Things to do in Brussels - by Sue Purkiss

You quite often see a little bit of Brussels on TV, don't you? It's generally a bit of one of the European Commission or Parliament buildings, used as a backdrop for a reporter relating the latest bit of news about some aspect of EU policy, or the latest twist or turn in Britain's tortuous relationship with Europe.

But there is much more to Brussels than this. Well, everybody knows about the chocolate and the beer, and lots of people know about the Manneken Pis, the little statue of the small boy having a pee. (But did you know that in one of the beautiful baroque buildings in the Grande Place, there is a display of the many little outfits in which, over the years, the little statue has been dressed for special occasions...?)

We go to Brussels quite often - we have family there, including two grandchildren. We're just back from there now, and here, to give you a flavour of the city, are some of the things we saw and did.

You may recognise that this is a Smurf. Quite a large one. Apart from chocolate and beer, Brussels' other great export is comic strips. The Smurfs, Asterix, and my elder grandson's personal favourite, Tintin, all hail from Belgium, and the weekend before last, there was a comic strip festival in the big square in front of the royal palace. Everyone was there: several Tintins, Captain Haddocks and Snowies; Asterix, Obelix, and heaven knows who else, all inexplicably playing musical instruments; ditto more Smurfs; and to top it all off, there was a Tintin Car Rally. This consisted largely of cars which had appeared in one or other of Herge's books, along with a few interlopers - notably a Batmobile.

Here's Tintin (whisper it softly, but I think he was a girl) and Snowy. 'He' strolled about smiling enigmatically and posing for photographs. 'He may not have been a dead ringer for Tintin, but he certainly had style.

This was the star of the cars - an Oldsmobile, lovingly cared for and the subject of much admiration. 

The cars entered the square under an inflatable purple archway. But when this glamorous car load arrived, the archway was quite overcome and promptly collapsed, which the ladies in the back seat thought was hilarious.

The whole thing was very relaxed, with cars and people milling about, much eating of chips, churros, waffles and ice cream, and not a health-and-safety rule in sight.

For our next outing, we hunted down the Musee d'Ixelles - no easy task as it's not in the centre, But we persevered because we were keen to see a special exhibition - 'Belgian Landscape'. Now, if you've ever driven to Brussels from Calais or Dunkerque, you may well have noticed that this particular bit of Belgian landscape is not especially varied. It's flat and it's green and there some nice trees, and that's about it. So we were interested to find out more about Belgium's other landscapes. Well, this didn't really happen, but we did see this nice picture of sand dunes, by Anna Boch - and some very lovely other paintings in the general collection, which has art from the 19th century up to the present.

Much easier to find is the Musee des Beaux Arts. It's just round the corner from the royal palace, on top of a hill, looking down on the lower city where the poorer people used to live. This is a wonderful museum/art gallery, with a very good shop and a pleasant cafe. The only unfortunate thing about it is that you have to choose which section to buy a ticket for; you can't wonder at will. We went for the Old Masters, because we wanted to see the Breughels...

... which, of course, were marvellous. A lot of the other Old Masters featured crucifixions, women with their eyes raised piously to heaven, and dead birds - but I always like the earlier pictures. Here's a detail from one such:

I've always loved the look of medieval gowns, and I thought this one was exquisite. (Unfortunately the security was draconian; they wouldn't let me take my handbag, which meant that I didn't have my notebook and so couldn't take note of the painter or the subject. She was a saint - that's all I can tell you: a very elegant one. Humble apologies for such lackadaisical scholarship.)

After the Old Masters, we had lunch in the museum cafe. We sat outside, looking over the rooftops, guarded by these splendid fellows as we ate delicious cheese with some sort of 'sirop' and grapes.

Another thing Brussels is known for is its Art Deco architecture. This is all over the place; you just have to look up, and the chances are that you will see a decorated panel or a balcony made of sinuously curved wrought iron.

The chief splendour of Belgium lies not in its landscape, but in its cities. Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven, Bruges; they're all beautiful. This is Aalst. I once sat beside a girl from there on the Eurostar, and she told me that she thought her city was just as lovely as these more famous ones. I've wanted to go and see it ever since, and last week we did. It's small, but it certainly has a lovely square, with this old belfry and cafes in front of the tall houses whose gables are decorated with curlicues. Why is it, I wonder, that all over Europe, cities both in the north and the south have these squares where people sit outside, drink coffee or sip wine and watch the world go by - but Britain does not?

Brussels is not as picturesque as these better preserved old cities. But it's vibrant and often unexpected - and of course, there's the chocolate. And the waffles... and the ice cream... and lots of art.

Werewolves

by Marie-Louise Jensen


I had a new book out in late July. Which was weird because I didn't see it until mid August because I was in Europe when it appeared.
I arrived at a friend's house in Germany and she (being a wonderful friend) had ordered a copy. That was my first glimpse of the print edition. Cue squeaks of excitement.

The book is a short novel for younger readers and was originally written as an interactive e-book for 10-11 year olds in schools.
Educational publishing - that strange animal, where not offending religious schools takes precedence over what people believed in the past.

Because let's not beat about the bush; the Norse believed in shape-shifting. In the saga of Egil Skallagrimson (not a tale for the faint hearted and certainly not for children) we are told in quite a matter of fact way that Egil's grandfather was known to be a shape-shifter. He was even called Kveld-Ulf (Evening Wolf.) Egil himself has beserker tendencies and behaves a lot more like a werewolf than a man a lot of the time, splitting enemies heads open with axes and other charming incidents.

The Christanisation of Iceland happened peacefully shortly after his death and his son had his body exhumed and reburied near the chapel that was built on his land. I can't believe he'd have been happy with that. He was a true pagan. Forgiveness and meekness were totally alien to him.

By all accounts, the official acceptance of Christianity in Iceland was a formality. The country was threatened with conversion by force from Norway if the population didn't accept the new god. Sensibly, they accepted him and privately continued with their worship of the Norse gods for many years. To this day, the majority of Icelanders confess to believing in 'The Hidden Folk,' - elves.

But my 'werewolf' wasn't allowed to be real. Which was fine. It made for a perfectly good mystery story anyway. But the people of Viking-age Iceland would have had no trouble believing in werewolves. I should think they'd have been more astonished if you said such things didn't exist. Even after the arrival of Christianity. Werewolves, trolls, elves, ghosts and other supernatural beings were an indisputable part of the rich and brutal fabric of their world.

Pretty Woman 1795 Catherine Johnson

I was initially going to title this blog Sex In the City. I have been researching loads for an adult (not that sort of adult thank you very much) project I'm working on. It's set among the low and high life of late eighteenth century London.

Women, as usual in history, had a tough time. The best most could hope for was a half decent marriage and perhaps an early but comfortably off widowhood (widows after all were independent).  In the 18th century, as today the gulf between the rich and the poor yawned wide. If you were very rich you might be comfortable but married off against your will with no recourse to separation or divorce. If you were very poor you could suffer a short brutish life on the street.

As part of my research I was back to reading Harris' List. Harris List strikes me as insufferably sad. In case you haven't come across it it's a kind of mid eighteenth century bachelor's guide to what was available on the streets, where to go, how much and what to expect. A kind of pre-Internet Internet, a phone box in the west end with none of the pictures.  It does give you glimpses (mediated via Harris who called himself the Great pimp) into history, but when you start thinking about the real people, the flesh and blood women behind the words it's just woeful.

And once you were ruined there was no turning back. A very small group of prostitutes managed to make the leap out of the tied brothel and into the keeping of one man, a smaller number made it to marriage. Fewer still a marriage that had anything to do with love. A notable exception was Elizabeth Armistead.

Elizabeth Armistead was born in 1750 in South London, but little is known about her early life, she might have sold flowers or vegetables, she might have been slightly posher, perhaps a lay preacher's daughter. What is known is that by her teens she was working in one of the most expensive and well appointed brothels in London and was a favourite of Viscount Bolingbroke, the Earl of Egremont amongst others. In 1776 Town and Country Magazine stated that she '“could claim the conquest of two ducal coronets, a marquis, four earls and a viscount.”

An engraving of a painting by Reynolds, currently in Chertsey museum c 1781

She was moved out of the brothel and kept as a mistress by a string of wealthy men. Elizabeth Armistead was one  of the 'Toasts of The Town'. She even caught the eye of the Prince of Wales. (An affair she  ended by taking an extensive tour of Europe so as not to offend him).

Elizabeth was smart, she hosted salons where Charles Fox, leader of a Whig faction met and plotted. She and Charles Fox were platonic friends for years before they became lovers in 1785, at a time when he was leading the country in the Fox/North coalition.

Charles spent more and more time in Elizabeth's house in Surrey, increasingly it became his  refuge from Westminster. They married in 1795 and the new Mrs Fox lived quietly and although reconciled with Fox's children, stayed out of the limelight of society.

Even though Charles Fox died in 1806 heavily in debt (his gambling had resulted in his twice becoming bankrupt) Elizabeth outlived him, granted a pension by George IV. She died in 1841 a day short of her ninety second birthday.

A (very) rare happy outcome for a girl from nowhere.

If you're interested, Katie Hicks book Courtesan has the whole story.

Catherine

PS a question. I am corralling British set historical novels for children and teens that feature main character that are POC. Black or Asian really.
So far I have Tanya Landman's  new next month Hell and High Water
S.I. Martins Jupiter Williams and Jupiter Amidships
Jamila Gavin's Coram Boy's  Toby is more than a sidekick
Julia Goldings Cat Royal Series has Pablo.
Celia Rees's Pirates has  Minerva and I reckon the boat can count as an extention of Empire!

DOG TALES – Elizabeth Fremantle

It is no secret that I'm a dog lover and a recent research trip to look at Dutch art offered up a multitude of painted canines which brought to mind the dogs in my novels.  My work is teeming with  the creatures but they are not only included on authorial whim, the beloved pets of my protagonists can more often than not be found in the historical record.

The first of these is Katherine Parr's dog Rig who is featured in Queen's Gambit. When I was first researching the book I visited Sudeley Castle where Queen Katherine died. There are a few personal items that belonged to her in the collection there: a love letter she wrote to Thomas Seymour before they married, as well as a lock of her hair and a tooth, both taken from her grave when it was rediscovered in the eighteenth century. It was the tooth, clearly an item of great sentimental significance to have been buried with her, that particularly resonated for me. It was not a human tooth and seemed to have once belonged to a small dog. Knowing about her dog Rig I thought it possible that this was a carefully kept relic from a beloved pet. From this I gained a glimpse of understanding across the years about my protagonist and her love for her canine companion.

Many women in the Tudor court had small dogs, as we can see from the portraiture of the period. An amusing anecdote which made it into Queen's Gambit is that of Katherine Parr's dear friend and fellow religious reformer, the Duchess of Suffolk, who named her dog Gardiner. Seemingly innocuous, the name was in fact an audacious dig at her enemy Bishop Gardiner a religious conservative who would eventually attempt, and nearly succeed, to topple Queen Katherine.

Another Katherine, Lady Katherine Grey, of my second novel Sisters of Treason, had a great love of animals and kept a number of dogs. We know this because it is recorded that her pets, canines amongst them, destroyed the furniture in her rooms when she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. I characterised her as a girl who loved to be loved and what more fitting a symbol of this than a pack of small, adoring dogs. We have no names for her pets so I had to invent them and one, Stan, has a story of his own. As I was writing the first scene of Katherine Grey surrounded by her pets my editor emailed to say that her much loved terrier had died, so I thought it fitting to name one of Katherine's puppies in memory of him.

Dogs feature again in Watch the Lady but my protagonist, Penelope Devereux's puppy Fides is pure invention. I have included however The Earl of Leicester's old russet and white hound, who wanders about lost at Wanstead after his owner's death. This dog was taken from a painting from the mid 1560s where such a hound can be found in the corner of the image gazing lovingly at his master.

Dogs were often included in portraits to signify fidelity and presumably the hound here is included as a demonstration of Leicester's loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, who favoured him and many believed might marry him. Interestingly though, he is said to have had a flirtation with one of the Queen's maids Lettice Knollys (later to become his wife) in 1565 and by 1568 he was conducting a liaison with the recently widowed Lady Sheffield, who maintained they had married in secret even on her deathbed. This was never proven and the son they produced was named a bastard. In the light of this it is amusing to speculate that the dog in the painting might well be there more as a way to cover Leicester's disloyalty, than to indicate his faithfulness.

There is a delightful picture of Arbella Stuart, the heroine of my next novel, with two parrots, a pair of finches, a monkey and a small white dog. I rather fancifully took this dog to be Geddon, Mary Queen of Scot's Skye terrier who it is said had to be prised from her decapitated corpse. I have imagined that the animal found its way back to  Arbella at Chatsworth with Mary's host/jailer, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was Arbella's step grandfather. Another portrait of Arbella in later life, shows her with a tan and white spaniel tucked in the crook of her arm. In the novel this little dog, which I named Ruff, becomes the device by which she encounters someone who is to change the course of her life.

It's hard to imagine creating the world of a novel without including the creatures that were so much part of the fabric of life in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, either as pets or working animals. For me they are a means to conjure the past and also a way to help draw my characters. The way an individual responds to the  animals, as well as the people, around them can reveal a great deal about their personality.


Find out more about Elizabeth Fremantle's books on her website elizabethfremantle.com

Cat Woman by Tanya landman

I suppose my fascination with Siamese cats started with Blue Peter’s Jason. I remember walking all the way to the Civic Centre in Gravesend, Kent with my brother when I was about six years old because there was a cat show on and Jason himself was going to be there in the flesh! He didn’t disappoint and I was star struck.                                 

However, as an adult I hadn’t ever planned on keeping a Siamese of my own.  I was working in theatre and then – when the boys were small and I’d started writing – we were often away from home and keeping a pet didn’t seem fair.

But then, one fateful afternoon, I went to collect my son from his friend’s house.  I was sitting on the sofa waiting for the boys to finish their game when a small kitten emerged, climbed on to my lap, put his paws on my chest, fixed me with his bright blue eyes and started purring.  It was love at first sight.

It turned out that the friend’s mum had been given the kitten by her husband.  He was in the armed services and was off on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Presumably to give her something to take her mind off it he’d bought her the Siamese she’d always wanted.

I was utterly bowled over by my first encounter with that kitten.  She gave me the breeder’s contact details, but as I walked home with my children that afternoon I thought the trouble is, I don’t want any cat. I just happened to have fallen in love with that particular animal.

When my son’s friend’s mother’s husband returned safely from his tour of duty he started sneezing the moment he walked through the door. Amazingly, he was allergic to cats.  It wasn’t long before I had a phone call. Was I interested in re-homing him?

It felt like Destiny. I blithely agreed. I mean, a cat was a cat, wasn’t it?  Past experience had taught me that cats are more attached to property than people so I reasoned that it didn’t matter if we went away for the odd weekend. As long as we left him enough food and water he’d be fine, wouldn’t he?

Wrong!

You see, Edgar had picked me out.  I had been chosen. I was his. Any attempt of mine to go away always meets with enraged protests.  He follows me down the path, yowling and biting my ankles, trying to drag me back.  If I spend a night in a hotel he walks around the house screaming his head off at the rest of the family, jumping on their heads at 4am and demanding, “Where the f*** is she??”

Edgar has strong opinions on everything.  In the early days there were plenty of things that Edgar disapproved of.  Bath- time was one of them. He really didn’t think the boys should be immersed in water. He’d sit on the side of the bath and try and lift them out by the scruff of their necks.

Having gone down the Pet Ownership road we decided after about a year – under constant pressure from my youngest son – that we might as well get a dog too. Edgar would be fine, I thought  – after all, he’d been brought up with dogs by his previous owner, he’d be OK with a puppy.

Wrong again!!

Edgar has never missed an opportunity to launch an assassination attempt.  He is a Ninja.  The Jackal of the feline world.  Not surprisingly the endless dog/cat dramas found their way into a book – Attack of the Blobs!!!

As any of my friends on facebook will testify, Edgar has some truly revolting habits.  Does it make one iota of difference to the way I feel about him? No, it doesn’t. There is something about a Siamese – a truly regal quality - that makes you feel humbled and grateful that they have chosen to bestow their presence on you.

For a non-cat owner I guess that sounds weird,  but I’m not the only person to feel that way.  In fact, I’m in some rather star-studded company (although I’m not entirely sure Jane Fonda should be doing that to her cat…)

 

Jean Cocteau

Patricia Highsmith

Alan Ginsberg

Vivien Leigh

John Lennon

Fred Astaire

Frank Zappa

Marilyn Monroe

Errol Flynn

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

Elizabeth Taylor

Jane Fonda

Peter Lorre

Laurence Olivier

Last Orders, by Laurie Graham

Jack the Ripper guided walks are a hugely successful tourist attraction in the East End of London but as I discovered when I was researching The Night in Question, 117 years on very little remains of the murder sites.  Bucks Row, where Polly Nichols’ body was discovered, has been renamed Durward Street and is hardly recognisable.  Only the old Board School, now converted to apartments, still looms over the place.

  

Bucks Row

The north side of Hanbury Street where Annie Chapman was killed, in a yard behind a cat’s meat shop, has also been redeveloped. The site of Dutfield’s Yard where Lizzie Stride perished is now a primary school playground. Mitre Square is all corporate steel and glass, and the Dorset Street rookery where Mary Kelly lived and died is long gone. Visitors interested in the Whitechapel Murders have to be satisfied with a few familiar street names and a lot of atmospheric spin.  But they can then retire, for liquid consolation, to the Ten Bells, a pub which has undisputed connections to the murders of 1888.

 

It’s perhaps worth pointing out that in Victorian London not all purveyors of alcohol were pubs. Anyone with a couple of pounds for a licence could set up a beer shop and sell ale, beer and cider. But only public houses licensed by a magistrate could sell spirits. Gin consumption had declined by the 1880s. Rum or brandy would have been a more likely choice for those who could afford stronger drink.

Pubs and beer shops were very important to the indigent population of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, people who often lacked all domestic comforts, living hand to mouth, sleeping in doss houses when they had money and in doorways when they didn’t.  Little wonder Jack’s victims were all known to frequent drinking holes. They were places they could stay warm and dry for an hour and rest from their endless trudging, places where they could take a drop of something to deaden their hunger and fatigue, and perhaps catch the eye of a man willing to exchange the price of a drink for a threepenny upright.

The Ten Bells

The Ten Bells pub on the corner of Commercial Street and Fournier Street displays a list of Jack’s victims which, to the disapproval of many Ripperologists includes the name of Martha Turner, also known as Martha Tabram.  Everything about the Whitechapel Murders is open to debate, including the number of women Jack murdered. The so-called ‘canonical five’ excludes Martha but I’m with the Ten Bells on this. I consider her to have been one of his victims, possibly his first. But my purpose today isn’t to conduct a body count. Let’s get back to the pub.

The most definite connection between the Ten Bells and the Ripper murders is Mary Jane (aka Marie Jeanette) Kelly, reckoned by many to have been his last victim and by some, myself included, possibly not to have been his victim at all. Mary Kelly was a regular at the Ten Bells. Two other victims, Lizzie Stride and Annie Chapman were also known to drink there, indeed tradition has it that Annie was seen in the Ten Bells just a few hours before she was murdered.  On the night Lizzie Stride met her fate she’d been seen drinking elsewhere, in The Bricklayer’s Arms, a beer shop on the corner of Settles Street and Fordham Street. That building still stands. It’s now a convenience store.

formerly the Bricklayer's Arms

Mary Kelly was also a regular at the Britannia pub, known more familiarly as Ma Ringer’s.  It stood on the corner of Commercial Street and Dorset Street.  When Mary was killed the regulars at the Britannia and the Ten Bells had a whip-round to buy flowers for her funeral. Annie Chapman was known at the Britannia too, and was remembered for getting into a fight there perhaps over a man, perhaps over money, perhaps over disputed ownership of a piece of soap. Such were those women’s lives. The Britannia was demolished years ago when the Dorset Street slums were cleared and Spitalfields Market was redeveloped.

The Frying Pan pre-gentrification

Finally, there was the Frying Pan pub, on the corner of Brick Lane and Thrawl Street. Polly Nichols spent her last evening there, drinking away her bed money, which is no doubt why she was on Bucks Row at 3 am that fateful morning looking for trade. The Frying Pan has had several incarnations since Polly’s time, and is now the Brick Lane hotel (en-suite rooms, WiFi and air-conditioning) and the Sheraz  Bangla Lounge restaurant.  I wonder what poor Polly would make of that. 

So if you’re ever in Whitechapel and want to tread some genuine Ripper-related ground I’d say you could do worse than a drink in the Ten Bells followed by a balti on Brick Lane.