sarah's bookarama

The Eagle (of the Ninth) & Roman Military Studies

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:00:00 +0000

At long last, on YouTube, the trailer for the forthcoming film The Eagle, based on Rosemary Sutcliff's classic novel The Eagle of the Ninth. Now we just have to wait until February to see the film itself. Comments so far seem dominated by the (questionable) acting abilities of the star, Channing Tatum, who plays Marcus Aquila*. I'm more interested in how faithful the film is to the novel, although really bad acting by the star might just sink it.

*LatinGeek note: full marks to whoever is responsible for Aquila being pronounced correctly.

I've recently discovered History of the Ancient World, a splendid source of academic articles about the ancient world. There are frequent headsy-upsies on Twitter (@historyancient). The website appears to make freely available articles from a few years ago that were first published in learned journals not accessible to non-academics. Anyway, there's one from 2002 by Simon James about Roman military studies in Britain which I found riveting.

There's quite a lot at the beginning about the development of Roman military studies in Britain during the 20th century, including the rivalry between historians and archaeologists (fascinating in a not-very-edifying way), and how changing attitudes to the study of war and violence have influenced Roman military studies. But the most interesting part is later on, where we get to more recent developments and the question is asked: Was there such ever such an entity as The Roman Army? And the author makes a startling comparison between the Roman military and the Georgian Royal Navy (he could have been writing that just for me, as both fascinate me). Read on...

Writing the Legions: The Development and Future of Roman Military Studies in Britain by Simon James. Archaeological Journal, Vol. 159 (2002)

New Historical Fiction for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:20:00 +0000

The historical fiction goddess Sarah Johnson (Reading the Past) has just posted on the Historical Novel Society website a list of historical fiction to be published in the USA in the first half of 2011. I compile a list of HF published in the UK for the same period for the same webpage. But I'm behindhand as usual, still waiting for some of the big UK publishers to make their catalogues available. If you're reading this, Sarah, that's my excuse and I hope to get my list to you soon!

Meanwhile, here's a sneak preview of novels from the UK list so far, set in my favourite periods:

January

M K Hume, Prophecy: Clash of Kings, Headline (novel about Merlin)

John Stack, Masters of the Sea, HarperCollins (latest in Roman naval series)

Mark Keating, The Hunt for White Gold, Hodder & Stoughton (second in 18^th-c pirate series)

February

Christian Cameron, King of the Bosphorus, Orion (latest in Tyrant series set post-Alexander the Great)

James McGee, Rebellion, HarperCollins (Bow Street Runner goes on dangerous mission to Napoleonic Paris, 1812)

March

Robin Blake, A Dark Anatomy, Macmillan (murder mystery set in 1740 Lancashire)

R S Downie, Ruso and the River of Darkness, Penguin (latest in Roman sleuth series set in Roman Britain)

Russell Whitfield, Roma Victrix, Myrmidon (sequel to Gladiatrix, further adventures of a female gladiator in ancient Rome)

April

Patrick Easter, The Watermen, Quercus (crime novel set in 18^th-c London Docklands)

Anthony Riches, Fortress of Spears, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in Roman army series set on Hadrian’s Wall, 3^rd-c AD)

Imogen Robertson, Island of Bones, Headline Review (Cumbria 1783: one body too many found in a tomb leads to discovery of a past that won’t stay buried)

May

Justin Hill, Shield Wall, Little, Brown (tumultuous events from the death of Ethelred the Unready to the Battle of Hastings, first of a series)

M C Scott, Rome: The Coming of the King, Bantam (second in series takes spy to Judea in pursuit of man bent on destroying the Roman province, 1^st-c AD)

Stella Tillyard, Tides of War, Chatto & Windus (two young women in London and Spain during the Peninsular War)

Christopher Wakling, The Devil’s Mask, Faber (young Bristol lawyer uncovers deadly secrets in the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade)

June

Elizabeth Chadwick, Lady of the English, Sphere (struggle for the English crown between Henry I’s daughter Matilda and his widow Adeliza who is Matilda’s stepmother)

Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner, Orion (latest in 18^th-c crime series)

Ben Kane, Soldier of Carthage, Preface (first in Punic War series)

Kate Quinn, Daughters of Rome, Headline (2 sisters in Rome in AD69, Year of the Four Emperors)

Julian Stockwin, Conquest, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in naval series set during Napoleonic Wars)

And not one, but two novels about Hereward the Wake:

Stewart Binns, Conquest, Penguin, February

James Wilde, Hereward, Bantam (first in series), June

Bletchley Park: Alan Turing & Enigma

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:23:00 +0000

The mansion at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, was Station X, the home of the Government Code and Cipher School set up by Winston Churchill during World War II. It is now a museum and a tribute to the vital work that went on here which is reckoned to have shortened the war by two years and to have saved thousands of lives. Churchill quickly realised the importance to the war effort of code-and cipher-breaking, and his famous "Action This Day" order ensured that the operation was set up with all speed. Later, he paid tribute to the loyalty and integrity of the Bletchley workers by calling them "the geese that laid the golden egg but never cackled".

Top mathematicians such as Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman were recruited to find ways of breaking the complex and ever-changing ciphers generated by German Enigma and Lorenz machines which were used to transmit messages between German High Command and their armed forces. Turing and Welchman, building on work done prewar by Polish crypto-analysts, were instrumental in inventing the Bombe which decrypted Enigma messages thousands of times faster than the human brain, whilst Colossus, the world’s first practical electronic digital information processing machine - a forerunner of today’s computers, was developed to deal with messages from the more complex Lorenz machines. Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park by Michael Smith is a good overview of what happened here.

Today, thanks to the splendid efforts of enthusiasts and computer experts, there are at Bletchley Park functioning rebuilds of both the Bombe and Colossus. See here (for more on the Bombe rebuild) and here (for Colossus).

Whilst the top boffins at Bletchley Park were all men (this was the 1940s after all), the actual work with the machines was mainly done by women who were recruited for their intelligence and quickness of mind. Gordon Welchman paid tribute to two of his assistants, Miss Rock and Miss Lever, by paraphrasing Archimedes thusly: "Give me a Lever and a Rock and I will move the universe."

Alan Turing's office in Hut 8

Block B contains the main exhibition including several Enigma machines and the Bombe rebuild, as well as a very striking statue of Alan Turing made of slivers of slate.

Alan Turing Statue in main exhibition Block B

No photo can do justice to this magnificent tribute to Alan Turing by sculptor Stephen Kettle. Kettle has shown a seated Turing studying an Enigma machine. The detail is breathtaking - the shoelaces, for example, are composed of 200 individual pieces of slate! It's worth visiting Stephen Kettle's website where he shows close-up photos of the statue and writes about the thoughtfulness and detail that went into its making.

Alan Turing, the father of computer science,

was perhaps the most interesting and the most tragic of the many geniuses who presided at Bletchley Park during World War II. The most brilliant mathematician of his generation, he should have been regarded as a war hero for his vital work at Bletchley but his life ended in undeserved disgrace and death in 1954 at the age of only 41. Whilst working on computers at Manchester University, he was convicted of a homosexual act (this being illegal at the time) and he chose chemical castration over a prison sentence. But the side effects of this and the concomitant destruction of his ongoing work for Bletchley Park's successor GCHQ, led him to take his own life by means of an apple laced with potassium cyanide. There's surely some symbolism here to do with knowledge and lost innocence, and I wonder if Turing chose an apple with any of this in mind.

Andrew Hodges' Alan Turing: The Enigma is probably the definitive biography and the author has generously supplemented it with a comprehensive website devoted to Alan Turing.

2012 sees the centenary of his birth and this website outlines a programme of commemorative events.

There's so much else to see and do at Bletchley Park (do see the website for details), you really can't do it all in a day, so tickets (valid for as many visits as you like in a year) are wonderful value.

Please support this stirring part of our heritage - visit soon and often! Bletchley Park receives no funds from government and relies on Heritage Lottery grants and the generosity of the general public to carry on its task of restoring and preserving the many historic buildings on the site (from wooden huts to a mansion). On our recent visit it was good to see the restoration of Hut 8 (where Alan Turing worked on Naval Enigma) with a reconstruction of Turing's office and other rooms dedicated to the sailors from HMS Petard who gave their lives retrieving vital Enigma code books from a sunken German U-Boat, and to the valuable war service of homing pigeons which is a lot more interesting than it sounds - there really were Hero Pigeons of World War II!

Rules for Writing Historical Fiction Set In Classical Times

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:26:00 +0000

As an addendum to the previous post and in the manner of An Awful Warning, here's a re-post of some rules which originally appeared in Solander, oh, a long time ago.

Rules for Writing Historical Fiction Set In Classical Times
Sarah Cuthbertson

I. Your Greek male characters must be philosophers, pederasts or homosexuals (but see Rule V). NB re Spartans: for 'philosophers' read 'stoics'. Your Greek females must be priestesses, nymph(omaniac)s or poets of the Sapphic persuasion. NB Spartan women should be wives/mothers/daughters who invariably instruct their menfolk to return home from war with their shields or on them.

II. Your Greek characters must always be witty, eloquent, learned and wise. (But see Rule X subsection v). Your Romans, though intellectual pygmies with no sense of humour or irony, can be relied upon to use the ablative absolute correctly when quoting Virgil or Cicero (which they must do at least once during any novel in which they appear).

III. Civilian Romans of either sex must (except for your Hero/Heroine) be any combination of decadent, fat, sleazy, grasping, politically corrupt or sexually depraved. They must be either bald (male) or afflicted with a high-rise hairdo (female). They must wear togas in all circumstances, however impractical (even the women). They must always consume (preferably to excess) stuffed dormice and braised lark’s tongues at least once during any novel in which they appear.

IV. Commissioned officers in the Roman Army must be anal-retentive control freaks with arrested libidos that can only be jump-started by comely Barbarian captive maidens. Such officers must always say, “The Roman Army is the greatest war machine the world has ever known” at least once during any novel in which they appear.

V. All Greek soldiers are Noble Heroes. All Barbarian warriors are Impassioned-But-Hopelessly-Disorganised Heroes. All Roman legionaries are Plundering (or Blundering) Rapists. The Plundering (or Blundering) Rapists must always win. (There’s a lesson here somewhere).

VI. Barbarians must always be portrayed as politically-correct Noble Savages, especially if Celtic. They must embrace sexual equality and be in total harmony with Nature and the Mystic Elements. They must always lose the battles but win the moral high ground (whatever that is), especially against The Greatest War Machine The World Has Ever Known. That’s probably the aforementioned lesson (see Rule V).

VII. In battle against Greeks and Romans, Barbarian chariots always have scythes on their wheels, never mind that blades would do more damage to themselves than to the enemy. Britons must paint themselves with designer woad before going into battle. This is not optional.

VIII. Your Hero must find slavery, crucifixion and gladiatorial combat Morally Repugnant.

IX. Despite the evidence of Cicero, Pliny the Younger and various Roman tombstones, slaves are always ill-treated except of course by your Hero (see Rule VIII). Revolting slaves are invariably idealistic, selfless proto-Communists who want to change the world. They are never just people who want to go back where they came from.

X. Miscellaneous Rules

i. Roman roads never have bends in them. Therefore they must always be described as “arrow-straight” (NB for the sake of variation, “spear-straight” is an acceptable alternative).
ii. Christians are always Persecuted, usually by lions.
iii. Jews are invariably Stiff-Necked. Sometimes they are also Biblical (or Apocryphal).
iv. Druids are usually to be found looming out of Celtic mists to incite rebellion. Some of them are women.
v. All doctors are both quacks and Greeks.
vi. All Roman emperors are devious psychopaths with speech impediments who marry their sisters, appoint their horses to the Senate, fiddle while Rome burns and die from eating poisoned mushrooms (or dormice or larks’ tongues - see Rule III).

Novels Set In Roman Britain

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:18:00 +0000

I did this list for an archaeology forum but thought it might be fun to post it here. I've asterisked my personal Top Ten. Do let me know if I've missed any.

NOVELS SET IN ROMAN BRITAIN

GILLIAN BRADSHAW

Island of Ghosts (Sarmatian cavalry on Hadrian’s Wall, late 2nd century. Plenty of atmosphere and authenticity)*

Dark North (North African troops in Britain in the reign of Septimius Severus)

AMANDA COCKRELL

Legions of the Mist (what happened to the Ninth Legion, but probably not)

LINDSEY DAVIS

The Silver Pigs (first Falco mystery, partly set in 1st-century Britain. Wryly amusing with lots of authentic detail)*

A Body in the Bathhouse (Falco is sent to investigate murder around Chichester and Fishbourne Roman Palace)

WILLIAM DIETRICH

Hadrian’s Wall (set in 4th century. Implausible characters doing implausible stuff and the subtitle A Novel of Roman England doesn’t inspire confidence in historical accuracy)

R S DOWNIE (RUTH DOWNIE in USA)

Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls (USA: Medicus)*

Ruso and the Demented Doctor (USA: Terra Incognita)*

2nd-century mystery series about an army surgeon based in Deva who becomes a reluctant sleuth. Perceptive, atmospheric and often wryly amusing.

ALFRED DUGGAN

The Little Emperors (Britain and the fall of the Roman Empire)

ADAM FERGUSSON
Roman, Go Home! (Roman noble and British princess at end of Roman Britain. Nice touch of humour in Roman Empire-British Empire parallel, if I remember rightly.)

JANE FINNIS

Aurelia Marcella mysteries set in c. 100AD on the road to York – Aurelia runs a mansio.

Get Out Or Die, A Bitter Chill, Buried Too Deep

PAULINE GEDGE

The Eagle and the Raven (from Caradoc to Boudica via Cartimandua, historical romance.)

DOUGLAS JACKSON

Claudius (Claudian invasion of Britain, the one with the elephants)

Hero of Rome (Boudica again but from Roman side for a change)

JOHN JAMES

The Bridge of Sand (set during the governorship of Agricola, c 80AD, with Juvenal (yes, that Juvenal) as a junior army officer sent on a mission)

MARY MACKIE

People of the Horse (Boudica, again but not too much romance)

ANTHONY RICHES

Empire: Wounds of Honour

Empire: Arrows of Fury.

Roman military adventure series set on Hadrian’s Wall late 2nd century

JOSEPH E ROESCH

Boudica, Queen of the Iceni

ROSEMARY ROWE

Libertus mysteries set in Roman Gloucester in late 2nd-century:

The Germanicus Mosaic, A Pattern of Blood, Murder in the Forum, The Legatus Mystery etc.

SIMON SCARROW

Roman military adventure series of which the first 5 are set during and just after the Claudian invasion:

Under the Eagles, The Eagle’s Conquest, When the Eagle Hunts, The Eagle and the Wolves, The Eagle’s Prey

Lots of thud and blunder, effing and blinding. Spawned imitators (see RICHES, JACKSON)

MANDA SCOTT

Dreaming the Eagle, Dreaming the Hound, Dreaming the Bull, Dreaming the Serpent Spear (highly original take on Boudica, with lots of shamanic dreaming and complex relationships)

ANYA SETON

The Mistletoe and the Sword (Roman soldier and foster-daughter of Boudica. Good mix of adventure and romance)

GEORGE SHIPWAY

Imperial Governor (Boudica story from Suetonius Paulinus’s point of view. Solid soldierly stuff; author even made me sympathise with Suetonius)*

ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF

Eagle of the Ninth (quest to find Eagle standard of the “lost” Ninth Legion, soon to be a film)

The Silver Branch (Carausius)

The Lantern Bearers (end of Roman Britain. Full of atmosphere and impending tragedy)*

The Mark of the Horse Lord (gladiator on quest to Caledonia, 2nd-century, I think. Dark and moving.)*

Frontier Wolf (cavalry adventure on Hadrian’s Wall and beyond, 4th century)

Outcast (boy cast out by tribe, sent to Rome as a slave, struggles to get back to Britain)

Song for a Dark Queen (Boudica, from both British and Roman perspectives. Absorbing, elegaic)*

These are billed as children’s fiction but all of them make satisfying reads for grown-ups too, especially The Mark of the Horse Lord, Song for a Dark Queen and The Lantern Bearers (which foreshadows RS’s masterpiece, Sword at Sunset - written for adults – the definitive Arthurian novel, in my view).

ANNA TAYLOR

The Gods Are Not Mocked (Druid priestess and Roman lover in time of Caesar’s 55BC invasion)

HENRY TREECE

The Dark Island (Romans vs Caratacus. Brutal but affecting – great sense of “being there”)*

Red Queen, White Queen (Boudica)

PETER VANSITTART

Three Six Seven: The Memoirs of a Very Important Man (end of Roman Britain through the eyes of someone who doesn’t see it coming)

PAUL WATERS

Cast Not The Day (4th-century Britain)

JULES WATSON

The White Mare and The Dawn Stag (Tribal resistance to Agricolan campaign in 1st-century northern Britain, romance/fantasy.)

The Boar Stone (4th-century, same area, same genre)

DAVID WISHART

The Horse Coin (Boudica-lite, but interesting)*

Good sources of titles:

http://tinyurl.com/26khojz (searchable database by title or period)

Steven Saylor’s website: http://tinyurl.com/2953hpd

Historicalnovels.info: http://www.historicalnovels.info/Ancient.html#RomBrit

Master of Historical Fiction by Allan Massie

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:06:00 +0000

I've just come across this essay by Allan Massie. He's no slouch at historical fiction himself, having written novels about Roman emperors, the Dark Ages and WWII, amongst others. But the master he refers to in his title is Sir Walter Scott, whom he makes the starting point for this stimulating piece in the May 2010 issue of Standpoint.*

Massie offers some interesting points about the value of historical fiction and why novelists and readers are attracted to it, in addition to its undoubted entertainment value:

Scott wrote at a time when interest in history as a means of understanding the contemporary world was being born. He contributed to this and stood also on the threshold of one of the 19th century's most significant features — the development of history as an academic study. The father of academic history, Leopold von Ranke, insisted on the autonomy of the past and sought to recreate it "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" ("as it actually was"). This is the aim, or at least an aim, of the serious historical novelist, who sets out to offer more than entertainment. In Wolf Hall, for example, Mantel evokes the revolutionary decade of the 1530s, and her hero, Thomas Cromwell, is an emblematic figure precise ly because he represents a new way of thinking. Mantel uses him to show how a new England will take shape.

Why do novelists turn away from the present day to the past, and sometimes, like [Robert] Harris, to the now far distant past? There is evidently no single reason. The writer may have become fascinated by some historical figure, as Mantel with Cromwell or Adam Foulds, whose The Quickening Maze was one of the six on the Man Booker shortlist, with the poet John Clare. Obsession with a particular period — the First World War, for instance — may suggest the theme for a novel. The author may wish to explore the past for its own sake, or to use it to point up the present. Harris's Cicero novels certainly offer a vivid picture of late Republican Rome, but Harris has worked as a political journalist, and these books are also an examination of the nature and craft of politics, all the more effectively so for being divorced from immediate political concerns.
The past is more manageable and easier to grasp than the present. It rewards brooding, whereas the contemporary world shifts and defies reflection.

Massie makes another point, using a favourite novel of mine, Alfred Duggan's The Cunning of the Dove, which a dear friend introduced me to:

The past is, as L. P. Hartley said, another country where they do things differently, and exploring this difference is one of the things that may attract the novelist. There is a fine moment in Alfred Duggan's novel about Cerdic, the first king of Saxon Wessex. Duggan has him as a Romanised Briton who, after misfortunes and adventures, becomes leader of a Saxon war-band. Early in the novel, he is reading Ovid in the courtyard of his father's villa when word comes of a Saxon raid. He puts down the book and picks up his sword, and observes, casually, "I think that was the last time I read a book." In that brief observation, the reader has a moment of illumination, catching the transition from Rome to Barbarism. This is something the novelist can do better than the historian.

But if the past is that other country, it is also a place that in certain respects is much like ours. Human nature does not change, though ideas and practices do. People are always subject to the same emotions: love, hate and fear. The Seven Deadly Sins offer the same temptations, and men are driven by ambition, idealism or the desire to exercise power, in any and every age. By turning to the past, free from the busy distractions of the present, the novelist gains the advantage of perspective.

Massie also comments on dialogue in historical fiction, a bugbear of mine, for so few historical novelists seem to get the right balance between archaic and modern without sounding stilted and sometimes comical. Not even the Master got it right, seemingly:

He also failed to solve the problem of finding the right language for his characters to speak, so that they express themselves sometimes in what one might call ersatz medieval — "zounds" and "gramercy" — and sometimes as 18th-century ladies and gentlemen transported back in time. The result, especially in the works of his imitators, was what has been called "tushery" or "Wardour Street English". His real distinction is to be found in the Scottish novels, more generally, in what Carlyle identified as his ability to remind us that historical figures were men and women of flesh and blood, not abstractions, and that events in the past were once in the future. This is something Robert Harris does successfully in his two Cicero novels, Imperium and Lustrum.

*Standpoint is a magazine I'd never heard of before, but it sounds well worth a read. Here's what its website says about it:

Standpoint is a monthly cultural and political magazine published by Social Affairs Unit Magazines Ltd, a subsidiary of the Social Affairs Unit (Registered Charity No. 281530). Standpoint’s core mission is to celebrate our civilization, its arts and its values — in particular democracy, debate and freedom of speech — at a time when they are under threat. Standpoint aims to be an antidote to the parochialism of British political magazines and to introduce British readers to brilliant writers and thinkers from across the Atlantic, across the Channel and around the world.

Rosemary Sutcliff Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:12:00 +0000

Anthony Lawton has alerted me to his blog about classic historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992), to whom so many of us owe our fascination with history. Please go there for all the latest links to Rosemary Sutcliff, her books - and of course the forthcoming film of her best-known novel, The Eagle of the Ninth.

Anthony, by the way, is Rosemary Sutcliff's godson and cousin.

See also this blog on Rosemary Sutcliff.

Rome: The Emperor's Spy by M C Scott

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:48:00 +0000

As a child in the first century AD, Sebastos Abdes Pantera, son of a Roman auxiliary soldier, witnesses an anti-Roman Judean rebel being taken alive from a tomb in Jerusalem. Decades later we meet Pantera again as he arrives in Coriallum (modern Cherbourg) after a stint as a spy in Britannia, during which he went native in the turmoil of the Boudican revolt. No sooner has he landed than he's recruited by the Emperor Nero to discover the missing details of a prophecy that Rome will burn - and then stop it happening.

Sweeping through three contrasting and vividly imagined parts of the Roman Empire - Gaul, Alexandria and finally Rome itself - this epic historical thriller is ablaze with intrigue, treachery, murder and chariot-racing, and is peopled by characters of a depth and complexity not often found in this genre. Some of the characters are from Scott's Boudica series, which will please fans of these novels but won't, I'm sure, disadvantage those who haven't read them. Integral to the plot is an unorthodox take on St Paul (as he then wasn't) and the beginnings of Christianity. I've no idea how plausible this theory is, but it works in the context of the story and the author provides a copious note on the matter for those who want to pursue it.

Rome: The Emperor's Spy marks a welcome return to the punchy style of Scott's contemporary crime novels. The vigorous, well-paced story is satisfyingly wound up, yet there's enough in the way of loose ends and unfinished business to make this reader look forward to the next in the series.

The author's website is here.

National Petition for Libel Reform

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:25:00 +0000

I don't usually jump on bandwagons but a while ago, I was shocked to discover from Dr Ben Goldacre's* Bad Science blog that certain unscrupulous 'sciency' types are using English libel law to silence their critics. A campaign called Sense about Science was started to persuade the government by petition that the law had in effect become a form of censorship and therefore needed reform. Sense about Science has now joined forces with English PEN and Index on Censorship to set up The Libel Reform Campaign, a more powerful and urgent campaign to preserve our much-cherished freedom of speech. This website gives shocking examples of how our libel law is being abused.

Please read the National Petition for Libel Reform statement on the website and sign it if you feel strongly that this type of legal abuse constitutes a real threat to one of our fundamental freedoms.

*Ben Goldacre is the author of Bad Science, a book whose title speaks for itself.

Make Your Own Academic Sentence

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:05:00 +0000

This is such fun to play with (thanks to Dr. Syntax's books and publishing blog). Here are two sentences I generated earlier:

The reification of post-capitalist hegemony replays (in parodic form) the historicization of pedagogical institutions. The epistemology of normative value(s) functions as the conceptual frame for the discourse of the gendered body.

It comes from the University of Chicago's Writing Program where you can also find examples of real academic gobbledegook.

Here's one for generating business jargon.

HMS Victory fires a Broadside

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Last September when we visited Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, we had an unexpected treat: the spectacle of HMS Victory firing a full 64-gun rolling broadside in honour of the new National Museum of the Royal Navy which incorporates all the naval museums under one umbrella. My photos (below) of the broadside don't do justice to the event but I found a You Tube video of it made by the companies who provided the pyrotechnics and set them off. Even with the sound on full blast, it doesn't do full justice to the real volume and depth of the noise.

We were also lucky enough to be able to visit Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose (which sank in the Solent in 1545) just before the viewing gallery closed for the building of a new museum which will display the remains of the ship and a reconstruction of its missing side to full advantage, now that the lengthy preservation process of the surviving hull is complete.

Now that's what I call A Grand Day Out.

The Fighting Temeraire by Sam Willis

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:49:00 +0000

I'm a sucker for the majestic, elegant but deadly ships of the Great Age of Fighting Sail and HMS Temeraire, a British 98-gun ship of the line is, as author Sam Willis points out in this spendid new book, an iconic ship of the era. Unlike HMS Victory, alongside which she fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, Temeraire ended her life as a prison hulk and receiving ship and was eventually broken up in 1838 in the unsentimentally expedient way of the Royal Navy. But JMW Turner immortalised her in his famous painting, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, reproduced on the cover of Sam Willis's book. The painting is not only Turner's best known, it was also voted the greatest painting in a British art gallery, having beaten Constable's Hay Wain and Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding in a 2005 poll organised by the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

The Fighting Temeraire, the first in a series published by Quercus called Hearts of Oak, is the story of not one ship but two. The earlier one of the name was a French 74-gun two-decker built in 1749 and captured in 1759 by HMS Warspite during the Seven Years' War. She was taken into the Royal Navy and sold in 1784. HMS Temeraire (without the accents) was built at Chatham and launched in 1798. At Trafalgar, under Captain Eliab Harvey, she fought astern of HMS Victory. Badly damaged relieving Nelson's flagship, she also captured the French ship Fougueux and helped force the surrender of the Redoutable, the ship from whose mizzen top a French sniper fired the shot that killed Admiral Nelson.

This book is driven by a fluid narrative, full of the authentic historical detail you'd expect from an Honorary Fellow in Maritime Historical Studies. And it's all informed by well-chosen illustrations and diagrams and the whole is made exceptionally vivid by the author's own experience: he spent 18 months as a Square-Rig Able Seaman, sailing the tall ships used in the Hornblower TV drama series and the TV film Shackleton.

The epilogue of The Fighting Temeraire is an essay on iconic warships and their continuing relevance down the ages. A sample:

...the biographies of warships are multi-layered and complex. Most obviously, the story of the Temeraire matters to our society because it was immortalized by one of the greatest artists ever to have lived, but Turner immortalized that story because it mattered to his society. In 1839 the Temeraire had already become icionic, and therein lies one of the peculiar values of iconic warships. They are potent historical objects because they transcend eras, and the ability to illuminate both our own times and those more distant offers an immediate and unmistakable example of the value of history. Moreover, the story of the Temeraire can be used to illuminate a whole range of historical topics, from the very broadest perspective of self-perception on an international stage - the question of how the navy serves to carry a nation's message around the world - to the tightest possible focus on day-to-day life in a warship.

Find out more on the author's website, including details of the forthcoming books in this Hearts of Oak series, Admiral Benbow and The Glorious First of June.

Another iconic ship of the era is HMS Bellerophon which also fought at Trafalgar (as well as the Glorious First of June and the Battle of the Nile) but which is perhaps best known as the ship that received Napoleon's surrender in 1815. She was affectionately known as Billy Ruff'n (Billy Ruffian) by her crew, hence the title of David Cordingly's fascinating biography of her.

NaNoWriMo

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:06:00 +0000

It’s National Novel Writing Month again, that madcap annual race to write a 50,000-word novel in the 30 otherwise dreich* days of November (at least it is, here in England).

In 2007 I did it for the first time, but had to abandon 2008 after 6 days because of a family emergency (see previous post). And so here I am again, just about keeping up the daily wordage and thoroughly enjoying it in a scary roller-coastery sort of way.

Here’s why I do it:

1. It’s fun, especially if you have the competitive urge.

2. It’s serious.

3. For those of us who can procrastinate to Olympic standards it has a foolproof built-in secret weapon: a DEADLINE (not so secret, then, but it really does work).

4. To make the word count and deadline, you have to write with the brakes off, disabling your Inner Editor and your Inner Critic, that pair of dispiriting demons. No plot is too preposterous, no character too cringeworthy, no scene too silly. This your chance to try ’em all.

5. It’s fun. Really.

However, I’m sure most proper novelists will think NaNoWriMo an absurd and futile waste of time, perhaps even belittling to their careful craft. But I, and probably thousands of fellow NaNo nutcases, look upon it (and this is the 6th and most important reason for doing it) as a no-holds-barred, all brake-cables-cut, 30-day brainstorming session at the end of which we’ll be rewarded with our own tottering pile of literary poo - and a lot of it will certainly be umitigated poo, having been written at such an unfeasible pace. But from all that dross, a few rough-diamond-like characters and exciting plot-bunnies will be twinkling irresistibly out at us. These we can spend the coming months carefully extracting and polishing to shining perfection. In theory.

The NaNoWriMo website is full of encouragement and jokes, whilst the NaNoWriMo handbook, No Plot, No Problem! (UK, USA), written by that inestimable genius Chris Baty, founder of all this inspiring nonsense, is crammed with brilliant motivational tips which you don't have to be NaNo-ing to use.

Last year I put up a wordcount widget here – and look what happened. But as I don’t believe there’s a Providence to be Tempted I’ll probably put one up again, if I can remember how to do it.

Right, so. I’m off on another trip to NaNoLand. I'm excited because I'm on the verge of inserting my first plot ninja (cunning devices to further the plot and up the wordcount): This one's called The Travelling Shovel of Death.

You see, NaNowriMo doesn't take itself too seriously. Just seriously enough.

*dreich is Scottish for "dull, damp and miserable." I got the this expressive word from my mother-in-law.

Seasonal Suicide Notes: Roger Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:57:00 +0000

Gosh, this blog has performed more comebacks than any number of wrinkly pop stars or botoxed celebs. But here it is again, after a long hiatus resulting from my father's death last November which, as well as being sad, caused no end of medico-legal problems and my assumption of full-time care for my mother, a victim of Alzheimer's disease. After this long silence, I'll probably just be talking to myself but what the hell. I've had stupider conversations recently.

However, I've been considerably cheered up by the reviews of Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life as it is Lived by Roger Lewis, an academic, journalist and sometime-notorious biographer. Here's one review that particularly creased me up and convinced me to buy at the earliest opportunity. Seasonal Suicide Notes looks like a book-length spoof of those smug, boastful round robin letters that plop dismayingly on your doormat every Christmas. Except that it isn't - the book is composed of genuine missives that the recipients persuaded Roger Lewis to publish: funny, vitriolic and oh-so-true to life as it's really lived. I was especially tickled by Mrs Lewis's experience in a TK Maxx changing room during a Two-Minutes' Silence.

A few Christmases ago, I got so irritated by these self-regarding incitements to envy that I composed a spoof round robin from Cuthbertson Acres. It was a catalogue of Dickensian misfortune which had us bankrupted in a scam moneymaking scheme and our offspring variously involved in drug-running/people-smuggling/unspeakable terrorist outrages, instead of becoming top lawyers/doctors/scientists/Booker-winning novelists. Sadly, I chickened out of sending it on the grounds that the recipients would either take offence at being sent up or, having no sense of the absurd, would have been only too willing to believe it.

And I wouldn't want that, would I?

Alan Coren: The Gollies Karamazov

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 10:10:00 +0000

If you're of a certain age, you may remember the satirical magazine Punch (1841-2002), even if you only read it in the dentist's waiting room. For me, the highlight was always Alan Coren's column, which invariably had me in stitches.

To commemorate Alan Coren's death a year ago, his son and daughter have just published an anthology of his work, Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks. It was chosen as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week last week and if you're quick you can listen to the five broadcast extracts here, read by the brilliant John Sessions who does all the voices wonderfully well. So far, I've only managed to hear "Let Us Now Phone Famous Men", and yes, it had me in stitches all over again.

In The Times, there's an example of what Coren did best, in my opinion - the literary parody. This one's called "The Pooh Also Rises". There's also an article about Alan Coren by his son Giles here.

Both Giles and Victoria Coren have, happily, inherited their father's gift of humour. Victoria Coren, a journalist since the age of 14, is probably best known for the TV series Balderdash & Piffle which tested new words or definitions sent in by the public for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. OK, that doesn't sound funny but it often was. She also writes columns in The Guardian and The Observer. Besides being The Times's restaurant critic, Giles Coren was recently co-presenter (or victim) with comedian Sue Perkins of The Supersizers Go..., a series of programmes in which the pair lived for a week on the dishes of various periods and tested the effects of historical diets with hilarious and sometimes revolting results. He also wrote this (expletives undeleted) in which he vents his anger with some Times sub-editor who went too far with one of his articles.

Gardens I: Levens Hall, Cumbria

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:32:00 +0000

The gardens at Levens Hall, near Kendal in the South Lake District, contain the the oldest topiary garden in the world, created by Guillaume Beaumont in the 17th century.

This photo is of one of the more spectacular creations and there are more on the Levens Hall website.

I bet they didn't trim them like this in the 17th century!

There are also high and ancient hedges that you can walk into and see this sort of thing which looks like a setting for The Lord of the Rings.

The flower borders were past their best when we visited in late September...

...but there are photos on the website which show them in their summer splendour.

There's also a fertile apple orchard where the fruit is currently weighing down the boughs, like the Bramleys in this photo:

Speaking of food, as I often do, the Bellingham Buttery restaurant serves tasty meals using produce from the garden and estate. I can certainly recommend the sumptuous fruit cake containing Leven Hall's own Morocco Ale made from an Elizabethan recipe.

The house is also worth a visit. Inside you can see beautiful Spanish leather wall coverings of rare colour and quality, the earliest English patchworks, stunning Tudor carved wooden overmantels and a collection of Wellington memorabilia which was brought to the house when the Iron Duke's favourite niece married into the family.

Book Review: The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:07:00 +0000

Given that my blog has the word book in its name, I really ought to talk about books now and again. I've been reading some rather good books lately and here's a review (slightly amended) of one of them, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean. It appeared in the August 2008 issue of The Historical Novels Review.

On a stormy night in 1626 in the Scottish town of Banff, the local apothecary's assistant collapses in the street. Next morning he's found dead in Alexander Seaton's house. Murder is suspected and when one of Alexander's few friends in the town is arrested, our hero sets out to clear him. But Alexander has a past. Having studied to be a minister of the Kirk, he had been denounced at his ordination for dishonouring the girl he would have married. The disgrace lost him not only his future wife, but also his vocation and his faith. Embittered and heartbroken, he took the only job open to him, that of a lowly schoolmaster.

Now, in the course of his investigations, Alexander must deal with his fellow-citizens, good and bad. Some reveal themselves to be selfless and wise, others devious, greedy or unscrupulous. He must contend with inflamed prejudices that erupt in a witch hunt and with accusations of treacherous Catholic plotting. But above all, he must confront his own personal demons.

This engrossing, atmospheric novel is a satisfying, skilfully constructed mystery with richly developed characters. But just as importantly, it's a vivid evocation of a particular time and place by an author whose uncle was the thriller writer Alistair MacLean and who is herself a historian specialising in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland. She has used her heritage and her skills to the full in creating this memorable and exciting read.

Here's an interview with Shona MacLean in The Scotsman.

An Award and Some Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Oh dear. I'm afraid I've become rather an unreliable blogger of late. Real life is so in the way in the blogosphere, as Mrs Gaskell might have said had she been living in the 21st century.

Sarah's Bookarama is, however, delighted to have been nominated for a blog award by Carla Nayland and Elizabeth Chadwick but, in view of its recent waywardness, it does feel rather a fraud. On the other hand, the undeserved accolade gives me a chance to nominate some of my favourite bloggers who are a good deal more dedicated than I am at the mo. I should like to single out Carla and Elizabeth of course, and others on my blogroll whom I nominated for a previous award.

But this time I thought I'd also mention a selection of excellent blogs I've discovered since then. So here, in no particular order, I present for your delectation:

George Orwell's Blog which was set up by The Orwell Prize to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of George Orwell's diary, much of which is published here for the first time. Each entry appears exactly seventy years after it was written. This from the introduction:

What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.

Cornflower. This is a beautiful blog, a source of daily aesthetic pleasure with its superb photographs, perceptive bookish thoughts and delicious recipes. To Cornflower I owe the delights of Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, from which I made 4 recipes in a week, which is a record for me from a single book. And every one was a winner. I'll probably be gushing some more about this book later.

Bad Science, the blog of Ben Goldacre, Guardian columnist, doctor and scourge of quackery, pseudoboffins and the misrepresentation of science in the media for the sake of an eye-catching headline. You know the sort of thing: tests on 5 blind mice show that red wine cures cancer/prevents strokes/lets you live to be 100. But what the hell: we're all going to disappear into a black hole next Wednesday - or are we? If not, there'll be time to read Ben Goldacre's book, just out in paperback.

Circle of the Year. This is a delightful blog that rejoices in the customs, traditions and natural rhythms of the English countryside, especially the Derbyshire Peak District. The photographs are superb.

NewsBiscuit, an up-to-the-minute satirical news blog to which anyone can submit material for consideration, a sort of www.notthetimesgrauniadindydailymailonline.co.uk with a special section on the Isle of Wight, for some reason.

Wife in the North, the tragicomic blog of a London journalist who, at her husband's behest, reluctantly moved with him, their two small children and another one on the way, to the wilds of Northumberland where the debatable joys of the weather, the natives and a major house renovation awaited her. The blog is certainly sad and funny - and wry and poignant and perceptive too, though the author got quite a tongue-lashing from some early commenters for her rude remarks about folk Oop North. Nonetheless she sold the idea to Penguin for a lot of money - yes, folks, it can be done - and the book of the blog came out recently.

Classical Bookworm Even if you're not interested in the Greek and Roman classics, there's plenty here for everyone who loves books and reading - from the serious to the quirky. The latest post is about how recent screen adaptations of Jane Austen misunderstand her values. Lots of fascinating sidebar links too.

Sceptical Cook. Nicholas Clee is a book journalist and food writer who uses this blog to experiment with recipes and ingredients. He's good on the how and why (and why not) of cooking and is usefully frank about his failures. The successes of course sound delicious. Lots for us foodies to learn and enjoy. He's also the author of that invaluable little tome Don't Sweat the Aubergine: What Works in the Kitchen and Why.

A Derbyshire Mystery

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Last weekend I visited my Cheshire family and went with Mother and Dad for a beautiful walk in their beloved Derbyshire Peak District. We parked the car at Middleton (which features in the magnificent book The Hike by Don Shaw) and walked through beautiful Bradford Dale.

Mother & Dad on a clapper bridge over the River Bradford

In the hollow leading down to the River Bradford we came across this intriguing piece of sculpture. Can any blogger tell us anything about it? We'd love to know how something so unexpected came to be there!
Click to enlarge and read the words

Old House in Youlgrave

Along with Auntie Kath, we also visited Tatton Park near Knutsford

where the Japanese Garden is a particularly beautiful feature

A Delicious Summer Lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Home-made soup, home-made bread and fruit freshly picked from the garden. Ambrosia.

I made up the soup recipe. I sometimes tweak it, so the quantities are somewhat vague. I'm rather pleased with it as my attempts to devise recipes usually end up in the bin or as friend-and-family jokes - or both. Someone only has to say "lager soup", or "no-bake key lime pie" (the one that drooled out of the tin and oozed floorward over the edge of the table) and everybody grimaces and falls about.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup with Feta (5-6 servings)

You need enough red peppers (de-seeded and quartered) to cover the base of a 30cm by 23cm (12" by 9") roasting tin or similar, and enough medium-sized ripe tomatoes (halved) to cover the base of another, cheek by jowl. (OK, tomatoes and peppers haven't got cheeks or jowls but you know what I mean).

Tuck in 2 or 3 peeled, whole cloves of garlic per tin and sprinkle over enough olive oil to coat everything.

Roast at 200 deg C/180 deg C fan/Gas 6 for about 45 minutes-1hr, or until the peppers are starting to blacken and the tomatoes are soft. The toms might take a bit longer than the peps.

In a food processor (or a large saucepan using a stick blender), whizz the contents to smoothness with about a litre of good vegetable stock (I use Marigold as I don't often make my own) and a generous handful of torn basil leaves. After this, you can push the soup through a sieve to get rid of tomato seeds and any bits of skin but I don't bother - I'm too lazy, and besides I like something to chew in my soup.

Either way, heat the soup gently, crumbling in about 100g (4oz) of feta cheese, or more if you like. The cheese won't dissolve completely, so your soup will have pretty white specks in it which will add some more texture and delightful little explosions of flavour. Taste the soup, which should be quite thick. If the flavour isn't strong enough, you could add a tablespoon or so of tomato paste and/or some more cheese. Check the seasoning and it's ready to eat.

On a hot day, it's good cold. Oh, and it freezes well.

This soup cries out for some plain crusty peasant bread or even this version of soda bread which I've adapted from the traditional Irish version. I adore soda bread, not only because it's absurdly easy and quick to make and tastes divine, but also because it reminds me of my Saturday morning childhood visits to my Irish Grandad. In my memory, his sister, my Great-Aunt Hannah, who kept house for him and my Auntie Kath, is just bringing soda bread out of the oven when we arrive, ready to be cut and eaten with butter melting into the dense, nutty slices.

Oaty Wholemeal Soda Bread

275g (10oz) stoneground wholemeal flour
175g (6oz) medium oatmeal
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon salt
25g (1oz) butter
about 300ml (half a pint) buttermilk (or plain yogurt if you can't get buttermilk) to make a sticky but handle-able dough

Put the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix well to combine. Cut the butter into small pieces and work them into the flour and oat mix between your fingertips.

Add the buttermilk and stir thoroughly until everything is incorporated. If you need more liquid, you can add some milk.

Knead the dough for a couple of minutes on a floured surface, then shape it into a 20cm (8") round. Using a sharp knife, mark the round with a deep cross, place the loaf on a greased baking sheet and bake at 200 deg C/180 deg C fan/Gas 6 for about 30-35 minutes.

To test for doneness, tap the base of the loaf and if it sounds hollow, it's finished.

You can also bake it in a greased (even if non-stick) 2lb loaf tin but allow an extra 15 mins or so.

Cool on a wire rack. It's best eaten on the day it's made, but it freezes well and it also makes delicious toast!

Soda Bread cooling, watched over by Teddy Gummidge, a gift to Ian from our local hospice for agreeing to buy a weekly lottery ticket from them. He looks like A Bear Who Enjoys His Bread

And to finish, a dish of raspberries freshly plucked from these canes in our garden

In my opinion, raspberries are the most perfect of fruits in taste, texture and colour, and should be eaten just like this, unadorned and un-messed-about with. Even I can't spoil this dish!

Powers of Concentration

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:52:00 +0000

Here's a rather consoling article by Alan Massie in The Spectator. It's about the waning powers of concentration that dismay the ageing reader. I find it consoling for two reasons: firstly it confirms that I'm not the only one who suffers from it as I get older and secondly it offers a practical remedy. So it's not all downhill, then.

The Secret Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:58:00 +0000

No, not The Secret Garden of Frances Hodgson Burnett, but the Secret Garden at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal in Cheshire, to which we recently repaired.

Quarry Bank Mill, in the care of the National Trust, is one of several important industrial heritage sites in North West England.

Set beside the River Bollin, it was built as a cotton mill by Samuel Greg in 1784 and it still produces 10,000 yards of cloth a year from the various machines that have been lovingly restored for demonstrations to the public. The Greg family were notably humane toward their workers but, as the mill exhibition shows, working days were long, dirty, noisy and dangerous. The Gregs bought children from the workhouses to train as apprentices (you can visit The Apprentice House where they lived), giving them better conditions than the workhouse, with decent education and health care. Nevertheless, the whole set-up still seems shocking to us.

Right next door to the mill (a bit too close for comfort, I would have thought!), the Gregs built an elegant family house

overlooking the River Bollin, with a landscaped garden that ran along the side of the valley. It's this garden, long hidden from view, that The National Trust has spent some years restoring as the Gregs would have known it, and it was opened to the public in March this year. It still looks rather new and raw in places, but it will be interesting to visit again over the next few years as it "beds in":

Book Review: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:10:00 +0000

I'm not a big fan of crime novels and if I do read them it's usually for something other than the investigation of the crime (see, for example, my review of Ruso and the Demented Doctor by R. S. Downie).

However, I can't resist a real-life murder story, particularly if it happened in a prosperous middle-class Victorian household and opens up a Pandora's box of seething emotional turmoil concealed beneath a veneer of stuffy respectability. The names Florence Bravo, Adelaide Bartlett, Madeleine Smith, Florence Maybrick and of course Lizzie Borden, spring to mind. And if they're unsolved mysteries, so much the better.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, the investigation of a child-murder in 1860s Wiltshire, ticks all these boxes, except the last. But that doesn't stop Kate Summerscale from telling a fascinating story with all the skill of a practised crime novelist, carefully setting out the troubled family background, the personalities involved and the circumstances of the murder, before gradually revealing the clues so as to allow the reader to play detective along with the real article.

Not a great deal is known about Jonathan Whicher, one of Scotland Yard's Victorian best, and the author doesn't embroider the facts, preferring to concentrate on contemporary police practice and the urban working class from which this detective sprang. Jonathan Whicher's police career ended in failure (though his suspicions in the Road Hill House murder, otherwise known as the Constance Kent case, were later proved right), and his real legacy is a literary one. The Constance Kent case was the original country house murder, sensational in its own time, whilst Wilkie Collins's Sergeant Cuff and Dickens's Inspector Bucket were both inspired by the intriguingly shadowy figure of Inspector Whicher.

Because they involve the brutal deaths of real people, true-life murder stories I find rather a guilty pleasure, though I hope I'm not being disingenuous in claiming that the real satisfaction lies as much in what they reveal about life in the eras in which they're set as in solving the mysteries themselves (or, as in the case of Adelaide Bartlett and Jack the Ripper, not solving them).

In any case, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a perfect gem of the genre, worthy to sit alongside such classics such as Poison and Adelaide Bartlett, Death at the Priory and The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick.

The book has a website here.

Rules for Writing "Feminist Re-Imagings & Re-Imaginings" Historical Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:47:00 +0000

I hope you’re still paying attention because these Rules, by novelist India Edghill, originally published in the Historical Novel Society’s magazine Solander, are absolutely indispensable if you want to get ahead as a feminist historical novelist.

OFFICIAL RULES FOR WRITING “FEMINIST RE-IMAGINGS & RE-IMAGININGS” HISTORICAL NOVELS
by India Edghill

1. All heroines are goddess-worshippers. If necessary (i.e., they are the daughter of the Jewish High Priest of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem), they are secret goddess-worshippers.

2. To be Politically Correct and not Offend Anyone, all gods are one god and all goddesses are one goddess. This means you don’t need to research their actual names or attributes, which is a real time-saver. Just remember that the deity the heroine worships is called simply “The Goddess”. To remain PC, from time to time try to remember that The Goddess has a Consort, The God (a deity who bears about the same vital relationship to The Goddess as Ken does to Barbie).
2a. In pre-Christianity historical novels, the goddess is properly called “the Great Mother”, even when the goddess actually worshipped has a perfectly good name, such as Isis, Asherah, or Inanna.
2b. In post-Christianity historical novels, Jesus is properly referred to as “the White Christ”, not to be confused with either the Lone Ranger or the Man from Glad. He may, however, be confused with the Goddess’s Consort.
2b.1. In which case, the Virgin Mary may, if you like, be confused with the Great Mother.

3. All goddess worshippers are pacifistic, politically-correct, and ecologically sound.
3a. All cultures that worship goddesses treat women well. All monotheistic cultures treat women badly. This holds true even though it requires ignoring such facts as sati in India (which has lots of goddesses) and female infanticide in pre-Islamic Arabia (which had lots of goddesses).
3b. All monotheistic cultures deny women any rights. This holds true even though it’s the Holy Qu’ran that grants women a half share in their father’s inheritance, rather than the zero share they got under the pan-Arabic pantheism that preceded Islam.

4. All monotheists are Bad
4a. Although they are pantheists, the Ancient Achaeans are Bad because they worship a Sky Father and drive out the Earth Mother.
4b. Although they are pantheists, Vikings are Bad because they worship an All-Father.
4b.l. Unless the book is a Viking romance, in which case I suppose the All-Father and the Great Mother can elope to Las Vegas for the weekend.

5. There are only two religions: The Old Religion and The New Religion. One of them is Good and one is Bad. Unfortunately, which is which varies according to time period.
5a. In Dark Ages fiction, Paganism is properly called The Old Religion, and is a Good Thing. It is opposed to Christianity, which is called the New Religion, and is a Bad Thing.
5a.1. This seriously confuses those of us who grew up reading historical novels set in the Tudor period, during which the Old Religion was Catholicism (a Bad Thing), and the New Religion was Protestantism (a Good Thing)
5a.2. But in novels about the English Civil War, the Cavaliers are Catholic and Good and the Roundheads are Protestant and Bad.
5b. In historical novels set in the 20th century, NeoPaganism is called the Old Religion, even though its name means “new Paganism” and you’d think it would be called the New Religion and Christianity would now be called the Old Religion. Well, it isn’t.

6. Whatever the Old Religion is, people practicing it are burned at the stake. This holds true even in countries where witches were hanged and only heretics were burned

7. Important Note: When referring to the “witch craze” period, remember it is A KNOWN FACT that nine million women were burned. Ignore modem serious research indicating that the number was more like 500,000 over a 300-year period. Ignore the trial records, if necessary. (In fact, it’s always best to ignore any facts that contradict the PC view on anything). In addition:
7 a. All those accused of being witches were women, because it’s all about male hatred of women, really. Again, ignore the trial records, if necessary (including all those defendants named named Henry, John, WaIter, and Philip).

8. Anyone accused of witchcraft actually is a follower of the Old Religion (whatever it is this book). They are never a devout Christian who is falsely accused.

9. All goddess-worshippers are expert herbalists and midwives.

10. All Christian priests are hypocritical bigots.
10a. Friars, however, may be sympathetic, if they’re not actually goddess-worshippers in disguise.
10b. Nuns may be unworldly nature-lovers or bitter bigots. Abbesses, however, are always narrow-minded.
10c. Abbesses are always sexually frustrated, cherishing an unholy passion for 1) the convent priest, or 2) the nubile new postulant, or 3) Jesus.

11. All goddess-worshippers enjoy their menstrual period as a time of womanly empowerment that proves their Oneness with Nature. No woman ever suffers cramps, migraines, nausea, bloating, or uncontrollable mood swings during her womanly “moon cycle”.

12. When the Bible is quoted to prove woman’s Subjugation to Man and her Inherent Vice, the quote will always be from the King James version, even though that translation dates from 1611 and your book is set in 1250.
12a. Whatever the book’s historical period, the patriarchal monotheistic villains will refer to Satan and the Devil, whether the concept’s been invented yet or not.

13. All lesbians are Good, because they prove the True Sisterhood of All Women. Unless the lesbian is an Abbess (see 10c above), when she’s merely Repressed and Embittered. There may or may not be a gay guy; if there is, he is the only Nice Man in the book. All heterosexual men beat their wives. Remember that:
13a. All goddess-worshippers are violently tolerant of all varieties of sexual behavior.
13b. All Christians are violently intolerant of any variety of sexual behavior.

14. No man in a feministly-reimaged historical novel ever does anything worthwhile.
14a. All worthwhile achievements were really done by goddess-worshipping women.
14b. If the man is an historical figure who is well-documented as having definitely done something, the idea was really given to the great man by a goddess-worshipping woman.
14b.1. Unless he stole the idea from a GWW.
14b.2. Unless the accomplishment is a new weapon. All weapons are invented by men.

15. No heroine in a feministly-reimaged historical novel ever does anything bad, because women are inherently gentle and nurturing, dedicated to peace, harmony, the Great Chain of Being, Oneness, and the Circle of Life.
15a. This is why you probably won’t see feministly-reimaged historical novels about
i. Catherine de Medici or
ii. The Empress Wu or
iii. Ranavalona of Madagascar
anytime soon.

India Edghill’s novels include Wisdom’s Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba, and Queenmaker: A Novel of King David's Queen.

Our England is a garden...

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Cuthbertson) — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:03:00 +0000

You'd expect a post with such a title* to have Kipling connections but really it's about Kent, which is known as the Garden of England for its bountiful hops and fruit orchards. In particular it's about this exquisite medieval manor house near Sevenoaks where we spent a happy day:

*first line of The Glory of the Garden

Ightham Mote

Ightham Mote (pronounced Item: I asked) has a long and complicated history, beginning in the mid-14th century. There are Tudor, Jacobean and Victorian additions and the furnished rooms reflect this, from the medieval and Tudor chapels (the latter having a unique barrel-vaulted ceiling with painted panels) to early 20th-century bedrooms and library. Oh, and a moat. And a Grade 1 listed half-timbered dog kennel which you can see in the courtyard in one of the photos above. It's owned by the National Trust which spent 15 years and £10 million restoring it and who also look after its estate of several hundred acres.

After looking round the house and delightful gardens, we took a three-mile walk around the estate woodlands and lanes. The first half of the walk regaled us with a Wordsworthian profusion of wild flowers, some of which I know, others I'm guessing at after squinting in my little pocket book of wild flowers. I'd love to hear from people who know more about wild flowers than I do! That's probably most people.

Bugle?

Lesser Celandine

Ransoms (Wild Garlic)

Germander Speedwell

Dog Violet

Wood Anemone

Yellow Pimpernel

Lady's Smock (Cuckoo Flower): thanks to Carla for identifying

Ground Ivy or Bugle?

Greater Stitchwort?

Yellow Archangel

Wood Spurge

Red Campion?

May Blossom

On the second half of the walk, the views over the Kentish Weald (below and the blog header) in beautiful spring sunshine were breathtaking. My camera scarcely does them justice):