Ponderings

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  • A Horrible Conspiracy

    The 5th November 1605 is a date that is etched upon the collective memory, at least in England. However every year it dwindles in importance and relevance. This has arisen in the wake of globalisation. History itself has become an irrelevance when the future of humanity is complete homogenisation. Modernity is solely based upon our combined ability to purchase and to consume, so the past literally has no purpose. I belong to the last generation where our unique culture and heritage was still celebrated, as it still had some meaning and significance.

    However there were early signs that this was beginning to wane. At the height of Thatcherite Britain, when this country had finally recovered its own self-confidence in the world, a vindictive political campaign was launched. The methods employed by these campaigners were insidious. They decided to launch a cultural revolution, akin to Maoist China, but through subversion, stealth and sabotage.

    However, their motivation was unambiguous, in spite of the barely concealed subterfuge. They were deeply aggrieved that Thatcher had torn up the post-war political consensus, and that she had initiated an economic revolution that drastically altered the role of the state. It was a positive progression from the economic stagnation of the previous decade. It led to more innovation and prosperity as individuals had more freedom and liberty and were less reliant on the state.

    The state was a sclerotic, leviathan like structure. However many resisted the attempts to reduce it, some resisted it with counter-revolutionary methods. Political activists, averse to the changes wrought by Thatcherism, infiltrated the established institutions and tried to subvert them. The BBC, the judiciary, the civil service and the education system were all targets, along with statutory organisations that were designed to encourage people in the arts. Creativity was scorned. Propaganda was promoted, and every effort to enhance imagination and inquisitiveness was suppressed.

    The propaganda was designed to undermine and to corrode any nationalist sentiment. Emotional blackmail was a tool, wielded like a weapon, along with historical guilt. It engendered a generation that was less sure of itself, and more fragile and disturbed than previous generations. This was a deliberate and devious manoeuvre, as lost and broken people are much easier to control. It was in keeping with their twisted plot to create the necessary conditions for international socialism. The propagandists actually loathed history, they only used it in order to manipulate minds, and to disorientate people by detaching them from their ancestral past.

    However political and cultural propaganda campaigns within this country are nothing new, in fact they are all too familiar. Jacobean England in particular, was also a hotbed of political intrigue. The King ascended to the throne in 1603. He had huge ambitions for the future. He took his inspiration from his great-great-grandfather Henry VII who revived the reputation of the Monarchy after the ruinous and catastrophic Wars of the Roses. The crown that he personally commissioned, the Imperial Crown, symbolised national reconciliation. King James, imitating his ancestor, imbued this with a more profound message for his kingdom. He styled himself Rex Pacificus, the peacemaker king.

    His ambitions were extraordinarily impressive, he sought peace between Catholics and Protestants, England and Spain, and England and Scotland. His greatest achievement was to unite England and Scotland under one realm. His indefatigable commitment to peace and unity was eventually rewarded when the twenty year conflict with Spain ceased, and the bridge of friendship between the warring Scots and the English, once regarded as irreconcilable, was finally built.

    None of these measures satisfied the extremist elements that still existed within society. The King’s pragmatism was viewed as a betrayal. A contingent of fanatical Catholics perceived the concession to Protestants as an act of extreme disloyalty and contempt. In this febrile atmosphere, a conspiracy was hatched. A plot to kill the King, and all of his Parliament was planned. Fortunately, the King was informed of these secret plans in an anonymous letter warning him that “a terrible blow” was about to be inflicted upon the centre of political power, the Houses of Parliament, which he was about to open.

    He immediately issued a search warrant, and at 11 pm on the 4th November the unmistakable figure of Guy Fawkes was discovered beneath the vaults of Westminster Palace guarding a pile of firewood and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder. The fuse was found in his pocket. This could have potentially been the most deadly terrorist attack enacted on English soil, yet it was foiled.

    In the early hours of the 5th November Fawkes was arrested and imprisoned. He was then subjected to a merciless and torturous interrogation. Eventually, he confessed to a “horrible conspiracy” to blow up Parliament. He was sentenced to death, and was hanged on 31 January 1606. He was just 35 years old.

    Fawkes was transformed into a folk devil, and his legacy as the bete noir of the British establishment was sealed. He became the personification of a sinister, foreign and hostile element that threatened the democratic values that were forged in painstaking detail by the newly crowned British Monarch.

    Fawkes hotheaded militancy was never forgotten, nor did it actually die. It was continually revived in successive decades, albeit for wildly different causes. He represented a youthful zeal and arrogance that has never truly disappeared, it has only remained dormant. Whenever a national crisis appears, his example is resurrected again. The ghost of Guy Fawkes and his crudely naive revolutionary spirit remain with us. His dark presence still haunts us. The spectre never really fades, in spite of the various attempts to banish his evil deeds. He lingers in the shadows, waiting to be reanimated.

    Fanatics of every stripe are vain and selfish, and never really consider the feelings of others. They only serve to alienate people from their cause. They are so consumed with self-righteous indignation that they lose their sense of empathy and humanity. Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is negative, destructive and often irrational. Often their only answer to perceived injustice is to destroy rather than build. Their antagonism only breeds more anger, spite and revenge. The profound symbolism of Bonfire Night provides a vital catharsis for every English and British person. It is a night when we burn the totems that represent intolerance and bigotry. This is why we must always “remember, remember”.

  • Memento Mori

    The 31st October is an ominous and portentous date in the calendar. It is observed in two very different ways. People either gather together to remember and mourn the dead whereas others choose to indulge in a celebration of the macabre and supernatural. Both of these interpretations are argued and debated over every year, and very rarely a sensible consensus is reached.

    Many prominent leaders in the church continue to attempt to suppress the livelier side to the ceremonies and stress that death is something that deserves a degree of respect and reverence. This is due to the belief in the sanctity of human life. However the secular interpretation is much older and predates Christianity. It originates from our Celtic, pagan past. Various rituals were enacted to banish malign spirits from possessing the living.

    According to legend, these spirits stalked the earth seeking revenge upon their enemies before they descended back down into the underworld. Their activity was especially pronounced in the winter time, so people would wear masks or costumes to avoid detection. When Christian missionaries arrived in parts of Northern Europe, several attempts were made to ban such rituals.

    However these bans failed, because this was something that was deeply embedded within the psyche of a population that frequently experienced enduring hardship during the harsh winter months. Death was something far too familiar to them, so they could not banish it from everyday life. Consequently the Church appropriated this festival and transformed it into a solemn commemoration of the dead.

    In the modern industrialised world, where science and technology have supposedly replaced myth and superstition, conversations surrounding our mortality have almost vanished. This is odd, because it is the only logical inevitability about our existence, that we all must die. This is the quandary that we all encounter as presumed sophisticates living in the west. We think that we are infinitely superior and civilised, and that we have a ready explanation for everything. We somehow pride ourselves that we have turned away from our once dark, savage and primitive ways. Yet we cannot avoid our collective fear of death.

    Once we acknowledge death, we can then understand that life has a greater meaning and significance beyond its biological and physical manifestation. Atheists scoff cynically about this, but their arrogance and ignorance is actually immaterial and irrelevant in the grand and eternal scheme of creation. Their methods are also flawed. This has been proven throughout history, and we are living with the unfortunate consequences of their mistakes. When the radicals, rationalists and revolutionaries purged centuries of tradition and religion from France, they also ushered in a culture that became shallow, inarticulate and inconsequential in spite of their laudable battle cries of equality, liberty and fraternity.

    Ghosts, spirits, and the restless souls of the dead remain a constant in our culture, in spite of our supposedly progressive and enlightened societies. Negating this is akin to negating our humanity, and denying the power and gifts of our imagination.

  • The King Without A Crown

    The 23rd October, 1642 was the scene of the Battle of Edgehill, one of the most dramatic, but uneventful conflicts in the English Civil War. King Charles I was busily engaged in an acrimonious conflict with Parliament. The King was a divisive figure. His accession to the throne was ominous right from the beginning, and his reign merely exacerbated the schism in English society. It also threatened the stability and identity of England itself.

    Charles was castigated as a tyrant and a religious bigot by an increasingly vocal section of English society. They believed that the office of Monarch was brought into disrepute by his autocratic behaviour. Another contingent remained his loyal and unquestioning supporters. They were convinced of his divinity, and believed that he was God’s anointed. They also claimed with complete sincerity that he could cure the afflicted.

    Parliament desperately attempted a compromise to placate the two factions, but the stubborn and unyielding recalcitrance of the King made it impossible. It only confirmed suspicions that he was arrogant and entitled. When he was asked politely to make concessions, he was unequivocal, retorting in characteristically bluff tones, “There are three things I will not part with-the Church, my crown and my friends; and you will have much ado to get them from me”. Evidently, “much ado” was a euphemism for civil war.

    England was torn asunder by the fighting that ensued. The Battle of Edgehill revealed that both sides were unprepared and inexperienced. Both Armies were assembled in haste, and suffered humiliating losses as a result. The Royalists had a greater advantage than their adversaries, but only in terms of being organised. After the battle was fought, with no actual victory for either side, a charismatic leader by the name of Oliver Cromwell stepped in. He disparaged the lacklustre efforts at war, “most of them old decayed servingmen and tapsters, and the (Royalists) troopers are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons and persons of quality”. Cromwell was a rising star in Parliament who had no patience with the King, disagreed vehemently with the notion that he had religious supremacy and refused to abide by any of his strictures on the subject.

    England was facing an uncertain future, and amidst despair and demoralisation, an obviously “populist” figure like Cromwell seemed the only hope left for its survival. He was perceived as the champion of freedom and democracy and this was a wildly radical departure from the establishment belief that the King had total religious and political authority. Nevertheless Cromwell attracted numerous sympathisers including smallholders struggling to survive on the paltry amount of land apportioned to them. In their minds the King was mean and miserly, with no sense of charity for those on the brink of destitution.

    Cromwell’s pragmatism was a refreshing change. He believed that everyone had individual liberty and rights, including in matters of personal faith. In some quarters of England such ideas would have been regarded as sacrilegious. Many refused to relinquish their piety, and their unwavering devotion to the King.

    England was still overwhelmingly Christian, but it was riven by religious division. Bigotry flourished on both sides of the divide, and there was very little tolerance. One side was committed to the absolutism embodied in the King, the other side argued that the conscience of the individual was more important.

    In February 1645, in the face of possible political defeat, Parliamentarians formed a set of rival fighters called the New Model Army. It was a meritocratic organisation, unlike the King’s Army which was formed on the basis of social rank. These men admired the political conviction of Cromwell. They followed his example and took up arms to fight on his behalf. They believed that this was a righteous war and it had to be won.

    Four months later, the New Model Army faced the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby. King Charles himself led the charge, arriving resplendent in gilt armour on an impressive Flemish steed. The opposing forces looked shabby in comparison, they were poor and humble men battling the privileged elites. However the finery of the King’s men was no substitute for the passion and strength of the Parliamentarian’s military representatives. The King’s troops were also outnumbered. At one o’clock they were exhausted and beaten.

    Cromwell claimed victory at Naseby and believed that this was God’s will. In the light of this battle people began to seriously question the King and his role as the head of the Church. Fundamental questions arose, some maintained a vain hope that the King would negotiate and reform the Church but others were determined to prove to the rest of the nation that the King was abusing his powers and drastic measures were required to unseat him.

    In April 1647 the New Model Army captured the King, in preparation for a trial. Once more, he was offered a reprieve if he agreed on a settlement to end the war. In a sly move, the King allied himself to the Scottish cause and made a fraudulent promise to the Scots. He told them that he would impose the Presbyterian religion across the English part of his Kingdom.

    However this was not a sincere promise, it was a cynical attempt at self-preservation, and it worked initially. Scottish forces invaded Preston in Lancashire and fought a prolonged and bitter battle with the New Model Army. The Scots loyalists were defeated and a new agreement became necessary. Neither side were particularly enamoured by the King, and support for his authority was waning. One year later an urgent meeting was convened at Windsor to discuss the worsening situation. After three days of deliberation a mutual decision was made to “call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to account for the blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the Lord’s cause and people in these poor nations”. As the year drew to a close, Parliament and the King reached an impasse.

    It seemed that there was no other alternative, the King was not prepared to back down. He was arrested and imprisoned on the Isle of Wight. Cromwell travelled down to London anticipating a coup. On the 6th December Colonel Thomas Pride entered the House of Commons and purged the Presbyterians. One month later the remaining 150 MPs declared themselves the supreme power of the nation. This was Cromwell’s political dictatorship in a nascent form. On the 20th January 1649 King Charles’ trial began at Westminster Hall. He was charged with high treason.

    It seemed that the unthinkable had come to pass, God’s holy representative was about to be tried, condemned and possibly executed. Ten days later the death warrant was signed and issued.

    The morning of the execution was a bleak occasion. The King cut a pitiful figure, he appeared truly remorseful and contrite. A full account of this day was written by B. Whitelocke in a book entitled “Memorials of the English Affairs”. Whitelocke states, “The King died with true magnanimity and Christian patience; his body was put in a coffin, covered with black velvet, and removed to his lodging chamber in Whitehall. At this scene were many sighs and weeping eyes, and divers strove to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, as in the blood of a martyr”. The image of his devotees clutching their bloodied handkerchiefs indicates that the King had a cult following that has never truly dissipated. His insistence on dogma attracted admiration and derision in equal measure. It is this ambivalence that dominates today’s society and it has never really resolved.

  • The People’d Wound

    On the 10th October, 1930 the esteemed English playwright, screenwriter, director, actor and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter was born. He was the only son of an East-End Jewish tailor. He was a thoughtful and bookish child, who later excelled as a scholar, cricketer and athlete at Hackney Downs Grammar School. His English teacher, Joseph Brearley recognised his aptitude for drama and poetry and encouraged him to write and to act. Brearley became a prominent and influential figure, and an important mentor who helped to shape his future career.

    He was awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but his attendance was poor and erratic. He was distracted and alarmed by the political situation that was gradually unfolding. The country was ostensibly at peace, but he could still sense a creeping authoritarianism and militarism. He was a conscientious objector and he was fined several times for refusing national service.

    He continued his studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama and acted in repertory theatre productions across England and Ireland. His acting work enabled him to think much more profoundly about the art and craft involved in the construction and performance of plays.

    In 1951 he performed in a series of Shakespeare productions staged in theatres across the Republic of Ireland. Here he met another important figure and mentor who helped to mould his literary imagination. Anew “Mac” McMaster was an Irish Shakespearean actor-manager whose expertise left an indelible impression upon the young and budding actor/dramatist.

    He described the collaboration with Mac as “electric”, and it inspired Pinter to write his own unique tribute to the Bard, in an essay entitled “A Note to Shakespeare”. He argued that the plays were a precious and delicate resource and must be approached in the same way that a doctor or a surgeon treats his or her patient, “The mistake (the actors) make, most of them, is to attempt to determine and calculate, with the finest instruments, the source of the wound”. He explains that this initial approach can be ham-fisted and crude to the point of bluntness.

    However even though the actor-practitioner fully understands the dilemma, he concludes through years and years of striving in the roles that any remedy is futile, “They turn to the wound with deference, a lance, and a needle and thread. At the entrance of the lance the gap widens. At the use of needle and thread the wound coagulates and atrophies in their hands. Shakespeare writes of the open wound and, through him, we know it open and know it closed.” This is a vivid and striking analogy, which he pursues with alacrity and vigour.

    He observes that the stage is the operating theatre, or the medical clinic, where all the hopeless cases are brought forward for examinations. However everyone who participates in these examinations becomes resigned to the fact that the suffering will never actually end, only perpetuated. The desperation is detailed in unsparing prose, “one discovers a long corridor of postures, fluid and hardened at the quick, gross and godlike, putrescent and copulative; raddled; attentive, crippled and gargantuan; crumbling with the dropsy; heavy with elephantiasis, broody with government; severe; fanatical; paralytic; voluptuous; impassive; muscle-bound; lissom; virginal; unwashed; bewildered; humpbacked; icy and statuesque. All are contained in the wound which Shakespeare does not attempt to sew up or reshape, whose pain he does not attempt to eradicate. He amputates, deadens, aggravates at will..” Evidently Pinter developed a great insight into the humanity that imbues the canon, all facets of the human experience are reflected back at the audience, even the ugliest elements that are seemingly beyond hope.

    He concludes his essay in stark, unforgiving and unequivocal tones that ultimately “The fabric never breaks. The wound is open. The wound is people’d”. The gallery of pitiless human grotesques infused and informed his perspective. It was this tireless dedication to Shakespeare and his philosophy which allowed him to create his own characters for the stage. He drew on themes of isolation, alienation and terror. Every character appears disconnected and disturbed, detached from reality. This was deliberate, it was actually summoned from real childhood memories.

    Pinter was evacuated from London when he was barely ten years old. It was at the peak of the Blitz, and he endured a prolonged period of isolation, dissociation and dislocation. He was forever haunted by the memory of that time. In 1957, it was fortuitous and fortunate that he reconnected with his old school friend, Henry Woolf. Woolf was another protege of Joseph Brearley and played in the same cricket team at Hackney Downs. Woolf was in the final year of a directing course at the University of Bristol and he asked Pinter if he could write a play for him.

    He obliged and wrote “The Room”. Woolf directed the play and played the main character Mr Kidd at his graduation ceremony. It was a one act play featuring a cast of eccentric outsiders with no obvious connection with each other. Pinter was unorthodox for the time, and the play deliberately subverted all of the conventions of polite drawing room dramas. The dialogue was punctuated with uneasy silences, unsettling the audience.

    In that same year he wrote “The Birthday Party” and the play premiered at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge in April 1958. This play was written in the same style, with similar characters and the first set of audiences were totally unprepared, and somewhat bewildered by it. His career as a playwright would have sunk without trace if it had not been for the encouraging words of the theatre critic Harold Hobson, who immediately understood the motivations behind the piece. His review was called “The Screw Turns Again” and it was published in The Sunday Times.

    The article ultimately salvaged Pinter’s reputation, and career. However he was frequently subject to vicious criticism throughout the fifties, sixties and beyond. Most of the criticism was undeserved, and merely a spiteful reflection of a shallow culture that regards artists and writers with contempt.

    It is a uniquely British trait to mock and belittle anyone who dares to express themselves, it ultimately stems from a sense of envy and fragility. Anyone who tries to be creative or thoughtful is considered pretentious or pompous, and their earnestness is never admired, instead it is looked on with suspicion.

    The sixties became the pinnacle of Pinter’s career, but this did not stop the attacks from the media. Unfairly his plays were castigated and maligned by the press as “absolute drivel and incomprehensible nonsense”. These angry missives sound rather too familiar, and resemble the hollow insults meted out today on social media.

    However Pinter remained undeterred. In the face of continuing criticism he kept returning to the fond memories at Hackney Downs with Joseph Brearley and the extended walks that they took through the park, where they discussed and debated drama and poetry in long and animated exchanges. Hackney was the epicentre of his world, it is where he observed society changing, much of it for the worse. In spite of the peace and harmony promised by a succession of post-war governments, the reality was stark. Utopia never materialised. The landscape was desecrated, the people were left battle scarred, angry and resentful. The promise was never fulfilled, and everyone was broken.

    Nothing of any value or worth remained, functionality and utility were poor and pitiful substitutes for the sacred and the beautiful. Ugliness resounded, in the brutalist architecture, and deep within the layers of the industrial military complex. The country was rendered a machine and run for the benefit of the faceless bureaucrats. They created the modern world in their own image, a black and soulless void. A country without a soul will only engender degradation and chaos. Pinter’s lonely, alienated, atomised characters are not far fetched, they are visible and all around us. We must remember his prophetic voice.

  • The Eternal Struggle

    On the 7th October, Israelis and the global Jewish diaspora will remember and mourn the worst atrocity committed against them since the Holocaust. It is tragic that this level of violent persecution is something that is all too familiar to Jewish people, and it is an experience that most, if not all have endured throughout history. However this murderous prejudice is simply a consequence of misunderstanding, misinformation and ignorance.

    The war against Hamas continues, but they are devious and cunning political operators. They have not only succeeded in capturing the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people, they have also seized the West and inverted, and even perverted their moral sensibilities. Suddenly barbarous acts are justified as “resistance”, even when committed against the most defenceless and vulnerable such as pregnant women, babies and the elderly. The strict rules governing war have been changed to suit their obscene narrative, somehow the armed bandits who steal food and medicine meant for civilians are excused because they are also part of the resistance.

    These methods are deliberate, as their ultimate aim is to manipulate and to confuse a global audience. Truth is always the first casualty of war. In this case, the enemy side has obtained the tools and ultimately perfected the skills of mendacity. They have actually killed the truth and turned the propaganda war into a sick kind of art form. Again, this is not new. Every single political and military campaign waged against the Jewish people has employed this black propaganda, and the same tropes are reiterated. It is sad that so many people have fallen for this and believe the negative information propagated by a collective of racist, genocidal terrorists.

    Coupled with this, is a complete ignorance of history. Very few people seem to fully comprehend the concept of Zionism and even fewer are aware of the ancient history that shaped it. It is shameful that a lot of people sincerely believe in the pseudohistory. The most egregious claim is that Israel is an entirely modern entity artificially engineered by Europeans to spread white supremacy. This is another inversion of historical truth. What actually happened was that a contingent of Europeans invented a specific ideology. This ideology dehumanised Jews to spread the concept of white supremacy and for thousands of years Jewish people were persecuted, oppressed and forced to live in exile all over the world.

    Israel was first occupied and conquered by the Assyrians, and ten out of the twelve tribes of Israel were held hostage before disappearing into the jaws of Mesopotamia. Then Assyria fell to the Babylonians, and immediately the Babylonian King ordered the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple. His army marched into Jerusalem, burned it to the ground and yet again the Jewish people were taken hostage. They were all taken to Babylonia, and were imprisoned until the conquering Persian Empire released them.

    Once they returned to Jerusalem there was a fierce determination within the newly liberated people to rebuild the Temple. With the encouragement and assistance of the Persian King, Cyrus the Great, the Second Temple was built. However Jerusalem was conquered yet again, this time by the Romans, and the Second Temple was destroyed.

    The future of the Jewish people was in doubt. It was uncertain whether they would endure further subjugation from an imperial power, or whether Jewish leaders could conceivably co-operate with their rulers. In 63 BC, the elites in Judea asked the Roman authorities to be the adjudicators in a civil war that was raging within the Hasmonean monarchy. After 23 years of chaos, the Roman Senate appointed Herod the King of all Judea and gave him military support.

    However Herod’s alliance with Rome was never recorded as an act of political expediency to save the Jewish people, it was regarded as a fundamental betrayal. This is the bind that so many political and religious leaders have found themselves in throughout history. This was eloquently expressed by the American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote a fictional biography on him called “Herod the Great”, which reassessed the legacy of this divisive figure. She explains, “There was indeed a conflict in Judea, not between Herod and the people, but that eternal struggle which is inevitable in every nation between change and tradition; between priest and palace-the palace representing the wide world”. Hurston goes further, “for again the ideology of the whole world is in flux. Old institutions and old concepts are in the death throes, and the new being precipitated out; ideologies East and West fight for the minds of men. Identical circumstances provoke similar reactions, human nature being what it is. Herod drew his sword for the West”. Sadly, we are still forced to choose between two swords, East and West and no compromise is on offer. The fate of human civilization is more uncertain now than at any other time in history.

  • The Hollow Men

    On the 26th September, 1888 the Anglo-American poet, essayist and playwright T.S Eliot was born. His work was considered modernist in style despite Eliot’s sincere traditionalist beliefs. He was born in St Louis, Missouri and he was the son of a prominent and wealthy family who had relocated to the area from Boston.

    The Eliots were a highly influential family in Boston and were part of an elite group of families that soon became known as the “Boston Brahmins”. The Boston Brahmins were a very select and distinct group of privileged people who inhabited the upper echelons of society, and kept their ancestral and cultural connections to Britain. In Eliot’s case, his ancestral home was situated in East Coker, Somerset.

    Eliot developed a prodigious talent for poetry and was awarded a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford in 1914. However when the First World War broke out, this changed his fortunes, and his outlook. He left Oxford after a year and moved to London. He took various teaching jobs and continued to write poetry where he eventually attracted the attention of fellow poet and compatriot Ezra Pound. Pound soon became a friend and a mentor.

    In 1915 he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood. However the marriage was destined to fail right from the beginning, Vivienne was nervous and fragile. Her emotional vulnerabilities proved to be too difficult for both of them to cope with and she was committed to an asylum. Eliot felt profound guilt and was on the verge of a mental breakdown himself. His poetry was imbued with this guilt and pessimism, and coloured by the political instability of the world.

    Consequently he used his strident poetic voice to elicit greater truths that transcended the often petty concerns that bedevilled mortal humans. In his mind, modernity was a lie, it simply detached mankind from its natural environment and only diminished men and women to things. Throughout the nineteen twenties he composed dark verse that epitomised the mood of those times. In his poetic journey he took his own spiritual journey towards enlightenment, and he ultimately found succour in the Anglican faith of his forefathers.

    However it was a long and arduous path, strewn with self-doubt and recrimination. In a world that was gradually turning its back on any semblance of peace, harmony or universal understanding, it must have felt like a pointless and thankless task with no conceivable end point. The most striking poem from this period is “The Hollow Men” which was written at the peak of his personal crisis in 1925.

    The poem reveals a world bereft of morality, humanity and meaning. It is a world only populated with dead souls. Three years earlier he published “The Waste Land” a solemn lamentation of a lost landscape devastated by the thoughtless actions of empty, deadened men.

    It is incredibly apposite that these poems were published in the interwar years when a far greater horror was hovering on the horizon. However his experiences of the Second World War inspired the bleak majesty of “Four Quartets”, a series of elegiac poems dedicated to the eternal elements that remain with us even amidst war and death. We must remember his potent poetic voice as the world turns dark once more.

  • Dogs of Lust

    On the 21st September, 1327 King Edward II died. The circumstances surrounding his death have been disputed for centuries and sordid accounts suggesting that he was tortured and humiliated before his death have not been historically verified. However his final years were marred by controversy and infamy, and rumours of sexual deviancy. Many historians have questioned the veracity of these rumours, and maintain that this was just malicious gossip and black propaganda from his rivals and enemies.

    It is easy to see the origin of these lurid tales. Edward made the deliberate decision to co-operate with the nobles, a starkly different style of rule from his predecessor, his father King Edward I. His close affinity to the nobles sparked suspicion, it was unlike a King to present such an affable nature, it looked weak, and it was a challenge to his supremacy. The nobles, in turn, competed with each other to be the King’s favourite. They knew how to flatter and to fawn for their own advantage.

    However it was clear from the very start who the King favoured, Piers Gaveston. Gaveston was amply rewarded for his loyalty and friendship, but raised the hackles of his wife, Isabella when he gave him her jewels as a present. Isabella herself was no ordinary Queen. She became a legend in her own right, appropriating traditionally male traits. She was ruthless and indomitable and was renowned for her lust for ultimate power. Consequently she received public opprobrium and the nickname “she-wolf”. Although she initially accommodated Gaveston into the court, she grew increasingly frustrated by him and plotted to have him removed. Gaveston was initially banished to Ireland to bolster support for the King in that realm.

    On his return the King sought to consolidate his power in Scotland and Wales. Gaveston abhorred his rivals. He scorned them because he sought the King’s affection solely for himself. He called the other nobles childish names like Burst Belly, the Cuckold’s Bird and the Black Dog of Arden. Such insults only hardened their resolve to destroy Gaveston. In March 1313 a warrant was issued for his arrest. Gaveston and the King tried to escape but they were captured by the earl of Warwick, the so-called “Black Dog” who had offended him so much. Warwick and four other nobles condemned him to death and he was beheaded at Blacklow Hill, just outside Warwick.

    Edward had lost his closest confidante and was humiliated. He tried to regain his power in his pursuit to acquire Scotland, but he was no match for the Scots and he lost the battle of Bannockburn. At this time, Isabella and Edward were estranged. Isabella acquired a new circle of loyalists, including Hugh Despenser and a secret lover, Roger Mortimer the earl of March. She fled to France with Mortimer and her son and heir, the future King Edward III.

    She was planning a coup, while her husband was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle. This was where the murky murder took place. Some accounts claim that he was pressed down upon a table by heavy weights until he suffocated. The most notorious account which is still widely believed, was that he was disembowelled by a red hot poker. However the whole sorry affair simply illustrates the gruesome nature of power in medieval England, which we are too inclined to forget.

  • Bitter Fruit

    William Blake represents the united voice of England and the English people. This is an immense accomplishment. It is a rare feat to leave such a memorable and meaningful legacy within a nation that throughout its history has struggled to define itself. England, and its people have sustained numerous attacks from cynics who refuse to believe that the English have a unique identity and culture. Bizarrely, these are the same cynics who have become the greatest champions of Blake’s work. It is strange that they share their admiration with traditionalists, their ideological enemies.

    However both camps are in agreement with Blake’s savage critique of the untrammelled industrialisation of England, and the pernicious effects of it. Anyone with emotional attachments to the English landscape feels the same way. Blake had a great insight into these sentiments. He had an acute awareness of the spirit of place, for him England was sacred. It is extremely unusual for any cultural figure to simultaneously appeal to the counterculture and to the Establishment. Very few figures aside from Blake resonate with two very different audiences.

    However Blake transcended these arbitrary political categories. His convictions were solely spiritual ones. He maintained a profound belief, but his belief system also defied conventional religion. He also understood the universal follies of human nature, once describing anger as a tree growing with poisoned fruit. Other human follies are exposed in his writing. Blake was a visionary, a prophet, a poet and expert draughtsman and engraver. All of his imaginative and creative skills were honed from childhood.

    His inspiration was also derived from the long walks that he took throughout London. He observed everyday life and reflected upon the remarkable and often disturbing scenes that he had witnessed. One morning was especially memorable. Walking through Peckham Rye he experienced a dramatic epiphany. He looked up and saw “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough”. Angels are a perennial theme in his art and in his poetry.

    However his stellar reputation is a relatively recent development. Today he is revered as a seer and a genius, but in his lifetime he was condemned as a lunatic and a dissolute. He was castigated as a disruptive and subversive influence and was shunned by polite society. Consequently he struggled to make a living and lived an austere life. When he died, his friend and fellow artist George Richmond kissed him, closed his friend’s eyes and prayed “to keep the vision in”. The vision has waxed and waned over the centuries, but at the time of his death, his passing was left unacknowledged. He was considered just another obscurity. He was buried in an unmarked grave at the Bunhill Field dissenters graveyard in London.

    However it wasn’t until 2018 that the Blake Society redressed this and paid for a new gravestone. Once more, the timing of this exposes a great paradox. It occurred at the peak of the vicious and vituperative “Brexit wars” when an ideological divide threatened to tear the nation apart. Paradox is at the heart of Blake’s sensibilities, he understood that it was vital in the journey towards moral and spiritual enlightenment,

    “Without Contraries”, he explained, “is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence. Opposition is true friendship”. Unfortunately, such challenging perceptions are too difficult to comprehend in a dying culture.

    The emotional depth rendered in his poetry and art still evades most modern audiences who are more familiar with the shallow and trivial. Blake’s point has been made, a society that is more concerned with material accumulation is essentially a moribund one.

  • The Hunters and the Hunted

    On the 10th September, 1931 the English author Isabel Colegate was born. Her most acclaimed work was her 1980 novel “The Shooting Party”. The narrative focuses on a society event on a grand estate on the eve of the First World War. It captures a place and time that has now vanished, as before the Great War there was a sense of familiarity and order. There were seasons, a pattern and a routine to life on the grand estates. Everyone and everything had a place in a fixed hierarchy.

    On this particular estate, life revolved around the annual shooting party. The quarry were bred and reared to be prey at exactly the same time every year. Every creature played a part, from the lowliest moth to the most magnificent specimen of deer. It ran like clockwork.

    However as the narrative unfolds, it soon becomes apparent that there are vague but palpable signs threatening both the social order and the cycles of nature. The first sign manifests itself in the form of a stranger arriving on the grounds of the estate. He arrives to spread subversive and dangerous ideas, disturbing the sense of peace and harmony. He makes a declaration in words that sound eerily prophetic, stating, “Until we can recognise the universal kinship of all living creatures we shall remain in outer darkness”. The atmosphere is redolent of an outer darkness and it strikes a chord within the reader, who senses that there is an inevitability to the brief existence faced by the animals. The reader accepts, albeit with resignation and sadness that these animals have no rights, and no agency.

    These animals exist as the hunted and their fate is sealed immediately from the point of their conception. They remain a constant and interchangeable feature whose entire destiny is inextricably entwined with the earth that sustains them. Their lives are so short that their fleeting presence seems negligible.

    It is a pattern of life that has a solemn futility to it. The lives of the agricultural workers who toil the land are an exact mirror of the brutal, limited lives of the animals. Nature appears like a cruel mimic, as these desperately poor men eventually succumb to the same meaningless deaths when they are hunted down and killed on imperial battlefields. Their lives are virtually the same, as the author readily admits. She can see the obvious parallels, she expounds upon this theme,

    “The sacrifice now was not of men but of birds, handsome creatures, bred in every luxury a bird could wish for…fed, protected from predators, set loose for a few months of life in what was to be presumed might be a pheasant’s Eden, only to be cast forth by a whole host of rustic angels, bearing not so much flaming swords as sticks and whistles, forced to take to the air reluctantly- heavy birds, a flight of more than a few feet exhausts them-forced up and out to meet a burst of noise and a quick death in that bright air”. However, the ominous words of that stranger come back to haunt the hunters when tragedy strikes.

    A minor member of the party is accidentally shot, and he dies of his injuries. In an instant, he is a martyr. A greater sacrifice of young men ensues when war breaks out. The aftermath of this loss was devastating, not just of youth but tradition, old money and hierarchical society. The diminishing members of the old guard who survived these seismic events were the last remaining witnesses of a vanished world. Their numbers continued to dwindle in the modern era. These changes simply swept everything of value away, Colegate reveals one character’s insights, stating, “Although he felt himself now too old to be able quite to make out what were the assumptions, orthodoxies, hypocrisies even events of the new age, he was certain that they embodied changes for the worse, a sort of mass loss of memory, and the replacement of the common understandings of a civilised society by the destructive egotism of a barbaric one”. Even now, the historic parallels seem strangely similar in our contemporary postmodern society.

  • Memories of Aragorn

    On the 2nd September, 1973 the English academic, poet and novelist J.R.R Tolkien died. He was the renowned author of the “Lord of the Rings” novels and an esteemed professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. He dedicated his entire career to the revival of a once distant and obscure culture, almost buried by modernity.

    One of his main inspirations was the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, who proclaimed, “Hail Earendel, most bright angel!”. This was a devotional composed to an entity which we now understand as Venus, the morning star. When he read this he was so haunted by the power of the words that it summoned in him a deep atavistic longing, “I felt an unconscious thrill,” he said, “as if something had stirred me, half-wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words”. This remote voice from our ancient past reawakened him, and revived his dormant imagination.

    Cynewulf’s verse explored the landscapes of the ancient kingdom of Mercia, a sylvan wilderness situated deep within the heart of England. This region of England is now lost to the realm of myth, aside from a few rural areas. It no longer exists in any meaningful sense as it has been transformed by the untrammelled forces of urbanisation. Tolkien spent his early childhood in Birmingham, in the shadow of Sarehole Mill. He remembered it as a blissful, bucolic existence. This peace and harmony was shattered by the First World War and the almost ceaseless drive towards efficiency and progress.

    The First World War and its aftermath was a watershed moment in our history. It was devastating, not just in terms of the lives that were lost, but also in terms of the tremendous impact that it left upon society. The old aristocracy went into rapid decline due to the loss of heirs, and the increase in taxes on estates. This impacted upon every strata of society, especially those who relied upon aristocratic noblesse oblige. Consequently, new and malign political ideologies were stirring amidst an increasingly discontented and insecure populace.

    This barren and austere world provided the inspiration for “Lord of the Rings”. He depicts the old Anglo-Saxon world as a paradise threatened by the forces of evil. This evil was personified by Sauron, the Dark Monarch who reigned over a nihilistic kingdom called Mordor. This was a military-industrial complex replete with black furnaces, munitions factories and slag heaps.

    Tolkien was a veteran of the Battle of the Somme and had witnessed death and destruction first hand. He saw how the destruction of human life and the natural world was simply pitiless and senseless. He imagined an alternate world, and a more benevolent ruler, the polar opposite of Mordor. This was Aragorn, the exiled King who was due to return to deliver his people from the yoke of Sauron. These tales are rich in religious symbolism, and correlate strongly with the author’s Roman Catholic faith.

    The Biblical allusions were deliberate and were encouraged by his friend and Oxford contemporary C.S Lewis. Both became convinced that modernity, and modern literature in particular was devoid of purpose, and essentially moribund. They both realised that the ancient world provided a fertile ground of inspiration and also contained vital moral lessons for future generations. Lewis was definite in his assertion that re-imagining this long forgotten world was necessary for those who “wish to visit strange regions in search of such beauty, awe or terror as the actual world does not supply”. Lewis maintained his own Christian beliefs, and were the source of his literary inspirations.

    Clearly, the philosophies that dominated the modern, secular world have not delivered humankind out of its own misery. In fact they have compounded it. A society that prioritises economic and scientific progression and growth is essentially lost. The decline of spirituality has corresponded with a decline in empathy and humanity. In this mindless and futile quest to achieve perfection on Earth we have simply become less human. Our ancestors had much more profound connections, and thanks to the tireless work of poets, scholars and authors like Tolkien we have learned so many valuable insights.