Dangerous Journey - The WW2 Trans-Siberian Express

                                  

by Deborah Swift

    

The Trans-Siberian Railway, stretching over 9,000 kilometres from Moscow to Vladivostok, is the longest railway line in the world and during the second world war the Trans-Siberian Express became an unlikely lifeline to thousands of refugees fleeing the ravages of war.

Completed in stages from the late 19th century and officially finished in 1916, the Trans-Siberian Railway was designed to be a symbol of Russian imperial ambition. By the 1930s, under Stalin’s regime, the railway was tightly controlled by the Soviet government, serving both civilian and military purposes for the Soviet regime.

After Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Trans-Siberian route took on an entirely new strategic importance—not only as a supply corridor for the Eastern Front but also as a humanitarian exit route.

As the Nazis swept through Europe, millions of Jewish civilians, through lack of anywhere else to go, ended up in Lithuania, which was then taken over by Soviet forces. For Jewish refugees, it was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire – under Stalin, political repression, deportations, and forced labour were commonplace, especially for intellectuals. Yet for many refugees, particularly Jews escaping the Holocaust, the USSR represented a narrow but unexpected path to survival.

                                                

The ‘Sugihara Survivors’

Some Jewish refugees who managed to flee to the Soviet Union were able to reach Japan or Shanghai, China, by traveling east. Many of these refugees were Polish or Lithuanian Jews who obtained transit visas through the efforts of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who held the consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Sugihara defied his government’s orders and issued thousands of transit visas to Jewish refugees. With these documents, refugees could travel across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express. In Vladivostock they could then board a ship to Kobe, Japan, and later to Shanghai. This escape route saved thousands of lives.

                                       

Chiune Sugihara’s Visa from the Holocaust Museum

Life on the train

Wartime travel on the Trans-Siberian Express was far from the romanticized version sold in modern travel brochures. Refugees endured extreme cold, food shortages, overcrowded compartments, and frequent stops for inspections and detentions. Nevertheless, compared to the alternative—death camps, gulags, or starvation—these hardships were endurable.

The Soviet government’s motive in allowing these transports was not purely humanitarian. In many cases, the USSR was removing anti-communists and also making them pay handsomely for the privilege. Many refugees were stopped and their valuables confiscated by the Russians.

Memorials and testimonies from survivors continue to shed light on these lesser-known refugee journeys. Documentaries, such as The Trans-Siberian Railroad: A Path to Survival, and the memoirs of survivors brought home to me the profound impact the Trans-Siberian railway had on people fleeing for their lives.

 

Read more about it:

1. Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II.
2. "Sugihara Survivors: Jewish Refugees Who Escaped via Japan." Yad Vashem. https://www.yadvashem.org
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Polish Refugees and the Soviet Union.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org
4. PBS Documentary: Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, 2000.

LAST TRAIN TO FREEDOM tells the story of some of the Sugihara Survivors.

 

“Read the Falco Books.” by Susan Price

 

My good friend, Karen Bush, gave me this advice at regular intervals:

“Read the Falco books.”

 

Karen, excellent editor and avid reader, put me onto many great reads: most notably the ‘Song of Fire and Ice’ sequence by George R. R. Martin, and the wonderful ‘Six Duchies’ books of Robin Hobb. Also, Hobb’s lesser-known, but excellent ‘Soldier Son’ trilogy.

 

Karen and I often exchanged notes about what we were reading (both of us were always reading something) and then she’d demand, “Have you read the Falco books yet?  No?— Well, read them.”

Karen had regularly proved that she knew a good book when she met it, but still, I never got around to Falco. 

 

I think I’d got it into my head that they were an Ancient Roman version of the Brother Cadfael series: that is, ‘murder-mysteries’ set in the past, with an historically accurate background and a main character ingeniously solving crimes without any modern forensic aids. 

But, back off, Cadfael fans! I do not intend, by this, any criticism of the Cadfael books. I’ve enjoyed reading most, quite possibly all, of them. But then, I’ve always been interested in what might be loosely called ‘the medieval period.’ I didn’t have  - then - any equivalent interest in Ancient Rome, and so the idea of ‘a Roman Cadfael’ didn’t much appeal.  

Then, very suddenly, unbelievably, Karen died. And I miss her. It seemed important to read the Falco books.

As usual, Karen was absolutely right. They are cracking reads that I should have fallen headlong into years ago. There are twenty books in the series. Twenty books! Twenty books worth of page-turning and staying awake into the small hours to read the next bit. And the next bit. And the next chapter…Or two...

Karen and I could have had our own Falco book-club, as we did a Pratchett book-club. What a fool I was, not to have immediately jumped to it and read Falco, when first ordered. If I had, I might have shared the series with my father too, as I did Pratchett’s Discworld books. He would have loved Falco as much as Captain Vimes.

Thing is, when I was dodging reading the Falco books, I thought they were straight-forward  'Historical Crime.' I  didn't appreciate how many sides to them there are, or on how many different levels they work. They are wonderful historical novels.

Rome itself comes to noisy, shoving, pushing, stinking, crowded, mucky life, in all its filth, din, poverty, privilege, injustice and lawlessness. And like all good fictional detectives, Falco loves his city and misses it painfully when he’s forced to be away.

Mulsum and must cake, street cafes, temple sacrifices, low-life, officialdom, boots that cause blisters and tunics with fish sauce stains and fraying braid... All the details of everyday life are casually mentioned in passing, raged about, laughed at, as if it was all just as ordinary, present and annoying as life in the 21st Century. 

 

In addition, the Falco books are a great laugh.

I wasn’t at all prepared for how funny the books are. Similar books may have their amusing moments, but the Falco books are often laugh-out-loud funny. 

 

Falco narrates his own stories and Falco is a vivid presence, with a wonderful turn of phrase.  His wife doesn’t like something he says and ‘shot me a look that would have skinned a weasel.’ The liveliness of the prose throughout makes other novels seem very flat.

 

There is not much of the cool, classical, toga-clad Roman about Falco, raised, as he was, in the rough, over-crowded, crime-pestered slums of the Aventine Hill (though he does drape himself in a rather worn and tatty, second-hand toga occasionally, under protest, when forced to look respectable, rather like a modern man changing his jeans for a suit.) Forget classical Latin epigrams. Falco’s chat has more of the stand-up comic’s one-liners about it.

 

Although set in the past and very funny, they are certainly not ‘cosy crime.’ They're full of fights, plotting and general vicious ill-will.

 

Nasty murders must be solved. Gangs of robbers create mayhem. Mafiosa types are causing misery. Rome has, at last, the first half-way decent and sane Emperor it’s had for years and what-d’ye-know, plotters are out to depose him. Falco is usually in the thick of it all, dodging, weaving, thumping and getting thumped. 

 

 "When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes.

"It was late summer. Rome frizzled like a pancake on a griddleplate… People flopped on stools in shadowed doorways, bare knees apart, naked to the waist— and in the backstreets of the Aventine Sector where I lived, that was just the women.

"I was standing in the Forum. She was running. She looked overdressed and dangerously hot, but sunstroke or suffocation had not yet finished her off… when she hurtled up the steps of the Temple of Saturn straight towards me, I made no attempt to move aside. She missed me, just. Some men are born lucky: others are called Didius Falco"

The Silver Pigs, Lindsey Davis

The opening paragraphs of the first book, The Silver Pigs. The girl is being chased by ‘two ugly lumps of jail-fodder, jelly-brained and broad as they were high…’ Of course, Falco, our hero, promptly deals with the ugly lumps and rescues the girl, because he isn’t just handsome, witty and charming with a shaggy mop of black curls falling over melting dark eyes. Oh no. He’s also an ex-legionary and hard-as-nails street-fighter, packing an illegal dagger hidden in his boot. (It was illegal for civilians to carry weapons on the streets of Rome.)

 The books are very tongue in cheek.

Raymond Chandler famously wrote: 

“…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero… He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be…a man of honour—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

 “He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him…”

Since Lindsey Davis consciously took the ‘classic’ 1930s detective stories as a starting point for her Falco novels, I’m sure it’s no accident that this could almost be a character sketch of Falco.— If you add a good few laughs.

Almost. Falco is honourable and honest and certainly proud (although he’d make a joke about it.) He isn’t mean, but he is a bit tarnished and often— for good reason— afraid. (The number of beatings he takes, it’s a wonder he makes it through five books, let alone twenty. And even more of a wonder that he preserves his ‘Etruscan’ nose and good looks.)

But ‘a lonely man’? This has to be one of Davis’ in-jokes. The classic 1930s ‘tec is lonely. He has no wife and changes his women more often than his underwear. He is a childless bachelor, seemingly without any close friends or relatives. All the better to be free when Trouble comes calling. Off he wanders, down those mean streets, all on his lonely lonesome, seeking out crime to fight and wrongs to right.

But Marcus Didius Falco is Italian. A Roman. He’d probably love to be ‘a lonely man’ (at least once in a while, for a rest) but he doesn’t stand a chance.

When we first meet Falco, in The Silver Pigs, he does live alone, as every proper seedy Private Eye should. His home is a tiny two-room apartment on the sixth floor of one of those flimsy Roman tenements that were always on the point of falling down. (And frequently did. And in one of the Falco books, does.) A typical, grimy, gritty, cheap dive.

Alone — except that Falco’s fierce old mother is always coming round to tidy up, collect his washing, leave him some home-cooking, chase off any floozies Falco has mislaid and then give him Hades about either them or something else. Falco lives in fear of her. Well, if not fear, then certainly keen apprehension. Phillip Marlowe never had to put up with this.

Falco also has five sisters, and quarrels with most of them, most of the time, except his favourite, the youngest and closest to him in age. He even quarrels with her sometimes. Nor is she ever slow to tell him exactly what she thinks of him and his doings.

These five sisters have lumbered him with five brothers-in-law, all of whom he hates and considers dead-beats. Together with his sisters, they’ve produced an ever-growing number of nephews and nieces for Falco to feel responsible for, because their fathers are so useless.

Oh, and Falco has a father of his own, Geminus, an auctioneer, who ran away with a red-head when Falco was seven, leaving Falco’s mother to bring up her children alone. People are always telling Falco (to his great annoyance) that he is just like his father, in looks and character, but Falco has never forgiven Geminus for his desertion and they have a difficult relationship. If ever they seem on the point of becoming friends, Falco manages to find some reason to fall out again. — But the reader can see, between the lines, that whatever Geminus’ reason for leaving his family, he is proud of his son and quite eager to help him out and rebuild their relationship. Nevertheless, Falco hates having to accept anything from him.

Also unlike the classic ‘30s PE, Falco has friends as well as family. Among them is the old harridan who runs the laundry on the ground floor of his tottering tenement and regularly screams friendly abuse at him. There’s Thalia, the scary animal-trainer and snake-dancer (and her even scarier snake); and there’s his best friend, Petronius Longus, a watch captain of the Vigils (something between a fire-fighting squad and a police force).

Falco and Petronius served together in Britain at the time of the Boudiccan rebellion (and both heartily detest the gods-forsaken, cold, wet place.) The experience left them disillusioned with the glory that is Rome, but strongly bonded as friends. ‘Petro’ often seems to fill the place of Falco’s dead older brother, looking out for him and admonishing him in an almost fatherly way. — Davis’ characters are never simple, though. Petro is a loyal friend, a level-headed and responsible Watch Captain, a doting father, and also a terrible philanderer, always chasing some new mistress and expecting his wife to tolerate it.   

As well as Falco’s one-liners, the books are full of sly, subtextual jokes you could easily miss if you aren’t expecting them.

I think I did miss a lot because it took me a while to grasp that I wasn’t reading a simple, straight-forward ‘whodunnit?’ I suspect that many jokes flew straight past me. Still, maybe I’ll catch them on re-reading.

Not wanting to spoil others’ fun, I’ll mention just one. In ‘Last Act in Palmyra’ Falco joins a travelling actors’ troupe. Short of cash, Falco unwillingly takes on the hack-job of patching together bits of old plays to come up with something that the company can present as new at their next stop. It’s a frustrating task, and since Falco is an amateur (and unappreciated) poet, he soon concludes that he could write a new play which would be just as good as, if not better than anything in the repertoire. 

So he writes a comedy called ‘The Spook Who Spoke’ about a young man who meets the ghost of his father…

It seems there really was a Roman forerunner of ‘Hamlet.’ And Falco wrote it.

Throughout this book situations keep arising which are oddly reminiscent of events in various Shakespearian plays. I daresay I’d have spotted more if I knew more Shakespeare.

In the other books, hidden beneath the story-line, there are many other jokes, and all the tropes of the classic detective story are played with gleefully.

The twenty books are one long, developing love story.

 

In the first book, the Emperor Vespasian sends Falco on a mission  to Britain. On reporting to Britain’s Governor, Falco meets another visitor: Helena Justina Camillus, the Governor’s niece and a senator’s daughter to boot.

Naturally, he and Helena hate each other on sight. He, being a mere plebeian, is beneath her in every way, and she is right out of his league: too beautiful, too rich, too high-caste. She proves to be intelligent and well-read too, with a sharp wit and a cutting tongue. A tart, snobbish piece, he thinks.

Naturally, after other adventures and pummellings (and nearly dying), Falco ends up being hired as her bodyguard for the long, hazardous journey back to Rome. And, naturally, they end up in bed and begin a passionate, loving but sometimes fraught partnership that runs through every one of the following nineteen books.

I don’t feel guilty about that Spoiler, because anybody who’s read a few novels would see this coming a long way off. I mean, what a cliché. The ‘meet-cute,’ the love-affair that begins with dislike and misunderstanding on both sides and ends on the heights of dizzy romance and happy (almost) ever after. Predictable, or what.

But it doesn’t matter at all. What makes these books so good and compulsively readable is the sparkle of the prose and the sheer power and conviction of the characterisation.

Did somebody commit a murder? Who cares? The murder is just a maguffin, allowing Falco to have hairy adventures, and allowing us to hang out with him and Helena, and have Petro drop by with an amphora… An excuse for us to overhear another squabble with Falco’s sisters or his father, or brother-in-law, or Helena’s brothers. (One Camillus brother likes Falco and is pleased to see his sister happy with a man who is devoted to her. The other is appalled by her scandalously living with such low-caste rough trade because it might damage his own future in the Senate.)

Practically everyone who so much as crosses a page is strongly characterised, with a vivid impression of what they look like, how they speak and do their hair, what colour their tunic is, what they smell like... The stray dog, Nux, who acquires Falco despite all the resistance Falco can muster, is as lively a character as any of them. The reader feels that Lindsey Davis has spent many hours observing the behaviour of mad, hairy little dogs. Even a feral cat (Stringy) which hangs about a street food stall for all of two pages is sharply drawn.

And although Lindsey Davis has said she prefers dogs to children, Falco’s small daughters (when they arrive) are wonderfully vivid portraits of children, from the games they play, to the way they crane around the bedroom door to peer at Falco when he’s catching up on sleep after one of his adventures. Having made sure that it is him, safely home again, they run off, laughing. His hordes of nephews and nieces are, likewise, individual, robust personalities, whether five years old, or twelve, or fifteen. They are so recognisable, you feel that you’ve met them.

Helena Justina is every bit as vivid and many-sided a character as Falco. As a senator’s daughter, she’s educated and loves reading, so she’s always happy — indeed, eager — to help Falco with research in libraries and archives. There’s a standing joke about her always being curled up on every cushion in the house, with her nose stuck in a scroll. (A joke made about her author, I wonder?) 

Helena’s high social standing gives her entrance to many grand homes where the slaves would drive Falco off with sticks, and she can gossip with and ask questions of, people he would never get near. Even when making inquiries among the lower orders, she can use her status and classy charm to wheedle information from aspiring snobs who would tell him where he could go.

It's unusual, of course, for a senator’s daughter to hob-nob with a plebeian, but when Helena met Falco, she had already tried conventional marriage within her own class. Her husband proved to have no interest in her whatsoever beyond her money. So, bored, lonely and miserable, she divorced him— which I was surprised to learn Roman women could do. But I’ve learned an awful lot about the Roman Empire from the Falco books. In fact, I’m now quite interested in Roman history. More than I ever was before.

 

After her divorce, Helena decides that perhaps there’s more to life than obeying convention, and, on finding a handsome bit of rough who adores her, she allows him some very hands-on adoring. Her high-ranking family just have to put up with it. Some of them find this easier than others.

 

Falco’s first impression was correct: Helena is very intelligent, well-read and often scathingly sharp and outspoken. But he learns that she’s also compassionate and loving, fair-minded and quick to stand up both for herself and others.

 

She is also quite jealous. Knowing that Falco’s eye is always drawn to a beautiful woman (and that women’s eyes are often drawn to him), she frequently insists on accompanying him on his investigations, so she can both size up the opposition and fend it off. Or even sneaks off by herself to meet with and interview female suspects.

Helena is, convincingly and enjoyably, Falco’s other half. 

 

As for Falco, I think he is the most masculine detective created by a woman that I’ve ever come across. Possibly this is because he isn’t simply a cartoon ‘hard man’ — in fact, in many ways he’s anything but ‘hard’. He’s warm, affectionate, protective and funny. (The acknowledgements in one book thank Richard for ‘keeping things masculine.’ Richard did a good job.)

Other fictional male detectives may take cocaine and play the violin to help them solve crimes, or cudgel the little grey cells while they drink tea, or droop and muse in an aristocratic manner. Falco prefers to do his deepest thinking with his hand down the front of Helena’s dress.

Falco thinks about a lot of things besides sex— food, poetry, wine, his sore feet, his mother, his sisters, money or lack of it— but his thoughts do turn to sex a lot. However, his readers know what Helena Justina cannot know— that he is utterly besotted by her and always afraid that she will leave him. (Everyone he knows is always telling him that she will.) 

When she’s angry and berates him, he’s thrilled because if she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t be angry. When she makes fun of him, he’s thrilled, because that means she notices what he does. When she’s jealous, he's thrilled, because it means she sees him as her property and he’s very happy to be that. He loves to see her disconcert other people, who expect her to be silent and self-effacing, as a well brought up, modest, quiet Roman matron should be. He’s as proud of her as she is of him.  

So, let’s see, that’s an adventure story, set against a brilliantly recreated Roman background, with lots of action, crackling prose, brilliant dialogue, superb characterisation, lots of laughs...

Plus lots of hidden jokes, and, even in the midst of the adventure, send-ups of all the detective story tropes...

 — oh, and a murder to solve thrown in.

The Falco books are, like the Cadfael series, excellent ‘historical detective stories’ — but they're an awful lot more at the same time.

Instead of each story being a self-contained puzzle, there’s a strong, continuing story-line from book to book, with Falco and Helena becoming older, having children, prospering a little... It’s a good idea to read the books in sequence, so you can follow the progress of a substantial cast of characters.

In between reading Falco books, I happened to read a couple of other detective novels, both from highly praised, best-selling authors, whose books have been turned into television series. I won’t name the writers or series here because, I’m afraid, compared to Falco, I thought them dead ducks. The books turned entirely around their less than fascinating ‘murder mystery’ while characterisation seemed perfunctory. They seemed written by numbers. I turned back to Falco with delight and relief.

 

Falco and Helena— I think I’m in love with both of them. Certainly, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a series of books that I’ve enjoyed so much. The story-telling and the prose crackles. The dialogue is about as good as dialogue gets. The characters kick their legs over the edge of the page, jump out of the book, stick the kettle on and hunt through your cupboards for biscuits.

Thank you, Karen.

 “Read the Falco books.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘It’s all Greek to me’: the story behind my Pocket GCSE Greek Etymological Lexicon by Caroline K. Mackenzie

 

I have just completed a little book with a rather long title, Pocket GCSE Greek Etymological Lexicon. It is being published by Bloomsbury Academic and is sister to the Pocket GCSE Latin Etymological Lexicon which I wrote in 2022. It seems like yesterday that I wrote a History Girls’ Blog on the Latin Lexicon: tempus fugit.

Both books were written with GCSE students in mind but their purpose is just as much to showcase the beauty and ubiquity of these ancient languages, so the lexicons may also appeal to logophiles (‘logos’ meaning ‘word’ and ‘phileo’ ‘I love’). The GCSE vocabulary lists provide a finite list of words to work on: 450 in Latin and 409 in Greek, which was just right for this project.

To accompany the words we wanted to include illustrations and I am very fortunate that one of the members of my Classics Club, now a good friend, is a local artist, Barbarann Lang. Barbarann has exhibited work at many galleries including the Royal Academy and I had seen first-hand her beautiful paintings. So I was delighted when Barbarann agreed to create 20 illustrations for the lexicon. As Barbarann began, she became so inspired by the Greek that 20 illustrations increased to 32 and, thanks to the skill and vision of Bloomsbury and our typesetters, RefineCatch, all 32 are included in the lexicon. The illustrations really bring the Greek words to life and it seems fitting to unveil a few of them here. Hand-delivering Barbarann’s beautiful book of illustrations to the Bloomsbury offices was one of the most important and enjoyable tasks in producing the lexicon.

Bloomsbury’s London office © Caroline K. Mackenzie

Barbarann’s book of illustrations is on the table, hidden in the ‘Classics Club’ bag, the design for which is also one of Barbarann’s creations

Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated film of the Odyssey is being released in July this year. I am not sure if the characters will be speaking any Greek but the film may inspire some audiences to read Homer’s Odyssey either in translation or even the original Greek. Homer’s Iliad was behind the 2001 film Troy in which the character of Achilles was played by Brad Pitt and it was that character who inspired Barbarann’s illustration for ‘soldier’.

'stratiotes’ (soldier) illustration © Barbarann Lang

‘strategos’ (general or commander) gives us the word strategy

Greek derivatives give us the names of many subjects on the school curriculum, e.g. biology from ‘bios’ (life) and ‘logos’ (study, story, account), geography from ‘ge’ (earth) and ‘grapho’ (I write), mathematics from ‘math-‘ (the past tense of the verb meaning I learn). The letter ‘π’ has an important role in school Maths lessons. You may also recognise the Greek letter ‘μ’ (mu) to indicate ‘microgram’, or ‘μg’, which appears on cereal packets, prescriptions and vitamin bottles.

During the recent pandemic (meaning affecting ‘all people’), the Greek alphabet was used by the World Heath Organisation (‘WHO’) to label key variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. WHO issued a press release explaining that it had ‘assigned simple, easy to say and remember labels… using letters of the Greek alphabet’ because ‘scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting.’  [Ref. below.]

On the subject of the alphabet, please don’t let that deter you from dipping into some Greek! (The word ‘alphabet’ itself derives from the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet, ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’.) In the introduction to the lexicon, the Greek alphabet is set out in full (24 letters) together with the English equivalents and a pronunciation guide. It is easier to learn the Greek alphabet than you may think and is, indeed, a very satisfying exercise. As Cicero reminds us in his book How to Grow Old our mind is a muscle that must be exercised as we get older and Cicero’s protagonist declares that he is teaching himself Greek in his old age. A good alternative to Sudoku, perhaps? In this blog, I have transliterated the Greek and I leave you to try the alphabet challenge another day.

‘geron’ (old man) illustration © Barbarann Lang

‘geron’ combined with ‘iatros’ (doctor) gives us the word ‘geriatric’

Cicero recommends learning Greek to keep one’s mind healthy in old age

You will know the word ‘aristocracy’, which derives from ‘aristos’ (best, very good) and ‘cratos’ (rule) but lesser-known is the word ‘kakistocracy’. ‘kakistos’ means ‘worst’ or ‘very bad’ and therefore a kakistocracy is a ‘government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state’ (definition from Oxford Languages English Dictionary on Google).

Writers may enjoy some of the literary terms derived from Greek such as ‘oxymoron’, a figure of speech by means of which contradictory terms are juxtaposed, for various effects, e.g. ‘bitter-sweet’ (Sappho, Fragment 130). (Thank you to Kevin in Classics Club for this excellent example!) In Greek ‘oxymoron’ means ‘clever-stupid’ or ‘sharp-blunt’ and is an oxymoron itself. The term ‘hyperbole’ derives from ‘hyper’ (beyond, exceeding) and ‘bol’ from ‘ballo’ (I throw or fire at) – a great origin for a word meaning excessive exaggeration. It was thanks to one particular writer that I had a suggestion for the first Greek word in the lexicon, ‘agathos’ (good). I had asked one of my tutees, named Sophie (Greek for ‘wisdom’), to help me think of a derivative and, after careful thought, she replied ‘Agatha Christie’s books are really good’.

Writers may worry that they suffer from ‘cacoethes scribendi’, an uncontrollable desire for writing or getting one’s work into print, literally ‘a bad habit for writing’. The ‘scribendi’ derives from the Latin verb ‘scribo’ (I write). Politicians are perhaps afflicted with ‘cacoethes loquendi’, an uncontrollable desire for talking, especially for giving speeches, literally ‘a bad habit for speaking’. The ‘loquendi’ derives from the Latin verb ‘loquor’ (I speak). To complete this tricolon of bad habits I came across a phrase, ‘ego-surfing’, which means searching for one’s own name on the Internet (‘ego’ meaning ‘I’ in both Latin and Greek.)

I was also delighted to discover the phrase ‘chronique scandaleuse’: a story or gossip full of scandal, or unsavoury ‘tittle-tattle’, deriving in part from the Greek word for time, ‘chronos’ (hence chronology, anachronism, synchronise, etc). This pairs nicely with a new word I learned for the Latin Lexicon: ‘quidnunc’. It refers to an inquisitive, gossiping person - the Latin literally means ‘what now?’.

Gardeners often mention the ubiquity of Latin in horticulture and Greek also plays a part here: an aspidistra is an evergreen plant with shield-like long, tough leaves, ‘aspis’ being the Greek for ‘shield’. Rhododendron derives from ‘rhodon’ (rose) and ‘dendron’ (tree). ‘Hippeastrum’ is the name of a group of plants, including the Amaryllis. It is possible that the name was given due to the flowers resembling a horse’s head, as ‘hippos’ means ‘horse’. ‘Hippos’ also gives us a derivative which is a firm favourite among my tutees: hippopotamus, literally a horse of the river (‘potamos’).

‘hippos’ (horse) illustration © Barbarann Lang

‘hippos’ gives us words such as ‘hippodrome’ and ‘hippopotamus’

‘potamos’ (river) illustration © Barbarann Lang

‘potamos’ gives us words such as ‘hippopotamus’ (horse of the river)

A favourite derivative of my own is ‘cryptozoology’: the study of and search for (potentially mythical) creatures, such as the Loch Ness monster. The Greek words are ‘crypto’ (I hide) ‘zoon’ (creature) and ‘logos’ (study). I was also delighted to discover that ‘theobroma’ is the name of a group of flowering plants including the cocoa tree, ‘theobroma cacao’, the beans of which are used to make chocolate. Theobroma means ‘food of the gods’ – no wonder chocolate tastes so good.

On the subject of food, I wonder if you or any of your friends are a ‘deipnosophist’: someone whose dinner-table conversation is erudite. The term derives from Deipnosophistai, the title of a work by Athenaeus (c. AD 200) and is a combination of ‘deipnon’ (dinner) and ‘sophos’ (wise).

‘deipnon’ (dinner) illustration © Barbarann Lang

A ‘deipnosophist’ is someone whose dinner-table conversation is erudite (‘sophos’ means ‘wise’)

Medicine abounds with Greek terminology. Anything ending in ‘iatric’ signifies medical care or treatment such as ‘geriatric’ (see above) and ‘paediatric’ from ‘pais’ (child). I enjoyed learning this fun fact: the ‘pylorus’ is the opening, or gateway, from the stomach to the intestines, from ‘pyle’ (gate). The condition of having a ‘phobia’ is from the Greek word meaning fear, giving us xenophobe from ‘xenos’ (foreigner), arachnophobia from ‘arachne’ (spider) and triskaidekaphobia, literally fear of three plus ten, i.e. thirteen. Anatomy can be useful when studying Greek and Roman sculpture, too: one of the most famous statues of Aphrodite (Roman name, Venus) is titled ‘callipygian’ meaning ‘with beautiful buttocks’. 

You may have been watching the Winter Olympics and Paralympics recently. Not only did the Olympic games themselves originate in Greece but the word ‘Paralympics’ owes its name to the Greek language, ‘para’ meaning ‘beside’ or ‘parallel to’. In these games athletes, from ‘athlos’ (prize) often put themselves through agony, from ‘agon’ (contest or trial), to be the best.

The final proofs for the lexicon have arrived for checking and, as I scanned the pages, one particular entry struck me as rather autobiographical (‘autos’, self, ‘bios’, life, ‘grapho’, I write), and I wondered if my subconscious had directed my choice of derivatives…:

phil or -phile (suffix meaning ‘lover of’ or ‘loving’) bibliophile (book-lover), Hellenophile (Greek-lover), linguaphile (language-lover), logophile (word-lover), oenophile (wine-lover)

It is perhaps therefore appropriate that the cover image depicts the interior of a ‘kylix’ (drinking bowl) which would have been used at a ‘symposium’, or drinking party. When the lexicon is published I shall definitely be toasting it with a glass of Bacchus, a locally grown wine named after the Greek and Roman god of drinking, theatre and parties. ‘Cheers!’

Pocket GCSE Greek Etymological Lexicon by Caroline K. Mackenzie is available for pre-order: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pocket-gcse-greek-etymological-lexicon-9781350572119/
Publication date: 9th July 2026 Ebook and 6th August 2026 Paperback.

With many thanks to everyone at Classical Studies Bloomsbury, especially Alice Wright, Lucy Batrouney, Lucy Springett, Sophie Beardsworth and Sarah Ruddock; to Merv Honeywood and his team at RefineCatch; and to Barbarann Lang.

Thank you also to Caroline Lawrence, Dr John Taylor, Dr Margaret Mountford and Dr Daisy Dunn.

www.carolinetutor.co.uk

Ref: https://www.who.int/news/item/31-05-2021-who-announces-simple-easy-to-say-labels-for-sars-cov-2-variants-of-interest-and-concern.

Show not tell by Mary Hoffman

I have never liked this piece of advice to writers. Sometimes you just need to tell. It can be something small or trivial that you don’t want to spend time developing into a full-scale scene with dialogue, just a little throwaway so you can get back to your main plot. But how does this fit when writing historical fiction?


The facts are known and can’t be changed. So you go back to “what did X think about this?” or “How did it affect Y?” “Surely, this would have thrown the whole court into an uproar?” 

Tomb of Katherine Swynford and Joan Neville, Lincoln

 

I recently discovered that another HG is writing about the same person that I am. It’s OK; this happens. And it was pretty much bound to happen with regard to this character – a significant female figure in fourteenth century England, who had been the main character in a romantic novel of the 1950s. I made sure not to read that novel until I had written the sixth draft of mine.

I was surprised when I did. Anya Seton made the woman far more of a peasant than I had, with her coming to court in London when she was already fifteen. In my version, she has been brought up there by the king and queen of the time, alongside a bevy of princes and princesses. (Can you have a “bevy” of males? Must check for future reference). 

Anyway, how do you “show not tell” the events of historical characters’ lives? And I had chosen to depict almost the whole of my main character’s life, from the age of about two to her death bed fifty-one years later. Maybe this was a bad idea? I hadn’t done it before. I needed to establish her as having been raised at the English court, with all the advantages of a noble upbringing but no fortune. So she could speak French, go hunting and hawking, do embroidery, read the popular romances of the time and behave with elegance and decorum whether dancing or singing. 

Joan Neville and her ladies

 

Put like that, it does sound a bit dull. But her life was actually full of adventures. Imagine what it must have been like to grow up as a virtual orphan, with no memory of the mother who had given birth to you and little information about your father. Your foster parents were the king and queen of England and you were raised in their lavish court settings of palaces and castles, doing as you were instructed, brought up like a little princess yourself. Your one constant was your older sister, who one day told you that she was being sent away to serve the second prince and his wife in Ireland. And you were only seven.

Then you would certainly know what it was like to be alone. I invented bedfellows for her, my little girl, and friends too. Always having to remember that the fork and handkerchief had not yet been invented. Her exquisite manners had to take this into account. Her clothes were hand-me-downs but of the greatest quality, as they had previously been worn by princesses. 

John of Gaunt feasting in Portugal

 

Her favourite prince, the king and queen’s third son, John, was ten years older than her but he said her name properly, as they had in Hainault. He lived with his oldest brother, the Prince of Wales, though my heroine didn’t know what that meant. Prince Edward was heir to the English throne and did not marry until he was thirty. And then he chose a woman older than him, his father’s cousin, who had been married twice before. Imagine! The most eligible bachelor in Europe, a great soldier and charismatic leader, eventually settled for a woman he had known since they were children. A Papal dispensation had to be sought, not for the first time in Joan’s case.

And when Prince John, at the age of nineteen, married a great heiress, he asked nine-year-old Katherine to go with him and serve his beautiful wife. Of course, she went. There were many women serving the great countess, as she was then, and my Katherine was proud to be one of them, once released from the English court, even in the lowly role of the girl who rocked the wooden cradle. 

The marriage of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster

 

An awful lot here to show and not tell and we are hardly into Katherine’s eventful life. Before long, she has the task of rocking the new princess, Philippa, named after the queen. Prince John is happy. His lovely wife has given him a healthy daughter and there would surely be more to come, male heirs among them. Against this background of court life and princely behaviour, Katherine muses about her life and destiny. As she grows older and the Lancaster nursery is filled with more boy and girl babies – not all of whom survive – Katherine becomes closer to her mistress and is given more responsibility.

You see? I am telling, not showing you. But the novel does both. Through their pregnancies, childbirths and experiences, the two women become friends. Katherine is tall and strong for a girl of fifteen and her employers think it is time for her to have a husband. She fears it might be a warty old man but it is in fact a sturdy knight, Sir Hugh Swynford, who is the same age as her lord. She goes with him to his Manor in Kettlethorpe, but is often needed back in the Lancaster household, whenever her husband has to follow Duke John overseas.

Of course, their marriage is consummated and Katherine is already pregnant when Sir Hugh has to go abroad. She and the duchess both give birth within a month, Blanche to the healthy little boy, who will one day be Henry IV and Katherine to a little girl called Blanche. Such a lot to cover by showing not telling. But the feelings of women for their children, not knowing if their babies will live or die, can’t have been a million miles away from how mothers feel now, whether in grand courts or humble cottages. 

Henry IV

 

That’s what I had to show. Women labouring to bring forth babies, who might be heirs to a great destiny, or brides to European monarchs, or simply the children of a humble knight and his lady. Katherine herself ponders on this: “Men donned armour and rode off to battle, where they might catch an arrow in their face or have an arm lopped off. They seemed extraordinarily brave to me. And yet women did something harder. How could Bess know about the pains of childbed, when she had no children of her own?”

Both genders have to face painful difficulties. To fight or to give birth, to risk marriage or enter a religious house. Of course the men could do both. And occasionally the women too. Think of Margaret Beaufort, who helped her only child become king, was married four times and yet became a “femme sole” while her last husband still lived. 

Margaret Beaufort

 

My subject, Katherine Swynford, née Roet, was a wife and a widow, a person of great piety, who bore four children out of wedlock to Prince John, while he was married to another woman. Is it a remarkable medieval love story, since the couple do marry in 1396 and their children – the Beauforts – are legitimated and go on to be the ancestors of several English monarchs? Katherine’s son by her first husband is the boon companion of Henry Bolingbroke, raised with him in the same nursery, born only a year later. He is no aristocrat but his half-brothers and half-sister are, through their father. That half-sister, Joan, gives birth to Cecily, who marries Richard of York and is mother to Edward IV and Richard III. 

 

Henry VII’s claim to the throne came from his mother Margaret (see above), whose father was descended from John and Katherine’s union. And hence Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary Tudor; the line ends with Elizabeth I. Six English monarchs is not bad for the line of a woman whose father was a humble knight at the court of Edward III.



Oh, and Katherine's sister Philippa married Geoffrey Chaucer. Thereby hangs another story, to tell or show.