NORWICH STORIES by Penny Dolan

As I walked round Norwich, three stories were in my head, all met through historical fiction, and all involving what was once seen as the second city of England.

Norwich stands a safe distance inland, on the banks of the Wensum with Yarmouth offering travel to London and across to the coast and estuaries of Northern Europe and beyond. Norfolk, when travel by land was hard and dangerous, had access to trade and markets, to exports and imports. The city was open, for better or otherwise, to wider cultural influences, knowledge and forces, and the prosperity eventually brought by the monastic wool trade.

Two structures dominate the city. One is religious: the mighty Norwich cathedral, with its tall, peregrine-housing spire and beautiful cathedral close. The other is the keep of Norwich Castle, high on the mound raised when the Conqueror took over the city, a symbol of might and right.

Ah, that cathedral, with its wide close and peaceful grounds!

However, my first historical character, although her story is ‘spiritual’, does not seem part of that great cathedral, though she would have heard its bell and those of Norwich’s many other churches.

Julian of Norwich was a 14th century anchorite, and the author of the first book written in English by a woman. After living through years of plague, bereavement and unrest, Dame Julian chose to be ‘entombed’ within a single sealed room, to live her life as if she was symbolically dead to the world, spending her time in prayers and devotion to Christ’s Passion. 

However, her solitude was not constant: people would seek out the small window to her cell, asking for advice, comfort and her prayers. ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ are Julian’s collected thoughts and meditations on the sixteen intense religious visions or ‘Shewings’ she had experienced earlier in her life. 

At that time, the act of writing, whether as a woman or in English rather than Latin, could have led to her persecution and death. Fortunately, her words were valued and preserved on scraps and smuggled fragments, and gathered together into a single volume later. For twenty three years, she lived alone in her cell with the help of a servant and, traditionally, a cat. Maybe the most loved of her sayings, and most used as a mantra, are these: 

‘All shall be well, and all shall be well 

and all manner of thing shall be well.’

Two recent novels, both quite original in style, relate to Julian’s life.

The first, ‘I Julian: The Fictional Biography of Julian of Norwich’ is by Claire Gilbert, Director of Westminster Abbey Institute.

This novel reads as a passionate reimagining of the life of the anchoress, written at a time when Claire Gilbert was suffering with cancer herself. Julian, on these pages, tries to find freedom in her chosen life, bricked up behind a wall, with only a squint to follow the mass in one direction and a a small window for her maid in the other. All the way through, the reader is reminded of the physical difficulties of that life and of the vulnerability that comes from being fixed in one spot.

At one point, her kindly, familiar priest dies quietly while resting during mass and is buried the next day. Immediately, when Julian is still in shock, ‘Robert Grylle becomes priest and stays for a long time and he could not be more different. Precise, vigilant, correct, cold and later dangerous.’ Later in the novel, an understanding confessor is suddenly replaced by a callow misogynistic youth, full of his own power as a cleric and keen to cause her pain.

This Julian needs the support of others, found in her relationship with the Abbess, of her maid Alice, of other women, by God (of course) and another too:
‘Sarah brings me Gyb, A sturdy black and white stray cat that has been pawing at my door for a week, she says. I concede he can stay for it is suggested in the Guide for Anchoresses, and we may have mice.’

Only later in the pages, after confessing to her ‘Shewings’, does Julian find release and freedom and that is through the very act of writing and remembering her Visions. Gilbert’s ‘I Julian’ reads like a thoughtful journey written from the heart.

In ‘Of The Great Pains, Have Mercy on my Little Pain’ by Victoria Mackenzie, the character of Dame Julian is seen through another’s eyes and intentions. This is a very different voice, unusually and not always comfortably told, which all adds - dare I say - to almost the fun within this account of a larger than life character. How would I behave if I met this woman? I wondered.

 

The main character in this short novel is that of Marjorie Kemp, a restless, garrulous woman from the nearby port of Kings Lynn. Burning with religious zeal, Marjorie feels continually driven to speak of her visions, at home, with neighbours and in the public street, to her family’s shame and annoyance, as well as the concern of the local clergy. 

Devoted to God, she expresses her faith by wearing a hair shirt, avoiding sex with her husband, and by suffering the mocking and ill treatment of neighbours. Now, perhaps, Marjorie would be given medication to calm and quieten her down. Eventually, in 1433, after years of seeking answers and of pilgrimages to Walsingham, Rome and the Holy Land, boisterous Marjorie sets off one last journey: to the nearby city of Norwich.

Desperate for help, she visits Dame Julian in her cell and finds a sense of kinship, understanding and an acceptance of her visions. and the freedom in using her voice and composing the first English autobiography written by a woman.

As an aside, and maybe a long shot, if any copies of this anthology are still obtainable. I must also suggest ‘All Shall Be Well’ a short story about Julian of Norwich written by Katherine Langrish, appeared in Daughters of Time, an anthology from The History Girls, collected by Mary Hoffman, and published in 2014.

And now for Norwich Castle and worldly power.

The City is dominated by the castle mound and keep. Begun in 1067 as a fortification, completed as a royal palace in 1121, used for administration and as a prison, the castle keep gradually fell into ruins. In the eighteenth century, new prison cells were constructed within the ruined walls. Then even the prison moved out of the city and a Museum and Art Gallery built alongside the keep.

However, this very year, the long-promised Castle Keep renovation was completed. Steel structures, walkways, lights and glass panels indicate lost parts of the building and the ‘new’ hall is decorated as experts say it would have been: painted with brightly colours and dressed with carved, gilded furniture and hangings. An authentic, if unexpected, experience of a twelfth century royal palace.

The streets of the old town twist and turn away from the castle, and there are many oddly named ways and ginnels. One strange name – Tombland – refers to the empty area of cobbled market in the centre of the city, and gives its name to my third choice of book, the last of the series of Shardlake novels. This huge novel is an adventure on an epic scale and where the keep and the prisons cells are very much in use.

Tombland by C. J. Sansom takes place in 1549: a very uncertain time. The old Tudor king, Henry VIII is dead. Edward VI, his eleven-year-old son, is on the throne; Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, has assumed the role of Protector and is waging war on Scotland, and radical preachers are stirring up the population.

The lawyer Matthew Shardlake, now out of favour in the court, is summoned secretly by Princess Elizabeth. She wants him to look into the accusation that her uncle, John Boleyn, now in Norwich prison, murdered his wife Edith. As the Summer Assizes will soon start, Boleyn and other prisoners will soon be executed. Elizabeth wants Shardlake to petition, secretly for a pardon, but when he visits the cells, the man seems curiously unwilling to help himself - and the princess does not want her name attached to any of this.

As Shardlake’s investigations lead him to Boleyn’s appallingly violent sons, to secretive merchants and trades-people, to a small religious sect, and with more murders, the mystery of the aunt’s death deepens.

However, there is a stronger and more significant thread in this novel. In their search for evidence and testimony, Shardlake, his assistant Nicholas and his friend Jack Barak are led into the path of the 1549 Peasants Rebellion, led by the charismatic Robert Kett.

During Henry’s reign, the old monastic estates had been bought up by rich gentry and merchants and enclosed for pasture land. These new sheep enclosures drove tenants from their traditional holdings, leaving families without plots or crops. Many hope that the young king will be merciful to the sufferings of his people.

Led by Robert Kett, his followers gather in growing numbers on Mouseland outside the city walls, soon causing skirmishes with local citizens. Shardlake and his men are questioned in the camp and, as the novel progresses, different sympathies emerge between the three. Kett, meanwhile, asks the literate Shardlake, still prisoner, to help by keeping a record of the property and weapons taken from any captured gentry so that none can say their possessions were stolen.

Although the twists of the plot weave between Norwich and Kett’s camp in the Tombland novel, the sense of the ill-fated rebellion is what sits most powerfully in the readers mind. At first, the 'rebels' are camping in the sunshine under Mouseland’s leafy trees but, as branch after branch is cut down for fuel or shelter, it is clear that more wood will be needed. Despite Ketts' careful and fair-minded administration, things go wrong, supplies start to run out and the people of Norwich have nothing more to give or sell to the rebels, and there are cold months ahead.

Seymour, the Protector, had grandly issued proclamations promising justice, but faith in the Protector and the young king starts fading fast and reports of mercenaries returning from the Scottish wars add to the turmoil and terror. What chance does Matthew Shardlake have of solving the mystery of the murder of Edith Boleyn and staying in Elizabeth’s favour? Or even escaping himself?

I have to say that Tombland is the kind of historic novel one can live in, and be thankful for your escape at the end. 

In addition, I was also thankful that C. J. Sansom had included so much information and notes on his research notes at the back of the book. Tudor fiction is so often entranced by the drama and glamour of the court and the adventures of famous gentry. I started to feel that Sansom wanted his readers to see life beyond the castle and palace walls, and make them think about the ordinary people.

Especially, in Tombland, those waiting and hoping for justice outside the city of Norwich.

Penny Dolan

Rambling through the past - is it a different place? - Sue Purkiss

 Ever since my first historical fiction book, Warrior King, which was about Alfred the Great, I've tussled with the question as to whether people in the past were basically pretty much the same as people in the present - apart, obviously, from not having smartphones. I think, when I was writing that - actually, come to think of it, people in the present didn't have smartphones then either - I felt that they probably were. So my Alfred was thoughtful and sensitive as well as being clever and brave; Cerys - my lovely silver-eyed Celt - was a freedom fighter as well as a semi-magical creature; Fleda (Alfred's daughter Aethelflaed, later to become the Lady of the Mercians and pretty much the definition of a warrior queen) was a determined, courageous, affectionate child. They were a nice lot, really. People you'd like to spend time with.

Some time after that, I considered writing a book about the young William the Conqueror. But the more I read, the more I decided that here was a very unpleasant character indeed. And his wife wasn't much better: her father didn't approve of William's suit, thinking that, being a bastard, he wasn't good enough. So William rode up to meet her as she was coming out of church and dragged her off her horse by her plaits. Apparently she thought this was great - what a guy! - and henceforth would have no other. As well as this, he was brutal in his treatment of the inhabitants of castles he besieged and captured - I don't remember the details, but they definitely involved cutting bits off people.

So I decided I really didn't want to spend any more time with him.

How nice it was, I thought, that things have progressed since then, and we don't behave like that any more. Hm...

The chained books

In the last couple of years, I've taken to volunteering at Wells Cathedral, mostly in the library, which was founded in 1424. It's a beautiful space, built above one side of the cloister. The arched wooden roof, the windows, and the carved heads which are portraits of contemporaries of the masons - all these are original, so almost six hundred years old. The books, some of which are chained (cf the library in the Unseen University of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books!), are mostly not as old as that: they've endured turbulent times, notably Henry VIII's Reformation, and the Civil War and its aftermath, and many were lost. But there are still some wonderful survivors:  notably an extraordinary polyglot bible (ie one written in five languages), an exquisitely illustrated Benedictine Rule, and a first edition of John Donne.

He looks a bit self-conscious, doesn't he? And look at his lovely big ears!

The annotation in red is in Archbishop Cranmer's own hand.

The original windows in the library, with Bishop Bubwith's crest.

I'm not that brilliant at remembering dates. But in quiet moments, when the past seems very close, I often wonder about the people who moved through the serene spaces of this most beautiful of cathedrals - those who built it, but also those who lived in the city and came here to worship. In those days, the magnificent West Front, with its layers of figures, saints, kings, angels, right up to the head man up at the top, would have been brightly coloured. Did the ordinary people - the tradesmen and women, the children, the pedlars, the beggars - did they come and stare at it and recognise the stories that it told? Were they allowed to wander round inside, and recognise their neighbours, carved in stone at the top of pillars - several with toothache, one stealing grapes, all with faces full of expression?

The West Front

One of the loveliest spaces in the cathedral - the staircase up to the chapterhouse, with its steps worn by centuries of footsteps.

Some local people...

There is little trace in the records of these people and what their lives were like. There's more of Bishop Nicholas Bubwith (1355-1427), who left money in his will for the building of the library. I think I have a sense of him. He was remarkable, but not in a showy sort of way. 

He was born in a little village in Yorkshire called Menthorpe, not long after the first major plague outbreak, which killed half the population and led to all sorts of unrest and turbulence. Little is known about his early life, but he entered royal service in the 1360s, and rose to become a significant figure - Lord Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal. Then in 1406 he became a bishop, first of London, then of Salisbury and finally of Wells. But he was still given responsibility by the King - by this time Henry IV - being sent as Ambassador to the Council of Constance, which was convened to sort out the mess the church had got itself into, with several would-be popes and considerable disagreements about doctrine.

But finally he came back to Wells, and busily set about sorting things out back home, improving education for the clergy (hence the library), regularising the cathedral's financial affairs, and looking round to see what needed to be done to improve the lot of the townspeople. In his will he left money to improve Somerset's roads (an ongoing endeavour!), to build almshouses, and for the poor back in Menthorpe.

So he survived life at court - and my guess is that this was because all three monarchs under whom he served recognised his value as someone who absolutely wasn't in it for himself; someone who was an effective administrator who spent his life trying to make things better for other people, not for himself.

So - we can look back at this period of British history, which was turbulent and must have been harsh in so many ways. But here we find also someone who was just getting on with things, doing the best he could, not just for himself but for other people too. Which is what, despite all the awful things that are happening in the world at the moment, most of us are trying to do.

At least, I hope so. 

PS - I am indebted to Austin Bennett, another volunteer at Wells, for his comprehensive notes on Bishop Bubwith. 

1968: The Year That Changed America (by Stephanie Williams)

 

                        Davis Hall, Wellesley College October 1966

I'm eighteen years old in 1968, a sophomore at Wellesley College. As girls of the time, our childhood had been spent in the sheltered 1950s. We were demure, conservative, and gently reared. We arrived at college to be educated in the liberal arts—as the world began to change around us. 

 

We were rule-bound: curfew at 11 pm, men permitted in your room only on Sunday afternoons, dress code for football games requiring suits, heels and white gloves. Sunday mornings, girls poured over the engagement columns in the New York Times. But three undercurrents were rising—women's rights, civil rights, and the war in Vietnam—and 1968 would be the year they crashed together.

 

Winter: hope rises
It is election year.

By early 1968, almost half a million American troops were fighting in Vietnam. Every month 40,000 boys were being drafted. Undergraduates could still defer, but draft deferments for graduate students had just been cancelled. The system protected the privileged—those who could afford four years of college—while working-class boys were sent to war. The men we knew were drawing closer to being drafted.

 

Eugene McCarthy campaign poster 1968

All of us were canvassing the streets of New Hampshire in support of Eugene McCarthy—a Democratic senator from Minnesota challenging President Lyndon Johnson on a peace platform. Through mushy snow, we knocked on doors, handed out leaflets for McCarthy. On March 12, he secured 42.4% of the vote to Johnson's 49.5%. The primary should have been a shoe-in for Johnson. We were jubilant. Days later, Bobby Kennedy, much more well known, who'd watched from the sidelines, declared his candidacy.

Two weeks later, on Sunday evening, March 31, President Johnson delivered his famous address to the nation, withdrawing from the race. He declared he would not seek the nomination and would begin to de-escalate the war by halting the bombing of North Vietnam. He invited Hanoi to join him in moves towards peace. The next day he announced he would meet Bobby Kennedy and work together towards national unity. By Wednesday, the North Vietnamese were ready to talk peace.

It was all wonderful for 24 hours.

Spring: everything shatters

On Thursday, April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Johnson cancelled his flight to Hawaii. Hanoi cancelled plans for talks. Fierce riots broke out in Washington, Baltimore, New York, Boston. All the momentum toward peace—gone in an instant.

The weather was beautiful that spring of '68, but the violence kept escalating. At Columbia University in New York, 1,000 students invaded five campus buildings protesting the university's involvement in weapons research and plans to encroach on Harlem. Police were called. The campus exploded. Unrest spread to Chicago, to Paris and the Sorbonne.

Columbia protests, April 1968
Hugh Rogers Photography/ /Columbia College Today

 Night after night on TV, grainy scenes from the jungle showed wounded men on stretchers being run to hovering helicopters. Footage came straight from the battlefield, uncensored, deeply traumatizing. The crump of bombs, the walls of flame cascading over grassy villages. Wailing children fleeing barefoot. The war was morally indefensible, and we were culpable.

 

Guiding a medivac helicopter to pick up casualties, near Hue, April 1968
AP Art Greenspan/Alamy

Not long after Christmas the year before, I'd had breakfast with Hillary Rodham, who lived across the hall from me. She was talking about the National Organization for Women, formed just the previous October.

"What do you think," Hillary said to me, "should Wellesley join?"

"I think the basic question is: are we feminists?"

I suppose I am fortunate to have first heard the term from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By the following spring, something had shifted in us. We realized we had been raised in a world that turned entirely on men and their view of things. The childhood activities thought appropriate for boys rather than girls. The stories and films in which the male is in charge, noble and dominant; the female a possession, passive, unable to negotiate the world alone. We were waking up.

Summer: the second assassination

We had hardly got home for the summer holidays when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5.

Two murders in two months. Two leaders who represented hope for peace and civil rights, gone. The violence wasn't theoretical anymore—it was consuming the people trying to end it.

August: Chicago

My roommate Anne traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Everyone knew the city was armed to the hilt. A peaceful anti-war demonstration was planned for the last afternoon. Young men offered up draft cards like communion chalices to burn before the crowd. The crowd chanted, "Hell no, we won't go."

Burning a draft card, Grant Park, 28 August 1968.
Anne Trebilcock

 Kennedy's assassination had left nearly 400 delegates uncommitted. McCarthy was still in the race. But Johnson's favorite, Hubert Humphrey, was trying to pave a middle way. By nightfall, it was cold. Everyone knew the Convention had slipped away from the peace candidates. The Vietnam war would go on. Nothing would change.

Outside in the park, Anne was exhausted. There were so many people. Floodlights glanced off police helmets. All of a sudden—no one knows why—huge armored cars barreled down the street. The National Guard fired tear gas. Police with clubs moved in a line and began to run, swinging left and right. Canisters popped. Smoke rose. The air burned. Sirens wailed. Protesters seized trash cans and hurled them back. Anne's eyes teared up. She couldn't breathe. She covered her mouth and nose with her McCarthy scarf and ran. There was a shriek as a baton cracked hard on someone's head. A girl was dragged by her hair and tossed into a paddy wagon. People were screaming.

All of it, seventeen minutes, was broadcast live on television around the world.

The whole world was watching the American government turn violence on its own citizens who were calling for peace.

Fall: a new view of the world

By fall 1968, there was a new vibe on campus. Hemlines were mid-thigh. Girls went about with no makeup, their hair long and loose. Some Black girls adopted Afros—emulating Angela Davis. Everyone talked of the relief of not wearing bras.

Over the summer a group called Cell 16 had set up a "female liberation front" in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Women had had enough of listening to men on ego trips, of being assigned to take minutes and make coffee, of being treated as objects to be possessed. The scales fell from our eyes. The term male chauvinist was coined. 

In November, the Democrats lost the election. Richard Nixon was elected president. The war would continue.

All the things we had been raised to believe in, all the systems we had taken for granted—the structures of government, not perfect, but relatively benign—all of it now known to be corrupted and degraded. Two-thirds of government resources devoted to war and outer space. Basic human dignity denied to Black citizens. Our own role as women of no consequence. The planet threatened by pollution and nuclear annihilation.

Who could you trust in authority anymore?

The echo across decades

In the winter of 1967, I had stayed with Yale's chaplain, William Sloane Coffin—one of the Freedom Riders arrested in 1961, a man Martin Luther King had bailed out of jail. Over drinks, the talk was electric. About conscience—and the role of civil disobedience.

William Sloane Coffin on his arrest Montgomery Alabama,
25 May 1961

How far are you prepared to let something go before you stand up to be counted?

Looking back across nearly 60 years, I see 1968 as the year America broke open. In twelve months we went from hope to despair, from believing in our institutions to watching them fail us, from trusting authority to questioning everything. We watched two assassinations destroy the peace and civil rights movements' momentum. We watched police violence broadcast into living rooms. We watched a war grind on despite massive opposition.

The patterns feel disturbingly familiar in today's America. Deep divisions. Struggles for civil rights taking new forms. Women fighting again for control over their own bodies. The sense that institutions meant to protect us have been corrupted.

The question Bill Coffin posed that electric night remains: how far are you prepared to let something go before you stand up to be counted?

Each generation must answer for itself.

Stephanie Williams is a historian and writer who lives in north London. 

 
Her latest book, telling the story of her four years as a Canadian, convent-educated girl at an elite American women's college is The Education of Girls -- coming of age in 4 years that changed America, 1966-1970.

 

'A rich and stirring history of a moment when everything was changing for women in higher education.' Hillary Rodham Clinton

Queens and Empresses: When Women Ruled Japan ~ by Lesley Downer

‘Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming of age ceremony.’
Prince Hisahito, September 6th 2025

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan

On Prince Hisahito’s 19th birthday, September 6th 2025, there was an elaborate coming of age ceremony at the imperial palace in Tokyo. The prince wore the Kakan-no-Gi, the traditional golden yellow garment with a long train to mark him as a youth, and was presented with a black silk and lacquer crown by deferential courtiers in rustling black robes, recognising him as second in line to the throne after his father, the Crown Prince.

He then changed into the black robes of adulthood and set off to the next ceremonial event in a horse-drawn carriage.

Princess Aiko, December 23 2022 

Prince Hisahito is the nephew of the Emperor of Japan; his father is the emperor’s younger brother. His cousin Princess Aiko is the only child of the Emperor and Empress and, at 23, is older than him. So how does Prince Hisahito come to be second in line to the throne?  

Princess Aiko can’t accede to the chrysanthemum throne for one simple reason: she is a woman.

This is not ancient tradition. Until the passing of Japan’s first constitution in 1889 there was no such rule. The aim of the constitution was to make Japan appear similar to western nations, on the surface at least, so as to end the unequal treaties which forced Japan to kowtow to the west - though ironically at the time Queen Victoria was firmly on the throne in Britain.

After the war the American occupying forces drew up a new constitution which set in stone the law that only men could accede to the throne. Empress Masako, the present Empress, was under great pressure to produce a son and didn’t succeed, though she did have a daughter, Princess Aiko.

But before that first constitution things were different. Female emperors were not common but there were some who played major roles in the development of Japan. And in ancient times there were plenty.

The Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami
by Utagawa Kunisada 1856

In fact the claim to legitimacy of the imperial family is - again, ironically - that they are descended in an unbroken line from the female Sun Goddess, Amaterasu.

Queens and Empresses part I

Shaman Queen

The very first named person in Japanese history is a woman - Queen Himiko, who ruled from about 190 to 248 AD, just over a hundred years after Boudicca. At the time the kings who ruled the various kingdoms that made up Japan were always fighting and in order to maintain the peace decided to set a woman on the throne.

Himiko, who came from a line of queens, maintained peace for 60 years. She was not only a temporal ruler but a shaman who could intervene with the gods to ensure the food supply and protect her people from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. After her death a king took the throne and fighting started again. Peace was only restored when Himiko’s 13 year old niece Iyo, who was also a shaman, became queen.

In the years that followed there was a succession of empresses, six in all.

Suiko: Long reigning empress who established Buddhism

Empress Suiko: imaginary picture
by Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1700 - 1772)

Empress Suiko (554 - 628) came to the throne in 593, succeeding her husband, Emperor Bidatsu, and ruled for 35 years. Like Himiko she was installed on the throne in order to establish peace among warring factions, the Soga and the Mononobe clans. Her father, Emperor Kinmei, had been given a statue of the Buddha by the King of Baekje, now part of Korea, who urged him to adopt this ‘most excellent’ religion.

Under Suiko’s rule Buddhism was recognised as the official religion of the country and the country absorbed a great deal of Chinese culture - politics, poetry, laws, religion, food, clothing, architecture and music. Chinese and Korean craftsmen came to Japan. Her government sent its first official embassy to the glorious Chinese court, introduced the Chinese calendar, replaced the Japanese system of hereditary ranks with the Chinese bureaucratic system and established the supremacy of the emperor, laying the foundations for Japan as a unified country rather than a collection of warring states.

Empress Kōgyoku witnesses a spectacular coup d’état.

Empress Kōgyoku

Empress Kōgyoku (594 - 661) had a rather dramatic story. She was the widow of the previous emperor, Suiko’s great-nephew. She came to the throne in 642 and had a new palace built, the Itabuki no Miya. In those days people founded a new capital every time a new emperor came to the throne so as to avoid being jinxed by the ghost of the previous incumbent. She then brought an end to a drought by praying.

But she’d barely settled into her new palace when there was an upheaval. Her son Prince Naka was tired of the Soga clan controlling power. He started meeting with a nobleman called Nakatomi no Kamatari in a wisteria grove where they claimed to be studying Chinese texts but in fact were plotting a coup d’état.

On July 13 645 there was a grand meeting at the new palace. Prince Naka ordered all the gates to be locked, smuggled in a sword and in full view of everyone lopped off the head of the young leader of the Soga clan, Soga no Iruka, thus ejecting the Soga from power. Empress Kōgyoku abdicated immediately because she was polluted by being in the presence of death.

Prince Naka killing Soga no Iruka
from the Tōnomine Engi scroll, Edo period

Empress Kōgyoku’s brother took over but everyone understood that the real power in the land was now Prince Naka and that power was now in the hands of the imperial family again.

After her brother died Kōgyoku came back to the throne with a new, unpolluted name - Empress Saimei. She then set off to lead an armada to attack the Chinese and Sillan (Korean) ships that were threatening Japan but on the way she died. Prince Naka finally took power as the great Emperor Tenji.

The empresses who were to follow played a major part and varied roles in shaping the country Japan was to become. For their stories, watch out for my next riveting instalment!


All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and in particular all things Japanese. She had two books out last year: The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) - 16,500 years of Japanese history in 50,000 words, full of stories and colourful characters - and her first ‘real’ book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, reissued by Eland under her new pen name to acknowledge her Chinese roots - Lesley Chan Downer. For more see www.lesleydowner.com

The Lifeline - The Shetland Bus in WW2

I’ve always been interested in untold stories of WW2, especially stories from overlooked outposts, such Shetland (The Lifeline). Although The Shetland Isles are a long way from the mainland it would be a mistake to think that the islanders of Shetland were little involved in the war effort against Germany. As one of the furthest flung points of the UK, Shetland was in an ideal position to act as a staging post between the mainland and Nazi-occupied Norway.

The idea of the Shetland Bus originated when a marine base was being established in late 1940 at Lerwick, and caught the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), who realised that the base could be used as a staging post for arms and information in the fight against the Germans.

David Howarth’s excellent non-fiction book The Shetland Bus describes how small fishing boats acted as go-betweens for the Norwegian Resistance, supplying arms, personnel, and intelligence in their fight against their fascist invaders, and this was my starting point for the novel, which draws on various true-life incidents. This clandestine route across the sea was in operation between Scotland and German-occupied Norway from 1941 until the surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, and it grew from being just fourteen fishing boats to a much bigger operation once the US got involved in the war.

 

To reconstruct these journeys across the North Sea for The Lifeline, I drew on memoirs and real accounts from men who made the crossing. The Shetland Bus Memorial is located at Scalloway in Shetland, and the local museum has a permanent exhibition relating to the activities of the Shetland Bus and information about those who manned it.

Although the boats pretended to be regular Norwegian fishing boats, they were ingeniously equipped with machine guns and ammunition hidden in boxes of fish, or oil barrels, as the men often had to defend themselves from enemy fire. Once the Nazis discovered this route was being used to support Resistance activities, they patrolled the coasts regularly with boats and reconnaissance planes, which would strafe the boats if they were spotted beyond Norwegian waters. If the men on board were captured by enemy patrols, they were tortured then executed.

Leif Larson is the most famous of all the Shetland Bus crew and the most highly decorated Naval Officer of the war. Known in Norway as ‘Shetland’s Larsen,’ he escaped from Norway in February 1941 in a fishing boat and trained with the military unit called the Linge Company. During WW2 he made over 50 trips to Norway including one trip where on the way back his boat was attacked by the Luftwaffe and six of his crew were hit. The surviving two men made it to the Alesund area and were picked up by a ship that took them back to Shetland. 

Arguably worse than the threat of Nazi attack, was the other enemy – the winter weather. Sorties had to take place in winter when enemy patrols were less likely to spot them. The mountainous seas and wintry conditions of fog, ice and storms made the journeys perilous. My fictional narrative features Jørgen Nystrøm, a Norwegian wireless operator who retrains to crew on The Shetland Bus. 

My other main character is a female teacher, Astrid Dahl. Her story centres on the Norwegian Teachers’ Strike. When the Nazis try to force the teachers to join their Fascist teachers union, Astrid refuses and persuades others to join her in defying them. This rebellion leads her into danger, and eventually forces her to try to escape Norway, via her only lifeline – The Shetland Bus. The stories of the two main characters coincide, and I hope provide both an insight into Norway in the war, and a satisfying story.

 

One of the pleasures for me as a writer was to be able to describe the wind-blown Shetland Islands and the majestic mountains and fjords of Norway, so I do hope some of you will take the journey with me!

 

Listen to a BBC podcast about the Shetland Bus. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0028vd4

THE LIFELINE mybook.to/LIFELINE

Website www.deborahswift.com

Twitter @swiftstory Bluesky @authordeborahswift

Pics: Wikipedia, Pexels, my own.

A Call to Arms: Heroic Midwifery during WWII by Rebecca Alexander

When war came, midwives delivered babies on shelters
Credit Jennifer Ryan

While researching health care in the 1940s for a novel, I found many astonishing stories about the changing role of midwives during WWII. Before 1936, most midwives learned about delivering babies by shadowing an experienced colleague and learning in the classroom in teaching hospitals. Training taught midwives to deliver babies with the least possible trauma to the mothers and babies, and to reduce the risk of infection. The Midwives’ Act (1936) recognised the need for full time, salaried professional midwives with advanced training. By 1939, most towns and cities provided council organised services for pregnant women, charging the mothers for the delivery and ante- and post-natal care. Coming from Portsmouth, I was surprised to see two midwives who were rewarded with honours for bravery, in horrendous circumstances.

Untrained ‘handy women’, already disqualified from calling themselves midwives, were forced to retire or worked as ‘maternity nurses’. These helped mothers who could afford them with child care, laundry and housekeeping. Poorer families in rural areas still relied on these untrained handy women to deliver babies, with varied experience or training. 

Survival of mothers varied hugely, from 1.51 deaths per thousand in Portsmouth, with a rate of 6.0 in some areas of the north of England, similar to the rate of maternal death in 1850. (At the time, there was no data collected for comparison of babies’ deaths). By 1939, midwives received £240-280 per year, with an allowance of £20 for a car and £4 for a bicycle. Before the NHS, families paid a standard fee to the council, usually around ten shillings and sixpence. Midwives provided all their own equipment, medicines, antiseptics and uniforms. About a third of midwives were self -employed private midwives, charging the mothers directly. Trained midwives emphasised antiseptic techniques, the use of gloves and the prevention of damage or infection to the mothers, but handy women were still called upon to save money. 

At the opening of the Second World war, the attitude changed. Unlike nurses, midwives were not considered to be doing war work and thus did not receive war pay. Many midwives applied to fill nursing posts, leading to reductions in the number of midwives across the country. Many areas lost 25-40% of the midwifery workforce, with more lost as the war went on. Many older midwives were swamped with work, so retired or became ill. Others were unavailable for full time work, being older or having children. 

In some areas, like Birmingham, services were overwhelmed by demand, midwives delivering far more babies than expected by the Midwives Act which suggested a maximum of 100 births per year and a compulsory retirement age of 60 but many delivering twice that many, and up to the age of seventy. The role of midwife was already under strain by 1939, and recruitment of pupil midwives was struggling. One training school had thirty-five places for trainee midwives but could only recruit two pupils. 

A call was put out for retired midwives but many had not attended the most modern courses or studied up to date techniques. Accelerated training was offered for pupil midwives and independent midwives were asked to volunteer for areas with high numbers of evacuated pregnant mothers. Evacuation caused havoc for the mothers, children and the services scrambled to look after them. 

On Dartmoor in Devon, the team of nine qualified midwives was slashed to two by the migration of practitioners to nursing. Younger doctors were also recruited for the war effort, leaving more older general practitioners to provide obstetric support to the midwives. Doctors were both more expensive for the families (averaging a guinea for their visit, which would be paid instead of the midwife’s fee of about ten shilling and sixpence) and sometimes less experienced in the biomechanics of childbirth. When doctors attended, there were more likely to be interventions like the use of forceps and more need for repairs. Midwives did not, at the time, carry morphine or do suturing. A smaller number of doctors, some trained decades before and not specialists in obstetrics, were left to support a reduced number of midwives. 

Despite the difficulties, a number of bravery honours were awarded to midwives operating in wartime Britain. They delivered babies in bomb shelters, damaged houses, in areas hit by fire and even in the street as pregnant women tried to get to safety during air raids. Maternity wards were damaged by bombs, both in the UK and in Germany. One especially notable case was that of Sister Violet Frampton of Bristol Maternity Hospital, who was awarded the George medal after treating casualties trapped in a house in Bristol during repeated bombing of the area. She was awarded her medal by the king. She was one of several midwives who received honours in recognition of their bravery.

British Journal of Nursing, February 1942

Supplement to the London Gazette 7th March 1941 p.1347

Even long retired midwives found themselves caring for women in labour in wartime conditions. 

Supplement to the London Gazette 7th March 1941 p.1346

Mrs Leaver also won the British Empire medal despite having retired as a midwife over twenty years before. Despite high explosive bombs and incendiaries falling all around, she moved the labouring mother to the basement and delivered the baby safely with the help of a doctor.

Despite the government's best intentions, most evacuated women returned to their homes in cities and towns, where their support networks and employment was. Pregnant women chose their birth attendants themselves, for financial reasons but also wanting people they knew to attend them from their own communities, meaning handy women continued to deliver babies until the founding of the NHS. Midwives left the profession to find work with regular hours and better pay. Only the Beveridge Report (1942) could start to suggest a cradle to the grave healthcare system, where midwives were valued as independent health practitioners with a wealth of knowledge and skill. 

Bibliography: 

Dawson S.T. (2024) Mothers, Midwives and Reproductive Labor in Interwar and Wartime Britain, Lexington Books 

McIntosh, T. (2012) A Social History of Maternity and Childbirth, Routledge

Starns, P. (2018) Blitz Hospital, The History Press

Latin, Greek and the 'Ready Brek glow' by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Some of the best advice I once received was this: find something that gives you that ‘Ready Brek glow’ (do you remember the 1982 advert?), and try to do whatever that may be every day. It will fortify you for life’s ups and downs. Immediately I knew what my Ready Brek equivalent was: time spent teaching Latin and Greek, whether via one-to-one tuition, or in a small group. It is not just the lesson itself which is rewarding, there is genuinely a glow that stays with me for some time afterwards, whatever that particular day has in store.

One of my first textbooks.

 
My tutees range in ages from 8 to 88, and almost every decade in between. Some of them are learning Latin or Greek at school and are working towards a GCSE, IB or A Level examination. Greek, in particular, is often squeezed into the already cramped school timetable so the subject may share the lessons allocated for Latin, or be taught as a lunchtime club. The students who have chosen either or both of these languages have usually had to make a very positive choice to study them, by opting in, rather than there being any curricular requirement (such as there may be for learning a modern foreign language). So the students’ commitment and enthusiasm go a long way in redressing the timetabling challenges their schools may face.

Many teenagers are initially drawn to the Classical languages from their childhood love of Greek mythology and the great stories that are told in both Latin and Greek. Others say they love the logic of the languages, and the challenge of translating a passage, which equates to solving a puzzle. For those who learn Greek, the excitement of a different alphabet can make them feel as if they are in a secret club: the thrill of decoding the symbols into English words is just one of the highlights.

But why do Latin and Greek appeal to so many adults, who have no exams looming, but who wish to master an ancient language just for the sake of it? Much has been written about the benefits of keeping one’s mind active throughout life, using crosswords, number puzzles, etc., so why not learn an ancient language, too? My octogenarian students say it keeps them on their toes and they love translating passages of literature in the original. Another student likened the satisfaction of translating a Latin sentence correctly to having a tidy laundry cupboard. A retiree reported that it felt like a return to childhood and a chance to recapture one’s youth.

 Part of the fun of learning Latin and Greek is discovering connections with English.

Most of all, learning Latin and Greek can be so much fun. Quite apart from the joys of mastering the languages, the stories and accounts that we still have in their original form unlock a whole world from as early as the eighth century BC through Classical Greece and the Roman empire. The poems, historical accounts and even ancient travel guides give an insight into the Greeks’ and Romans’ lives in extraordinary detail, including their hopes and fears: from the food they ate and wine they drank, their homes, families, art, architecture, clothes, pesky politicians, and nosy neighbours, to the big question of mortality and the wish to make one’s life meaningful. These are all human conditions to which we can still relate, sometimes with surprisingly acute similarities. The languages may sometimes be referred to as ‘dead’ but the dialogue started by the people who spoke those languages is very much alive.

Equal to my tutees’ love of learning Latin and Greek is my love of teaching them. My favourite Greek textbook includes (as a nice nod to all the teachers using the book) a practice translation sentence as follows: διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn). The transliteration of the verbs in this sentence are ‘didasko’ (I teach) which gives us ‘didactic’, and ‘manthano’ (I learn) (the root of which is ‘math’) which gives us ‘mathematics’, ‘polymath’, etc.

Without fail, I learn something new in every lesson I teach. I also have the pleasure of witnessing the delight of my students in the moment that they make a connection between Latin and a word or abbreviation which they use daily, e.g. (exempli gratia, for the sake of an example), 7am (ante meridiem, before midday), etc. (et cetera, and the rest). It is also wonderful to experience their animated reaction to a wronged character in Greek tragedy, or to hear their laughter at a joke in an ancient Greek comedy. The jokes still land after all these centuries.

διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn).

Kennedy's Latin primer is one of the first textbooks I ever used when learning Latin and recently one of my students has acquired a second hand copy which has become his vade mecum (literally, 'go with me' - I suppose we might say 'my go-to textbook'). It has a fantastic quote from Cicero, which he pointed out to me just a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing a point of grammar but the quote resonated with me as I think it encapsulates what I have tried to describe in this post:

haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant.
These studies nurture youth, and delight old age.

So back to that ‘Ready Brek glow’. I love porridge and eat it most days - it is full of nostalgia for me as my Dad used to make it overnight and serve it the Scottish way, with a pinch of salt and definitely no sugar. But if I had to choose between my bowl of steaming oats and teaching an hour of Latin and Greek, you can probably conclude which one will give me the greatest glow.


P.S. (post scriptum) If you are interested in having a little taste of Latin, I shall be giving an online illustrated talk for The Hellenic and Roman Societies on Tuesday 4th November at 7pm, and repeated on Saturday 15th November at 11am. Whether you are a complete beginner or wish to brush up on existing knowledge, you will be very welcome! Please contact me for further details via my website: www.carolinetutor.co.uk