This curious building is a raised granary, or 'hórreo', in the northern Spanish town of Avilés, which we recently visited. Among the most characteristic buildings in the region the 'hórreo asturiano' was usually square and built of wood, its most striking feature being that each wooden piece perfectly fits with the next without the need for screws, bolts or clamps.

The 'hórreo' is supported by four characteristic 'pegollos' or pillars made from wood or limestone, and was a safe storehouse providing the Asturian farmer, with an answer to a disagreeable climate by providing a relatively simple solution for protecting the harvest from the region’s characteristically damp weather. This elevated building would hold food for the year, corn for livestock and grain for next year’s crop, keeping it safe from fungi, rodents and bugs. Between each pillar and the wooden base of the granary is a flat circular or square stone called a 'muela' that prevents vermin from getting inside. Today it is common for the supporting pillars to sit on concrete bases.

The Principality of Asturias is thought to have around 20,000 'hórreos' usually sitting next to rural houses across the region. Although the 'hórreo' in Avilés now sits in an urban setting, close to houses, restaurants, bars and other buildings, it would have once been on the outskirts of the town among fields and orchards. The survival of Avilés' 'hórreo' is due to region’s respect for its heritage and a nostalgia for the concept of rural Arcadias.

 

[For the above information I am indebted to my friend, Jose Maria Miranda Boto and this post on 'Barceló Experiences': https://www.barcelo.com/guia-turismo/en/spain/asturias/things-to-do/granaries-asturias/ ]

 

[Photo: David Weeks]

FAMILY UPS AND DOWNS

This truly great movie was released on this day 55-years ago in 1968. Based on a brilliant play/screenplay by James Goldman and played to perfection by a legendary cast of stars and newbies, headed by Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn as King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.

 

The Lion in Winter has the wittiest, most quotable dialogue in any Hollywood movie since All About Eve...

 

Henry: Did the Channel part for you? 

Eleanor: It went flat when I told it to. I didn’t think to ask for more.

 

Eleanor: Henry.

Henry: Madam.

Eleanor:Did you ever love me?

Henry: No.

Eleanor: Good. That will make this pleasanter.

 

Geoffrey (fourth of the five sons of Henry II): I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family.

 

John (youngest sons of King Henry II): Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!
Richard: Let's strike a flint and see.

Eleanor: What family doesn't have its ups and downs?

 

 

The film also has a sumptuous score by John Barry and impeccable art direction, creating an almost suffocating sense of claustrophobia. 

 

I vividly remember my first (of very many) viewings aged 19-years at a London preview in 1968 with my best pal: we were both captivated by the film and dashed out and bought copies of Goldman's play-script which we would regularly read together – in voices that were somewhat extravagant impersonations of the two leads. I'll leave it open to speculation which us guys was most often cast as Queen Eleanor!

A nice story recently posted on the Turner Classics Movie Fan Site relates an anecdote from Anthony Hopkins who made his full-length theatrical movie debut in the film, playing Richard (later the Lionheart). Apparently, Hopkins expressed anxiety about his performance compared to such established names as O'Toole and Hepburn, Hepburn allegedly advised him:

 

'Don't act. Leave that to me; I act all over the place. You don't need to act. You've got a good face, you've got a good voice, you've got a big body. Watch Spencer Tracy, watch the real American actors that never act, they just do it. Just show up and speak the lines.' 

 

Hopkins later regarded this as the best acting advice he had ever been given.

A LITTLE LEARNING

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

 

– Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

 

 [Cartoon: David Low (1891-1963)]

QUEEN BEE

One of the interesting things about Tim Burton's take on Lewis Carroll's Alice is the decision to rename Wonderland's monarch, the Queen of Hearts, as the Red Queen (an identity formerly belonging to the far-less violent ruler of Looking-glass World).

In the process she has acquired a new 'look', as can be seen from this comparison of John Tenniel's original illustration in the first edition of the book, Walt Disney's clearly derivative depiction from his 1951 animated feature and Helena Bonham-Carter as she appears in Burton's film...

As a film aficionado, I couldn't help feeling I had seen a similar-looking queen somewhere before...

The clue was in the name bestowed on the film character, Iracabeth! Where could that have come from but a Humpty Dumpty-type portmanteau-word combining 'irascible' with 'Elizabeth' That's when I realised where I'd previously seen this regal personage - she was none other than Miss Bette Davis as the Virgin Queen in the 1939 film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex...

Don't you think so?

Anyway, it's a good excuse to play you the film's trailer hilariously heavy with hyperbole and laced with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's sumptuous score.

Yep! That's how to tell history!

DISC BREAK

Every now and again I look back over my career and wonder how some surprising thing or other ever happened.

As an example, let me refer you to my involvement, back in 1992, with For All Time, a top-selling single (No. 36 in the UK charts no less!) from Catherine Zeta Jones.

Well, almost, but not quite...

My actual involvement was with the 'B' side of that record, performed by - name dropping again - Sir Anthony Hopkins...

It was some time around the end of the 1980s that I had got myself involved with one of my modern musical heroes: Jeff (War of the Worlds) Wayne as a replacement writer on what had already been a long-running project - a concept album based on the historical (as opposed to the filmic) character, Spartacus.

Like the phenomenally successful War of the Worlds album that had starred Richard Burton, Justin Hayward, Phil Lynott, Julie Covington and David Essex, Spartacus was to be a combination of rock music, songs and the spoken word.

It was an exciting and exasperating project: exciting, because I feel instantly in love with the idea and was thrilled to be writing words that would be scored with Jeff Wayne music and read by Hopkins who was so clearly a latter-day Burton; exasperating, because the process gradually degenerated into a nightmare of endless haggling over interminable re-writes.

It was like working on a Hollywood movie! A page of narration that everyone adored when they first read it on Monday morning became the subject of total hatred by Monday evening. Some sequences were required to be re-written so many times that it became almost impossible to find a new way of saying what had to be said and the narrative began to bend, break and disintegrate into a dust of word ends and punctuation marks...

I wrote the script for whole of the first disc and the conclusion of the second, but when the contract came round for renewal (and fearing for my sanity), I bowed out and left the project. John Spurling valiantly took up the task and completed the second disc and the album was eventually released, to sadly mixed reviews, in 1992.

The finished album featured - in addition to Sir Anthony - Alan King as Spartacus; Catherine Zeta Jones as his woman, Palene; Fish as his fellow gladiator, Crixus the Gaul; and Ladysmith Black Mambazo as the chorus (aka Voices of Spartacus' Army).

My name (and John Spurlings) appear in the accompanying booklet in very small print but I also picked up a shared credit with Jeff W on the 'B' side of that single which had Sir Ant reading my opening narrative entitled 'Animal and Man'.

Here, for your entertainment (or, depending on your view of such things, amusement), are the first two parts of this somewhat ill-fated project...

DR WHO?

Walking down Wimpole Street in London the other week, I noticed - on the wall of the house at No 6 - a plaque to surgeon, Sir Frederick Treves.

Though the plaque does not mention the specific fact, this is the physician who famously took care of Joseph Merrick, the severely deformed individual whose life story was told in David Lynch's 1980 film, The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt as Merrick and Anthony Hopkins as Treves.

As a reminder of this wonderful movie, here's the original trailer...

And the heart-rending scene in which Joseph Merrick displays the human soul within the seeming monster by reciting the 23rd Psalm...

MERRY MAY-KING

I grew up in what was - in my youth - a rural village (now a semi-suburban dormitory of London) where ancient rituals such as the crowning of a May Queen were still observed. As part of the ceremony, held on the village green, the youngsters would dance round the Maypole - a custom that dates back hundreds of years.

So, today, we usher-in the month of May with this wonderful old window...

Click image to enlarge

Showing a Maypole and various merrie-makers, it was once part of Betley Court, an 18th century manor house in the ancient village of Betley, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

The window, which can now be seen in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, is a fine example of enamelled glass and is, possibly, the oldest representation of (possibly) Morris dancers to be found in this country.

Read more of the fascinating the history of the Betley window and the intriguing origins of the figures depicted on the window.

However you celebrate the arrival of May (with or without the involvement of Maypoles and Morris dancing) here, to help get you fully into the mood, is Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere in the 1967 movie version of Lerner and Loewe's musical, Camelot, extolling the lascivious virtues (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms) of 'The Lusty Month of May'...

Image: David Weeks © 2009

By the way, there are many more windows to look at - or through - on my blog Window Gazing.

CROSS AGAIN

Following yesterday's post, Jen wrote to say:

"Thanks for a fascinating Good Friday blog. The reliquary cross is exquisite, yet reminded me of a display of lead crosses in London's Science Museum..."


These crosses are very basic in their design and production: undecorated, with irregular edges and battered surfaces - were not found during the excavation of a London cemetery in shafts suggestive of an institutional system of burial.

Archaeologists Barney Sloane and Bruce Watson concluded that the bodies were most likely prisoners from nearby Newgate Gaol who had died of ‘gaol distemper’, or typhus, in the 1700s.

As no other lead burial crosses of this date have been reported, and documentary evidence is not yet found, Sloane and Watson can only speculate that, since they are clearly made by unskilled hands, the prisoners may have produced them for dying inmates - or themselves...

"Crudely fashioned," writes Jen, "they, too, are representative of faith and belief in what must have been dire times, moving in their simplicity and the mysterious circumstances surrounding them."


Image: Science Museum where you can read more

IF YOU WANT TO GET AHEAD...

Speaking about hatters...

David and I went to a fabulous exhibition recently at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones is a perfect exhibition: packed with fascinating stuff, but not so big and sprawly that you get totally exhausted by walking and looking.

The premise is simple and direct - an exploration of what people have worn on their heads over the years around the world and how those hats - over 300 of them, ranging across many centuries - have inspired modern hatters such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Dior, John Galliano and, of course, Stephen Jones.

And in telling that story, the exhibition inevitably touches on why people wear hats.

"A hat," says Jones, "makes clothing identifiable, dramatic - and, most importantly, Fashion.... It's the cherry on the cake, the dot on the 'i', the exclamation mark, the fashion ficus. Everyone from showgirls to dictators knows that by wearing a hat they will be the centre of attention."


The co-mingling of helmets, fezzes, turbans, Egyptian Anubis-head masks, Doge's caps and plastic Cinderella tiaras for little Disney princesses, alongside all manner of beautiful and bizarre headgear from the roaring twenties via the swinging sixties to the latest and zaniest creations of Mr Jones and Co is fascinating, informative and fun.

The use of materials is only limited by the confines of the milliner's imagination and ingenuity and the hats on show are made of leather, fur, feathers and flowers, baubles, bangles and beads - not to mention twigs, twisted wire, paper, lollipop sticks, shoes (left, courtesy of Dali) and sheets of heat-twisted plastic that end up looking like the wearer has been hit on the back of the head by a bucket of water...


Here's Stephen Jones talking about his career...

There are many surprises: obviously from the extraordinary scope of 'ideas' (a hat designed to look like a jellyfish with trailing tentacles, a little cap based on the London underground sign); but also from opportunity to scrutinize a number of hats that once adorned famous heads - from Queen Victoria's Bonnet and Prince Albert's topper to hats designed by Cecil Beaton for Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn (right) in the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady, a Marlene Dietrich beret and an amazingly exotic concoction worn by Carmen Miranda.

The exhibition also allows the visitor to take a peek into the Aladdin's cave that is the milliner's studio and workshop: a place littered with pins and pencils; tracing paper and cardboard; pots of glue; scissors and shears; blocks for shaping; weird, spiky contraptions for measuring heads and making patterns; sketches; swatches of material; bales of fabric; cascades of ribbons and cornucopias of bells and buttons and bows.

From one such fantastical laboratory, here's a glimpse into the making of a typical (and suitably patriotic) Stephen Jones hat...

So hats off to Mr Jones and the V&A for a diverting exhibition that remains on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 until 31 May; open daily 10.00–17.30, Fridays 21.30.

The exhibition is accompanied by an elegant adornment for every hat-wearer's coffee-table: Hats: An Anthology is a superbly illustrated book offering an intriguing insight into the world of millinery. Drawing on the V&A’s extensive collection of hats, Stephen Jones’s own archive as well as iconic headgear from around the world, the book's various chapters examine the inspiration behind the creation of hats, the history of their construction, the lure of the hat shop and, finally (and I quote), 'the etiquette and occasion of hat wearing for the client'.

So, if you really want to get ahead...

TAGGED AGAIN

Bela of Slap of the Day has tagged me as follows...

Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal/blog along with these instructions. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Tag five other people to do the same.

I'm sure I've been caught with this one before, anyway, this time I grabbed one of the several books that I happen to be simultaneously reading at the moment..

It's entitled Casanova - A Study in Self-Portraiture and is the work of the 19th Century Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig. Here's the relevant passage from page 56...

Instead of wearing sackcloth and ashes, instead of lamenting over a misspent life which is ending in abject poverty and dependence, the toothless old rogue writes with delicious impudence:

"I should regard myself blameworthy if I were rich today. But I have nothing left, I have squandered all my possessions, and that is a great consolation to me."

He has laid up no treasure in heaven, has not refrained from indulging any of his passions out of regard for the dictates of morality or the welfare of his fellows; he has hoarded nothing, either for his own sake or for others'; and from his seventy years nothing is left to him save memories. Even those memories he would not hoard, but, to our good fortune, has squandered them on us. Surely, therefore, we should be the last to complain of his spendthrift ways...

Would we could all be so resignedly philosophic!

I think I've previously tagged several unfortunates with this self-same game, so - this time around - you are all excused! Unless, that is, you are sufficiently sadomasochistic as to do it simply for the hell of it - or simply want to impress us with what you are reading just now!!

GRAVE REMARKS

I quite often visit Southwark Cathedral - it's a little treat I give myself after sitting around for hours in the rheumatology clinic in nearby Guy's Hospital.

A place of Christian devotion for over 1,000 years, Southwark is a beautiful oasis of peace, light and tranquility poised on the banks of the Thames, alongside London Bridge which spans the river from the hustle and bustle of the fruit and vegetable traders of Borough Market and that of the bankers and brokers of the City.

Whenever I'm there I renew my acquaintance with the Once-Great-and-the-Good who are buried here in an aggregation of the most characterful - and colourful - tombs...

There is, for example, the final resting place (well, it's more like a very elaborate, slightly gaudy, canopied bed) of John Gower, the fifteenth century poet and friend of Chaucer with whom he shares - at least amongst literary historians - the distinction of being one of the fathers of English poetry...


But, my favourite tomb (if that doesn't that smack of too much morbidity) is that commemorating the life of...

John Trehearne
Gentleman Portar to King James the First

who died in 1618 and who is depicted alongside Margaret with whom "he lived together man and wife for fifty years" and (below) a collection of children and Very Small People...

Click image to enlarge

The plaque that Mr and Mrs Trehearne are holding is inscribed with a piece of doggerel that is quite clearly not the work of the aforementioned J Gower Esq...

Had Kings a power to lend their Svbject's breath,
Trehearne thov shovld'st not be cast down by Death,
Thy Royal Master still wovld keep thee then.
Bvt length of days are beyond the reach of men,
Nor wealth, nor strength, or great men's love can ease
The wound Death's arrows make, for thov hast these.
In thy King's Covrt good place to thee is given,
Whence thov shalt go Ye King's Covrt in Heaven.

Now, the Trehearne tomb has given me the idea for a new

CAPTION COMPETITION

What I'm inviting you to do is suggest what conversations, comments and observations might be being exchanged by the Trehearnes as they pass yet another day in their getting-on-for-400-year-long sojourn in Southwark...

Click image to enlarge

Submissions via the 'Thoughts' option below.

Closing date 26 October. Usual Terms and Conditions apply!

Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2008

ROMAN GAIETIES

We went to see the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum where an exquisite bust of Hadrian's Greek male lover, Antinous, provided a stunning centerpiece...

Details of Antinous' relationship with Hadrian are sketchy: according to one account Hadrian encountered Antinous when he and his entourage were accompanied him on his many journeys through the empire. A somewhat more romatic version tells how Hadrian (who was, incidentally married to Vibia Sabina, the grand-niece of his predecessor, Trajan) had the empire searched for the most beautiful youth, and chose Antinous.

The circumstances of Antinous' death during an imperial visit to Egypt are also vague: in October 130, according to Hadrian, "Antinous was drowned in the Nilus," but it is not known whether his death was the result of accident, suicide, murder or some kind of religious sacrifice. Whatever the truth, Hadrian was inconsolable and his grief for the loss of his lover and subsequently approved his deification.

Thus are - or were - gods born...

Talking of Roman emperors: overheard by David in the exhibition:

"You know Jane? Well, she's got Marcus Aurelius
in her conservatory..."

Stuffed?

And here's Buttons' (somewhat limited) view of the exhibition.

SEEDS OF SYMBOLISM

There probably isn't a fruit in the world with a more complex symbolic character than the POMEGRANATE.

The pomegranate was brought to the Agean, from Iran in the earliest days of sea travel and exploration.

Today it is found all over Greece - on trees and market stalls and in symbolic representations signifying fertility and good fortune.


The pomegranate - now the source of a popular packaged fruit juice - also features in the Greek myth of Persephone. There are various, slightly differing versions, of the story but here's the basics: Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and carried off to live in the underworld as his wife.

Persephone's mother, Demeter, went into mourning for her lost daughter and being the goddess of the Harvest, everything stopped growing. Anxious to prevent the world from dying, Zeus, the supreme god, ordered Hades to return Persephone.

There was one problem: the Fates had ruled that anyone who took any food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to remain there for eternity. Hades cunningly tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds - in some versions, six or seven seeds - as a result of which she was condemned to spend four months in Hades company every year.

During Persephone's annual vacation in the Underworld - surely the holiday from Hell! - Demeter mourns and the earth ceases to be fertile. Thus the seasons of the year were satisfactorily explained for the benefit of Greek agriculturalists.

The Qur'an instructs that pomegranates are grown in the gardens of paradise; while, in Jewish tradition, the pomegranate symbolizes righteousness since it is alleged to contain 613 seeds, corresponding to the 613 mitzvot (or commandments) of the Torah. Like Persephone's seeds, the actual number found in any one fruit varies considerably - as can be testified by anyone who has brought a pot of them from Marks & Spencer's over-priced, luxury, power-food counter!

Not to be outdone, the early Christians latched onto the pomegranate as a symbol of the fullness of Christ's suffering and resurrection - which inspired many classical painters such as Sandro Botticelli (right) to show the Virgin Mary and/or the Infant Jesus holding a fruit that is bursting open.

Today, in Greece, the Orthodox Church keeps the pomegranate's symbolism alive and shops sell pomegranate knick-knacks such as key-chain fobs. The fruit is also featured in the menus served on the religious feast days as well as at funerals and at weddings where a pomegranate is often broken on the ground.

When visiting a new home it is customary to take, as a first gift, a pomegranate that will be hung up on the wall to express a hope for an abundance of happiness and prosperity.


Goodness! I do hope you appreciate the fact that - even when I'm on holiday - I'm passing on valuable knowledge to my loyal blog-readers!

Images: Pomegranates on Telendos Island, Kalymnos, © Brian Sibley 2008; 'Madonna of the Pomegranate' by Sandro Botticelli (detail), 1487, exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

HISTORY NOW

Just heard on Woman's Hour (Radio 4), during a discussion with a Cambridge historian about the background to Monteverdi's opera The Coronation of Poppea which has, as its central character, the second wife of the Emperor Nero:

"Nero got too much too young - it was a kind of Brittany Spears situation."

Whoever said ancient history was dull?!

COME BACK, RAQUEL!

Little known historical facts learned from 10,000 BC - in descending order of earth-shattering importance...

1) A race of people with plaited pony-tails and gold finger-nail extensions built prototypes for the Egyptian pyramids using woolly mammoths to haul the building blocks.

2) Good prehistoric folk spoke impeccable English; baddies (wearing turbans and riding horses) spoke in subtitles.

3) Cave-people had first-rate dental hygiene and used beard-trimmers with variable settings.

4) 10,000 BC is mammoth bollocks.

If you doubt this newly acquired knowledge, the film opens nationwide today, so you can check for yourself.

If you want to save the cost of a ticket, just take it on trust...

FUTURE GROWTH

Readers may remember my reporting that a 150 year old horse chestnut tree in Amsterdam, which gave hope to young Anne Frank during the time that she and her family were in hiding from the Nazi's, was deemed to be unsafe and had been marked down for the chop until a last-minute stay of execution was granted while tree experts sought ways to save it.


Well, the experts have cogitated and come up with a plan. Reuters reported:

In a statement on Wednesday, city authorities, residents, the Anne Frank museum and conservationists said they had agreed to build a frame around the 150-year-old tree before the end of May.

"That means the tree can stay standing for a minimum of five to 15 years," they said. "A multi-year plan will be drawn up to keep an eye on its condition and safety."

Responsibility for looking after the tree has been assumed by the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation, but the costs will be considerable: €50,000 for the frame required to support the 27-tonne tree and approximately €10,000 a year in maintenance, but as Arnold Heertje, a member of the foundation, said, "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews..."

The news about the fate of this one old tree in a Dutch garden was reported across the globe yesterday by hundreds of newspapers, TV and radio stations from the San Francisco Chronicle via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to the Times of India.

It is, perhaps, a cynical observation, but would that the many thousands of individual infringements and abuses of human freedom that are perpetrated daily - hourly - throughout the world might generate as much universal concern as something which symbolizes freedom...

It also proves that one should be very wary about stuff you buy on eBay!

"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year..."

- Anne Frank

Images: Reuters

WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE!

A court today will be considering an appeal for an injunction against the felling of a tree...

Not any tree, but a horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam that is over a 150 years old and sick to its roots with a fungus infection that is making it unsafe. So, why is anyone anxious to save it?

Quite simply because it stands in the garden of a house in Keizersgracht that is overlooked by the secret annex where a Jewish family by the name of Frank hid from the Nazis for two years during WWII and where the family's youngest daughter, Anne, would write a diary that made her name famous throughout the world...


When we were in Amsterdam, we visited the Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht. I wasn't agile enough to climb the ladder-like stairs into the secret annexe, but it is impossible to be in the building - despite the somewhat sanitized, visitor-friendly feel which is inevitable for a public museum receiving thousands of visitors every day - without feeling the weight of true history: not the great dealings of rulers and dictators or the terrors of the battlefield, but the small, ordinary drama of human history as seen through the eyes of a young and gifted child.

On 18 April 1944
, Anne Frank wrote:

April is glorious, not too hot and not too cold, with occasional light showers. Our chestnut tree is in leaf, and here and there you can already see a few small blossoms.



In a speech given in 1968, Anne's father, Otto Frank, spoke of the thoughts that came to his mind when he read Anne’s diary for the first time:
 "How could I have suspected that it meant so much to Anne to see a patch of blue sky, to observe the gulls during their flight and how important the chestnut tree was to her, as I recall that she never took an interest in nature. But she longed for it during that time when she felt like a caged bird. She only found consolation in thinking about nature..."

As, indeed, she did. On 13 May 1944
, just three months before the family were betrayed and their hiding place was revealed to the Nazis, Anne wrote:

Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.

Now, if the injunction fails, the tree will be felled and a small, some might say insignificant, piece of history will be lost.

There are plans, if it has to fall, to plant a healthy graft from the tree to keep alive the notion of freedom that it represented to Anne and - it could only happen in our modern age - the Anne Frank House Museum has 'planted' a Virtual Tree...

But neither, of course, can ever replace the tree itself...

23 February 1944:


The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.



Image: Peter Dejong/AP Photo

__________________________________________________

Today is Closing Day for entries to our
CAPTION COMPETITION

REMEMBER, REMEMBER...

As with all days of celebration these days, November 5th is no longer exclusively Firework/Bonfire night - the whizzes and bangs have been going on nightly now for the past two weeks and will doubtless continue for a while yet.

But there was a time when tonight would have been the most exciting night of autumn!

Guy Fawkes Night!

"Who-what Night?" you ask...

The night named after the treasonable activities of GUY FAWKES (1570 - 1606), a member of a group of English Roman Catholics who, in 1605, sought to carry out the Gunpowder Plot: a daring and dastardly attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, kill King James I of England and end Protestant rule.


I remember a time when every child knew by heart the rhyme...

Click to enlarge

For anyone who has forgotten, doesn't know or who lives in a country where this day is not the subject of special commemoration, here is all you need to know about it, courtesy of Wikipedia and some of the artists who created so many memorable images for those gems of my '60s childhood, Look and Learn and Treasure (any excuse to mention them again!):

Guy Fawkes (right) was probably placed in charge of executing the Gunpowder Plot because of his military and explosives experience. The plot, masterminded by Robert Catesby, was an attempt by a group of English conspirators to kill King James I of England, his family, and most of the aristocracy by blowing up the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster during the State Opening of Parliament.

The plot itself may have been occasioned by the realization by English Protestant authorities and Roman Catholic recusants that Spain was in far too much debt and was fighting too many wars to assist English Roman Catholics. Any possibility of toleration by the State was removed at the Hampton Court conference in 1604 when James I attacked both extreme Puritans and Catholics.

The plotters realized that no outside help would be forthcoming unless they took action themselves. Fawkes and the other conspirators rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords having first tried to dig a tunnel under the building. This would have proved difficult, because they would have had to dispose of the dirt and debris. By March 1605, they had hidden 1800 pounds (36 barrels, or 800kgs) of gunpowder in the cellar.

A few of the conspirators were concerned, however, about fellow Catholics who would have been present at Parliament during the opening. One of the conspirators wrote a warning letter to Lord Monteagle, who received it on 26 October. The conspirators became aware of the letter the following day, but they resolved to continue the plot after Fawkes had confirmed that nothing had been touched in the cellar.

Lord Monteagle had been made suspicious, however, and the letter was sent to the Secretary of State, who initiated a search of the vaults beneath the House of Lords in the early morning of 5 November. Peter Heywood, a resident of Heywood, Lancashire, was reputedly the man who snatched the torch from Guy Fawkes’s hand as he was about to light the fuse to detonate the gunpowder.

Fawkes was tortured over the next few days, after the King granted special permission to do so. James directed that the torture should be gentle at first, and then more severe. Sir William Wade, Lieutenant of the Tower of London at this time, supervised the torture and obtained Fawkes's confession.

For three or four days Fawkes said nothing, let alone divulge the names of his co-conspirators. Only when he found out that they had proclaimed themselves by appearing in arms did he succumb. The torture only revealed the names of those conspirators who were already dead or whose names were known to the authorities. Some had fled to Dunchurch, Warwickshire, where they were killed or captured.

On 31 January, Fawkes and a number of others implicated in the conspiracy were tried in Westminster Hall. After being found guilty, they were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster and St Paul's Yard, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Fawkes, however, managed to avoid the worst of this execution by jumping from the scaffold where he was supposed to be hanged, breaking his neck before he could be drawn and quartered.

So, now you know (or know a bit of it: corrections and further background are provided by Boll Weavil in the Thoughts/Comments section, below); and that is why, when we were kids, we used to make a 'Guy' (a kind of scarecrow figure to top off our November 5th bonfires) and tout him around the streets begging - in a fashion not unlike today's Trick-or-Treaters!

"A penny for the guy..." we'd cry, any earnings ostensibly intended for the purchase of fireworks, but doubtless often diverted into the purchase of sweets -- or even ciggies!

Anyway, if you haven't already done so and tonight's the night for "Oooo-ing" and "Ahhh-ing" at the sparkle, dazzle, whiz and fizz of Roman Candles, Silver Fountains, Mines of Serpents and Retro-Sky-Rockets --- have fun and take care...


And keep those pets (particularly the elephants) safe indoors!

Images: Portrait of Guy Fawkes: artist not known; Look & Learn and Treasure artwork by Ron Embleton, Clive Uptton, Harold McCready © Look and Learn, 2007