tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-332220872024-03-07T07:41:05.049+00:00Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service"Even trash has become worthless."
Tian Wengui, who collects refuse for recycling in Beijing.
[As quoted in the New York Times]Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.comBlogger771125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-28227627644821952632022-05-12T15:39:00.000+01:002022-05-12T15:39:30.403+01:00Just north of the Somme<p>On twitter and elsewhere one might comes across postings by 'John Bull', @garius. He is expert on transport in London (see <a href="https://www.londonreconnections.com/author/johnbull/">London Reconnections</a>) and digs up recondite aspects of forgotten history (the <a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1167470771696033792.html">Emu War</a> is a gem).</p><p>Today he made a reasonable complaint:</p><figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/screenshot-2022-05-11-at-19.44.31.png"><img alt="" class="wp-image-17207" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/screenshot-2022-05-11-at-19.44.31.png?w=545" /></a></figure><p>That is because most producers — and I include Olivier and Branagh— haven't thought through the context and depth of the great soliloquy speeches in <em>Henry V</em>. Here was my effort, now fifteen years gone, part of <a href="https://redfellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/malcolm-gets-all-pedagogic-and-goes.html">a wider study of the play</a> and of Henry's 'psychology':</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">The address before Agincourt</span></b></h4><p>This is the crunch moment, up against impossible odds, when Henry had to rally some sparks of spirit. </p><p>The English army trekked across northern France, an unnecessary journey which should have taken just over a week. It had had now extended into three, in foul weather, and worsening to constant autumnal rain. Just a short march from the English town of Calais, they were brought to battle by a larger (though not, as Shakespeare and some school histories have it, vastly overwhelming) French force. It is also not true,<a href="http://www.julietbarker.co.uk/books/agincourt.html"> as Juliet Barker shows</a>, that the French tactics were unco-ordinated.</p><p>That's the history: here's the theatre. This speech, too, is worthy of close analysis. It is something more than mere rabble-rousing:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">If we are mark'd to die, we are enow<br />To do our country loss; and if to live,<br />The fewer men, the greater share of honour.<br />God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.</span></p></blockquote><p>Henry enters, having just overheard Westmoreland wishing for reinforcements. His opening merely recognises the inevitable: there are no additional resources. Instead he offers honour, an abstract, but one of the marks of chivalry.</p><p><strong><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Chivalry</span></strong></p><p>This of itself needs a passing comment. Chivalry was the morality which controlled the man on the horse, who was the military equivalent of the modern tank (and, curiously, needed about the same size of support team).</p><p><a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-para.html">Chaucer had described it:</a><br /><em></em></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,<br />That fro the tyme that he first bigan<br />To riden out, he loved chivalrie,<br />Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.</span></p></blockquote><p><em></em>Those essentials of knighthood would translate into modern English as the code of the noble class:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>giving one's word and keeping it, no matter what;</li><li>offering due respect and deserving respect from others;</li><li>generosity of spirit and well as of pocket;</li><li>the good manners of the Court. </li></ul><p></p><p>Henry picks up one those, <em><span style="color: #800180;">fredom</span></em>, to continue:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,<br />Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;<br />It yearns me not if men my garments wear;<br />Such outward things dwell not in my desires...</span></p></blockquote><p>Then he reverts to his first theme: <i><span style="color: #800180;">honour</span></i>, that most prickly issue of the Medieval and post-Medieval period.</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">But if it be a sin to covet honour,<br />I am the most offending soul alive.<br />No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:<br />God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour<br />As one man more, methinks, would share from me<br />For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!<br />Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,<br />That he which hath no stomach to this fight,<br />Let him depart; his passport shall be made<br />And crowns for convoy put into his purse:<br />We would not die in that man's company<br />That fears his fellowship to die with us.</span></p></blockquote><p>This has segued through <em><span style="color: #800180;">stomach</span></em> to <em><span style="color: #800180;">fellowship</span></em>. The stomach was the seat of anger, the opposite of self-control, according to the theory of the four humours. Apart from the shame of walking out on one's fellows, Henry manages therefore to lob in a belittling hint of pettiness. It is going to be the <em><span style="color: #800180;">fellowship</span></em> theme that will be developed further.</p><p>First, though, a touch of the domestic. At first it seems little more than a momentary reflection on the church holy-day back home:<br /><em></em></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">This day is called the feast of Crispian:<br />He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,<br />Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,<br />And rouse him at the name of Crispian.<br />He that shall live this day, and see old age,<br />Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,<br />And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'<br />Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.<br />And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'</span></p></blockquote><p>There are, by the way, only a couple of Church of England dedications to Crispin.</p><p>Half way through that section, the appeal changed. It becomes an invitation to project into an imagined certain future, when faced by the uncertainty of an impending battle. It also invites the hearer to imagine a prosperity in which there is the wherewithall to provide the "feast". Within that is a hidden, cruder appeal: the promise of wealth from plunder or ransom, the substantial motive for going to war.</p><p>Then comes the moment of "lightening", a wry invitation to imagine reaching old age, and being able to "improve" on the personal history:<br /><em></em></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,<br />But he'll remember with advantages<br />What feats he did that day, ... </span></p></blockquote><p>The speech before Harfleur had clearly distinguished between the orders of society. Now Henry deliberately blurs and overlaps them. This may be a perceptive recognition of the growing cameraderie that would inevitably have developed over months together. It might invite speculation that Shakespeare talks from experience, if he spent some of his "lost years" in a spell with the army in Flanders. It invites the common soldiery, drawn from the yeoman class, to identify with the highest nobility as their "best mates":</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">Then shall our names,<br />Familiar in his mouth as household words<br />Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,<br />Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,<br />Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.</span></p></blockquote><p>The slow, settling, sonorous long vowels of the personal names, the commonplace of "Harry"; then <i><span style="color: #800180;">flowing cups</span></i>, again the domestic and cheering tone, as he moves towards a peroration:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">This story shall the good man teach his son;<br />And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, ...</span></p></blockquote><p>It's the inheritance and posterity line again, the dream of establishing, or continuing a dynasty, that Henry used in the Harfleur speech. Then the rhythm increases: the vowels shorten, the language veers to simple monosyllables:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">From this day to the ending of the world,<br />But we in it shall be remember'd;<br />We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;</span></p></blockquote><p>Three soaring promises there: one of an eternal memory, a kind of heaven on earth, kinship with the king himself, and superiority over all those at home:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">For he to-day that sheds his blood with me<br />Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,<br />This day shall gentle his condition:</span></p></blockquote><p>Again the carrot of social advancement:</p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;">And gentlemen in England now a-bed<br />Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,<br />And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks<br />That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.</span></p></blockquote>But not just that: "they're at home in bed: we're here doing the job of <em>real</em> men"; "you're not just country yokels, you're better than the landed gentry"; and the where, when, what and who of the final line. Notice, though, there is something deliberately missed out: at no point does Henry give a reason <em>why</em> the battle is necessary: the one question of all those the common soldiers had proposed to him the night before:<br /><blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><span style="color: #800180;"><a>... if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and</a> a<a>rms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it ...</a></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #cc0000;"><a></a><strong>Wrap up</strong></span></p><p>It's the most commonplace that is frequently overlooked: the live Mills bomb we have used as a doorstop because Granny did the same. We employ the cliché to avoid thought, but the implication may indicate strange truths (witness the white South African who announced he felt "the Blacks needed a fair crack of the whip")<strong>.<br /><br /></strong>What is the English journalist or the grandiose prime minister saying, when he plunders this bit of Shakespeare? It is a desire to link with the "tradition", that strongest, most potent, and potentially most poisonous aspect of our culture. It is a piece of self-inflation.</p><p>We recall the bravado of <em>Henry V</em>, and likely do so with Olivier's curious pronunciation and emphases in our heads. Perhaps, though, the play is the thing, and we might usefully return to the whole text, and strip from it trite jingoism. For the text is an exercise in psychology: that of the eponymous Henry, but also of those, on stage and in the audience, seduced by his rhetorical expertise. </p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-46425839248045486592022-03-25T12:55:00.002+00:002022-03-25T12:55:55.618+00:00Our reading may be about to change ...<p><span style="font-family: times;"> This derives from two prompts:</span></p><div class="message-content js-messageContent" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 1 1 auto; min-height: 1px; position: relative;"><div class="message-userContent lbContainer js-lbContainer " data-lb-caption-desc="Malcolm Redfellow · Mar 25, 2022 at 12:42 PM" data-lb-id="post-13494462" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><article class="message-body js-selectToQuote" id="js-XFUniqueId48" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 12px 0px 0px;"><div class="bbWrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ol style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; overflow: hidden;"><li data-xf-list-type="ol" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: times;">The latest edition of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The London Review of Books</i> had a piece, <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n06/malin-hay/paper-cuts" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Paper Cuts</i> by Malin Hay.</a></span></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: times;">I had, yesterday, an Amazon delivery.</span></li></ol><span style="font-family: times;">Now I'm putting them together, in the hope of finding a conclusion.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #41a85f;">Take those 'prompts' one at a time:</span></b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Malin Hay tells us more than we need to know about the production of the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">LRB</i>, how it is:<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 20px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #7c706b;">printed on a matte lightweight coated paper. The specifications are exact: it needs to be heavier than newsprint, resistant to heat and the effects of ageing, and good at reproducing colour. It is called ‘improved newsprint’: the paper quality is slightly higher and the ink doesn’t come off on the reader’s hands.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: times;">The paper originates in Finland, where the manufacturer is in a long-running dispute with its employees. Until COVID there was over-production of paper, until those factors reduced the supply. As soon as the economies re-opened, there was under-production, and paper manufacturers went for price hikes. All predictable. All wishing Marxian definitions of cyclical supply-and-demand. In particular, the strike at the UPM paper mills:<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 20px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #7c706b;">... has prevented the production of more than a million tonnes of coated graphical paper – about 25 per cent of the total European supply. At the end of January, the European federation for print and digital communication, Intergraf, estimated that 40 per cent of the paper that would be needed from mid-February onwards would be impossible to procure.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Fascinating as the piece was, I assumed it was a fore-warning of a change in LRB production quality, or format, or subscription pricing, or all three.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 20px;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #41a85f;">On to the second prompt.</span></b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span><div class="bbImageWrapper bbImageAligned--right js-lbImage" data-caption="<h4>51Yw64cWDnL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;politics.ie&#x2F;threads&#x2F;our-reading-may-be-about-to-change.284756&#x2F;#post-13494462" class="js-lightboxCloser">Malcolm Redfellow · Mar 25, 2022 at 12:42 PM</a></p>" data-fancybox="lb-post-13494462" data-lb-caption-extra-html="" data-lb-sidebar-href="" data-single-image="1" data-src="https://politics.ie/attachments/51yw64cwdnl-_sx331_bo1-204-203-200_-jpg.169622/" style="box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; float: right; margin: 0.25em 0px 1.35em 1.35em; max-width: 100%;" title="51Yw64cWDnL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg"><span style="font-family: times;"><img alt="51Yw64cWDnL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" class="bbImage" data-url="" data-zoom-target="1" height="499" src="https://politics.ie/attachments/51yw64cwdnl-_sx331_bo1-204-203-200_-jpg.169622/" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 145px;" title="51Yw64cWDnL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="333" /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;">Early afternoon, Amazon delivered me Graham Robb's latest:<i style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="link link--external" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/graham-robb/france-an-adventure-history/9781529007626" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"> </a></i><a class="link link--external" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/graham-robb/france-an-adventure-history/9781529007626" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">France, an Adventure History</i>.</a><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Robb is not, primarily a historian, or — more correctly — not an <u style="box-sizing: border-box;">orthodox</u> historian. He is a literary critic of great distinction, and one of our experts on French literature and culture.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />He started with <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1883390.The_Discovery_of_France" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Discovery of France</i></a>, back in 2007-8 (my copy is a 'slightly-foxed' paperback — after which I tended to invest in the hard-backs), and then continued with<i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7346882-parisians" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Parisians</a></i> (a sequence of pastiches so good even the French awarded prizes). To which this latest completes something of a trilogy.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />In between such efforts, he extended his range with the quite extra-ordinary attempt to rediscover Celtic western Europe, <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/graham-robb/the-ancient-paths/9780330531511" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Ancient Paths</i></a> (flogged to the susceptible Americans as <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Discovery of Middle Earth</i>) —this is predicated to the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Via Heraclea</i>, a notion there is a 'ley-line'<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">, </i>from the winter solstice sunset seen at Cabo de São Vicente to the summer solstice sunrise seen at Col de Montgenêvre. More recently he has retreated from his Oxonian dreaming spire to the Scottish border, and celebrated that with <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/graham-robb/the-debatable-land/9781509804719" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #006c2b; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Debatable Land, the Lost World between Scotland and England.</i></a><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />None of that is my immediate concern here.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />What alerted me, and reminded me of that <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">LRB</i> piece, was the Amazon package I received yesterday. It was a solid box, not the usual book pouch. What came out was equally hefty. The latest Robb is 520-odd pages, more than <i>Parisians</i> (470-odd), same format but 540mm deep (<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">versus</i> 460mm). And weighs in (literally) at over 1280g (<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">versus</i> 840g). The difference is the quality of the paper. Although, for now, it looks clean-and-decent, it is a different weight and feel. Different type-setter; different printer.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #41a85f;">I am not too happy about these changes.</span></b></span></div><div class="js-selectToQuoteEnd" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 0px; height: 0px; overflow: hidden;"></div></article></div></div><footer class="message-footer" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: auto;"><div class="message-actionBar actionBar" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-top: 12px;"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></footer>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-41161094198775415772021-09-24T13:13:00.003+01:002021-09-24T13:13:19.715+01:00The glory that is Swift<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Round about 1959-60, starting Irish Leaving Cert, my brain-cells absorbed the <i>dictum</i> about:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;" /><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ad infinitum</span>.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I see <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/syphonaptera/" target="_blank">I blogged about it</a>, nearly a decade ago. And rather well, too, if I'm allowed to say so:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">... the slim-line version was courtesy of </span><a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/De_Morgan.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Augustus de Morgan</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, the twice-coined professor of mathematics at the newly-minted London University: a great man who was ineligible for Oxbridge tenure because of his atheism — though he went the same way as Willie Yeats, seduced into spiritualism by the love for a good woman. Correction there: since the Yeatsian seduction was </span><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">via</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> that Surrey minx, Edith Maud Gonne, and de Morgan married </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Frend_(social_reformer)" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sophia Frend</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, that should read “the love for a better woman”.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nothing like getting one's vicious retaliation in first; but around then — and continuing to this day — I've always felt the Gonne MacBride (from father to wife to son to son-in-law) set up was to be treated with very long tongs. Dammit: the fascist tendencies were never far from the surface.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">But, just now, I had to remind myself of Swift's original. He was getting at his <i><a href="https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/critics-4" target="_blank">Critics</a></i>. Here's the whole thing:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Hobbes clearly proves that every creature </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Lives in a state of war by nature. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">The greater for the smallest watch, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">But meddle seldom with their match. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">A whale of moderate size will draw </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">A shoal of herrings down his maw. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">A fox with geese his belly crams; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">A wolf destroys a thousand lambs. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">But search among the rhyming race, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">The brave are worried by the base. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">If on Parnassus' top you sit, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">You rarely bite, are always bit: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Each poet of inferior size </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">On you shall rail and criticize; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">And strive to tear you limb from limb, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">While others do as much for him. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">The vermin only tease and pinch </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Their foes superior by an inch. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">So, nat'ralists observe, a flea </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">And so proceed ad infinitum: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Thus every poet in his kind </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Is bit by him that comes behind; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Who, though too little to be seen, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Can tease, and gall, and give the spleen; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Call dunces, fools and sons of whores, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Lay Grubstreet at each others' doors: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Extol the Greek and Roman masters, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">And curse our modern poetasters. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Complain, as many an ancient bard did, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">How genius is no more rewarded; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">How wrong a taste prevails among us; </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">How much our ancestors out-sung us: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Can personate an awkward scorn </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">For those who are not poets born: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">And all their brother dunces lash, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">Who crowd the press with hourly trash.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm fairly sure I've seen that printed as quatrains, and the punctuation suggests the same.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why is it coming to mind just now?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, here's a tweet by the egregious @OwenJones84:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(15, 20, 25); display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Labour needs to stop waging war on its own party and fight the Tories instead.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(15, 20, 25); color: #666666; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">On </span><span class="r-18u37iz" style="-webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; caret-color: rgb(15, 20, 25); color: #666666; flex-direction: row; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit; word-wrap: break-word;">@lbc</span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(15, 20, 25); color: #666666; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"> shortly arguing just that...</span></p></blockquote><p>Boosterism personified. Ah well, a young feller has to make it where he can, even if that means felling every fruitful tree in sight.</p><p>But who is 'waging war' on whom? Where I'm sitting, the far left are making life as hard as they can for anyone not of their little persuasion (meretricious<span style="color: red;"><b>*</b></span> Steve Walker's Sqwawkbox, anyone?) and <span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94); color: #2b00fe;">crowd the press with hourly trash.</span></p><p><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0); color: red;">* </b><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Now there's a good word.</b></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">It's the Anglicising (by Francis Bacon, no less) of the Latin <i>meretricius</i>, the adjective formed from <i>meretrix. </i>And <i>meretrix</i> is a prostitute. Related, then, to Swift's </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94); color: #2b00fe;">sons of whores</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(94, 94, 94);">.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-72541929585756189512021-09-21T10:33:00.004+01:002021-09-21T12:09:45.084+01:00From generation unto generation<p>There's something eerie in finding one's children, without prompting, have same books on their shelves. Except, in this case, I assume there was prompting from a university course.</p><p><b><span style="color: #38761d;">21. Ronald Blythe: <i>The Age of Illusion</i></span></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVP7F-lwCyjFFUd5SBIMFRYneDficAESVigyEucutdS5NwP2bZOoPNnOqn7PaO4Dh3Oyb4aiwBjQM2fbLOJTbodpAzdfs7ysW2-4ONhVqnHKTa07G-xjH9dvL4z1mXJYofQx6og/s471/Blythe.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="307" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVP7F-lwCyjFFUd5SBIMFRYneDficAESVigyEucutdS5NwP2bZOoPNnOqn7PaO4Dh3Oyb4aiwBjQM2fbLOJTbodpAzdfs7ysW2-4ONhVqnHKTa07G-xjH9dvL4z1mXJYofQx6og/w131-h200/Blythe.png" width="131" /></a></div><br />That comes with the informative sub-title: <i>England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940</i>. The first chapter is <i>A Great Day for Westminster Abbey</i>. That Great Day was 11 November 1920, and the interment of the Unknown Warrior. The final chapter is <i>The Destruction of Neville Chamberlain</i>, and deals with the few dramatic days from 7 May 1940.</div></div><p></p><p>In between most of the chapters hang hats on various characters of the period:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Home Secretary Joynson-Hicks and his use of the <i>Defence of the Realm Act</i> to crack down on London night-life;</li><li>John Reith and the birth of the British Broadcasting Company <i>(sic)</i>;</li><li>T.E. Lawrence;</li><li>Amy Johnson;</li><li>Harold Davidson, the infamous, much-maligned, and much-mocked Rector of Stiffkey;</li><li>Wallis Simpson and the Abdication (and let's not forget the canoodlings of Edward Windsor and his Baltimore floozy did more to create the modern republic of Ireland than any of the blood-sacrifices of 1916);</li><li>George Lansbury's pacifism and the Labour Party. That involved a swift canter through Lansbury's strengths and weaknessses, notably his use of the minor Cabinet post as Commissioner of Works — in which he tore down the railings of royal parks and opened the Serpentine to mixed bathing.</li></ul><div>Those are then divided by the passing 'crises' of the age:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>the attractions of arty-farty bourgeois Communism;</li><li>the horrors of the Depression;</li><li>Britain's distraction with sensational murders, while the Nazis seized power in Germany;</li><li>Spain.</li></ul></div><div>When the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/10/archives/britain-between-wars-the-age-of-illusion-england-in-the-twenties.html" target="_blank"><i>New York Times </i>came to review the book</a> it pointed out that (on publication in 1964) it was as remote from the events it describes which <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">are already as much history as the Battle of Hastings or Magna Carta</span></i><span style="color: #333333;">.</span></span> That is perversely true in psychological distance: the interim involved several wars (one World, one Cold) and a couple of nuclear bombs. I feel that review's attempt at a punch-line is mistaken:</span></div><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">the large and variegated cast are assembled, put on their costumes and their makeup, speak their lines. But what of the play? What is the point of this so foolish, expensive, bloody and destructive spectacle? If point there be, it has eluded Mr. Blythe.</span></span></div><p></p></blockquote><p></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The use of the word <i>spectacle</i> is <span style="color: #666666;">appropriate</span>; but the lesson it tries to draw is not. Britain between the Wars was living a myth: the days of imperial grandeur had died none too far from Sarajevo, but the reality hadn't struck home. Despite the loss of Empire and Britain's diminished status, it still properly hasn't — and won't as long as Boris Johnson stirs the ashes. Dean Acheson's pungent remark was two years old when the <i>NY Times</i> came up with that review:</span></div><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a rôle.</span></i></span></div><p></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: inherit;"><b><i>The Age of Illusion</i>, indeed. </b></span></p><p></p><div><br /></div><p></p><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-23850700225094098122021-09-18T11:09:00.003+01:002021-09-18T11:09:45.588+01:00A load of old Bull <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHZChJBW5yINJ1Ezv2yDoAFjOT1dehIUY09XkAWYrvxrM_bocM1CA27XL7dLcayc-5Op8URqStz6Z4OZpKLU37egP0J3ndLziHnSG8h7bu3PuC1MEq7AinzYfLFXmlHneS1DdjQ/s400/300px-P1100561.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHZChJBW5yINJ1Ezv2yDoAFjOT1dehIUY09XkAWYrvxrM_bocM1CA27XL7dLcayc-5Op8URqStz6Z4OZpKLU37egP0J3ndLziHnSG8h7bu3PuC1MEq7AinzYfLFXmlHneS1DdjQ/w150-h200/300px-P1100561.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><br />Once upon a time Norfolk was dominated by two Norwich brewers: Steward & Patteson (which had over six hundred tied pubs) and Bullards (which had more than five hundred).<p></p><p>In 1963 Watney Mann acquired the whole lot. In a single stroke much of East Anglia was reduced to a single, monopoly supplier. Red Barrel became the universal fizzy concoction, the prototype for keg beers, flogged out at 3.9% alcohol. I have to admit it always seemed to me to have a metallic fore-taste and after-taste of onions. Red Barrel was widely and quite properly mocked:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #666666;">"Why is Red Barrel like making love in a canoe?"</span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;">"Because it's fucking close to water."</span></p></blockquote><p>One might think the British brewing industry couldn't fall lower. It could. Watneys was in turn taken over by Grand Metropolitan, a vertically-structured leisure, hospitality and property goliath, which in its turn was merged with Guinness to arrive at the Diagio empire.</p><p>All of which left me a trifle amused to find Bullards is not only still in business, but still producing 'the Spirit of Norwich' — or, at least, flavoured gins.</p><p>There's a faint whiff of pseudery in <a href="https://bullardsspirits.co.uk/bullards-story/" target="_blank">The Bullards Story</a> Presumably the Bullard family, quite reasonably, retained the name through the Watney take-over. Then decided to exploit it.</p><p>But what grates is the design of those gin bottles. My memory is: you went into even the better Bullards houses, and the young miss with whom one was accompanied (as if!) had advanced from expensive perries to someone 'harder' — a G&T perhaps (ha-ha! we're in luck with this one!). What was on offer was Gordon's. Or at a pinch, Gilbey's.</p><p>Since when we have had a tsunami of gins. Well, I mean, it's a raw spirit diluted to non-toxic levels, with added colouring and flavourings. And, unlike whiskey, it can be marketed without being natured in barrels. What's not for the marketing-manager and accountants to like?</p><p>So Bullards sell a gin.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfI1bdqKhuFXcY2KFZ4metBogVpQn4vUJ-gxaYWhF7q653_xOHakoahB7-p3DcCLzs0SMr0imuGpLFHMZfYozx_V7Xs0LOt_NsguItPZH1cd5x0xX8QWPsfRt_Vrq1wo6tzHxyGw/s1188/Gin.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="1188" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfI1bdqKhuFXcY2KFZ4metBogVpQn4vUJ-gxaYWhF7q653_xOHakoahB7-p3DcCLzs0SMr0imuGpLFHMZfYozx_V7Xs0LOt_NsguItPZH1cd5x0xX8QWPsfRt_Vrq1wo6tzHxyGw/w640-h344/Gin.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Look closer.</p><p>Two small matters show up.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The claim to be 'Est 1837' would be valid only if we ignore the 1963 sell-out. Oh, and various changes of business name through the nineteenth century. Still, if the Bullard family secured the name from Watneys, fair enough. Any link, though, has to be purely financial, as a 'family share-holder'.</li><li>Then the trade-mark of the Anchor Brewery. That opened in 1867 at St Mile's Bridge. It closed in 1968, and the landmark chimney came down in 1982. If one pokes around the Coslany Street area one will find 'Anchor Quay' — but that's about it. Bullards distillery is now the other end of town, in Cattle Market Street, between an architect and a take-away.</li></ul><p></p><p>So why am I griping?</p><p>It's <a href=" https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/red-bull-challenge-bullards-spirits-over-name-8330922?" target="_blank">yesterday's <i>EDP</i>, of course</a>:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><h1 class="article__title mdc-typography--headline4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.00735294em; line-height: 2.5rem; margin: 0.67em 0px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Famous Norwich firm locked in legal battle with Red Bull</span> </span></h1></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.00735294em;">Despite being 150 years older,<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/bullards-gin-boss-russell-evans-hopes-to-hold-wedding-receptions-1492708" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px;" target="_blank">Bullards</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px;"> has been accused by Red Bull of "creating a conflict of interest" due to an apparent clash with the naming of the companies.</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="advert lp_track lazyloaded" data-google-query-id="CJ2Y3q2hiPMCFQrzGwodWqcE3g" id="ad-slot-teads" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: table; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; margin: 0px auto; text-size-adjust: auto;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/154725070/EasternDailyPress/news_13__container__" style="border: 0pt none; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><iframe data-google-container-id="7" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="1" id="google_ads_iframe_/154725070/EasternDailyPress/news_13" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/154725070/EasternDailyPress/news_13" scrolling="no" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; vertical-align: bottom;" title="3rd party ad content" width="2"></iframe></span></div></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Basically, Red Bull which has existed for just three decades, believes a centuries-old company should ditch its famous name.</span></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Major mistake, then, to feature a photograph of a very living <span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); letter-spacing: 0.25px;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">Russell Evans, left, founder of Bullards Spirit.</span></i></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); letter-spacing: 0.25px;"><span style="color: red; font-size: medium;"><b>Good luck with that one.</b></span></span></span></p><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-92054529669116669272021-09-17T14:33:00.004+01:002021-09-17T14:33:56.296+01:00Missed opportunities<p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yesterday was a busy one. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqZa-GGvBEWwZXSpbOKF3DyEhDkBKGJTl4x20w0nFSthVrON63ALPyaYrURjKdKkbA_kemWZuvd2-3Sp1t8Wre0-fsz6i6AER7u0jcAX3TGZ7WplZ6LCTjTu4hmyrfXXf9YHlVA/s500/img-Blessed-Louis-Allemand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="349" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqZa-GGvBEWwZXSpbOKF3DyEhDkBKGJTl4x20w0nFSthVrON63ALPyaYrURjKdKkbA_kemWZuvd2-3Sp1t8Wre0-fsz6i6AER7u0jcAX3TGZ7WplZ6LCTjTu4hmyrfXXf9YHlVA/w139-h200/img-Blessed-Louis-Allemand.jpg" width="139" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />It meant I missed out on acknowledging a story from ecclesiastical history, a story more complex than most fictive plots.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">16 September was when we might wish to celebrate the curious life of Louis Aleman (c. 1390 - 1450, and rather imaginative image as right).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">All went well for Louis at the start of his career in the church. It always helps to have a benevolent and <a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bconzief.html" target="_blank">archiepiscopal relative</a> in the trade. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">By his late twenties he was a Bishop of Maguelone — which is far more important than seems from<span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> beach </span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">that still carries the name</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span> — </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(36, 36, 34); color: #242422;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.anaturistworld.com/destination/31463/maguelone?c=1009" target="_blank">very popular with nude bathers and gay men</a> —</span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"> down the one-way track from Palavas-les-Flots.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #202122;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCXgDw7RwHqmP5TWQVlLuhVnEwHPzftzzc1_hzRRRybI18Gr1Wd0LyoJQ9FYirluxq7JMN0FgoI8AjnBg2Mz_Es8_owM6s1z-uKCPwYOMCn8T7m_2h_pWVy1fs7UEeED0mKH92Q/s1024/Maguelone.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="1024" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCXgDw7RwHqmP5TWQVlLuhVnEwHPzftzzc1_hzRRRybI18Gr1Wd0LyoJQ9FYirluxq7JMN0FgoI8AjnBg2Mz_Es8_owM6s1z-uKCPwYOMCn8T7m_2h_pWVy1fs7UEeED0mKH92Q/w640-h396/Maguelone.jpeg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #202122;"><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maguelone — that big blister in the middle of the map — was one lf the 'seven cities' (<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimania">Septimania</a>) </i>of what once had been the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, and was absorbed as a buffer zone for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric_II" target="_blank">Theodoric II</a>'s Visigothic kingdom.</span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">The diocese is now based in Montpellier.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Anyhoo, Louis Aleman quickly received preferment, and within five years in 1423 was Archbishop of Arles, and soon after Pope Martin V Colonna dispatched his cardinal's hat.</span><a class="pop-up-irish" href="https://president.ie/ga" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #1779ba; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: inherit; margin-right: 40px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none;"></a></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Martin V Colonna was re-constructing western Christianity after the tumultuous and schismatic fourteenth century. After 1410 one had a choice of three popes: Gregory XII Correr, Benedict XIII in Avignon, and John XXIII Cossa. The 'middle management' of the Church had, it seems, had enough of this popology, held Councils at Pisa and Constance (where Jan </span>His<span style="font-family: inherit;"> was immolated). Finally John XXIII and Benedict XIII </span>were<span style="font-family: inherit;"> dethroned, Gregory XII was bought off and abdicated — and Cardinal Oddone Colonna was installed as Martin V, the first Renaissance pope, to rebuild Roma and the Vatican.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Louis Aleman had been in </span>the midst<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of all this kerfuffle (fifteenth century Italian politics and church politics perfectly fitted that Russian's description of '</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/03/despotism-tempered-by-assassination.html?m=1" target="_blank"><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">absolutism</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">moderated</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;"> </span></a><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/03/despotism-tempered-by-assassination.html?m=1" target="_blank">assassination</a>'. In</span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"> 1424 he had been Papal Legate and governor in Bologna (turbulent stuff!) in succession to Gabriele Condulmer (watch this space). The novelist <i>manqué</i> in me would make that the source of a continued feud.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Bologna billet didn't last long: anyone claiming to have a full grasp of Italian politics in that era is too far </span>ahead<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of me (<a href="https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1042" target="_blank">though see here)</a>. In 1428 Louis Aleman was evicted from Bologna by the Condulmer faction. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">— and Martin V pegged out in 1430: Condulmer got the nod and the white </span>smoke<span style="font-family: inherit;"> as Eugenius IV.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The comparative </span>stability<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of Martin V's </span>pontificate was already failing. Eugenius IV was under real pressure, and Martin V had convened the Council of Basle. There were two basic questions: relations with the near-terminal Eastern Church in Constantinople, and the far more acute matter of governance of western Christianity (that latter came down to a monarchical papacy <i>versus</i> something more collegiate and oligarchic). The presiding authority at Basle, as nominated by Martin V, was meant to be Louis Aleman. Eugenius V squelched that with a Bull of 1437, transferring the sittings from Basle to Ferrara (<i>i.e.</i> somewhere nearer his control).</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;">That was not entirely a wise move. The Council in Basle went schismatic, and deposed Eugenius, nominating instead Count Amadeus VIII of Savoy as Felix V (his anti-papacy and the Council would limp on in shadow form over a decade, but would fail because the Germans wouldn't give him support).</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;">Eugenius was having none of that: he stripped Louis Aleman of his titles, cardinalate, and excommunicated him. Eugenius was on something of a high: he had cobbled a form of conciliation with the Byzantines; he had seen off the Council in Basel; and now seemingly disgraced his main opponent. Then Eugenius inconveniently died.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;">The next pope was Nicholas V Parentucelli, who may have risen rapidly as a protegé of <span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Eugenics, but shows as someone far more subtle, more diplomatic, and more cultured. In short order he bri=ought about the resignation of anti-pope Felix V, lanced the boil of Bologna by conceding a form of near-independence from the papal states, and re-instating Louis Aleman.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Louis himself survived barely another year; but would be beatified by Clement VII de' Medici.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">All this is more than a bit of a niche interest. Even so, were I looking for an outline plot for a historical fiction, Louis Aleman might be its centre.</span></span></p><p><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; color: white; display: inline; font-family: utopia-std, sans-serif; font-size: 1.625rem; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">in 1432Uachtarán na hÉireann</h3><a class="pop-up-irish" href="https://president.ie/ga" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #1779ba; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: inherit; margin-right: 40px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none;"><h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; color: white; font-family: utopia-std, sans-serif; font-size: 1.625rem; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">Uachtarán na hÉireann</h3></a><a class="pop-up-irish" href="https://president.ie/ga" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #1779ba; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: inherit; margin-right: 40px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none;"><h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; color: white; font-family: utopia-std, sans-serif; font-size: 1.625rem; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">Uachtarán na hÉireann</h3></a><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-65542367024141645162021-09-15T15:17:00.004+01:002021-09-15T15:19:29.472+01:00Rudery and prudery<p><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: inherit;"> 20. Strumpshaw, Tincleton and Giggleswick's <i>Marvellous Map of Great British Place Names.</i></span></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGi7BTQfoc2lAIsZILZgMXXTS5faLJpHl121rqpFEsV45i0pfEq26D029V_EmCdMvSaPdcDM_xjfkWy-5GjQ_c28amXbtHaSKI4gzrjCKgqrpOGITrzS8h0AM1ko8r-qCrPg5Yrg/s493/STG.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="493" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGi7BTQfoc2lAIsZILZgMXXTS5faLJpHl121rqpFEsV45i0pfEq26D029V_EmCdMvSaPdcDM_xjfkWy-5GjQ_c28amXbtHaSKI4gzrjCKgqrpOGITrzS8h0AM1ko8r-qCrPg5Yrg/w200-h166/STG.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />It was an item in the <i>Eastern Daily Press </i>that reminded me:</span><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">A post about tranquil Cockshoot Dyke was removed by Facebook because it goes against community standards and constitutes "hate speech".</span></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Steve Burgess, a businessman and administrator on the Facebook page Love the Norfolk Broads said the issue arose when a member posted she had moored along the popular stretch, the old entrance to Cockshoot Broad.</span></p></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Her reference combing the words cock, shoot, and dyke was promptly removed by automatic filters, a notification citing both violence and sexual content as the reason.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Most keyboard warriors have had similar experiences. Way back when PC (in every sense) machines were becoming available to teachers, I was edifying examination classes studying <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. The institution had a super-Bowdler blocker. It meant a text-search of the the text of the play hit a block, and recorded an alarm to Higher Authority, were one to scroll to Mercutio's <a href="https://genius.com/William-shakespeare-queen-mab-speech-annotated" target="_blank"><i>Queen Mab</i> speech</a>. Since that comes as early as Act I, scene iv, it really put the mockers on cut-and-paste text extracts.</span></p><p>Since my days in Norfolk, it has become generally accepted that the Broads are flooded mediæval peat excavations. There's a passing mention in <a href="https://redfellow.blogspot.com/2021/09/something-happened.html" target="_blank">Michael Pye's <i>Antwerp</i></a> that the Netherlanders borrowed the process.</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cockshoot Broad is off the River Bure, and near to ... <i>ahem!</i> ... Horning. It isn't just Facebook that has a down on Cockshoot Broad — as a place-name it gets omitted from many another map. Even on the Ordnance Survey, one has to come down to finer definitions:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmRzew-MPrW_Mckfa4B2fd2A-4YdgpnYvh-YlDnmwyph2cMxGGlX7aRnFv6hdwdesxpiRcb2ApkyPu6hpk-IJcgha38LUcABmo2IcznB0edjzlDTuXkjlNNxSkqa2PzBmlRuLURQ/s526/Untitled.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="406" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmRzew-MPrW_Mckfa4B2fd2A-4YdgpnYvh-YlDnmwyph2cMxGGlX7aRnFv6hdwdesxpiRcb2ApkyPu6hpk-IJcgha38LUcABmo2IcznB0edjzlDTuXkjlNNxSkqa2PzBmlRuLURQ/w309-h400/Untitled.jpeg" width="309" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p><p>Cockshoot Broad and Cockshoot Dyke seem to miss out on <i>Marvellous Maps of Great Britain:</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZVQTBywCtzI4cnHB5YzXHaWkh2SgilLxNRNPnwoBQf0JWkuPhXZMZCzneJCaDeTUbSNdxeeAG4cDam2J2UgW-GVYahC56ApfTsvmGytqmvKZCir349-oiHRgbhjJ4LCwgt4Vzaw/s719/Norfolk.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="719" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZVQTBywCtzI4cnHB5YzXHaWkh2SgilLxNRNPnwoBQf0JWkuPhXZMZCzneJCaDeTUbSNdxeeAG4cDam2J2UgW-GVYahC56ApfTsvmGytqmvKZCir349-oiHRgbhjJ4LCwgt4Vzaw/w400-h275/Norfolk.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>Some of those seem eccentric selections, anyway. What's funny or peculiar about Stiffkey (apart from one past rector)? Especially since, nearby is Muckledyke, Cockthorpe, Cocklestrand Drive and others? Why is <a href="http://www.the-snorings.co.uk/info/name.html">Great Snoring</a> (even with its Duckstown End) more amusing than Little Snoring? And Binham used to have Lousybush Lane.<p></p><p>The <i>EDP</i> conclude that story with even better snorklers:</p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">A scan around the county reveals Facebook could have a field day if it were feeling particularly easily offended.</span></p></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/rude-street-names-norfolk-1358392" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">From Balls Lane in Fakenham to Booty Road in Norwich, Norfolk has its fair share of rude street names.</span></a></p></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Notable mentions go to Three Holes, a hamlet on the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire border and Two Mile Bottom campsite near Thetford and Stiffkey.</span></p></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">But top honours have to go to Slutshole Lane, Besthorpe, Cock Street and Hooker Road in Norwich, Dick's Mount in Beccles, and Trumpery Lane in Norwich.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div><p> <br /><i><br /></i></p></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-82860549224933215902021-09-14T13:40:00.002+01:002021-09-14T13:40:14.077+01:00Fair exchange is no Robb-ery<p> This one came about in the usual circuitous manner.</p><p>I re-used that earlier <a href="https://politics.ie/threads/something-happened-why-did-english-mariners-turn-to-the-west-in-16th-century.283922/" target="_blank">post on Michael Pye's <i>Antwerp</i> </a>on <a href="http://politics.ie">politics.ie</a> site. The exchanges drifted onto how mediæval monasteries were roadhouses on cross-country travel.</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">A poster made what, for me, was a strange claim: <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px;">Europe's road network was near non-existent, and long journeys were dangerous. That begs the question: how soon did those Roman roads fall into disuse?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); font-size: 15px;">I take a passing interest in that, for my home cottage is none too far from the A19 from York to Thirsk — and that, once upon a far distant time was how the Roman </span></span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); font-size: 15px;">legionaries</span></span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); font-size: 15px;"> and auxiliaries tramped from Eboracum's Porta Dextra to </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">Cataractonium (Catterick) and the Roman Wall.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The <i>Itinerarium Antonini</i> (the Antonine Itinerary) is a listing of the major Roman roads of Augustus's Empire, and lists some fifteen main roads, two thousand miles, across Britannia.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As Chesterton said:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,</span><br style="display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">The </span><a href="https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/167013#eid25217569" style="cursor: default; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">rolling</a><span style="background-color: white;"> English drunkard made the rolling English road.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">They weren't English: those Mesolithic </span>track-makers came along eleven millennia ago. Perhaps here I reach for David Miles,<i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dGRUHAAACAAJ" target="_blank">The Tribes of Britain</a></i> — or, better, leave that for another occasion. Whoever they were, they filled the landscape, and must have got around somehow. One of those ways, though not necessarily as claimed '<a href="https://sites.google.com/a/odeger.space/austincale/the-oldest-road-exploration-of-the-ridgeway-lonely-planet-walking-guides-0905483529" target="_blank">the oldest road</a>' would have been the Ridgeway:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIOfXOJk7v414ZA-_Ni2WoXYUIjUYGECLzOeur155YHq8GOb6k6sAcqjC3Mk6kxSgW-fCXr8qAJjYHDm85jReoNEvPmkUWkmS6_vkXylD9iX4on4tOIyTvP-jdsil4Pop4spRQQg/s451/destinationsukridgewaymap.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="451" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIOfXOJk7v414ZA-_Ni2WoXYUIjUYGECLzOeur155YHq8GOb6k6sAcqjC3Mk6kxSgW-fCXr8qAJjYHDm85jReoNEvPmkUWkmS6_vkXylD9iX4on4tOIyTvP-jdsil4Pop4spRQQg/w640-h442/destinationsukridgewaymap.gif" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If these routes pre-dated the Romans (as is generally agreed), they certainly took back their significance after Roman power in Britain fell. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_Huntingdon" target="_blank">Henry of Huntingdon</a> was commissioned (1129-30) by Bishop <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_Huntingdon" target="_blank">Alexander of Lincoln</a> to compile a <i>Historia Anglorum</i>. Henry identified four royal highways: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Ermine Street, from Bishopsgate to Lincoln, and onto York;</li><li>Fosse Way, from Exeter to Lincoln;</li><li>Watling Street, from the Channel ports in Kent, <i>via</i> Westminster, to Utoxeter on the Welsh border;</li></ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">and </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Icknield Way, the line of the chalk escarpment that runs from Norfolk to Salisbury.</li></ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4024912" target="_blank">The Laws of Edward the Confessor</a>, at least as re-invented by the Norman kings, declared these ways were under royal protection.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">You may remember that this post was instigated by European history, not merely English. And that I'm not convinced mediæval routes across Europe were there to get from one Cistercian house to the next. More that the Cistercians needed to move their fleeces and sites their monasteries in good dsheep country, but also convenient to transport.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">All this brought me to:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;">19: Graham Robb: <i>The Ancient Paths</i>.</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);">Robb occupies several locations on my shelves. <i><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/graham-robb/the-discovery-of-france/9781509803491" target="_blank">The Discovery of France</a></i> and <i><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Parisians.html?id=NN5iI9oO3N0C&redir_esc=y">Parisians</a> </i>are with things French so bottom shelf, near the bay window. What I assume to be his latest, <i><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/authors/graham-robb/the-debatable-land/9781509804719">The Debatable Land</a> </i>is, for want of somewhere more frontier-like, high above my left shoulder, along with <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Steel_Bonnets.html?id=_RIXAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">GM Fraser</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Steel_Bonnets.html?id=_RIXAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">Alistair Moffat</a>. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);">This one, though, is a bit of a lost soul: it wanders from travel (above right shoulder) to ancient European history (sort of near left side) as it feels appropriate.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);">I reckon that's because I haven't quite nailed down what I think of this book.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; text-size-adjust: auto;">Its subtitle is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; text-size-adjust: auto;">Discovering the Lost Maps of Celtic Europe</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; text-size-adjust: auto;">. For me, it's all a trifle too 'New Age-ist' — especially when he constructs a whole nexus of oh-so-precise geometrical connections. Try this one (page 275 in my paperback):</span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><div class="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage" data-caption="<h4>Scan.jpeg</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;politics.ie&#x2F;threads&#x2F;something-happened-why-did-english-mariners-turn-to-the-west-in-16th-century.283922&#x2F;#post-13359823" class="js-lightboxCloser">Malcolm Redfellow · Sep 13, 2021 at 8:36 PM</a></p>" data-fancybox="lb-post-13359823" data-lb-caption-extra-html="" data-lb-sidebar-href="" data-single-image="1" data-src="https://politics.ie/attachments/scan-jpeg.164842/" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; max-width: 100%; text-size-adjust: auto;" title="Scan.jpeg"><img alt="Scan.jpeg" class="bbImage" data-url="" data-zoom-target="1" height="1420" src="https://politics.ie/attachments/scan-jpeg.164842/" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" title="Scan.jpeg" width="1189" /></div><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Hmm: too convenient, think you?</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">So I'm not leaping to accept Robb's thesis of a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Road to the End of the Earth<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">following a solstitial line, bearing 57.53° east of north from sunrise through the Alps at the Col de Montgenèvre, near Briançon, all the way to sunset at Cabo de São Vicente. </span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">I don't chase ley-lines; but cannot avoid the 'sense of the numinous'. The trend in the 1920s was to look for spiritual markers. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W3lXrgEACAAJ" target="_blank">Alfred Watkins</a> was the prime-mover in Britain. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Teudt">Wilhelm Teudt</a> and his similar </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">„</span><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">Heilige</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">Linien</span></i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-size: 14.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><i>"</i> were doing something adjacent in Germany — but that was absorbed into the <i>Völkisch</i> movements, all that went with them, and so into post-War disrepute.</span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><div class="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage" data-caption="<h4>Scan.jpeg</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;politics.ie&#x2F;threads&#x2F;something-happened-why-did-english-mariners-turn-to-the-west-in-16th-century.283922&#x2F;#post-13359823" class="js-lightboxCloser">Malcolm Redfellow · Sep 13, 2021 at 8:36 PM</a></p>" data-fancybox="lb-post-13359823" data-lb-caption-extra-html="" data-lb-sidebar-href="" data-single-image="1" data-src="https://politics.ie/attachments/scan-jpeg.164848/" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; max-width: 100%; text-size-adjust: auto;" title="Scan.jpeg"><img alt="Scan.jpeg" class="bbImage" data-url="" data-zoom-target="1" height="1206" src="https://politics.ie/attachments/scan-jpeg.164848/" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" title="Scan.jpeg" width="1500" /></div><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">I am, though, prepared to accept that our Celtic (and Germanic) illiterate forbears were (in every sense) crafty, and used 'natural knowledge'. Then, again, I've read too much Arthur C Clarke not to apply his apothegm,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</i><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">And yet ... and yet ...</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px;">Even before Rome, there were tracks across Europe. They may have been seasonal (what wasn't?); but all the evidence is they were there. Some were transactional (something as universally essential as salt needed to be moved): others seem to have particular and spiritual significance.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29);"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29); font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Camino de Santiago</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> — the path to Compostela — </span>follows the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://carlafernandezandrade.com/Amarillo-Atlantico" target="_blank">Callis Ianus</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">That notion stems from a belief there was a cult of Ianus as far back as pre-Roman times. Ianus gets absorbed into the classical pantheon as the two-faced door-keeper of the classical gods — but curiously takes precedence in some prayers: <a href="https://www.loebclassics.com/view/livy-history_rome_8/1926/pb_LCL191.3.xml?rskey=zKUHKo&result=8" target="_blank">Livy's History of Rome, Bk 8</a>, chap 6, has the priest invoke:</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;" /><div style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; margin-left: 20px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #7c706b;">Ianus, Jupiter, Father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares, divine Novensiles, divine Indigites, ye gods in whose power are both we and our enemies, and you, divine Manes, — I invoke and worship you, I beseech and crave your favour, that you prosper the might and the victory of the Roman People of the Quirites.</span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29); font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></div>Ianus is the deity of 'beginnings' (January, anyone?) and so, inevitably, of endings. That's where we are all travelling: visit headlands facing the sunset, and spot the pre-historic burial grounds: the Celts and Scots chose Iona. All the pilgrim need do was follow the sunset to the 'field of stars' (</span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">campus stellae</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 29, 29); color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 15px; text-size-adjust: auto;">, in case you miss the significance).</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(56, 118, 29); font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #202122;"><br /></span><p></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-86661974440733956562021-09-13T12:02:00.004+01:002021-09-13T12:08:04.862+01:00Would I were in Grantchester<p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: medium;"> <span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">εἴθε γενοίμην. . .</span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> </span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">I can tell you that's optative mood. Latin manages just two moods</span><span style="color: #202122;"> — indicative and subjunctive, but the Greeks had already said 'Hold my </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Limnio<b>!'</b></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">and come up with a third. You have just been treated to a proper classical </span><span style="color: #202122;">education in 1950s-60s Dublin.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Some </span>present<span style="font-family: inherit;"> may recognise the expression: it's from Rupert Brooke's well-known celebration of Cambridgeshire:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">... would I were</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Some, it may be, can get in touch</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">With Nature there, or Earth, or such.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">And clever modern men have seen</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">A Faun a-peeping through the green,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">And felt the Classics were not dead,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">To glimpse a Naiad’s reedy head,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: ...</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">But these are things I do not know.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">I only know that you may lie</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Until the centuries blend and blur</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">In Grantchester, in Grantchester. ...</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Gorgeous, pretentious, affected goo. Exactly what one expects from a privileged, effete Rugbeian. But — ooh — so emotive. Of course, the place and the poem come with all the trimmings. Byron swam nearby (Brooke gets that it). The village is the most up-market end of Cambridge, and it used to be an irregular number 18 bus.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigksF9O1tF5OWxEXYZiWVL_Y8QpXV-KU8YNSgoA6CErgqZ6ni1hGBvPcl9hl7xytnRiOPJBDmAFNRHJiMFekz9nz2mtM-r-1f5x8QgpZj7sb4BXzoA4rqJdULpb0qAL31s5LpNOA/s960/HDR-High-St-and-Coton-Road.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="960" height="83" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigksF9O1tF5OWxEXYZiWVL_Y8QpXV-KU8YNSgoA6CErgqZ6ni1hGBvPcl9hl7xytnRiOPJBDmAFNRHJiMFekz9nz2mtM-r-1f5x8QgpZj7sb4BXzoA4rqJdULpb0qAL31s5LpNOA/s320/HDR-High-St-and-Coton-Road.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>If you detect empathy for the mosquito that got Brooke, you may have a point.<div><br /></div><div>A Cantab once muttered his imprecations against his fellow alumni: 'The trouble with them is they spend the rest of their lives trying to crawl back into the womb of alma Mater.' I feel his pain.</div><div><br /></div><div>One such is James Runcie, son of a former Archbishop of Canterbury. As I work it out, young Runcie was born while Runcie senior was dean of Trinity Hall — which, by a strange co-incidence, was young Runcie's college.</div><div><br /></div><div>Young Runcie, though, made it in the big, bad world of media as a novelist, film-maker, and playwright. And — perhaps more significantly — arts guru for the BBC.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2012, to gild a shining hour, young Runcie began a series of detective short-stories based on the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/80976-the-grantchester-mysteries" target="_blank">fictional vicar of Grantchester.</a> Either by intent, or calculation those six books provided a perfect basis for TV adaptation. Moreover, they had the quaint, cozy English feel that appealed to an American audience. The Runcie table would never be short of <span style="color: #2b00fe;">honey still for tea</span>.</div><div><br /></div><div>After half-a-dozen volumes of his Sidney Chambers, young Runcie went back to the fountain-head. And something quite remarkable came up:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: medium;">18. James Runcie: <i>The Road to Grantchester</i></span></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV81fTkiNGQAGc1jdw6cUoAG3l-Fuy7a5L_Q2FSSuOauULHz3HK2Q4j42RJuC1Aap1PKNIdV79btIErp129BdrP50f8qYOrsyfBq7z_xYGRnwh2WubXawEPWYSggZGcKQBKipfeg/s671/iu.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="420" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV81fTkiNGQAGc1jdw6cUoAG3l-Fuy7a5L_Q2FSSuOauULHz3HK2Q4j42RJuC1Aap1PKNIdV79btIErp129BdrP50f8qYOrsyfBq7z_xYGRnwh2WubXawEPWYSggZGcKQBKipfeg/w125-h200/iu.jpeg" width="125" /></a></div><div>We get four evenly-spaced 'Parts' — <span style="color: #2b00fe;">War</span>, <span style="color: #2b00fe;">Peace</span>, <span style="color: #2b00fe;">Faith</span> and <span style="color: #2b00fe;">Love</span>.<br /><p>It starts:</p><h2 style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; text-align: left; text-size-adjust: auto;"><em style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: medium;">London, 28 February 1938</span></em></h2><p class="noindent" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They are in the Caledonian Club, dancing the quickstep. Sidney is eighteen. Amanda, his best friend’s little sister, is three years younger. The band is playing ‘<em>Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen</em>’: ‘To Me, You’re Beautiful’. He has asked her to dance out of politeness. He has good manners, everyone thinks so, but he enjoys the dance more than he had expected.</span></p><p> Amanda Kendall is, of course, the on-off love-interest in the early <i>Grantchester Mysteries</i>. Then a crash cut:</p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">No one believes there will be another war and, even if there is one, how can it possibly ruin the memory of this golden evening, with everyone in their finery, dancing on a polished wooden floor under the chandeliers with the orchestra playing and the candles ablaze?</span></span></p></div><div><p class="noindent" style="margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Five years later, Sidney Chambers is on a transport ship with the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards, preparing for landing south of Salerno.</span></p></div></blockquote><p>Sidney's school- and Cambridge-buddy, Amanda's brother, Robert Kendall is in the same unit. </p><p>We follow the blood-and-gore of the Italian campaign from Solerno to Monte Cassino. Sidney's problems with faith are implied: a visit to Mass at a ruined chapel, his occasional guilt, his exchanges with the padre:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter02.xhtmlpage27" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 19.2px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">'Rev Nev' Finnie is an Episcopalian from Markinch in Fife. He is an asthmatic in his early forties, technically too old for service, but he is a family friend of the Colonel. He has been offered leave but he has a determination to continue with his ministry, wherever it takes him, and people can’t be bothered to argue about his age or suitability. He is only a priest. There are plenty of soldiers to console and bury.</span></a></p></blockquote><p>Page 69 (of 327) comes the crisis:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter08.xhtmlpage68" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Kendall leads the advance; Sidney is behind with the Bren, waiting to open up when the German defence has weakened. It is a sustained cacophony, rifles firing, blazes of illumination, silhouettes of movement, men stumbling, falling, shooting, killing, dying; a sustained attack and then<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter08.xhtmlpage69" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">a lull; a moment for replenishing, rearming, reconsidering before another opportunity to take the initiative while both sides work out what to do next.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sidney calls, ‘Down,’ and the men nearby fall low, allowing him a clear line of fire. But a few soldiers in the distance either haven’t heard or are confused about the battle orders and are scrambling back. In the darkness, it is hard to tell if they are Allied troops returning or whether it’s an enemy attack.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sidney keeps firing. He can’t see Kendall, but then he can’t see very much at all in the melée. He only stops when he runs out of ammunition. Then he realises how many of his own men are wounded. He calls out for the stretcher-bearers. Where is the Advance Dressing Station? How soon can they get help?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One man is unconscious, bleeding from the neck and chest, his head to one side, his eyes open in glazed surprise.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">It is Robert Kendall.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Two days later Sidney has a field promotion to Captain, and awarded a Military Cross. Robert Kendall gets a posthumous DCM. Sidney goes to 'Rev Nev' for some comfort:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Would you like to pray?’</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘I’m not sure if I can.’</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Let me start for you.’</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Rev Nev bows his head. ‘Merciful Father, look down on this, thy servant Sidney. Accept his penitence, calm his fears, bring him your peace, in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for us. Amen.’</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sidney just manages to repeat the ‘Amen’.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>A lesser writer might have skipped then to Sidney, post-War, taking Holy Orders. Runcie doesn't, but rushes the story through Sidney being wounded, cared for by an Irish nurse (hinted flashback to Sidney's earlier relationship), and the end of the War.</p><p>The reader now possesses Sidney's causes of guilt and of 'belief'. Post-war he is rootless: suggestion of a career in the Foreign Office, in teaching or whatever leave him inert, unmotivated. Amanda takes him to the National Gallery: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">They find themselves in front of Caravaggio’s</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><em style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Supper at Emmaus</em><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">, Christ with outstretched arms in blessing, the two strangers suddenly realising who is with them, light in the darkness, the simplicity of bread and gesture, its distilled meaning. [...]</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="indent" style="display: inline; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They study the picture in silence. It is an image of commanding serenity, perfectly proportioned in its beauty and stillness. He feels the painting is calling him. Christ is calling him. This is the peace that the world cannot give.</span></p></blockquote><p><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter15.xhtmlpage149" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;"></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwC4gqgiffTmVsuCme_q93VdoIZ_5FZhWaEHKdTvbrtRj7DiAbS0JtL9bhI6UXJKOK4L2X53e4TwSF6UwXa9oUjcHR1ksX67hdrx-n1_oDr76fWdCCgXUbJcJhLfracwJ3lErdQ/s1200/Caravaggio+-+Cena+in+Emmaus.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwC4gqgiffTmVsuCme_q93VdoIZ_5FZhWaEHKdTvbrtRj7DiAbS0JtL9bhI6UXJKOK4L2X53e4TwSF6UwXa9oUjcHR1ksX67hdrx-n1_oDr76fWdCCgXUbJcJhLfracwJ3lErdQ/w640-h336/Caravaggio+-+Cena+in+Emmaus.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /> Then follows a series of awkward exchanges: he meets 'Rev Nev' who arranges a retreat, he talks to his father, he tries to explain his intention to Amanda ...<p></p><p>From then there is a killing (involves a pair of duelling pistols, no great mystery), we follow Sidney through theological college, into his first parochial involvements in Coventry as curate to Canon Clitheroe (there's an awkward, youthful pregnancy which involves secrets needing to be confessed), he finds himself growing away from the social scene of Amanda and her family, until ...</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">On Easter Monday, Graham</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span class="cv_highlight cv_selected" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Clitheroe</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">asks for ‘a serious conversation’. Sidney worries what this might be about. Has a parishioner made a complaint? He does not think he has been neglecting his duties. On the contrary, he has been working all the time. Perhaps the vicar thinks he has been too lenient with Julie Jordan? Or maybe someone has died? Or</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span class="cv_highlight" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Clitheroe</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">has decided to retire?</span></span></p><p><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They sit in deep old sofas, inherited and in need of reupholstery, drinking sweet dark sherry that Sidney does not like but won’t say. There’s a loud clock too, and he wonders why people need to be so constantly reminded of time.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">‘Do you fancy a trip back to Cambridge?’</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span class="cv_highlight" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Clitheroe</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">asks. The tone is kindly, almost amused.</span></span></p><p><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Why there?’</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">‘I’ve had a letter from the Bishop of Ely. I don’t think you know him, but he’s been asking after you. They ne</span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify; text-indent: 19.2px;">ed a new man in Grantchester and he wants to know if you might be ready for the task. It’s quite a job.’</span> </span></p></blockquote><p>The conclusion involves Sidney telling Amanda how her brother died, a finely written scene — any comment would be a spoiler.</p><p>The novel concludes with Sidney induction at Grantchester:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Sidney is supported by friends old and new: his parents and siblings </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[...]</span><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"> together with all the regular villagers, including Mrs Maguire, a fierce-looking woman who has been earmarked as his housekeeper, the Mayor of Cambridge, and Inspector Geordie Keating from the local police.</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Sidney looks out into the congregation and spies Amanda at the back of the church. She must have arrived late and on her own.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter40.xhtmlpage318" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;"></a>They walk by the Cam:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter40.xhtmlpage323" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘I’d like you to answer another question,’ he begins.</span></a></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Questions, questions, Sidney. Whatever next?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Will you look after me, Amanda?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘That sounds like a proposal of marriage. You know I’m engaged to someone else?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘I think it’s more than that.’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘More than marriage?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Yes, probably, given our history, given all that we know about each other, given my hopelessly uncertain and impoverished future. . .’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘And you expect me to answer that?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘I do.’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘There you go again. Is that the only time you are going to use those two words in my company?’</span></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Probably.’</span></span></p></blockquote><p><b><span style="color: #38761d;">Cliff-hanger ending.</span></b></p><p>All of that side-steps the question: to what extent is the story of Sidney Chambers at least partly an analogue of Runcie's father?</p><p>Robert Runcie served in the Scots Guards (✔︎ check), was in the Normandy campaign (not Italy), was awarded the Military Cross for acts of bravery ((✔︎ check), was a Classics scholar (✔︎ check), studied for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge (✔︎ check), served as a curate in Newcastle, returned to Cambridge (✔︎ check), and then became Bishop of St Albans. Robert Runcie died in 2000.</p><div><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><a epub:type="pagebreak" id="part_chapter01.xhtmlpage4" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-size-adjust: auto;"></a></span></p></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-88967891496032236622021-09-11T16:39:00.000+01:002021-09-11T16:39:08.396+01:00Something happened ...<p>No: not Joseph Heller's '<a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-happened-a-look-at-joseph-hellers-forgotten-novel/">forgotten novel</a>' — though I ought to get to Heller sometime. Just a thought about the moment English navigators and seamen looked across the Atlantic.</p><p>I doubt it was just Cristóbal Colón, <i>antea</i> Cristovão Colom, <i>né</i> Cristoforo Colombo finding his way and naming San Salvador.</p><p>All the evidence is that the shipmen of Bristol (and perhaps places like Waterford) had gone beyond the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine_Bank" target="_blank">Porcupine Bank</a> and been fishing off Newfoundland for at least two decades before — and presumably had some idea of land nearby. They just kept that knowledge to themselves. Else, how do we explain John Lloyd in a small vessel <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfL2AMHsJXEC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=John+Lloyd+july+1480&source=bl&ots=-R6TF0t8Gd&sig=ACfU3U3VSlYiaef3i0gyU3sEJPh9oaCqDg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjntMX6gPfyAhVJQMAKHetrDeoQ6AF6BAgYEAM#v=onepage&q=John%20Lloyd%20july%201480&f=false" target="_blank">out of Bristol (15 July 1480</a>) heading out to look for the mythical island of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasil_(mythical_island)">Hy Brasil</a>? Lloyd's cargo included forty bushels of salt — a bit of cod-fishing was obviously part of the deal.</p><p>There's more evidence in Hakluyt, who included in <i><a href="http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=hakluyt" target="_blank">Principal Navigations</a></i> a Robert Thorne's map and some memoirs. Thorne, in two letters (one to Henry VII Tudor, the other to Edward Lee, the English Ambassador to Spain), tells of his father having been involved in explorations of the Newfoundland coast, and urging the 'authorities' to get on with repeating it.</p><p>All of which, and far, far more suggests to my mind that 'Something was happening' in Tudor times to turn English attention to look west. The only question is when to date it.</p><p>Allow me to leap a very eventful century to 4 November 1576. That date was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Antwerp">the sacking of Antwerp</a>, and a period of anarchy for the Spanish Netherlands, which had all kinds of consequence. Out of that, the Union of Arras (formulating a core for the remaining Spanish power) and the Union of Utrecht (the cohesion of the United Provinces), both in late 1579, explain why the modern Netherlands (mainly lapsed Protestants) and Belgium (heavily Catholic, but no longer as sincere as they used to be) still persist. This was when the Habsburgs were realising the limits of Spanish power in the Low Countries. After, the main commerce centre moved north along the coast to Amsterdam. From a specific English point-of-view, it destroyed the main export wool-market.</p><p>And it's why I have been reading ...</p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">17. Michael Pye, <i><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/289/289964/antwerp/9780241243213.html" target="_blank">Antwerp: The Glory Years</a></i></span></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ELWSCcnVRBIRZ5-9UFYBn4QrpmufD4BKcSifGJAOs_msE4bKGZCvxrS4FCc2R5cUYxckIk6jCSuHjLAc9B-bAZSUFsp9_hJsIvxSJp3zq-8Ot7pt7hQWEGQIb7I4N2CdWUpUdg/s677/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="440" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ELWSCcnVRBIRZ5-9UFYBn4QrpmufD4BKcSifGJAOs_msE4bKGZCvxrS4FCc2R5cUYxckIk6jCSuHjLAc9B-bAZSUFsp9_hJsIvxSJp3zq-8Ot7pt7hQWEGQIb7I4N2CdWUpUdg/w130-h200/image.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><br />I bought this book on the back of very warm reviews, and because I knew (and took to) Pye's earlier <i>The Edge of the World, </i><span class="calibre5" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: center;"><i>How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are </i>— which is very much the other half of this story. In the matter of the city and history of Antwerp, Pye's two books overlap to the extent one may spot borrowings from one to the other: the same names flit from one to the other.</span><p></p><p><span class="calibre5" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: center;">Another reason for acquiring this book was — I know and like Antwerp. Getting there is too easy — off the Eurostar at Brussels-Midi, change platform and the same ticket takes me the rest of the way. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Antwerpen Centraal</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> is gloriously theatrical, turn-of-the-nineteenth-century and splendidly over-the-top.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Belgium as a whole is the epitome of Northern European bourgeoisification. Antwerp must count as the country's most bourgeois provincial city. And the ultimate bourgeois bit of Antwerp is Meir, the fashion district. Money still talks here — but with style.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Pye's story of the great century of Antwerp, the sixteenth century. His account is topped-and-tailed by two events, making for a compact account (the text is barely a couple of hundred pages). It kicks off with the arrival of Portuguese Jews fleeing from the Inquisition, bringing their skills, trades and acumen. It ends with </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">, suppressing of dissent, enforcing Catholic conformity, and so with the flight of those Jews, of Lutherans and Calvinists to more congenial cities. In between is a period of liberalism, especially in economics. </span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Hence the story never strays too far from money. The book is delightfully full of anecdotes and vignettes. This is from page 116, starting chapter 8 (which is entitled — yes — <i>Money</i>):</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The banker and merchant Erasmus Schetz tried to explain money to his 'most special friend', the 'great and most learnèd man', the philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was not doing well. 'I was certain,' Schetz wrote, 'that within a year I would have rendered you capable of understanding all this.' He added: 'I would prefer that you were more capable of grasping this matter than I see you are.'</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Erasmus was expecting income from a parish in England, but the coins seemed to have different values in different places. Schetz had to tell Erasmus that there was money in coins and money on paper and the value of the two could shift, that other people could take the difference between the markets in money 'to their own gain, and to your detriment'. The great philosopher had a simpler view: he assumed he was being robbed.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-76238526276454570002021-09-11T10:42:00.002+01:002021-09-11T10:59:28.472+01:00Where were you when ... ?<p> I'd finished a day teaching. Long since (formally) retired I was a <i>locum</i> at the local Roman Catholic secondary school. <i>Locum </i>in this case making me a 'supply teacher', the lowest of the low in the pedagogic pecking order.</p><p>It wan't by any means a 'bad' billet. My TCD degree gave certain credibilities (I'd mentioned that I wasn't RC; but that didn't seem to matter). I could, though, cope with the stuff others shied away from — A-level Milton kept me in fodder for several years. Above all, it more than paid the bills: what with a secure pension, and this daily screw I was better paid in retirement than I ever had been before. I was once, discreetly, told that and the 'on-costs' made me the third most expensive item on the school pay-roll, after the Head and the Caretaker.</p><p>So, sweat of a day behind me, I cruised home on the Yamaha, over Alexandra Park (ignoring as did everyone else, speed restrictions). I dropped down the run-in towards the garage. Removed my crash-helmet, reached for the garage key...</p><p>The kitchen door was open, and the Lady in my Life called out: "She's all right!"</p><p><b><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">Huh?</span></i></b></p><p>We had a small Sharp tv on a ledge in the kitchen, and it was tuned to the news-channels. The full horror was being revealed moment-by-moment.</p><p>The time difference meant that London around tea-time was coming up to noon in New York.</p><p>It took some while for everything to become clear.</p><p><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Number 1 Daughter ...</span></b></p><p>... lived in suburban Noo Joisey, convenient to the 'Midtown Direct' trains into Penn Station. We'd been over a few weeks earlier, and trogged around Manhattan in steamy heat to exhaustion. Even to the point where we'd looked up and considered the tourist lift up the Twin Towers, only to say, "No: they'll be there another time. Let's go, get a drink".</p><p>Number 1 Daughter was then working on an consulting assignment in the World Trade Center. Her husband was down in Texas on some job. So Number 1 Daughter, with au-pair, was caring for First-born, due into day care.</p><p>That was the morning First-born, in short order, filled and re-filled his nappy, so Number 1 Daughter missed two trains in succession.</p><p>Not-quite-alternate trains on that Morris & Essex line run into Hoboken, there the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_%28rail_system%29">PATH</a> or ferry runs to the World Trade Center. When Number 1 Daughter arrived at Hoboken there were, of course, no PATH no ferries — but all could see the smoke from the Twin Towers. The instruction was to go home — except, by then, the entire transport network was in total chaos, cell-phones were no longer working, and confusion was thrice confused.</p><p>It took hours for Number 1 Daughter to make it home. By that stage some sense of events had percolated through: Number 1 Daughter knew some of her team were down to DC that morning, and jumped to the conclusion they could have been on American flight 11. There was another shocker when she made it back to pick up First-born, by which time it was already approaching shutting-up-shop time. Only to find several other uncollected children, and an air of despairing panic setting in.</p><p><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Meanwhile, deep in the heart of Texas ...</b></span></p><p>... a select cadre of business-types could hear and see what was happening in NYC, but couldn't communicate with home. Number 1 Daughter's husband managed a line of communication: he could 'phone his sister in California, who could 'phone us in London, who could 'phone Number 1 daughter once she was on the Noo Joisey network.</p><p>Without airlines, four business-types hired a car and drove non-stop the seven hundred miles to New York.</p><p><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Yes, I remember 9/11.</span></b></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-65253173941875765402021-09-10T15:19:00.003+01:002021-09-11T11:38:18.361+01:00The book of the show, the show of the book<p> Right of my desk is one particular shelf:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-sJDG16Z3pQoa8yysvMaK0AYZGKHw1qWF8D1bRQWRAOBSwQHdXVaoRYFwai9XEYirWrq3a_ECJwG7kiBwm5paBvFuXcikovjFehvSPScCWZOc_8278Raf9yKqFTv9cIrksGCy5g/s1258/Shelf.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="1258" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-sJDG16Z3pQoa8yysvMaK0AYZGKHw1qWF8D1bRQWRAOBSwQHdXVaoRYFwai9XEYirWrq3a_ECJwG7kiBwm5paBvFuXcikovjFehvSPScCWZOc_8278Raf9yKqFTv9cIrksGCy5g/w640-h362/Shelf.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Were this a 'library' and not, more prosaically, my 'book-room', this would be marked 'over-sized'. As that image shows, it has become where I stuff exhibition catalogues. There are two more, currently wandering free, to add. Both from our last trip down to The Smoke: <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turners-modern-world" target="_blank">the Tate doing Turner</a> yet again, and the <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/thomas-becket-murder-and-making-saint" target="_blank">BM on Thomas Beckett</a>.<p></p><p>Such vanities, at their ordinary norm, tend to be 'coffee-table books', casually left beside where, like <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes" target="_blank">pensive Selima</a>, the Mistress or Master usually reclines, to impress a casual visitor on the depth, learnedness and perception of their sporter.</p><p>These glossy efforts should be something more than an ornament or a momento. That 'something' ought to add depth and understanding to the exhibition from which they originate.</p><p>As I imply, some are better at that than others. Many are definite improvements on the exhibition itself — (editors) Gareth Williams, Peter Pentz and Maththias Wemhoff on <i><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Vikings.html?id=jO8ungEACAAJ&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">Vikings, life and legend</a></i> for the 2014 travelling show would be my best the best example. Here's another:</p><p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">16. (editors) Claire Breay and Joanna Storey: Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Art, Word, War</span></b></p><p>This is, by any avoirdupois, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40590280-anglo-saxon-kingdoms" target="_blank">a heavy tome</a>. It runs to over four hundred pages of quality art-paper.</p><p>Back in 2012 the British Library bought St Cuthbert's Gospel from the Jesuits (we'll come to that small history in a moment). The fund-raising was up to £9 million, which suggests the importance of this tiny piece (think 5½ x 3½ inches). We are assured that it will rotate between the BL and viewings <i>oop north</i>. The BL then had to construct an exhibition around its acquisition. That's the occasion: this is the record.</p><p>The bulk of the exhibits were either similarly small — the Alfred Jewel, borrowed from the Ashmolean almost ridiculously so — or script based. It was like old-times to be back with the Book of Durrow from the TCD Long Room — which prompts a wonder at the relative exhibition value of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells" target="_blank">the other Book there</a>, Durrow's younger-by-a-century sibling.</p><p>The star of that BL show was meant to be St Cuthbert's Gospel: the text of St John, written we must believe in the monastic scriptorium at Jarrow, and around a century after Cuthbert's death (AD687). what makes it special is this is the oldest known bound European text. Its cover, then, is of greater intrinsic interest than the text.</p><p>After his death Cuthbert's coffin was repeatedly on the move, to keep it from intrusive Danes. it and his corpse eventually arrived at Durham. In AD1104 the monks decided to have a poke at the old lad, and found this book in the coffin.</p><p>When Henry VIII Tudor dissolved the monastic establishment at `durham, the Gospel and other saleables were put on the market. The Gospel ended up the property of Stonyhurst College. For many years the College left it 'on loan' with the British Museum/Library., until the Jesuits decided to realise its considerable value.</p><p>Unless one is into manuscripts, the exhibition was hardly over-whelming, whereas the depth and scholarship in the catalogue undoubtedly achieves that end. Only through the extensive annotations in the text do th exhibits (and their analogues mentioned, but not displayed) achieve a full context.</p><p>The exhibition had a chronology, spanning — let us remember — over six full centuries. It started with '<a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/spong-man" target="_blank">Spong Man'</a> – the seated, unisex figure which must once have been the seal for a flask or a cremation pot, found at North Elmham. That is dated back to the early period of Anglo-Saxon occupation. It concluded with two versions of the Domesday Book — the <a href="https://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/">Exeter Domesday</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/" target="_blank">Great Domesday</a>..</p><p>Just when one feels one should be reaching an end, the catalogue properly concludes with fourteen pages (!) of comprehensive bibliography.</p><p>Before I wrap up this post, I must add two particular memories from other exhibitions, and now to be revisited through these catalogues.</p><p>From the winter 2011-2012 National Gallery Leonardo show there were <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/past/leonardo-experience-a-masterpiece/leonardo-and-the-virgin-of-the-rocks">the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks</a> facing each other, and so ready to be compared and contrasted. Since the National already had one (the darker version from as late as 1506) bringing the Louvre's, earlier (1485-ish), prototype to London was something of an achievement. It involved a mutual exchange deal, of course.</p><div style="text-align: left;">On 19 March 2018 (I have the ticket before me) I was at the Royal Academy for its <i><a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/charles-i-king-and-collector" target="_blank">Charles I, King and Collector</a></i> show. A few of the stand-out highlights are <a href="https://royal-academy-production-asset.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/fe4b97fa-622d-4d8c-921e-f135cc5a06c1/Charles+I+King+and+Collector.pdf">listed here</a>. What that omits are the two gob-smacking royal portraits: the very domestic king in the <i><a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/405353/charles-i-and-henrietta-maria-with-their-two-eldest-children-prince-charles-and" target="_blank">Greate Peece</a></i> (<i>Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children</i>), and his grandest possible entry, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_with_M._de_St_Antoine">Charles I with M. de St Antoine</a></i>.</div><br /><div>The Commonwealth, ever short of cash, had a massive garage sale of all Charles's art-works. The items seem to have been valued by the yard: both are huge (around 3.7m by 2.7m). The mounted Charles went for £150:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdQuYjAjANGb-NMUxrmPqjYQ13grTJHt0ueTF_TJpUBgZrzIaHROSaZQVkh9qOqnXF_NwqVEqja3N44OIWeQOing9ZcUWRfWGYe6C237S5TELZqhhZ6cQCeZuCz8O8qopjHtOHA/s1101/800px-Anthony_van_Dyck_-_Charles_I_%25281600-49%2529_with_M._de_St_Antoine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1101" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdQuYjAjANGb-NMUxrmPqjYQ13grTJHt0ueTF_TJpUBgZrzIaHROSaZQVkh9qOqnXF_NwqVEqja3N44OIWeQOing9ZcUWRfWGYe6C237S5TELZqhhZ6cQCeZuCz8O8qopjHtOHA/w291-h400/800px-Anthony_van_Dyck_-_Charles_I_%25281600-49%2529_with_M._de_St_Antoine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="291" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-21047644671286810212021-09-08T20:22:00.005+01:002021-09-08T20:23:46.903+01:00How far could he push it?<p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> 15. Richard Condon: thrillers on speed</span></b></p><p>Once upon a time, after growing up in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, and doing his stint in the merchant marine, Condon settled for the hectic life of a Hollywood publicist and agent. His boss, <span style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_E._Youngstein" target="_blank">Max E. Youngstein</a> </span><span style="background-image: none; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">at United Artists, skimmed his salary, banked it for him, and then sacked him, telling him to go look at the sea in Mexico and write the novel he had been promising.</span></p><p>Condon's second effort was <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376514.The_Manchurian_Candidate" target="_blank">The Manchurian Candidate</a> </i>(1959), which suitably reframed into an almost-conventional thriller, was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056218/" target="_blank">filmed in 1962</a> (and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368008/" target="_blank">remade in 2004</a> — though stick with the John Frankenheimer version). Condon needed never to work again.</p><p>But he did — I think his total <i>oeuvre</i> runs in excess of two dozen books. He drove deeper and deeper into the phantasmagoria of American conspiracy theory. Just as <i>The Manchurian Candidate</i> mined the hysteria of the Cold War, he later took on the Kennedy years, and the mafia (towards the end of his writing career, and not up to his best, four books on <a href="https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/prizzi/" target="_blank">the Prizzi family</a>).</p><p>Time and again Condon excoriates political corruption and how it destroys. In <i>Manchurian Candidate</i>, the mother-figure uses her damaged son to bring about an assassination which would make her husband the presidential candidate — the villain behind the curtain is thinly-disguised Senator Joe McCarthy. In <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376520.Winter_Kills" target="_blank">Winter Kills</a> </i>(1974) a substitute 'Honey Fitz' machinates the assassination of his JFK-like son. Perhaps too often there a sexual perversity at work, as well: incest is implied in <i>Manchurian Candidate </i>(a posthumous study showed Condon, there, had ripped bits from Livia in Robert Graves's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18765.I_Claudius?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=VeaMyHivnQ&rank=1" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">I Claudius</a>).</p><p>If any one motive was the driving force, it was Condon's visceral disgust at power-games, power-exploitation in the leading political families and for Richard Nixon in particular. That is most evident in the central character of <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/980351.Death_Of_A_Politican" target="_blank">Death of a Politician</a></i> (1978). Trump would have been grist to his mill.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-size: xx-small; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdApW4cVzHPWX2Xp-Yn_yWt5i8OQOsDCzdrAxrAhZ1wIa3nw-bx4D_iAUU7_HJF4lCyvcnFwypG4TTsaGPE0qvhSIB9Yn7oP6mphM6bVeRyyRHk2SGOnYLzlxoFxo5L552s3kxqg/w132-h200/Mile_High_%2528novel%2529.jpg" width="132" /></span></div><br />I'm picking just one of his works, and not an obvious one: <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376522.Mile_High?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=mxjscjaZAA&rank=1" target="_blank">Mile High</a> </i>(1969) — which was put in the shade by Mario Puzo's similar, (and this is a strange thing to say about any Condon story) more sensationalist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22034.The_Godfather" target="_blank"><i>The Godfather</i>.</a></div><p></p><p>It's another generational novel: a triple-decker <span style="font-family: inherit;">— the three unequal parts are <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><i>The Minotaur</i>; <i>Theseus and Wife</i>; and <i>The Labyrinth</i>. There is a positive morass of characters, quit a number of excesive vices, and a smattering of over-the-top virtues and their singnallers.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">Paddy West is the grandfather, in Famine Ireland:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The blight came on in ’45. The famine began in ’46. Dysentery and relapsing fever followed. Thousands roamed the countryside praying for food, eating thistles to stay alive. They began to leak out of their country. First to Liverpool, Glasgow and South Wales, then to Australia, last but most powerfully to the United States, jammed starving and diseased into unseaworthy ships.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A million died at home before Paddy West got away, including three brothers and four sisters. The British at last had begun to issue corn, but the Irish didn’t know what it was and most of them couldn’t or wouldn’t eat it. Paddy filled his pants and a sack with it and made himself eat it after he saw how they cooked it, but on the road from Killarney to Cork he preferred to eat weeds. But he had luck. He came on two drunken English soldiers and in the right place for it, so he clomped them both on the heads with a flat rock and found six shillings in their pockets, all unaware that he had started on his life’s work. He ate the corn, cooked or raw, and watched for lonely soldier drunks at night until he earned enough for his Cunard passage — about twenty American dollars’ worth.</span></p></blockquote><p>Paddy West then involves himself in the seamiest aspects of New York life — and (for me) sketches a dystopic criminal and political corruption. West rises though 'crimping' — shanghai-ing crews for ships on behalf of <span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254);">Ma 'the Casker' Steinet — and politicking with Tammany Hall:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">After Ma died Paddy set his course for politics [...]. He leased the three boardinghouses to Charley Gleason. He sold the slop shops to Larry Meagher, and over the twenty-two years with Ma and his bands of fancy girls and his various overrides he had saved forty-one thousand dollars and he now owned leases and buildings and land. When he burned the boardinghouses that stood between Fulton and Wall Streets after the leases expired, he collected another three thousand in insurance. He built tenements on the land with a good bank loan that the Party arranged for him at fair rates.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With all that comes money. Paddy sires Eddie on a Mafia bride. Eddie is cultured into being a businessman:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Edward Courance West at twenty-one became the youngest bank president in the history of the state. The bank was three blocks west of Tammany Hall, which had moved uptown from Franklin and Nassau in ’68. To install his son, Paddy had torn down the building the street-level store was in and built a four-story edifice, with a vault for the sweet little bank whose capital was now eight million, two hundred and ninety-one thousand dollars and eleven cents (as of the 1909 year-end audit).</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">When Paddy died suddenly after a lifetime without a sick day, Eddie was twenty-three years old: March 24, 1911.</span></p></blockquote><p>Paddy dies in the company of Willie Tobin, who continues as the father and son's go-fer to the end. Eddie is the central part of the story. He comes up with the ultimate heist:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">To Edward Courance West the prohibition of alcohol was merely the greatest business opportunity since the Industrial Revolution. He did not see it as an infringement of rights </span>[...] <span style="color: #2b00fe;">All he saw, very simply, was a chance to make two or three billion dollars and to evade taxes on all but a minuscule fraction of it.</span></p></blockquote><p>While agitating for prohibition, Eddie has also squared Don Vito of the Sicilian mafia to provide the labour to distribute illegal hooch. Which led to involvement in organised labour (or rather exploiting it).</p><p>Eddie's marriage turns sour: his ultra-Catholic wife is appalled at his violence to prostitutes (this, as only happens in fiction, will coincidentally return in the final section of the novel). Eddie becomes convinced his partner is having an affair with her (Eddie convinces himself it is all part of a Commie plot). He catches them together, and destroys his house out on Long Island. The wife dies in childbirth. Eddie abjures the child. Etc., etc.</p><p>Eddie falls for a chorus-girl, sets her up in an apartment, only to find she betrays him with the 'companion' Eddie had arranged to watch her. Eddie goes totally nuts. All this, and much more.</p><p>The story then changes gear. With Eddie out of his mind, we move to the third generation. Walter (named for his maternal grandfather) has a complex history. He serves as a rifleman in Korea, becomes a priest, then a respected architect, never a criminal. And, obviously, a meg-millionaire on the back of his inheritance and then Eddie's management of his funds. He marries Mayra Ashant, an artist on a West scholarship. When Mayra is told Walt is the son and heir of Eddie:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mayra had felt cold hostility cover her like hair spray and hold her in a rigid net. He was the son of the West Foundation. They’d been together for three months and she had thought they’d been everything it was possible to be to each other, but he had been afraid she would find out who he was, because she was black and he was ashamed of her. So many things he did habitually began to convince her more and more that he had just been using her until he got tired of using her. Like the way he was so cheap, pretending to like Swiss champagne more than French, or always taking buses, or having two suits of clothes to his back, all so she wouldn’t think he was that rich man’s son and try to take him the way he figured that’s what she’d do the minute she found out. And the way he babbled about astrology, and theosophy and faith cures and nature healing, just like he was some goddam idiot who never got out of grade school and who had to cover up and show off like a little boy how smart he was, all so she wouldn’t know he was that rich man’s son with a mess of colleges behind him. And how he never knew anything about the West Foundation. And the way he’d look at her Foundation check when it came on the first of every month and keep turning it over in his hands and looking at both sides of it and saying he’d get it cashed for her. Then when she packed his goddam bag she found all three Foundation checks tucked right in there, never used, like he thought his rich goddam honkie father could trace them to a nigger girl if he cashed them.</span></p></blockquote><p>Then another Condon twist:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The news that Edward Courance West’s younger son had been ordained in the priesthood after service in the Korean war had made a large forty-eight-hour splash in the papers. Walter even cooperated to keep the comment strident because he hoped it would flush his father out, but West remained silent and invisible. Then, to get out of the spotlight, [...] Walt was whisked out of sight to become pastor of a tiny parish in the back country of New Mexico, to work with a congregation of Mescalero Indians. He and his flock got along fine. Walt was a good priest and because he was rich, he provided, as a good shepherd should—a new hospital, community tools, a roof for the school. He was happier than he had ever been. People were calling upon him for love and service. He expanded and fulfilled himself.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Then, without warning, five months after he had been installed, his father began to write long letters to him; intimate, fervent, embarrassing letters that repeated over and over how much it meant that his son had taken holy orders, then had expanded that mission of his life into beatitudes of meaning for Edward West’s mother and Edward West’s wife, who were then in heaven glorying in the presence of God, rejoicing with Edward West in the knowledge that Walt was allowing all of them to serve him through a devout son. </span></p></blockquote><p>Eddie rediscovers his lost son, and writes long letters: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mr. West ordered Walt to pray for his immortal soul. Very soon the letters specified the combinations of litanies that were required. The litanies became so complicated that Walt was sure that his father had called upon the hundreds of obligations among bishops, mothers superior, cardinals, the entire curia (including the Pope), for obscure, long, wearying and obfuscating forms of prayers.</span></p></blockquote><p>This devotion takes over Walt's life. Eddie snows the community with money; and destoys Walt's ministry. Another corruption by money.</p><p>Back in the secular world, Walt falls for a young Black artist, Mayra Ashant. Eddie becomes obsessed by her, has her obsessively filmed and recorded. Mayra discovers who Walt is, the heir to the West wealth:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mayra had felt cold hostility cover her like hair spray and hold her in a rigid net. He was the son of the West Foundation. They’d been together for three months and she had thought they’d been everything it was possible to be to each other, but he had been afraid she would find out who he was, because she was black and he was ashamed of her.</span></p></blockquote><p>She flees. Walt follows. They are reconciled, and marry. Walt and Mayra, now pregnant, are summoned to Eddie's estate for Christmas. That will mean passing through New York and encountering Mayra's mother; and she knows Eddie's treatment of black whores. At the estate, Eddie is having Mayra injected with what are called tranquillizers, but are in fact mind-altering drugs. Mayra is having fantasies.</p><p>Willie Tobin (remember him?) is there to protect Mayra. It all comes together in a cataclysmic final scene. Willie is fed to Eddie's man-killer hounds. Eddie then advances on Mayra, armed with a poker (pokers had appeared earlier in the violence of the crimping episode) only to collapse with a coronary.</p><p>Yes: all melodrama. But on the way Condon packs in a remarkble amount of history of the criminal life if New York. And that's what I was there for.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-17487449805014938562021-09-07T20:26:00.006+01:002021-09-07T20:32:19.567+01:00Entr'acte: sonnets<p> If those previous posts were the first Act, and if more are to follow, I need a short diversion.</p><p>Something short and snappy. My natural verbosity will not deliver, so I'll still go for the diversion.</p><p>I'm not going to explain again the sonnet form. Nor attempt a history of it. I'll just pluck a few petals on the way.</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">First up, although it had been around in early Italian since the thirteenth century, it didn't arrive in England until the sixteenth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfM_QdKf6_3QBd_k4pZ1nOLhjdkfXbHCY3h-BC-JWgcPn6iqF-8ljw8HKWBiwV00FbLNQ0O4UKJrqVhEUsxpWR4QBCoF0v10kki8uv3QLV-HYm6vMJm6R9dGv5h1rc9t8nR7R3vA/s304/Sir_Thomas_Wyatt_%25281%2529_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfM_QdKf6_3QBd_k4pZ1nOLhjdkfXbHCY3h-BC-JWgcPn6iqF-8ljw8HKWBiwV00FbLNQ0O4UKJrqVhEUsxpWR4QBCoF0v10kki8uv3QLV-HYm6vMJm6R9dGv5h1rc9t8nR7R3vA/w145-h200/Sir_Thomas_Wyatt_%25281%2529_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg" width="145" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Usually <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">Sir <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wyatt_(poet)">Thomas Wyatt</a> (as left, by Holbein) and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey get that credit</span></span><span style="color: #494949;">. It says much about mid-sixteenth-century courtly life that both those worthies had flirtations with the headsman's axe. Wyatt was in deep doo-doo through an association with Anne Boleyn which put him in the Tower to witness her end. He was saved by his friendship with Thomas Cromwell (they shared, serially, a mistress, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Darrell_(courtier)">Elizabeth Darrell</a>).</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #494949;">Henry Howard, the earl of Surrey, was not so spared. He was a trifle too closely related to the head that wore the crown for comfort; and he had too short a temper for a courtier of Henry Tudor. He became the king's last victim.</span></p><p><span style="color: #494949;">I've tried to engage with their sonnets; but never managed to be properly uplifted or enthused.</span></p><p><span style="color: #494949;">I'm sure I should rave about Bill Shagspur's efforts. Some we know too well; others have the odour of a sonnet factory (one cannot maintain prime quality over 154 of them). And I've had to teach them too often. Perhaps his best are those almost hidden in <i><a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html">Romeo and Juliet</a> </i>(far too good a play to be wasted on the young): the Prologue and the heavily-truncated two tiercets of the Epilogue, but above all the <i>hands</i> motif when the lovers first engage.</span></p><p><span style="color: #494949;">My salivation improved with Milton:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px;"></span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px;"></span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #2b00fe; font-size: 16px;">Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones </span></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold ...</span></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>Spit it out, man!</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #2b00fe; font-size: 16px;">Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll’d</span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 16px;">Mother with infant down the rocks.</span> </span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div><div style="text-align: left;">There! Bet you felt better for that! There's nothing like a piece of invective for clearing the pipes. Some day I must set to discover what incident (apart from a general loathing of Roman Catholicism) prompted Milton's outburst.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's another that stuck: Keats gob-smacked <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-looking-into-chapmans-homer">On First Looking into Chapman's Home</a>r. </i>The doughty explorers climb a hill, and find themselves facing a vast new </span></span><span style="color: #494949;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);">Ocean:</span></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">... like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes </span></div></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men </span></div></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — </span></div></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Silent, upon a peak in Darien.</span></div></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>Pity it wasn't Cortez: but <span style="font-family: inherit;">then '<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">Vasco Núñez de Balboa' is never going to fit iambic pentameter.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">Allow me to cut to the chase.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">There are a couple of modern sonnets that work for me. Both are very Irish, but speak to a wider audience. Both of whose authors I remember seeing in Dublin. Heaney, still unpublished but one we knew to watch, was athwart the cobbles of TCD's Front Square, in deep conversation with Michael Longley, and (I believe) with Derek Mahon. One at least was smoking a cigarette.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">First of them, Famous Seamus:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea:</span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Green, swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Conjured by that strong gale-warning voice, </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Collapse into a sibilant penumbra.</span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Midnight and closedown. Sirens of the tundra,</span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Of eel-road, seal-road, keel-road, whale-road, raise </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Their wind-compounded keen behind the baize </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">And drive the trawlers to the lee of Wicklow. </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">L’Etoile, Le Guillemot, La Belle Hélène </span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Nursed their bright names this morning in the bay </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">That toiled like mortar. It was marvellous </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">And actual, I said out loud, ‘A haven,’ </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">The word deepening, clearing, like the sky </span></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="text-indent: -1em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">Elsewhere on Minches, Cromarty, The Faroes.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;">Heaney had withdrawn from the Troubles to Glanmore in the County Wicklow, a few kilometres inland from Wicklow town. I imagine him listening to the post-midnight Shipping Forecast from the BBC. His sonnet twists back to the very beginnings of early English poetry, and their <a href="https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/kenning">kennings</a>, those metaphors, of Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon verse. Just as the storm drives the French fishing-boats to shelter in </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254); color: #2b00fe; text-indent: -16px;">the lee of Wicklow</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254); text-indent: -16px;">, so his home in the Republic is <span style="color: #2b00fe;">A Haven.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254); text-indent: -16px;">OK: well it works for me.</span></p><p><span style="text-indent: -16px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254);">If that one is good, this is even better: Paddy Kavanagh — who I was taken to observe in McDaid's in Harry Street. The evening was yet young, because Kavanagh was merely hunched and </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254);">solitary.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254);">Kavanagh exploited the sonnet form, playing fast-and-loose with formal rules — and, as we are about to see, whole rhymes. Many propose <i><a href="https://allpoetry.com/Canal-Bank-Walk">Canal Bank Walk</a></i> as his great achievement. Fair enough, say I, provided you are not being blinded <span style="font-family: inherit;">by </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/paddy-kavanagh-and-hilda-moriarty">Hilda Moriarty</a>. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This one, though, is both simply and grandly, <i>Epic</i>:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">I have lived in important places, times</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglaVH9Wo1q5snMztGwRVFStE1MtKDsOwNgy96WWq98csMhE6dVoWDzjI3otwm8P06XkvnHMIpwVruCex9Ymo6h2GDTVMoi_U8RPAtOmncQ3NtfPORxVt0ZR4dQ2YlfbZCxbA/s1600-h/kavanaghwithcapforweb.jpg" style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163865978418485602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglaVH9Wo1q5snMztGwRVFStE1MtKDsOwNgy96WWq98csMhE6dVoWDzjI3otwm8P06XkvnHMIpwVruCex9Ymo6h2GDTVMoi_U8RPAtOmncQ3NtfPORxVt0ZR4dQ2YlfbZCxbA/s200/kavanaghwithcapforweb.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; padding: 4px;" /></a><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">When great events were decided, who owned</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">"Here is the march along these iron stones."</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">That was the year of the Munich bother. Which</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">Was more important? I inclined</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">He said: I made the Iliad from such</span><br style="font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-size: 16px;">A local row. Gods make their own importance.</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div><blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px;"></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px;"></span></p></blockquote></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-3006120887297622552021-09-06T15:25:00.003+01:002021-09-06T15:27:13.423+01:00Telling a story<p> At its best, a book tells at least two stories: the text within, and the metatext that surrounds what is within.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Here's an example:</p></blockquote><p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">14. JB Priestley, <i>English Journey</i></span></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikD6zwIMrsTs9HdsUXN2mi5e0xsCBNsUYQhDzOGJkQV1nba3d7-P0klcN1GlbtS8JxaFq-MnALjPg1ZpXQWiPUOaGnGkHvZ6fg7Xi6zu8pphu2gkyw3AlGd0cFsnDyVm1BYJZ18Q/s266/EnglishJourney.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="178" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikD6zwIMrsTs9HdsUXN2mi5e0xsCBNsUYQhDzOGJkQV1nba3d7-P0klcN1GlbtS8JxaFq-MnALjPg1ZpXQWiPUOaGnGkHvZ6fg7Xi6zu8pphu2gkyw3AlGd0cFsnDyVm1BYJZ18Q/s0/EnglishJourney.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>My copy lacks this wrap-around dust-cover, which would multiply its monetary value several fold. It is, nevertheless, a first edition, and in remarkable condition for an octogenarian.<p></p><p>Inside the front cover, its first owner has inscribed, in respectfully modest minuscule, 'H. Barnett. 23 July 1934'. Below which, in an educated, even artistic hand, larger, more confident, 'CT' (or possibly 'GT') '1988', forcibly underlined. In the corner above, Oxfam Books (where I bought it) has pencilled '£2,99, w 13'. There's a whole history summarised.<i style="color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold;"><br /></i></p><p>I obviously got a bargain, because opposite in in delicate pencil is '1934 £7.50 1st edition'.</p><p>Over the year I have picked up some remarkable autographs in such inscriptions. At one stage I was collecting Left Book Club editions, and found I had the names of a couple of Cabinet members from the Attlee years. The Pert Young Piece rescued those when we moved house, and squealed with delight at her discoveries. One never knows until one looks.</p><p>We could, pertinently, ask why Priestley's text has survived and prospered.</p><p>First of all, it was to Priestley and now to us a voyage of exploration, historical and personal.</p><p>Start with the extended subtitle:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Being a rambling but truthful account of what one man saw and heard and felt during a journey through England during the autumn of the year 1933</span></p></blockquote><p>— precise, subjective and emotive (at least in the sense it is placed definitively within Priestley's own personal emotions).</p><p>That comes through with one of his first trips, to Southampton:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">I had been to Southampton before, many times, but always to or from a ship. The last time I sailed for France during the war was from there, in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1918,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">when half a dozen of us found ourselves the only English officers in a tall crazy American ship bursting with doughboys, whose bands played ragtime on the top deck. Since then I had sailed for the Mediterranean and New York from Southampton, and had arrived there from Quebec. But it had no existence in my mind as a real town, where you could buy and sell and bring up children; it existed only as a muddle of railway sidings, level crossings, customs houses and dock sheds: something to have done with as soon as possible. The place I rolled into down the London Road was quite different, a real town.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><i><a href="https://archive.org/details/marginreleased00jbpr">Margin Released</a></i> (1962) was as close as Priestley came to a memoir, and beyond the second section and a few letters from the trenches we have to piece together his WW1 service. He had volunteered on 7 September 1914. He was posted to France as a lance-corporal in the 10th Battalion, was wounded twice, most seriously being buried by a trench mortar in June 1916 (which required an extended convalescence). At the dog-end of the War he was back as an officer (anyone of any capability who had lasted four years was likely to be advanced that far) and may have suffered a slight gassing.</p>In English Journey, he returns to the West Riding, and Bradford, invited to a regimental reunion:<br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">I should not be writing this book now if thousands of better men had not been killed; and if they had been alive still, it is certain that I should have been writing, if at all, about another and better England. I have had playmates, I have had companions, but all, all arc gone; and they were killed by greed and muddle and monstrous cross-purposes, by old men gobbling and roaring in clubs, by diplomats working underground like monocled moles, by journalists wanting a good story, by hysterical women waving flags, by grumbling debenture-holders, by strong silent be-ribboned asses by fear or apathy or downright lack of imagination. I saw a certain War Memorial not long ago; and it was a fine obelisk, carefully flood-lit after dark. On one side it said<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Their Name Liveth For Evermore<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>and on the other side it said<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Lest We Forget.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>The same old muddle, you see: reaching down to the very grave, the mouldering bones. I was with this battalion when it was first formed, when I was a private just turned twenty; but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">left it, as a casualty, in the summer of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1916<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">and never saw it again, being afterwards transferred to another regiment. The very secretary who wrote asking me to attend this dinner was unknown to me, having joined the battalion after I had left it. So I did not expect to see many there who had belonged to the old original lot, because I knew only too well that a large number of them, some of them my friends, had been killed. But the thought of meeting again the few I would remember, the men who had shared with me those training camps in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1914<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">and the first half of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1915<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">and those trenches in the autumn and winter of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1915<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">and the spring of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">191</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">6</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">, was very exciting. There were bound to be a few there from my old platoon, Number Eight. It was a platoon with a character of its own. Though there were some of us in it young and tender enough, the majority of the Number Eighters were rather older and grimmer than the run of men in the battalion; tough factory </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">hands, some of them of Irish descent, not without previous military service, generally in the old militia. When the battalion was swaggering along, you could not get Eight Platoon to sing: it marched in grim, disapproving silence. But there came a famous occasion when the rest of the battalion, exhausted and blindly limping along, had not a note left in it; gone now were the boasts about returning to Tipperary, the loud enquiries about the Lady Friend; the battalion was whacked and dumb. It was then that a strange sound was heard from the stumbling ranks of B Company, a sound never caught before; not very melodious perhaps nor light-hearted, but miraculous:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Number Eight Platoon was singing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>Well, that was my old platoon, and I was eagerly looking forward to seeing a few old remaining members of it. But I knew that I should not see the very ones who had been closest to me in friendship, for they had been killed; though there was a moment, I think, when I told myself simply that I was going to see the old platoon, and, forgetting the cruelty of life, innocently hoped they would all be there, the dead as well as the living.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>After rambling (quite literally) up the Dales, Priestley heads for the Potteries and then to Liverpool and Lancashire. This is where the tone of the <i>Journey</i> changes, and Priestley's mood with it. What about the slums of Liverpool? —</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">A great many speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland. I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England. If we do have an Irish Republic as our neighbour, and it is found possible to return her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the Western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff what a fine exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease. The Irishman in Ireland may, as we are so often assured he is, be the best fellow in the world, only waiting to say good-bye to the hateful Empire so that, free and independent at last, he can astonish the world. But the Irishman </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">in England too often cuts a very miserable figure. He has lost his peasant virtues, whatever they are, and has acquired no others. These Irish flocked over here to be navvies and dock hands and casual labourers, and God knows that the conditions of life for such folk are bad enough. But the English of this class generally make some attempt to live as decently as they can under these conditions: their existence has been turned into an obstacle race, with the most monstrous and gigantic obstacles, but you may see them straining and panting, still in the race. From such glimpses as I have had, however, the Irish appear in general never even to have tried; they have settled in the nearest poor quarter and turned it into a slum, or, finding a slum, have promptly settled down to out-slum it. And this, in spite of the fact that nowadays being an Irish Roman Catholic is more likely to find a man a job than to keep him out of one. There are a very large number of them in Liverpool, and though I suppose there was a time when the city encouraged them to settle in it, probably to supply cheap labour, I imagine Liverpool would be glad to be rid of them now. After the briefest exploration of its Irish slums, I began to think that Hercules himself will have to be brought back and appointed Minister of Health before they will be properly cleaned up, though a seductive call or two from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">de<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Valera, across the Irish Sea, might help. But he will never whistle back these bedraggled wild geese. He believes in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Sinn Fein<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>for Ireland not England.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Tsk! Tsk! Mr Priestley! </p><p>If Priestley is out-of-sorts in Liverpool, his temper worsens as he drives through industrial Lancashire:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">We went through Bolton. Between Manchester and Bolton the ugliness is so complete that it is almost exhilarating. It challenges you to live there. That is probably the secret of the Lancashire working folk: they have accepted that challenge; they are on active service, and so, like the front-line troops, they make a lot of little jokes and sing comic songs. There used to be a grim Lancashire adage: "Where there's muck, there's money." But now when there is not much money, there is still a lot of muck. It must last longer. Between Bolton and Preston you leave the trams and fried-fish shops and dingy pubs; the land rises, and you catch glimpses of rough moorland. The sun was never visible that afternoon, which was misty and wettish, so that everything was rather vague, especially on the high ground. The moors might have been Arctic tundras. The feature of this route, once you were outside the larger towns, seemed to me to be </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;">what we call in the North the "hen runs." There were miles of them. The whole of Lancashire appeared to be keeping poultry. If the cotton trade should decline into a minor industry, it looks as if the trains that once carried calico will soon be loaded with eggs and chickens. It is, of course, the extension of what was once a mere hobby. Domestic fowls have always had a fascination for the North-country mill hands. It is not simply because they might be profitable; there is more than that in it. The hen herself, I suspect, made a deep sub-conscious appeal to these men newly let loose from the roaring machinery. At the sound of her innocent squawking, the buried countryman in them began to stir and waken. By way of poultry he returned to the land, though the land he had may have been only a few square yards of cindery waste ground. Now, of course, sheer necessity plays its part too. We were going through the country of the dole.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>He is back, eighty years on, in Dickens's Coketown. Preston, which is generally taken as the model for 'Coketown'. He finds the cotton trade already in terminal decline:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">That very day a mill, a fine big building that had cost a hundred thousand pounds or so not twenty years ago, was put up for auction, with no reserve: there was not a single bid. There hardly ever is. You can have a mill rent-free up there, if you are prepared to work it. Nobody has any money to buy, rent or run mills any more.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>George Orwell will follow a couple of years later, also on Victor Gollancz's money and patronage, and do <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30553.The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier">a better, more incisive demolition</a>. </p><p>That followed quickly by an anticipation of the North-South divide, the 'Red Wall', 'levelling up' and other false promises:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Lancashire must have a big plan. What is the use of England — and England in this connection, of course, means the City, Fleet Street, and the West End clubs — congratulating herself upon having pulled through yet once again, when there is no plan for Lancashire. Since when did Lancashire cease to be a part of England? </span>[...] <span style="color: #2b00fe;">No man can walk about these towns, the Cinderellas in the baronial household of Victorian England, towns meant to work in and not to live in and now even robbed of their work, without feeling that there is a terrible lack of direction and leadership in our affairs. It does not matter now whether Manchester does the thinking to-day and the rest of England thinks it to-morrow, or whether we turn the tables on them and think to-day for Manchester to-morrow. But somebody somewhere will have to do some hard thinking soon.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And on this most unsatisfactory conclusion, asking myself, over and over again, what must be done with these good workless folk, I took leave </span>[...] </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #2b00fe; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">and made for the bleak and streaming Pennines, on my way to the Tyne; with the weather, like my journey, going from bad to worse.</span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span></p></blockquote><p>By which time Priestley is running a cold and a temperature, and dislikes Newcastle :</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;">taking a great dislike to the whole district, which seemed to me so ugly that it made the West Riding towns look like inland resorts.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Then he <a href="http://george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html">anticipates Orwell precisely</a>:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">On </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">a morning entangled in light mist, under a sullen sky, I left the Tyne by road for East Durham. Most of us have often crossed this county of Durham, to and from Scotland. We are well acquainted with the fine grim aspect of the city of Durham, with that baleful dark bulk of castle, which at a distance makes the city look like some place in a Gothic tale of blood and terror.</span> [...] <span style="color: #2b00fe;">It is, you see, a coalmining district. Unless we happen to be connected in some way with a colliery, we do not know these districts. They are usually unpleasant and rather remote and so we leave them alone. Of the millions in London, how many have ever spent half an hour in a mining village? How many newspaper proprietors, newspaper editors, newspaper readers have ever had ten minutes' talk with a miner? How many Members of</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #2b00fe; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">Parliament could give even the roughest description of the organisation and working of a coal-mine? How many voters could answer the simplest questions about the hours of work and average earnings of a miner? These are not idle queries. I wish they were. If they had been, England would have been much merrier than it is now.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">Most English people know as little about coal-mining as they do about diamond-mining. Probably less, because they may have been sufficiently interested to learn a little about so romantic a trade as diamond-mining. Who wants to know about coal? Who wants to know anything about miners, except when an explosion kills or entombs a few of them and they become news?</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;"> </span></span></p></blockquote><p>Then his journey returns him south: he isn't much taken by York, quite likes Beverley, and finds Hull busy with fish and grain:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;">It remains in my memory as a sound and sensible city, not at all glamorous in itself yet never far from romance, w</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;">ith Hanseatic League towns and icebergs and the Northern Lights only just round the corner</span>.</span></p></blockquote><p>Lincoln he likes, too: a comfortable hotel, some companionship, and</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">few things in this island are so breathlessly impressive as Lincoln Cathedral, nobly crowning its hill, seen from below. It offers one of the </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">Pisgah sights of England. There, it seems, gleaming in the sun, are the very ramparts of Heaven. That east wind, however, blew all thoughts of idling in the </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">Minster Yard out of my mind.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Ditto market day in Boston, and <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">not quite three hundred feet high</span> Boston Stump (actually, <a href="https://parish-of-boston.org.uk/church/st-botolphs/">St Botolph's</a> is just over eighty metres).</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px;">And so <i>via</i> King's Lynn to Norwich:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span lang="FR" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">1<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">was not paying my first visit to Norwich, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">though I had never stayed there before. But I must have </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">lunched several times at the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Maid's Head,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>and then spent an </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">hour looking at the antique shops in Tombland. The last </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">time we were there, I remembered, we had bought a John </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 21.3pt;">Sell Cotman and a pretty set of syllabub glasses.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>For me the notion of finding a Cotman in an antique shop, is more than anything else the distinction of 1934 and today. Priestley then chucks in an anticipation of regional government:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is! May it become once more a literary and publishing centre, the seat of a fine school of painters, a city in which foreigners exiled by intolerance may seek refuge and turn their sons into sturdy and cheerful East Anglians; and may I live to sec the senators of the Eastern Province, stout men who take mustard with their beef and beer with their mustard, march through Tombland to assemble in their capital.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Bring it on, say I.</p><p>Finally his journey over, Priestley works up a froth to sum it all. We then see why he became so popular during the Second Unpleasantness (1939-1945). The Central Office of Information decided that regional voices were a good thing — apart from much else, they were harder for the Huns to imitate, and they did give some sense of 'We're all in this together'. Despite Priestley's boast of keeping his Bradford accent, three years at Cambridge had softened it. In his war-time broadcasts he reconstructs it (as did John Arlott, Wilfred Pickles, and others).</p><p>In 1934 'Jack' Priestley is already preparing himself for that rôle (he was ever a man of the theatre):</p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">I thought about patriotism. I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="DE" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Englander,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">It was a term of sneering abuse, but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">1<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>little<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love. And I considered how much I disliked<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="DE" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Big Englanders,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">whom I saw as red-faced, staring, loud-voiced fellows, wanting to go and boss everybody about all over the world, and being surprised and pained and saying, "Bad show!" if some blighters refused to fag for them. They are patriots to a man. I wish their patriotism began at home, so that they would say — as I believe most of them would, if they only took the trouble to go and look </span><span lang="FR" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">— </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">"Bad show!" to Jarrow and Hcbburn. After all, I thought, I am a bit of a patriot too. I shall never be one of those grand cosmopolitan authors who have to do three chapters in a special village in Southern Spain and then the next three in another special place in the neighbourhood of Vienna. Not until I am safely back in England do I ever feel that the world is quite sane. (Though I am not always sure even then.) Never once have I arrived in a foreign country and cried, 'This is the place for me." I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country,, but if I were compelled to chose between living in West<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="DE" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Bromwich<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">or Florence, I should make straight for West<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="DE" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;">Bromwich.</span></span></p><p><span><span lang="DE" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 28.4px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Decode that 'metatext'.</b></span></span></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-41204528399927214362021-09-05T14:29:00.003+01:002021-09-05T14:38:48.158+01:00Fallen from grace<p>If the human race truly sprang from Eden, what could possibly persuade them to move to industrial Lancashire? Of course: the force of necessity.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949;"></span></p><div class="separator" dir="rtl" style="clear: both; font-family: DDG_ProximaNova, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_0, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_1, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_2, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_3, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_4, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_5, DDG_ProximaNova_UI_6, "Proxima Nova", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, "Segoe UI", "Nimbus Sans L", "Liberation Sans", "Open Sans", FreeSans, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1HqI6pNLFDlfy8LFx1ZjYwG6uCKp_4quR4rw5GCtBGcLWrFcHygsc7HQUPFh0pDT-LsUwzzZYviwLkVsVtfPvMadqa-BzfOQnRGhQ4KUG_tLoIkq-m1fiaT1Q0ean80GDLWXuHA/s316/Die_Lage_der_arbeitenden_Klasse_in_England.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1HqI6pNLFDlfy8LFx1ZjYwG6uCKp_4quR4rw5GCtBGcLWrFcHygsc7HQUPFh0pDT-LsUwzzZYviwLkVsVtfPvMadqa-BzfOQnRGhQ4KUG_tLoIkq-m1fiaT1Q0ean80GDLWXuHA/w139-h200/Die_Lage_der_arbeitenden_Klasse_in_England.png" width="139" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Friedrich </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); color: #494949; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Engels, the elder, owned a mill in Salford. His son, living well on the profits, excoriated the system in </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="The Condition of the Working Class in England">The Condition of the Working Class in England</a> </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">(1845)<span style="background-color: white;">. There is no connection there to Dickens: the English translation didn't appear until 1887.</span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">It didn't need Engels, Junior, to tell the English middle classes of the squalor and </span></span><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">brutality</span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> of the factory system. A railway journey through through any industrial suburb would have shown what was involved. Dickens himself made many such a trip, and witnessed it for himself.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">So I cannot casually pass by on the other side, without adding to my list:</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><b>13: Charles Dickens, <i>Hard Times, for These Times.</i></b></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" dir="rtl" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTXmXsH5coqIXG0PWLGJMoKpB5RRq4c1gDyz2yxX54Y0SDMOLTgWHWEAWb9ieoL7P2aa7BRRrrPuIl1HN2As-5fAHN0AnW-s2yXh0E4H9vB4ZV_CpA2Pp2D2FyA6xS4Pa1QQ2wA/s365/Hardtimes.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTXmXsH5coqIXG0PWLGJMoKpB5RRq4c1gDyz2yxX54Y0SDMOLTgWHWEAWb9ieoL7P2aa7BRRrrPuIl1HN2As-5fAHN0AnW-s2yXh0E4H9vB4ZV_CpA2Pp2D2FyA6xS4Pa1QQ2wA/w121-h200/Hardtimes.jpg" width="121" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />When I look up there, above my left shoulder — between <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/42448-aurelio-zen">Michael Dibden</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/922006.J_P_Donleavy">JP Donleavy</a> — <i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/786/786-h/786-h.htm">Hard Times</a></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> seems slimmer (even in </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">annotated</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> academic edition) than others of his novels. It is 'only' 110,000 words, which is short-shrift for Dickens. It appeared in </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">twenty</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> instalments over the summer of 1854. It has the classic 'triple-decker' structure to go with the </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">seasons — <i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sowing</span></i>, <i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Reaping</span></i>, <i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Garnering</span></i>. If we are not already on the same page, try <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%206&version=KJV">Galatians, 6,</a> particularly verse 8 (and Mr Dickens would never have used anything less than KJV):</span></span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>The opening of <i>Hard Times</i> bashes us over the head with that antithesis. By name and nature, in a gaunt classroom, Thomas Gradgrind (patron of education and local MP) interrogates:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Later, </span></span><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">chapter</span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> IV with Mr Bounderby, we find the forenames of Gradgrind's five </span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="color: #202122;">children: </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">young Thomas,</span><span style="color: #202122;"> </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Adam Smith</span><span style="color: #202122;">, </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Malthius</span><span style="color: #202122;"> — and (tellingly for gender discrimination) </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Louisa</span><span style="color: #202122;"> and </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">little Jane</span><span style="color: #202122;">.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="color: #202122;">Gradgrind meets his match in Cissy </span></span><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Jupe, the circus-clown's daughter:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Oh yes, sir.’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse [...]'</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #202122;">Two reasons I failed to be a novelist were inabilities to develop a plot or manage convincing dialogue: but note again the gender discrimination. Dickens always implies far more than he tells us.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202122;">Louisa Gradgrind will be married off to </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="color: #202122;">Bounderby (the marriage quickly fails: he is disgraced) to be saved by the family life of Sissy. Tom will rob Bounderby's bank: Sissy will try to save him through the circus, and he escapes on a emigrant ship (and dies </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">of fever</span>).</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">The last chapter is </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Final</span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">. The wrap of a Dickens story is ever a quick once-over-lightly to fulfil the need in a good morality. In Hard Times it seems more abrupt than ever — almost like one of those movies where the production money runs out before the final reel.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">There is a complex sub-plot involving exploited work-folk, heroic and honest labourers, and even embryonic trades unions (but also a whiff of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052911/">Fred Kyte</a>). This tends to grab those looking for 'social realism'.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">And yet ...</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">For me the truly endearing character is Mr Sleary, the owner of the circus and 'Signor Jupe'. He is what Bounderby and Gradgrind fail to be: the successful businessman, who adopts Sissy.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">The people of the circus are the antithesis of Gradgrind's natural order:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in the world.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Dickens makes Sleazy a zany:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.</span></p></blockquote><p>He is, though, always in charge of the admission booth and the takings. He has his mantra, book-ending the main story (chapter VI of <i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sowing</span></i> and — here, in the fuller version — the penultimate chapter of the book):</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You <i>mutht</i> have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!’</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">‘And I never thought before,’ said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to say it, ‘that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!’</span> </p></blockquote><h3 style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; text-align: center;"><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum" style="color: grey; font-size: small; font-weight: normal; left: 1087.43994140625px; position: absolute; text-align: right;">p. 222</span></h3><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><br /></span></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-79739217680846846082021-09-04T21:19:00.008+01:002021-09-05T10:34:27.501+01:00What the Dickens!<p>Sometime in the intermission between lock-downs, we escaped to Porto. The Pert Young Piece insisted we join the throng to gain admission to<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://www.livrarialello.pt/en" style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.399999618530273px;">Livraria Lello</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.399999618530273px;"><span style="color: #494949;">.</span> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);">One pays to get in, and reclaims the expense against a purchase. Seems sound </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);">enough business practice, and</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);"> I came away with a small anthology of </span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_de_Camões">Camões</a> (whom I have frequently mentioned as part of the epic tradition, but never really read at any </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);">length). Despite the hordes desperate to view that Harry Potter stair-case, the bookseller took pity on my age, allowed me to sit and muse, and engaged me in conversation — at one point thrusting a Dickens first-edition into my hands.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqChaKrvSJ4Tg5x8HHpMXQpBUHB3Q5Xo5p_hvspB2eMI3VjNv3PiQvxYm8dYuAGYNH5DqfzCbcFC-RpvulNrenGACIaZMJkM7wCLtVQlcNqZiago2nICpUuBLpAwng4QnQQ3usAw/s1920/iu-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqChaKrvSJ4Tg5x8HHpMXQpBUHB3Q5Xo5p_hvspB2eMI3VjNv3PiQvxYm8dYuAGYNH5DqfzCbcFC-RpvulNrenGACIaZMJkM7wCLtVQlcNqZiago2nICpUuBLpAwng4QnQQ3usAw/s320/iu-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(73, 73, 73);"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I</span>'ve never bothered to order my preference for Dickens' writings. On first thoughts, I prefer the later ones to anything before <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/766/766-h/766-h.htm">Copperfield</a></i> (1850) — though even that ending is a trifle oily and unctuous for modern tastes. Probably bottom of the league, and teetering on relegation would be <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/968">Chuzzlewit</a> </i>(1844), where I sense the creative juice was running a trifle thin. </p><p>On the other hand, there are the 'hard' novels — not just <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/883/883-h/883-h.htm">Our Mutual Friend</a> </i>(1865), because of its complexity, depth and length — but <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1023">Bleak House</a></i> (1853) and <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/786">Hard Times</a></i> (1854). Those latter two are my top spots. </p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: medium;"><b>12. Charles Dickens: <i>Bleak House</i></b></span></p><p>I've been obsessing over openers above. The starter here, <i>In Chancery</i>, has to be exemplary. At his luxuriant best, Dickens develops a massive metaphor: a true 'London peculiar' and the fog of the judiciary:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>One of the few joys of A-level teaching is a 'bright' class cracking open their clean, new paperbacks. Quick clearing of throat, and I, the centre of attention, can indulge in those rolling paragraphs. Never deny the latent thesp in any teacher. With luck, one of the brightest of the bright may quibble over <i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Megalosaurus:</span></i></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Did they really know of dinosaurs in the 1860s?</i></p></blockquote>Oh yes, indeed, my fine friend. And they were an English discovery. The Rev. Dr. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland">William Buckland</a>, Oxford geologist and (get this!) Dean of Westminster, found the first one in a slate quarry: it still has its place in Oxford University's museum of Natural History. 'Not many people know that!' (to be delivered in the rôle of Michael Caine). Other, different species started to come out of the strata, so <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen">Richard Owen </a>(who thought Darwin's theory too simplistic) had to invent the omnibus term, 'dinosaur', in 1842.<div><br /></div><div>It needs a certain input of imaginary puissance to conjure up the smog and filth of a London still dependent on coal fires and horse-drawn vehicles, though gas lamps might just be graspable.</div><div><br /></div><div>The plot derives from the convolutions of the epic law-suit, <i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Jarndyce and Jarndyce</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;">,</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">which is the main link between a whole phalanx of characters. The main two are Lady Dedlock and Esther </span><span style="color: #202122;">Summers. We soon realise they are mother and her illegitimate daughter, by the recently dead 'Nemo' (Captain Hawdon). Dickens manages a complex detective story over how Lady Dedlock unravels who is who.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Inevitably (did we expect anything else?), Lady Dedlock's shame is exposed; and she flees her marriage, leaving a note of confession and apology. The conniving lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, is found shot dead — suspicion falls on the fugitive Lady Dedlock. One of the more remarkable characters of the story, Inspector Bucket, now become central: he is commissioned to find her.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">This provides — especially for one who spent four decades living in the locality — a moment of extreme tension. Bucket pursues Lady Dedlock along the turnpike road (we'd now call it, in its modern form, Archway Road) as it climbs up to the old turnpike at the junction with the present Muswell Hill Road. In driving snow. Leading to the final encounter of Esther and her mother, wearing (this is Victorian melodrama) the clothes of </span></span><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Jenny, the mother of the dead child —</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7kMr6ov_G2-w4zWsFTWUeMo3q500dl_sDwD6_lTeFkIN0pR3XEdRp7-Z-fmRHGD3tVSJtXIYaIPXoxJWB-iVTB_e_j8likRCt2rKY-_9plvg27ynxe4pauOlP_D-1Clu-fVlsw/s1000/370.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="661" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7kMr6ov_G2-w4zWsFTWUeMo3q500dl_sDwD6_lTeFkIN0pR3XEdRp7-Z-fmRHGD3tVSJtXIYaIPXoxJWB-iVTB_e_j8likRCt2rKY-_9plvg27ynxe4pauOlP_D-1Clu-fVlsw/s320/370.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other </span>[Bucket]<span style="color: #2b00fe;"> on the breast to keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.</span></span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"</span></p></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours."</span></p></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p style="background-color: #fdfdfd; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead.</span></p></div></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; caret-color: rgb(43, 0, 254);"> </span></span></p><p>One can read into the story whatever one wishes: the law's delays, the foibles of fortune, Victorian moralities ... </p><p>Bucket often gets the credit of being the first detective in English fiction. The 'detective branch' of the Metropolitan Police date from 1842: CID wouldn't come along until 1878. Three articles by Dickens, from 1850 before he was formulating <i>Bleak House</i>, show his growing interest in the work of the detectives. In one, <i><a href="http://fullreads.com/literature/on-duty-with-inspector-field/">On Duty with Inspector Field</a></i>, Dickens accompanied Field and his bag-man, Rogers, into the grim slums and cellars of 'the rookery of St Giles' (which would be swept away to make New Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road):</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">How many people may there be in London, who, if we had brought them deviously and blindfold, to this street, fifty paces from the Station House, and within call of Saint Giles's church, would know it for a not remote part of the city in which their lives are passed? How many, who amidst this compound of sickening smells, these heaps of filth, these tumbling houses, with all their vile contents, animate, and inanimate, slimily overflowing into the black road, would believe that they breathe THIS air? How much Red Tape may there be, that could look round on the faces which now hem us in - for our appearance here has caused a rush from all points to a common centre - the lowering foreheads, the sallow cheeks, the brutal eyes, the matted hair, the infected, vermin-haunted heaps of rags - and say, 'I have thought of this. I have not dismissed the thing. I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, nor tied it up and put it away, nor smoothly said pooh, pooh! to it when it has been shown to me?'</span></span></p></blockquote><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Inspector Field was not just a creation of Dickens, patrolling the British Museum:</span></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #202122;">I</span><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: inherit;">nspector Field is, to-night, the guardian genius of the British Museum. He is bringing his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of its solitary galleries, before he reports 'all right.' Suspicious of the Elgin marbles, and not to be done by cat-faced Egyptian giants with their hands upon their knees, Inspector Field, sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing monstrous shadows on the walls and ceilings, passes through the spacious rooms. If a mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty covering, Inspector Field would say, 'Come out of that, Tom Green. I know you!' If the smallest 'Gonoph' about town were crouching at the bottom of a classic bath, Inspector Field would nose him with a finer scent than the ogre's, when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his kitchen copper. But all is quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on, making little outward show of attending to anything in particular, just recognising the Ichthyosaurus as a familiar acquaintance, and wondering, perhaps, how the detectives did it in the days before the Flood.</span></span></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">He was a very real and identifiable person, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Frederick_Field">Charles Field</a>, and the obvious model for Inspector Bucket.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><br /></span></span><p><br /></p></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-10322316599172264312021-09-04T11:04:00.001+01:002021-09-04T12:42:29.310+01:00Not 'Lorst', but definitely 'Gone Before'<p><span style="font-size: medium;">There was going to be an over-long and detailed comment on an American thriller. Overnight the first draft seems to have evaporated into the cyber-ether.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So, advance, the Potters!</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: medium;">11. Margaret and Alexander Potter: <i>Houses</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I have two copies, both extremely distressed, published by John Murray in 1948, and intended to be the start of a series, <i>The Changing Shape of Things</i>. First editions, no less, but even in good condition these go for less than a tenner. Shame on the values of the book trade and its customers.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM_ux0eb_O6HCX31Ptyn1Mwo9bjhpuXLGl1pS_lYDysf1Grkg1VjAz3a2mZtvV3w321aZkd5Ghd9MZzVeFS-niFo2tWc_FHChlW1240rGkYjwr1u6rRhNQaBszvdymVDXJ6EE3uQ/s2048/Scan.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1764" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM_ux0eb_O6HCX31Ptyn1Mwo9bjhpuXLGl1pS_lYDysf1Grkg1VjAz3a2mZtvV3w321aZkd5Ghd9MZzVeFS-niFo2tWc_FHChlW1240rGkYjwr1u6rRhNQaBszvdymVDXJ6EE3uQ/s320/Scan.jpeg" width="276" /></a></div><br /><p>Then 48 pages of superb architectural draughtsmanship, tracing the development of the English home from 'Early Medieval' castle and hovel down to 'A Borough Council Housing Estate 1947', which — heaven help us — would be 'state of the art' at the time of the original publication.</p><p>The Potters insist on including domestic detail. The animals include horses, goats, chickens, an odd cat or two, but predominantly dogs — I've counted a dozen or more. The vignettes are entertaining. There's a lot of 'Upstairs and Downstairs', involving leisured gentry and harassed house servants (women seem particularly put upon). A cynic might consider some of it cliché: the 'Reinforced Concrete Framed House, 1939' has an artist's studio on the third floor (complete with artist and artistic nude lady model -though the radiator seems to be his end), but the through-lounge/kitchen has his mural, and a bit of Bauhaus.</p><p>The 'Familiar 20th Century House Type', like many, spreads over the double page, with the over-puffed upholstery, tiled fireplaces (no central heating or telephone that I can see), and car-polishing. All very upwardly-mobile.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeCRsscAtK3UPcI3lB7pXHTOWR9J6krg1EDKWo-P0UGA5Wn_Dng5XC4WIH_7AOPGD9HtPCGetqAGtFhUxgf9xRZ-bscQbU-2Aaqb2MTFVd1Y1_ACdn9omjVY2fuslaDSqVBpzPMw/s2048/Scan.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1594" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeCRsscAtK3UPcI3lB7pXHTOWR9J6krg1EDKWo-P0UGA5Wn_Dng5XC4WIH_7AOPGD9HtPCGetqAGtFhUxgf9xRZ-bscQbU-2Aaqb2MTFVd1Y1_ACdn9omjVY2fuslaDSqVBpzPMw/s320/Scan.jpeg" width="249" /></a></div><br /><p>Oh, but a cluttered kitchen and an unattended child. Next door, the husband bathes while his lady is at her dressing table.</p><p>This suggests there may be a political subtext here. That carries over into the text:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">As an indication of the general housing position to-day, it is worth noting that, according to some pre-war figures, nearly half the total number of houses in the whole country were then more than sixty years old: tenements like the Peabody building, bye-law houses, big draughty Victorian mansions (with no servants to keep them clean), 'back-to-backs', and a few houses from Georgian days. In spite of patching-up and improvement many of these houses are completely out-of-date when compared to what might have taken their place; and some of them are unhealthy and verminous. Nor are there enough of them to go round. [...]</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">There were, in pre-war years, plenty of houses being built of the type illustrated on this page, but the majority were 'For Sale' and many people living in the older houses could not afford to buy, and so the problem remained largely unsolved. Some local authorities built houses to be let at lower rents, but buying land and borrowing money were so expensive that most of the schemescouldv not afford to provide the shopping centres, libraries and other facilities which everybody wants, and the houses themselves had often to be cut down to a very low standard of accommodation. With this in mind, the Government is now making grants to local authorities at specially low rates of interests, and as a result it is likely that</span><span style="color: #999999;"> </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">there will be more low rental houses available. The shortage is so great, however, that it will be many years before it can be alleviated to any extent.</span></p></blockquote><p>Leave aside the glow of the Attlee government and its <i>grants ... at specially low rates of interest</i>, and much of that stands firm three quarters of a century later.</p><p>On the other hand, what's not to like about a writer deploying semi-colons, and hyphenating <i>to-day</i>?</p><p>To make up the requisite four dozen pages, fill the end-plates, and generally dispel essential knowledge, they also take us through how to build a wall (from wattle-and-daub to steel-frame) and what is involved in a rain-proof roof.</p><p>I keep my Potters alongside Osbert Lancaster, with whom they have much in common: <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16157796-homes-sweet-homes">Home Sweet Homes</a></i> is also 1948. Lancaster is far jokier, more fun, but the instructive intent, even the moralising, none too distant.</p><p>Later, if this sequence continues, I think I have a couple more recent publications worth noting.</p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-55799614662610924962021-09-03T16:24:00.008+01:002021-09-03T16:24:50.334+01:00<p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: medium;">The purplest passage of a new dawn</span></b></p><p>I've been looking at how to start a story. What about a non-fiction text?</p><p>Well, here's the most contrived opener of which I immediately think.</p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f;">10. Theodore H White: <i>The Making of the President, 1960 </i></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8r_96pwesy57kFbOl2pC1RQ-DQPSm2JFr4MWuONjpgWWCCRYR8-ZV1t4t7Bbs0HP-m-a0Fxwj4BjaF9Om6BkMbIjKvQ4epE7BJ4q0QMIQDR_mpvaLkAgSiU6kzAUqUm9Av951A/s270/eb924afe.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="172" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8r_96pwesy57kFbOl2pC1RQ-DQPSm2JFr4MWuONjpgWWCCRYR8-ZV1t4t7Bbs0HP-m-a0Fxwj4BjaF9Om6BkMbIjKvQ4epE7BJ4q0QMIQDR_mpvaLkAgSiU6kzAUqUm9Av951A/w127-h200/eb924afe.jpg" width="127" /></a></div><br />JFK was not, by any measurement, the most successful US president. In retrospect he had too many strikes against him, starting with ramping up the war in Vietnam. He didn't deliver on Civil Rights — that too was left, along with southern loathing, to LBJ. <p></p><p>We can excuse Kennedy in retrospect because his presidency was abbreviated. The more we learn, the harder it gets to see him as the Bright Shining Star that his coterie of admirers and publicists perpetrated.</p><p>When White was writing (the book published in 1961), all that was in a shrouded future. The gilt hadn't rubbed off the Bostonian gingerbread.</p><p>So, here we go. Enjoy the ride:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">It was invisible, as always.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They had begun to vote in the villages of New Hampshire at midnight, as they always do, seven and a half hours before the candidate rose. His men had canvassed Hart’s Location in New Hampshire days before, sending his autographed picture to each of the twelve registered voters in the village. They knew that they had five votes certain there, that Nixon had five votes certain—and that two were still undecided. Yet it was worth the effort, for Hart’s Location’s results would be the first flash of news on the wires to greet millions of voters as they opened their morning papers over coffee. But from there on it was unpredictable—invisible.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">By the time the candidate left his Boston hotel at 8:30, several million had already voted across the country—in schools, libraries, churches, stores, post offices. These, too, were invisible, but it was certain that at this hour the vote was overwhelmingly Republican. On election day America is Republican until five or six in the evening. It is in the last few hours of the day that working people and their families vote, on their way home from work or after supper; it is then, at evening, that America goes Democratic if it goes Democratic at all. All of this is invisible, for it is the essence of the act that as it happens it is a mystery in which millions of people each fit one fragment of a total secret together, none of them knowing the shape of the whole.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">What results from the fitting together of these secrets is, of course, the most awesome transfer of power in the world—the power to marshal and mobilize, the power to send men to kill or be killed, the power to tax and destroy, the power to create and the responsibility to do so, the power to guide and the responsibility to heal—all committed into the hands of one man. Heroes and philosophers, brave men and vile, have since Rome and Athens tried to make this particular manner of transfer of power work effectively; no people has succeeded at it better, or over a longer period of time, than the Americans. Yet as the transfer of this power takes place, there is nothing to be seen except an occasional line outside a church or school, or a file of people fidgeting in the rain, waiting to enter the booths. No bands play on election day, no troops march, no guns are readied, no conspirators gather in secret headquarters. The noise and the blare, the bands and the screaming, the pageantry and oratory of the long fall campaign, fade on election day. All the planning is over, all effort spent. Now the candidates must wait.</span></p></blockquote><p>As I said, purple prose. Is it 'over the top'? The excessive flag-waving certainly grates on this non-American; but there are many truths implicit there.</p><p>Shall we continue with White, a bit further?</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The candidate drove from his hotel at the head of his cavalcade to the old abandoned West End branch of the Boston Public Library. Here in these reading rooms, the countless immigrants and their children of Boston’s West End for two generations had, until a year ago, first set their feet on the ladder that was to take them up and out of the slums. Now, deserted and desolate, the empty library was the balloting place of the Third Precinct, Sixth Ward, and here at 8:43 he voted, signing the register as John F. Kennedy of 122 Bowdoin Street, Boston.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">He was tense, it seemed, as he voted, thronged and jostled by the same adhesive train of reporters who had followed him, thronging and jostling, for three months across the country; only now his wife was with him in the press, and he was uncomfortable at how the pushing might affect her, she being eight months pregnant. He let himself be photographed as he came from the booth, and then the last cavalcade began, in familiar campaign order—photographers’ car first, candidate’s car second (the top of the convertible shut, for he did not want his wife to catch cold), security car next, three press buses following. It moved swiftly out of the West End, down through the grimy blight of Scollay Square, under the tunnel to East Boston and the airport. This had been his first political conquest—the Eleventh Congressional District of Massachusetts, immigrants’ land, full of Irish, Italians, Jews, some Negroes, few Yankees.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">For a full year of journeys he had bounded up the steps of this same airplane in a grace act that had become familiar to all his trailing entourage—a last handshake to dignitaries, an abrupt turning away and quickstep run up the stairs, a last easy fling of the hand in farewell to the crowd cheering his departure, and then into the cozy homelike Mother Ship and security.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This morning he walked up the stairs slowly, a dark-blue mohair overcoat over his gray suit, bareheaded, slightly stooped. He was very tired. He paused at the top of the stairs and, still stooped, turned away. Then he slowly turned back to the door but made no gesture. Then he disappeared. He was off to Hyannisport: a quick flight of twenty-five minutes; no disturbance; the plane full of messages of congratulation; the welcoming group at the Cape shrunk to a few score—and no more speeches to make.</span></p></blockquote><p>
That works, for me, in capturing the journey of the Kennedy tribe. All four of JFK's grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the Famine years: Fitzgerald from rural County Limerick, to marry a Cox from Cavan; the Kennedy and his Murphy wife from County Wexford. They entered the Massachustts workforce at the bottom, as labourers, coopers and street-traders. 'Honey Fitz' cut it as a Boston politician, and entered Congress. Onwards and upwards, mainly through the ruthlessness of 'Honey Fitz'.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-IB-P_FsYcK_06JDtYo36H1Q3T2ChMh6D5tTd9ShoNr-0TlkBYiNABBDkRmRasAmpbxrDLQIymmNd0ELZYvUwuJWbcTqjTFyab4dcMWBs3fOLX4sTvTitKW14XG9dzPMYbUt4A/s480/PC370.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="480" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-IB-P_FsYcK_06JDtYo36H1Q3T2ChMh6D5tTd9ShoNr-0TlkBYiNABBDkRmRasAmpbxrDLQIymmNd0ELZYvUwuJWbcTqjTFyab4dcMWBs3fOLX4sTvTitKW14XG9dzPMYbUt4A/s320/PC370.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>As ever, political lives are like Bismarck on laws and sausages: to maintain respect for them, one must not watch them in the making.</p><div class="page" title="Page 8"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: LiberationSerif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: LiberationSerif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 12"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: LiberationSerif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p></div></div></div><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-40849244585637048362021-09-02T21:29:00.004+01:002021-09-02T21:46:45.318+01:00<p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">A nasty intro</span></b></p><p>We've not ventured into the teccy stuff — and my shelves groan with each addition, most recently the collected works of <a href="http://mickherron.com">Mick Herron</a> (and he's bound to get a mention somewhere down the line).</p><p>But I was considering openings for novels in that previous post. Which allows me to present you with the most gross. If this doesn't offend, nothing can.</p><p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">9. Christopher Brookmyre: <i>Quite Ugly One Morning</i></span></b></p><p><span>The entire 'Tartan Noir' thing has to be one of the most remarkable outbreaks of the last few decades in British fiction. It often gets traced back to <a href="https://www.valmcdermid.com">Val McDermid</a>, who has been knocking them out since the end of the 1970s. In her train came a whole blether of younger ones: none more successful or celebrated than <a href="https://www.ianrankin.net">Ian Rankin</a>. Perhaps there's something adrift with the water of the Kingdom of Fife.</span></p><p><span><i>Ummm </i>... I seem to remember, a bit further back, J.I.M. Stewart (a.k.a. 'Michael Innes') who was chilling the blood pre-WW2: I particularly recall <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1717832.Lament_for_a_Maker">Lament for A Maker</a></i>, from 1938: not to everyone's taste, very donnish, but it made me read Henryson and Dunbar (sad omissions from my 'prescribed reading):</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">I that in heill wes and gladnes,</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">Am trublit now with gret seiknes,</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">And feblit with infermite;</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">Timor mortis conturbat me.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">Our plesance heir is all vane glory,</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">This fals warld is bot transitory,</span></div><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #800180;">The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #800180;"><span face="adobe-garamond-pro" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-indent: -1em;">Timor mortis conturbat me.</span></span></div></blockquote><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dunbar">William Dunbar</a> there, sometime very early in the sixteenth century, defining crime fiction.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmxRWtIteJq-cRemOXVfq3YvmwEep3MNvd0pLpsv-AzYw2Of3Uw1b7Y7eMVWFc5FienaHWvlqodUPOre8G9v7unhIdO38DJBDjEZlcBah9pH2Hp05cldDoc4B-0SBrJ0NOM-acA/s411/iu-1.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="270" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmxRWtIteJq-cRemOXVfq3YvmwEep3MNvd0pLpsv-AzYw2Of3Uw1b7Y7eMVWFc5FienaHWvlqodUPOre8G9v7unhIdO38DJBDjEZlcBah9pH2Hp05cldDoc4B-0SBrJ0NOM-acA/w131-h200/iu-1.jpeg" width="131" /></a></div>But I promised Brookmyre and some real filth. This is how Brookmyre introduced himself back and the unfortunate McGregor in 1996:<p></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0%;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0%;"></span></p></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0%;"><span style="color: #666666;">‘Jesus fuck.’</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Inspector McGregor wished there was some kind of official crime scenario checklist, just so that he could have a quick glance and confirm that he</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span class="italic" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">had<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">seen it all now. He hadn’t sworn at a discovery for ages, perfecting instead a resigned, fatigued expression that said, ‘Of course. How could I have possibly expected anything less?’</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">The kids had both moved out now. He was at college in Bristol and she was somewhere between Bombay and Bangkok, with a backpack, a dose of the runs and some nose-ringed English poof of a boyfriend. Amidst the unaccustomed calm and quiet, himself and the wife had remembered that they once actually used to like each other, and work had changed from being somewhere to escape to, to something he hurried home from.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">He had done his bit for the force – worked hard, been dutiful, been honest, been dutifully dishonest when it was required of him; he was due his reward and very soon he would be getting it.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Islay. Quiet wee island, quiet wee polis station. No more of the junkie undead, no more teenage jellyhead stabbings, no more pissed-up rugby fans impaling themselves on the Scott Monument, no more tweed riots in Jenners, and, best of all, no more fucking Festival. Nothing more serious to contend with than illicit stills and the odd fight over cheating with someone else’s sheep.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Bliss.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Christ. Who was he kidding? He just had to look at what was before him to realise that the day after he arrived, Islay would declare itself the latest independent state in the new Europe and take over Ulster’s mantle as the UK’s number one terrorist blackspot.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">The varied bouquet of smells was a delightful courtesy detail. From the overture of fresh vomit whiff that greeted you at the foot of the close stairs, through the mustique of barely cold urine on the landing, to the tear-gas, fist-in-face</span><a id="textpart0006.htmlpage2" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"></a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">guard-dog of guff that savaged anyone entering the flat, it just told you how much fun this case would be.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">McGregor looked grimly down at his shoes and the ends of his trousers. The postman’s voluminous spew had covered the wooden floor of the doorway from wall to wall, and extended too far down the hall for him to clear it with a jump. His two-footed splash had streaked his Docs, his ankles and the yellowing skirting board. Another six inches and he’d have made it, but he hadn’t been able to get a run at it because of the piss, which had flooded the floor on the close side of the doorway, diked off from the tide of gastric refugees by a draught excluder.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">The postman had noticed that the door was ajar and had knocked on it, then pushed it further open, leaning in to see whether the occupant was all right. Upon seeing what was within he had simultaneously thrown up and wet himself, the upper and lower halves of his body depositing their damning comments on the situation either side of the aperture.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">‘Postman must be built like the fuckin’ Tardis,’ McGregor muttered to himself, leaving vomity footprints on the floorboards as he trudged reluctantly down the hall. ‘How could a skinny wee smout like that hold so much liquid?’</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"></span></p></blockquote><p></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 13px;">Also your introduction to Glaswegian cant.</p><p style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 13px;">I bought my first Brookmyre — this one — at the station and magazine counter on Barking Station, and took it to the clapped-out DMU that provided my 'service' for Crouch Hill and then home. I disgraced myself, guffawing, as we bounced and rattled to Woodgrange Park.</p><p style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 13px;"><br /></p><blockquote><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; text-size-adjust: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-16768321283524099782021-09-02T14:26:00.004+01:002021-09-02T14:26:34.636+01:00<p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Gored</span></b></p><p>Gore Vidal came to London: it must have been his last visit. He was promoting his final collection of essays.</p><p>A select group assembled in the basement of Bush House, where he was interviewed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Naughtie">James Naughtie</a>. That's a bit presumptuous in itself: Vidal was never greatly to be confined by the limits of an 'interview', and pontificated in his usual acerbic generality.</p><p>I have collections of Vidal's essays here; but that's not my topic here.</p><p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">8. Gore Vidal: <i>Narratives of Empire</i></span></b></p><p>The curse of being an acclaimed American writer is the chimera of The Great American Novel. Nobody has ever successfully planted the flag on the top of that prominent peak; but generation-after-generation they keep trying.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpAD5yCLlkB_r1heqfkwfbiOAyn-LgLYON39YFP12sIAKcri2KWddInr71fw32vSo2czSYk6gK_ROyntPmQezUWTKssScSGTZ0hueNpu0mB7NyS9p-yxyTkFAHj-SOUllC1QPfdA/s329/LincolnNovel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="329" data-original-width="220" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpAD5yCLlkB_r1heqfkwfbiOAyn-LgLYON39YFP12sIAKcri2KWddInr71fw32vSo2czSYk6gK_ROyntPmQezUWTKssScSGTZ0hueNpu0mB7NyS9p-yxyTkFAHj-SOUllC1QPfdA/w96-h144/LincolnNovel.jpg" width="96" /></a></div><br />Vidal went for this extended novel sequence, which developed into a heptology, seven of them,. Any one of which could stand here (and do squat, all in paperback, on the seventh shelf down behind me). The tattered state of my <i>Burr</i> (570-odd pages plus an afterword) shows it has been with me since the 1970s — so that was when I started on this exploration:<p></p><p>The publication sequence was:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88870.Washington_D_C_">Washington DC</a></i>, 1967 — but slots in as the sixth in chronology. It is thinly-disguised autobiography of Vidal's family and youth, against the presidencies of FDR, Truman and Ike.</li><li><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8722.Burr">Burr</a>,</i> 1973, was the secon in publication, but the first in chronology. Vidal, like a dog with a lamp-post, marks his territory by dedication the book to his nephews, inclding one, Burr.</li><li>Bi-centenary year, <i>1976,</i> was marked by <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88890.1876">1876</a>. </i>Gore exploits that through an elaborate analogy on social divides and elctoral mayhem. This is the third in both publication and chronology.</li><li>Fourth in publication, but second in the chronology, was <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8716.Lincoln">Lincoln</a></i>, 1984.</li><li>For the fifth, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88867.Empire"><i>Empire</i>,</a> 1987, Vidal entered the world of the great capitalist families of the McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt era. A particular focus is the burgeoning media power of William Randolph Hearst.</li><li>That leads naturally into the sixth, the mutual exploitation of media and government in the WW1 years and after: <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88869.Hollywood">Hollywood</a></i>, 1990. I expect many, taken by the character of Caroline Sanford, would mark this one as the pick of the litter.</li><li>Finally, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88885.The_Golden_Age">The Golden Age</a></i>, 2000. Vidal takes on the then-fashionable notion that FDR manipulated US entry into WW2. Which led into the world-power era of the Cold War. Vidal gives himself a walk-on part.</li></ul><p></p><p>As I said, anyone of those could deserve an entry in this choice. The first and last of that order above are, arguably, the nearest to 'great literature'; and <i>The Golden Age</i> is Vidal's mature shot at 'The Great American Novel'. However, I'll go for <i>Lincoln </i>as my personal pick.</p><p>A classic starter for any fiction is the stranger moseying into town or, in Chaucer's <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2696.The_Canterbury_Tales">Tales </a></i>(don't worry — I'll get there!) two and a half dozen on their way <u>out</u> of town.</p><p>That's how Vidal gets <i>Lincoln </i>going. Try this:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3"><p class="nonindent" style="margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #666666;">Elihu B. Washburne opened his gold watch. The spidery hands showed five minutes to six.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="nonindent" style="margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">“Wait here,” he said to the driver, who said, “How do I know you’re coming back, sir?”</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">At the best of times Congressman Washburne’s temper was a most unstable affair, and his sudden outbursts of rage — he could roar like a preacher anticipating hell — were much admired in his adopted state of Illinois, where constituents proudly claimed that he was the only militant teetotaller who behaved exactly like a normal person at five minutes to six, say, in the early morning of an icy winter day — of the twenty-third of February, 1861, to be exact.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">“Why, you black—!” As the cry in Washburne’s throat began to go to its terrible maximum, caution, the politician’s ever-present angel, cut short the statesman’s breath. A puff of unresonated cold steam filled the space between the congressman and the Negro driver on his high seat.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a></a><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Heart beating rapidly with unslaked fury, Washburne gave the driver some coins. “You are to stay here until I return, you hear me?”</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a style="text-indent: 16px;"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a style="text-indent: 16px;"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">“I hear you, sir.” White teeth were quickly bared and unbared in the black, cold-puckered face.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Washburne buttoned up his overcoat and stepped carefully onto the frozen mud that was supposed to be the pavement of a stately avenue leading to the squalid train depot of Washington City, capital of thirty-four United States that were now in the process of disuniting. He fluffed up his beard, hoping to better warm his face.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="color: #666666;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">Washburne entered the depot as the cars from Baltimore were rattling<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">to a halt. Negro porters were slouched along the sidings. Huge carts stood ready to be filled with Northern merchandise to be exchanged for Southern tobacco, raw cotton, food. Currently, the Southerners were saying that Washington City was the natural capital of the South. But they did not say it, if they were wise, in Washburne’s irritable Western presence.</a></span></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Just past the locomotive, the representative of Illinois’s first District stationed himself in front of an empty gilded wagon whose sides were emblazoned with the name of Gautier, the town’s leading caterer, a Frenchman who was, some claimed but never he, the lost Dauphin of France.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">As Washburne watched the sleepy travellers disembark, he wished that he had brought with him at least a half-dozen Federal guards. Since the guards were just coming off night duty, no one would think it odd if they should converge, in a casual sort of way, upon the depot. But the other half of the semi-official Joint Congressional Committee of Two, Senator William H. Seward of New York, had said, “No, we don’t want to draw<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>any</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>attention to our visitor. You and I will be enough.” Since the always-mysterious Seward had then chosen not to come to the depot, only the House of Representatives was represented in the stout person of Elihu B. Washburne, who was, suddenly, attracted to a plainly criminal threesome. To the left, a small sharp-eyed man with one hand plunged deep in his overcoat pocket where the outline of a derringer was visible. To the right, a large thickset young man with both hands in his pockets—two pistols? In the center, a tall thin man, wearing a soft slouch hat pulled over his eyes like a burglar, and a short overcoat whose collar was turned up, so that nothing was visible between cap and collar but a prominent nose and high cheekbones covered with yellow skin, taut as a drum. In his left hand he clutched a leather grip-sack containing, no doubt, the tools of his sinister trade.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">As the three men came abreast of Washburne, the congressman said, “Well, you can’t fool me, Abe.</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">The small man turned fiercely on Washburne, hand half out of his overcoat pocket, revealing the derringer’s barrel. But the tall man said, “It’s all right, Mr. Pinkerton. This is Congressman Washburne. He’s our welcoming committee.”</span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></p></a></div><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage4"><p class="indent" style="display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;">Warmly, Washburne shook the hand of his old friend the President-elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, a fellow politician from Illinois, who was supposed to be murdered later on in the day at Baltimore.</span></p></a></div></blockquote><div class="cv_bookpage" id="cv_bp_9" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Charis, "Times New Roman", Verdana, Arial; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3"></a><p class="nonindent" style="margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: 0em; text-align: justify;"><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3"></a><a id="OEBPSVida_9780307784230_epub_c01_r1.htmpage3" style="text-align: left;"></a></p></div><p>Were I back teaching, I'd be using that as a casebook example. There's the essential racial theme established, the sense of menace, and critcal foreshadowing. Along with strong depiction of the context, and considerable characterisation lready.</p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-32498349649080560002021-09-01T20:41:00.005+01:002021-09-01T20:42:22.697+01:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Buckle that swash!</span></b></h2><p>I include these out of sentiment.</p><p>One of the ailments that come with teaching is a massive reading block. It inevitably impacts at the end of a long, gruelling term. I came up with an ever-ready mood-breaker:</p><p><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">5. Anthony Hope: <i>The Prisoner of Zenda</i></span></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrE_XajbptMojKnxvpLMbmsI4_dux0HqktNYiaX1SqK9hyphenhyphen0FiSWGIwqfg4aVFa8yP4JnrxYi9VrlO1lXp-VZOfWMsrwxqsWAKB5ZfgcOITtoDs5Hr7y2mpK4QaxsWphXZNesY-A/s1000/84.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrE_XajbptMojKnxvpLMbmsI4_dux0HqktNYiaX1SqK9hyphenhyphen0FiSWGIwqfg4aVFa8yP4JnrxYi9VrlO1lXp-VZOfWMsrwxqsWAKB5ZfgcOITtoDs5Hr7y2mpK4QaxsWphXZNesY-A/w150-h200/84.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>Bedford Square, WC1B, must sport more blue plaques to the acre than anywhere else in the capital. Number 41 gets <i>Anthony Hope Hawkins, Novelist lived here 1903-1917</i>.<br /><i style="color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold;"><br /></i><p></p><p><i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/95">Zenda</a></i> appeared in 1894, and was in competition for trade with Shaw's <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3618">Arms and the Man</a></i>, Dr Watson's <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/834">Memoirs of Sherlock</a></i>, and Wilde's <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/854">A Woman of No Importanc</a>e</i>. All of those are in the public domain, so spoil yourself.</p><p>Allegedly Hope Hawkins conceived the story as he walked home — home was with his father, the rector of St Bride's — from a day in the Courts (his day-job was at the Bar). Then dashed off the entire effort in a month.</p><p>I'm pretty sure I saw both film versions — Ronald Colman/Madeleine Carroll/Douglas Fairbanks Jr (1937), and Stewart Granger/Deborah Kerr/James Mason (1952), though probably not in that order — before I read the book.</p><p>Not many writers successfully generate a wholly imaginary country and the term to describe such a romantic, Ruritanian, fiction. Having realised <i>Zenda</i> was a good thing, Hope quickly followed up with <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1145">Rupert of Hentzau</a></i>, a classic piece of villainy. He had other ventures into Ruritania, but none are so memorable — some are totally soppy (<i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41438">The Heart of Princess Osra</a></i> teeters on that brink).</p><p style="text-align: left;">Given a quiet day, and no hang-over (another attribute of end-of-termitis) I'd be through <i>Zenda</i> in a quiet afternoon. If the reading block persisted, the follow-ups could be something like <a href="https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/carl-hiaasen/">Carl Hiaasen</a>'s equally fantastic rendering of Southern Florida — for me — the stand-out of a good list is either <i><a href="http://www.carlhiaasen.com/book-detail.shtml?bid=19">Stormy Weather</a></i> or <i><a href="http://www.carlhiaasen.com/book-detail.shtml?bid=9">Skinny Dip</a></i>. Hiaasen's 'plots' are somewhat repetitive; but it's the whiff of something sinister, even Grand-Guignol I'm up for.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If that recipe doesn't shake the torpor, it's back to the bottle.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">6. Howard Spring: <i>Fame is the Spur</i></span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGHH35nWWJLEMwIr3Oam-IgUrRe-_EF8g3YLeR6lM8R9iTYlQx3VmPwmvbJnx8mOI_ZAwWX4ULDHJLg0HhSWK-B_MPcIGnGAozfE5RDgz0z7bC0Qc7UI7oK7rdi8kUMlK5rh9Gg/s465/iu.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="318" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGHH35nWWJLEMwIr3Oam-IgUrRe-_EF8g3YLeR6lM8R9iTYlQx3VmPwmvbJnx8mOI_ZAwWX4ULDHJLg0HhSWK-B_MPcIGnGAozfE5RDgz0z7bC0Qc7UI7oK7rdi8kUMlK5rh9Gg/w131-h192/iu.jpeg" width="131" /></a></div>Spring was a second-generation Corkonian, born in South Wales, the archetypal 'hauled up by his own boot-straps'. When, aged twelve, his father died, he left school to work as an errand-boy. From there to being an office boy, learning short-hand at night-school, and Cardiff Uni evening classes. That got him a job as a reporter on the <i>South Wales Daily News</i>. Onwards and upwards to the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, just in time to be called up for service in WW1. Back to the Guardian, he wrote a piece about Beaverbrook at a public meeting — it wasn't too flattering, but the Beaver liked a degree of edginess, and Spring became a reviewer for the London <i>Evening Standard</i>.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">After a bit of acclaimed kit-lit, he finished his first adult fiction —<i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">O Absalom </i><span face="sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">(you'll be into the second-hand market for that) which was optioned by Charles Vidor, heavily re-scripted (by Lenore Coffee) as a vehicle for Madeleine Carroll and Brian Aherne, and renamed <i>My Son, My Son!</i> </span><i style="color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold;"><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: left;">On the back of that, Spring retired from regular journalism to Cornwall and writing.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Which finally arrives at <i>Fame is the Spur</i> (1940).</p><p style="text-align: left;">I was walking back form TCD to the cold-water Ballsbridge basement flat, which took me past <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/greene-s-a-bookshop-with-a-story-to-tell-1.1086311">Greene's</a> second-hand bookshop in Clare Street (now, alas, no more). Greene's catered for the passing trade with trays of whatever outside — typically three or sixpence for a paperback. It was there I picked up my first copy of <i>Fame is the Spur </i>(I'm now on my third or fourth copy, this one a 1959 hard-back reprint).</p><p style="text-align: left;">That paperback was passed around the TCD Fabians, as a kind of prophylactic, to keep us politically sound.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The story is the ideological decline and fall of Harmer Shawcross, his rise in the Labour Party, his betrayals of friends and ideals, until he reaches the House of Lords (and his only son dies in Spain). The story starts, brilliantly, at the field of Peterloo, and the capture of a dragoon's sabre. The sabre has three lives: <i>Sabre on the Wall</i>, and the story recounted by the Old Warrior; <i>Sabre in the Hand</i>, as it is used by Shawcross as the visual aid for his fire breathing oratory, and <i>Sabre in Velvet</i>, when it is reduced to a display relic.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The parallel is not, I feel, Ramsay MacDonald — though aspects of that life are appropriated. More closely, I'd suggest Philip Snowden. The powerful sub-plot is women's suffrage.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If I ever had to do the <i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr">Desert Island Discs</a></i> single book test, it might well be this one — partly for the decency, partly for the memories.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">7. Gore Vidal: <i>The Best Man</i></span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;">I was looking for a political fiction to go alongside Howard Spring, and I ended up reaching for another drama script.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlAUL5rUnhFhYs5eoCHcrmwjSRzLkhfh2-vROOLMfCxk3wPTXdGNbEZerxwCCTDyoVueNTMwPHbjpR83v2ehXMOVXUyqIB9JpJCvTHiVun9lacI_mtN05aBH3uDwuaAt3LOzKjLA/s293/iu-1.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="186" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlAUL5rUnhFhYs5eoCHcrmwjSRzLkhfh2-vROOLMfCxk3wPTXdGNbEZerxwCCTDyoVueNTMwPHbjpR83v2ehXMOVXUyqIB9JpJCvTHiVun9lacI_mtN05aBH3uDwuaAt3LOzKjLA/w127-h200/iu-1.jpeg" width="127" /></a></div><br />This one sidled up to me, circuitously. I saw the Henry Fonda/Cliff Robertson movie (1964): I think that was at the <a href="http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Dublin/CapitolTheatreDublin.htm">Capitol in Princes Street</a> (just off O'Connell Street).<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">I saw most of the parodic implications (Vidal himself wrote the film adaptation), but — again, and much later — it was a cheap paperback resale that gave me the script. I have it her: <i>First printing, 1964,</i> well 'foxed', but holding together remarkably well for a mass-paperback of that vintage.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The story is a Presidential convention. There are two thrusting candidates, both have 'secrets'. They work those out in the script. </p><p style="text-align: left;">One, the JFK/Nixon hybrid (<i>Joe Cantwell</i> — note the implication of the surname) is opportunist and cynical. The film gives him a run in an open-top limousine, scattering index-cards — <i>'Buy him ... burn him'</i>. The other is <i>William Russell</i>, principled (up to a point — his marriage is a sham), taken from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II">Adlai Stevenson,</a> who was twice seen off by Ike. They have to convince the ex-President, <i>Art Hockstader</i>, of their qualifications. <i>Hockstader </i>is the wise old owl: part Ike, part rustic Harry Truman. </p><p style="text-align: left;">This gives us fine scenes:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader</i>: Bill, do you believe God?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Russell:</i> Do I ... ? Well, I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader:</i> Here, that wasn't what I asked. I'm a Methodist and I'm still askin': do you believe there's a God and a Day of Judgment and a Hereafter?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Russell:</i> No. I believe in us. In man.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader (nods):</i> I've often pretended I thought there was a God, for political purposes.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Russell (smiles):</i> So far I haven't told a lie in this campaign. I've never used the word 'God' in a speech.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader:</i> Well, the world's changed since I was polickin'. In those days you had to for God over everything, like ketchup.</span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;">That last bit has annealed itself to my brain-cells.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i style="color: #76a5af;">Cantwell (evenly):</i><span style="color: #76a5af;"> If Russell doesn't withdraw before Wednesday, I am going to see that every delegate gets a copy of his psychiatric report. I'm going to ask him if he really feels that a man with his mental record should be President of the United States. Frankly, if I were he, I'd pull out before this </span><i style="color: #76a5af;">(indicates papers)</i><span style="color: #76a5af;"> hits the fans.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader:</i> Well, you are not Russell ... to state the obvious. And he might say in rebuttal that after his breakdown he served a right rough period as Secretary of State and did not show the strain in any way.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Cantwell:</i> One of the psychiatrists reports that this pattern of his is bound to repeat itself. He is bound to have another breakdown.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader:</i> You and your experts! You know as well as I do those head-doctors will give you about as many different opinions as you want on any subject.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Cantwell:</i> I realise that, which is why I am going to propose that he be examined, before Wenesday, by a nonparisn group of psychiatrists to determine if he is sane. [...]</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #76a5af;"><i>Hockstader: </i>Wow! You sure play rough, don't you?</span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Inevitably <i>Russell</i>'s adultery and <i>Cantwell</i>'s gayness (oh, c'mom! this is 1960!) eliminate each other. So the dark-horse, third-party comes through and takes the nomination.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">But I doubt we are finished with Gore Vidal.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i style="color: #6aa84f; font-weight: bold;"><br /></i></p><p><br /></p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-19487228023961023942021-09-01T15:57:00.001+01:002021-09-01T15:57:36.572+01:00<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 28px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/the-4-04-for-forfar-will-leave-from-platform-four/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The 4.04 for Forfar will leave from platform four …</span></a></h1><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); clear: both; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 1.7em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ah, that old one, the mythical announcement at Edinburgh Waverley, and in a plummy Morningside contralto. But, after a quantum of perspiration, I have arrived at …</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">4. T.H.White, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Once and Future King</span></span></b></span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This features here for a very particular reason. It was probably the first ‘grown-up’ novel I read and relished.</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am the man my mother made me, so I read. Christmas and birthdays guaranteed those Dent classics, as sold by Woolworths. One or two may turn up later.</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I had for years plundered the ‘juvenile’ shelves of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells-next-the-Sea" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wells</a> branch of Norfolk Library Service. Next door but one to the post office. Both still in the same buildings. Back in my day the shelves were topped by taxidermied birds in glass cases. I see they’ve now gone for topiary in pots outside.</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The old order changes …</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="White" class="wp-image-16977 alignleft" data-attachment-id="16977" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="White" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=205" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg" data-orig-size="567,829" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/the-4-04-for-forfar-will-leave-from-platform-four/white/" height="255" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 174px) 100vw, 174px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=174&h=255 174w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=348&h=510 348w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=103&h=150 103w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/white.jpeg?w=205&h=300 205w" style="display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-right: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="174" />The day finally came when I felt the juvenilia no longer provided. I turned to the back end, S-Z, of the adult fiction shelves. And plucked out White, fresh from the press and a first-edition.</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More than slightly timorous, I approached the check-out and presented my book and a distinctively-coloured (and I feared discriminatory) child’s card. It was accepted, without question. I shot home with 677 pages to devour (I know because I have here a copy, sadly a ‘seventh impression’ and dog-eared at that, from a school library long consigned to oblivion).</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All and sundry know the first of the tetralogy — <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sword in the Stone</span> — because Disney adapted it. But the film doesn’t do credit to the accumulated detail of White’s 1950s text (the tetralogy is an expansion of separate and simpler tales he’d written in the 1930s). By the time I reached Chapter 3, and Merlin’s cottage, with Archimedes the Owl, I was engrossed. Chapter XIII, with the Wart tranformed into an ant, and the anthill a parody of totalitarianism (and seemingly digs at Orwell), taught me early political science.</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The third book in the sequence, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ill-made Knight</span>, has a nice analogy:</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lancelot ended by being the greatest knight King Arthur had. He was a sort of Bradman, top of the battling averages. Tristram and Lamorak were second and third.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But you have to remember that people can’t be good at cricket unless they teach themselves to be so, and that jousting was an art, just as cricket is. It was like cricket in many ways. There was a scorer’s pavilion at a tournament, with a real scorer inside it, who made marks on the parchment just like the mark for one run which is made by the cricket scorer today. The people, walking round the ground in their best frocks, from Grand Stand to Refreshment Tent, must have found the fighting very like the game. It took a frightfully long time – Sir Lancelot’s innings frequently lasted all day, if he were battling against a good knight – and the movements had a feeling of slow-motion, because of the weight of armour. When the swordplay had begun, the combatants stood opposite each other in the green acre like batsman and bowler – except that they stood closer together – and perhaps Sir Gawaine would start with an in-swinger, which Sir Lancelot would put away to leg with a beautiful leg-glide, and then Lancelot would reply with a yorker under Gawaine’s guard – it was called ‘foining’ – and all the people round the field would clap. King Arthur might turn to Guenever in the Pavilion, and remark that the great man’s footwork was as lovely as ever. The knights had little curtains on the back of their helms, to keep the hot sun off the metal, like the handkerchiefs which cricketers will sometimes arrange behind their caps today.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Knightly exercise was as much an art as cricket is, and perhaps the only way in which Lancelot did not resemble Bradman was that he was more graceful. He did not have that crouching on the bat and hopping out to the pitch of the ball. He was more like Woolley. But you can’t be like Woolley by simply sitting still and wanting to be so.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Probably today the Bradman and Woolley business wouldn’t work, but it was just right, late 1950s, for a young teen. </p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Arthurian legend is the ‘matter of England’ and so part of my psyche. Whenever Tennyson and <span style="font-style: italic;">Le Morte d’Arthur</span> cropped up in the classroom the latent Ham in me couldn’t resist — </p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So all day long the noise of battle roll’d </span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Among the mountains by the winter sea …</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bedivere fossicking around before consigning Excalibur to the lake, and the stagger down to the barge on the mere. The class would be looking at me, wondering how close to lacrimosity it took me: I was usually able to control myself:</p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Long stood Sir Bedivere </span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Revolving many memories, till the hull </span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn, </span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And on the mere the wailing died away. </span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gawd, but I nearly disgraced myself, again.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All that for just one book, one addition to the list — but an important one for this developing reader.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">[This is the second of a sequence. As I explained earlier, I'm totally pissed with wordpress — which has been irritating me for some time. So I'm playing with a return to blogger.]</span></p></div>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-55528822066666268072021-09-01T15:50:00.000+01:002021-09-01T15:50:54.197+01:00<div id="content-container" style="border: 0px; float: left; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px -234.078125px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 770px;"><div id="content" role="main" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 270.265625px 50px 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 500.421875px;"><div class="post-16953 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-cole-porter category-reading category-shakespeare category-theatre-2" id="post-16953" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/auto-draft/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Counting to a hundred …</span></a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m at the end of my chain with wordpress. The latest iteration/user-unfriendly-update is totally unusable with a Safari browser for input. Hence I'm looking to revert to Blogger.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, I’m seeking a way to fill space and occupy time. I started this racket to keep the Alzheimer's at bay — and, so far — it seems to be working.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m going to emulate, and I hope improve the multitude of webpages which tell us, with one or another level of credibility, the hundred books we all should read. Correction there: there cannot be a canonical list of the books anyone <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">should </span>read. My choice is subjective, the result of six decades as an active reader (and before that it was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biggles" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Biggles</span></a> and worse). Give anybody a ddecent library, and turn that individual loose, to choose and reject.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most of those definitive efforts are wholly vacuous. A dead give-away is listing both <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span> and the Complete Shakespeare. I’m not convinced I’ve done the second of those — it was only in the last year or so I attended a performance, and then read the text (which I found significantly different) of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Two Noble Kinsmen</span>. I’d argue that one is as much John Fletcher as <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">yer ackshul Uncle Bill Shagsper</span>.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But let me get him out of the way to start.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b></b><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>1. <span style="font-style: italic;">Julius Caesar</span></b></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I give this one priority because it was the first that really ‘got’ to me. </p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d been fed <span style="font-style: italic;">Midsummer Night’s Dream</span> in a mixed-class at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1717661035131229" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fakenham Grammar School</a> (now defunct, for good or ill). Perhaps it was all those fairies that were supposed to ‘sell’ this to a captive audience, but it didn’t ‘sell’. Only decades later, when a daughter was doing that play for A-level, did I go back and have another try. That’s when I came across the editorial suggestions that <span style="font-style: italic;">MND</span> is a deep political satire. Which opens a proverbial can-of-worms — but one not presentable to early adolescents.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then, for Irish Leaving Cert, we had to do a deep-ish study of Julius Caesar. Which meant learning large chunks of text. This time it all came together. If ever a play was made for all times and all societies, it’s this one. The characters are well-defined. The issues are authoritarianism, ambition, loyalty and opportunism. Assassination is a blood sport that constantly interrupts the flow of history. The structure of the play is impeccable: it fits Freytag’s pyramid precisely:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16955" data-attachment-id="16955" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png" data-orig-size="500,375" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/auto-draft/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414/" height="375" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png 500w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png?w=150&h=113 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/0c888fb5c8f318a0e438cfb3d52b1d5134233414.png?w=300&h=225 300w" style="height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>2. <span style="font-style: italic;">Antony and Cleopatra</span></b></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusdq3tRW7_Y5xTclmQOISNusQQarwiyKl7Vr4GIyOSw2M4BM3QeUw4pE-l_Zf90200iGhJYjQvnrp3KJYAi-Lv2KONNevPUwqc3Uo1V4mmsVzRikP1vLKTQbDqwM3ESCPWh7lQQ/s500/iu.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusdq3tRW7_Y5xTclmQOISNusQQarwiyKl7Vr4GIyOSw2M4BM3QeUw4pE-l_Zf90200iGhJYjQvnrp3KJYAi-Lv2KONNevPUwqc3Uo1V4mmsVzRikP1vLKTQbDqwM3ESCPWh7lQQ/w127-h200/iu.jpeg" width="127" /></a></div><br />I swear if you cut me, I’d bleed <span style="font-style: italic;">A&C</span>. I had to teach it to two groups in two college years. That meant for sixteen hours a week I lived and breathed it. Without realising, I can still place much of the text, even to a particular page of the New (but not latest) Arden edition.<p></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d maintain one of the funniest scenes in all Shakespeare is the one on Cleopatra’s tomb (the close rivals for that distinction are the two ‘assisted suicides’ in <span style="font-style: italic;">J.C.</span>) . I could never read those without corpsing.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Judy Dench once reckoned the most difficult speech in all the corpus was Cleopatra’s ‘O!’ — and she does it repeatedly.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For sheer political cynicism there’s always Antony in <span style="font-style: italic;">J.C</span>. and Octavius in <span style="font-style: italic;">A&C</span>.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You may notice I don’t list any of: </p><ul style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em 2.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span>, which is based on the most eccentric pretext of a decaying monarch dividing his kingdom, has plenty of gore, includes the (unconscious) hilarity of the cliff-top scene, and comes with a truly gooey ending.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span>, if only because <span style="font-style: italic;">Omlette</span> is far too complex for my mind (or those of the many critics) to fully comprehend. On top of which the treatment of Ophelia is even more gynophobic than Katerina in <span style="font-style: italic;">Shrew</span> (for which, see below).</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span>, because the play is so incomplete it barely holds together (we clearly have the shortened version, for royal entertainment mainly). I cannot truly engage with any of the characters — each is incomplete, and lacks real depth. The witchery is too crude for words. And I’ve had to teach it to the unwilling far too often.</li></ul><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>3. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kiss Me Kate</span></b></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fair enough, unlike the above, not really a text.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is, though, so wonderfully structured it is exemplary.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kate/Katerina/Lilli is a remarkable part, and demands an equally-remarkable actor. In the original, in 1948-9 on Broadway and then in London, she was [Eileen] Patricia Morison — just one generation out of Belfast, and feisty with it. I saw the 2001 London transfer (after 9/11 did for Broadway) with Marin Mazzie and again the 2012 Chichester transfer, with Hannah Waddington.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To make the thing work, Kate/Lilli has to be in control all the way through — something the Kathryn Grayson/Howard Keel MGM movie doesn’t consistently achieve.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">T<a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16957" data-attachment-id="16957" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="1378312173281509_resize_265_265" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg?w=187" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg?w=187" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg" data-orig-size="187,265" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/auto-draft/1378312173281509_resize_265_265/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 106px) 100vw, 106px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg?w=106" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg?w=106 106w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/1378312173281509_resize_265_265.jpg 187w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="106" /></a>here was a magnificent moment, one worth borrowing, in the 2013 Toby Frow Globe production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Shrew</span> which made the whole farrago make perfect sense. In the first meeting of Katerina and Petruchio they exchange a mutually-knowing look (Beat … Beat …), as if each is recognising a worthy opponent.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And, with <span style="font-style: italic;">Kiss Me Kate</span>, there are always the superb lyrics of Cole Porter.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, on with the motley, and some fiction …</span></span></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/auto-draft/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 Comments</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/theatre-2/cole-porter/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cole Porter</a>, <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/tag/reading/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">reading</a>, <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/shakespeare/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shakespeare</a>, <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/theatre-2/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Theatre</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16942 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16942" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">SEPTEMBER 1, 2021 · 10:00 AM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16942" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/just-bloody-impossible/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Just bloody impossible</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The latest upgrade to wordpress makes it totally unusable under Safari.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t see myself continuing this blog under those constraints.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Back to blogger.com?</p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/just-bloody-impossible/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3 Comments</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16921 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16921" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 11, 2021 · 1:18 PM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16921" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/been-there-got-the-sweat-stains/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Been there. Got the sweat stains</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16922" data-attachment-id="16922" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Death Valley" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg" data-orig-size="609,165" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/been-there-got-the-sweat-stains/death-valley/" height="135" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=500" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=500 500w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=150 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/death-valley.jpeg 609w" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/us/west-heat-wave-death-valley.html?algo=combo_lda_newslettersize5_unique_edimp_fye_step50_diversified&block=1&campaign_id=142&emc=edit_fory_20210710&fellback=false&imp_id=933411527&instance_id=35070&nl=for-you&nlid=14398347&rank=1&regi_id=14398347&req_id=974420930&segment_id=63173&surface=for-you-email-wym&user_id=64cfd0f54c86a60d2daf75eebd31e190&variant=1_combo_lda_newslettersize5_unique_edimp_step50_diversified" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">today’s <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span>.</a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The story starts with my ‘early retirement’, which meant a substantial lump-sum pay-out. Daughter #1 had other fish to fry, #2 had already done her American summer (it seemed to feature cleaning and refilling ketchup bottles in Estes Park, CO) — which qualified her to determine much of the route. #3 was old enough to be bored, young enough to be entertained by word games.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, to spend the loot we did our own American trip: two weeks East Coast, fly to Denver, three weeks circuit of the Western States. This in an insane velour-lined ‘double-upgrade’ with a Utah plate.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thus we arrived at Death Valley and Highway 190.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16925" data-attachment-id="16925" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="iu" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg?w=488" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg?w=194" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg" data-orig-size="488,755" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/been-there-got-the-sweat-stains/iu-51/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 97px) 100vw, 97px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg?w=97" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg?w=97 97w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/iu.jpeg?w=194 194w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="97" /></a>At Zabriskie Point, we paused, out of misplaced respect for Michelangelo Antonioni and Sam Shepherd. The two daughters refused to join us scrambling up the bank to observe the celebrated view. They were complaining because we were, of course, adhering to roadside instructions to switch off air-conditioning to avoid over-heating. I was watching the oil-temperature closely. One look around the bleak outlook suggested their reticence was well advised.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Onwards, then, and Furnace Creek. Somewhere along the road we passed a jogger, doing it the hard way despite the heat. Inevitably, his small back-pack sported a Union Jack.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Furnace Creek is the Visitor Centre, and chilled drinks. That got the young ideas out of the car.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then an encounter with the National Park Warden. He admitted to spending his winter in a ski-ing resort.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Somewhere there must be photographs of us by the thermometer‚ which my memory says was registering something above 120 degrees F.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: red; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phew!</span></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not so, we were told: ‘yesterday’ it hit 127.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After which, on to the balmy air of the Sequoia forest.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In passing, the ‘entertainment’ for #3 daughter on this trek involved Q+A on a listing of all the American Presidents: by that time we had just reached Bill Clinton.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I blame her addiction to US politics, her subsequent M.A. thesis, and much more on that.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/been-there-got-the-sweat-stains/#respond" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Leave a comment</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16902 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16902" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 11, 2021 · 11:31 AM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16902" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/location-location/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Location, Location …</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That previous posting came down to class: the 11+ and grammar schools gave the aspiring lower-middle class a route into white-collar employment. And consigned the 80% who didn’t make it to hewing wood, drawing water. In many local education authorities there were fewer ‘grammar school’ places for little girlies. And those sweet, dainty mademoiselles, who suffered from earlier ‘awareness’, had a discriminating subtraction to make sure they didn’t squeeze out the lads from the places that were available.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This posting continues along similar lines.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Two houses, both alike in dignity, in fair Wells, Norfolk, where we lay our scene …</span></span><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16906" data-attachment-id="16906" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Prop porn" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg" data-orig-size="856,289" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/location-location/prop-porn/" height="169" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=500" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=500 500w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=150 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg?w=768 768w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prop-porn.jpeg 856w" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a>My links to Wells are shown in <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/322/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">other postings on this blog</a>. I wouldn’t want to go back (but I have been, for as brief a time as possible); but there is a persistent nostalgia. Above all, I never quite get over cottages, which in my time sold for the bottom end of three figures, now going for well into six numbers. Hence a gobsmacked addiction to local property porn.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now those two houses …</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The terraced job on the left is:</span></span></p><div class="STw8udCxUaBUMfOOZu0iL _3nPVwR0HZYQah5tkVJHFh5" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A charming Grade II Listed period brick and flint cottage with 2 bedrooms, attractive gardens and first floor views out towards the sea. No onward chain. </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">… situated in a convenient location just a short walk from the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea with fine views from the rear towards the Pinewoods and Lifeboat Station beyond. There is well presented characterful accommodation comprising a sitting room with a wood burning stove, kitchen, dining area and a ground floor bathroom with 2 bedrooms upstairs. Outside, there is a small front garden and a lawned garden to the rear with a patio area.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It should also go, even without saying,</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a much loved second home for the current owners and a successful holiday lettings business</span></div></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s in Freeman street, which, in the days of my youth, was not the ‘nicest’ part of town. On 1st February 1953, the day after the Great Storm, the young me cycled down to take a look.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many of those cottages were open to the sea view — the ‘Embankment’ had been breached, and the tide had got behind the older sea-defence (which itself had to be breached deliberately to let the waters escape). Salt water did massive damage to houses built by flints held together by lime and mortar.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-16911" data-attachment-id="16911" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"4","credit":"","camera":"Canon DIGITAL IXUS 75","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1249907795","copyright":"","focal_length":"12.12","iso":"100","shutter_speed":"0.01","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg?w=400" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg" data-orig-size="400,300" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/location-location/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d/" height="225" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg?w=300" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg?w=300 300w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg?w=150 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/928c29ef-dc6c-4d59-8f1a-1e16dc0e1b8d_d.jpg 400w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="300" /></a>I’d give small odds this <span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">charming Grade II Listed period brick and flint cottage<span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> is more brick to the rear, for just that reason. Were ‘Burnham Cottage’ mine, in mid-winter I’d keep a sharp eye on those ‘spring’ tides and flood warnings. </span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All along the coast you’ll see markers (as above). We’ve got a lot better in predicting these tragedies. We even expend money to prevent them. But the nature of the beast is, over time, we get careless; and water levels are ever rising.</span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In short, I’d not be easy spending <span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in excess of £450,000</span> on this one.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The post-war brick job, on the right of that double image above, is in Northfield Waye at the other end of town. No: for once that not my clumsy fingering: they do thing different in Norfolk.<a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16913" data-attachment-id="16913" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Map" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg" data-orig-size="507,273" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/location-location/map-5/" height="269" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=500" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=500 500w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=150 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/map.jpeg 507w" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This comes from the same estate agent, same website as the Freeman Street cottage:</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">An ex-local authority house with 3 bedroom accommodation, driveway parking, an attractive south facing rear garden and views towards the sea. No chain. </span><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ç is a semi detached ex-local authority house situated in a popular residential area within walking distance of the town centre at Wells-next-the-Sea with first floor views towards the sea and close to walks on the North Norfolk Coastal Path and East Quay.</span></p></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Again the view (I’d reckon a better one, if one likes salt marsh), far more space. Probably built to a far-better standard. But <span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Guide Price £325,000. </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Obviously two reasons for that: the <span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ex-local authority <span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bit, and, hidden well down the description:</span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a restrictive Covenant which states that it may only be sold to a purchaser who has been resident in or worked in Norfolk for the 3 years prior to purchase.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That last being a reminder that Wells is already 40% holiday lets and weekender second homes.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So <span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">40 Northfield Waye</span> requires </span></span></span><span style="border: 0px; color: initial; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a 10% deposit of £32,500 and a mortgage of £1,300 a month. Compare that to the average Norfolk wage of £24,000 a year.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div></div><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/location-location/#respond" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Leave a comment</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16887 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16887" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 10, 2021 · 3:28 PM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16887" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/forgotten-performers-the-laughter-of-ghosts/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Forgotten performers, the laughter of ghosts.</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Great Fowler, Christopher that is. The creator of the magnificent and — <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">err</span>— well-matched duo, Bryant and May.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Suzi Feay, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/10/bryant-may-author-christopher-fowler-writing-the-end-was-really-emotional" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in the current <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Guardian</span> Review</a>, warns me that:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This month <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">London Bridge Is Falling Down</span>, Fowler’s 20th Bryant & May crime novel, will be published, bringing to a close a much-loved series that started in 2003 with <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Full Dark House</span>. The books feature the unconventional detective duo Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, who solve arcane murders whose occult significance baffles more traditional detectives. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/crime" style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Crime fiction</a> aficionados can amuse themselves by spotting references to classics of the golden age, whose plots and twists Fowler ingeniously projects on to the era of computers and mobile phones. Everyone else can enjoy the endlessly bantering and discursive dialogue between the pair as they break all procedural rules, and the uniquely droll narrative voice with its sharp-eyed slant on modern life.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Crime fiction is a very crowded genre. Anyone entering the trade has to stretch the envelope. Fowler described that:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conceived Sherlock Holmes, why didn’t he give the famous consulting detective a few more quirks: a wooden leg, say, and an Oedipus complex? Well, Holmes didn’t need many physical tics or personality disorders; the very concept of a consulting detective was still fresh and original in 1887.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Holmes certainly comes with quirks. Each of his successors adds a few more. Fowler, though, tops the list. It is hard to come across any characters so outré as:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16893" data-attachment-id="16893" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cover" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg?w=400" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg?w=200" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg" data-orig-size="400,600" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/forgotten-performers-the-laughter-of-ghosts/cover-5/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg?w=100" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg?w=100 100w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/cover.jpeg?w=200 200w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="100" /></a>John and Arthur, inseparable, locked together by proximity to death, improbable friends for life.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nor an author who makes as if one of them is killed off on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108531.Full_Dark_House" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the first page of the first book</a> in the sequence. Even Conan Doyle gave Sherlock twenty-six stories before despatching him (or not, as readers and revenue demanded) <a href="https://sirconandoyle.com/the-final-problem/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">down the Reichenbach Falls</a>:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16895" data-attachment-id="16895" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Sherlock_Holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg" data-orig-size="858,536" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/forgotten-performers-the-laughter-of-ghosts/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge/" height="312" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=500 500w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=150 150w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=300 300w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg?w=768 768w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/sherlock_holmes_an_2760152a-xlarge.jpg 858w" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fowler adds another dimension: the trivia of London geography. In that first outing, he has Bryant and May located in the Palace Theatre, since 1891 that gloomy presence overlooking Cambridge Circus, and now since 2017 haunted by <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Harry Potter and the Cursed Child</span>. May:</p><p class="tx" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">located the theatre archive in a room at the darkest turn in the corridor. Within the cramped suite were dozens of overstuffed boxes and damp cardboard files cataloguing productions and stars. Dim light was provided by the bare bulb overhead. He glanced a<span class="cv_highlight cv_selected" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">cross</span> the titles on the lids of the boxes and pulled out some of the Palace’s monochrome publicity photographs. Buster Keaton performing with his father, the pair of them bowing to the audience in matching outfits. The jagged profile of Edith Sitwell, posturing her way through some kind of spoken-word concert. A playbill for W. C. Fields starring in a production of <span class="calibre4" style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Copperfield</span>. Another presenting him in his first appearance at the Palace as an ‘eccentric juggler’. The four Marx Brothers, gurning for the camera. Fred Astaire starring in <span class="calibre4" style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Gay Divorcée,</span> his last show before heading to Hollywood.</span></p><p class="tx" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The dust on the lower boxes betrayed an even earlier age. The infamous Sarah Bernhardt season of 1892; Oscar Wilde’s <span class="calibre4" style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Salome</span> was due to have been performed at the theatre, but had fallen foul of the Lord Chamberlain’s ruling about the depiction of religious figures. The legendary Nijinsky, seen onstage just after his split with Diaghilev. According to the notes, he had left the Palace after discovering that he was to appear at the top of a common variety bill. Cicely Courtneidge in a creaky musical comedy, her dinner-jacketed suitors arranged about her like Selfridge’s mannequins. The first royal command performance, in 1912. Anna Pavlova dancing to Debussy. Max Miller in his ludicrous floral suit, pointing cheekily into the audience—’You know what I mean, don’t you, missus?’ Forgotten performers, the laughter of ghosts.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Counting those lately missing in action: Henning Mankell, Colin Dexter, Sue Grafton, Philip Kerr, John le Carré …</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/forgotten-performers-the-laughter-of-ghosts/#respond" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Leave a comment</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16870 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16870" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 10, 2021 · 1:08 PM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16870" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/alma-matter/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Alma matter</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m just reading <a href="https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/ian-jack/diary" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ian Jack’s Diary</a> for the current <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">London Review of Books</span>. Although he starts from a mention of <a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16874" data-attachment-id="16874" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="49098148" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg?w=260" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg?w=195" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg" data-orig-size="260,400" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/alma-matter/attachment/49098148/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 98px) 100vw, 98px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg?w=98" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg?w=98 98w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/49098148.jpg?w=196 196w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="98" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49098148-snakes-and-ladders" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Selina Todd on post-War social mobility</a>, or the lack (and <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Myth</span>) of it, being Jack, after one paragraph, he gives a sketchy outline of educational thinking in the 1940-50s. That segue is achieved through something less sociological, more human, more approachable:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On a Monday in late August 1956, somewhere around two hundred of us waited in the assembly hall of Dunfermline High School, wondering what would come next. We had stood to sing the day’s hymn and sat bent to mutter the Lord’s Prayer — the Scottish version, debts and debtors rather than the sibilant trespasses and trespass — and then watched as older children, familiar with the school’s routine, filed out to start their lessons. Now we, the new intake, were told which class we would be in. There would be four classes for girls and four for boys, their gradations taking up the first eight letters of the alphabet, beginning with class 1A for girls and 1B for boys. As names were called, children stood up from the benches and gathered at the front, until an entire class had been assembled. A, B, C, D, E and F were called, and I was still there, waiting with around thirty other boys until the girls of class 1G had been led away, leaving us to be identified as 1H. There was no lower rank and no avoiding the fact that we were considered the least bright children in the school, who only just deserved to be there. I remember the shame.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16877" data-attachment-id="16877" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x@2x" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg?w=225" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg" data-orig-size="1160,1547" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/alma-matter/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x2x/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 112px) 100vw, 112px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg?w=112" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg?w=112 112w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/image_c442485e-a9f9-41b9-9cf9-19ca404303c9_580x402x.jpg?w=224 224w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="112" /></a><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FGS</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At Fakenham Grammar School, I found myself first in the pits of the C-stream: initial sheeping/goating (and something ruminant in-between) was done on the basis of surname. After a term I was elevated to the middle stream; and only at the end of Year One did I ascend the Olympian heights of 2A. For that <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">accelerando,</span> I blame a total inability to cope with French particles. Still: I have the Year One Geography Prize (a case-bound copy of Monty James’s <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/suffolk-and-norfolk/5B1C760E4E5926590E15249E8D80B803" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Suffolk and Norfolk</span></a>) to show for it.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #339966; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-16879" data-attachment-id="16879" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="c281270a" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg?w=165" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg?w=165" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg" data-orig-size="165,270" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/alma-matter/c281270a/" height="150" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 92px) 100vw, 92px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg?w=92" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg?w=92 92w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/c281270a.jpg 165w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="92" /></a></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Erasmus Smith and all his works</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I repeated the experience some years later, switching from the English GCE curriculum to Irish Leaving Certificate at the <a href="https://highschooldublin.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">High School,</a> then single-sex and at the top of Harcourt Street. Thus I found myself, week one, sitting at the left-hand end of one of those antique school desks <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/967/967-h/967-h.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wackford Squeers</a> would have recognised (position determined by fortnightly evaluations). While in normal circumstances the back-row is my chosen place in life, I gradually edged out (though to add to my existential problem with French, I now added Irish).</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My break-through came with Eng Lit study of <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/winters_tale/full.html" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Winter’s Tale</a>.</span> The shepherdess Mopsa makes a love-demand:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: purple; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Come: you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The master threw out one of those questions that I would later, as a practitioner myself, recognise as <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">vamp until ready while discreetly checking end-notes</span>:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyone know what <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">tawdry-lace</span> means</span>?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s always a smart-arse. Reader, that day, he was I.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Probably because my copy of the text (we had to buy our own) was a venerable edition, with a compendious literary apparatus, and I, bored by progress, was squirrelling there. Onwards and forwards: by week six (after the third assessment) into the front row. Latin grammar, History, and a certain fluency in English, trumped the MFL blindness. Not that the plank seats were any more easy on the bum.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We all contain versions of such anecdotes: Josie Holford (whom I ought to acknowledge more frequently) gave hers in a blog, <a href="https://www.josieholford.com/almond/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And of Course We Called Her “Nutty”</span></a><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span>Delicious stuff, well worth the trip.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The sociology of it all</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the midst of his academic memories, Ian Jack drops the killer:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Matching a personal to a general history rarely makes for a perfect fit. Todd says that more working-class children at grammar school were influenced by their mothers’ experience than by their fathers’, quoting the findings of the social scientists Jean Floud and Albert Halsey that such mothers were likely to have ‘received something more than an elementary schooling, and, before marriage, had followed an occupation “superior” to that of the father’.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For me, that’s the essence. My mother also went to Fakenham Grammar School: somewhere I’ve a photograph of the hockey 1st XI. As a girl, in those days, there was no higher education. So she became a nurse and midwife. Her sons, she made sure, were the first in the family’s memory to go to university.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The moral of the story?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jack final paragraph comes close:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My own schooldays ended in 1962. In the academic year 1962-63 only 3.56 per cent of <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">UK </span>school leavers went to university and I wasn’t among them. In those days you needed Higher Latin to study English at Edinburgh. As Peter Cook’s miner says in <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beyond the Fringe</span>: ‘Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin. I never had the Latin for the judging. I didn’t have sufficient to get through the rigorous judging exams.’ The change began soon after. ‘By the end of the 1960s,’ Todd writes, ‘the value of giving everyone greater opportunity<span class="ellipsis" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span> was more widely understood, particularly when it came to education. But this lesson was learned at the expense of thousands of children defined as “failures” at eleven years of age. They paid a high price for the illusion of meritocracy.’ And, she might have added, Britain’s still industrial economy paid that high price too.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Edinburgh University’s loss was journalism’s gain.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is there another ‘me’ who missed out on a different, less academic, but fulfilling life? What happened in that parallel existence where, driven into the locked toilet by fear of another days of French particles, I resisted my Mother’s winkling threat:</p><blockquote style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: #666666; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 10px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 7px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Well, stay there. And go and get a job on the railway.”</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/10/alma-matter/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 Comments</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16854 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16854" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 9, 2021 · 11:38 AM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16854" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/boris-not-good-enough-4/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Boris, not good enough</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For almost a year, politics.ie has had a thread,</span></p><p class="p-title-value" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://politics.ie/threads/boris-johnsons-administration-is-smelling-of-sleaze.277392/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Boris Johnson’s administration is smelling of sleaze</a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I suspect it flourishes because:</p><ul style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em 2.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it represents an existential truth;</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it plays to negativism, one of the main drivers of many posters there;</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it kicks against the old enemy;</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it anatomises one of the more bizarre characters in modern politics.</li></ul><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, I am reminded that all the best Tory scandals concern sex — let’s identify that as 💋for brevity; while all the best Labour ones involve money 💰. Oddly enough, in both cases, the persons involved stick to, and ultimately resign (or are resigned) by the rules 📕. And, until now, I never thought I would fall for emojis.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Johnson is different, especially in his contempt for 📕.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yesterday’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span> had a column by Heather Stewart, its political editor, <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/08/boris-johnson-yet-again-avoids-paying-price-cavalier-attitude-mustique-freebie-exoneration" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Boris Johnson yet again avoids paying the price for his cavalier attitude</span></a>. Her focus is her starter, the Mustique jolly and therefore mainly 📕, but with added 💋 and incidental 💰for zest.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stewart listed:</p><ul style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em 2.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mustique: <span style="font-style: italic;">£15,000-worth of accommodation from the Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross. </span>Ross, a vampire capitalist, says <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Private Eye</span> and other sources, has a casual relationship with general 📕. Another dimension is the family fortune began with fish in Grimsby — so a touch of the #Brexits <img alt="🇪🇺" class="emoji" draggable="false" role="img" src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/svg/1f1ea-1f1fa.svg" style="background-image: none !important; border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; display: inline !important; height: 1em !important; margin: 0px 0.07em !important; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: -0.1em !important; width: 1em !important;" />.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Lulu Lytle/Carrie Antoinette ‘tart’s parlour’ at Downing Street, initially financed by £58,000 from Conservative peer, <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/27/lord-david-brownlow-tory-donor-paid-no-10-refurbishment-boris-johnson" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Lord Brownlow</a>. Brownlow’s contributions to Tory funds were £714,690 in 2017, and his elevation to the Lords followed some months later. So mainly 💰and 📕.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jennifer Arcuri (always very much to the fore) gets short shrift on wikipedia. It suggests only a couple of bunces from public funds, and three overseas trips. <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/exclusive-boris-johnson-overruled-officials-to-take-friend-jennifer-arcuri-on-jet-set-trade-missions-5v0clbmmj" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Other sources </a>go larger, and add in the hundred grand awarded to her firm. So a grand total of at least £126,000 for (admittedly) several years as Johnson’s <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">grande horizontale</span>. I’d award that another full house: 💋,💰and 📕</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then there’s Peter Cruddas, City wide-boy, commuting ex-pat, who acquired a Lords nomination on the back of (his own claim) £1 million to the Tories — though only a third of that can be actually accounted. When the Lords soured on his nomination, he sealed it with a further £50,000 — and Johnson casually over-ruled the objections. 💰and 📕.</li></ul><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stewart skims lightly over:</p><ul style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em 2.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Priti Patel’s bullying, which required a substantial pay-out to the bullied — 💰 and 📕.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="link link--external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/robert-jenrick-planning-row-the-key-questions-answered" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Jenrick playing footsie with former pornographer Richard Desmond</a>, to do down Tower Hamlets rightful community charges. £12,000 of Desmond’s £50 million gain to the Tory party, money well spent. More 💰and 📕— even Jenrick acknowledged what he did was illegal.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Re-treading Gavin Williamson as the most useless education minister in living memory. Williamson had been defenestrated from the defence ministry by Theresa May for security reasons. 📕.</li></ul><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Other highlights should include the catalogue of untruths Johnson has perpetrated from the Dispatch Box. No need to list them: Peter Stefanovic’s little movie does it 📕:</p><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="embed-youtube" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" class="youtube-player" height="282" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KmGDWnbbcBQ?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" style="border-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="500"></iframe></span></p></div><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not to mention Johnson’s decade-long tussles with the UK Statistics Authority. That goes back to his days <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/nov/16/boris-johnson-statistics-authority-labour-stooge" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">as London Mayor</a>, intensified over the spurious <a class="link link--external" href="https://fullfact.org/europe/foreign-secretary-and-uk-statistics-authority-350-million-explained/" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">£350m a week for the NHS</span></a> and continued over small matters such as <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/universal-credit-boris-johnson-pmqs-people-work-benefit-dwp-false-statement-statistics-authority-394465" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Universal Credit</a> 📕 Remember, folks, insisting on raw numbers makes one a ‘<a class="link link--external" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15765557" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Labour stooge</a>‘ (2011), or <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-350-million-brexit_uk_59be7e51e4b02da0e142a246" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">suffering from ‘amnesia</a>‘, or guilty of ‘<a class="link link--external" href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-350m-brexit-distortion_uk_59bea88ae4b02da0e142c19f" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">wilful distortion</a>‘ (both 2017) 📕.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: green; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s not ‘smelling of sleaze’. It’s wallowing in it.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Personal confession: along the lines suggested by <a href="http://yacht.a7sharp9.com/DV/Potter/Posters/Rickman/pl-act1.html" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Noël Coward</a>:</p><blockquote style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: #666666; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 10px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 7px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Elyot: </span>Nasty insistent little tune.</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Amanda:</span> Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.</span></p></blockquote><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: initial; font-size: Revert; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have recurrent flashbacks to school poetry anthologies, and the </span>tumpty-tumpty-tum stuff found there.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, I know he was a bigot of the first holy water, and a near-fascist (his brother went the full trip), but Chesterton got so much correct:</p><blockquote class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: #666666; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 10px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="bbCodeBlock-content" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="bbCodeBlock-expandContent js-expandContent " style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest</span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.</span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.</span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.</span></span></div></div></blockquote></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/boris-not-good-enough-4/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 Comments</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16844 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16844" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JULY 8, 2021 · 7:02 PM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16844" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/08/whorfianism/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Whorfianism</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Around 1929, two linguists dropped a theory that we are limited in our appreciation by our personal semantics. The two were Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. This became the <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8485/4014ff787a590ef6259eeecfcd7a4fe3aaaf.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’</a>. Or Whorfianism.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So an Eskimo is alleged to have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">multiple words for ‘snow’.</a> Oh, argue that amongst yourselves: I’ve had to sit through lectures on semantics and stuff; and have no intention of revisiting.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then I went to the back-page, and Will Self’s column, in the current issue of <span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New European</a>. </span>Available at all good newsagents, and cheaper in Ireland than in the UK. Self claims to have spoken to an advanced shop-lifter, ripping off high-end shopping parks. And this is the core matter:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">… in the old-style London criminal hierarchy … hoisters are pretty lowly creatures, even if they are stealing from high-end outlets. Up above them ascends a perverse pantheon of peculation, with kiters (passers of stolen cheques and other fraudulent financial instruments), fences, conmen and sundry other tea-leafs — all the way up too those ‘pavement artists’ also known as ‘the chaps’ or ‘the heavy mob’: those thieves inclined to enter banks or jewellers and at gunpoint relieve them of their cash and valuables. To be a celebrated ‘chap’ is to ascend to the paramount status and become a ‘face’.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Self says he learned that from his origins in Hampstead Garden Suburb.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">His predecessor was Henry Mayhew. In <a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">London Labour and the London Poor</span></a>Mayhew itemised in painstaking, even tedious detail:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Cannot Work, and Those that Will Not Work.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-16849" data-attachment-id="16849" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="Mudlarks_of_London,_1871" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=201" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg" data-orig-size="546,814" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/08/whorfianism/mudlarks_of_london_1871/" height="300" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=201" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=201 201w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=402 402w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/mudlarks_of_london_1871.jpg?w=101 101w" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 7px; max-width: 100%;" width="201" /></a>At the pits of Mayhew’s hierarchy would be the mudlarks, pre-teenagers picking through the slime and effluent of the Thames banks for anything with the slightest value.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Down in the sewers were ‘toshers’, scavengers looking far valuables.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ‘climbers’ were the (mainly, but not exclusively) boys climbing up and sweeping the inside of chimney flues.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At the start and end of working lives were the crossing sweepers, clearing paths through the mud and horse dung for ladies in crinoline skirts. The ‘dust’ they cleared would end up on “the Golden Dustman’, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/883/883-h/883-h.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Noddy Boffin</a>‘s dust-heaps behind King’s Cross. To understand that, we need to appreciate just how much horse-dropping fouled the streets of Victorian London (<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Dirty_Old_London/FWY3BQAAQBAJ?hl=en" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lee Jackson</a> estimates a thousand tons a day). Oh, and the ‘dust’ would be shipped up the Lee Valley to the market-gardens.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One more: ‘pure collectors’ — which must be the grossest euphemism of all. They hoiked up dog turds and delivered them to tanners, where the ‘material’ was used for dying and treating leather.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Above there I referred to <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Mutual Friend</span>, Dickens’ longest, most complex of novels. It opens with Gaffer Hexam and his daughter Lizzie, rowing:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #666699; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Their search is for bodies.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Dear Old Dad came back from the Second Unpleasantness, he was with Thames Division at Wapping. One of the river police’s tasks was bringing corpses, largely of suicides, to shore. He once recollected how, curiously, all those ended up on the north bank, because the coroner would pay a better honorarium.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are probably Whorfianisms for all that.</p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/08/whorfianism/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 Comments</a></p><p class="entry-categories tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filed under <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncategorized</a></p><p class="entry-tags tagged" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/cabinet.png"); background-position: 0px 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div></div><div class="post-16825 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized" id="post-16825" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: inline; float: left; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JUNE 1, 2021 · 10:14 AM<span class="edit-link" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> | <a class="post-edit-link" href="https://wordpress.com/post/redfellow.wordpress.com/16825" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EDIT</a></span></div><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 28px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/06/01/another-irish-first/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another Irish first!</a></h2><div class="entry entry-content" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Luke McGee tweets:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" height="230" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/mcgee.jpeg?w=500" style="height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The wikipedia link is about a project from 1869, which propelled passengers a grand total of a hundred yards. Mr Beach, its<a href="http://shakespeares-sonnets.com/dedication" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> onlie true</span> </a><span style="border: 0px; color: #007cba; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><u><span style="font-style: italic;">begetter </span></u></span>was defeated by Mayor ‘Boss’ Tweed and a stock-market crash.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Let us celebrate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Blacker_Vignoles" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Charles Vignoles</a> (engineer) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dargan" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">William Dargan</a> (the contractor) who took, and made work an 1839 patent trialled at Wormwood Scrubs. This was the <a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/_wp_link_placeholder" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dalkey Atmospheric Railway</a>, which operated for ten years from 1844. It gave Brunel the notion for his short-lived effort, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Devon_Railway_Company#The_atmospheric_system_in_use" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">South Devon Railway.</a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Vignoles’s implementation worked, while Brunel’s didn’t. The difference was Devon rats, who took a liking to the oiled leather used for closing the vacuum tube, while Vignoles used a metal protection.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So we have a permanent reminder (and an instructive example of translation problems) where the Dalkey pump house once stood:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-16832" data-attachment-id="16832" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Atmospheric Road" data-large-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg?w=391" data-medium-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg?w=295" data-orig-file="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg" data-orig-size="391,397" data-permalink="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/06/01/another-irish-first/atmospheric-road/" height="397" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 391px) 100vw, 391px" src="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg" srcset="https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg 391w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg?w=148&h=150 148w, https://redfellow.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atmospheric-road.jpeg?w=295&h=300 295w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="391" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p></div><div class="entry-links" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 3.4em; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="comment-number" style="background-image: url("https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/pilcrow/images/icons/bubble.png"); background-position: 0px 4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: right; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px 26px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/06/01/another-irish-first/#comments" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; 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margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/02/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2021/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2021</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/03/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">March 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/02/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2020/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2020</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2019/03/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">March 2019</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2018/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2018</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/03/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">March 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2017/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2017</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/02/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2016/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2016</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/03/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">March 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/02/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2015/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2015</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/11/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">November 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/10/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/09/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/08/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">August 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/07/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">July 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/06/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">June 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/05/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/04/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/03/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">March 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/02/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2014/01/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2014</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://redfellow.wordpress.com/2013/12/" style="border: 0px; color: #1c9bdc; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">December 2013</a></li></ul></li></ul><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div><p> </p>Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33222087.post-92080838646285011482010-10-25T21:09:00.002+01:002010-10-25T21:12:32.742+01:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Go to ... elsewhere</span></span><br /><br />After near-850 postings here, Malcolm got fed up with the Blogger interface.<br /><br />For some time his observations on the passing scene have been confined to:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://redfellow.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service.</span></a><br /></div><br />He welcomes you there.<br /><br />And it's free.Malcolm Redfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11907427518823910875noreply@blogger.com0