The Audacity of the Historical Novelist by Sheena Wilkinson

When I describe myself as a historical novelist, what do I really mean? Historical fiction is a such a broad term. I’ve written stories set in the past which don’t focus on actual historical events but instead bring to life the daily realities of the era (for example, my Fernside books), and stories about ordinary (fictional) people’s lives being affected by real historical events, such as my Irish trilogy; Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau and Miss McVey Takes Charge).

My Irish Trilogy (1916-1921) 

What I have not (yet) had the courage -- or the audacity -- to tackle is what many people consider ‘serious’ historical fiction, which takes as its central characters actual historical figures (for example, Wolf Hall or Hamnet) or stories which involve the interplay between real and fictional characters, for example, Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. This is partly because I prefer making things up; partly because I balk at the research involved – I LOVE research but not to that extent; partly because I haven’t (yet) come across a real figure that I would want to write a whole novel about. 

My 1930s novels 

But mainly because, however confident I might be in my research of the facts, once you turn a ‘real’ person into a character in a novel, they become a fictional construct. And in today’s post-truth climate, maybe I am chary of misrepresenting the past. 

 

Only occasionally have I written about real historical people. For example, in Miss McVey Takes Charge, the main characters become embroiled in the real-life Battle of Holbeck Moor, an anti-fascist demonstration in Leeds in 1936 and I describe Sir Oswald Mosley, based on contemporary newspaper reports and newsreels. This was straightforward enough: the events of the day were not so widely documented as to give me an embarrassment of material, but well enough to give me the facts I needed. 

 

This was enough to help me place my fictional characters in the scene: 

But we see Mosley here from a distance, and it is hardly stretching historical truth for me to add the authorial description of ‘arrogant’ to the leader of the British Union of Fascists. 

 

Only once have I had the audacity to ascribe a made-up opinion to a historical figure. Here’s the context and the justification. In Star by Star (2017), all the characters are fictional, and their lives are deeply affected by World War 1; the 1918 flu pandemic and the 1918 general election. When real-life suffragist, socialist and republican Winifred Carney stands for election in East Belfast, a seat she had no chance of winning, Stella, for whom Carney is a heroine, is excited. She is even more thrilled to realise that Rose, another fictional character, knew and liked Winifred Carney:  

 

Some of the people in the Republican cause weren’t happy when I married Charlie – him having fought for the King, but Winnie stood by me. She said the cause of labour was bigger than that. 

 

As Carney herself, in 1928, married a Protestant Somme veteran, I felt this was an acceptable opinion to ascribe to her. Funnily enough, last Saturday I was walking my dogs in a park in Belfast when a small dog ran up to make her friends. Her name, her owner informed me, was Winifred. When he went on to tell me that his other dog was Constance I asked, Carney and Markiewicz? Another assumption, but an equally intelligent one – the dogs were indeed named after those two Irish Republican figures; their owner was an expert, and we had a very jolly chat in the course of which he agreed that Winifred would very likely have said such a thing to anyone in Rose’s position.

 

Of course we can never know for sure. I suppose that every historical novelist must decide what balance of ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ events is appropriate for their work, what the implications of these choices are, and how audacious they decide to be. 

 

 

 

 

Fly Me to the Moon - Joan Lennon

"Do you remember where you were on 20 July, 1969?" *

I do. I was in the basement with my dad. We'd put the TV down there because it was so hot in a Canadian summer (no air conditioning) and the basement had a particular sort of cooler air that I would recognise the feel of immediately if I ever came across it again. Walter Cronkite's mellifluous voice filled the room. It took a long time, but then, at last, those fuzzy images... We had gone to another world.

We'd finally done it.

Humans have been intrigued by the possibility of going to the Moon for as long as there have been people to look up into the sky. (Not a statement I can prove, of course, but I'm sure anyway.) Here are just a few of the ways we know that have been mooted. "It's only science fiction!" you may say. And I say, "There's nothing 'only' about it." Without science fiction, without that human desire to get there in any way we can imagine, the space programme would never have got off the ground. So to speak.

How about Lucian of Samosata in 125 CE, who imagined a waterspout so huge it carried a ship on a lunar adventure? (Meeting the inhabitants - three-headed vultures - did not go well.)

  

  

Or Francis Godwin in The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, who suggested using swans for the trip in 1638? 

How about using a hot-air balloon, which was Edgar Allen Poe's take on the problem in 1835, or building your rocket out of anti-gravity metal, as H.G. Wells proposed in 1901, or blasting off using a cannon a la Jules Verne, as illustrated by Henri de Montaut? 

Have a look at Georges Méliès' fabulously chaotic and wonderfully badly acted Le Voyage dans la Lune ** from 1902, loosely based on Verne's novels. It was the first science fiction film and well worth a watch, if only for all those ladies' legs on display! Heavens to Betsy***! 

20 July, 1969 was only a continuation of all those wild, weird and wacky dreams. Though there's nothing 'only' about it.

* Yeah, all right, lots of you weren't even born.

** Not the music I would have chosen, but you can always mute it.

*** Etymology unknown.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Egyptomania by Rachel Louise Driscoll

 

When we think of the rise of Egyptology, I think our minds often turn to the Art Deco Egyptian Revival of the early 20^th century with Carter and Carnarvon’s hunt for King Tutankhamun’s tomb.  In truth, however, Egyptomania – the fascination for all things Ancient Egypt – actually goes back further than that to the 19^th century and beyond.  This was a time when the Rosetta Stone arrived at the British Museum, the hieroglyphs were deciphered in a race between Britain and France, Amelia Edwards published her travelogue about her journey through Egypt and Nubia entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile, and characters like “Mummy” Pettigrew hosted their infamous ‘mummy unwrapping parties’.

Thomas Pettigrew, known by the sobriquet “Mummy” Pettigrew, was a 19^th century surgeon and antiquarian.  A founding member of the British Archaeological Association, he had a particular interest in mummies.  In fact, upon the association’s first meeting in 1844, he apparently unwrapped a mummy in front of his rapt audience.  At such events, Pettigrew was known to not only unroll the layers of cerement from the preserved corpse, but to also perform an autopsy.  His knowledge of Egyptian mummies was so vast that in 1834 he wrote a book called A History of Egyptian Mummies.  This work explored the ancient funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, including how sacred animals were worshipped and embalmed. 

Animals such as cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and birds of prey were amongst the varieties of species that the Egyptians would embalm, usually through a connection to a deity.  For instance, Bast or Bastet had the head of a cat, and so cats were seen to be linked to the goddess.  Ibises were sacred and Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, was often depicted with the head of an ibis.  Many of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses had heads of animals, or were said to be able to change their form into animals – like Isis and Nephthys, the sister goddesses who could shapeshift into kites.  Mummified animals would often be buried at the sites that held particular worship for the deity that was associated with that animal, such as the many cats buried at Bubastis, the centre of Bast’s cult.

The term Egyptomania, from the Greek ‘Egypto’ for Egypt and ‘mania’ for madness, came into existence around the end of the 18^th and start of the 19^th century, and this was really when we see the increased interest in this ancient land and its rich history.  Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign helped Egyptomania take flight, inspiring the hunger for antiquities.  There was such a cry for mummies and relics when travellers came to Egypt, that supply could not meet demand, and mummy snatchers and forgers became commonplace.  New laws arose to halt illegal digs and export, but the black market of antiquities continued as more travellers sought to own their piece of history, and the mummy unwrapping parties continued.

Despite this, there were many who came to Egypt with permits for legal digs, amongst them the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Rhind, and Margaret Benson, the first woman to be granted a permit by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.  In cases such as these, when the excavations were carried out in accordance with local law and with historical insight, provenance was not lost and knowledge increased.

I’m not sure that Egyptomania has waned so very much over the years.  Even today in the 21^st century, Egypt is consistently ranked as a top tourist holiday destination, the Egyptian exhibits are often the busiest in museums, and we still feel a thrill of excitement over the mysterious hieroglyphs on obelisks and papyri.  The age of Egyptomania is far from over, although I’m glad to say we no longer host mummy unwrapping parties or have powdered mummy in our paints like the Pre-Raphaelites did. 

If you’d like to read more about the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt, then I highly recommend Amelia Edwards’ book A Thousand Miles up the Nile.  For fictional writings from the era, you might like Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (quite a different read from her more famous Little Women series) and Some Words with a Mummy by Edgar Allan Poe.  And to investigate these themes further, especially those of mummy unwrapping parties and the preservation of Egyptian history, you might enjoy my debut novel Nephthys which explores the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt in a gothic tale of adventure, mythology, and mystery.  Nephthys is available in hardback, with the paperback out with Vintage in February 2026, and you can purchase your copy here.  If you’re in the US, it is published by Penguin Random House under the title The House of Two Sisters, and is available here.

Instagram: @rachel.louise.driscoll

Contemporary Australia and its Jewish Past, by Gillian Polack

 I’ve been explaining Jewish Australia to many people recently. This is because the antisemitism here is hurting.

Why is this emerging right now?

At the special memorial event at the Opera House on the Day of Mourning (yesterday, from where I’m typing), many Australians were shocked when they heard the perfectly normal (for Jewish Australia) reminder not to hang around and chat, to keep an eye out, to leave quickly. Until that moment, I think everyone thought their Jewish friends lived as freely as they themselves did. On top of the murders at Bondi Beach, this was an eye-opener. Why was it an eye-opener? 

Jewish Australians have not been treated well for a while now.

Bigots are saying that Jews should leave Australia. We’re not considered Australian. A new migrant said that to me personally last week. That they're working towards citizenship makes them more Australian than my five generations of family. I love it that they are becoming citizens, but my father’s mother’s family were citizens at Federation, and were here decades before then. They don’t know this. It’s not actually conceivable to them that any Jews might be born in Australia.

When someone tells me this, I talk history. History helps lead into a discussion of what is Jewish Australia and what its origins are. It also helps us understand that narratives about Jews in Australia help support the bigotry.

So what is the Jewish history of Australia?

It began in 1788 with the First Fleet and the initial colonisation of Australia by the British. There were a number of Jewish convicts on the first Fleet and at least one Jewish free settler.

That free settler was a baby, Roseanna or Rosanna. Her mother was a 15 year old convict, Esther Abrahams. Esther fell into an arrangement with Major George Johnston, one of the leaders of the Rum Rebellion and they became one of the power couples of the colony. To put the rebellion into perspective of British history, the governor they deposed was Bligh, the same Bligh who suffered the mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh’s daughter kept the rebels at bay with a parasol, but that’s another story. 1808 was an exciting year for the colony.

Eventually Esther married George, but they had children together before that. Those children were baptised, but their older half-sister remained Jewish, to the best of my knowledge. When Johnston was on trial in the UK for his role in the rebellion, Esther managed his holdings and pretty well managed the whole of the colony of NSW, to boot. A friend once drove me down a wide road and announced, “This is the road Esther used to race on.” She raced carriages, of course, and I cannot think of a better start to Jewish life in Australia than Esther winning her carriage races.

I was going to give you a proper potted history, but the carriage racing has led me astray. I’ll tell you about just a few of the more interesting people. I shall eschew chronology and wander wherever I feel like… until I reach the point I intend to eventually make.

First, let me wander back to the UK. A book was published there in 1890. It brought English fairy tales to life and it was written by Joseph Jacobs, who wasn’t an Australian citizen - he was a subject of the British Empire, since Australia didn’t exist at that time - but he was born in 1854 in Sydney. He wasn’t the only Jewish writer from Sydney (not by a long way), but he was one of the most influential. He gave so much of the world their standard versions of English fairy tales. He had a splendid career as a folklorist, and he also spent much of his life fighting antisemitism. He died in New York in 1916, from memory.

I don’t know why I must move from a renowned teller of fairy tales to orcas, but I must.

Last year I spent a week in Eden, exploring several subjects for my fiction. Eden is a beautiful town in the very south of NSW. It was a whaling town for a long time, since before European settlement, I suspect. Why do I suspect this? Its whaling process included locals from old Yuin families. Teams of orcas work with teams of humans. The death rate of humans in this type of whaling was phenomenally low and the orcas punished the humans if the humans didn’t behave and… I need to find out more. While I was exploring, I discovered… one of the whalers was Jewish. His name was Solomon Solomons and I am currently trying to work out if one of his relatives married one of mine.

The important aspect of Mr Solomons was not the whaling. That’s just a curiosity. His importance was that he represents a number of families who, when they came to NSW or to Victoria, set up shops and trade and even hotels in the new country towns. Without these Jewish families (including mine) Australia would have been an entirely different country. From the 1820s through to the 1930s, a single large family would help hold together a whole region. Smaller families (my mother’s grandfather’s, for instance) would connect two or three towns. Colonial Australia was all about farming, and the farmers needed goods. Not all goods were provided by Jewish traders, but that connectivity was terribly important.

It led to bright young Jewish men being brought up rurally, who then went to the Big Smoke and made it big. One of these men was Isaac Isaacs, from Yackandandah, who helped bring about the White Australia Policy (where Jews were never quite White) and who was also Australia’s first home-grown Governor-General.

Jews were not considered White in Australia under the White Australia Policy, but individual Jews were given a kind of honorary status under it. Sir John Monash (who is the main reason many in Australia’s military right are not antisemitic) didn’t benefit from this. When I chatted with locals in the Somme region a few years back, they were very surprised. They had no idea that he was Jewish. 

He nearly didn’t get the job that saved all those lives because of those lobbying against a Jewish solder becoming a general and leading at such an important time.

How did this antisemitism operate? How does it still operate)?

Violent antisemitism used to be much rarer in Australia than it is now. The quiet discrimination against individuals, even those as acclaimed as Monash, was far more typical.

There was some violence (a letterbomb led to a cousin of mine being unable to walk half a century ago, for instance), but mostly it was graffiti, and snark and discrimination. The nicer side of antisemitism was “Keep your differences to yourselves and avoiding being to obvious and we’ll accept you.” This is why so many people were surprised by the closing comment at the memorial: they had no idea that our everyday was different to theirs.

I always describe this as a Gentlemen’s Agreement variety of antisemitism, because it has a fair amount of overlap with the style depicted in Hobson’s novel. It goes right back to the early colonial days. It meant that Jews were accepted in places and professions, but not all. My great-uncle was unable to join the same golf club as his friends, for instance, and, years later, I was told, “You don’t have the right background” for certain other activities. This is a deep current in Australian culture, and still applies. Chanukah on the Beach, the event where so many people were murdered, was criticised just last month because “If Jews hadn’t been out there, celebrating, they could not have been killed.” We’re denied speech in this place and that right now because, “It won’t be safe.”

I can’t help but thinking that this would be a lovely element in an historical novel. That small thing, that trifle, that can change a whole plot. However… while it’s easy to write about the famous people in Jewish history. It’s not so easy to write about the rest of us. We’re not in historical novels. In fact, not even the famous Jewish Australians are in most historical novels. I did some research into Jews in novels by Australian historical fiction writers years ago, and there were few and none of them were major characters. No Esther Abrahams, no Rosanna, not even John Monash.

This is part of the hiding. Historically, some events expose us and make us visible. The Holocaust was one such thing. Bondi Beach in December was another. Yet the work of Linda Phillips to get Australian singers known and to compose and to give cheek to the very misogynistic journalists she worked with is only known to her family. How I know it, in fact, is because she was my father’s first cousin. She lived across three centuries and changed the world around her… but she was Jewish.

I will be writing more about our history, I think. There’s so much fodder for novels… but not if it’s hidden alongside most of Jewish Australia.

T

Hunting for Hellfire by Maggie Brookes

 I felt as though I'd inadvertently stirred a hornet's nest when an Instagram / Facebook post I made about a chance visit to West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was viewed more than 22,000 times. Some of the comments made me itch to investigate further.

My original post said, 'West Wycombe looks like a quiet English village until you spot the bizarre ball on top of the church tower, the Hellfire caves and the extraordinary mausoleum for the Dashwood family. They were all constructed in the mid-18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Dilettanti Society and co-founder of the Hellfire Club.' I suspect it was the hashtag '#hellfire club' which created the viewing frenzy. (Note to self ­– write a novel abut a licentious secret society!)

Fraser Whitelock of High Wycombe responded first: 'St Lawrence's was built on top of the hill, on a pagan site. Later extended and a crypt added said to be an exact recreation of Syrian Sun Temple. The Golden Ball was used as a messaging system using the sun's reflection, linked through buildings such as Crystal Palace, through line of site, (sic) linked across the channel to Paris.  The Hellfire Caves were dug to access underground water systems, the re routed to help flood and create the lakes in Dashwood's grounds, so he could stage epic battles between Spanish galleons he had transported to West Wycombe village.'

Anthony Mealing, also from High Wycombe and a Listed Building Consultant at Garret McKee Architects responded: 'The Dashwoods had two Spanish Galleons transported to West Wycombe, and rebuilt them for battle reinactment (sic) on his lake. Spanish galleons were being taken in Barbados by privateers, and pirates. Also although it is told that locals dug the tunnels, it was actually Cornish workers. The obvious connections between pirates, Cornwall, mining, and overwhelming Masonic connections in the village. Stokes the fire a little more.'

Fraser Whitelock came back: 'I used to knock around the village as a teenager.  The tunnels in the High Street exist. I've seen them.  Used to dare each other to go in them.  No one did....  Don't get me started on Templar history in Wycombe.....'

Head spinning, I set out to see what I could discover. 

The National Trust told me that there was indeed an Iron Age ('pagan') settlement on the hill, dating from the 4th or 5th century BC, and later, the Saxon village of Hæferingdune or Haveringdon. Sadly its population was decimated by the Black Death in the 1340s, and those who remained moved down into the valley to the current village, named West Wycombe. The medieval church of St Lawrence remained on the hill. 

Then, in 1723, the 15-year-old Sir Francis Dashwood inherited his father's estates and Baronetcy. As a young man he did the Grand Tour and developed a taste for classical art and architecture, and a reputation for wild behaviour.  In the 1730's he started the Society of Dilletanti, which his political enemy Horace Walpole said was a 'club for which the nominal qualification is having been to Italy, and the real one, being drunk.' Later Sir Francis founded the Divan Club, for men who had visited the Ottoman Empire. He liked to dress up. This painting was made in his Divan Club outfit.

He seems to have begun the excavation of the 'hellfire caves' to quarry chalk for a new road, and give employment to local men who had suffered three successive bad harvests. A long winding tunnel runs a quarter of a mile into the hill, with many passages and chambers leading off it, including a Banqueting Hall. The caves are said to be the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world.  The 'Inner Chamber' is reputed to lie directly under St Lawrence church, signifying heaven and hell.

Sir Francis continued to love founding questionable 'dining clubs'. The one which is now known as the Hellfire Club, wasn't called that by him.  He called it the Order of Knights of West Wycombe, or The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe. Not such a catchy hashtag! This painting of him by Hogarth shows him as 'St Francis' worshipping a naked Venus.

Members of the not-called-the-hellfire-club may have included important 18th-century figures including William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, though no papers about the club survive. Benjamin Franklin was a close friend of Sir Francis who visited the caves on more than one occasion. The club motto is popularly believed to have been a quote from Rableais: 'Fais ce que tu voudras' (Do what thou wilt).

Horace Walpole (who we have to remember was the author of the first Gothic novel, as well as Sir Francis' political rival) wrote this, about meetings at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames, also owned by Sir Francis: 'Its practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits.'

The 'inner temple' of the Hellfire Caves.

But Sir Francis was more than a hell-raiser. He spent most of his life extending and converting the Queen Anne house at West Wycombe into a Palladian mansion with landscaped grounds full of follies. He bought pictures, sculptures and books. In 1732 alone, he purchased over £2700 in books from a bookseller in Amsterdam. 

In the 1750s he had the tower of St Lawrence's Church raised and crowned with an 8 ft wooden ball covered in gold leaf, possibly inspired by the Dogana in Venice. 

Dogana Da Mar, Venice

Various sources say the West Wycombe ball contains seating for six to 10 people. It was described by the author John Wilkes as 'the best globe tavern I was ever in'. 

Back to the comments about the golden ball on my Facebook post:

Craig Jay said 'I remember as a child you could climb the steps into it. I believed it to be a small card room for a select group of hellfire club members to illicitly gamble. Did the earl of sandwich bring a packed lunch?'

Adela Hollingsworth replied 'My mum went inside it when she was a child but it hasn’t been open to the public to enter for years.' 

 Sarah HR wrote: 'There are seats inside and they looked used to me when I looked into it 55 years ago.'

St Lawrence's church, West Wycombe

What about the signalling from the ball? A book about the Dashwoods published in 1987 reports a suggestion that Sir Francis Dashwood used a heliograph to signal through a porthole in the golden ball to his friend, John Norris (1721–1786), who had erected a tower, now known as the Camberley Obelisk, near his home at Hawley, Hampshire, 21 miles to the south. I haven't been able to find any evidence that signals continued across the Channel, and of course the Crystal Palace wasn't built till 1851, but it's a good story, and I love a good story.

The inside of the church was also remodelled in a classical mode, though perhaps not based on a temple at Palmyra. The painted ceiling, by Borgnis, was apparently an adaptation of Robert Wood’s drawings of the Temple of the Sun at Balbec. 

I also failed to find evidence of the two Spanish galleons, though the National Trust says that Sir Francis kept a frigate on the lake, using it to re-enact sea battles as entertainment for guests. Cannonballs dredged from the lake are on display in the house.

Not wanting to be forgotten, Sir Francis also built the Grade One listed  Dashwood Mausoleum on the edge of the hill.

In true Dashwood style, there’s an urn containing the heart of the poet Paul Whitehead, steward of one of Sir Francis's 'clubs'.  In the centre stands a pedestal and urn dedicated to his wife Lady le Despenser, who must have been a long-suffering woman. 

Unsurprisingly, the house and gardens have featured in many TV dramas and films, including Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton, Belgravia, adaptations of Daniel Deronda, Cranford, Little Dorrit and Howards End, episodes of Endeavour and Foyles War and movies A Clockwork Orange, The Duchess, I Capture the Castle, Bridget Jones' Baby and the one Sir Francis might have loved the most, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  

Alongside his secret societies and his collecting, Sir Francis was a politician, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then the 11th Baron le Despencer, Postmaster General and finally the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. 

I wondered where Sir Francis got the money to do all his renovations, rebuilds and to fund his wild parties? His father and uncle were successful merchants, who served on the board of directors for both the Royal African Company and the East India Company. As such, their investments were deeply implicated in Britain’s international slave trade. Although we don't know if Sir Francis owned enslaved people, his grandson received government compensation for emancipation of slaves.

 Back on my Facebook feed, Anthony Mealing wrote ' The Dashwoods were slave owners up until 1835 with the end of Empire Slavery (the empire territories) when they received government compensation for emancipation of slaves on three plantations they then had an interest in, Barbados Spring Plantation 161 Enslaved, Barbados Over Hill Plantation 109 Enslaved, Barbados Ashton Hall Plantation 83 Enslaved... From the UCL records.'

What about the link to the Knights Templar? A medieval manor house in what is now High Wycombe known as Temple Wycombe was owned by the Knights Templar from 1227. When they were dissolved it passed to the Knights Hospitallers, who held it until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Of course this was long before the Dashwoods of West Wycombe. A branch of Morrisons now stands on the site.

 Finally there's a mysterious comment from Robert Fox: 'Not forgetting the praying wall in the High Street, where you can see where people have knelt.'

So far my searches haven't turned up any other mention of this wall. I guess I'll have to return and take a look. If I dare.

Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

Instagram: Maggie __Brookes 

Facebook: Maggie Brookes-Butt

Further reading about Sir Francis:  https://www.artandthecountryhouse.com/essays/essays-index/sir-francis-dashwood-connoisseur-collector-and-traveller   Jason M. Kelly is Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Professor of History in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. 

Alof de Wignacourt (1547-1622), Grand Master of the Order of St. John. Malta

Olof de Wignacourt (1547-1622), Grand Master of the Order of St John, Malta

In 2024, I had the pleasure of staying at the House of W. in Nicholas Street, Valletta, Malta. When we booked, we didn’t realise the building's significance. Located in the heart of Valletta, just a short walk from the Grand Master's Palace and St John's Co-Cathedral (formerly the Conventual Church of St. John), the building appears unremarkable from the outside, similar to many others in Valletta. However, step inside, and you can feel Malta’s rich history come alive.

Most older Maltese houses have an open interior 
to let in light and for air circulation.

When Malta became the most bombed place on Earth during WWII, the building, like others nearby, was destroyed. After the new owners purchased the building, they aimed to restore it to emphasize its historical importance. Research in Malta’s archives uncovered plans showing that the building was once owned by none other than Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, a key figure in Malta’s history.

Official portrait of de Wignacourt

Alof de Wignacourt was born in 1547 to a noble French family, and at just 17 years old, he answered the call to arms from France to defend the Maltese islands that had come under the control of the Order of Saint John in 1530 against the Ottoman invasion known as the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. At the time, the Knights' stronghold was in the Three Cities, particularly Birgu, where they built Fort St. Angelo on the site of a medieval castle. This bastioned fort, located at the centre of the Grand Harbour, overlooks the main battle that took place at Fort St Elmo on the Sceberras Peninsular It was during this time that de Wignacourt’s skill as an engineer came to the fore, After the Ottomans were defeated, Grand Master Jean de Valette decided to build the new city named La Vallette, (Valletta) in his honour and after only four years of joining the order, his prudence and courage, combined with his engineering skills were quickly put to use earning him a nomination as Lieutenant of the new city of Valletta.

A painting of The Great Siege of Malta showing galleys around Senglea, 
which was almost defeated, and Fort St Angelo in Birgu.

De Wignacourt's military and administrative skills were soon recognised, and he was appointed Grand Cross and head of the Langue of France. His outstanding merits and services rendered to the Order earned him the unanimous election to the Grand Magistry. With his election as Grand Master in 1601, the Order experienced a naval and military power rebirth, demonstrating their maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean by expanding the navy to include a great galleon commissioned by him in Austria at 60,000 gold scudi. In 1602, he dispatched galleys of the Order on an expedition against the corsairs of North Africa, seizing the town of Mahomet and expelling the corsairs. It must be noted that corsairs. Two years later, the island of Kos was taken, followed by Corinth in 1611.

A Maltese galley brings in a captured Ottoman galley

A painting showing Maltese galleys capturing an Ottoman 
vessel near Malta

By the beginning of the 17th century, the importance of corsairs in the Mediterranean cannot be underestimated. In an area mostly dominated by Ottomans or Spanish, switching from a military role to an economic, viable, and necessary one. Captured booty made these states wealthy, and with wealth came diverse trades. In fact, the Order’s fleet of private corsairs made them some of the most feared seamen in the Mediterranean.

De Wignacourt Coat of Arms on the 
reconstructed arch.

After the Maltese successfully defended the islands against another Turkish raid of 60 vessels carrying 5,000 men, efforts were made to build new coastal fortifications. Under the reign of Grand Master Martin Garzez, another military engineer, Giovanni Rinaldini, was asked to suggest improvements, but after Garzez died in 1601, de Wignacourt became Grand Master, and he set about building the defenses himself. These included the Wignacourt Tower at St Paul's Bay and St Julien's Tower at Marsaxlokk. Only four of the original six forts now survive. He also oversaw significant expansions and renovations to the fortifications and buildings of Malta, including the construction of the Wignacourt Aqueduct in 1616, which brought fresh water to the capital city of Valletta.

The Tower at St Paul's Bay

The Wignacourt Aqueduct

During his reign, de Wignacourt often defended the privileges of the Order, preserving peace among the knights of different Langues, which was mainly a cosmopolitan order. Despite the formal structure of the Langues, the linguistic landscape was complex. French was the dominant language and acted as the language of chivalry during the Middle Ages, though Italian, specifically Tuscan Italian, became the main language for official purposes after the Order settled in Malta. French remained in use for documentation and maps, especially due to the influence of notable French military engineers. Latin was also used in official documents and diplomatic correspondence, but French was initially preferred for administrative purposes.

Selmun Palace (villa)

The Mistra Gate (1760) is the main entrance to the 
large estate once owned by Caterina Vitale.

In 1607, Wignacourt established the Monte della Redenzione degli Schiavi after a Capuchin friar delivered a series of sermons about the plight of Christian slaves under Muslim captivity. The ransom for a Maltese slave was initially set at 70 scudi, but this later rose to 120 scudi. From 1707 onwards, the rate increased to 150 scudi. In the early years, the institution struggled to gather enough funds, but this improved when Caterina Vitalee, a noblewoman of Greek descent, bequeathed most of her estate to the Monte di Redenzione upon her passing in 1619. Some of her property was sold, and an extra 6,000 scudi was donated by Gio. Domenico Felici, who allowed the institution to begin operating. The Foundation continued until 1798, when, during the French occupation of Malta, it was taken over by the government, and the estates formerly belonging to the Monte di Redenzione became state property.

‘Portrait of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt with
 a Page’ by Caravaggio

It was under Wignacourt's reign that the painter, Caravaggio, left for Malta. He travelled in July 1607 aboard a vessel of the Order and was enthusiastically accepted into the folds of the Order as a Knight of Obedience on 14 July 1608. The Grand Master was aware of Caravaggio’s dark past, when, in May 1606, whilst working in Rome, he killed a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. This should have impeded the artist from entering the Order, yet de Wignacourt had managed to obtain papal permission to accept the artist within the Order and became his patron. Whilst in Malta, Caravaggio painted some of his most famous paintings, ‘The Beheading of St John the Baptist’ and ‘St Jerome Writing’, both of which are at St John’s Co-Cathedral. In 1608, he painted the ‘Portrait of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt with a Page’, now in the Louvre, Paris. Unfortunately, Caravaggio’s period of relative calm was short-lived, as by late August, he was involved in yet another brawl. This time, several knights were wounded. He was immediately arrested and imprisoned in Fort St Angelo. Thoroughly disgraced, Caravaggio managed to escape before his trial and fled from Malta.

‘Beheading of St John the Baptist’ by Caravaggio.

On 1 December 1608, in a meeting of the Public Assembly held in the Oratory of St John’s Co-Cathedral, in front of his masterpiece, the ‘Beheading of St John the Baptist’, Caravaggio was “expelled and thrust forth like a rotten and fetid limb” from the Order. Although his period in Malta was short-lived, his work contributed to that period of the Order’s grandeur and might.

Parade armour of Wignacourt, displayed in the Palace Armoury, Valletta

Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt suffered a stroke in August 1622, while he was out hunting. He died on September 14 at the age of 75. Like his predecessors, he is buried in the crypt of St. John's Co-Cathedral. De Wignacourt’s armour now stands in the Armoury at the Grand Master’s Palace. It is beautifully engraved and in excellent condition.