uneasy about putting a “Guy” on top of the bonfire. My primary school taught me that Guy Fawkes wasn’t necessarily a gunpowder-toting terrorist. He could be seen as a freedom fighter, trying to restore the rights of Roman Catholics in England during the period of The Henry VIII Club. I don’t know which teacher taught me to call the Church of England The Henry VIII Club but it stuck with me, as did the political complications of an event like the Gunpowder Plot. What should people do if they think the world isn’t listening to them? Blow up parliament? Vote for Brexit? Elect Trump? Become a suicide bomber? Die a martyr? Like the saints? Was Guy Fawkes, in his way, following his beliefs to their logical conclusion, like St Catherine of Alexandria? I’ll think about both Saint Catherine and Guy Fawkes at tonight’s Bolton Abbey bonfire.

Triggering Article 50

Dreaming of Heathcliff's dogs chasing Michael Gove

In the week that the (unelected) Prime Minister of the UK intends to trigger Article 50 that begins the country’s negotiations to separate from the European Union, I’m going to type whatever comes out in a stream of consciousness. My past few blogs have been about writing, Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights in particular. I wonder whether Heathcliff looking through the windows of Thrushcross Grange and despising the spoilt lives of privilege is a common experience. Is that why 52% (of the voters who bothered to vote) voted to Brexit? Would Heathcliff have voted to leave the European Union? (In truth, I don’t think he would have voted; he might have set his dogs on Michael Gove…. Or set fire to the polling booth….)

Do we want a return to the feudal system?
In the past it was easier to understand Britain’s/England’s/the UK’s social system:

• Before the Norman Conquest in 1066 there were serfs (slaves), cottars (cottagers), ceorls (freemen), thanes (landowners), earls and other nobles, royalty and the king
• In medieval times the feudal system dominated: serfs now had villeins below and peasants above; freemen came after yeomen came after servants; then came knights and vassals before the nobles and the king
• Both pre-1066 and post-1066 there was a parallel hierarchy in the Church too with the Monks after the Priests after the Dean after the Prior after the Abbot and then the ArchDeacon, Archbishop, Bishop, Cardinal and Pope (and then Henry VIII complicated everything by divorcing and beheading his spouses and inventing the Church of England)

It must have been comforting living in a feudal society. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

Knowing your place

The four seismic shifts since Medieval Times that have affected the UK’s class system are the Industrial Revolution, World War One, World War Two and Globalisation. Before the Industrial Revolution it was easy to know your place: your goods and lands were your own as long as you gave up a portion to the level above you (a portion either in cash, goods or a willingness to supply male bodies to fight in wars.) Apart from in times of famine – or catastrophic upheavals like the Black Death – people lived lives “sufficient unto themselves.” The sons of blacksmiths generally became blacksmiths; the youngest sons of nobles generally went into the church; the lives of non-religious women generally focused on giving birth. Occupation, social status and political influence were the anchors of society. You only broke the mould if someone on a higher plane of the structure conferred some favour upon you in terms of land or status. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

The Age of Reason

The Industrial Revolution brought wealth to unexpected people in unexpected ways. Suddenly ordinary people could make swift profits through inventions and hard word. Mass migration of people to factories in cities disrupted the equilibrium in the towns and villages. Ideas from the French and American revolutions trickled through the brains of thinkers and agitators and God was on trial for His/Her/Its very existence as the Church began to lose its influence over society. The Age of “Reason” or “Enlightenment” had arrived. The old ways were being disrupted. But the peasants/working class were still labouring in filthy conditions, underpaid, underfed, uncared for in terms of health, safety and welfare and likely to die from dysentery or diphtheria or cholera. Do Brexiters want to return to this period of our history?

The Années Folles

The Middle Classes (old cottagers and freemen) began to find political voices and by the time of the First World War the demand for women’s equality was a clarion call. There was no turning back and universal suffrage and meritocracy meant it was possible to use the capitalist system in most of the world (or, clandestinely, a corrupted version of the communist system in the USSR; or, strangely, a smoke and mirrors version of communism in China) to beat the system and rise to the top from wherever you started. You just needed to know how to play the system. So – just after the First World War – that seemed like a good time to be alive – the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, the French called it the Crazy Years (Années Folles).I could understand if Brexiters wanted to return to this period of our history (as long as what came next could be avoided.)

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart

The 1930s, tragically, brought the financial crash (sound familiar?) that led to The Great Depression that led to the rise of Fascism that led to The Second World War, the holocaust and the atomic bomb. The peace at the end of World War One had clearly been an attempt to impose outdated terms on political systems in countries whose societies were going through convulsions. The Roaring Twenties may have been the period, after all, of the greatest ostrich-head-in-the-sand national-delusion. And after World War Two all the certainties about “isms” became uncertainties and the world had faced, as Ralph weeps at the end of Golding’s 1954 Lord of the Flies:

the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart

Surely Brexiters don’t want to return to the 1950s, or do they?

James Aubrey as Ralph in Peter Brook's 1963 film of Lord of the Flies with images of the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart

Taking back control or business as usual….?

Much good followed the Second World War – attempts to build global organisations to end poverty and improve health on an international scale. There was an upsurge in cultural sharing and tourism that improved understanding between nations. Great strides were made in treating all citizens equally with reforming legislation about gender, race, disability, sexuality, age and religion. It once again seemed possible that, with the age of the internet, we might all be able to work more efficiently for fewer hours and enjoy more leisure time. If everyone worked fewer hours more people could be employed. As computers and mechanization became more sophisticated the work could become less stressful. Why didn’t it happen? Greed for profits…. leading to the 2008 financial crash in not-dissimilar circumstances to the crash of the 1930s. And then a skillfully-managed Establishment and Media campaign managed to deflect the blame for the consequent political decisions to impose AUSTERITY and blame OTHERS in order to help the financial institutions return to business as usual.

Staring through the windows
I have some sympathy with the cries of Fake News these days, but I’m worried that the wrong news is being called fake news. In my opinion the last five years have seen a dreadful polarisation of stances in all the Media and our brains have not yet caught up with the bombardment of manipulation that comes our way in ever-increasingly sinister bits of brainwashing. The arguments on both sides of the EU referendum were not presented clearly or honestly and the claims of the “victors” (ie the Brexiters) are the ones that are now being strained. I blogged earlier that Time Will Tell but between that blog and now I am still waiting for the government to present certainty about what the post-Brexit world will be like. I hope clarity will start to emerge in the following weeks. What I am sure about is that much of what I think people thought they were voting for will not have changed. The rich will remain rich and will continue to get richer. The establishment will still protect itself and bolster itself. The only control that has been taken back will be the Haves controlling the Have-Nots. The disempowered and disenfranchised will still be staring through the windows of Thrushcross Grange wondering how it came to this.

Fake News has been with us longer than The Donald....

Kynren

Glen Coe

Glen Coe

An epic drive back from Drimnin was broken by a geocache stop at beautifully grim Glen Coe. Apart from the brutal massacre of Glen Coe in 1692 (in fact three simultaneous slaughters in different locations along the Glen), the site it also familiar to film location hounds: (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban, Skyfall and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)

Skyfall, The Massacre at Glen Coe by James Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban and Monty Python and the Holy Grail locations

Inveruglas and Hermitage Castle

Pretty Inveruglas where we later stretched our legs and had a cuppa had a view across Loch Lomond with an imposing hydro-electric station as a backdrop. Hermitage Castle was a further stop just before the Scottish-English border where ghostly memories of Mary Queen of Scots haunted the massive monolithic castle and chapel.

Inveruglas and Hermitage Castle

Bishop Auckland, near Durham – The Eleven Arches Company and Kynren

Our final stop before heading for home was an extraordinary event in the shadow of Auckland Castle. Around 1000 volunteers on a 7.5-acre site took part in a £30m specatacular pageant of the history of England. We were in an audience of 8000! Jonathan Ruffer, a city hedge fund manager, philanthropist and art collector grew up in the north and was inspired to spend some of his fortune buying the castle and some important art works and then investing in restorations and in this theatrical enterprise. The script focused on the history of the North East and the style of the show is influenced by the Cinéscénie at Puy du Fou in France. Jonathan Ruffer has managed to create an astonishing infrastructure of parking, food and drink stalls, toilet facilities and dazzling flower-strewn walks down to a state-of-the-art 8000-seater performance arena (the Tribune) with hydraulics, pyrotechnics, hundreds of costumes, props, sets and those unbelievably well-drilled, well-choreographed volunteers.

Kynren, the flower meadows walking down to the arena and, in the centre, philanthropist and creator of Kynren, Jonathan Ruffer with the Chief Executive of Eleven Arches, Anne-Isabelle Daulon

How was the Kynren experience?

The nearest thing I’ve experienced to Kynren is watching a big Disney show in America, but in Kynren’s case there were more people on stage – and they were all local amateurs! There was a true sense of Kynren (a word that means generation or community or kindred or family.) A cavalcade of English history paraded in front of our eyes:

• Romans
• Vikings
• King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
• St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Gospels
• the Normans at the Battle of Stamford Bridge
• a medieval festival
• the Battle of Neville’s Cross against the Scots
• Henry VIII and the Field of the Cloth of Gold
• Elizabeth I and Shakespeare
• Charles I’s beheading
• the Georgian Renaissance
• the Industrial Revolution (especially an astonishing steam train and a moving account of the Trimdon Grange mine disaster)
• Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee
• the Christmas Truce in World War One
• the Roaring Twenties contrasted with a Miner’s Gala
• World War Two’s “Finest Hour.”

A young Geordie boy Arthur was whisked through time by Bishop Hensley Henson; water fountains suddenly revealed a ghostly projection of Durham cathedral’s arches; thundering horses with knights charged across the backdrop; cows, horses, sheep, goats, ducks and geese joined in the action; the Glastonbury Holy Thorn emerged out of the water like Excalibur. The script was sometimes a bit hard to follow, partly because the ever-changing spectacle meant it was hard to “keep up.” Filmic music by Nathan Stornetta and jaw-dropping lighting effects gave the whole event a rousing and emotional core which was impossible to resist. The plan is to revive the event every couple of years and I for one have signed up on the website for future updates and ticket sales.

What country should give you harbour?

Romans in Britain, A Doll's House, Richard II, Behzti (Honour)

A play may be dangerous
Thomas Middleton’s words (in the sub-heading above) were true in Elizabethan and Jacobean times just as they can be true now: a play may be dangerous. Drama has always had the capacity to be contentious and provocative, although the Internet is the forum today where controversies are most easily stirred up. Shakespeare’s Richard II was banned in its day (because of the scene where the king is forced to abdicate on stage); Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was credited with women walking out on their husbands at the end of the 19th Century; the director of Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain was prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act; and as recently as 2004 British-born playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was forced into hiding following death threats after her play Behtzi (Honour) had to close after two days of violent demonstrations outside Birmingham Rep.

Turbulent times
An Act of Parliament in 1543, while Henry VIII was establishing the Reformation in England, forbade plays that explicitly explored religious issues. 100 years later in 1642 the parliament (who seven years later would execute King Charles I) banned stage plays altogether.
Between 1543 and 1642 current affairs were in a dangerous state:

• Who would succeed Henry VIII?

1. Would it be the young Edward VI, who was keen on his cousin Lady Jane Grey succeeding him?
2. The pro-Catholic (Bloody) Mary I?
3. The daughter of beheaded Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I? 
4. (In the event they all did, including Jane, albeit Jane for only nine days!)

• Could the old Catholic forces and new Protestant Church of England find a non-violent accord?
• Could the country manage the effects of the colonisation of the Americas (the New World)?
• Would the economic boom and bust caused by new trade routes ever stabilise?
• How would the population of England deal with the influx of migrants from the new trading partners abroad?
• Could the racial and sectarian conflicts, especially in London, be quelled by the authorities?
• Would the increasing social mobility give the lower and middle classes an inflated sense of their rights and influence?
• Would Spain invade?
• Would the pockets of civil disobedience spread out of control?
• Would the plague destroy the whole of society?

Turbulent times indeed.

Turbulent times in Elizabethan and Jacobean England

Ian McKellen in Stratford-upon-Avon
I enjoyed (most of) the BBC2 broadcast of the Shakespeare Live! presentation from the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death – April 23rd 1616. One “act” that struck me as blindingly contemporary was Ian McKellen’s impassioned extract from Sir Thomas More. It’s astonishing that the speech McKellen delivered is the only known example of William Shakespeare’s own handwriting.

Shakespeare's own handwriting

When I saw Sir Thomas More in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2005 it was clear that a central section was indeed by Shakespeare – it had echoes of Coriolanus, King Lear and the Henry VI trilogy and vocabulary that was recognisably Shakespearean. Scholars agree the original work was by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle but that at least three other playwrights contributed revisions or additional scenes: Shakespeare, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood.

Judi Dench as Elizabeth I and Simon Callow as Sir Edmund Tilney in Shakespeare in Love

What country should give you harbour?

The Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney (played by Simon Callow in the movie Shakespeare in Love) is known to have banned the play unless major revisions were made – “Leave out the (riot) wholly” he demanded – a clear sign of political censorship. Within Shakespeare’s scenes is the climax of the May Day riot of 1517 when the character of Thomas More persuades the crowd to calm down by imagining the plight of the refugees and asylum-seekers:

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs, and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires....
....What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour?....
....would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth?

The text is timeless; Ian McKellen delivered the speech as if it were about 2016 not 1517; the sentiments and questions are as powerful now as they were in Shakespeare’s time. If you were an asylum-seeker or a migrant in another country, how would you hope to be treated? The crowd replies to Sir Thomas More:

Faith, he says true: let’s do as we may be done to.

Images of Thomas More (Paul Schofield, Anton Lesser, Nigel Cooke and "wretched strangers"

Secret Santa

Alex in Wonderland....

Christmas and New Year
I think I might have broken free of the academic year cycle. Approaching this year’s season of good will, I have a definite sense that I am approaching the end of the year, a chance to reflect, look back and look forward. I spent the best part of 50 years thinking of September as the beginning of the year and August as the end of the year. From 1985 when I started teaching in secondary schools, the beginning of the year switched to A Level results day – usually the third Thursday in August – from that point on a new school/teaching/working year began…. But no longer. January is (for me now) the beginning of the New Year. I feel glad about that.

Christmas Dinner Number One: Joyce, Janet, Michael, Emily, Harriet, Sally

Secret Santa

Last weekend I had my first Christmas dinner courtesy of our friends in Badby. A log fire, great company, a trip to the Royal Shakespeare Company for Wendy and Peter Pan and Secret Santa presents (now half way through Srsly Hamlet and playing regularly, perhaps more than I should, with my wind-up toy of Shakespeare.)

My Secret Santa presents!

Origins of December 25th becoming Christmas Day

I’ve been reading quite a bit of Bernard Cornwell recently – borrowed from the library.  His Stonehenge and the trilogy about King Arthur, The Winter King, Enemy of God and Excalibur have been fascinating about the way early Christianity compromised with paganism in order to increase followers. Choosing December 25th as the Nativity of Jesus was a canny move on the part of the early church to get pagans on board. It happened to be the birthday of Mithras, the Indo-Persian-Roman Sun God (belief in whom stretched back to 1500BC and who had a virgin birth, recruited 12 disciples, was born in a manger, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and visited by shepherds, became a travelling preacher doing miracles, promoted baptism, had Sunday as a sacred day, was described as the “Way, the Truth and the Light of the World,” who ascended to heaven and who died to save the world.) December 25th was also near the winter solstice which had long been a time for Celts and Vikings to bring greenery into the house, to wander through fields and orchards singing songs (carols) to ward away evil spirits and guarantee a good harvest and burn (Old Norse) Yule logs on the fire to gather families and friends together. The date was also near Saturnalia, the Roman feast of gift-giving, candle-lighting, mistletoe-hanging (to promote fertility) and feasting. Even further back December 25th was also the birthdate of the Ancient Egyptian god, Horus.

Pretty pagan but no less wonderful for that.  Joyce off to Canons Ashby

So when was the historical Jesus born?
Historians use a number of factors to seek an accurate birth date for the historical preacher who became known as Jesus of Nazareth:

• non-Christian historical evidence from Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Josephus, the Babylonian Talmud, the Greek satirist Lucian 
• the gospel accounts of the Nativity in Matthew and Luke
• the reign of Emperor Augustus
• the reign (and known death date) of Herod the Great
• the census of Syrian governor Quirinius
• the conception of John the Baptist (since there are records of his father Zacharias who was a temple priest
• the likelihood of shepherds being on the hills watching their flocks on December 25th (nil likelihood)
• the possibility that the star followed by the Magi was in fact an astronomical phenomenon. 

Dates suggested range from 12BC to 1AD, usually narrowed down to 6BC to 3BC and the months have been (most convincingly) suggested as May, June or September.  But I can’t see the Christian world ever changing the date of Christmas day any day soon…. But then again, I imagine the medieval world would never imagine a King of England would one day create a breakaway church because he wanted to get divorced. One teacher at my (Roman Catholic) primary school called the Church of England – “The Henry the Eighth Club” like it was a hobby rather than a religion….

Old Norse tradition or Victorian Germanic import? - it smells good!

Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Whatever the origins, I find it impossible not to enjoy the Christmas season, as long as I can avoid thinking about it before December 1st and as long as, at least once, I can watch White Christmas and, like Bing Crosby, count my blessings.

Provoking the Desire

Plenty of Henrys

Like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, another vivid image of an English drinker is Henry VIII. He was clearly a man of enormous appetites. He loved wine and ale, not to mention food, sport, music and women. There have been plenty of fictional Henry VIIIs apart from Shakespeare’s version in All Is True. Hilary Mantel created a vivid Henry in Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, as did Philippa Gregory in The Other Boleyn Girl. I also vividly remember Keith Michell in 1970 in the BBC’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Richard Burton in 1969 in Anne of the Thousand Days and Robert Shaw dueling with Paul Scofield as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons in 1966.  Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in The Tudors, Sid James in Carry on Henry and Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII have all made their mark in popular culture.

Richard Burton, Robert Shaw, Charles Laughton, Richard Griffiths, Nat Parker, Keith Michell, Damien Lewis

A few other vivid drinkers in Literature

Michael Henchard in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge starts the novel sozzled in Furmity (milk and raisins mixed with rum) – and then promptly sells his wife to a sailor, a startling beginning to a novel. Dick Diver in F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night – starts as a successful playboy and ends in a drunken stupor. On stage Maggie and Brick in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are earlier incarnations in their drinking battles of Martha and George from Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf; both are memorable and sympathetic couples, in spite of their intoxication. Dickens created the unforgettable image in A Tale of Two Cities of the Parisians desperately lapping up spilled wine in the streets and even squeezing wine-soaked handkerchiefs into the mouths of infants, prefiguring the later puddles of guillotine blood. He also gave us the tragic Mrs Blackpool’s alcoholism in Hard Times and the comic Mrs Gamp’s gin-swilling in Martin Chuzzlewit.

Mrs Blackpool and Mrs Gamp

Days of dirty water

Where does the British love of alcohol come from? In medieval times alcohol was indispensible because safe drinking water was a rare commodity. If you lived near a source of fresh spring water you were lucky but most medieval folk (rich and poor alike) relied on:

• home or locally-brewed concoctions of weak or strong wine 
• mead (using honey or fruits)
• cider (using different fruits) and
• different kinds of ale or beer. Beer had many variations by the time of the guzzling Tudors and nicknames inevitably sprouted, for example: 
• mad dog beer
• dagger ale
• tooth rot brew
• dragon’s milk
• double double beer (double double beer was eventually banned by Elizabeth I as it caused such riotous behaviour by all accounts; an early example of prohibition)
  

  Wine, women and song

Heavy drinking and drunken revelry is not a modern phenomenon: there are references to bacchanalian orgies of drinking in classical Greece and Rome; we know that the Chinese developed rice wines in ancient dynasties; the Vikings enjoyed pouring horns of plenty into their gullets; and even Noah in the Bible inspired artistic depictions of his fall from grace after too much celebration following the appearance of the rainbow.

The First Hangover (Genesis 18 – 24)

Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japeth came out of the ark…. and from them the whole earth was populated. Noah, a farmer, made a new start and planted a vineyard. He drank too much of the wine, became drunk, took off his clothes and lay down in the middle of his tent. Ham, Canaan’s father, walked into the tent and saw his father’s genitals and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japeth took a large robe, threw it over their shoulders, walked backward, and covered their naked father without looking at him because they turned away. When Noah sobered up from his wine, he discovered what his youngest son had seen...

The Drunkenness of Noah by Bernardo Cavalino

“It provokes the desire but takes away the performance….”

So spake the Porter in Macbeth.

“Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things . . . nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”

Times past and times present are not that different in terms of alcohol. It can lead to disaster, violence and death in some cases. It can also lead to happy times of great joy. On the one hand it’s a toxic, calorific, liver-destroying, addictive, hangover-provoking, sleep-disrupting activity that affects your judgement, perception and performance. On the other hand it can reduce stress, reveal truths, dilate blood vessels, promote socializing, improve the taste and digestion of meals, enhance friendship and lead to a more contented state of mind. I suppose you need to choose your drinking companions and moderate your intake. Then all will be well with the world. Cheers.