Island of Last Hope by Lydia Syson

Left to right, in the front row: Pilot Officer Mirosław Ferić, Flight Lieutenant John A Kent (Commander of ‘A’ Flight – Kent wrote out phonetically on his trouser leg the Polish words for every procedure involved in take-off, flying and landing), Flying Officer Bogdan Grzeszczak, Pilot Officer Jerzy Radomski, Pilot Officer Witold Łokuciewski, Pilot Officer Bogusław Mierzwa (obscured by Łokuciewski), Flying Officer Zdzisław Henneberg, Sergeant Jan Rogowski and Sergeant Eugeniusz Szaposznikow. In the centre, to the rear of this group, wearing helmet and goggles, is the infamous ace F.O. Jan Zumbach.

Last week this image of a group of fighter pilots - all but one of them Poles - walking away from a Hawker Hurricane in October 1940 was posted anonymously on the door of the Welsh Polish Association in Llanelli with the words: 'Thanks for being here then...still glad you're here now'.  The photograph - apparently taken after one of over a thousand sorties made in just the first six months of Squadron 303's formation during the Battle of Britain - has also been doing the rounds on Twitter, as part of the effort so many people have been making to combat the poisonous resurgence of xenophobia and racism unleashed by the Brexit vote. Yesterday Michael Rosen offered Nicky Morgan a draft letter outlining ways in which education could lead the way in helping the population understand that migrants are not to blame for the pressures on schools and public services:

"My door is open to hear any possible approach to stop this happening," he suggests she should write. "Perhaps we should be holding a Celebrate Migration week? Or should I be asking schools to develop teaching materials that make the connection between now and times in the past in Europe when minorities were scapegoats for economic problems they didn’t cause?"

Historical fiction can be immensely useful in making those connections, allowing young readers in Britain to see that such scapegoating didn't just take place 'over there' in Europe but on this island too. At school visits, talking about the reasons why so many international volunteers went to help the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, after a right-wing military coup that was backed by Hitler and Mussolini and happened eighty years ago this month, I show students pictures of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Nobody ever guesses the photographs were taken here, or that the Blackshirts could be British. And, during discussions of the Home Front in the summer of 1940, although there is always one who recognises the flag on this memorial as Polish, most young readers know very little about the part played by Polish airmen at 'our finest hour'.

For a long time after World War II a myth persisted that the Polish Air Force was destroyed on the ground within days of Hitler's invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939.  In fact, despite their outnumbered and out-of-date planes, Poland's highly trained airmen fought bravely for several weeks before accepting defeat.  By 17th September, the country 'first to fight' had been invaded for a second time, by Russia, and would soon be doubly occupied.  But for the pilots the battle was far from over. 

This poster was designed in 1942 by Marek Żuławski,
a Polish expressionist painter and graphic artist
who settled in London in 1936.

Descriptions of their departure from Poland make heartbreaking reading. Adam Zamoyski, author of The Forgotten Few, reckons that about 80% of the PAF survived the first Blitzkrieg of World War Two and managed to escape capture. 9.276 crossed the border into Romania (not all as easily as Henryk, in my novel, That Burning Summer), 900 fled to Hungary, about 1,00 escaped via the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, and another 1,500 were captured by the Soviets and sent straight to labour camps. The aim was to regroup in France.

In late December, 1939, Michal Leszkiewicz, a future Bomber Command pilot who had escaped from Poland via Rumania at the age of 23, was on the way to Beirut, though he did not know this when he recorded in his diary: ‘We’re probably sailing to Syria. A vague fear of the unknown – a purely human instinct. When you know what to expect, you don’t go to pieces. We have to – we must go on. The responsibility lies with us, the young people; they’re turning to us even in Poland – the innocent ones whom fate has wronged . . .we are their hope.’

Despite his great love and commitment to his homeland, Michal Leszkiewicz never again returned to Poland, and died in England in 1992. His diary made a huge impression on me when I was finding out about the odysseys so many airmen made before they reached Britain. I drew on his account for my descriptions of Henryk’s sea voyage from Bulgaria to Beirut, his arrival in the Middle East, the journey to France, and his frustration at the chaos there. On arrival, he found himself interned in miserable conditions in France with refugees from the defeated Spanish Republic.

By June 1940, France too had fallen. The remaining Polish airmen were evacuated to Britain. Arriving exhausted and battleweary in the only allied country left unoccupied in Western Europe, they called it ‘The Island of Last Hope’. On 18th June, Churchill famously declared: ‘Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.’ J.B.Priestley (‘That Yorkshire man on the radio – the one with the calming voice Aunt Myra loved to listen to’ TBS, p. 100) remembered the Germany he’d known and loved before the last war, and warned ‘any country that allows itself to be dominated by the Nazis will not only have the German Gestapo crawling everywhere, but will also find itself in the power of all of its own most unpleasant types – the very people who, for years, have been rotten with unsatisfied vanity, gnawing envy, and haunted by dreams of cruel power. Let the Nazis in, and you will find that the laziest loudmouth in the workshop has suddenly been given the power to kick you up and down the street, and that if you try to make any appeal, you have to do it to the one man in the district whose every word and look you’d always distrusted.’

The forty Polish pilots who took to the skies at the beginning of the Battle of Britain were scattered at first among a number of RAF squadrons. Most were among the 2,000 or so airmen who'd been kicking their heels in Britain for months already. When the earliest pilots arrived between December 1939 and February 1940, they were given a frustratingly slow induction into RAF life, involving English lessons, education in the King's Regulations, and endless parades and roll calls: it seemed they would never be allowed near an actual plane.

Co-operation across national boundaries is never easy, and a distinct clash of military cultures soon became obvious. Driven to distraction by British officers who seemed to be hiding their heads in the sand about the real nature of the threat from Germany, the Poles called their RAF colleagues 'ostriches'. Meanwhile, as Zamoyski writes, the British were disconcerted, to say the least, by the newcomers' manners: 'The Polish habit of saluting everyone, on station, in town, in restaurants, irritated the British officers, who found they could not cross the airfield or walk down a street without acknowledging several dozen salutes. "They were always giving you salutes even if it was their dispatcher handing you a cup of coffee," recalls an RAF officer. "The heel-clicking that went on was terrific," remembers one RAF fitter, "and they had a funny way of bowing stiffly, from the waist up, like tin soldiers."'

Despite this, the Poles did not take easily to the kind of hierarchical deference traditional in the British military. Group Captain A.P.Davidson, a former air attaché in Warsaw and the station commander at RAF Eastchurch, near Sheerness, where the first Polish airmen were based, was shocked and baffled by their attitudes: “Whilst on the one hand there exists a distinct class feeling between officers and airmen and the former often treat the latter with a lack of consideration unknown in our own Service, on the other hand, officers fraternise with airmen, walk about and play cards with them.”

Morale improved once the Poles were finally allowed to fly, but then they discovered that everything on a British aircraft was back-to-front, so all their reflexes had to be reversed. You had to push instead of pull to open the throttle, and even the toggle for opening the parachute was on the ‘wrong’ side. There was also the difficulty of judging in feet and miles, not metres and kilometres, and new navigational aids to master like radar (only just adopted, and still secret) and radios. The British tactic of close formation flying seemed suicidal to the experienced Poles, for pilots had to pay far more attention to not colliding with each other than looking out for attacking aircraft. Four tight ranks of three planes were supposedly protected by the middle plane of the last rank, known as the ‘weaver’, but 32 Squadron, based at Biggin Hill, lost 21 of these pilots in three weeks, each ‘picked off’ by the enemy without the rest of the squadron even noticing.

A myth that came to dominate war films and popular memory was that all Polish pilots were reckless and individualistic. The stereotype arose partly because they were trained to fire at much closer range than British pilots – almost at pointblank. (‘Those crazy Poles’, thinks Peggy in That Burning Summer.) This scene from the 1969 film The Battle of Britain (whose uncountable stars included Laurence Oliver as Hugh Dowding and Trevor Howard as Keith Park) is typical of British attitudes. 

(Incidentally, and somewhat chillingly, the German aircraft used in this film were provided by Franco’s Spanish Air Force: a mixture of Heinkels, still used for transport, and retired Messerschmitt 109s.)

In August 1940, two new Polish fighter squadrons were formed: No. 302, ‘City of Poznań’, and No. 303, ‘Kościuszko’. By 1941 a fully-fledged Polish Air Force was operating alongside the RAF. By the end of the war, Polish pilots had won 342 British gallantry awards, and 303 Squadron claimed the highest number of kills of all the Allied squadrons in the Battle of Britain yet its death rate was the lowest.

On 11th September 1940 at 16.15 hrs, Sergeant Stanisław Duszyński was shot down over Romney Marsh, not far from Lydd, while attacking a Ju 88. He was 24, and like Henryk in That Burning Summer, had initially been evacuated to Rumania in 1939. Neither his body nor his Hurricane were recovered at the time, although unsuccessful efforts, both official and unofficial were made in 1973 and 1996. Six months later, Pilot Officer Bogusław Mierzwa’s Spitfire came down in flames on the stony promontory of Dungeness, not far from the lighthouse. 

Another pilot of the 303 Squadron, Mieczyslaw Waskiewicz, crashed into the sea off the point and was never found. Both were returning from a mission to escort six Blenheims sent to bomb a fighter airfield in France. Mierzwa had been awarded his Pilot’s Wings in Poland less than two years earlier, at the age of 22, not three months before the invasion of Poland. For many years, a tattered Polish flag flew over the spot where his aircraft burned, next to a plastic garden chair and the rather makeshift memorial shown above.  It's now been replaced by this slightly less romantic but more informative noticeboard.

Between 1939 and 1945, well over 200,000 Poles fought in all the forces under British High Command. But for complex reasons, largely connected with post-war shortages of jobs and housing, anti-Polish sentiment in Britain had become so bad by 1946 that ‘Poles go Home’ graffiti began to appear near Polish Air Force bases. Squadron 318 Spitfire pilot Stefan Knapp, a sculptor and painter who suffered from recurring nightmares and insomnia for years after the war, recalled the change in his memoir, The Square Sun (1956):

‘I was choking with the bitterness of it…Not so long ago I had enjoyed the exaggerated prestige of a fighter pilot and the hysterical adulation that surrounded him. Suddenly I turned into the slag everybody wanted to be rid of, a thing useless, burdensome, even noxious. It was very hard to bear.’

In the programme for the Allied Victory Celebrations in London a year later, you will only find a mention of Poland under one heading – the Central Band of the Royal Air Force. By this time it was Stalin, not Hitler, who seemed to require appeasement. The fate of Poland had already been determined around conference tables at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.

Find out more: 

Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II (1995, Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009)

Lynne Olson & Stanley Cloud, For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kosciuszko Squadron – Forgotten Heroes of World War II, (2004)

Robert Gretyngier, in association with Wojtek Matusiak, Poles in Defence of Great Britain, July 1940-June 1941 (London, Grub St, 2001)

Josef Zielnski, Polish Airmen in the Battle of Britain, 2005 (A very useful book, with a short chapter on every airman, but not easy to get hold of)

Kenneth K. Koskodan No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces in World War II (Osprey, 2011)

Arkady Fiedler, 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron (2010)

F.B.Czarmomski, They Fight for Poland: The War in the First Person, (1941 – Front Line Library)

Patrick Bishop, Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940 (Harper, 2003)

Jonathan Falconer, Life as a Battle of Britain Pilot (The History Press, 2007)

Battle of Britain monument…find out about the Polish airmen.

RAF Museum online exhibition on Polish Pilots

Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum

Commemorative site with information to help find all the cemetaries in the world where Polish airmen were buried during WW2

Polish War Memorial

Lydia Syson is the author of A World Between Us, about Britain and the Spanish Civil War, and That Burning Summer, the story of a Polish pilot suffering from flying fatigue (or 'Lack of Moral Fibre') during the Battle of Britain.  

www.lydiasyson.com

World Menstrual Day by Janie Hampton

Now that I’m too old to have periods, I rely on writing my monthly History Blog to remind me of time passing. Because tomorrow is ‘World Menstrual Day’, that’s what I’m thinking about.
What’s the relevance of menstruation to history? Well, Queen Victoria had periods; as did Joan of Arc and Princess Diana. Yet this normal bodily function, that happens to half the world’s adults, is mentioned only rarely in the historical record.

Pliny the Elder 

Beliefs

2,500 years ago the Greeks believed that if a girl’s menarche (first period) was late, then blood would accumulate around her heart, and her womb would wander aimlessly around her body. This produced erratic behaviour, violent swearing, and even suicidal depression. Right into the 20th century these symptoms were known as hysteria, after the Greek word for womb.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman who died in 79CE, warned that menstrual blood: “turns new wine sour; crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens dry up, the fruit falls off tress, steel edges blunt and the gleam of ivory is dulled; bees die in their hives, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.”
In mediaeval times if a penis touched menstrual blood, a man’s penis would burn up and any child conceived during menstruation would be devil-possessed, deformed, or even red-haired. Some Europeans thought that touching menstrual blood was the cause of leprosy, while others reckoned it cured the disease.
Despite herbal books referring to menstruation as ‘the flowers’, a more positive image of blossoming and growth, menstruating women carried nutmegs and nosegays to disguise their condition. Amenorrhea (lack of periods) could be cured with potions of herbs and wine, or vaginal pessaries made from mashed fruit and vegetables. To reduce a heavy flow, women were advised to bind the hair from an animal’s head onto a young tree. If this failed, they could drink comfrey or nettle tea, while reciting numerical formulae. Or find a toad, burn it dry, and put its ashes in a pocket near her vagina.



Two menstruating women dancing. Rock engraving from the Upper Yule River, Western Australia.

Religion and menstruation

Such attitudes reinforced the Christian Church’s suspicion towards women. Catholic doctrine argued that Eve was to blame for the eviction from Eden and Abbess Hildegard of Bingen [1098-1179] claimed that menstruation was God’s reminder of Eve’s Sin. even today it is still called ‘The Curse’ by many people.
Until 1916, Roman Catholic women were forbidden to receive communion while menstruating. In Eastern Orthodox churches women are still expected to refrain from receiving Communion, and to remain outside the building. Many other religions, such as Judaism’s Halakha laws and certain Muslim traditions, forbid menstruating women from sharing a bed with their husbands. Given this history of ignorant prejudice, it is pleasing to read the theologian Carmody Grey writing recently in The Tablet, ‘We could begin to answer Pope Francis’ call by pointing out that, quite literally, shedding blood for the life of humanity is just what women do.’


Carmody Grey

Mechanics

How did women in history manage their periods? There is actually little evidence, other than frequent repetition of stories such as that ancient Egyptian women used tampons made from softened papyrus, or the Greeks from lint wrapped around bits of wood.
Until the advent of contraception and bottle-feeding, women were either pregnant or breastfeeding for many more years and so had far fewer periods. Poor diet and hard work meant that for most girls the menarche was not until age 17 or 18. Though well-nourished healthy girls such as Lady Margaret Beaufort [1443-1509] gave birth to the future King Henry VII when she was just thirteen. It nearly killed her, and despite four husbands, she had no more children.
“Menstruous rags”, as the prophet Isaiah called them, or “clouts” as they were termed in 1600s England, were made from any absorbent fabric, or even grass, hemp or sphagnum moss. Elizabeth I of England [1558-1603] owned three black silk girdles to keep in place her linen “vallopes of fine holland cloth”.
In the 19th century the subject was so taboo, that historian Laura Klosterman Kidd found not one reference to menstrual-management in North American pioneer women’s diaries, letters or inventories of wagon-trains.
And the mediaeval myths continued unabated. Even the British Medical Journal claimed that menstruating women were unable to pickle meat or churn butter successfully. Female factory workers in France were forbidden to work in sugar refineries during their periods for fear they would spoil the food; and a Viennese scientist thought menstruating women stopped dough rising and beer fermenting.



The paediatrician Dr. Bela Schick [1877-1967] believed menstruating women released plant-destroying substances through their skin, which he named ‘menotoxins’. He ‘proved’ it by asking housemaids to arrange cut flowers: if they were menstruating, the flowers died sooner. This notion was even repeated in The Lancet in 1974, with the modern addition that a permanent wave would not ‘take’ to a woman’s hair during menstruation.
As recently as 1980 I was told by a farmer’s wife in Shropshire that if a menstruating woman touched meat it would go rancid, and hams wouldn’t cure. When I queried this she asked, ‘Have you ever seen a female butcher?’ It was true, I had not.
My grandmother used linen rags held on with string and washed by hand, until French nurses in the First World War, discovered wood-fibre field bandages worked much better, and burned them after use. Kotex disposable pads were soon on the market.




Kotex brought comfort and relief

An American osteopath called Dr Earle Haas invented the ‘catamenal device’ in 1929, using two cardboard tubes and a cotton-wool tampon. Four years later he sold the patent for US$32,000 to an industrious woman called Gertrude Tendrich who made them with a sewing machine and an air compressor. My mother started her periods in 1930 and was one of the first to use Tampax, but insisted that her daughters had to be married before we could use them. (Did we listen? No!)
In 1946 Walt Disney’s animated educational film The Story of Menstruation was shown to over 100 million American high school students. The first film ever to use the word 'vagina’, it nevertheless managed to avoid any mention of sex or reproduction. Despite the narrator, the actress Gloria Blondell [1910-86], encouraging girls to bathe, ride a horse, and dance during menstruation, the emphasis on sanitation reinforced the idea that menstruation was a hygienic crisis.

In 1969, the same year Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, a glue was finally invented which held sanitary pads into knickers and sanitary belts were consigned to history.
Judy Blume was reputedly the first novelist to mention the unmentionable, in ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ published in 1970. In keeping up with the times, her sanitary-towel belt has been deleted in recent editions of the book. It was not until 1985 that the word ‘period’ was used in a television commercial; and as recently as 2010, US TV networks banned a tampon commercial using the word ‘vagina’ or even ‘ down there’.
Only very recently has a method been invented by a woman – the menstrual cup. This revolutionary egg-cup-sized silicone device cannot be seen or felt, needs minimal water, leaves no rubbish and lasts for up to 10 years. It avoids the waste products of the 3,000 pads or tampons that each woman uses in her life.

Contemporary Social Beliefs

Menstruation has always been associated with lunar cycles and the moon remains central to myths and rituals across the world. 'Have you Gone to the Moon?' is said by boys to tease girls in Malawi, where the Chichewa word for menstruation also means 'Moon'.




Why do disposal bags feature a lady in a crinoline? 

In Britain and USA girls are taught that a ‘normal’ menstrual cycle is 28 days – any shorter, longer or irregular is classed as ‘abnormal.’ At school, I associated ‘regular’ periods with tidy girls with neat straight hair who always did their homework on time. My own irregular periods were obviously a symptom of my lazy, untidy mind. I never knew how ‘abnormal’ I was because even among my closest friends it was taboo to discuss such matters.
Unfortunately millions of women and girls are still disabled every month by practical as well as cultural barriers to menstruation. In many parts of Africa, girls lose as many days from school due to menstruation as they do from malaria. A quarter of women in Africa have to stop work during their periods, which means less food and money for their families. Like our grandmothers, they simply don’t have the products to feel safe walking, digging or playing netball.


Women's co-operative in Malawi making washable pads
Menstruation is a complex mixture of the positive proof of womanhood and fertility, combined with shame. In recent years most women’s lives have improved economically, politically and socially. But even though we’re now more comfortable physically during menstruation, we’re still embarrassed to talk about this normal part of our lives.


Pad made by Girl Guides in Malawi

The 28 May was chosen by the U.N. in 2014 for Menstrual Hygiene Day because the average menstrual period lasts 5 days, and happens every 28 days. But why did the UN add the word ‘hygiene’? I think it was because even in the 21st century, this normal bodily function is considered ‘unclean’. I prefer to call it simply World Menstrual Day to celebrate this important function us women have in reproducing humans.

More from the Museum of Menstruation 

Janie Hampton 2016

Volcano Gods and the Golden Boy - Katherine Langrish

I’ve been reading a remarkable book by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T Barber, ‘When they Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth’, Princeton UP, 2005. It’s about the persistence of real physical information in ancient myths, and begins with a Klamath mythical story from Oregon, all about the creation of Crater Lake. The story, recorded in 1865 – even with allowances for European translation, rewording, and bias – describes a battle between ‘the Chief of the Below World’ and ‘the Chief of the Above World’ involving fire, burning ashes and the disappearance of an entire mountain, in such a way as almost certainly to encode an eyewitness account of the eruption of the volcano geologists deduce once stood 14,000 feet high between Mount St Helens and Mount Shasta.

The catastrophic explosion of its magma chamber pulverised the entire mountain and formed the giant crater which now forms Crater Lake. And here’s the thing: the eruption has been ice-dated (from ash layers) to nearly 7,700 years ago. So the Klamath explanation of this event has been handed down for several millennia.

According to the Barbers, this isn’t even unusual. Hawaiian mythical accounts of battles between various of their chiefs and the volcano goddess Pele can be closely correlated to radiocarbon dates for different lava flows. I was absolutely fascinated by their chapter on the massive eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean, in around 1625 BC (four times more powerful than that of Krakatoa): check out this passage from Hesiod’s poem ‘The Birth of the Gods’, about the battle between the gods and the Titans:

…wide heaven groaned, shaking, and great Olympus shook… and heavy quaking reached gloomy Tartarus… And the cry of both sides reached the starry sky as they bellowed and came together with a great battle shout. Nor did Zeus hold back his might, but now indeed…from Olympus he came, hurling lightning continually, and the bolts flew thickly amid thunder and flashing from his powerful hand…and all around the great boundless woods crackled with fire. …The hot blast surrounded the earthborn Titans, and a boundless flame reached to the bright upper air… and it seemed, facing it, as if Earth and wide Heaven above collided, for so huge a boom would roll forth, as if Earth were being hurled up while Sky were falling down from above…

Hesiod was writing about 700 BC, so nine hundred years after the eruption – but most poetry had been oral up to his time, and it’s highly likely his account dates back much, much further.

After all, wouldn’t it be odd if such a cataclysmic eruption hadn’t been talked and wondered and sung about by the peoples ringing the Middle Sea, for centuries and centuries? The Barbers point also to the Exodus account in the Bible, in which Moses leads his people out of Egypt, guided by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.  ‘For people moving north down the Nile valley to where the Delta opens out, an eruption pillar from Thera would indeed be ahead of them.’  (I've checked this on Google maps, and Thera - modern Santorini - is indeed pretty much in line with the Nile valley and/or the Red Sea, on a north-north-west alignment.) The Barbers go on to caution: ‘whether the Exodus… actually occurred in 1625 BC is another matter. Time often gets foreshortened in the telling of myths… thus Exodus as we have it may contain details from several different time periods.’

In recent years, we've all grown accustomed to the psychological exploration of myths, the discovery (or re-discovery) of their emotional relevance, but it’s refreshing to be reminded that some myths may have sprung from simple matters of fact. Mythologizing is all part of the long struggle of humanity to make sense of the world. A natural calamity requires an explanation, which nowadays is promptly delivered by science, via experts appearing on our television screens, details about plate tectonics and so on. Interesting and accurate as these explanations are, I don't know how much comfort they provide. But without any scientific knowledge of the physical causes, the best way to make sense of the event – to bring it to some kind of proportion – is to inject it with emotion, and by analogy with human passions suppose it to be caused by the anger of gods or of God. And this is consolatory, because understandable. Even today, when the causes of natural disasters are understood by most people, we still struggle to ‘make sense’ of the unbearable loss of innocent lives.

'... human kind
Cannot bear very much reality'.

I recommend the Barbers' book, which is wise and fascinating and wonderful. And here’s an epilogue, not part of the book at all. In the British Museum is an utterly gorgeous golden cape. It dates to somewhere between 1900 – 1600 BC, and was found by workmen in Mold, Wales, in 1833. (They threw away the bones it clothed, tore it to pieces and shared it out, and it had to be painstakingly reconstructed, but that’s another story.) I’ve seen it myself and the gold is as bright and yellow as summer buttercups.

It was one of the 100 objects in BBC Radio 4’s ‘History of the World In 100 Objects’, so you may have heard about it there. The gold is so fragile that it could only have been used ceremoniously: and it’s too small for a man, so must have belonged either to a woman, or a youth. Maybe a teenage king or priest was buried in it.

But the mound those workmen were digging into was in a field called Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, which means ‘the Hill of the Fairies’: and the legend of the hill was that it was haunted by a ghostly boy, all clad in gold. Just think of that for a moment...

Isn't it possible that the sight of a young man being laid to rest in his shimmering golden cape so impressed and touched the onlookers, that for nearly four thousand years, if a child said, ‘Mother, who’s buried in that hill?’ the answer was: ‘A boy all dressed in gold'?




Picture credits: 
Crater Lake, Oregon, Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zainubrazvi
The Mold gold cape, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AndreasPraefcke

The Easter Story: Myth, Truth or both?

by Caroline Lawrence

Which famous story has a character whom we first meet in a kind of shed, who is persecuted by men in authority, has a special affinity with children, is gentle and meek, performs healing miracles, whose message can be summed up in the words "be good", who sacrifices his life to save another's, who dies, is resurrected to joyful cries of "He's alive!", who reappears dressed in white, promises to be with his friends always and who finally returns to the heavens from whence he came?

It's the 1982 film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.

Think about it: Eliot first meets ET in a shed-like garage, finds he's being hunted by scientists who want to "dissect him or something"; ET is "seen" only by children, at first. In one scenes he heals Eliot's cut finger by touching it. He tells Eliot's sister to "be good". He and Eliot become so empathically linked that when E.T. starts to die, Eliot sickens, too and so E.T. cuts the link to Eliot – essentially his life support – and allows himself to die, thereby saving Eliot. But when E.T.'s "family" come back from space his heart begins to glow again and he comes alive again. (Think of those pictures or statues where Jesus is shown with a glowing red heart!). Before E.T. leaves, he touches Eliot's forehead with his finger and says, "I'll be here". Then he ascends into the heavens, leaving a rainbow-like star above.

E.T. was directed by Steven Spielberg, who is Jewish and had no conscious intention of re-creating the Christ story. In an interview I heard a few years ago, Spielberg told the story of how some Jewish kids who played extras on the film said to him, "This story's about Jesus!"

"No, it isn't," said Spielberg, then paused, frowned and added, "At least not consciously."

Isn't that amazing? That one of the highest-grossing films ever made essentially tells the Jesus story, and yet the director wasn't consciously aware of it.

Martin Scorsese, another film director, came up with one of my favourite quotes: He said, "I have a hard time telling the difference between going to the movies and going to church."

Scorsese, a New York born Catholic, directed such films as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and the controversial Last Temptation of Christ. I think Scorsese means that when you've seen a good film you come out of the cinema feeling inspired, encouraged, warned, loved, and with a renewed sense of awe for God's love and grace.

That's how some films make us feel, and I'm not just talking about so-called "religious films" like The Passion of the Christ or Ben-Hur. Many secular films can inspire the sort of feelings we'd like to have when we leave church on Sunday. (One of my favourite inspirational films is WALL-E.) I think it's because of the huge power that stories have in our lives.

As a professor at Oxford, C.S. Lewis wrote several academic essays on Christianity. Then one day he had a revelation about the power of story from his colleague J.R.R. Tolkien. He realised that stories are far more powerful than even the most beautifully presented academic argument. So he wrote The Narnia Chronicles.

As a writer, I'm deeply interested in story structure. I regularly attend screenwriting classes put on by an organisation in London called Raindance. In 2004 I attended one by Christopher Vogler, who used to work for Disney Studios in the 70's. Shortly after he left film school, Vogler read a book that changed his life. It was a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, an anthropologist who studied myths from different cultures. Campbell noticed that people from different parts of the world – without contact with each other – told very similar stories.

diagram of the Hero's Journey

As Vogler read Campbell's book, he identified twelve steps common to every hero's journey and realised it could provide powerful plot structure. His revelation was confirmed when he was invited to an early screening of Star Wars. With a shock of recognition, he realised that George Lucas had been reading Campbell, too. Vogler left Disney not long after that screening of Star Wars, and for over 30 years he's been teaching these 12 steps of The Hero's Journey in seminars and in his book, The Writer's Journey, a must-read for any would-be screenwriter.

This Easter Monday, I thought it would be interesting to see if those Twelve Steps could be applied to the Story of Jesus.

1. The Hero's World
The gospel writer Mark (and Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ) begin when Jesus is an adult. Jesus seems to be the ordinary son of a Jewish carpenter in Nazareth in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Then one day the Herald comes. "And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins..." This Herald is someone known to Jesus. His cousin John, called the Baptist.

2. The Call to Adventure
As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well-pleased.'

3. Refusal of the Call
The moment Jesus comes up out of the water and hears God's voice, he realises what he probably never consciously dared to think: he is the son of God, the Messiah. He may have suspected it before, but I don't think he knew for sure. This is a huge revelation and he needs a month in the wilderness to wrestle with the implications. I don't know if you could call this a "refusal of the call", but he certainly has a struggle. It's interesting that Satan, the Threshold Guardian as well as supreme enemy, challenges his revelation. "IF you are the son of God", he says repeatedly, "then prove it by doing such-and-such."

4. Meeting the Mentor
Although angels ministered to Jesus in the desert, Jesus' mentor is God the Father speaking through the Holy Spirit.

5. Crossing the Threshold
Jesus returns from the desert and begins his ministry. He Crosses the Threshold when he comes out of the desert and crosses the Jordan into Galilee. Just stop to think how many people in the Bible crossed rivers. In Christianity, crossing a river is a symbol of baptism. When we are baptised, we cross a threshold from our old life to a new life.

Dali's Christ Crucified

6. Allies, Enemies, Tests, Training and Oracles
As soon as Jesus leaves the wilderness and crosses the Jordan, his ministry begins. He meets and calls his disciples, and is opposed by religious leaders. Various people prophesy about him. He undergoes many tests and trials. He teaches, heals, casts out demons, forgives, and performs many miracles. Miracles like the raising of Lazarus must have given him courage for the Supreme Ordeal. At times, he must have wondered whether he was mad to think he was the Son of God. He was human, after all.

7. The Approach to the Inmost Cave
For Jesus there will be an actual cave, and a literal visit to the underworld. That journey which so many heroes took in the Greek myths, Jesus did in reality. According to 1 Peter 3.19-20 he went to the underworld for three days and preached to the spirits of the unsaved. But that is still ahead. First he must face

8. The Supreme Ordeal or Visit to Death
Jesus submits to torture and crucifixion. Films like The Passion of the Christ give us some idea of the agony he went through. But we can never really grasp the horror of his mental and physical anguish.

11. Resurrection
After three days in the cave – in the underworld – Jesus is resurrected.

10. The Road Back
Galilee was never Jesus' real home. He returns to his real home when he ascends to heaven.

9. The Reward
Just as the reward in most Myth-based films is rescuing a person or persons, so Jesus' reward is rescuing us from Death. Holman Hunt's famous painting The Light of the World shows how Jesus becomes a sort of Herald to knock on the door of our life. We can Refuse the Call if we wish. This image reminds me of 2004 film, The Polar Express. The conductor on the train holds a lamp and invites children to join. But he never insists. The Conductor says this: "The thing about trains... it doesn't matter where they're going. What matters is deciding to get on."

12. Return with the Elixir
Finally there is the return with the elixir. According to Campbell (and Vogler), the hero often looks different and often has new powers. The "elixir" in the Story of Jesus is salvation for everyone, Jesus reconciling God and Man outside space and time.

In the 1930's, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were dons together at Oxford. They were both Christians and both writers, and they met regularly with others to discuss various aspects of writing in a literary group called the Inklings. On one occasion, Lewis, Tolkien and another friend were up all night discussing Myth and its relation to Christianity. Tolkien and Lewis both loved ancient myths, particularly the Greek and Norse myths. But Lewis disapproved of Tolkien using myths in the books he was writing. He called them "lies breathed through silver" and suggested that a Christian shouldn't use so-called pagan stories.

But Tolkien argued that "pagan myths" point to the truth of Jesus Christ.

This was a huge revelation in Lewis's life and he suddenly realised that the "story of Christ is a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference: it really happened."

Recently I was listening to a podcast called Mythology and the Spiritual Journey with Jungian psychologist Dr Richard Naegel. He quotes Joseph Cambell, who said, "Myth is what we call someone else's religion."

Naegel points out, "You don't call your own religion a myth. When you live in a myth you know it to be true... A living myth acts like a lens to align your inner world to your outer world... Stories are about meaning. The weave past, present and future. They give us a place in the universe. "

And I'll end with a quote from one of my own mentors, the late Blake Snyder, who taught with passion and humour about Hollywood storytelling in his Save The Cat books, seminars and podcasts. "Why do we have to go through this storytelling process again and again?" he said in a 2008 podcast for The Writing Show. "Couldn't we just be told one story and then get it? I think it's because stories keep us on track. We need a miracle every day."

[This blog is a shortened and updated version of one first posted in Dec 2004]

Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for kids set in Ancient Rome and the Wild West. Christopher Vogler will be teaching a masterclass on The Writer's Journey at Raindance, London on April 28th & 29th.