War and Peace: the French and the Germans this time, by Leslie Wilson

Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle shake hands
in 1963. Photograph: Bundesarchiv,B 145 Bild-F015892-0010 / Ludwig Wegmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0 

The Regency dandy and Waterloo veteran, Captain Gronow, visiting Paris after the final downfall of Napoleon in 1815, wrote: 'The Duke of Wellington's conduct to the Parisians was kind and considerate…Blücher' (the Prussian general) was not so moderate in his conduct towards the French. His troops were billeted in every house; he obliged the inhabitants to feed and clothe them; and he issued an order.. commanding the authorities to supply each soldier with a bedstead containing a bolster, a woollen mattress, two new blankets, and a pair of linen sheets. The rations per day, for each man, were two pounds of bread of good quality, one pound of butcher's meat, a bottle of wine, a quarter of a pound of butter, ditto rice, a glass of brandy, and some tobacco.' The Prussian horses also received a liberal ration of oats, hay, and straw, all, of course, at the Parisians' expense, and another Prussian General took possession of Marshall Ney's house, together with his plate, carriages and horses. The Russians and Austrians, he noted, were similarly vindictive.

This shocked disapproval, from a francophile English gentleman, shows a marked lack of imagination; Prussians, the Russians, and the Austrians had endured years of occupation and invasion from French troops, which the British had not.

British accounts of recent history often talk as if Germany had only ever invaded France, rather than the other way round. Just going back as far as Louis the Fourteenth's time (though I could have gone back further); the War of Palatine Succession, which began in 1688, and was prosecuted in the interests of Louis's sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orléans, a great-granddaughter of James the First, and daughter of the Palatine Elector Charles (she was horrified by the invasion of her homeland), resulted in widespread destruction. Cities, towns and villages were razed to the ground and their inhabitants driven out to starve, crops destroyed. Destruction was a crucial war aim. Those picturesque ruined castles you can see from the Rhine steamers were knocked down then.

I often hear people say that Napoleon introduced liberal laws to Germany, and indeed, the emancipation of the Jews was clearly a step forward, but this was achieved at the cost of national humiliation. Napoleon put his puppet rulers in place of the German kings, princes and dukes, and introduced conscription. German young men were dragged from the plough and from their jobs and marched off to Russia, slaughtered at Borodino and froze to death alongside French conscripts on the disastrous retreat from Moscow.

Arc de Triomphe, commemorating
the soldiers who fought in the
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars, by Vassil, Wikimedia Commons.

As for the myth that Napoleon was a civilised conqueror; that may have been true for the upper classes, but in 1812, when the Grande Armée passed through Prussia on its way to Russia, 'Hans Jakob von Auerswald, provincial president of West and East Prussia, reported in April that the farm animals in East and West Prussia were dying of hunger, the roads were strewn with dead animals, and there was no seed corn left…It was said that those who still owned draft animals ploughed and sowed at night, so as not to see their last horse or ox carted off… there were numerous reports of excesses by the troops, especially extortion, plundering and beatings. One report from a senior official spoke of devastation 'even worse than in the Thirty Years' War.'

Taking this into account, the actions of the Prussians in 1815 are more comprehensible, as is also the 'Was für Plunder!' that Blücher is supposed to have exclaimed as he approached Paris as a conqueror. Also the song, 'Die Wacht am Rhein', (Guarding the Rhine) which is often evinced as proof of German expansionism, is about keeping the French aggressor out, he having been there too many times before.

It's a sorry story. France takes Alsace-Lorraine from Germany; Germany takes them back, by which time these provinces feel French, for all the Alsaciens still speak a recognisable (to me, since I visited the Rhineland so much as a little girl) form of Rhineland dialect. The Germans invade France in 1870 to 'settle them once and for all.' But no country ever is settled once and for all. In 1918 the French press for punitive terms in the Treaty of Versailles, and occupy the Rhineland (also with the intention of 'settling them once and for all). Hitler (the man whose territorial ambitions even outstripped Napoleon's) invades France in 1940, to wipe out 'the shame of Versailles', and marches his troops down the Champs-Elysées and under the Arc de Triomphe. Horrific crimes are committed in France (some of them, it must be said, by Pétain and his collaborationists, but it's the presence of the Nazi conquerors that facilitates the worst modern excesses of French antisemitism).

Only then, things change. Post-war - not immediately, the wounds are too raw - but eighteen years later, comes the Franco-German friendship pact. De Gaulle stands in front of City Hall, Bonn, waves his arms in the air and shouts in French and German: 'Long live the great German people!' This is De Gaulle, who has good reason to hate the Germans. 

Brandenburg Gate, a Peace Gate originally.
Napoleon marched his troops through it and
took the Quadriga (bronzes on top) away to Paris.
It was taken back in 1814. Photo: Norbert Aepli,
Wikimedia Commons.

For many reasons, not least the desire to create what is nowadays the European Union, the French and the Germans decide to heal the wounds of the past. German and French statesmen commemorate the victims of Verdun together. The German president, Joachim Gauck, and François Hollande, visit the town of Oradour together, the location of a horrific massacre by the SS in World War Two. Perhaps far more significantly, a Franco-German exchange programme was instituted in 1963, under whose auspices more than eight million young Germans and French people have visited each other's schools, homes, and countries. There are countless other initiatives.

Part of this process, as I said in my February blog, is the Dufours and the Bakers (Mrs Baker having been born German) forging a close and loving friendship, in spite of Marc Dufour having been in the Resistance during the war, and having seen the worst side of Germany. 

Dufours and Bakers having fun in the 60s.

Of course everything in the garden isn't totally rosy. On the other hand, I have never, in fifty-plus years of spending holidays in France (and I speak fluent French) had any unpleasantness from French people who knew I was half German, as opposed to in my own country. French people tend to remark that the war was a long time ago, and that the old enmities have nothing to do with the present generation. I know British people don't always have a positive view of what is sourly called 'The Axis', yet considering the importance of that 'inherited enmity' in the genesis of both World Wars, I am certain that the rapprochement has been a vital force for peace.

I've heard a lot of people, recently, saying that it's not the EU that's kept the peace in Europe since 1945, but NATO. This is the mantra that if you want peace, prepare for war. But the Germans and the French prepared for war for hundreds and years, and itgenerally led to war. The East-West stand-off and buildup of weapons almost led to accidental nuclear war in the '80s (when the Russians thought they saw nuclear-armed Cruise missiles coming over and were on the point of launching the SS20s in response).

I wonder why it should be so far-fetched to suggest that economic cooperation and international peace-making lead to peace? After all, people all over the world live at peace with one another far more often than they fight.

Compare this Franco-German friendship initiative, with Britain, where (sorry, I know I've said this before) too many of my fellow-countryfolk are still fighting World War Two in their heads. It's an important motif for the 'Out' campaign, isn't it? Once again, according to too many people, we have our backs to the wall, fighting a foreign invader who wants to straighten out bananas, take over our sovereignty, impose brutal measures on us (like maternity leave, environmental protection, inoculation of our hens against salmonella so we can safely eat soft-boiled eggs, inspection of pig carcases against roundworm, and waste recycling, so that our country doesn't become one massive landfill site). Behind the EU (according to this rhetoric) stands Nazism.

If only we could have instituted a similar programme, and encouraged Brits to travel to Germany and meet the ordinary people there (still very much a minority pursuit). Maybe there's still time to start?

Capital Folly by Kate Lord Brown

Gloriously eccentric, and somehow quintessentially British, follies see reason give way to imagination and sensation as prosaic water towers, bathhouses and dairies are transformed into evocative structures, similar only in their diversity and magic. Arbiter of taste and amateur alike took the fundamental human desire to adorn one’s home to new heights of fancy during the eighteenth century, the great era of architectural folly building. As with many fashions, the capital led the trend.

Follies are built entirely for pleasure, and some extraordinary trends emerged during the Georgian era. For example, the ultimate accessory for a landowner’s folly was an ornamental hermit. At Richmond, the thresher poet Stephen Duck lived with his library in Merlin’s Cave, a peculiar Palladian structure with a thatched roof and ogee door designed by William Kent. If a suitably solitary occupant such as Duck could not be found, a waxwork or clockwork hermit would, apparently, suffice.

Follies suited the informal picturesque ‘jardin anglais’ perfectly. Their location within a landscape is as instrumental as the structure itself in enchanting the onlooker. What could be more romantic than rounding the corner of a leafy path and discovering a tranquil temple partially hidden among the undergrowth, or a dramatic vista leading to a ruined tower? As Alexander Pope advised Lord Burlington:


‘Let not each beauty ev’rywhere be spied

When half the skill is decently to hide.

He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,

Surprizes, varies and conceals the Bounds.’



Such follies not only disguise the prosaic, but also offer perfect resting spots for contemplation and the unique enjoyment of a fanciful interior space in the heart of the landscape. Pope’s own grotto in Twickenham is encrusted with luminous minerals, ores, and stalactites shot down from Wooky Hole by his friends. As ever, fashion concedes little to practicality. Grottoes are cold, dark and spiky, yet they were good selling points for homeowners while the trend lasted. Shells were avidly collected in the eighteenth century, and grottoes were popular diversions for the amateur, as well as influential figures like Pope, whose home in Twickenham was a welcome retreat from town.

The desire to find a refuge from the stresses of the city, close to one’s work is not a new one. In the eighteenth century, this corresponded with the idea of creating ‘rus in urbe’, an ideological and aesthetic turn towards nature, health and beauty. It found its public expression in the parks and pleasure gardens of the capital. Those who could afford it built predominantly private retreats beyond the city. The imaginative use of follies unites three such estates – Chiswick, Kew and Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. Although London has now engulfed them, they were once situated in the heart of the countryside, known to the public through visits and popular printed maps.

At Chiswick, Charles Bridgeman (1716-24) and William Kent in the 1730’s created an essay in Palladianism for Lord Burlington. The house was greatly influenced by Palladio’s Villa Rotunda; he had described a villa as a place ‘where the mind, fatigued by the agitations of the city, will be greatly restored and comforted, and be able quietly to attend the studies of letters and contemplation.’ It is a romantic notion, creating an Italianate setting so close to England’s capital. By the imitation of the ancients, Burlington believed that ideals of nature and beauty could be achieved. Burlington used the house and gardens primarily to entertain his friends, and the gardens are still occasionally used for their original purpose with events staged in the ‘amphitheatre’.

While Chiswick embodied a single, classical ideal, Kew Gardens epitomised the vogue for eclectic exoticism. From 1751 William Chambers designed a conscious ‘world tour’ for Princess Augusta. He delighted in chinoiserie in particular, advocating it not as a style equal to the antique but because ‘variety is always delightful, and novelty attended with nothing inconsistent or disagreeable sometimes takes the place of beauty.’

There were over 25 garden structures at Kew, ranging from the ruined Triumphal Arch, (an imitation of a Roman antiquity), to the ten roofed 163ft high Pagoda. The enormous size and lavish decoration of this structure enchanted close to and acted as a landmark for the estate. Other follies included temples of Aeolus and Bellona, the house of Confucius, the Alhambra, Queen Charlotte’s Cottage and a Chinese bridge. Many of these delightful structures can still be enjoyed today during a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens.

While the great estates such as Kew, Gunnersbury and Osterley contain a considerable number of the follies in west London, it was a private home that first revived the interest in gothic architecture as a native style. Although Horace Walpole was quick to condemn the rash of gothick follies inspired by his house at Strawberry Hill, he described his own home as: ‘the prettiest bauble you ever saw … set in enamelled meadows with filigree hedges.’

Strawberry Hill was both a romantic and an intellectual project, and between 1748-90 Walpole consciously assembled a literary work, using ecclesiastical forms in a domestic environment. In 1738 when John Carter painted watercolours of the interiors, a new trend was set. Walpole produced a minutely detailed guide to his home, and received visitors from noon to 3pm from 1st May to October by advance tickets. Garden follies illustrated at the time included a fanciful shell seat by Mr Bentley. The Chapel in the woods by Mr Gayfrere can still be seen today.

The instinct to adorn one’s home with decorative structures is as popular today as in the eighteenth century, with conservatories and elaborate statuary gracing the most modest homes. Perhaps one would more commonly go to Chiswick or Strawberry Hill to see the enchanting houses, or Kew for the botanical specimens, but in visiting them today, we also see inspirational follies and garden structures that embrace serious academic Palladianism, novel exoticism and whimsical Georgian Gothick. In their time they were not only private gardens but educative aesthetic and artistic creations. Their creators would be delighted to know that their plots of enchanted earth continue to inspire today.

Five of the Best History Podcasts by Imogen Robertson

Seeking inspiration? A companion for your chill spring walks, or something more interesting to listen to in the gym than the spotify list of some manic teenager? Then hie thee over to itunes and subscribe to these podcasts. I love podcasts. Quality varies of course, but there are some superb story-tellers and historians, interviewers and experts out there. These podcasts are regularly full of the sort of history that makes you want to stop people in the street and tell them this fascinating new thing you've just learned. These are my favourite History podcasts. Let me know if there are any gems I've missed.


Dan Snow's History Hits

A new one to me, but already hugely popular. Snow has top quality guests including Jessie Childs and Alex von Tunzelman and gives them plenty of room to share their knowledge and passion for their subjects. History Hits regularly looks at current events, such as the US primaries too, giving current news stories a historical context which is illuminating and will make you sound very clever at the next drinks party you go to.

On this Day in History

Only started on the 1 February this year, and there's a definite emphasis on all things American, but it is full of fascinating stories well told. Nicely scripted, it has a professional, engaged tone and is full of the random historical oddities that tend to give you ideas for whole new novels when you are supposed to getting on with the poisonous business of rewriting your current manuscript.

Stuff You Missed in History Class

This one is presented by Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey and is both chatty and relaxed while being very careful to be accurate. They cover a huge range of topics but often focus on moments of personalities squeezed out of the grand historical narrative. So an episode on a blizzard in 1888 is followed a few weeks later by one on the London brothel riots of 1688 via a mining disaster and the Lady Hastings scandal.

A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

For those of you who don't like such a scatter-gun approach, this, now famous podcast, does (is doing) exactly what it says on the tin. Professor Peter Adamson and occasional guests provide the historical context of the people and ideas they cover, and guide listeners through the philosophy with authority and the occasional bad pun.

Hardcore History with Dan Carlin

Ok, you need to be going on long walks for this one. The lectures are three to four hours long but are delivered with such verve, the time melts away. Carlin is superb story teller. His series on the First World War is absolutely riveting and their scope and ambition is remarkable. Do take a listen. At the time of posting the WWI series, Blueprint for Armageddon, is free, and you can buy episodes from the archive for $1.99

Ottoman History Podcast

This is quite academic in tone, but is full of excellent stories, vividly told and is a wonderful resource. I knew embarrassingly little about the Ottoman Empire before I started listening to them, but the more I hear the more fascinated I become. It's full of the sort of detail that is utterly absorbing.  



And as a bonus extra, the series that has sent me off down more research rabbit holes of delight than any other, though it's one I suspect every reader of this blog already knows:


In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg leads experts through subjects from Queen Zenobia to the South Sea Bubble, Bedlam to the Taiping rebellion. These are always fascinating, wide ranging and the site has suggestions for further reading for each programme. Which is why I spend more on books than I do on food most months. You can also play the In Our Time drinking game by taking a shot every time Lord Bragg gets cross with a guest for taking too long to explain something or being a bit too vague. For seasoned drinkers only.

www.imogenrobertson.com

Two Centuries That Changed the World - by Ann Swinfen

I have found myself drawn to write in my novels about the period from 1500 to 1700, two centuries that changed the world. How did these changes come about? And why was the seventeenth century a period of such social, political, and religious upheaval? It seems to me that this period from 1500 to 1700 can be seen as a whole, when the western world underwent the profound change from a medieval society, in which a near universal Christianity (centred in Rome) held sway and few people looked beyond their own small communities, to the beginnings of the world we live in today.

So, what triggered these changes?

Coverdale Bible 1535

Two seemingly small changes late in the fifteenth century lit a fuse which set off explosions in the years that followed. The first was the introduction of printing to Europe. Once the craft had been mastered, books could be produced at a price affordable by many people, especially the rising middle class of merchants, professionals, and master craftsmen. Teach a man to read, and he will grow wiser. He will also start to have ideas of his own, and question those set over him to rule his religious and secular life. Translate the Bible into the vernacular and you sow the seeds of dissent, leading to the rise of many varieties of Protestantism and the religious tumult of these two centuries. Circulate political pamphlets and you feed the growing discontent of those who believe they should have a voice in how their secular lives are governed. In England in the seventeenth century this led to the killing of a king and an experiment in republican government, which was unfortunately tainted by military dictatorship.

Ortelius World Map 1564

The other change which was to have far-reaching effects was the improvement in ship-building and navigational equipment. In the late fifteenth century, ambitious sea captains, mainly from Portugal and Spain, started searching for naval routes to the East Indies, so that the West could control the trade in exotic goods which had previously been carried overland. Gradually the idea came to be accepted that the earth was round, prompting Columbus to believe he could reach this profitable area of eastern riches by sailing west, around the ‘back side’ of the globe, as it were.

Well, we all know where that led. The Americas had been discovered and the world would never be the same again.

Native American village 1585-6

As Spain and Portugal exploited South America in the sixteenth century, England took longer to realise what opportunities lay in this new-found-land, but by the end of that century English expeditions were mounted to the northern parts of the new world. It was the seventeenth century which would see the first permanent English colonies established, growing settled and prosperous by 1700. At the same time, England was exploring the possibility of a northeast passage to China and Japan, explorations which led to a new trading route to Russia and the founding of the world’s first joint stock venture, the Muscovy Company.

To people living at the time it must have been as exciting and strange as space exploration has been in our own times.

So, halfway through the period, we come to the start of the seventeenth century with this heady and volatile mix – growing literacy, an explosion of new ideas, and questions about religion and the right way to live in a rapidly changing society. No wonder it’s such a rich period to write about, though a frequently terrifying period to live through.

Preaching in the street mid 17th century

My own seventeenth century novels have their roots in fact. Flood and Betrayal are based on the real situation in the fens of East Anglia in the middle of the century. Before the Civil War, various groups of aristocratic ‘adventurers’, including the king, decided to seize the common lands in the area, drain what they saw as ‘useless’ marshland, and import foreign tenant farmers, mainly from the Low Countries. These tenants would exploit the ‘new’ farmland and pay the adventurers a massive return on their investment. We would call them not adventurers but venture capitalists.

The local people lived by fishing and farming the fields and fens held ‘in common’ (that is, by the community), managing the annual floods which washed down rich soil from the uplands. They used the rushes for thatching, basket-making, eel traps, and a dozen other products. The peat bogs provided fuel. It was a tough life, but relatively prosperous, self-sufficient, and abundant in food. When war broke out, they believed it would bring an end to the attacks on their livelihood. Far from it!

Fenland

A new breed of adventurers arose, including Cromwell and his supporters, who also viewed the fenlands as ripe for the taking. The fenlanders stood up and fought, some to the death.

As I researched the story, I discovered that women played a very large part in the resistance, often leading attacks on the drainage works, which, incidentally, were ill-judged and frequently led to disastrous floods. So unnatural did the women’s courage seem that sometimes they were accused of witchcraft, for this was the period of the notorious Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, who sent so many innocent people of the area to their deaths.

Matthew Hopkins

Deeply moved by the plight and bravery of the fenlanders, I wrote Flood as the story of one such family and village, told from the point of view of a young woman who becomes a leader of the resistance, and is herself accused of witchcraft. Some of the most unlikely-seeming incidents in the novel – such as the blasphemous baptising of a horse in the village church by a group of soldiers – are based on evidence from accounts of the period. Betrayal takes the story further, into the search for a charter granting the common lands, at a time when the Inns of Court were still reeling under the impact of the Civil War.

Pride's Purge - expulsion of Moderates from Parliament

My other seventeenth century novel, This Rough Ocean, is set at exactly the same time, but in a different part of the country and concerns a very different group of people, the young Moderate MP, John Swynfen, and his wife Anne, left to run their large estate. Last month my History Girls blog gave the background to these two different families of the 1640s. While the fenlanders were involved in massive social change in a rural area, John Swynfen was at the heart of the political upheavals that would result in permanent changes to the English parliamentary system. Just as the fenlanders’ story is based on contemporary evidence, the Swynfen story is based on letters and state papers of the period.

So, returning to the original point: Why write about this period? I believe that neither of these stories could have taken place at any earlier time. For the reasons I’ve mentioned, society underwent huge changes over these two centuries. The confidence and independence of the fenlanders arose from these changes, as did the courage of men like John, working for a new political system, and of women like Anne, taking on a man’s role and succeeding. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the old world changed for ever and the foundations of our own modern world laid.

Ann Swinfen

Author of:

http://www.annswinfen.com

Great Exploration

By Katherine Webb

Since my latest novel THE ENGLISH GIRL comes out in just a few days’ time, this month I thought I’d write about a few of the real-life historical figures that inspired my characters, and the particular relationship between two of them that inspired the whole story. 

THE ENGLISH GIRL tells the story of Joan Seabrook, a young woman who goes to Arabia in 1958 in search of adventure, and gets a good deal more of it than she bargained for thanks to her involvement with Maude Vickery, an early pioneer of desert exploration and idol of Joan’s, now living in retirement in Muscat. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in the history of exploration that the woman who inspired the character of Maude was Gertrude Bell. I first discovered her when I read Janet Wallach’s excellent biography of her about eighteen years ago, and I remember being bothered that I hadn’t heard of her before, when she had done such amazing things. 

Janet Wallach's excellent biography of Gertrude Bell, my first introduction to this remarkable woman

Born in 1868 to an aristocratic family in the north of England, Gertrude took her position of wealth and privilege, and, perhaps rarely for a woman at that time, did something with it. Fiercely intelligent, she studied History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, and took first class honours (though women were not actually awarded degrees at that time). Her education didn’t stop there — she was a tremendous autodidact, and continued to study and learn however she could, teaching herself latin because she was so frustrated by the ‘blank wall of my ignorance of it’. She began to travel; to study archeology and classical civilisation; to write, and she never stopped — she didn’t marry, but devoted her life to travel and discovery.

Gertrude developed a deep love of the Middle East early in her career, and spent more of the remainder of her life there than ‘at home’ in England — her letters record her delight each time she returned to ‘my east.’ She travelled extensively in Egypt, the Levant, Syria and Mesopotamia, becoming fluent in Arabic, writing books and articles on the remains of ancient civilisations she visited, and on the structure of modern life there. She became ‘a personage’ to the sheiks there — no small feat for a woman, and a European infidel to boot. By the time of the First World War, no westerner knew the area, or its people and politics, better than Gertrude Bell.

Gertrude Bell

Gertrude first met Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), later known as Lawrence of Arabia, when he was a young man in his twenties, on an archeological dig. She commented in a letter that he would ‘make a traveller one day.’ Despite being twenty years his senior, and notoriously irascible, the two became lifelong friends and rivals. They didn’t always see eye to eye, but had a great deal of affection and respect for one another. Later, when Lawrence led the Arab Revolts of 1916-18, his success relied heavily on Gertrude’s knowledge and writings of the tribes and their internal politics, though she was given little credit outside of the Political Office in Baghdad. After the war, they were both involved in the discussions that led to the re-drawing of the political map of the area, with the creation of the modern countries of Palestine and Iraq. Gertrude foresaw but could do nothing to mitigate the problems these new countries would suffer by being drawn along geographical and political rather than tribal and sectarian lines. 

Thomas Edward Lawrence

Gertrude found self-promotion and the idea of fame both repugnant and vulgar, and however pleased she was to have some renown amongst the Arabs, she certainly wouldn’t have wanted the fame or ‘myth-making’ that surrounded Lawrence. They even met for lunch to discuss the matter, and she counselled him to write The Seven Pillars of Wisdom to help counter the hyperbole. Still, however unbothered Gertrude was at this injustice, it bothered me! Short of leading men into battle, she did everything Lawrence did and more — and given that she did it earlier, and on her own, it’s fair to say that she did it backwards in high heels to boot. Their relationship got me wondering — what if they hadn’t got on? What if they’d fallen in love — and then out of love? What if their rivalry had turned bitter, and led to acts of underhandedness, and betrayal? This was the germ of the idea of the story at the heart of THE ENGLISH GIRL.

Gertrude Bell on one of her many journeys

The male counterpoint to my character of Maude is Nathaniel Elliot, her childhood sweetheart. The inspiration for his life and travels came from Wilfred Thesiger (1910 - 2003), known as the last of the great explorers, and the man who explored the Empty Quarter of Arabia more comprehensively than anybody during five years in the 1940s. From a less wealthy background than Gertrude Bell (though still educated at Eton and Oxford), Thesiger was forced to explore on the sly, when he was sent there by what would later become the UN’s Food and Agricultural Association, to look for the breeding sites of Africa’s great locust swarms. Rather than travelling with a European team or equipment, Thesiger ‘went native’. Abhorring all modern technology, he travelled with Bedouin guides, and lived as one of them, with all the inherent privations and hardships that that entailed. Thesiger was a man in love with the solitude and beauty of the desert, even when it almost killed him — an attitude I tried to embed into each of my characters. He once said that even the celibacy of the desert hadn’t bothered him at all, and that marriage ‘would certainly have been a crippling handicap.’ 

Wilfred Thesiger in his Arabian Bedouin garb

By the time he wrote his wonderful book about the Empty Quarter, Arabian Sands, in 1959, Thesiger was already lamenting the end of the era of exploration. Cars, roads, aeroplanes — he loathed them all, and the way they made the planet smaller, running roughshod over its mysteries. One wonders what he would have made of satellite phones and GPS. It was indeed the end of an era — none of us will ever be able to take ourselves as far from civilisation as he did, and even though I am probably not the type to take on such journeys in any case, I can’t help feeling a little sad that they are no longer possible; that all that remains to us now are the ghosts of adventure, loitering along well-trodden routes. It’s this strange nostalgia for adventures never to be had that leads my character, Joan, into an extraordinary situation…

One of Thesiger's photographs of the Empty Quarter in the 1940s

Through the Shop Window - Celia Rees

The exhibition could be about any town, large or small, in any part of the country, but it is my town, the town where I live, Royal Leamington Spa. It offers a fascinating glimpse into a lost, almost forgotten world but one which existed well within living memory, the last vestiges disappearing in the 1990s. One of the last shops to go was Toytown, a much loved emporium, haunted by generations of children. It sold everything from Steiff Bears to pocket money toys. Every exhibit brings part of the past back into being. A neon sign, a logo on a paper bag sparks a memory, sharp and sudden. Visits to Toytown in its heyday. My daughter inspecting the Hello Kitty collection, selecting an addition to her growing family of Sylvanians. 

The town grew up and owed its prosperity to the Spa and Pump Rooms. Like so much else these have gone now. Only the building remains. The Library occupies what used to be the Victorian Swimming Baths and the Spa now houses the very Museum and Art Gallery where this exhibition is taking place.  

In Leamington, the main shopping street is called The Parade. It used to be occupied, like High Streets up and down the country, by small independent retailers, family firms which catered to the town's people in a variety of different shops. It was a world where women went out each day, shopping basket at the ready, where groceries were delivered by boys on bicycles and people could buy goods on account. 

The town was a prosperous place. It had four department stores: Bobby's, Woodward's, E. Francis and Sons and Burgis and Colbourne. The only one that remains is what used to be Burgis & Colbourne - it's now a House of Fraser. Burgis & Colbourne had a wonderful Food Hall, like a miniature Harrods, which smelt of ground coffee and smoked ham, where everything was weighed and packaged and which sold impossibly exotic things in Epicure tins, the kind of food one read about in books

. 

Burgis & Colbourne Delivery Vans in Bedford St.

My mother on the roof at Bobby's

My mother (on the right) and friend

My parents came from Leamington Spa and we would often come to the town to visit relatives and to shop. My mother had worked in Bobby's and then Francis & Sons. She went into retail straight from school and stayed until she got married. Shop work was seen as a skilled occupation, a respectable job for a young woman and working in one of the department stores was a particularly sort after position. This is a picture of her, hair newly shingled, on the roof at Bobby's with some of her co-workers. She went on from here to work at Francis & Sons in Millinery and Drapery, Fabrics and Haberdashery. She was a skilled dress maker, taking advantage of the latest patterns and the high quality fabrics to make most of her own clothes.  

Francis and Sons Millinery and Drapery Department in the 1920s

My mother (in the middle) and friends 

When my mother's younger brother left school, he went to work in Burgis & Colbourne's furniture stores. Unlike my mother, he  hated it. He left as soon as he could and went to Horticultural College because he couldn't stand working indoors. 

When I came to Leamington as a child in the '50s and '60s, the shops had hardly changed. They were all still there, the independent chemists, the boot and shoe maker, the tobacconist and the watchmaker, the bespoke tailor, the dairy and the milliner. The Parade was very like the High Street in Solihull (where we lived) but bigger and grander, although the shops were not as large or imposing as those on New Street and Corporation Street in nearby Birmingham. We would sometimes have lunch in the restaurant at Bobby's. I remember thinking it was very grand and grown up with heavy silver cutlery, white linen napkins, the waitresses in black uniforms with aprons and caps. 

Cutlery from Bobby's Restaurant

It was a world that was about to change. Very little of it remains. Tarnished cutlery from Bobby's restaurant is now encased in a vitrine like an archeological exhibit. Bobby's Department Store is a Travel Lodge. Francis & Sons was knocked down in the '80s. Its site is now occupied  by Majestic Wines.

Francis & Son 1920s

Majestic Wines

Almost nothing remains of the town as it was then. Just a few ghostly reminders here and there: an old sign, painted high on a wall, advertising a shop which has long gone. 

Above street level, clocks mark the site of watchmakers' or jewellers' shops that are no longer there. A reminder of the passage of time, of how everything changes. 

There is one shop that defies the age, that refuses to change. 

F. Hazell Smith, The Spot for Value, Gentlemen's Outfitters, established over 85 years. Even the paper bags are the same. 

Shops like F. Hazell Smith are survivals from a relatively recent past which disappeared suddenly and almost completely, like a retail die off. It is good to see a shop of the old fashioned kind, not as a museum exhibit but open for business in the middle of the town.  

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

TINDERBOXES by Susan Price

This is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Birmingham Midlands Institute,in April 2015,

The Royal Literary Fund

for the Royal Literary Fund's programme of talks open to the public. I was one of three writers - the others were Jane Bingham and Mike Harris.
                                     

I have heard other writers talk of hours in the archives, or interviewing experts — not for me. Mostly I make it up.
Take my Sterkarms books —   
           
          These are sci-fi/fantasy/historicals… Part of them is set in the 21st Century, most of them in the early 16th, on the Scots Borders.

          I did research them, but not in the 'hours in the library' sense.
          More in the ‘getting sodden and cold on Scottish hillsides’ sense.

          I first had the idea for the books while on a walking holiday along Hadrian's Wall, where I kept hearing mention of the Rievers. I then read MacdonaldFraser's Steel Bonnets and Godfrey Watson's Border Rievers, both of which are excellent sources of information about the rievers.

                       

          But does this count as research? I would have read these books anyway, from general interest. The fact that I used them, later, as reference was just – lucky.

          When I have what I feel is a good idea for a book, I’m usually too impatient to begin writing to waste time researching. After all, I write fiction. I make it up. When I wrote the 16th Century sections of the Sterkarm books I relied on what I remembered from the books I'd read on the rievers, what I knew from general reading about the period, and a lot of educated guessing.

          My approach has always been, 'If I was on the Borders in 1520 and had only the materials available that they had, and I wanted to do X, Y, Z — how would I solve that problem? And, I figure, if I could think of that solution, they did too.

Wolfsbane: beautiful and lethal

          For instance, one of my characters, a bit of a witch, makes a painkiller by mixing wolfsbane with fat — not baby’s fat, just dripping. How would she store this lethal stuff? (Wolfsbane, AKA monkshood or aconite, is extremely poisonous in its every part - root, leaf, stem and flower. It's said that even the scent of its flowers in a room can make people ill.) My witch doesn’t have any Tupperware, she lives in the middle of nowhere, and I imagine even the crudest pots are an expense she'd find it hard to meet.

          In thinking about what she’d have available, I thought of mouse-nibbled hazel-nuts. I said she scraped her ointment into the hollow nuts and sealed them with wax.

          Prove me wrong. Prove that no woman anywhere, anywhen, ever did that. You can't, can yer?

          Making up my own answers, like this, means I can leave research until later while I go on sorting out my plot. In my experience, a new finding from research rarely ruins your plot — at most, it will need a few tweaks.

          But endless, perfectionist research will prevent you from ever writing your book.

          In any case, a lot of what I want to know can’t be found in books or archives.
What is it like to use a longbow? — Again, I owned a longbow long before I came to describe its use, because I'd always wanted to use a longbow.

          What is it like to ride a horse? — I took a week-long riding course in Northumbria, where I learned how to fall off a horse.

          What is like to sleep in one of those little cupboard beds, with a hay-filled mattress supported on ropes? — I sneaked into one in an Orkney museum when no one was around and found out.

          You can't really find out about any of these things by researching in a library. You can read what others have written about them, but it won't give you the experience of drawing back the weight of a longbow, the personality of a horse, the smell of old grass and wood in the wall-bed.

          I've also found that some of the most interesting, useful details are discovered when I'm not researching at all.

          For instance, I wondered how my rievers would make fires - especially when they were travelling on raids. How did they light fires at home in the pele tower? I knew they wouldn't have had matches, but doubted that they spent much time rubbing sticks together. I researched in the usual way and the answer, of course, was tinderboxes.

English tinderboxes, 18th-19th century (Wikimedia commons)

                                               

          When I used to read Andersen's 'Tinderbox' as a child, I had a vague idea that it was something like a modern lighter, that somehow made a flame by itself. In reality, it was a box where you kept all your fire-making equipment together in one place. It 'kept your tinder dry' and you always knew where to find the things you needed.

          There was the firesteel. In the picture below, this is at the bottom. It is shaped to fit round the hand, to make it easier to use.

          There was the flint - seen in the top right-hand corner. It might not actually be a flint, but a piece of any hard stone, which would create a spark when struck on the steel.

          And then there was the tinder, which you kept dry in the box. This might be pieces of charred cloth, very dry plant material, or 'punk' which was the dry, powdery rotted wood from the centre of a dead tree.

          You struck sparks from the steel with the flint, and let them fall on the tinder in the box — and when a spark started to smoulder, you blew on it until you had a flame. You lit one of your spills in the flame and transferred the flame to a candle, or to the kindling for your fire…

          Most of the information I could find was of 18th or 19th century tinderboxes, but they were certainly used earlier — because here's Joseph striking a light for the Holy Family…

           In this detail (below), you can see that St. Joe has the fingers of his right hand through the steel, and is holding the flint in his left. His tinder box is under the flint, ready to catch the flame. He has spills scattered around, ready to light at the flame when it catches. And under his left hand is an open lantern, holding a somewhat bent candle. He will light the candle from the lit spill.

          People used to have small tinder-boxes they could carry with them. So that's what I found out by what you might call 'formal research.' And I'm glad to know it. You never know when information on tinderboxes will come in useful. Which is why I'm keeping it all in my Research File.

          However, it never seemed quite right to me for the rievers. I knew that people carried fire with them — I'd heard of fire being carried out to field, or about castles in 'fire-pots.'  I know from family gossip that, more recently, one neighbour would help another out by carrying a shovel-full of hot coals from one house to another.

          Carrying a fire-pot of hot coals on horseback seemed unlikely, though. Especially if, like the reivers, you never knew when you were going to have to gallop for your life.

          Then, I read No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. This had nothing to do with any research. I read the book purely because I wanted to.

          In the book, the elderly narrator has a dream where he's riding at dusk, and sees his dead father ride past him on horseback and ride on ahead of him into the darkness. The narrator says, ‘and he was carrying fire.’ 

'carrying fire'

           The phrase about carrying fire seemed to carry a lot of weight, but I didn't understand it, or its significance. I puzzled about it quite a lot. Was I to imagine the father carrying a crown of fire on his head, like something out of William Blake, or a flaming torch, or what?

          Then, on-line, I came across a forum where people were discussing the book and the Coen Brothers film of it. A lot of other people seemed puzzled by 'and he was carrying fire,' too.

          Another poster explained it. He introduced himself (I assume it was 'him') as a survivalist, who had researched the old ways of life, before the arrival of electricity and the internet. The significance of  'and he was carrying fire' is that the narrator, an elderly man, dreams of his dead father riding on ahead of him into the dark. The father is carrying glowing embers in a cow-horn at his belt, so that he can make camp somewhere up ahead and wait for the narrator to join him. This is what used to be done 'on the trail' - one man would go ahead, with fire, make camp and have a fire burning ready for when the others joined him.

          So the phrase is a rather beautiful dream metaphor for the elderly narrator facing death. His father, he feels, will be waiting for him, somewhere up ahead in the dark, sitting beside a campfire.

          The survivalist went on to explain how carrying fire was done. You took a hollow cow’s horn, and made a lid for it, from metal or leather, or horn. The lid had to be pierced, to let in the air. The horn also had a strap, so it could be carried at a belt or saddle.

           You then put smouldering embers into the horn, added some punk or other tinder, to keep them smouldering, and insulated them with ash, or dried moss or punk.

          The amount of air getting into the horn was crucial. Too much and the embers burst into flame, which is obviously a problem if it’s hung on your belt. Too little air and the embers died. But if you got it right, you had the immediate makings of a fire when you reached your camp place — without having to struggle with other methods when it might be cold, windy or damp. (Which, in Scotland…)

          Other survivalists, who’d tried this, added that you should put a slab of wood, or thick leather, between you and the horn as you carried it, because it got very hot.

          Now No Country For Old Men is set in Texas, and there are lots of connections between the Border reivers and the American South — many reivers were transported there for their crimes. Which is why some of the most complete Scots ballads and folk-tales were collected in the Carolinas, and not in Scotland.

          The reivers of Lowland Scotland and Northern England were herding cattle on horseback for roughly 200 years before Columbus. Many of the Wild West’s cowboys were, in fact, Scots and Geordies. So, I figured, if they carried fire like this in Texas in the early 20^th Century, they also did it in the Borders in the 16^th. Why wouldn’t they? — They had the cows, and the horns, and the need to carry fire.

          Prove that not one of them ever did. You can't, can yer.


          I suppose that my point, in all this, is that although research in libraries is enormously important, researching fiction encompasses everything you’re interested in, and anything you observe, all the time. It is sounds, tastes, smells – it’s which muscles and joints take the most pressure during the task you’re describing. It's the feeling of a fire's heat on your skin, and the scent of roses in a warm garden.

         It's bringing together things that intuition tells you are true, even if you can't prove it - rather like inventing a story. 

         For a writer, your sensual memory and imagination are the most important libraries of all.

All images: Wikimedia Commons. 

Penny Dolan is away