The Puffin at Palazzo Tron

If this post had a subtitle, it would be ‘in which the Royal Mail almost sabotages my debut at the Venice Biennale of Art and I’m made to understand that my artwork is “of no intrinsic value”.’

But in the end that’s just a commonplace tale of lost time, expense and heartbreak caused by an apparently uncaring, untrusted institution that also appears averse to the concept of answering the telephone. You can guess what happened and it reflects well only on the valiant Jack, manager of my local London branch and my lovely postie Neal, who honestly tried to swim against the tide and help.

So enough black bile. I’m not going to go all Ms Lovric versus the Post Office on you here.

This is actually a really lovely story.

And a simple one. 

My forthcoming novel, The Puffin, is as usual set in Venice.

And as has also become usual with my books, early on in the novel’s life, it began to exist in a series of poems that explored its ideas and totems: empire, coercion, hats, feathers, Habsburg Yellow, infidelity, poetry, language, animal consciousness, faith and even catastrophic plumbing, which is of course intrinsic to human unhappiness and therefore a special ornament to storytelling.

The Puffin also began to exist in the form of a hand-painted watercolour leporello. 

               

TThe leporello came courtesy of the gracious Venetian artist Matilde Dolcetti, who invites people to come to her beautiful home at the Palazzo Dandolo at San Tomà where we may work at her dining table on whatever we wish, using watercolours and the deliciously textured paper that she provides. I always make a leporello for the literary work-in-progress. It's a really precious use of time, and an exercise that invariably triggers thoughts, images, ideas and words. It even helps me with pace, as something tangible has to happen in each painted panel. It is time with the novel but not at the keyboard. It’s a full and happy refreshment.

The Puffin leporello performed its usual inspirational duties and I didn’t think any more of it – until I saw that the artist Emilia Kabakov was creating a collateral event at the Venice Biennale of Art this year. It was to be called Diario veneziano, a large-scale “total installation” curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate. The ambition was to transform the noble floor of Palazzo Tron into a collective narrative space: “not an exhibition about Venice, but an exhibition with Venice”. The artist and curators invited participants to contribute physical objects relating to their lives in the city, along with an explanation about why the object carried important memories, resonance and meaning.

I decided to submit the leporello, not so much as the story-model of a Venetian-based novel but as a tribute to Matilde’s grace and generosity in creating the ephemeral community of her dining table in the heart of Venice.

Diario veneziano was not a competition but I was still highly honoured and delighted to have The Puffin's leporello accepted. I’d never dreamt of being more than a regular and excited Biennale attendee (though I avoid the opening week parties). And I loved the idea of this exhibition. The Biennale is the province of international pavilions, big-name artists, publicity stunts and – more than ever this year – the art business. The crowds it draws are just one more thing Venice has to suffer. So I really appreciated the concept of giving the Venetians their own, private Biennale by them, about them and for them.

And it was even nicer to discover that my dear friend, the artist Déirdre Kelly, also has one of her works in Diario veneziano. We have collaborated as fellow Companions in the Guild of St George, the charity devoted to the works and ideas of John Ruskin. But this was the first time we have been in the same exhibition - Déirdre being a proper artist and me being just a writer who loves painting watercolours. And it was of course Déirdre who had taken me along to Matilde’s watercolour sessions in the first place.  

The Puffin, by the way, is a sequel to what's undoubtedly my best-known novel The Book of Human Skin. The Puffin works as a standalone, introducing new characters and new ideas – but readers who enjoyed Human Skin’s garrulous villain will perhaps feel pleasantly uncomfortable to welcome him back as one of a chorus of narrators. This time, not all of them are human.

The book is published on October 8th. Salt Publishing have designed my favourite-ever cover in a process that was joyfully collaborative. I’ll be doing some events to launch The Puffin, including the Venice Noir festival in November and being interviewed by our poetical Dean, Mark Oakley, at Southwark Cathedral on October 20th (Save the date!)

And of course I have other publicity duties ... 

Although I had for a long time despaired of social media, I worked out that Instagram was probably the most palatable for me. A Puffin in Venice Insta page was born. I acquired a life-size replica of a puffin and began to take him on my journeys around Venice. 

I was happy because it meant that I could work with David Winston, whose photographs of Venice tell incredible stories of their own. David has kindly done various puffin shoots with me, like this one at Benevento in the Strada Nuova, where we illustrated scenes from the book using their fabulous array of damasks, feathers, shoes and a very frightening mannequin.

I treated Instagram as I would a novel – not something personal, but part of my work as a writer. I found a voice for the puffin which means he writes himself. He gives historical insights, he comments wryly, he jokes, he points out the ridiculous. He meets local wildlife. He supports local causes like NoGrandiNavi, which opposes the cruise ships that pollute Venice. He is not exactly the same as the puffin of the novel because he has different work to do.  

And, after being very scared of AI, I found a use for it. Writing captions made use of my literary brain but hashtags rotted it. I use AI to generate the hashtags. So also, they are not my fault.

Despite my poor camera skills and cheap old phone, I went out on the streets to seek original material and I have to say that the puffin has brought me some completely unexpected pleasures. 

The first is seeing things from a different angle – in miniature and in detail. Puffin pictures work best that way. I have loved the chance to refocus.

The second is the joy, for a solitary writer, of interacting with living human beings. Whether I’m taking the puffin to be blessed by the local priest along with cats and dogs at Santa Marina, going shopping with him at antique fairs or smuggling him into exhibitions, people are always intrigued by him. Some do double-takes, thinking the resin model is real. Several people have said gloomily, ‘Now we have PUFFINS in Venice too? It must be Global Warming.’ Other ask if they can touch. Everyone wants to know what I am up to.

I was spending a lot of time explaining the puffin and, as you might have noticed, I don’t have a lot of time. So I went to Veneziastampa in Santa Maria Materdomini – where the wonderful Michele is still using antique machinery. I had some puffin cards printed, and that turned out to be another lovely experience. The cards are very popular. I have to keep reprinting them.

In the last two years, I have also worked with a delightful milliner, Tina Giuntini (aka Bea Evie) who makes bespoke hats, as does Alva, the fiery heroine in my book. Tina lent me the antique millinery tools she collects, so I could feel them in my hands as I wrote the scenes in which they figure. Tina has checked the book for millinery faux pas. To illustrate a part of the plot, she even made me a Bergère bonnet with ribbon compartments for musket balls and rolled-up maps.

Tina also created a tiny Napoleon hat for the puffin and is working a turban with a miniature Barbary plume. All for Instagram, but also for joy.

Speaking of joy, now the leporello stands in a vitrine at the Palazzo Tron's Biennale event, surrounded by toys, handmade lace, wedding veils, antique fishing baskets, letters, schoolbooks and so many other things contributed by Venetians. My explanation of Matilde’s magical afternoons stands beside stories of school days, sporting events, family triumphs and tragedies. Naturally the puffin and I went along to see. It is hard to convey how happy this makes me. 

You were perhaps wondering about the melodramatic subtitle to this post … so I will explain. Yes, the Royal Mail lost the original leporello and my frantic attempts to track it down failed. With the deadline for delivering artwork by then three days way, I hastily repainted the leporello from photographs of the original and sent it to the curators by a reliable courier just in time to be included.

In the course of trying to fill out online forms, I discovered that Royal Mail apparently characterises my leporello as ‘of no intrinsic value’. You see, I was lending it, not selling it to the exhibition. The online forms do not consent to be completed so I sent an actual letter to the Royal Mail.

The leporello, I told them, ‘never was and never will be for sale. But it is a piece of original art that was judged interesting enough for the Venice Biennale of Art, so the Royal Mail’s estimation of “no intrinsic value” says more about the Royal Mail than it does about the artwork.’

Interestingly, the Royal Mail actually replied on May 12. ‘I’m happy to advise,’ wrote my correspondent, apparently without irony, ‘ … that your item was delivered on 11/05/2026.’ There was no mention of the fact that this date was nearly seven weeks after it was posted (via a 3 – 5 day tracked service), a Biblical 40 days after the deadline for exhibition submissions and two days after the Biennale actually opened. There was no explanation of the delay.

Who knows if the original leporello was ever really delivered? I have heard nothing from the curators. The Royal Mail has not to date answered my request for proof of delivery. 

Meanwhile, on a happier note, I have just discovered that my Insta puffin has fellow-travellers on the Isle of Man. The Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) has used the same resin models to attract puffins back to the Calf of Man, a small island without human inhabitants. The marine conservation officer Lara Howe has explained that puffins are sociable and prefer to breed in colonies, so showing other puffins already in place convinces the living birds that the Calf is a good place to settle.

Perhaps I can attract a permanent colony of puffins to Venice this way? We already have beautiful egrets, cormorants, herons and even owls (none of which the tourists, lost in their phones, ever never seem to notice). 

The puffin is sometimes known as the northernmost Bird of Paradise. 

I think they would feel quite at home in what John Ruskin described as 'the Paradise of Cities'.

Michelle Lovric’s website

'Diario veneziano'
9 May — 28 June 2026
Ca' Tron, Sestiere Santa Croce 1957, Venice (two minutes from the San Stae vaporetto stop).

A Sinister Neighbour: Gestapo HQ Berlin

Martin Gropius Bau, venetian friezes,
Gestapo HQ, Berlin Wall death strip
(Clockwise from top left)

My new novel, Fables & Lies: A World War II, arose from my fascination with the archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, who not only proved the ancient city of Troy existed but also discovered a fabulous cache of gold there known as Priam’s Treasure.  Schliemann smuggled the trove out of Turkey then ‘bequeathed’ it to the German people. During WWII, the treasure was kept in a Berlin museum. After the Soviets looted the city, Priam’s Treasure disappeared mysteriously for 50 years until the Russians admitted they had hidden it in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum where you can see it today.

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is a patriotic museum assistant raised on Nazi dogma. Through her love affair with Cambridge educated archaeologist, Darien Lessing, her eyes are opened to the rot beneath the Regime’s lies, as both strive to protect Priam’s Treasure and other antiquities from air raids. Intertwined is Freyja’s forced marriage to Kaspar Voigt, one of Himmler’s SS scholars, and her quest to discover what her husband’s twisted research entails. As such, Freyja’s safekeeping efforts and her journey to enlightenment form the spine of the novel. However, I also explore Himmler’s promulgation of the Aryan Myth to justify invasion, dispossession and murder.

My research revealed Priam’s Treasure was housed in the Pre and Early History Museum in the ‘Martin Gropius Bau’ building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It had the distinction of being located next to Gestapo Headquarters which intrigued me. What would it have been like for my characters to have worked next to such sinister neighbours?

A changing streetscape

Excited to visit Berlin to ‘walk the ground’, I hired a guide from Humboldt University to give me a tour of specific places I’d identified as relevant to my plot. I quickly learned many street names had altered over the years depending on which regime was in power. The East Germans changed Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse to Niederkirchnerstrasse in 1951, named after Käthe Niederkirchner, a communist resistance fighter against the Nazis.

In the late 1880’s, the short street boasted the elegant Prince Albrecht Palais at No. 9 and Martin Gropius Bau at No.7 which was purpose built in 1881 to house the Museum of Decorative Arts. Opposite these stood the Prussian Parliament House. In 1905, an extension to the Decorative Arts Museum was built at No.8. Later this annexe became the School of Industrial Arts.

After WWI, the Museum of Decorative Arts was moved elsewhere in Berlin. Martin Gropius Bau became known as ‘the Museum at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse’ which housed three collections – Pre and Early History, East Asian and the Art History Library. The ‘Schliemann Salon’ displayed Priam’s Treasure and other Trojan exhibits. The ‘Gold Hall’ was filled with magnificent Merovingian Frankish jewellery and Bronze Age troves such as the Cottbus and Eberswalde Hoards. In all, there were over 100,000 exhibits in the Pre and Early History Museum to pack and protect.

Priam's Treasure in Berlin

An ominous address

The cultured atmosphere of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse changed after 1933. No.8 was taken over as Gestapo HQ. The palace at No.9, since turned into a Grand Hotel, became SS House. The parliament building became The House of the Aviators. Goering also built his massive Aviation Ministry (which covered one city block) at the corner crossing at Wilhelmstrasse, an imposing eagle statue at the front. In fact, during the Third Reich, ‘Wilhelmstrasse’ became shorthand for the entire government quarter of ministries including Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery.

Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was an ominous address. Being taken ‘to No.8’ was a terrifying prospect. Dungeons were built underground. A ‘House Prison’ was erected in its gardens. Thousands of people were interrogated and tortured within its walls.

Of course, Gestapo Headquarters and other Wilhelmstrasse ministries were targets for Allied bombers during the war. As a result, Martin Gropius Bau was under constant threat of becoming collateral damage. Despite this danger, curators persisted in packing their national treasures. During the Soviet assault, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was part of the ‘Zitadelle’- the innermost sector containing Wilhelmstrasse which was to be defended at all costs. Ultimately, the Soviets bombarded SS House and No.8 with artillery but, even in the downfall, SS soldiers defended Gestapo HQ to the last, their blood staining the cobblestones.

The quest to save national treasures

Zoo Flak Turm

On the eve of the war, the Nazis issued a directive to all cultural institutions to sort their exhibits into three categories: priceless, most valuable, and less precious. Over time, space was found in bank vaults for the first two groups, but with the advent of RAF saturation bombing and American ‘blockbusters’, many of the irreplaceable and most valuable objects were sent to salt mines in western Germany. However, the director of the Pre and Early History Museum, Wilhelm Unverzagt, chose to secure his Category One exhibits such as Priam’s Treasure in a monumental ‘Flak Tower’ near the zoo which resembled a medieval fortress with three-metre-thick concrete walls.

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is one of Unverzagt’s assistants. She risks her life packing the collections while watching the museum take hit after hit. Freyja lives in a world of oppression where trust is a fragile currency. Threats from the Gestapo loom large in her life as much as the HQ’s physical presence next to her workplace. As Himmler made it a prerequisite for SS cadets to pass an exam on pre-history she grows used to ‘Black Angels’ attending lectures in the museum. There is no escaping interaction with her odious neighbours.

Through Freyja, the reader is taken into the world of Germany’s safekeepers and the destruction of Berlin’s cultural landmarks. Freyja also weathers the Soviet assault in the Flak Tower and witnesses a Soviet Trophy Brigade plundering all the exhibits she’s strived so hard to protect. At the same time, she’s drawn into the chilling world of Himmler’s research institute, the SS Ahnenerbe. Forced into marriage with Kaspar Voigt to protect her father, she is horrified to learn how prehistorians and ethnologists are subverting history to serve power.

A walk through history

Niederkirchnerstrasse stands today as a time capsule for various eras in Berlin’s history. No.8 and No.9 have been razed with only the basement cells remaining. A museum known as ‘The Topography of Terrors’ has been established to serve as a reminder of the oppression of the Regime. The Berlin House of Representatives now occupies The House of the Aviators. Only Goering’s Aviation Ministry remains pretty much as original due to the Soviets and then GDR officials using it as offices.

Ornate bas reliefs and columns

The street also holds echoes of misery from the German Democratic Republic. The Berlin Wall ran down the middle of the road cutting off Mitte in the east from Kreuzberg in the west. Martin Gropius Bau ended up in the ‘American sector’ during the period of the Four Powers. Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous crossing point featured so often in spy thrillers, was located nearby. Pseudo US soldiers now pose with tourists for photos there. A section of the wall with its death strip remains as a memorial.

Next to this wasteland, Martin Gropius Bau rises in its splendour. The West Germans reconstructed it in 1978 with further renovations occurring after reunification. It certainly wasn’t what I expected to find on my tour - a delight to behold – one of the most beautiful historic buildings in Berlin. I describe it in my novel:

Majolica mosaics

‘Although Freyja had worked at the museum for some time, she’d never grown accustomed to such sinister neighbours. She was always relieved to reach the refuge of the Martin Gropius Bau at No. 7. Three storeys high, the faux Italian palazzo was a confection of red brick, terracotta and sandstone. A row of Venetian glass mosaic friezes adorned its top floor. The blue, red and gold majolica human characters in each panel embodied nine different epochs of art. She saw the gleaming figures as her guardians.’

In addition to these magnificent friezes, each storey is demarked by terracotta reliefs depicting industrious craftsmen such as masons, spinners and carpenters. Above each are stone lozenges engraved with the names of famous artisans such as Schinkel, Schiller and Buhl. The entrance columns are ornately adorned with frolicking children and fruit such as pineapples. There are coats of arms including one with masonic symbols. The art epochs are exemplified by figures such as an Egyptian pharaoh, Japanese geisha, Roman Caesar and Grecian noblewoman. 

Atrium skylight, foyer dome, acanthus balustrades

Inside, the museum is no less wondrous. The rococo décor is a celebration of the Baroque with green acanthus balustrades and stucco ceilings festooned with garlands. In the foyer is a beautiful leadlight dome. Three double doors lead to a huge atrium covered by a rectangular skylight. In its heyday, over thirty exhibition salons surrounded the hall on the ground and first floors. Now it is an art exhibition space which has featured artists such as Wei Wei, Anish Kapoor and Paul Klee.

I admit I’ve become entranced by this amazing building with all its layers of history. If you are ever in Berlin – I recommend you visit. You won’t be disappointed!

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. Her latest release is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.

Photos are my own or courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Researching my novels by Wendy J. Dunn

Researching my novels has always led me to fall in love with places. Hever Castle was my first love affair with a place – a love affair that continues to this day. I suppose this is not surprising considering the length of time my imagination lived within its walls. Dear Heart, How Like You This?, my first Tudor novel and published in 2002, took ten years to find a publisher. It was also the first novel I had ever completed.

Copyright and with thanks to Dr Owen Emmerson.

While I had proved to myself that I could indeed write a novel, getting it published proved another challenging story. Despite receiving a twice year although encouraging rejection, I was not brave enough to start a new project, so, as soon as another year of teaching was over for the year, I spent hours of my summer breaks revisiting my novel, which meant revisiting Hever Castle of my imagination. Hever Castle was a vital part of the fabric of my story. I imagined my main character, the poet Tom Wyatt, spending his growing-up years at Hever Castle, and falling in love with Anne Boleyn there. Having his heart broken there.

Living in Australia forced me to rely on the research of history books to build up in my mind my imagined Hever Castle. It did not take long before I burned with desire to see the castle for myself. I wanted to smell its air, walk its grounds, explore the interior of Hever Castle, climb its narrow, spiral staircase, listen to my footsteps crunching and echoing within the castle’s stone walls.

Eight years before my first novel found its publisher and two years before the birth of my last child, I got my wish. My husband and I took our children to England to visit their grandfather. One day, we left our three older children with an unsuspecting close relation, and we travelled along the winding roads to Kent.
‘It’s so small,’ I said to my husband on first seeing Hever Castle. Not an original observation, I must admit. But Hever Castle, for an English castle, is indeed small. Small, yet immensely beautiful. Tom Wyatt in Dear Heart describes Hever Castle as ‘enchanting’. I cannot remember now whether I wrote that before or after my first visit to the castle. I can only say truthfully, Hever Castle has deepened its enchantment on my psyche each time I have visited it.

Copyright VB.

In my eyes, few places in the world rival Hever Castle’s perfection when backed by the blue skies of an English summer, with green grass spread out before it.
Hever Castle is a moated castle built out of amber-coloured stones, stones usually heavily festooned with climbing, flowering plants in the warmer seasons. 

Copyright VB.

The lowered drawbridge takes its visitors through a gateway. Raise your eyes and you’ll see the niches with four stone saints protecting the gateway and its timbered courtyard. Originally built in 1270, the Gatehouse and walled Bailey are its oldest existing parts. Anne Boleyn’s ‘self-made’ grandfather, Geoffrey Bullen, purchased the castle in 1459.  Since Hever Castle was first built, the castle has experienced periods of great neglect, followed by extensive rebuilding. Such was the case when Geoffrey Bullen bought the castle. During the more settled period of the Tudors, a castle such as Hever rarely needed to be put to its original purpose, protecting all within and without from armed assault; rather those people high on the English social scale used castles like Hever to showcase their wealth. This happened at Hever Castle. Geoffrey Bullen was on the up and up, and he wanted the castle to assert his new status and wealth. He built for his family a fine Tudor home with large lattice windows within the castle’s walls. Nowadays, every room at Hever Castle seems filled to the brim with treasures of the Tudor age. The paintings are especially wonderful and set out for the visitor a feast for the eye, as well as for the Tudor lover, with their depictions of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Mary I and – of course – Elizabeth I.

Still possessing the dark timber from the Tudor era, the castle’s entrance hall leads to the inner hall, once serving as Hever Castle’s ‘Great Kitchen’ in the time of the Boleyns. Here, in pride of place upon a mantelpiece, is a replica of a clock believed given by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn on the morning of their wedding in 1532.

 Portraits abound in the castle, original Tudor art and copies of paintings from the period. On one wall, there is a Holbein painting of Henry VIII alongside portraits of Anne and Mary Boleyn from the Holbein school. On another wall hangs a portrait of Philip II, surrounded by important women in his life: his mother, Isabella of Portugal, his second wife, Mary Tudor, and his third wife, Elisabeth Valois, her portrait painted by the famous French artist Clouet, the same artist who painted Mary, Queen of Scots, during her youth in France. 


The Dining Hall was originally the Boleyn’s Great Hall. Over its fireplace, a rectangular tapestry depicts the arms of Henry VIII. Wall tapestries featured in the Tudor period not only as items of great beauty but because they also helped to keep the fire’s warmth within the draughty confines of their homes.
Affixed to the dining room doors are copies of locks that Henry VIII took on his travels around his kingdom. The king’s locksmith, a servant accompanying the king when he stayed at the home of a subject, would attach a lock to the door of the king’s sleeping chamber, as a protective measure against the king’s enemies. 



The room where Anne Boleyn supposedly slept as a girl has an attention-grabbing architectural feature: a half-domed ceiling. Huge bedroom furniture dominates this room, as does the bedroom furniture in each and every bedroom at Hever Castle. It also possesses one feature I love most about homes from the Tudor Period: window-seats recessed into castle walls, backed by lattice windows. When I viewed this chamber in 1994 (how long ago that is now), I saw not only several depictions of Anne Boleyn, but also for the first time her book of hours. There is a legend that Anne Boleyn – moments before her execution – gave it to her friend and kinswoman Margaret Lee to pass to Sir Thomas Wyatt. Knowing how Anne Boleyn treasured that exquisite tiny book, I always shiver seeing it again as if touched by a ghost. 



Hever Castle has inspired my imagination and continues to do so. I only hope to return there one day.

New Edition of Dear Heart, How Like You This?

 

Ancient Greece's Strongest Man by L.J. Trafford

Sometime around about the year 220 CE a philosopher named Philostratus was getting annoyed with the days in which he was living. Now since I turned 50 last year I am fully onboard with nostalgic winging. What the hell happened to alcopops? I used to knock back the cranberry flavoured ones as a student back in the 90s when Brit Pop was at its peak and I had my whole life infront of me, as opposed to wondering where the hell all those years went. Philostratus’ wallows in nostalgia, however, were not for sweetly flavoured alcoholic beverages nor a music scene he understands, but rather for the athletes of times past. ‘The athletes of today are inferior to those of earlier times,’ he whines and adds with a snort of disgust (I’m imagining). ‘the majority of people are irritated even by lovers of the gymnasium.’

 

Two lovers of the gymnasium post exercise.
Credit: Two men using strigils. Gouache painting by S.W. Kelly 1937. Wellcome Collection.

Philostratus then lists the names of those great athletes that no one around him can remotely compare to, ‘Milo, Hipposthenes, Poulydamas and Promachus’ That he reels off these names without any further explanation or description of their victories or even which sports they competed in shows how famous these athletes were. Which is quite something when you find out Milo lived a cool 800 years before Philostratus is writing, as did Hipposthenes. Poulydamas & Promachus won their victories in the 5th century BCE, 600 years prior to Philostratus gym hating times.


Of the names Philostratus mentions the most famous was undoubtedly Milo or to give him his full name, sort of, Milon the Croton. Croton was a Greek settlement in Southern Italy and Milo the wrestler was their most famous son.In a career spanning decades Milo totted up six wins in six Olympic games.
Milo turned up to compete for a record breaking 7th Olympics, but he won by default because nobody else turned up to fight him. Nobody wanted to.


Legendary status is often distributed postmortem, with the likes of Philostratus looking back on times centuries before their birth and deciding that things and indeed people were just so much better back then. Milo of Croton however was a legend in his own lifetime and for far more than those Olympic victories, impressive as they were, he was a man who cultivated his legendary status.
We see this in an event that took place after the conclusion of the Olympic games at a spot known as The Altis. The Altis is a sacred area that contains several temples, including the Temple of Zeus whose statue of the God makes it into the seven wonders of the world list but it was also where statues of Olympic champions were erected. As a many times Olympic winner Milo naturally had a statue, but unlike the other athletes Milo carried his own bronze statue into the Altis for installation. Legendary behaviour in front of his adoring crowd.

Some of the remains of ancient Olympia. Credit Annatsach, Wikicomms.

However, Milo did not limit his amazing displays of strength to the adoring fans who’d come to watch him compete at the Olympic games or any of the other multitude of athletic competitions that were staged in Greece, he was quite happy to impress/show off outside of competitions.


There was the time he carried a bull, yes a fully grown bull, on his shoulders. This is not something you see every day, if ever in your lifetime. I’m not entirely convinced that anyone in ancient Greece saw it in their lifetime either, especially after consulting with farmers son, Mr LJ whose immediate reaction to my recounting of Milo’s feat was ‘that’s rubbish.’ Like everyone else who has ever worked with cattle Mr LJ has thrown himself over a fence to get out of the way of a fully grown bull. Although his main objection to the tale is that bulls are far too heavy to be carried by a human.


Milo of Croton is no human though, he is a legend and the story of the bull and the wrestler is not yet done. Not only did Milo carry the bull on his shoulders, he also killed the bull singlehandedly, butchered it personally and ate it whole in a single day. I put this to Mr LJ and his response was a single word ‘nonsense.’ You don’t need to know anything about farming or indeed the length of time it takes to butcher a whole bull to know this is, as Mr LJ rightly identifies ‘nonsense.’


Aside from the implausibility of having captured and carried a notoriously angry animal that weighs between 500 and 1000kg (78 and 150 stone in old money), a fully grown bull makes for around 340kg of edible meat. You don’t even have to do the maths, although I have, to know this is not just implausible but impossible. 340kg is 749lbs, now translate that into quarter pound burgers and work out how many minutes there are in a single day. Milo would have to be eating 2.14 quarter pound burgers a minute to eat a whole bull, and that’s if he started with the eating at sunrise, which we know he didn’t because he had to first capture and kill and butcher the bull. We don’t even need to go into what that quantity of meat would do to the human digestive system because the story is clearly nonsene.


But that is by the by, Milo of Croton was clearly such a specimen of manhood and had acquired such a legendary status that people were prepared to believe any tales told about him no matter if they were nonsense.

A big bull for reference.
Credit: A West Highland bull, Etching by H.Beckwith, ca 1840, after W..H Davies. Wellcome Collection.

I have an inkling that Milo might well be responsible for the exaggerated embellishments of what was probably a true tale involving some feat of strength and a bull. He certainly wasn’t shy of showing off his skills and we find other, more plausible stories about his legendary strength that revolve more realistically, if less dramatically around fruit.

‘It was said that such was his grip that nobody could take a piece of fruit out of his hand once he had hold of it,’ so says ancient Greek travel writer, Pausanias. In Pausanias’ account the fruit is a pomegranate, others say it was an apple. The type of fruit doesn’t matter because the trick is the same ‘when he gripped an apple, nobody could straighten his fingers,’ so says Pliny the Elder.
Which strongly suggests a public performance of some sort and a challenge set to be the first person to successfully retrieve the fruit from Milo’s grip.

Another one in Milo’s portfolio of impressive things was to burst a cord tied tight around his forehand by inhaling and expanding the veins in his head, which no man has any reason to do beside to show off that he can. Milo was a man who created his own legend and lived it to the full.


It is fitting that the manner of Milo’s death should be as legendary and show-offy as the manner of his life, he was never going to be a man who expired quietly after a short illness. His demise came about when he punched a tree in half, got his hands wedged in the split and was eaten alive by wolves.

After: Pordenone's painting of the subject in the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago, or one of its many copies. Wellcome Collection

 
There’s a lesson in that tale somewhere about the worthlessness of great feats if there is no one to witness them, about abusing the powers the gods have given you and paying the price, or about how man is nothing compared to nature and that nature will always triumph. Grand themes like that. Although my takeaway is never ever to go wandering around any woodland where you could possibly encounter a wolf. But then I’m from Britain where the most dangerous animal you are ever likely to encounter in a wood is a slightly narked squirrel or a grumpy badger.

L.J, Trafford

Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece is available for pre ordering now.

  

The Ayrshire Vendetta by Margaret Skea

The Ayrshire Vendetta.

It is 440 years since the Massacre of Annock. Though not an unusual occurrence in the lawlessness of Scotland in the 16th century, that event, and particularly the extent and ferocity of the reprisals that followed, marked the beginning of a change in attitude towards blood feud. 

‘Blood feud was the custom of the times.’ So wrote William Robertson in Ayrshire. Its History (1908) 

Of course, feuding between Scottish clans wasn’t a new phenomenon, nor did it entirely end with the 16th century, and it certainly wasn’t confined to Ayrshire. There are many well-documented, long-standing feuds between families throughout Scotland, from the Scotts and Kers in the Borders, to the Campbells and MacDonalds in the west and the Gordons and Stewarts in the Highlands. However the Ayrshire Vendetta, as it became known, is a classic example; the Cunninghame and Montgomerie families later dubbed the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Ayrshire. 

All that remains of Eglinton castle – Primary residence of the Earl of Eglinton – head of  the Montgomerie family.

Nothing remains of Kilmaurs, the seat of the Cunninghame family.

Various factors contributed to a culture in which violence was considered the most appropriate manner of dealing with dispute. Foremost was the weakness of the Crown.  Of the seven Scottish monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries, only one (James IV, aged 15 when he became king) was able to rule in his own right from accession. Of the others, three inherited the throne as infants (James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI) and two at less than ten (James II and III), while James I, aged twelve, was captured, still uncrowned, and detained in England for eighteen years.  As a result the years of successive minorities were characterized by a nobility jostling for precedence and for control of the monarchy, allied to a general acceptance of the rule of ‘might’ regardless of ‘right’.

On his accession in 1488 James IV set out to establish stable government at local level, appointing representatives in each district to dispense justice. A laudable aim, marred in Ayrshire by an error of judgement, when he passed control of the bailiwick of Cunninghame to Hugh, Lord Montgomerie, thus sparking the 150 + year feud. 

Although the original affront had been to the Cunninghames, the first blow in the feud was the sacking of Kerelaw - a Cunninghame tower situated in the midst of Montgomerie territory.  The years that followed were punctuated by repeated acts of brutality and murder on both sides, separated by periods of temporary quiet. 

In 1505 Cunninghame of Craigens was attacked and wounded by the Master of Montgomerie; and in 1507 the Cunninghames retaliated, attacking the newly created Montgomerie Earl of Eglinton, with lives lost on both sides. 

Meanwhile the issue of the bailiwick became the subject of arbritation, the decision in favour of Eglinton in 1509 failing to satisfy the Earl of Glencairn, head of the Cunninghames. 

However, as is so often the case when a country is threatened by an external enemy, private grievances are set aside. So it was in the years before Flodden, clans uniting in the face of the English threat. The Scottish losses, whether one accepts the lower estimate of 5,000 or the higher one of 10,000, decimated the nobility and left the country once again with an infant king. 

                           Site of Flodden Battlefield – very atmospheric even today. 

It is interesting to note that though both Eglinton and Glencairn were on the same side in the unsuccessful conspiracy to depose the Duke of Albany, Regent for James V, it failed to diminish the ill-feeling between the two families.  Just four years later, in 1517, hostilities flared again with the wounding of John, Master of Montgomerie and the killing of his followers. Though Albany extracted an agreement from both factions to lay aside their quarrels, it served only to delay revenge, Cunninghame of Auchenharvie and of Waterston becoming the next victims.  

These tit-for-tat murders led to one of the most significant episodes in the vendetta, when in 1528 a large force of Cunninghames rode through Montgomerie territory, causing wholesale destruction: decimating crops, stealing and killing stock and burning the dwellings, leaving the tenantry penniless and homeless. The raids culminated in the burning of Eglinton castle itself, destroying all the contents, including tapestries, furniture, paintings, armaments and most important of all, family records going back as far as the Norman Conquest, as well as their Charter to the Montgomerie lands. This time the Montgomerie earl, perhaps tired of violence, or feeling his increasing age, accepted a cash settlement as compensation, and for a period of almost sixty years there are no records of atrocities, though whether as a result of external pressures or a genuine attempt at peace is hard to gauge.  

The external pressures were certainly significant - war with England, the Scottish defeat at Solway Moss and the subsequent death of James V; resulting in the accession of 6-day old Mary and a new cycle of government by regency. Then came the ‘Rough wooing’ as Henry VIII tried to force a betrothal between his son Edward and Mary; the English incursion into southern Scotland; and two battles: Ancrum Moor, where the Scots were victorious, and Pinkie Cleugh where the honours went to England, precipitating the smuggling of the young Queen Mary to safety in France. 

     

But it seems that old enmities are hard to stifle and when the country was once again secure, with James VI on the throne and hopeful of inheriting the English crown, the feud erupted once more, with the massacre at Annock in 1586. Most sources agree on the main facts: a small group of Montgomeries stopped at Langshaw on route to the court at Stirling; the Cunninghames, having been alerted to their presence, lying in wait at the Ford to ambush them. Though the numbers killed appear to have been small, the aftermath was brutal and wide-ranging. As Robertson put it: 

‘All the country ran to arms, either on one side or the other, so that for some time there was a scene of bloodshed and of murder in the West that had never been known before.’ 

One person’s fate seems particularly poignant: Lady Margaret of Langshaw, a Cunninghame by birth, but married to a Montgomerie, was held responsible for the ambush and forced to remain in hiding for many years - a heavy price to pay for a family name.

James VI, determined to outlaw blood feud, brought forward laws restricting the carrying of firearms, and commanded opposing lords to process hand in hand up the High Street in Edinburgh as a symbol of the new, peaceful order. It wasn’t quite the end of the Ayrshire Vendetta, however, for in 1606, while Parliament was in session, a battle between the followers of the families was waged on the streets of Perth, lasting for three hours. 

But in contrast to Shakespeare’s ‘Montagues’ and ‘Capulets’, 

the marriage of William, 9th Earl of Glencairn to Margaret Montgomerie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Eglinton, did finally seal the peace in 1661.

And in an interesting postscript the Lord Lyon recognized a new chief for Clan Cunninghame in 2013. 

His name? Sir John Christopher Foggo Montgomery Cunninghame.

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of three books focusing on this long-running feud, which together comprise the Munro saga:  Turn of the Tide, (Historical Fiction Winner in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist competition and Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time author Award), A House Divided (Long-listed for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award) and By Sword and Storm. 

They tell the story of a fictional family trapped in the middle of the conflict, with all the challenges and difficulties it poses for their relationships and their safety; along with the pressure it places on conscience and integrity.

For details of these and Margaret’s other books visit www.margaretskea.com 

Ebooks can be found at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/

 

A LONDON FAMILY 1870-1900 by Molly Hughes. Penny Dolan

Bookshelves, like time capsules, give glimpses of past lives, stories and enthusiasms.

Decluttering, I came across a title my mother inherited from her oldest brother: A LONDON GIRL OF THE EIGHTIES by Molly Hughes. The merry, positive tone, read many decades before, did not feel ‘Victorian’ at all. 

This time, after a couple of chapters, I started looking for information on Molly Hughes. Back then, the task would have needed a bus ride to the public library before I could even begin. Now, ‘Molly’ simply appeared on my screen. 

I discovered that my book was, in fact, the middle title of a trilogy. Molly Hughes had written all three during her retirement, living in a cottage in Cuffley, Hertfordshire. Intrigued, and hoping that Molly’s memories might help with one of my own fictitious characters, I placed an order for the trilogy,

A LONDON FAMILY 1870-1900, the full second-hand trilogy, arrived on the front step, 

And then? I read them all.

A LONDON CHILD OF THE SEVENTIES, pub 1934.

Molly wrote her autobiography to show that ‘Victorian children did not have such a dull time as is usually supposed,’ and her own energy and appreciation of life seem the opposite of what the straight-laced term ‘Victorian’ once suggested.

Her parents, Tom and Mary Thomas, and their family led a quiet, respectable middle-class life in a three-storey house in Canonbury Park, North London. 'We were just an ordinary, suburban, Victorian family, undistinguished ourselves and unacquainted with distinguished people,' says Molly.

Tom, her father, is a stockbroker in the City. He and Mary are very aware of the flow of money, and the need to live according to their social class. Tom declares that ‘a settled income has its attractions possibly, but it can never be the fun of an unsettled one,’ letting the family enjoy the spending any windfall that comes their way, while living as cheaply as possible in between. 

Despite the optimism, daily life is not without problems. Mary, his wife, seems to manage the home without permanent servants or nursery help, and worries about afternoon visitors who stay until they must be offered food when nothing is left in the pantry. The family willingly  manage,avoiding parties and costly social obligations, although Molly describes her mother telling an over-long visitor how lovely she finds sitting in the dark, looking out at the street-lights. The visitor left,unaware Mary was concealing the results of an unpaid gas bill.

Tom and Mary clearly took pride in their four sons but, when Mary’s fifth baby proved a daughter, she was so delighted she leapt out of bed to see her, and made to lie down promptly for the sake of her health. Molly, as a result, always felt that, like Beatrice, a 'merry star’ had danced at her birth and, despite being the youngest, always felt loved and encouraged in whatever she wanted to do.

Each of her four brothers had a different character: the oldest, Thomas, was good at his studies, including Latin; the second - Vivian known as Dym - was quick at maths, science and had a secret love of poetry; the third, Charles, was only interested in art, painting and churches, while the youngest, Barnholt, tagged along after his brothers or lived in a world of his own.

The children were given a space of their own: a large third-floor room with a fire, a carpet, an ottoman, pictures that they liked and a window-seat that looked down and across the road junction. With few toys, they made use of a huge box of blocks, books and bits of furniture, and damaged toy soldiers to stage interesting battles and strategy games, along with cloaks, hats and dressing up clothes for acting out dramas and stories. The children had pens and ink for writing, paint & paper for drawing and sketching – a useful skill at a time when cameras were not available – as well as playing cards, all sorts of board games and a collection of much-loved, much-read story books. In addition, each boy had a shelf for their own interests and box of treasures, and Molly would surely have had one herself too.

Molly writes about visits to all sorts of amusements: the Boat Race; the Diving Bell at the Polytechnic, displays at the Agricultural Hall, or tickets to see Irving in ‘The Bells’, re-enacted at home, She also describes the older boys secretly daring each other to roof-high climbing challenges, or taking young Barnholt, disguised as Guy Fawkes, on a street-corner begging venture with a barrel-organ grinder, and other hidden activities. Molly describes many of these trips and incidents as well as if she had been present but she and her mother often stayed at home, whether from choice, because of Molly's youth or because of the cost. 

Occasionally, the boys did include Molly: one afternoon, knowing she longed to take a bus ride, they smuggled her outside, up the ladder on the back of the bus, across the sloping roof and in beside the driver at the front of his horse-drawn bus. The boys also managed to divert their mother’s attention from the mud on their delighted sister’s shoes on their return. The book gives a remarkable picture of the sibling relationships; while Molly herself is eager to learn from her brothers, they in turn are eager she should not grow up as one of those despised ‘silly girls’ with no sense in her head.

Religious observance is still important or expected. On Sundays the whole family walk almost two miles to St Paul’s Cathedral for the service with its hour-long sermon and then back again, with occasional other churches to add variety. Only the glorious sound of the organs and the beauty of the choral music made the constant church-going bearable, says Molly. 

Molly's balance of topics in these books can be slightly idiosyncratic, but that also tells the reader what matters to the writer. For example, one chapter describes all the packing and preparation needed for a family trip to Cornwall, followed by a description of the whole journey by steam trains from St Pancras to Penzance. 

The Thomas family are visiting Reskadinnick, near Camborne, which Molly describes as ‘more than a mere home or house or farm.’ Built on land owned by her grandfather, who had been a mining-prospector all over the world, the secure and comfortable family home is managed by Tony, his daughter and Molly’s ‘golden aunt’. These chapters give the reader  a sense of the whole Cornish coastal setting, before mass tourism hits the landscape. That beauty and the carefree life in and around the house are clearly idyllic moments for Molly, her mother and all the family.

Gradually. though, the children get older. The boys are sent to school: Thomas to his father’s old school in Shrewsbury and the three younger boys to the Merchant Taylor School in London. Molly goes to school each day, and for a while all seems settled. Then, suddenly, on the final pages, after a diversion about the dreadful London smogs, tragedy strikes: their father is killed, and Molly's childhood is over.


A LONDON GIRL OF THE EIGHTIES, pub 1936.

After her father’s death, and its financial impact, Molly’s education has even more importance. Along with her friend Winnie, a kindred spirit, she studies for and passes the Oxford Senior Local Examination. This award was not enough to help Molly with her next ambition, that of becoming a pupil at the North London Collegiate School for Ladies. Fortunately, Tony, Molly’s beloved ‘golden aunt’, offers to pay her fees. Molly entrance is barred at the last moment: every pupil, no matter how knowledgeable, must be able to sew a buttonhole. Fortunately, after a weekend of practising, Molly is allowed to take her self-sewn button-hole along, and starts her first term.

The North London Collegiate was the first academic school for girls in London and was led by the famous headmistress Miss Buss who, with Miss Beale, was one of a pair of great protagonists for female education. In addition to the usual subjects, the rigorous timetable included the study of Maths, Science, Latin and Greek, although Molly's descriptions of the classes do not sound as startlingly exciting as she or we would wish. Aware of the prohibitive fees at NLCS, Buss also founded the less exclusive Camden School for Girls in 1871.

Molly was eager to earn her living by teaching, so she took up one of the places at the first teacher-training college in Cambridge, gaining a BA degree. As Molly writes about this first keen, excited but inexperienced cohort, she conveys a sense of the buzz and excitement of the time. Along with Molly, the students are all keen to learn and to help each other with their practice and visits, and talk about the methods of education, including the new European ideas.

Growing up with four brothers had definitely helped Molly become a strong-minded, capable and enthusiastic young woman. At the age of twenty-five, she was invited to take on the role of teacher-educator at Bedford College, London. Her work there, based on all the discussions in Cambridge, led to the inclusion of the history and theory of education, childhood development, classroom practice and other subjects that formed the familiar curriculum in colleges of education during the 20th century.

An aside: Molly’s romping style, and the successful outcome of her story in A LONDON GIRL might have been bitter reading for my mother. Her father, an old soldier, refused to sign the form granting her a place at the local grammar school, possibly because of the cost of the uniform. Instead, she stayed on, up in the top floor of the local authority school, taking a typing course instead. Not so long after, she ha joined the WAAF, and was working as a typist at Bomber Command.

A LONDON HOME OF THE NINETIES, pub 1937.

This last book in the trilogy, is about Molly’s marriage to Arthur Hughes, a barrister, after a ten year engagement. Molly, of course, (pictured below) knew she had to give up her work on marriage, so much of this book is about the work of managing their home in Ladbroke Grove, the birth of their first beloved daughter, and later, the arrival of their three boys. After Arthur's early death, Molly returned to teaching, eventually becoming a schools inspector and writer, living in a cottage in Cuffley.

As a whole, the LONDON FAMILY trilogy is a touching and complex portrayal of late Victorian family life, and has more in common with the liveliness of Nesbitt’s fictional families than I had expected, as well as revealing societal norms and changes during and since this period. 

Copies of A London Child may also be available from Persephone Books, with the charming cover below, titled '1 Canonbury Park North, Islington' and drawn by Ann Usborne.

An additional oddment: the hardback book that arrived here unseen was, to my surprise, a deft example of late century thriftiness. Someone had taken the trouble of rebinding the soft, original and unused Oxford paperback of A LONDON FAMILY, creating a sturdy cloth-covered hardback instead.  The front and back covers of the original paperback, with all the illustration and lettering, had been smoothly secured to the grey cloth binding, though they did not have the charm of the Persephone image above. Somehow, the neat practicality of the new binding felt very appropriate for Molly's determined account of her life.


Penny Dolan.