The Sacra Infermeria: Malta. #Malta #Valetta #Maltese Hospitals.

The Sacra Infermeria:

The Holy Infirmary. Malta.

By Kathryn Gauci

The Sacra Infermeria from the Entrance Fort Elmo

Many visitors to Malta these days visit The Malta Experience at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, situated opposite Fort Elmo in Valletta, unaware that this building, which overlooks the Grand Harbour, once housed the most important hospital in the Mediterranean – the Sacra Infermeria – built by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. I visited this remarkable place one year ago, and was disappointed to see that most people only went for the Malta Experience film portraying the island's history, yet only a handful chose to do the second tour of what was once described in the 17th Century, as the best hospital in Europe,

The hospital was built in 1574 by Grand Master Jean de la Cassiere (1572-82) after the previous great Knight, Jean de la Valette, embarked on building Valletta, making it the capital of Malta after defeating the Ottomans in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565

Grand Master Jean de la Cassiere

The Knights of the Order of Saint John, or Knights Hospitallers as they are also known, were a Catholic military order founded in the 12th-century in Jerusalem and were known for their care of sick and injured Christian pilgrims. By the time of the success of the First Crusade in 1099, the Hospital of St John was already well-known among pilgrims and regarded as a separate organisation from the monastery of St. Mary. The brothers at the hospital saw it as their duty to provide the best possible treatment to the poor. The monastic Hospitaller Order was formally created when the Pope issued a papal decree, Pie postulatio voluntat, on 15 February 1113 to the head of the Hospital of St John, Blessed Gerard de Martiques.

Pie Postulatio Voluntatis

The document is in the National Library in Valletta

The Pope subordinated the hospital to his authority and exempted it from paying tithes on the lands it owned. He also gave the right to its professed brothers to elect their own master and placed several other hospitals and hospices in southern Italy under the governance of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, as they were located at port cities from which pilgrims travelled to the Holy Land. The Knights Hospitallers were in Jerusalem until 1291, and then moved to Cyprus (1302–1310) and afterwards to the island of Rhodes (1310–1522). After an attempt to defend themselves against Suleiman the Magnificent’s Ottoman Forces, a siege that lasted six months, the Knights were allowed to go freely to Malta in 1530. There, they were administered as a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily and became rich through trade and what was deemed a lucrative profession of the day – becoming fine corsairs, or pirates. Yet at their heart was a philosophy to care for the sick and wounded of all religions including their Muslim captives.

Entrance from street level to the infirmary.

The Great Ward

The Sacre Infermeria has 6 levels and the first level, once used for the poor, is now used for events such as CHOGM ‘67, the Malta Regatta Dinner, and other prestigious events. Halfway down this room, there is a ramp where the poor entered. The Old Ward was later extended during the years 1660 to 1666 under the rule of the Cotoners. During this time, arches were spaced between the beds. Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner (1663-80) also founded the School of Anatomy and Surgery here; the forerunner of the Medical School of the University of Malta. The Great Ward is 155 metres long by 10 1/2 metres wide and could house 300 single beds and 914 patients with each bed allowing for 3-4 people. Interestingly, the rich still received the same service, True to their faith, no one of another faith was turned away. There was also the Phalangue, an irregularly shaped section of the infirmary reserved for patients suffering from contagious or venereal diseases. Some with contagious illnesses were later sent elsewhere, usually to the area in Marsamxett Harbour which was primitive and provided little accommodation and comfort, although the area was used when plague afflicted Malta in the first half of the seventeenth century. Quarantine was forty days, representing the forty days of Jesus in the desert.

Valletta in 1801. The hospital can be seen next to St Elmo's Fort

It should be noted that fear of contagious diseases was rife at the time. Passengers and goods arriving on ships, even with a clean bill of health, were required to remain under observation for a short period of quarantine. The site selected was very convenient. It was on the south side of the new city below the Castille bastion and the Lower Barracca, along the Valletta wharf of the Grand Harbour. There was a row of stores and warehouses, above which was residential accommodation for passengers and crew kept under observation. A special loggia was also built for the benefit of distinguished passengers. A few yards away from the isolation quarter a row of bollards formed a barrier to keep away unauthorised persons from entering the quarantine. That barrier gave rise to the name by which the wharf is now known - "Il-Barriera". From here they could safely approach the hospital.

Five rooms were specifically sectioned off for venereal disease patients needing mercury inunctions. The Great Magazine Ward consisting of 109 beds for sailors and soldiers of the Order, as well as galley-slaves was located in the basement of the infirmary. On the second basement level, was the Magazine Ward with 36 beds for the mentally ill.

To clean the wounds, vinegar was used. Sea salt and honey were also used for infections as an antiseptic. It is said that kidney stones could be removed safely within a matter of minutes and amputations were swiftly dealt with by the sword.

For all this goodness, women were not admitted. If a woman was rich, a doctor would personally visit her home. For all other women, a cross was painted on the patient’s door and a nun would pay her a visit. Normally all nuns acquired some medical education. Women were not even allowed to visit their male relatives at the hospital.

The garden at St Catherine's Monastery

In the Great Ward, one can still see ventilation holes along the wall facing the inner walled garden, which is where the auditorium for the Malta Experience now stands. In its time, the garden would have been large and built after the style of Arab gardens, containing citrus fruits and many medicinal herbs. The scent would have been wonderful. Such gardens still exist in Malta but on a smaller scale. The Monastery of St Catherine’s is one of them. It shows that they processed their own rose and orange water and had an abundance of honey.

Towards the closing stages of the 18th century, there was a general decline in the Order. Life had changed and the Knights of St. John were losing their raison d'être. Liberal ideas were spreading throughout Europe and to make matters worse, the French Revolution led to all the rich estates of the French langues being confiscated, pushing the Knights to the brink of bankruptcy. This decay was reflected in the administration of the Sacra Infermeria, where conditions were vastly different from those of its former days. In 1786, the noted English philanthropist John Howard, visited Malta's hospitals and recorded his impressions in a book titled 'An Account of the Principal Lazzarettos in Europe'. His account of what he saw in Malta was anything but flattering and is one of the first indications of the decline of the Order's hospital. According to his report, doctors doing their rounds were forced to press a handkerchief to their faces to ward off the unbearable stench.

When the hospital was used as a garrison, horses were tethered to the arches. Note the iron ring.

The building was used by the British Military Forces as the Garrison Hospital (1800-1920) At the time, British soldiers suffered an outbreak of what was called the Malta fever. The disease caused undulant fever in men and abortion in goats. It is transmitted by goat milk. In 1886, the medical facility became well known when Major-General Sir David Bruce, (29 May 1855 – 27 November 1931), became chairman of the Malta Fever Commission that investigated the deadly disease, by which he identified a specific bacterium as the cause. Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Scottish parents, engineer David Bruce and his wife Jane Russell Hamilton, who had immigrated to Australia in the gold rush of 1850. He returned with his family to Scotland at the age of five. Sir David discovered the bacterium, now called Brucella, in 1887 along with the bacterium and the disease it caused. Brucellosis, together with the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei, are named in his honour.

During WWII, the building suffered severe bomb damage but was later restored.

David Bruce

The members of the Mediterranean Fever Commission

The Streets of St Andrews by V.E.H. Masters

 St Andrews in Scotland is known worldwide as the home of golf as well as for its famous university where Prince William met Catherine – but it's also a town with a lot of history.

My first historical novel, The Castilians, closely follows the long and dramatic siege of St Andrews Castle in 1546-7. Since St Andrews is my home town, I had a very clear picture of the streets my characters walked and the destruction wrought by the siege, since some of it is still visible almost five hundred years later.

Pictured above are the remains of Blackfriars Chapel damaged by the castilians – which is what the men who took the castle, killed its cardinal and held it for the next fourteen months called themselves – and hence the title of my book. Blackfriars sits in the grounds of my old school and I walked by it every day without a second glance.

St Andrews is so named because bones purporting to be from the apostle Saint Andrew once rested here. The town was a centre of pilgrimage from the 1100s with pilgrims coming from as far away as Russia, whose patron saint the apostle was.

A certificate of pilgrimage to St Andrews was found in France a few years ago. This particular pilgrim had been required to undertake the journey as a penance for killing someone, as well as making recompense to the man's family. 

Pilgrims travelled in groups for safety. They arrived by sea, usually further down the Fife coast and walked the last twenty or so miles to St Andrews. The townsfolk were understandably fearful of pilgrims bringing the plague so pilgrims were held in quarantine outside the city boundaries and permitted entry through a controlled pilgrim's gate.

The cathedral, once the largest in Scotland, was built in the 1100s. God was said not to have looked favourably upon this over grand edifice when the west end was blown down in a storm in 1270 and the building partly destroyed by fire in 1378.

St Andrews is a very early example of town planning built with its main streets fanning out from the cathedral, as pictured below in the Geddy Map of 1580 (with permission of the National Library of Scotland). Those streets, wide and straight, were laid out to facilitate the processions for the many holy days of the Catholic calendar. These would include carrying the reliquary containing the bones of Saint Andrew, presumably on Saint Andrew's Day 30th November and performances of the mystery plays. 

When Mary of Guise, mother to Mary Queen of Scots, arrived from France her first meeting with her new husband, James V, was in St Andrews. Forty days of jousting, plays and street pageants followed which must have been hugely exciting for the folk of the town.

The siege of the castle took place only eight years later. James V was already dead and Mary Queen of Scots, aged four in 1546, was now queen. The siege was ostensibly because Cardinal Beaton, Scotland's most powerful man, had the Protestant preacher George Wishart burnt at the stake outside the castle while he, and the people of the town, watched. A few months later a group of disaffected Protestant  lairds crept into the castle disguised as stone masons. They killed the cardinal and hung his naked body from the parapet so the townsfolk were in no doubt who now controlled the castle.

Inevitably the siege was not only about religious differences. Henry VIII of England was funding them as one amid many tactics to force agreement to the marriage of wee Queen Mary to his son Edward. The castilians expected Henry to send a relief force to rescue them but he did not, although he did send funds and supplies by sea.

The government troops tried to break the siege by tunnelling in but the castilians were wise to siege warfare and they mined out to meet them. The purpose of the tunnel was to set explosives and undermine the curtain wall which the troops were prevented from doing. Both sides were tunnelling through rock which is why one of the best preserved mine and counter mines to be found in Europe can still be visited in St Andrews.

Eventually Scotland's auld alliance with France was called upon. The French galleys bombarded the castle from the sea unsuccessfully however they had among them a master tactician in Leon Strozzi, Catherine de Medici's cousin. He ordered the dismantling of St Salvator's (pictured below) then wooden spire and had cannon hauled up to the top of its tower and one of the cathedral towers. The resulting bombardment quickly ended the siege.

In 1559 John Knox was preaching in St Andrews and incited the congregation to such a pitch that they destroyed all the imagery in the church, smashed the stained glass windows, toppled the saints from their pedestals and continued on to the cathedral, which they looted. Other towns followed and Scotland became a Protestant country. St Andrews, which had been Scotland's ecclesiastical centre as well as home to the country's first university, gradually fell into decline. Rubbish piled high in the streets and the town became so rundown there was even a proposal that the university be re-sited to Perth.

Both castle and cathedral soon fell into ruin and were systematically quarried for several hundred years. The good citizens of the town used the stone to build and repair houses and to replace the wooden piers at the harbour with stone.

Eventually St Andrews was re-purposed as the home of golf. Golf had been banned by James II in 1457 because he observed the young men were playing it rather than practising archery. James IV was a keen golfer and re-instated the game and his granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots played golf too.

V.E.H Masters is the award winning author of the best selling Seton Chronicles. The first book in series The Castilians tells the story of the siege of St Andrews Castle in 1546. You can find out more at her website https://vehmasters.com/where there are three short stories available for free to download.

Born Out of Wedlock, by Carol Drinkwater

 

I am a week away from publication of my latest novel, ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE. 3rd July 2025. It is always an exciting as well as a nerve-racking time. 

A broad synopsis of what the novel is about: a British couple, Celia and Dominic, are living on a vineyard in the south of France. A vineyard that was inherited by Celia when her father died a decade earlier. Celia has decided to throw a huge summer party to celebrate the growing success she and her husband are making of their wine production. A few days before the big August bank holiday weekend when the party will be in full swing, Celia receives a forwarded letter from a man, David Hawksmith, who claims to be her son; the son she gave up at birth in 1977. David's existence is the outcome of a traumatic incident from Celia's past that she has never spoken about, not even to Dominic. Celia invites David to the party. Dominic graciously welcomes him (and David's unexpected and rather curious travelling companion) even though he has his doubts about the veracity of David's claims.

The book has elements of mystery but, ultimately, it is a story of  Betrayal and Belonging set against a backdrop of all the glorious ingredients - food, sunshine, scents etc - of living along the Mediterranean coast in the south of France. 

The Irish Times, in a recent Q and A, asked me whether the fact that I don't have children of my own had been the seed, the inspiration, for the novel. Giving up a child born out of wedlock is a very big issue in Ireland. Only two weeks ago, a dig began in search of the bodies of babies whose mothers were obliged to give up their "illegitimate" offspring during the last century.

https://news.sky.com/story/opening-the-pit-dig-for-remains-of-800-infants-at-former-mother-and-baby-home-in-ireland-begins-13384111?fbclid=IwY2xjawK8yglleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETB5RzI4SXF3eFBab042VmNyAR7960m6fL8n0J55ru2FjHnpkPSRQPp9TKphdWrgRFnD2zV0qQ8HeqYtXUjj6A_aem__xN9uAsQA5bsM7CkprKizA

I have written a little about this subject before in one of my earlier History Girls blogs. Via the link below you will read that Ireland's right to abortion was not made legal until 2018.

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/search?q=carol+Drinkwater+Irish+childhood

Abortion was made legal in Britain on 27th October 1967, and came into effect on 27th April 1968. In theory, this means that Celia, the leading character in ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE, could have legitimately terminated her pregnancy, but, for reasons  revealed in the novel, she did not.

The choices for young pregnant women before the late sixties in Britain were: a termination of the pregnancy (frequently a risky abortion, a backstreet illegal business), a hasty marriage, for some a shotgun wedding, or give up the child at birth for adoption.

In my novel, the young Celia gives birth to her son and, four days later, the child is taken from her for adoption. All she knows about the boy is the Christian name she has chosen for him, David.

Ghosts from the past. 

I am fascinated by secrets that step out of the shadows of our own lives and others' lives. The lives of those close to us. My mother was expecting me when she married my father in October 1947. I often joke about the fact that I was with them on their honeymoon in Devon. However, this was a fact I only discovered, by accident, when I was about ten or eleven. I found a stash of their honeymoon pics and calculated the dates! The subject had never been spoken about and when I confronted my parents with the question, they (both Catholics) were a little sheepish, but did not deny the fact. Why should they? I have, since that discovery, perceived my conception as one fired by love and passion. Would they have married if Mummy had not been pregnant with me? I believe they would, but who can say? The choice they made was to keep the baby, marry and start a family.

I love to be by the sea - I live overlooking the Mediterranean. I crave its rhythms and I have asked myself whether this has anything to do with the fact that my parents were happy on their honeymoon. A happiness that was tested in a relationship that was tumultuous even though they stayed together all their lives and my mother was deeply committed to her marriage. She loved my father loyally till the day he died, forty-six years later. Her face and her demeanour at his deathbed I will never forget. 

Now that both my parents are gone, I deeply regret all the questions I never asked. How did Mummy feel the moment she discovered she was pregnant; was she frightened, elated, guilty? What were the circumstances when she discussed her situation with Daddy? What was his response: "Let's get married, Phil" ... Was his willingness to tie the knot instantaneous? I know that they had been expecting a boy and had decided to Christian me Charles!

The morning the newly-weds, my parents, were boarding the luxurious Devon Belle train at Waterloo station heading to Ilfracombe in north Devon for their honeymoon, my father discovered that he had won the Football Pools. His win was the staggering sum of almost one hundred pounds. It was a fair fortune in those years of austerity after WWII. Mummy told me some years later that it felt as though their marriage had been blessed. It was all their wedding presents rolled into one. As an Irish country girl who had relocated to London during WWII to train as a nurse, she was far from home and her family. The wedding was a very quiet affair with only my father's brother and my mother's younger sister in attendance, as far as I am aware. 

The Devon Belle was a luxury passenger train which only began service in June 1947 so my parents would have been early travellers. I wonder, before his pools win, how my father, so soon home from life in the RAF entertaining the wartime troops in Africa, could have afforded to splash out on such a treat. But it does seem to suggest that he was celebrating their union, that he wanted to give my mother, pregnant with their first child, the best that was on offer. A luxurious and memorable debut to the life ahead of them together in post-war London.

Last week I was in London recording ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE for audio. Reading the novel as an actress is quite another eye to when I am working on the text as a writer. This time, as I read, a period from my own teenage years came flooding back to me. Bromley in Kent, in England in the early 60s, a little earlier than my principal character, Celia's teenage years in a small provincial town outside Bristol. Without realising it, subconsciously, I must have taken from my own experiences of this era and interwoven it into Celia's story in the novel. 

When I was a late teenage girl, the battle to legalise abortion was underway. David Steel, Liberal MP, later leader of the Liberal Party, was responsible for introducing as a Private member's bill, the Abortion Act 1967. Fortunately, I had no need of the liberating results of this act once passed. Even so, as a teenage girl growing up, educated at a rather strict Irish convent, the waves of such a progressive bill would have been in the news and in debates all around me. As well, I must have had some awareness of the trials and terrors for young unmarried women who found themselves "in trouble" in the days before abortion was an available choice for them.

The episode that came flooding back to me as I was recording my novel last week was of a completely forgotten incident. It was the case of R., a girl in my class at the convent. We both would have been about fifteen at the time. R. discovered that she was pregnant. In our middle-class, Catholic-educated circles, this was completely unheard of and very shocking. How did R. deal with her situation? She said nothing, packed a bag and just disappeared. It was a scandal. Her parents, of course, were fraught with worry. I have a clear image of her mother and father paying a visit to our house one evening after school. We were all gathered in the sitting room, which in itself was rare. The white and gold-flecked three-piece suite was usually covered in dust sheets to keep it clean and protected from the light. The room was rarely used. Mummy kept it immaculate for "special occasions". Well, this must have been deemed a special occasion. I sat in a corner. Our guests remained standing. R.'s exceedingly tall mother was chain-smoking. (Smoking in Mummy's pristine sitting room!) She was clutching a small ashtray shaped like a shell in the palm of one hand. The reason for the gathering was information. "We need to hear what Carol knows about R. Her movements, her companions, before she fled." 

Or had she been kidnapped, abducted, murdered? Were any of these scenarios ever considered? I don't remember. Certainly the police had been called in and a search for R. had been set in motion. It wasn't known at this stage that R. had gone of her own volition nor that she was pregnant. I had no information to share with the grieving adults towering over me. R. had not confided in me - we weren't that close - and I had not overheard any chatter in the classrooms. I could shed no light on the crisis. R's mother was in tears as they exited our house. I felt so bad about their situation that I was almost inclined to run after them, invent a tale, but I knew better than to create false leads. 

It was at least another three weeks before R. was eventually tracked down, It was then her parents discovered that their daughter was pregnant. This was two or three years before David Steel's Abortion bill. R. was sent away somewhere unknown to me to give birth to the child who was then immediately handed over for adoption. My classmate never returned to the convent. She became a girl from our childhood whose story was not spoken aloud. Her parents split up, as I remember. Tragedy had befallen the family.

R. was a young woman shamed. From there on she and the "unsavoury business" was only spoken of in whispers.

What happened to R.'s child, her son? Did she and he ever make contact, did they find one another at some point later in their lives? I have no idea. I sincerely hope that there was some kind of happy ending to the tale.

In ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE, Celia's son, David, contacts her out of the blue. A forty-seven-year-old man claiming to be the son she gave up at birth comes knocking, or rather, sends a letter requesting a meeting ... How does a mother respond? Invite the stranger into your life, welcome him as long lost kin ... Or deny his existence? Refuse to see him?

Earlier this year, I was honoured to be one of the two judges for the very prestigious Listowel Literary Festival's 'Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.'  Settling on our overall winner was very tough; the standard of fiction being published by Irish writers right now is mesmerisingly good. The prize went to Niall William's, Time of the Child. Williams' story is set during the season of Advent in the year of 1962 in a small (fictional) village over on the west coast of Ireland. An abandoned baby is found in the churchyard and taken in by the local doctor and his unmarried youngest daughter ... The prose is luminous and the story, compassionate and heart-wrenching.

Coincidentally, having read fifty novels for the Kerry Prize, I am now reading another Irish novel, also delicately crafted. The Boy From the Sea from debut novelist, Garrett Carr. It is 1973. A baby is found in a barrel off the shore of a small coastal Atlantic town in Ireland. A local family adopts the boy ... Beautifully written, full of wry humour.

Every conception offers up the possibility of an untold story; a world of choices, of future bondings or terminations. Of aspirations and dreams dashed or built, of love washed up on unexpected shores. 

I beg to be forgiven for placing my novel on the same page as the very fine works of Williams and Carr. These are three very different stories. What they have in common is that each centres on the ripples and (tidal) waves caused by the arrival of a boy born out of wedlock. Interestingly, the other two are both written by male authors.

I hope you will enjoy ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE. It is receiving some splendid feed back. It is a LoveReading Book of the Month for July. Available at all good bookstores and on Amazon etc. If you are outside the UK, Blackwells will have it in stock and they ship worldwide for free. Here is the link:

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/One-Summer-in-Provence-by-Carol-Drinkwater/9781805462767

Have a wonderful summer. If you happen to be in Britain, Ireland or France during July, here, above, are a few of the events I will be talking at. It would be lovely to see you at one or other of them.

Enjoy your summer reading.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

My Life as a Historical Novel by Miranda Miller

 

This is the cover of my ninth novel, When I Was, which has just been published by Barbican Press.  I wrote this novel about growing up in London in the 1950s from memory. Strangely, I found myself unable to write about myself in the first person, although I’ve written about other people – the artists Richard Dadd and Angelica Kauffman, for instance – using “I’ and love the vividness of first person narratives. Yet I found that I couldn’t write in the first person about my own childhood, because as soon as I excavated behind my memories, I found other people there and had to attempt to see their points of view.

I’m a member of the  Historical Novel Society, so I looked up their definition of historical fiction: a novel that must be either written at least fifty years after the events it depicts. This made me feel very old (I was born in 1950) but also relieved, because throughout my career as a writer I’ve been told by agents and publishers that my novels don’t fit into any particular genre or category. Recently, I’m happy to see that borders between these territories are dissolving.

 

Timothy Hyman R A, Painting the Family 2003, Collection of David Smith.

This novel has a long history. Twenty years ago, when I first saw this painting by my late beloved brother Tim, I’d just moved back to London, where I grew up, from Oxford. Three of the people in the painting were dead and I was living in a flat very close to the flat in St John’s Wood where I lived from the ages of seven to ten. This combination of circumstances stirred up a tsunami of memories and I started to write a novel about my childhood, abandoning the timeslip novel I’d been working on, Nina in Utopia (Peter Owen 2010).

For over a year I feverishly wrote a novel about my life up to the age of seventeen I called (rather unoriginally) Family Portrait. After writing five novels with characters who were invented, I was trying to write autobiographically. It felt quite unlike my other novels: visceral, painful, embarrassing. I had to write it - yet I wondered if anybody would be interested in this unfashionably privileged family bumbling through the 1950s. When I sent it to my ex-agent he confirmed my doubts; he didn’t like it enough to send it out to publishers, so I returned to my timeslip story about nineteenth century Nina who finds herself in 21^st century London – a story, with a plot and characters who were invented.

The novel about my family languished on my computer until lockdown, that strange period when we all had too much time on our hands. I reread it and decided that although it was too long and one-sided, I might be able to rewrite it as a shorter, more balanced novel. Perhaps I’d mellowed in the years in between, I’d come to see that my parents did their best and long conversations with my brothers Tim and Nicky brought new dimensions to that lost world.

All this was in my head as I wrote When I Was. At the end of the novel Viola, my alter ego, is ten. Many people have been surprised that I have enough memories of my early years to fill a book. Actually, I have many more but chose the ones that were most alive. Perhaps novelists are people who have abnormally long emotional memories? One of the saddest things about getting older is watching dear friends lose their memories so that I can no longer have those comforting conversations that begin: “Do you remember…” They don’t, but I do, and it becomes harder to be sure what really did happen. A memory is altered as soon as you talk about it or write it down; it freezes, becoming a still photograph instead of a  chaotic movie, losing intensity rather as ancient Roman frescoes fade as soon as they are exposed to oxygen. 

Martin and Mike at Barbican Press wanted to use an actual photograph of my childhood for the cover of this novel. My parents were inept photographers in the days of Kodak box cameras and the few family photos that have survived are tiny, faded and black and white. This one was taken by a professional photographer at a children’s party at the Hungaria restaurant in Lower Regent Street. My parents had been loyal customers since the war, when the restaurant advertised itself enticingly as being “Bomb-proof. Splinter-proof. Blast-proof Gas-proof and BOREDOM PROOF.” 

I’m the sulky, dark little girl sitting behind my friend Claire, who seems to be enjoying the party more than me. I didn’t start to enjoy parties until I was about thirty. We are six years old and live next door to each other in Aberdare Gardens, near Swiss Cottage. My parents and their four children retreated to a small flat there after trustees abruptly withdrew their financial support and forced them to move from an enormous house in Chelsea. I’m the only member of my family who has not been devastated by this sudden fall; I love playing with Claire and digging in the back garden for the treasure my family seems to have lost.  I’m happy to share a room with my parents and I’m delighted that they keep keep forgetting to send me to school. 

 

www.mirandamiller.info             

 

The Whalebone Theatre, by Joanna Quinn - Sue Purkiss

 

I first read The Whalebone Theatre a couple of years ago. Lots of people had enjoyed it, and I did too, but it probably suffered a bit from something akin to 'tall poppy syndrome': do you know what I mean? It's when you hear so many good things about a book/film/place that when you eventually read it/see it/visit it, there's no way it can live up to all those high expectations. Also, I read very quickly, and I think I probably raced through it for the story and didn't accord it the time and attention it so richly deserved.

So I'm glad that Penny Dolan (another History Girl) mentioned earlier this week that she had read it recently, and, already having it on my Kindle, and being in search of a book to read while away on holiday, I was able to dive straight into it.

Reader, I'm so glad I did. It is a remarkable book. Of course, that's already established - it's been a huge best-seller - but it's one thing people telling you a book is good, and quite another to find it out for yourself.

In case you haven't come across it, it's a family saga, a little bit in the vein of Elizabeth Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, in that it tells the story of the fortunes of a well-to-do (to start off with) family, starting just after the end of the first world war, and finishing after the second. In particular, it focuses on Cristabel, a small child at the beginning, a grown woman by the end. But no character is neglected: each is gradually revealed in all his/her complexity - all reveal hidden depths, or indeed levels of shallowness. 

And because of the range of characters, Joanna Quinn is able to explore what is happening on both the national and international stages, in what seems like a perfectly believable and natural way. Old family friend Colonel Perry is key in this. He is a significant figure in one of the intelligence organisations, so he knows what's going on, and is also able to propel some of the other characters into particularly interesting places - notably, into wartime France. He's cool and perceptive, and clearly very fond of the Seagrave family - an enigmatic, pivotal character, though at first he seems like a bit of a bystander.

The writing is subtle and beautiful. I loved the way the author described the slowly unfolding relationship between Flossie, Cristabel's younger half-sister, and a German prisoner of war. They are two gentle characters, and theirs is not a dramatic affair, but it's a very moving one. And the descriptions of the Dorset landscape are simply gorgeous. (I'm sorry for not quoting in illustration of this, but useful as Kindle is, it doesn't easily lend itself to finding quotes.)

But it's not all gentle. Cristabel is a wild creature, prickly and tough: not surprisingly as her mother died at her birth, and her stepmother, Rosalind, ignores her as much as she can. The last section of the book, when she becomes an SOE agent in France, is very powerful - particularly towards the end, when she is searching for her beloved brother, Digby, in Paris, as the allies are marching to liberate the city. There were tears, I must confess, and it's a while since a book has made me cry.

Apart from this being a really good read and a beautifully written book, though, it made me think how valuable fiction can be in shining a spotlight (appropriate: I haven't mentioned about Cristabel's interest in the theatre) on historical events. Because history isn't just about the figures who set great events in motion: it's also about the countless millions of ordinary people who are affected - and often suffer - as a result. People sometimes ask writers which book they would like to have written: well, I would most certainly love to have written this one.

This week's post

 The History Girls regret there is no new post this week, due to illness. Normal service will be resumed next Friday, 13th June.

Birds of Blackfriars - Michelle Lovric

I love birds and have lived within chirping distance of Blackfriars Bridge for two decades. Yet I only quite recently realized that it’s a twitcher’s paradise.

From the road, you’d never suspect it. You have to lean over the parapet to see the full, strange spectacle. Each column, east and west, is adorned with life-size sculptures of sea and river birds rendered in Portland Stone. Many beaks and wings are sadly eroded by the uncontrolled emissions of vessels on the Thames (a long and interesting story for another time). But some of the birds are still magnificent and even magnificently eccentric.

The bridge, the second on this site, was designed by Joseph Cubitt. (Cubitt also built the first Blackfriars Rail Bridge, now visible only in attractive iron columns poking out of the water.)

The sculptures are the work of John Birnie Philip (1824 – 1875). a London-born sculptor who worked extensively for the architect George Gilbert Scott. Philip’s daughter Beatrix married James McNeill Whistler in 1888.

The bridge was opened by Queen Victoria in November 1869, and it is said that members of the public booed her. This may have been because many homes were demolished to create the run-up to the bridge. Or it may have been the public expressing their anger at her disappearance from public view in the previous eight years, following the death of her husband Prince Albert.

The sculpted birds, at least, deserved a better reception. They are very hard to photograph, and I’m a poor photographer at the best of times, but a few images follow to give you an idea of their charms. Probably the best way to photograph them would be from the water below ... but the Thames, with its six metre tides, is not a place where that can safely be accomplished. Filming on the river is in any case controlled by the Port of London Authority ...

There birds on the west side are fresh-water creatures. Those on the east, facing towards the estuary, are sea-birds. One explanation for this choice is that Blackfriars was the place where the river turned from salt to sweet. However, technically that is a moveable feast depending on freshwater flows from the west and tides from the east.

Going south to north on the west side of the bridge, you’ll see herons, swans with waterlilies, crows.

And on east side, going north to south, there are black back gulls, or albatrosses, Canada and other kinds of geese.

And here are a few images. I urge you to lean carefully over the parapet next time you find yourself on the bridge. It really is a delightful sight.

This video gives a few more glimpses of the birds: Secrets of Blackfriars Bridge - YouTube

Michelle Lovric’s website is www.michellelovric.com