Saxon Hoard BBC2

Saxon Hoard, a documentary fronted by television historian Dan Snow, told the story of the hoard of Saxon gold discovered by a metal detectorist in Staffordshire on farmland adjacent to the A5 - the Roman Watling Street and the Saxon Mercian stronghold of Tamworth.   This should have been much more interesting than it was. 

For a start the programme was too long at an hour given that the assembled experts could tell us very little about the hoard, where it came from, who had buried it and what it represented.  The glimpses of the artefacts were so brief that it was barely possible to examine let alone admire them and very little information was given as to the actual size or what the items were supposed to be. I was disappointed that it was not linked at all to the historical context - for example the fact that the British had been expert metal-workers for centuries before the Saxons arrived and that many of the designs on the weapons such as linked knotwork and animal motifs were carried over from Celtic art.  There was a facetious suggestion that this was so good because it was German which is not only flippant but historically inaccurate.  Indeed the 'experts' had very little to add that any member of the audience could not equally have well deduced for themselves.

In the end the programme ran out not only of ideas but also of comments and ended up re-running the not very enlightening comments it had already shown.  It was clearly a half hour programme which had been commissioned at twice its natural length.  I am all in favour of programmes about archaeology and history but too often this is the case making what would have been an entertaining and interesting half hour an hour-long bore.  Documentary makers please note - if you have nothing much to say stringing it all out for an hour and repeating everything three times to fill the time-slot does not make for a good programme.  On commercial channels there is the even more irritating habit of repeating everything before and after the commercial break as if we will all have forgotten what the programme was about while we went to make a cup of tea.  Kindly stop it! 

The Devil & The Bag of Nails - new cover

The Devil and the Bag of Nails paperback is now listed on amazon.  For anyone looking out for it here is the new cover.

The Devil & The Bag of Nails Paperback

The Devil and the Bag of Nails is now available in a paperback edition from Createspace.  It will also be available from www.amazon.com and other outlets in a few weeks' time.  A Kindle Edition is also available.

Other books available in both paperback and digital formats

The Lady in Grey
Master Merryman
The Ghostrider
The Wonderful History of The Sword in the Stone
The Serpent's Cove

Details of these can be found at www.amazon.com and www.goodreads.com.

Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint is available in paperback only and is published by Imprint Academic, Exeter.

I have one more book that is currently only available in a Kindle Edition - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; the Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester which can be found at http://www.amazon.com.dp/B00651QMLZ .  I am hoping to prepare a paperback edition of this later in 2012.  Otherwise for the moment that's your lot!

The Lark Ascending BBC4

Last night I watched a programme on BBC4 'The Lark Ascending' which gave a brief run-through of the circumstances leading to the composition of this iconic piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams including a performance by Julia Hwang (violin) and Christopher Matthews (piano) as it was originally composed as a duet.  Miss Hwang played this fiendishly difficult piece exquisitely with such maturity and grace it seems unfair to mention in passing that she is only 15 years old. 

The programme was followed with 'The Passions of Ralph Vaughan Williams', a documentary charting the composer's long career (he died in his late 80s) with reference to the relationships that inspired him.  It was an excellent biography illuminating many of his works by describing the circumstances in which they were composed. 

Reflecting on my own formative influences (see Ronald Searle) I should mention the prominence of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  At Junior School we used to have a weekly singing lesson (Miss Dodd at the piano) for which we used his English Folk Song book - greatest hits as far as I can recall 'The Linden Tree' and 'The Lincolnshire Poacher'.  In the late 60s I had aspirations to be a serious folk-singer and still have a well-thumbed copy of the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs which he edited.  I must have sung inumerable times his hymns and some of his choral pieces.  I acquired a copy of 'The Lark Ascending' with, on the same album, the wonderful Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis which is an absolute wonder.  My eldest brother, a great fan, gave me the ballet suite 'Job' for a birthday present and followed it up with the Serenade for Music (words by Shakespeare, music by Vaughan Williams - the perfect evocation of Englishness) and the spell-binding 5th symphony.  All of these are on vinyl so they have been in some way part of the accompnaiment of my life.

The programmes went some way to explaining the appeal of Vaughan Williams as a national composer although his music transcends nationality as all good music does.  The combination of exquisite sweetness and serenity giving way to turbulent storms and flavoured with a slight earthiness convey both the English landscape and its changeability and the national character.  Robert Tear described the composer as resembling a sofa with the stuffing coming out of it (he was very untidy in his appearance).  That's quite a good description of both the man and his music - soft and inviting with a warm spirituality on the surface but with just enough prickly bits here and there to remind you of the less comfortable reality of the human condition underneath.

Garden Rubbish

A Reminder of last Summer's Pleasaunce

Sellars and Yeatman are best known for their book '1066 and all that' but they also wrote a book which was a formative influence on me as a gardener entitled 'Garden Rubbish'.  In that book the garden was divided into 'The Pleasaunce' and 'The Unpleasaunce', a plan I have adhered to ever since.  In January pretty much the whole garden can be classified as 'The Unpleasaunce', so much so that a modest snowfall comes as a bit of light relief since it blankets the whole in a pleasing and tidy white so that the general unpleasauntness of it is hidden from public view.  However gardening experts will tell you that January is a good month to browse the seed catalogues and plan your gardening for the busy months ahead.

For writers this is also a profitable exercise as the lovely English names of the flowers will also bring some colour and variety to your descriptive passages and it is well to know when the different varieties are in bloom to avoid making a literary horticultural howler.  Descriptive names like larkspur and marigold, toadflax (like a baby antirrhinum in different colours) and woodruff (blue and scented), cornflower and sweet sultan (white, rose and yellow), and pretty drifts of candytuft bring romance and poetry to a plain description.  Then if you want to sound more knowledgeable you can toss in a bit of Latin (variegated) - calliopsis (yellow and brown), nasturtium (all colours, commonly found in vegetable patches), ageratum (blue), linum grandiflorum (red) - even my dog Latin knows grandiflorum means a big flower - from South Africa the Ursinia and Veridium, both daisy-like and orange with a dark centre.  Since the church gave up using it horticulture is the one area where Latin is still used on a daily basis. 

You can, if you wish, do a little light digging in January if the weather is not too inclement and winter storms provide plenty of opportunities for repairing garden arches and fences and replacing uprooted bush roses, or you can stay in the warm and read a good book and pray for a fall of snow which will make your garden all pretty, white and sparkling and put off any real work until next month.

Name that pud

Last night I concocted a delicious pud out of necessity when the weekly shop had to be deferred but I have no name for the dessert.  Any ideas?  The recipe is as follows:

1. Spoon a prepared cold rice pudding into a sundae dish.  I used Mullerice but Ambrosia tinned would do or your own if using leftovers.

2. Peel and core fresh pears (half for each serving) and lay in a baking dish.  Spoon over a tablespoon of clear runny honey, sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and bake at Mark 4 (Gas) or 160 degrees electric for 20 mins until the pears are soft.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

3. Whip up a small carton of double cream until it folds into soft peaks.  Lay the pears on top of the rice pudding and spoon over the honey and cinammon syrup so that it soaks into the rice then top with a generous dollop of double cream.

Nice!
...and easy.

The Serpent's Cove paperback

Lizzie, the strange child brought up by mad Granny Tulliver, is only allowed out at night.  Her life of shadows is shared by the 'gentlemen' who land their illicit cargoes in the Serpent's Cove.  When she meets Richard Merritt, the handsome young riding officer, her life changes dramatically until he mysteriously disappears.  Fate takes Lizzie into fashionable society and the company of the famous playwright Anthony Lindley, whose friendship seems set to bring her happiness.  Suddenly she finds her life is in danger.  Why does Mr Lindley count a highwayman among his friends and who is the methodist preacher?  Not until these mysteries are cleared up can Lizzie find the path to fortune and solve the enigma of the Serpent's Cove.

Pleased to announce that The Serpent's Cove is now available in paperback from Createspace and will also be available from www.amazon.com next week.  A historical romance, this book is suitable for all ages including older children/young teenagers.  A digital edition is also available on Kindle.

Ronald Searle - a personal thank you

I cannot let the passing of Ronald Searle yesterday, 3rd January 2011, pass without acknowledging how deep an influence this remarkable artist has had on my own work.  Like most kids in the late 50s and early 60s I grew up with the role model of the great Nigel Molesworth before me and the girls of St Trinians of whom I can say the girls of Upper 4B in my own girls' grammar school could have given a run for their money. If my generation turned out to have a taste for subversive humour quite a lot of the responsibility could be laid at the door of Ronald Searle whose images captured the zeitgeist perfectly.  I was also influenced by a book he illustrated of which we had a copy at home, the title of which I forget, but it consisted of portraits of Londoners - not celebrated or notorious Londoners but the sort of ordinary people, since I lived in London at the time, that I might meet any day of the week.  I was too young for his war drawings but having seen them since I now understand why my father, who fought in Burma, was so reluctant to talk about his experiences.  All I know is that at Cox's Bazaar on the India/Burma border the jewel of the British Empire was defended by 25 RAF blokes and about a hundred indian troops.  They had a machine gun on the beach (just the one) and no ammunition for it.  The boat called once a week with supplies, otherwise they were on their own.  When they received a consignment from home it contained balaclava helmets and gloves knitted dutifully by WI ladies who might have been distressed to know they were given to men serving in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  The Japanese once sent a plane over to reconnoitre but otherwise mercifully left them alone.  Seeing Ronald Searle's drawings reminded me that years afterwards when asked to greet Japanese visitors to the London Borough where he worked my father - the friendliest and most forgiving of men - had great difficulty in agreeing to do this.  He accepted that the visitors were all too young to have served in the war and yet he still found it hard to face them and be civil.  Ronald Searle's drawings allowed me to understand why that was.  I never met him and did not know him but his influence in subtle ways is all over my work and for that I thank him.  Goodbye and God Bless.

The Devil and the Bag of Nails

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the publication of my book The Devil and the Bag of Nails which was published on Kindle on 5th January last year as part of my first great experiment with ebook publishing.  Lots of people have asked about the title which comes from a London pub in Victoria now known only as the Bag O'Nails but it changed its name from The Devil and the Bag of Nails only as late as 1905.  Historical records trace the pub back to 1775 when it was known as 'The Bacchanals'.  It stood at the corner of Kings Row and Lower Grosvenor Place.  My story is set a little further back in 1732 on the eve of the passing of the Gin Act and is based on events at the time. The original sign showed a satyr of the woods and a group of jolly dogs known as bacchanals, but as the satyr was painted black and had cloven feet it was called the Devil by common people not well-versed in classical mythology.  The pub is still there and is owned rather appropriately by Punch Taverns, Mr Punch being a late victorian version of the Satyr/Devil of the title.