Tales of my London Trip: Part II

Tweet Yesterday I posted part one of my write-up of my recent London trip, talking about Saturday 16 March, and the entry was getting a bit long so I decided to split it in two and put the events of Sunday 17th into a separate entry.

Sunday saw us check out of our hotel and take a trip along the District line back to old London to visit the Tower, one of the five Historic Royal Palaces in the city. I'd been to the Tower a couple of times before, the last time about four years ago, but Gemz had never been and wanted to see the Crown Jewels. As you can see, I wasn't particularly impressed by the damp and drizzly weather, and I was just glad I'd taken my raincoat with me! I think I had hoped that the poor weather might put people off venturing out of doors, but the Tower was really busy, and the continual rain meant that all of the indoor attractions were rather full. The Jewel House in particular was very busy, although I can't help thinking the mammoth steel doors are a better indication of royal might than the impressive range of royal plate and jewelled ephemera on display. It's a good job they have a moving walkway in front of the crowns, otherwise you'd never be able to get anywhere near them!

The Tower of London was founded in the latter half of 1066 after the Norman Conquest of Britain, and only Tower Hill separates it from the eastern boundary of the City of London. It's been used as both a royal palace and a prison, not to mention a symbol of royal power, and various monarchs have added different towers and functions. It used to house the Royal Mint and the treasury, as well as a Menagerie, and currently houses the Crown Jewels in the Jewel House, as well as the Royal Armouries in the White Tower. It also houses seven ravens, due to the legend that says if the ravens leave, the Tower will fall.

The Royal Armouries in the White Tower contain both the weaponry belonging to individual monarchs, such as Charles I's suit of armour and an articulated suit of armour for the thirteen year old Edward VI, as well as those weapons etc. that have been donated as gifts over the years. For example, they have a suit of samurai armour dating back to 1610. We came across this particular display, where a range of weapons and other items, were turned into a gigantic dragon. It was rather steampunk in its own way, and I couldn't not take a photo. I've been trying to find it online to see if there's a particular reason for its being there, but I can't find anything, so I don't know if it signifies anything, or a curator just got bored and wanted to do something a bit different with one of the displays.

One of the displays is of weapons as art, and I couldn't not take this photo! Apparently the legendary US gunsmiths Smith & Wesson donated this revolver to the Royal Armouries in 1989. The Trustees of the Armouries commissioned Tiffany & Co. to decorate it as part of their policy to commission and collect fine craftsmanship. The decoration features leaves representing five different woods used in gun-making. They did also have a couple of other guns but they were a bit too 'bling' for my liking.

This is me faffing about outside the White Tower, pointing at a rather large cannon. I pinched this from Gemz, which is why I've tagged it with her web address instead of mine. (Give her website a look if you need to employ a web ninja!) As you can see, I have no problem with posing like an idiot in photographs, especially where heavy weaponry is involved. I think the rain had briefly stopped by this point, but the day was still somewhat dull and overcast. Still, we're Northerners so we're used to crap weather. All I can say is at least it wasn't snowing!

One of the strange things about the Tower is the fact it was once this imposing symbol of royal power, and it's now been dwarfed by the rest of modern London, now nothing more than a tourist attraction on the banks of the Thames. I took this photo from beside the south east corner of the White Tower, looking across the inner ward towards the Shard on the southern side of the Thames. The little black dot on the lawn to the right of the tree is one of the Tower's famous ravens, having a bit of a wander. While inside any of the buildings, you really do get a sense of the age and history of the place, but the second you get outside, the skyline is dominated by the hideous glass monuments to commerce that seem to have sprung up all over London. I suppose it's one of the signs of modern life, and perhaps I'm just too much of a traditionalist, but I really do prefer the 'historic' parts of London, as opposed to those glittering modern areas.

All over the Tower they now have these wire sculptures of various animals by Kendra Haste - we spotted lions, an elephant, a polar bear, a leopard and monkeys, all testament to the Menagerie that the Tower had between 1251 and 1835. No one actually knows where the Menagerie was kept, although the lions were kept, somewhat unsurprisingly, in the Lion Tower. The Menagerie was originally for the benefit of the monarch, and visiting royalty often gifted animals to join the Menagerie, but it was opened to the public in the seventeenth century. It was moved out to a site in Regent's Park in the nineteenth century, where it became London Zoo.

After the Tower, we crossed Tower Bridge, and took a walk along the South Bank towards the Tate Modern, passing Southwark Cathedral, Borough Market, and this, the Golden Hinde II in Pickford's Wharf. It's a replica of Sir Francis Drake's famous vessel, and while I've been on the original in Brixham, I've never been on the replica. It's something of a favourite for children's pirate themed parties (well Drake was a privateer, which is pretty much a polite way of saying he was a State-sponsored pirate) and there was one going on as we went past.

From there it was on to the Tate Modern, which is not one of my favourite art galleries due to my general aversion to modern art, but it's always worth a look. We'd wanted to see the Lichtenstein exhibition but so did the world and his wife so we ended up having to give it a miss due to the time difference between the time we were there, and the next available time for entry. We had a look around the other galleries, and I was somewhat disappointed to see that their collection of Pop Art has gone, as has their collection of Soviet political posters (I can only assume they're on loan to another gallery elsewhere). Obviously you're not really supposed to take photos, but I did take a photo of this particular piece of art. Well, it's a mirror, so I'm not sure how an artist could really claim that a mirror is art, but I don't really want to get into debates around found art, or other philosophical considerations. Plus, as the subject of the photo is me, I can claim copyright :-p

Here's me posing with an example of knitting in the Tate Modern, so really, if it's in an art gallery then it must be art...right? I've been campaigning for knitting to be considered art for a while! This is an example of tubular knitting, done on double pointed needles, and I think this one was done using nylon. That would absolutely wreck your fingers, but it certainly looks good It's actually Untitled by Marisa Merz, from 1969, and is in the Energy and Process gallery. I think knitting IS an art but it is also a process, and a very valuable one, so it was nice to come across something representative of my hobby in an art gallery.

Here's the view of the Millennium Bridge from the viewing platform of the Tate Modern. Obviously that's the extremely distinctive dome of St Paul's Cathedral that you can see beyond all of the other buildings. The London skyline never fails to amaze me - Newcastle's is naturally somewhat smaller, and given our city centre stretches up a hill from the Quayside, our skyline is a bit more 'staggered', whereas the flat expanse of London gives you a good idea of its scale. I do quite like the Millennium Bridge, and if you've seen the Harry Potter films, you should recognise it.

You are now entering the City of London...here be dragons! One of the weird things about London is that it's actually two cities for the price of one. The City is the square mile (well, 1.12 square miles) in the east that contains the likes of the Bank of England and Guildhall, and the area around it is Greater London. Boris Johnson might be Mayor of London, but the City has its own, the Lord Mayor of London, who holds office for a year. The City is pretty much the site of Londinium, and is therefore the oldest part of town, and the London Wall used to originally mark its boundaries. There are only fragments of it left, making it pretty useless as a wall, and I love the fact that they now use silver dragon statues to mark its boundaries. The dragons also appear on the City of London Corporation's crest, and some people think they refer to the legend of St George. This particular dragon marks the boundary between the City of London and the City of Westminster, and stands outside Temple Bar.

We walked along Aldwych from here to reach Somerset House, the palatial building on the north bank of the Thames where they now hold London Fashion Week. I'd only ever been in the courtyard before, and it's home to various gallery spaces, as well as the Courtauld Institute and part of King's College. Other royal palaces have stood on the site for centuries, but the present Somerset House was built in the late 1700s/early 1800s as a public building for organisations such as the Admiralty. It was even the home of the Inland Revenue until a couple of years ago.

This was one of the exhibitions that was on, the Wool House expo for the Campaign of Wool. Considering Gemz and I are both very keen knitters (and I've recently taken up crochet), we couldn't very well not have a look around, especially since it was almost finished as an exhibition (it actually finished on Sunday). The Campaign for Wool has HRH The Prince of Wales as a patron, and it's a global community of sheep farmers, retailers, designers, manufacturers and wool users who want to educate people about the benefits and versatility of wool. There's a real push to make the wool industry big again to help those small businesses and local farmers that depend on it. Wool House was the world's biggest celebration of wool, and contained all sorts of yarn-related delights, from rooms decorated entirely with woollen products, to educational events and workshops. They also had rooms dedicated to wool in the fashion industry, including shoes by Vivienne Westwood that I would kill to own*!  *Not really.

This is one of the rooms on display, and I'm determined that I will one day have a room like this in a house I own, with rustic wooden furniture and plenty of fabric and wool to hand. This is the Natural Room by Josephine Ryan, and she's created a room with naturally coloured yarns, coarse textures and layers. Other rooms in the exhibition featured interiors for modern living rooms, children's nurseries and entrance halls. If wool was a cheaper fabric, I'm sure I'd try and use a lot more of it at home! It was certainly a very inspirational exhibition and had me itching to reach for a ball of yarn and a pair of needles.

The other thing we saw was the Positive View Foundation's exhibition, Landmark: The Fields of Photography. It's on until 28 April and it's FREE so if you're in London and you like photography, I really recommend it. It's a huge exhibition, and knocks the stuff at the Tate Modern into a cocked hat. It features work by photographers from all over the world, with the common theme being that of landscape. It's not all digital work, either - some of the photographers have used 19th Century techniques involving plate photography, while others have used drones and satellites to capture their images. The exhibition's curator, William A. Ewing, says that “landscape has been and remains one of the most powerful forms of photography, and is even more so in a world which is changing so fast we can hardly keep up" and you get the feeling that the only way you'll be able to see a lot of these landscapes is through exhibitions like this, because the landscapes are either totally inaccessible, or on the brink of destruction.

It was a really busy and tiring weekend, but I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of history and culture, and I came back with a lot of ideas marinading in the back of my mind...

Tales of my London Trip: Part I

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It's taken me a while, but I've finally gotten around to sorting out my photographs from my trip to London last weekend. I wanted to celebrate my birthday but I prefer weekends away to nights out, and there was an exhibition I wanted to see at the Museum of London, so the destination choice was fairly obvious...

Gemz and I travelled down on Friday, and we were staying in the Gloucester Road Holiday Inn. How's this for a creepy corridor? I put the photo on Instagram and a lot of people had visions of the Overlook. We were also amused by a 'what to do in an emergency' sign that included the line 'Do not panic'. Well that's us told, isn't it? What made the corridor especially weird was how low the ceiling is - I'm only 5ft 6ins and even I felt like I was having to duck.

Anyway. The whole reason I'd wanted to go down was for the Doctors, Dissectionists and Resurrection Men exhibition at the Museum of London up in Barbican. (We couldn't take photos in the exhibition so Gemz took this photo of the sign in the entrance). It was a fascinating exhibition, split into three areas. Bodysnatching came first, along with the tale of London's own bodysnatchers, known as Burkers (named after Burke and Hare). The bodysnatchers operated in the years prior to 1832, when bodies for anatomy lectures were scarce and difficult to come by through legal means. The next part of the exhibition was dedicated to the doctors, followed by the art of dissection. It was an interesting exhibition, featuring skeletons uncovered during excavations at the Royal Hospital in Whitechapel, and it left you aghast at the practice at bodysnatching, but aware that without such sordid acts, medical science might not have advanced the way that it did.

The Museum of London is a fascinating place to visit, telling the story of the city from its prehistoric origins, through its occupation by the Romans, and then through the Plague, the Great Fire, the War, and on into the Sixties and Seventies. There isn't much evidence of London's medieval past, let alone anything earlier, and much of their Jacobean architecture has even been demolished, but the museum does afford a good view of a section of London Wall, part of the defence wall built by the Romans to protect Londinium. Apparently the wall dates to the late second or early third century, between 190 and 225 AD.

Next up was the Science Museum, where I wanted to see an exhibition on alchemy (as you do). We also visited Google's Web Lab, where they were running various experiments where visitors could try out things in the exhibition, and other experiments were controlled by online users. It was predictably busy, and half of those experiments available for use within the museum seemed to be out of order, though I'm not surprised having seen the way a lot of people were just hammering on the machines with no idea of what they were supposed to be doing. The Science Museum isn't my favourite of all of the museums in London but they do have some pretty cool stuff, and considering it's free entry, it's always worth a visit.

On Saturday night we headed off to the Bank of England to do a ghost walk around the alleyways of the City of London. The photo on the left is the plaza outside the Royal Exchange. I used to work on the edge of the City, and the pub where I DJed is on Cannon Street, just along from the Bank of England, and I've always found the City to be a fascinating place. It's pretty much deserted after about 7pm, and it's surprisingly quiet on a weekend, and it's a place where the old brushes up against the new within the confines of the medieval City.

Our guide led us down Birchin Lane and into Birchin Court, where we saw the alleged sight of Ebenezer Scrooge's counting house in A Christmas Carol. The streets in this area are very narrow, running between tall buildings and giving you a sense of what our fair capital must have looked like in Dickens' day...albeit without as much sewage and filth in the gutter. So many tiny pubs and other gems are tucked away down these alleys and in these back streets, and it often makes me wonder how people come across them, unless it's by accident. If that's the case, what else could you accidentally stumble across?

We ended up in Fredericks Place, off Old Jewry, which was the site of a story about the Cripplegate Ghost. According to our guide, Alice Gilliford was living in this court when she died, and she was laid out for burial in her wedding dress, wearing her wedding ring. The sexton of the church decided to make off with the ring before she was buried...except the wife came to life just as he dug his knife into her finger. It turns out the woman was narcoleptic and was not dead, merely in a death-like coma, and the pain brought her round. She fled home through the streets carrying the lantern discarded by the terrified sexton, and became known as the Cripplegate Ghost even in her lifetime. She lived many more years and even had four more children before she finally passed away.

The walk also took in Guildhall, a fabulous building on Gresham Street that is the home of the City of London Corporation. Built in the fifteenth century, it's one of the few remnants of medieval London, and it's now a Grade I listed building - it's the only stone built building not owned by the Church to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666. Lady Jane Grey, the famed Nine Days Queen, was tried here for treason in 1553. The façade is beautiful enough on its own but what is perhaps more interesting is the fact that Guildhall stands on the site of Londinium's Roman ampitheatre. You can see the remains of the eastern approach to the arena if you descend into the basement below Guildhall Art Gallery, something I did a couple of years ago when I was in the area. Coming from the north east where we have Roman ruins aplenty, I'm never particularly phased by seeing them elsewhere, but I have to admit, seeing part of an amphitheatre is still rather impressive! Thing is, the area still feels thick with something, as those who fought and died in the arena haven't quite managed to pass on. It's definitely a very weird place, and the combination of a fairytale frontage and a Roman amphitheatre make Guildhall a great place to visit.

After the tour, we took a walk across to Leadenhall Market on Gracechurch Street. The market site dates back to the 14th century, providing another link to London's medieval past, and was originally a game, poultry and meat market. Now it sells all sorts and is even home to aPizza Express and Ben's Cookies. The current design dates to 1881,  and has appeared as Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, and was also used in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. It was restored in 1991 and is now a Grade II listed building. I've been in before, a few years ago at Christmas, but the only time I think you can really appreciate it is actually at night when it's deserted.

Here's me posing by one of the pillars. I absolutely love Leadenhall Market, and I've got a bit of a thing about covered markets. They're just such a good idea, and the fact that they're covered gives them a feeling of permanence denied to regular markets. We used to have two covered markets in Newcastle, but the Green Market was turned into an extension for the main shopping centre, leaving just the Grainger Market, which has seen something of a regeneration in recent years. Places like Leadenhall Market become tourist attractions, not to mention fashionable, and it's an easy way to preserve little slices of history.

After Leadenhall Market we took a ride in the lift up to the roof of One New Change, the shopping and restaurant complex beside St Paul's Cathedral. Our ghost walk guide told us that one of the planning conditions for the complex was a viewing area, so they decided to use the roof, giving you amazing views of the Cathedral, and across the river to the likes of the Shard. I absolutely love St Paul's, designed by Christopher Wren after the previous cathedral was gutted during the Fire. Due to the cost of entry, I've never actually been in, but one of the days, I will have a look inside. Anyway, it was dark and very windy when we went up onto the roof of One New Change, and it was also raining, but I'm sure the view is astounding on a clear day.

The hour was growing late and the weather increasingly wild so we headed back to west London, and a truly horrendous late night trip to Tesco Express. If the zombie apocalypse had broken out, I don't think we would have noticed the difference.

I'll post the photos and write-up of our Sunday activities tomorrow...

[Guest Post] Beth Trissel on Research

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I'm pleased to be able to welcome author Beth Trissel to the Blunt Pencil today! Beth caught my attention with her fascinating posts about herbal lore over on her blog, One Writer's Way, and I've asked her to talk about the importance of research. Over to you, Beth!

Passion for the past and research into those who’ve gone before me is the underlying inspiration for all my work, as is the beautiful Shenandoah Valley where I live. My Scots-Irish ancestors were among the earliest settlers here. Did you know Virginia has more ghost stories than any other state? Not necessarily because we have a more fertile imagination, but sadly because the Old Dominion has seen more bloody battles over the centuries than any other. Think back, Jamestown (founded 1607) was the site of the oldest successful English settlement and its history is a violent one. And on we go to the many heart-rending wars fought with the usurped Indians, a number of them waged on Virginia soil.

March on to the Revolution; anyone heard of Yorktown, to name just one famous battle? And let’s not forget that horrific most uncivil of wars, much of it fought in, you guessed it, Virginia. And yet, this multitude of hauntings doesn’t only feature soldiers caught in an endless fray who haven’t gotten word the war’s over, although there are legions of tales that do, and entire companies of ghosts are said to battle on. Many tales feature the myriad of people, great and small, who dwelt in our richly historic state.

The old Virginia homes and plantations have accumulated a wealth of such stories. Thus, it was while touring some of these English styled manor homes with my dear mother and doing research for my historicals that I conceived the idea for my paranormal romance, Somewhere My Love. Added to this meld of vintage Virginia is my own heritage, a vast source of inspiration from my childhood. On my father’s side, I descend from old Southern gentry, now impoverished after the Civil War, Great Depression, and various other misfortunes, including the untimely death of my brilliant grandfather. But the gracious Georgian home his ancestor built (circa 1816) still stands outside the historic town of Staunton.

Ever determined the family home place was haunted, I wove stories through my fevered mind, along with my continual search for Narnia which entailed frequent treks into the old wardrobe. This house is also the primary inspiration behind my recent light paranormal romance, Somewhere the Bells Ring. But I digress. Frequently. The magnificent ancestral portraits in my family and on display in other Virginia homes held me transfixed, wondering. And it was just such a portrait of a striking dark-haired gentleman who embedded himself in my thoughts. Who was he? Why did he die so young? That other painting of the fair young lady…did she love him?

Often, the guides at these old homes are brimming with tales. But other times we are left to wonder…and ask ourselves are these folk who’ve gone before us truly gone, or do some still have unfinished business in this realm? And what of the young lovers whose time was tragically cut short, do they somehow find a way? Love conquers all, and so I answer ‘yes.’

My love of herbal lore also played a prominent role in the story, as did Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Talk about research...whewwww....

*The outstanding homes behind my inspiration for Somewhere My Love:

Berkeley Plantation (well worth a visit)

Shirley Plantation (well worth a visit)

Family home place (Not open to the public)

“As I read Somewhere My Love, I recalled the feelings I experienced the first time I read Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca long ago. Using deliciously eerie elements similar to that gothic romance, Beth Trissel has captured the haunting dangers, thrilling suspense and innocent passions that evoke the same tingly anticipation and heartfelt romance I so enjoyed then, and still do now.” ~ Joysann, Publisher’s Weekly

Light paranormal romance Somewhere My Love is available in print and/or eBook at Amazon Kindle, The Wild Rose Press, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
 
Beth's blog, One Writer's Way.
Beth on Facebook.
Beth on Twitter.
Beth on Goodreads.

Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition

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By now, everyone knows the story of the Titanic. It has been the subject of countless novels, films, documentaries and books, and has captured the public imagination ever since it sank on April 15, 1912, claiming more than 1,500 lives.

It's no surprise that a new exhibition would be staged at The O2 in London, but Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition, is a little different. Running from November 5 2010 until May 1 2011, it features over 300 items from the ship on display, including china dinner services, the ship's wheel, porthole frames, and objects belonging to the passengers themselves. The exhibition also features recreations of parts of the ship, including first class cabins, the boiler room and the hold. I went along on Friday 12 November 2010 to try to better understand one of the most famous maritime disasters.

Upon entry, you're handed a boarding pass giving details of a passenger, including their age, the reason for their trip, and which class they were in. At the end of the exhibition, a "memorial wall" allows you to discover if 'your' passenger survived, or was lost. Naturally the survivors' list is somewhat shorter, and the plethora of names of lost souls hammers home the scale of the tragedy.

My own passenger, Annie Clemmer Funk, was a 38-year-old from Bally, Pennsylvania. She was travelling in second class to be at the bedside of her sick mother, after working in India as a missionary. Sadly, Annie didn't survive. She gave up her seat in the lifeboat to a mother whose children had already been seated. When faced with such tales of selflessness, you do wonder how you would behave in the same situation. Could you give up your seat to allow a mother to stay with her children, knowing that doing so would seal your fate?

The exhibition is staged chronologically, and begins with the initial design of Titanic in 1907. Visitors move through the exhibition to see recreations of the ship's interior, and display cases of artefacts retrieved from the ocean floor. It's rather poignant, as well as a little eerie, to look at these handkerchiefs, stockings and notebooks, knowing their owners are never going to use them again. One passenger was a perfumier  and some of his perfume samples survived - you can even smell the potent aromas. The galleries grow colder and darker until you reach the iceberg wall, which gives you some idea of how cold the sea was on the night of the disaster. Most casualties died of hypothermia, as opposed to drowning.

Naturally, the exhibition tells the story of the people on board as well as the facts regarding its doomed voyage. You hear about pursers who hurriedly tried to save the contents of the ship's safety deposit boxes, with the intention of returning the valuables to their owners. There are the five mail clerks who desperately tried to save the hundreds of bags of mail on board. It's genuinely humbling to hear about the lengths these people went to, continuing to do their jobs in the middle of a disaster. I doubt workers today would display such dogged devotion, though all stories pale into insignificance alongside the band who continued to play as the ship went down.

The exhibition also tells the stories of those passengers who weren't even supposed to be on board. Some passengers booked tickets at the last moment when their plans changed, while others were transferred to the Titanic when the coal strike of 1912 prevented the departure of their own steamers. Few of these survived. Is this just simply bad luck, or does it raise more metaphysical considerations of fate?

Essentially the exhibition is a story of a great tragedy caused by human folly, but one coloured with great courage and sacrifice. As tragedies such as this, or the Great War, disappear into the mists of time it is easy to forget the people who suffered, or were lost. However I think it is important for us to remember, both to keep us in touch with humanity and those who have gone before us, but also so that we do not make the same mistakes again. Sadly history has shown that mankind and his warfare are not to be easily parted, but in the case of the Titanic, at least important lessons were learned. For that, at least, we can be grateful.

Friday Flash - The Hidden

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“This sorry specimen came to us late last month. Her husband brought her. The poor fellow was simply beside himself with worry. He is much improved now that he is confident in the knowledge that she is in our care.”

The warden gestured to the woman behind the bars. A tattered shawl hung around her thin shoulders. A brown mouse sat in the palm of her right hand, nibbling a crumb of bread. The visitors chose not to see the cracks in the wall, or the lack of glass in the window. They did not smell the fouled straw matting on the floor. They did not hear the drip of water in the corner.

“What is her condition?” asked the visitor. He adopted a suitable expression of concern, although his wife looked terrified by the mouse.

“I believe her to be simply melancholic, but the Physician believes her to be delusional. Her paranoia is at an advanced stage, although she is a quiet patient and keeps to herself,” replied the warden.

“What form do her delusions take?” asked the visitor’s wife.

“She calls herself Ann Crook, and believes herself to be the future Queen of England. She denounced her husband when he admitted her, telling us that he was a member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Her real husband, so she claims, is Prince Albert Victor,” replied the warden.

“How astonishing!” said the visitor.

“And there is no basis in her claims?” asked his wife.

“We believe not, although she is lucid when she tries to explain. Indeed, one might have trouble believing her to be insane, although the Physician has made this diagnosis, and he is never wrong,” said the warden.

“On what basis did he make his diagnosis?” asked the visitor.

“She ranted and she raved on admittance. She demanded to speak with her husband, and then the police, and she even called for a newspaper man. She has calmed since those early days.”

“Is it safe to speak with her?” asked the visitor’s wife.

“Good Lord, Marian - why ever would you want to do that?” asked the visitor.

“Curiosity, William,” replied his wife.

“She is entirely safe to converse with. I shall call her,” said the warden.

“No need, warden. I can ’ear all you say from ’ere,” said the woman. She looked up from the mouse’s antics.

“Pray tell me, madam. What is your name?” asked the visitor’s wife.

“Ann Crook, but everyone ‘ere calls me Louisa Smith,” replied the woman.

“Are you really the wife of a prince?” asked the wife.

“If I say yes, then I’m a lunatic, and I live in this ‘ell. If I say no, then I’m a liar, and I damn myself to ‘ell,” replied the woman. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll keep quiet.”

“Why would the Prince have you deposited here?” asked the wife.

“I dunno about you but I don’t think a Prince would abandon his wife. His mother, on the other ‘and...well if she’s a cold, uncaring sort who’s only interested in the future of her bleedin’ Empire...then she might well ‘ave somethin’ to do with it,” replied the woman. “She can’t ‘ave her son producing an ‘eir with a Catholic, now, can she?”

“You’re a Catholic?” asked the visitor.

“Not any more, I ain’t. God deserted me when I got dumped in ‘ere. So I deserted ‘im. See how he likes it,” replied the woman.

“Dear me, God does not desert anyone! He loves all of his flock. If you only reach out to him-”

“Pardon my language, my lady, but arses to that,” said the woman.

“Come on now, Louisa. Less of that,” said the warden. He tapped his keys on the bars.

“Or you’ll what? Bleed me? Purge me? Vomit me? The bleedin’ Physician does that!” said the woman.

“Gracious, does he really?” asked the visitor. “I thought such antiquated practices had long been abandoned by the madhouses.”

“I’m in no position to discuss that Physician’s practices, but he’s one of the most brilliant doctors in London. People literally queue to have their unfortunate relations placed under his care in this very hospital,” snapped the warden.

“And they queue up in ‘ere to get back out,” said the woman. “You pay no mind to ‘is blatherin’ on. I’m not the only one who shouldn’t be ‘ere. You stop and think about it - where’s the best place to put someone if you don’t want people to listen to ‘em?”

“William, I think we should be going,” said the wife.

She clutched her husband’s arm. He looked down at her and nodded.

“I really am terribly sorry for your plight, Mrs Smith,” said the visitor.

The warden led them away down the corridor. They didn’t hear the raving of the lunatics upstairs. They didn’t hear the sobbing of the melancholics, locked in their damp cells with only their own neuroses for company.

They didn’t hear the silent plea of an innocent woman.

* * *

This flash was inspired by a book I read about London’s infamous Royal Bethlem Hospital, known as ‘Bedlam’. Written by Paul Chambers, Bedlam: London’s Hospital for the Mad tells several tales of people imprisoned in asylums in the 18th and 19th centuries by relatives eager to get their hands on their wealth, or by people wanting to silence an outspoken individual without resorting to more nefarious means. The conditions, and treatment, described here are all based on documented evidence. The inclusion of Ann Crook is my nod towards Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper epic, From Hell.

The image is from William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, wherein a man falls from grace and ends his days a gibbering wreck in Bedlam.

Icy's Guide to writing Historical Fiction

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Having read the excellent guest post by the equally excellent Carrie Clevenger over at Write Anything about writing historical fiction, I thought I might take the time to sit down, and have a bit of a chat about my own process. Lately I've been basing some flashes on local legends or historical anecdotes, and I've discovered I really enjoy doing so.

Fowlis Westerby
I first began flirting with history when I wrote my first novel, Fowlis Westerby. Fowlis himself is a ghost and therefore free from the restraints of time, but as he is originally a Cavalier, I needed to have some awareness of the English Civil War. Hazy memories of studying the Stuarts at school was clearly not enough, and I've been spending some time researching the period. Madame Blavatsky also makes an appearance, so again I delved into the history books to find out more about this fascinating figure.

Local legends and anecdotes
I've already written a post about the origins of the tale that inspired my flash about the Black Knight, but my most recent flash, The Resurrection Men, and an exclusive flash which will only appear in my forthcoming e-book, a tale named The Charterhouse Bullies, were both inspired by historical events. History can sometimes seem so dry and far removed from us. How can we connect with people and places that are long gone? Personally, I love reading historical non-fiction. Only this week, I've bought a book on Victorian social history, and another on medieval England (research for the third tale from Vertigo City). One of my passions is London history - I might be a Geordie but London is my current home, and I like to know where I'm living. Besides, London has a rich and eccentric history, and it provides ripe fodder for fictional prompts.

It starts
So how do I go about writing it? Well it usually starts with a book. I might be a film student but I do love reading. So there I am, reading about whatever has taken my fancy on that particular day, and something leaps out at me. One of two things now happens. Sometimes a story pops into my head, fully formed, that is designed solely to add a human face to an anecdote or legend. The rest of the time, the seed of an idea drops into the top soil of my mind, and I have to do a little gardening to get it to grow. By gardening, I obviously mean research, but you knew that, didn't you? Of course you did.

Research
When I say research, what is the first thing that pops into your head? If you thought, "Wikipedia", then get out of my classroom now, and don't come back until you've written "Encyclopaedia Britannica" 800 times. Wikipedia CAN be a useful source of information, but, like most things on the Internet, it is written and edited by ANYONE. Take what you find on it with a hearty dose of salt - much of it is written by experts for other experts but that won't stop some bored jackass changing the details.

Books
Instead, go to a library. Bloggers might be predicting the death of publishing but real books still exist, and they still contain an absolute wealth of knowledge. Read all you can about your chosen topic - accept what feels right, discard what doesn't. Remember that these will be mostly secondary sources and their primary sources might not be the most reliable. Even if you find primary sources, consider their original purpose and remember that they might be biased, and if they're memoirs, remember that people won't always tell you the whole story, and even if they do, the human memory is not infallible.

Media
If your historical period is after the mid-1800s, seek out photographs. Yes, some early photographs were faked, or fake merely in the sense that they are highly posed, but they'll still give you a greater clue to details, ambience and basic setting than any amount of description in a book. Photographs act as wonderful prompts anyway, but old photographs do so in a completely different way. Why not use old family photographs to write the invented histories of your ancestors? Experience media from the period in whatever way you can - Carrie also recommends listening to music from the period, but movies are also a good example. Yes, they may be sanitised, romanticised, or simply from one point of view, but what they DON'T contain often tells you more than what they DO. You can also check out paintings, engravings, or even tapestries. If you've got a local fashion or textiles museum, pay a visit - costume can tell you a lot about social convention or mobility.

Locations
If it's possible, visit locations. I write a lot in London so obviously I can pop out and see the places. Many of them no longer exist, but while the street or building itself has long since gone, there will no doubt be somewhere similar nearby. There is enough of London's strange atmosphere to soak up that I can get by on what I absorb simply walking around.

Eyewitnesses
If your piece occurs within living memory, then talk to people who were there. Again, be wary of rose-tinted spectacles or skewed memories, but you can still get plenty of details from a conversation with someone who experienced a period firsthand that you'd never get from a book. If it doesn't occur within living memory, then try and track down oral histories. There are several that deal with the Victorian period due to the sudden interest taken in the lower orders. The documentation is mind-boggling.

Immerse yourself and put it all together
Hopefully, if you immerse yourself in a period for long enough, you'll feel that little 'click' when it all comes together. Your idea will be rooted in a sense of 'reality' and your research will help bring a past time to life. This reality will breathe life into characters and places that are long gone - and hopefully you'll have a better sense of where you come from, and what has gone before. Go forth on your historical quest - and good luck.

Inspired by Bunhill Fields

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Like most writers, I lead something of a double life. Evenings, weekends and stolen moments are spent writing; either creating something new, or editing something that I've already written. But by day, I work in an office just on the edge of the City of London. The back of the office overlooks Bunhill Fields, one of the few inner city burial grounds that hasn't disappeared under an office block or housing.

Bunhill Fields has been an area associated wth death since the seventeenth century, when it was set aside for those bodies that couldn't fit into other churchyards. Naturally the plague that swept London in 1665 decimated the population, and caused an explosion in cemetery overcrowding. It was eventually converted into a graveyard for dissenters, which was extended to include anyone who practiced a religion outside of the Church of England.

Bunhill Fields was closed in January 1854, although the City took it over in 1867 and reopened it as an inner city 'green space'. These days, half of the area is a park, home to squirrels and other wildlife, and the rest is the cemetery. Iron railings serve to keep the graves separate from the open space. William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan are all buried here, along with approximately 120,000 other people.

It's a lovely space, and a quiet place to have your lunch when the weather's fine. I decided to have my sandwiches there yesterday, and my only company was an inquisitive squirrel and a lone magpie. Being the recluse that I am, this is my idea of bliss. People might think eating your lunch by yourself in a graveyard is a bit morbid, but a) I never pretended to be a cheerful, sunny sort of person, and b) I envy the peace and quiet of those that dwell in eternal slumber.

It's sometimes easy to forget that everywhere you walk in London, you're treading a line through the city's past. The living and the dead jostle for space in the capital. Hell, the area around Bunhill Fields used to be used for plague pits - my office probably sits on one (though I'm hoping the Yersinia pestis bacterium is dead by now). How many lives surround us? The whole of history is exactly that - a story. At any given moment, I'm surrounded by hundreds of thousands of stories; some of them are old, some of them continue right now, and some of them have been forgotten. I'm part of some of them. I even tell them.

I'm off out to have lunch with my new friends. Maybe they'll tell me some stories...

Literary Remixes

Tweet The tendency towards remakes and sequels has been present in cinema for decades now, but for a long time it seemed that literature stood apart. A book was an individual creation by an author/genius, and was therefore sacrosanct. They could be adapted for performance in the theatre, or on screen, but it was rare for other authors to continue the story, or to retell it altogether. However, this seems to have changed over recent years, with more authors 'retelling' classic fairytales, or taking inspiration from earlier works.

There have already been plenty of novels released that either continue the story after the final page of classics such as Mansfield Park, or that tell the story of an alternative character (see the series of 'Diary' novels for Jane Austen's heroes), but now a new literary 'remix' trend seems to have exploded out of leftfield. Horror is being injected into the works of Austen - we've already had Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters and Mr Darcy, Vampyre, with Vampire Darcy's Hunger: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation due in December. Exactly what has prompted this trend? Personally, I can't help thinking that a great deal of it relates to the publishing world's grudging acceptance that women do read horror, and they enjoy it. They also enjoy romance and the classics, so...why not combine the two?

However, I cannot work out whether this trend either devalues the original classic, or devalues the horror genre as a whole. Horror is a particular genre, defined less by its iconography, themes or typical characters and more by the feeling it provokes in the reader or viewer. It has long been seen as the 'poor man' of both literature and cinema, looked down upon by loftier genres, a sort of 'trash' for a less discerning audience. Therefore on one hand, injecting this 'lowest common denominator' genre into classic novels brings the reputations of these novels into a sort of disrepute. The subtle social commentary or historical value of such works is obliterated by the introduction of zombies, vampires and sea monsters, rendering the (often poorly written) original text almost worthless. However on the other hand, horror is actually a complex means of conveying wider themes as it reflects social anxieties current at the time of its inception, and to ham-fistedly cram it into a classic novel tells the world that actually, horror is a bit of silliness, only good for amusing or entertaining the reader as a new spin is put on a well-known story.

Beyond this, I also can't work out why it seems to only be Jane Austen's work that is so far afflicted. She only wrote six full novels, two of which are in my opinion truly dire (Mansfield Park and Emma, in case you were wondering), and surely there are other authors with a larger oeuvre who would benefit from the introduction of a little silliness in their stories? Charles Dickens is a po-faced bore at the best of times, and I can't help thinking that a scene depicting Pip battling a werewolf Miss Havisham would truly improve the work as a whole.

Still, it's an interesting trend, and with any luck will prove that horror is a viable genre for female readers. I shall be watching with interest...

The image in this post is actually a drawing by me!