James Bond meets Goldoni, and more musings on the Byron question - Michelle Lovric

Gregory Dowling’s new historical novel, Ascension, is set in Venice in the 1749. By coincidence, my current WIP is set in La Serenissima in 1740, so I devoured his book with particular voracity. It’s also a fine read – pacy, humorous and well supplied with edge-of-seat factor. So I asked Gregory, whom I’ve known for far too many years, if he would agree to being interviewed. Very kindly, he did.

First, a little background.

Gregory Dowling – novelist and academic – is Bristol-born. He read English at Oxford. It’s now more than thirty years since he moved to Venice, where he is Associate Professor of American Literature at Ca' Foscari University. He has published four novels, co-edited two anthologies of poetry, written various non-fiction books and academic articles on Italian, British and American literature. He has a special interest in British and American writers in Italy, from the Romantic age onwards, and has written extensively about Byron in Venice. From the last fact, regular readers will know that Gregory and I have something to argue about.

But let us not dive head-first into controversy, and begin with the basics.

How did your personal and professional relationship with Venice begin?

First of all, thank you, Michelle, for offering me this chance to talk about my book – and thanks for your kind words on it. I’m very glad you enjoyed it; that means a lot to me.

 I first saw Venice in 1979, after four months teaching English in Naples. I came up to the north of Italy in June to visit an old school-friend who was working at a language school in Treviso and we went to Venice on a day-trip. And then I went back again by myself the next day. And the next day… And I knew I would be going back often. After Naples I did a stint at a language-school in Siena; and then, in January 1980, I got a job at a language school in Verona and while living there (for the next year and a half) I used to spend almost every weekend pottering about in Venice. In summer 1981 I was beginning to think I ought perhaps to go back to England and get a “proper job”—but then I said to myself if I could just have one year living in Venice… And I moved to a language school in Venice. And one year turned into another, and then I was offered the chance to start teaching at the university. And here I still am, now teaching American literature as well as English language. So I never got that “proper job”.

the view from Sant-Elena - Gregory's part of Venice

In a sentence or two, tell us what Ascension is about.

It’s a spy-story set in 18th-century Venice, with a hero, Alvise Marangon, who finds himself, against his will, inveigled into the Venetian secret service. Alvise was born in Venice but brought up in England in the world of theatre and so a certain amount of make-believe comes naturally to him. It is intended as a thriller, with, I hope, some elements of comedy. James Bond meets Goldoni, perhaps…

Why did you choose 1749 for the setting of this novel?

 Well, my choice was originally a little vaguer. It’s still there as an epigraph to the novel: “Venice, under the Dogeship of Pietro Grimani (1741-52).” As I wasn’t tying myself to any specific historic event I was quite happy with that general indication—rather like the old-fashioned convention you find in Victorian novels of leaving the last digit in the date as a dash. Those years attract me as a historical setting for a number of reasons: the final decline of the city is still several decades off; great art, music and literature are still being produced, and—should I so choose in future novels—I can bring in such figures as Casanova and Goldoni, who were very much part of the scene. However, the publisher decided that the “shout-line” on the cover needed a specific date, so after some hemming and hawing I opted for 1749, which seemed right.

Arsenale, setting of one of the climactic scenes of the new novel

One of your characters says, ‘In this city, everything is connected with everything else.’ Can you explain how this applies especially to Venice.

It still seems true to me. Perhaps it is just that Venice, despite its glittering cosmopolitan image, is also at heart a village, where people tend to know what everyone else is up to—and who they are related to.

 Another observation that caught my attention: ‘this city does bring out the histrionic in everyone’. Do you think that this is as true in 2015 as in 1749?

 Well, I suppose we can still point to carnival. However, there is something a little forced and artificial about carnival today (I used the contemporary carnival for the climax of my previous thriller set in Venice, Every Picture Tells a Story, St Martin’s Press, 1991). Or, to put it in another way, the artifice doesn’t seem to come quite so naturally today. Nonetheless, there’s still a good deal of performance in Venetian life, whether at the Rialto market or at faculty meetings at the university.

How do you make use of your locations? Do you physically go to write in the settings of your scenes? Do you superimpose a map or diagram of how things were then over how they are now? I am particularly thinking of your description of the Piazza San Marco at night, which well illustrates how things were different then. I also loved your description of the cheese shop in the middle of the fishiest bit of Dorsoduro.

I don’t feel the need to actually be in the place while writing a scene. Sitting down with my laptop in the Doge’s Palace would be a little inconvenient, after all. But I do try to remain faithful to the city’s geography as it was then, which essentially means remembering that streets like Via 22 Marzo, the Strada Nova, and Via Garibaldi did not exist; that there was just the one bridge over the Grand Canal; that Venice itself was a true island… Obvious things like that, for a start. It’s possible that a real expert might find I’ve allowed my characters to cross a bridge that wasn’t there at the time and I’ll be happy to accept correction on such points. However, I won’t lose too much sleep over it, since it’s the overall faithfulness to the period that counts, I feel. And I hope I captured that in such things as my descriptions of Piazza San Marco at night.

 I’m glad you liked the cheese shop; that, of course, is purely imaginary. I’m not drawing on any records of such an establishment in the archives.

Sant'Isepo, one of the little-known corners of Venice explored in the novel

Were you able to go inside the Palazzo Garzoni to research the scenes you set there? Was that during its recent restoration?

Actually, the department I belong to at the university was situated in Ca’ Garzoni for many years, until the university sold the building. So I know the palace well. I allowed myself a little licence in describing its attic, mind you. And I never climbed on to the rooftop either…

The Missier Grande is inevitably part of the crime-and-punishment scenario of all novels set in Venice. But your book offers the first time I can remember him being an actual character with a personality. How did you come up with your particular and charismatic Missier Grande, in the context of his political role?

I was drawn to the character precisely because he is usually such a vague figure. I imagine that at the time a certain anonymity was considered desirable, in order to instil the necessary awe among the populace. That gave me some scope to make what I wanted, more or less, of the figure. I was also intrigued by the fact that the post was held by figures for fairly long periods, amid a context in which most positions of authority had very strict time-limits. So I was interested in how this would affect relations between such figures.

How do you deal with the issue of info-dumping – trying to get on with the story while accommodating the need to explain the strange workings Venetian life in the 18th century? Lately I have been shucking off history in favour of character in my books, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do the research. However I find that I increasingly discard explanations of Venice from the novel I submit, partly to avoid the editor’s red pen. What is your attitude to the balance between educating the reader and entertaining him/her?

Well, the particular position of my hero-narrator helps here. He is Venetian by birth but not by upbringing, and that means he has had to learn most of the strange workings of the city for himself. Also he is a professional cicerone, so it isn’t too unnatural that he should occasionally feel the need to explain things as he narrates. And I also imagine that a reader who chooses such a novel will have a certain amount of curiosity about the city and the period and thus a certain degree of toleration for such information. Having said that, I will always tilt the scales in favour of entertainment over education.

I understand that you, your wife and children were charmingly inserted by your father into a copy he made of a Francesco Guardi painting of the Bucintoro, the Doge’s ceremonial boat, which features at the climax of the novel. I am envious of that picture! I guess this is what historical novelists do – we insert ourselves into history. Do you agree? And can you tell me more about the painting?

 

My father, after he retired as a G.P., took up painting, something he hadn’t done since schooldays. He regularly attended an art-class for years and did countless view-paintings, as well as portraits. Occasionally he did copies of famous paintings. One of these is of the Francesco Guardi painting you refer to, and in the bottom right-hand corner he included my own family: myself, my wife Patrizia and our two sons, Christopher and Alessandro.

 

Judging from the fact that Patrizia and I are holding the boys in our arms, the painting must have been done about 24 or 25 years ago. The painting now hangs in my father’s bedroom, just one of numerous Venetian views that cover three of the walls of the room. It is possible that when I began thinking of a plot for the novel, I was unconsciously influenced by this painting, since, as you say, we have been inserted into history—into a particularly splendid moment of history.

It’s hardly a secret after my novel Carnevale that I fail to admire Byron. I find much of the poetry facile, and even brilliant poetry could not make up for the cruel way he treated his mother, daughter Allegra, and nearly every woman who passed through what I cannot even bring myself to call his ‘romantic’ life. As far as I am concerned, Byron’s only big love affair was with himself. I enjoy his letters, but only because I like the dark, vicious humour there. I still pity his targets. Those letters are rampantly self-conscious, knowingly destined for publication. So they are only half letters; other half is posing with curlicues. Well, I got off the fence! I think you would defend Byron, would you not? Tell us what about your own writings on him. 

Byron by George Henry Harlow,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Well, now here is where I could wear out your and your readers’ patience, since I could bang on about Byron for pages and pages (if we can refer to a blog having pages). The first thing to say, of course, is that Byron’s behaviour is at times indefensible. The story of Allegra is a terribly sad one and Byron comes out very badly from it. (People might be interested in this half-hour BBC Radio 4 programme by Michael Symmons Roberts that was made about her short life a few weeks ago, in which I feature briefly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ygl5 ) And I won’t try and defend his behaviour towards his wife, either, just as I wouldn’t try and defend that of Charles Dickens or that of Graham Greene towards their wives. But it is worth saying that not all women had such negative experiences with him; you only have to read Teresa Guiccioli’s adoring account of his life to see that. And another interesting case is that of Mary Shelley, an extremely intelligent and sensitive woman who had every reason to have a very negative view of him, since she was so closely tied to the story of Allegra, but who after his death had to admit to the enduring fascination he exerted over her.

And if you want to get a much more positive view of Byron it is well worth reading accounts of his last year, the year of the so-called Greek adventure. A very good book on it came out two years ago by Roderick Beaton, Byron’s War. It’s a period that is extremely well-documented, since almost everyone who came into contact with Byron during his time in Greece wrote their own accounts of the story and of his death. And it is clear that Byron made a strong and favourable impression on most of these people, who are extremely diverse in character and background. Particularly touching is the account by Teresa’s brother, Pietro Gamba, who accompanied Byron to Greece and also died there; before meeting Byron he had tried to warn his sister against associating with him, influenced by the tales he had heard of Byron’s behaviour; after meeting him he became one of Byron’s most loyal friends.

Another book that is a passionate defence of Byron the man as well as Byron the poet is the recent L'estate di un ghiro - Il mito di Lord Byron attraverso la vita, i viaggi, gli amori, le opere by the Italian critic Vincenzo Patanè, who lives and works in Venice, the first full-length Italian biography of the poet. A very good book.

 But of course the real reason we continue to be fascinated by Byron is his poetry and here I have to disagree vigorously with your opinion—while at the same time acknowledging that there is a nugget of truth in what you say about it. There is a lot of Byron’s poetry that is “facile”, as you put it; it’s the stuff that made Byron famous: much of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the Oriental Tales etc. The kind of stuff that created the Byronic legend, and made him famous throughout Europe. The kind of poetry that Byron himself said had “corrupted the public taste”. It’s enjoyable enough, in its own rather undemanding way, but it is not what keeps Byron’s reputation so high today. Byron’s greatest works are the poems he wrote in ottava rima, the Italian stanza form he encountered in Italy: Beppo, The Vision of Judgement, and, in particular, Don Juan. Beppo gives us a delightful picture of Venetian society, in a story that works as a parody of his own oriental romances. The Vision of Judgement is one of the greatest satirical poems in the language, and is also highly imaginative. Don Juan is an extraordinary work, varying in tone and register from canto to canto, ranging from tender love poetry to bedroom farce, from epic adventures to literary parody, from scenes of war to humorous reflections on religion, politics, high society… While his poetry in the “Byronic” style had a huge and immediate influence on so many of the other European Romantics of the day, in all fields of art, from Turner to Delacroix and Gericault, from Tchaikovsky to Berlioz and Schumann and Verdi, Don Juan had a long-lasting but even more powerful influence on such great works as Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Auden’s satirical poetry and, to come up to our own days, Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. In fact, I’d leave the last word on Byron to Auden, by far and away the best critic on Byron.

“Whatever its faults Don Juan is the most original poem in English; nothing like had ever been written before. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel like reading it very often, but when I do, it is the only poem I want to read: no other will do.”

 Which writers, in your opinion, do Venice justice on the page? (I’d love to ask you who doesn’t deliver, but let’s not be uncharitable, shall we? At least to the living.)

Well, I’ll start with Beppo, then. And in fact I could remain with Byron to make a distinction between those writers who are good at the Childe Harold vision of the city—describing Venice in terms of sheer romantic spectacle—and those who are good at the Beppo mode—describing Venice in terms of its daily life, depicting it, one might say, from a more intimate point of view, the point of view of the long-term Venetian resident. Some, like Byron, can do both, but in general writers tend towards one or the other.

The best of the former kind is Anthony Hecht in his extraordinary poem The Venetian Vespers, which contains some of the most moving descriptions of the city’s beauty in all literature: I’m thinking of the end of the second section and the beginning of the third, with the description of the interior of San Marco, or the final section, with its sunset description. All as part of a great psychological portrait of a tormented American exile in the city. Other poets I admire on the city are James Merrill and John Drury.

Henry James also has some wonderful descriptive passages; perhaps not so much in the novels (although the storm and its aftermath in The Wings of the Dove are wonderful) as in his essays in Italian Hours.

Remaining more or less in that period, I would say that the best of the “Beppo”-type writers is William Dean Howells, in his wonderful book Venetian Life, a great account of everyday life in 19th-century Venice.

My favourite essayist on the city is Mary McCarthy, whose book Venice Observed contains some of the most acute and brilliant descriptions of different aspects of Venice, but most particularly its art.

Novels I’ve enjoyed that are set in the city are Miss Garnet’s Angel by Sally Vickers, with its wonderful pictures of Dorsoduro and the Guardi paintings in the church of Angelo Raffaele. Vikram Seth’s pages in An Equal Music are brilliant; there’s a wonderful range in them, from the magnificent descriptions of the Carpaccio paintings in S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni and the mosaics of Torcello to the homely depictions of life in S. Elena, my own part of town. So he manages to do both Childe Harold and Beppo.

And to turn to fiction in my own genre, Donna Leon is always reliable for pictures of Venice today (even if the city is, of course, rather less crime-ridden than one might expect from a reading of her novels). Rather more melodramatic, but enormous fun, is the crime novel Lucifer’s Shadow by David Hewson.

I have a guilty fondness for the novels of Simon Raven, and two in particular have well-drawn Venetian settings: Brother Cain and The Survivors.

Andrea Molesini, among Venetian writers, is extremely imaginative in his children’s novels set in the city, particularly Tutto il tempo del mondo.

Fruttero and Lucentini wrote a strange but very atmospheric novel set in Venice, L’amante senza fissa dimora, which I translated for Chatto and Windus; however, for some reason, after publishing two other books of theirs that I had translated they decided not to proceed with this one, which was a pity, since it was perhaps the best of the three.

For my own purposes—that is, to get the sense of 18th-century Venice—Andrea di Robilant’s books have proved invaluable, particularly A Venetian Affair. As, of course, have the works of Goldoni and Casanova.

And that brings me to your own novels, which I have greatly enjoyed. I particularly love the imaginative extravagance of your children’s books. I may even have got the idea of putting the story of Marino Faliero at the heart of my book from the use that you made (although very different) of the figure of Baiamonte Tiepolo.

Thank you so much, Gregory, for this tour around your literary Venice. You have almost swayed me about Byron. Almost.  I too love the Hecht and the Howells, different as they are.  And you have added to my books-to-buy-list, very expensively.

Michelle Lovric's website
Photographs of Venice by Gregory Dowling.
Portrait of Gregory Dowling, and photograph of the Guardi painting, by Barnaby Dowling.

Visualising Roman London by Caroline Lawrence

The historical novels I love to read (and hopefully write) transport me to the past. They make me hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. Most of all, they make me SEE the past. As a visual thinker that is what is what I crave most.

When I wrote my Roman Mysteries set in Ancient Rome, I had the ruins of Ostia and Pompeii to inspire me, along with the well-preserved frescoes, sculptures and mosaics, and all the art and movies that attempt to envision those places. I know Pompeii better than I know cities on America's east coast. 

When I was writing my P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries, set in Nevada in 1862, I found that photography had been invented just in time to let me look into the past. There were even stereographic photographs that let me gaze into canyons, along railway lines and over the roofs of Virginia City at exactly the times my books were set.

Now I’m working on a book set in Roman Britain during the last decade of the first century. Pre-Trajanic Londinium is not as well-preserved as Pompeii or as well-documented that Virginia City in the 1860s. Scholars are not even sure who the governor of Britannia was in AD 94, the year my book is set.

Luckily, London offers some fabulous resources. The British Museum has rooms devoted to stunning artefacts like the Snettisham hoard and the Vindolanda tablets.

3-D Model of Roman London's port at the Museum of London

The Museum of London (MOL) is even better. Not only does it have bits of the original Roman wall poking up around it, but it has replica Roman rooms, street scenes, delicious artefacts and 3-D models of Londinium’s port and forum.

Gladiator Games in August 2015, sponsored by the Museum of London

They go above and beyond. The MOL stages gladiatorial combats with dedicated re-enactors like those put on last month. Their archaeologists give regular tours of the underground amphitheatre, hidden bathhouses and Thames foreshore. The tech guys at the MOL have even produced a brilliant app of Londinium with an interactive map: you can ‘dig up’ artefacts, listen to ancient street sounds and watch ancient Romans superimposed on modern streets.

Mudlarking with Museum of London archaeologist September 2015

But as I was making a pass over my second draft of my Roman Britain book last week, I wasn’t seeing it.

For me to write something clearly enough for nine-year-olds to get it, I have to get it first. And I was confused. How did the north bank differ from the south? When were the city walls built again? How extensive were the wharves? What was the main building material? What did Londinium look like?

Then I stumbled across a wonderful resource on the Museum of London’s website: the paintings of Alan Sorrell. It was just what I needed: postcards of the world I was writing. Bird’s eye views of the streets and buildings. Inspired vignettes of daily life with great attention to archaeological and historical detail.

A commercial artist who worked in many mediums and on many projects, Alan Sorrell (1904 – 1974) first studied art at Southend and later at the RCA in London and Rome. He spent WWII in the air force. After the war he worked closely with some of the most respected archaeologists of the day. His 'neo-Romantic' training accounts for the often moody lighting of his work. His time with the RAF is reflected in his fondness for aerial views. And his attention to historical detail attests his collaboration with scholars.

London's Praetorium by Alan Sorrell, via the Museum of London

An atmospheric watercolour of London’s Praetorium (Governor's Palace) shows all the features mentioned by Peter Marsden, its excavator. This is one of Londinium’s lesser-known but great buildings (now totally covered by Cannon Street Station.) As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be the setting for a key scene at the heart of my book. With Sorrell’s illustration alongside the sparse archaeological plan and dry written accounts of this structure, I can now write a believable setting for my scene.

Sorrell’s watercolour of the wells beside the Walbrook reminded me to include rubbish heaps in my Londinium. His red-painted goose-neck on theBlackfriars barge encouraged me to add more colour. His aerial view of Londonin the time of Hadrian prompted me to check whether London Bridge had a drawbridge in the mid 90s. The answer is we don’t know, so I’ll have to use my instincts.

Like authors of historical fiction, archaeological artists also need to use flashes of creative instinct when fleshing out the dry bones of the facts. In a preliminary sketch of 3rd century Londinium, Sorrell felt he should give the Roman city a river wall. A notation on his sketch shows that he was asked to remove it for the final painting as there were no remains of such a wall. His theory was justified however, when a few months after his death evidence of a riverside wall was indeed found.

Sorrell’s diligently researched and inspired paintings have finally helped me ‘get’ Roman London.

I am grateful to his family and fans who have made his work available to the world. 

A superb paper on his life and output has been made publicly available on Academia. 

Escape from Rome, the first of four books in The Roman Quests, a new Roman British series by Caroline Lawrence, will be out in May 2016. 

'Don't Hang the Messenger' by Karen Maitland

'I don't care what your delivery sheet says,
 I'm not signing for the white elephant!'

Having waited all day for a ‘guaranteed’ delivery of a package which has not arrived, I find myself wondering if things were any better before our modern courier services.

Since the time of the ancient civilizations there has always been a need for couriers and messengers to deliver valuable packages and vital documents. Both the Persians and Romans established very efficient networks of state messengers, but by the 11th Century in Europe many commoners such as wealthy merchants, town councils and monasteries discovered they needed to develop their own independent courier systems, not least because they wanted to keep their business interests safely away from the prying eyes of government officials, popes and kings. Even universities in the Middle Ages employed their own couriers so that students could obtain money urgently from their families to pay their fees or refill their wine flagons, and these university couriers were given royal dispensation to travel without hindrance.

But maintaining a courier system was an expensive business, not only did the messengers have to be provided with coins for food and lodgings on the road, but they needed money to change horses, pay tolls, buy passage on ships or river craft, and they often had to be provided with the funds to bribe clerks and officials so that they could be admitted straightaway to see someone of importance and not kept hanging around for weeks. So it made sense for individuals to band together to finance a courier service between them. One of the first of these was the Scarsella dei Mercanti Fiorentini founded in Florence in 1357 by a group of merchants, who hit on the bright idea of not only using the service themselves, but allowing anyone who could afford it to pay to use it too, whenever the need arose.

Couriers had to be fit, tough, trustworthy and resourceful. It helped if you could speak several languages as well. On one occasion when a quantity of gold had to be sent secretly from Verona to St Gall, six messengers were dispatched in pairs travelling by different routes disguised as pilgrims. They were warned that if they were caught, the gold would be bound to their legs with their own thigh sinews!

This was probably not an idle threat, since at the siege of Auberoche in 1345, when the French captured a page boy on his way to deliver a message to the English inside the besieged castle, the poor lad was bound and catapulted into the castle from a trebuchet or siege engine, with the letters he was carrying tied around his neck. Unsurprisingly it is said the knights were much ‘astonished and discomforted when they saw him arrive.’

Before the days of modern ID cards, couriers who were carrying valuables or secret messages had to find a way to prove their own identity and that of the person to whom they were delivering the package. The simplest method was to a cut a coin in half, one being given to the recipient who would then match it to the courier’s. Rings were often use to identify the bearer or recipient, as well as passwords and coded gestures. Confidential documents could be concealed in the linings of clothes or laid flat on a wooden board and coated with a thick layer of wax, so that it would appear to be a cheap writing tablet. Not something a thief would bother stealing.

If messages fell into the wrong hands, the consequences could be disastrous. When Calais was being besieged by Edward III in 1346, the French defenders tried to send a letter to their king telling him they were so desperate they would have to start eating each other or surrender if help didn’t arrive. When one of couriers realised he had been spotted, he tied the letter he was carrying to an axe and threw it into the sea, hoping the axe would weigh it down, but it floated ashore and fell into the hands of Edward III who took great delight in personally sending it to the French king, just to add to his enemy’s humiliation.

Quite apart from the hazards of the journey itself, some couriers must have felt very apprehensive

Valette - Grand Master of the Knights of St. John

about the reception they’d receive when they eventually arrived. The accepted laws of chivalry meant that a messenger delivering bad news should be allowed to speak freely without being punished, but men in authority were seldom noted for their sweet disposition and often the temptation to ‘hang the messenger’ proved too great. 

 In 1565, when a courier delivered the message to Suleiman that his siege of Malta had failed, Suleiman flew into a rage and stamped on the unfortunate man. But to be fair, when the Turks had earlier sent a messenger to Valette, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John on Malta, he had ordered the messenger hanged, and only relented when it was pointed out that the poor man was a slave who couldn’t disobey orders. So instead Valette sent him back with the message that he would hang anyone who came to deliver any further communications.

As for that package – I’m still waiting!

SISTERS by Adèle Geras

Note: When I wrote this post, I  hadn't read Christina Konig's excellent post about LIFE IN SQUARES. I do hope readers of this blog will excuse a slight overdose of the Bloomsbury Group. My post is sufficiently different from Christina's I hope, for this to be excused. 

The whole world, it seems,  is Bloomsbury Mad. Actually, ever since Vanessa and Virginia Stephen moved to 46 Gordon Square in 1904, the lives of these two sisters and their friends have fascinated biographers, critics and anyone interested in a story of highly intelligent people and their doings: literary, artistic and sexual. Perhaps it's their sexual shenanigans which have kept the interest alive and the recent BBC drama, LIFE IN SQUARES, did concentrate on that aspect of their lives perhaps rather too much. The drama was quite well done, I thought, though Virginia I felt, was woefully miscast and Rupert Penry-Jones, much as I admire him, didn't appear to be much older than James Norton, playing the older Duncan Grant. I saw no good reason why the same actor couldn't have been used for both old and young, but there you are. The series certainly looked wonderful and Eve Best as Vanessa has made me resolve to wear my string of amber beads round the house, as she did. Most importantly, the drama suffered, I though from only being three episodes long. There was far too much happening in all these lives to cram into such a short time frame. If it had been longer, the characters could have been much more fully developed and the situations, and complicated relationships of the Group could have been explained to those of the viewing public who didn't know the intricate stories of these lives. As well as that, more episodes would have been able to convey the artistic and literary importance of these two women, who, in the time allowed, were just beautiful people who swanned around, with occasional bouts of grief and thwarted love to interrupt the apparent idyll.

This (above) is Charleston House, Vanessa's home for most of her life.  You are not allowed to photograph the interior, where Vanessa and Duncan Grant and other artists decorated every available surface. You saw the rooms in the TV series, and they are most beautiful. The scale of the house is very small. It's really a farmer's cottage and feels like it: rough, as well as beautiful. The furniture comes from the Omega Workshop, where Vanessa Bell produced wonderful (unsigned) designs for furniture. Duncan Grant's  work is everywhere. He was the love of Vanessa's life and more than that, her closest friend in the world, except for her sister, Virginia. Anyone who missed the tv series and who is interested has only to put Charleston House into Google to see what it looks like. They will also find many of Vanessa's works reproduced.

Many people can't stand the Bloomsbury group.  Snobbish, they say. Elitist. Spoilt. Anti-semitic. And on and on. This may very well be true but also, clever, ground - breaking artistically, and leaders of the intellectual life of their day, whose lives are still fascinating to many, including me. I can say exactly why I am drawn to them. It's because of the relationship between the sisters. I'm an only child and I suppose I romanticise the bond that can exist between sisters, because I've always wished I had one of my own. In February, I read a novel which I can't recommend too highly. It's called 'VANESSA AND HER SISTER,' by Priya Parmar, and it's published in paperback by, of course, Bloomsbury.  It is completely gripping and deals with a period of their lives when they were young. After reading that, I'm now reading an excellent joint biography by Jane Dunn called 'A VERY CLOSE CONSPIRACY.' That is brilliant and shows one thing very clearly.  No matter what was going on in their love life, or in their intellectual lives, each sister was emotionally the centre of the other sister's world. They were close, and loving and Vanessa never stopped being the chief looker-after of Virginia. We know about Virginia suicide, and that death is, horribly, part of the drama of their lives and their story. But what is clear from what I've read is that Virginia, for many reasons, was always in a state of precarious mental health.  Vanessa was her mainstay. Leonard Woolf also looked after her, but it was her sister to whom she was most attached.

Both sisters  had to be constantly creating.  Virginia fell ill when she couldn't write for some reason, and Vanessa, together with other denizens of Charleston, used their artistic talent to transform everything. Both sisters made beautiful gardens, and the mosaic above shows that every corner of Charleston was worked on: painted, decorated with beautiful pictures and patterns and enhanced by the artist's hand and eye.

Virginia and her husband Leonard took a house just a few miles fro Charleston, in the village of Rodmell. The house is called Monk's House and it's a National Trust property. There is no café and therefore none of the lovely NT scones but it's a wonderful place to visit. The photo above shows Virginia as painted by Vanessa and below, there's a screen painted by Angelica Bell, Vanessa's daughter by Duncan Grant, which looks like something from a stage set. That seems remarkably appropriate. The conversations and situations both at Charleson and in Monk's House were indeed very dramatic. I also think it's very beautiful.

Vanessa's bedroom at  Charleston looks out on to the garden. So does Virginia's at Monk's House. They are beautiful rooms, characterised also by very narrow beds. Below is Virginia's, which is the size of the bunks on overnight trains. This is a single bed if ever there was one. 

And in another part of the same room, at the foot of Virginia's bed, is a bookshelf which I found the saddest and most moving thing in the whole house. It's full of Shakespeare Plays, each covered in paper from the endpapers printed by the Hogarth Press. Virginia covered the volumes during one of the times when she was ill. I took a photo of 'ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,' which struck me as ironic. But here we are, still thinking about the sisters, still reading the novels and looking at the pictures and discussing the lives. That's ending well, in many ways. 

Ancient History in Sardinia by Lydia Syson

I first fell for Sardinia eight or nine years ago, on a summer house swap. Even the milk cartons charmed me. They used to show a cow standing in front of a crumbling nuraghe – a circular, dry-stone wall structure with a passing resemblance to a Scottish broch, but built considerably earlier, in the Bronze Age.  

Nuraghe Ardasái
© Hans Hillewaert, via Wikimedia Commons

We went to visit one nuraghic site near where we were staying (possibly S’Ortali ‘e Su Monti, near Tortolí) and I have a vague memory of dappled shade, intriguing arrangements of stone, and a very petite guide telling us how incredibly tall the nuraghic people must have been  - at least  5’8”!  But I had four small children in tow, mobile internet wasn’t really ‘a thing’, and when I got back home I never found time to investigate further.

Returning for another family holiday last month, I found the milk cartons replaced by dull plastic bottles. But I also discovered that in the last twenty years the official number of the megalithic towers found on the island has risen almost three-fold to 20,000, and that each one was once in sight of another. Earlier assumptions that their primary purpose was military or defensive are being overturned.

View south from Nuraghe Mannu

As an infectiously enthusiastic guide at the cliff-top site of Nuraghe Mannu explained, ancient Sardinia – mountainous, richly wooded and presumably well-watered in the days before it effectively became a colonial outpost, supplying wood and minerals for a variety of conquerors over the centuries, including of course Rome, both ancient and modern – must surely have been populated by communities who collaborated rather than fighting with each other.  They communicated their sophisticated building techniques and shared other knowledge and beliefs in ways at which we can now only guess.  

View from the ascent of Tiscali

Nuraghe Mannu is one of the easiest sites to get to.  We made a very early start to climb up to another, Tiscali, before the August heat became too intense.  The ruins of this village, well-hidden in a partially collapsed mountain-top cave, a great round karstic sinkhole, date from the very end of the Nuraghic era, or maybe later, first or second century A.D./C.E. 

Tiscali

It’s thought by some to have been a place of refuge at a time when Sardinians were just managing to hold out against the Roman invaders: it’s in the wild area still named Barbagia after Cicero’s description of it as a place of barbarians, and Tiscali remains dramatically and enchantingly inaccessible.  Sadly though, thanks to its remoteness and the fact that it’s only recently been guarded, the site has been repeatedly plundered in the decades since its discovery, leaving it richer in atmosphere than artefacts.

Tiscali

I’ve rarely been anywhere so utterly silent.  Not even a cicada could be heard so early in the day.  And we had the place to ourselves, which I think always makes the mental shift required for imaginative reconstruction a little easier.  Still, I confess I struggled a little to picture the place swarming with people and animals.

A few days previously, reaching the well temple of Su Tempiesu, still in perfect working order three and a half millennia since it was built, had involved another delightful, steep but altogether shorter walk, through cork oaks, juniper, fennel and fragrant myrtle.

Between visitors, the keeper of Su Tempiesu spends
 his spare time making shepherd's huts and cork watering hose covers

A cork oak

Before we set off, another inspiring and friendly guide showed us around the models, photographs and reproduction bronzetti in the little museum at the top, and explained in patiently slow Italian that the top of the building – originally a truncated pyramid, with twenty votive bronze swords stuck into it with molten lead - had been found in 1953 when the hillside was being terraced to grow tomatoes.  

It was immediately obvious that something 

special was buried beneath the soil as the stones they uncovered were hewn basalt, a volcanic rock which must have been brought to this schist region from at least thirty kilometres away.  The whole complex seems to have been buried by a landslide.  I could absolutely picture the excitement of this discovery, and further investigations thirty years later when the full brilliance of Su Tempiesu’s hydraulic engineering was uncovered as a third, lower pool was unearthed, complete with channels.  Much harder though was visualising the ceremonies that once took place here, and what the significance of its alignment to the equinoxes might have been.

At Nuraghe Mannu, climbing up the steps of a single tower,  

I looked down onto a dense network of low walls spreading out into the undergrowth, wondered exactly who had lived in these houses, and thought how easy I’d had it so far.  Since I started writing historical fiction, I’ve worked in periods so recent I could draw not just on written sources, published and unpublished, but photography, film, and music, never mind artifacts with obvious functions.  I’m not sure if I’ve got the right kind of imagination to take myself back three thousand years or more, to times and places where the evidence is still so sparse, so much archaeological investigation still needs to be done, and about which interpretations are constantly changing.  (In fact, I came home to find this article linking nuraghic Sardinia to Atlantis…) I’d love to know how more daring authors go about this.  I’d find it a truly dizzying prospect, but perhaps others discover a liberation in the mystery and temporal distance?

Some practical stuff if you are in Sardinia:

As you’ll have gathered, there are nuraghic remains all over the island, so you’re sure to find something near by.  Both Tiscali and Su Tempiesu are well worth going off the beaten track for.  For Su Tempiesu, drive to Orune, and you’ll easily pick up signs from the village.  Guidebooks suggest that the walk to Tiscali is much harder than it actually is, and that you might need a guide! Actually, it’s clearly signposted, once you're on the right road from Dorgali, except from the carpark at the bottom, but you just need to keep following the track down to the river bed and over the bridge and then you’ll see the first sign taking you off to the right.  There are a few steep rocky bits on the way up, but nothing very serious and it's lovely and shady a great deal of the way.  If you are reasonably fit you should manage it in 1.5 or 2 hours, allowing the same amount of time to come back down again, but do take plenty of water. And five euros to get in!  I hadn’t found this before we went, but this map could be very useful.

www.lydiasyson.com

The trail winds up to the right and then into the gap behind my head.