The Fortnightly Flag #03 Senior Open Tintagel Royal Porthcawl Film and Drama news

The Fortnightly Flag

1st August 2017

 

 

 

WRITING AND ART            ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY     STAGE AND SCREEN

 

 

WRITING AND ART

 

 

 

This week I went to the Senior Open Championship www.senioropenchampionship.com at the Royal Porthcawl Golf Club. 

 

The weather was atrocious even by the standards of South Wales which, let's face it, can be quite moist but the Royal Porthcawl is one of the best links courses (don't go by my opinion - this was from Tom Watson who described it as an 'unsung course') and the tournament was very well organised so, rain and wind apart, we had a good time and saw some of the top golfers we have followed since we were all a lot younger and less grey.

This got me thinking about how much sport in Britain has influenced our art and literature.  My favourite golfing book is P. G. Wodehouse's charming and funny collection of short stories as told by the Oldest Member 'The Clicking of Cuthbert'.  No prior knowledge of golf is needed.  It will make you laugh anyway.

 

                                                      ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

 

 

New discoveries at Tintagel - Life in Post-Roman Cornwall

 

My first novel 'The Serpent's Cove' was set near Tintagel and I am currently researching post-Roman Britain so I was excited by the news that archaeologists at the site have made important new discoveries there.  Last year's dig by the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, the first research excavation at the castle in decades, confirmed that it was certainly a royal site with links to Ireland, Scotland and Brittany south to the Eastern Mediterranean.  Finds included a fine Phocaean red slipped ware bowl from Turkey, imported amphorae from Southern Turkey or Cyprus and fine glassware from Spain.

 

Evidence showed that someone did live like a King at Tintagel on a diet of oysters, roast pork and fine wine, dining and drinking from good quality imported tableware and glasses from Spain.

 

It used to be assumed that the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain threw the islands into obscurity but finds at Tintagel confound this suggestion which is good news for me, of course, as it also adds evidence to the argument I put forward as a result of my own research in my book 'A History of Post-Roman Britain: The High Kings".

 

Jacky Nowaskowski, the project director at the archaeological unit says their plan in 2017 is to open up a much larger area on the southern terrace to get a good look at the scale and size of the stone buildings they have unearthed.  Photos and more information can be found at www.englishheritage.org.uk/tintagel.

 

Although the archaeologists say we do not know which kings lived at Tintagel this is not strictly true.  King Mark of Cornwall and the King Arthur of the Tintagel legend are both mythical but Constantine II, the nephew of the real King Arthur, was King of Cornwall and succeeded his uncle in 543 AD.  He is mentioned in Gildas (c 560 AD) as a contemporary who was still alive at that date.  His son, Conanus Aurelianus, also mentioned in Gildas, succeeded him, so we know of at least two of the kings from documentary evidence, who would have been based at Tintagel in the late sixth century and who were the likely owners of the objects unearthed in the dig.

 

Royal Porthcawl Golf Club - Local History

 

I unexpectedly learned a bit of local history at the Senior Open.  The Royal Porthcawl Golf Club is a historic local institution.  It dated back to the 13th November 1891 when H. J. Simpson and the Vivian brothers, Willlie and Harry (the Vivians were an influential family in South Wales - I once lived at Clyne Castle in Swansea which belonged to the family of wealthy copper manufacturers - along with some other locals met at the Angel Hotel in Cardiff to set up a Golf Club.  Porthcawl, which had originally been a coal port, had recently become a quiet holiday resort, as it was superseded by the larger docks at Barry and Cardiff to take the bigger coal ships that could not fit in the harbour at Porthcawl.  The first site for a nine-hole golf course was Locks Common but the club gradually moved north, leaving the original course which was full of cart tracks and holes left by cattle to the ladies (!) and an 18-hole course was established behind the convalescent home 'The Miners' Rest' (where Florence Nightingale once worked - I didn't know that either) where the distinctive red club-house still overlooks Rest Bay.

 

STAGE AND SCREEN

I mentioned in my last blog Alan Ayckbourn's new play "The Divide" (in two parts lasting six hours) will have its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival @edinfest.  Edinburgh International Festival www.eif.co.uk runs from August 4th to August 28th 2017 presenting performers from the worlds of opera, music, theatre and dance for three weeks.

Also in August are two music festivals which feature performance art and visual arts as well as music.

For campers and glampers Wilderness is at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire from August 3rd to August 6th.  The line-up includes Two Door Cinema Club, Grace Jones, Artwork, Nightmares on Wax, Bonobo, Michael Kiwanuka, Toots and The Maytals, Ray BLK and Sigrid.

Curated by Craig Richards (no relation) Houghton includes visual art and sculpture as well as a musical line-up including Ricardo Villalobos, Nicolas Jaar, Floating Points, Seth Troxler, Andrew Weatherall, Ben UFO, Optimo, Joy Orbison and Cassy.  It will take place at Houghton Hall, London from Friday 11th August 2017 to Sunday 13th August 2017.

Watford Palace Theatre are holding an 'Elton John's Glasses' Open Day on 10th September, which is free for all, in conjunction with their autumn production of 'Elton John's Glasses'.  There will be backstage tours and a display of objects from Watford in 1984 (I remember that!) including items from the FA Cup Final.  They are collecting for Watford Museum and the Hertfordshire Heritage Hub and are interested in objects, photos, clothing and memorabilia which illustrate what was happening in Watford in 1984.  My mother was teaching at a local primary school so may have some photos I can look out.  The theatre is asking people to bring their items along to be digitally recorded and/or potentially donated to the Museum.

Finally, Tom Hanks will be speaking about his book #Uncommon Type at @southbankcentre's London Literature Festival this November.  Tickets go on sale at 10:00 am on 2nd August.
po.st/TomHanksTickets#UncommonType.

 









The Fortnightly Flag #02

The Fortnightly Flag

18th July 2017

 

WRITING AND ART    ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY    STAGE AND SCREEN

 

 

Writing and Art

The must-see art event of this summer is the exhibition of work by the Japanese master Hokusai (1760-1849) currently at the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

 

 

 

Creation is my Master

Katsushika Hokusai was born in Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1760 and died aged 90 in 1849.  He often changed his professional name but was originally named Tokitaro.  Apprenticed to a woodblock cutter in his teens, in 1779 he joined the studio of Katsukawa Shunsho, a leading artist in the floating world (ukiyo-e) school of art which celebrated the hedonistic pleasures of Edo and remained with him until his teacher died in 1792.

 

One of the early works in the exhibition 'Yuzhi and her dragon' (1798) bears a seal declaring 'Creation is my master' - Hokusai's personal affirmation of an artist's vocation.

 

From 1807 is a lovely painting of the Warrior hero Tamatomo exhibiting Hokusai's skill as a fantasy artist, a style that has much influenced Western fantasy art, and the energy and life he instils in his figures.  It also demonstrates the hallmarks of his style, subtle colouring, a simple landscape as a background and, in this painting, a clever use of gold leaf to create the effect of autumn leaves, just dappled dabs of gold in drifts across the picture.  Tamatomo's black bow stands out against the muted colours.  It is just gorgeous.

 

In 1820 Hokusai re-invented himself as Iitsu (One Again) following the East Asian belief that at 61 a person's life-cycle begins again. His '36 Views of Mount Fuji' (there are actually more) was published in 1831 when he was in his early 70s.

 

He learned the use of perspective in European Art from Shiba Kokan (1747-1818).  There is an example of this artist's work in the exhibition showing his introduction of European perspective into Japanese art, use of natural colour and, one of Hokusai's favourite subjects, a breaking wave.  No artist comes from nowhere.

 

This use of perspective is in marked contrast to traditional Japanese style which shows perspective by putting different levels of viewpoint one on top of another with the most distant viewpoint at the top.

 

Hokusai quickly mastered the principles of European perspective and became adept at it.

 

'The Flower-viewing Party' (1824-26) shows how he demonstrated his skill by placing the distant garden in the lower part of the picture.  There are four levels of viewpoint in this painting - the grass in the foreground, the middle distance where the figures are standing, then, clearly placed behind and below them, the garden and cherry trees with the clouds and sky beyond them.  This must have seemed quite an extraordinary shift in perspective to Japanese eyes in the early 1820s.

 

The '36 Views' demonstrate the spare use of colour as well as Hokusai's superb technique.  In 'Irises and grasshopper' the water in which the irises are growing is suggested audaciously just with a wash of Prussian blue.  It is also used to represent water in the picture of the 8-plank bridge in Mikawa (1834) with unpainted paper providing the light on the water.  He also cleverly uses just straight lines to suggest the horizon.  At the same time, although the landscape is rendered with such simplicity, the figures, which are tiny, are each drawn as individuals in fine detail.  It's a real tour de force and, for me, another favourite.

 

He worked with his daughter Oi, who was a fine painter in her own right.  A lovely scroll of chrysanthemums caught my eye, beautifully detailed and richly decorative.

 

I bought the book published in conjunction with the exhibition, 'Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave' edited by Timothy Clark, published by Thames and Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com and the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org.  It's a tad expensive at £35 (and heavy) but chock-full of wonderful illustrations comprehensively researched and will make a great addition to your Art Book collection or start one off.

 

Archaeology and History

Exciting New Finds at Vindolanda

A new hoard of Ancient Roman writing tablets has been found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.  It consists of around 25 Roman ink documents on wooden writing tablets (letters, lists and personal correspondence).  The fragile, wafer-thin pieces of wood about the size of modern postcards were found during the excavation of a small area of the site three metres in length.  They are likely to represent part of an archive from the late 1st century AD.  Some of the letters are complete and had partial or whole confronting pages.  This is where the pages are protected by the back of adjoining pages and are the most exceptional discoveries providing the greatest chance of the ink writing being preserved.

 

The first Vindolanda tablets were discovered by Robin Birley in 1973.  These documents are the very personal accounts of the residents of the fort, mostly written before the construction of Hadrian's Wall in cAD120.  They form the most important archive of Roman writing from north-western Europe, a discovery that has revolutionised our understanding of life on the frontier of the Roman Empire.

 

More information and photographs can be found on the website at www.vindolanda.com/pressrelease

Twitter: @VindolandaTrust

Facebook: @thevindolandatrust

 

Stage and Screen

The Royal Court Theatre (@royalcourt) has announced its new season in which two thirds of writers and directors are women.  Compare this with when I started as a playwright in 1979 when you could have counted us all with your fingers and toes.  This is an enormous improvement. (Cheers) Having said that the Royal Court has never put on any of my plays. (Boo! Chiz! Shame etc.)

 

Alan Ayckbourn's #The Divide will play at the Old Vic Theatre (www.oldvictheatre.com) from 30 Jan - 10 Feb following its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival (@edinfest

 

The Divide is a tale that unflinchingly explores a dystopian society of repression, insurrection and forbidden love.  It is directed by Annabel Bolton, an Associate Director of The Old Vic. 

 

The play is set in the aftermath of a deadly contagion which a century from now has decimated the English population and rendered contact between men and women fatal.  Under the dictates of an elusive Preacher an unthinkable solution is enforced.  Separated by The Divide, the adult survivors are segregated by gender.  Men wear white as a mark of their purity and the still-infected women wear black as a mark of their sin.

 

It's a far cry from Alan Ayckbourn's signature Middle England comedies.  It will be interesting to see what he makes of the subject and, please note, another woman director. 

 

 

 

 



 



The Fortnightly Flag

Writing and  Art                                 Archaeology and History                       Stage and Screen            
 

Writing and Art

Just returned from a Writers' Retreat at Moniack Mhor, Scotland's Creative Writing Centre near Inverness, organised by the Society of Authors, Scotland. My first writers' retreat and my first visit to Scotland. Fifteen writers in a variety of genres got together to work in peace and tranquillity in idyllic surroundings and talk about literature, a thing almost unheard of in my long experience. Writers usually talk about money.