In
this delightful book, Sara Wheeler follows in the footsteps of the great
Russian authors from the “Golden Age” between the defeat of Napoleon and the
end of the 19th century: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and others
less well known in the West. She discusses their lives and works and travels
through Russia visiting the sites where they lived, including the north
Caucasus and remote parts of Siberia; staying in the homes of local people and
chatting to them, to build up a picture of life in Putin’s Russia today. This
is interspersed with anecdotes about the difficulty of learning the Russian
language, and instructions on the correct pronunciations of the writers’ names.
I would unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest
in the subject.
Friday, 6 September 2019
Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Fascism and Nazism
The word "fascist" tends to be used very loosely, and is often applied to the political Right in general. I would like therefore to attempt to explore the salient aspect of Fascism which distinguish it not only from Liberalism and Socialism, but also from traditional Conservatism.
Fascism takes its name from the Fasces, an axe in a bundle of rods carried by the Roman lictors as a symbol of the authority of the magistrates. Fascism as a political movement began in Italy in the aftermath of the First World War, when Italians thought they had been badly let down in the postwar settlement, and there was an economic downturn and political instability. There appeared to be a danger of revolution, on the Russian Bolshevik model. Soon young men (many being ex-soldiers) were being organised into squads called "Fascisti di combattimento"), parading in uniforms of black shirts. Initially they were used as strike-breakers, but soon they began invading towns that were under Socialist control, beating up and expelling the councillors and taking over themselves. The police and the military stood by and did nothing.
Mussolini had been a prominent socialist before the war; the editor of the main socialist newspaper. By now he had his own paper and had switched to become an extreme right-wing nationalist. He did not personally lead any of the Blackshirt outrages, but he provided them with propaganda, encouragement and direction through his journalism. If he had ordered them to halt their violence, it is questionable whether they would have taken any notice. When in autumn 1922 the Blackshirt squads marched on Rome to overthrow the government, Mussolini prudently remained behind in Milan, and only took the train to Rome when the government collapsed without firing a shot and the King summoned him to become Prime Minister. He then allowed the Blackshirts to parade through the capital and burn down the Socialist Party headquarters. When installed in government, Mussolini was initially cautious, and it was only a few years later that, probably under grassroots pressure from the Blackshirts, that he formally abolished Italian democracy and formed a one-party Fascist state. Even then, his dictatorship was comparatively mild by later standards.
Mussolini's success led to a host of imitations, combining the key factors of quasi-military parades, street violence, extreme nationalist rhetoric and hatred of Socialism and Communism. Groups such as the Iron Guard in Romania, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Action Francaise and of course the Nazis in Germany attempted to follow his methods. The British Union of Fascists never made much impact, and were ruthlessly parodied by P. G. Wodehouse in "The Code of the Woosters" in the form of the would-be dictator Roderick Spode and his troop of Blackshorts (the supply of colouerd shirts having been exhausted).
Fascism was not then the generalized term of abuse which we see nowadays. Indeed, Mussolini was admired by many in the Western democracies, on the grounds that he had saved Italy from Bolshevik revolution and restored order (the famous "made the trains run on time" argument). The British and French leaders accepted him as an equal partner and a potential force for stability. Many Conservatives, and Italian Catholics, had grave doubts about Mussolini's character and methods, but were prepared to overcome these doubts because of their much greater fear of revolution from the Left. Despite his earlier left-wing utterances, when in power Mussolini (and later Hitler) was careful not to upset the big businessmen and landowners; and negotiated the establishment of the Vatican City as an independent state by the Lateran Treaty.
It was only in the later 1930s that this changed.
I have always seen Mussolini as essentially having the soul of a tabloid journalist; concerned principally with what would look good in the next day's headlines. So initiatives would be announced, striking pronouncements made and foreign policy adventures started; and if nothing much useful happened, it didn't matter, because soon new promises would be made and the old ones forgotten. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a genuine Facsist ideology behind the headline-grabbing.
The first aspect would have to be not just the acceptance but the glorification of violence. Mussolini proclaimed that fighting was not just a means to an end, but a good thing in itself: it provided an opportunity for the "natural leaders" to come to the fore and separated the weak from the strong, both individually and nationally. He always stated that he wished to prepare the Italian people for war, without ever setting out any definite target or aim for this aggression.
Fascism differed from both classical Liberalism and from Marxism. Take the famous ideals of equality, freedom, justice and human rights, pointing towards a democratic system of government, as first set out by John Locke and summarised by Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence. These have formed the basis of western democratic thought ever since. The Marxists also accept them as ideals; but argue that they cannot be fully achieved under capitalism. Fascism, however, rejects them entirely.
Fascists would begin by denying the notion of equality. Humans, they would say, are not equal. Some are bigger and stronger than others, some are clever than others, some are more fitted to rule than others. Most people, let's face it, are mediocre. To treat everyone as equal is not only unjust, but also stupid. It is both natural and expedient that the strongest and the best should lead. A democratic political system serves only to give power to the mediocre masses. Instead government should be in the hands of the "natural leaders" who have the "will to power" and are strong enough to accept responsibility. This doctrine can be applied to nations and to races as well as to individuals: war leads to the strongest nations dominating the inferior ones and the lesser breeds, as is only right and proper. (Although Mussolini banged on endlessly about the glories of the Roman Empire, there was little specific racism in Italian Fascism, and it was only in the later 1930s, under the influence of Hitler, that he introduced antisemitic laws into Italy). If you wish to some up Fascist ideology in its simplest form; think of the school bully who says to smaller boys, "Get out of my way or I'll hit you!" What Fascism would allow the bully to say is, "I'm bigger than you, and therefore I'm more important than you, and so I have a right to hit you if I want to!"
Hitler began as an imitator of Mussolini, with his brownshirted stormtroopers (S.A.) and campaigns of street violence in Munich. But in November 1923 his attempt to stage a coup there, Mussolini-style, was a complete failure. After he was released from a short prison sentence he realised he would have to adopt more constitutional means to take power; though he never renounced street violence. He came to power in January 1933 by a combination of electoral success, political intrigue and the threat of violence from the S.A. Very few in Germany could have anticipated what would follow.
Hitler would have agreed with all the Fascist principles outlined above, but he had a clearer ideology and more precise aims. He did not identify with the German state (of which he only became a citizen in 1932), but with the German race.
Race was central to his outlook: the superiority of the German race and hence their rightful demand to rule the inferior ones. This especially applied to the Russians and other Slavic races to the east. Hitler's national circumstances were diferent: whereas Italy had been on the winning side in the war, Germany had lost. How could it possibly be that the superior German race had been defeated? Only if Germany had been betrayed by internal enemies; notably, in his mind, by Marxists and Jews. They must therefore be eliminated, both in revenge and to prevent any repetition of their treachery.
The Jews loomed large in Hitler's mental world. He saw them as infiltrating all aspects of life in Germany, and in other countries too. Comparisions were drawn with rats, or maggots, or plague-germs. Exactly when, or why, Hitler became so aggressively antisemitic is not known. He was not alone in having these ideas, either in Germany or throughout Europe, though he expressed them with far more violence than most.
Antisemitism is quite different from other forms of racism. Racist attacks on Blacks, Pakistanis, Irish or others usually portray them as mentally inferior to white people: little better than animals; but racist attacks on Jews suggest they are cunning, manipulative, and unscrupulous with money. Take the case of the classic antisemitic work, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; produced by the Tsarist secret police early in the 20th century. It purports to be a document in which Jewish leaders discuss their plans to take over the world. It was soon exposed as a crude forgery. But consider: postulating a Jamaican or an Irish plot to take over the world would simply be laughable, but a Jewish plot to take over the world would at least be worth considering. Antisemitism expresses the fear that Jews might be cleverer than us. How else could they have risen to dominate finance, culture, government?
19th century antisemitism had a persistent anti-capitalist tone, but after the First World War it tookon a new face. Many of the most prominent of the Russian revolutionaries had been Jewish (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others), and so was Rosa Luxemburg and other leaders of the failed left-wing revolutions in Germany after 1918. It occurred to Hitler, as a great revelation, that capitalism and communism were just opposite sides of the same coin: both part of the great Jewish conspiracy for world domination. In a famous speech as late as January 1939 he said that the financiers of Wall Street were in league with the commisars of the Kremlin; and that unless they were stopped, it would be the death of all civilisation.
Hitler's attack on Russia in summer 1941 was therefore intended as the climax of his career. All his most deeply-held beliefs pointed towards it. The Slavs were an inferior race, led by Jewish communists, and for the good of humanity they must be crushed and the vast natural resources of Russia taken for the use of the superior race. The extermination of the Jews of Europe began at exactly the same time. No historian has ever found a directive from Hitler to initiate the Holocaust, and maybe no such document ever existed; but it is surely the case that such a major policy could not have begun without at least verbal instructions from the Fuhrer.
As well as the notorious rant against the Jews in Book 1 of "Mein Kampf", Hitler had some interesting things to say about democracy at the start of Book 2. He asked why, if democracy was such a great system, there were no democratic armies or democratic companies? The strongest structure, he argued, was of hierarchical command. Thus, in an army, the generals decided strategy, the junior officers provided local leadership, the sergeants imposed discipline, and the rank and file did as they were told. Successful businesses were organised in a similar manner. It was significant, he argued, that this was actually how the Soviet Union was run, despite all the propaganda about "the workers' state". The purpose of any political system was to ensure that power was in the hands of the best leaders; and democracy was clearly failing to achieve this.
Mussolini was openly contemptuous of Hitler when he met him for the first time in 1934. In that year he acted to deter a Nazi coup in Austria, which led Britain and France to see him as a useful check on Hitler's ambitions. But then he involved Italy in entirely unnecessary adventures, in Abyssinia and Spain and Albania, which are hard to view as anything other than mere headline-grabbers. As these increasingly alienated him from his Western friends, he instead hitched his wagon to Hitler's star. He signally failed to take action against Hitler's Anschluss with Austria in 1938, and joined the Axis alliance and the Anti-Comintern pact. He also passed pointless anti-Jewish laws.
In a final belated act of sanity, Mussolini declared Italy neutral when war broke out in 1939, but a year later, with France about to collapse before the German offensive, he could not resist joining in. His intervention was disastrous for Italy, and at best dubiously helpful for Hitler.
In 1945 Mussolini was shot by partizans and his body was strung upside down in Milan. It is tempting to say that it was no more than he deserved.
Fascism takes its name from the Fasces, an axe in a bundle of rods carried by the Roman lictors as a symbol of the authority of the magistrates. Fascism as a political movement began in Italy in the aftermath of the First World War, when Italians thought they had been badly let down in the postwar settlement, and there was an economic downturn and political instability. There appeared to be a danger of revolution, on the Russian Bolshevik model. Soon young men (many being ex-soldiers) were being organised into squads called "Fascisti di combattimento"), parading in uniforms of black shirts. Initially they were used as strike-breakers, but soon they began invading towns that were under Socialist control, beating up and expelling the councillors and taking over themselves. The police and the military stood by and did nothing.
Mussolini had been a prominent socialist before the war; the editor of the main socialist newspaper. By now he had his own paper and had switched to become an extreme right-wing nationalist. He did not personally lead any of the Blackshirt outrages, but he provided them with propaganda, encouragement and direction through his journalism. If he had ordered them to halt their violence, it is questionable whether they would have taken any notice. When in autumn 1922 the Blackshirt squads marched on Rome to overthrow the government, Mussolini prudently remained behind in Milan, and only took the train to Rome when the government collapsed without firing a shot and the King summoned him to become Prime Minister. He then allowed the Blackshirts to parade through the capital and burn down the Socialist Party headquarters. When installed in government, Mussolini was initially cautious, and it was only a few years later that, probably under grassroots pressure from the Blackshirts, that he formally abolished Italian democracy and formed a one-party Fascist state. Even then, his dictatorship was comparatively mild by later standards.
Mussolini's success led to a host of imitations, combining the key factors of quasi-military parades, street violence, extreme nationalist rhetoric and hatred of Socialism and Communism. Groups such as the Iron Guard in Romania, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Action Francaise and of course the Nazis in Germany attempted to follow his methods. The British Union of Fascists never made much impact, and were ruthlessly parodied by P. G. Wodehouse in "The Code of the Woosters" in the form of the would-be dictator Roderick Spode and his troop of Blackshorts (the supply of colouerd shirts having been exhausted).
Fascism was not then the generalized term of abuse which we see nowadays. Indeed, Mussolini was admired by many in the Western democracies, on the grounds that he had saved Italy from Bolshevik revolution and restored order (the famous "made the trains run on time" argument). The British and French leaders accepted him as an equal partner and a potential force for stability. Many Conservatives, and Italian Catholics, had grave doubts about Mussolini's character and methods, but were prepared to overcome these doubts because of their much greater fear of revolution from the Left. Despite his earlier left-wing utterances, when in power Mussolini (and later Hitler) was careful not to upset the big businessmen and landowners; and negotiated the establishment of the Vatican City as an independent state by the Lateran Treaty.
It was only in the later 1930s that this changed.
I have always seen Mussolini as essentially having the soul of a tabloid journalist; concerned principally with what would look good in the next day's headlines. So initiatives would be announced, striking pronouncements made and foreign policy adventures started; and if nothing much useful happened, it didn't matter, because soon new promises would be made and the old ones forgotten. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a genuine Facsist ideology behind the headline-grabbing.
The first aspect would have to be not just the acceptance but the glorification of violence. Mussolini proclaimed that fighting was not just a means to an end, but a good thing in itself: it provided an opportunity for the "natural leaders" to come to the fore and separated the weak from the strong, both individually and nationally. He always stated that he wished to prepare the Italian people for war, without ever setting out any definite target or aim for this aggression.
Fascism differed from both classical Liberalism and from Marxism. Take the famous ideals of equality, freedom, justice and human rights, pointing towards a democratic system of government, as first set out by John Locke and summarised by Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence. These have formed the basis of western democratic thought ever since. The Marxists also accept them as ideals; but argue that they cannot be fully achieved under capitalism. Fascism, however, rejects them entirely.
Fascists would begin by denying the notion of equality. Humans, they would say, are not equal. Some are bigger and stronger than others, some are clever than others, some are more fitted to rule than others. Most people, let's face it, are mediocre. To treat everyone as equal is not only unjust, but also stupid. It is both natural and expedient that the strongest and the best should lead. A democratic political system serves only to give power to the mediocre masses. Instead government should be in the hands of the "natural leaders" who have the "will to power" and are strong enough to accept responsibility. This doctrine can be applied to nations and to races as well as to individuals: war leads to the strongest nations dominating the inferior ones and the lesser breeds, as is only right and proper. (Although Mussolini banged on endlessly about the glories of the Roman Empire, there was little specific racism in Italian Fascism, and it was only in the later 1930s, under the influence of Hitler, that he introduced antisemitic laws into Italy). If you wish to some up Fascist ideology in its simplest form; think of the school bully who says to smaller boys, "Get out of my way or I'll hit you!" What Fascism would allow the bully to say is, "I'm bigger than you, and therefore I'm more important than you, and so I have a right to hit you if I want to!"
Hitler began as an imitator of Mussolini, with his brownshirted stormtroopers (S.A.) and campaigns of street violence in Munich. But in November 1923 his attempt to stage a coup there, Mussolini-style, was a complete failure. After he was released from a short prison sentence he realised he would have to adopt more constitutional means to take power; though he never renounced street violence. He came to power in January 1933 by a combination of electoral success, political intrigue and the threat of violence from the S.A. Very few in Germany could have anticipated what would follow.
Hitler would have agreed with all the Fascist principles outlined above, but he had a clearer ideology and more precise aims. He did not identify with the German state (of which he only became a citizen in 1932), but with the German race.
Race was central to his outlook: the superiority of the German race and hence their rightful demand to rule the inferior ones. This especially applied to the Russians and other Slavic races to the east. Hitler's national circumstances were diferent: whereas Italy had been on the winning side in the war, Germany had lost. How could it possibly be that the superior German race had been defeated? Only if Germany had been betrayed by internal enemies; notably, in his mind, by Marxists and Jews. They must therefore be eliminated, both in revenge and to prevent any repetition of their treachery.
The Jews loomed large in Hitler's mental world. He saw them as infiltrating all aspects of life in Germany, and in other countries too. Comparisions were drawn with rats, or maggots, or plague-germs. Exactly when, or why, Hitler became so aggressively antisemitic is not known. He was not alone in having these ideas, either in Germany or throughout Europe, though he expressed them with far more violence than most.
Antisemitism is quite different from other forms of racism. Racist attacks on Blacks, Pakistanis, Irish or others usually portray them as mentally inferior to white people: little better than animals; but racist attacks on Jews suggest they are cunning, manipulative, and unscrupulous with money. Take the case of the classic antisemitic work, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; produced by the Tsarist secret police early in the 20th century. It purports to be a document in which Jewish leaders discuss their plans to take over the world. It was soon exposed as a crude forgery. But consider: postulating a Jamaican or an Irish plot to take over the world would simply be laughable, but a Jewish plot to take over the world would at least be worth considering. Antisemitism expresses the fear that Jews might be cleverer than us. How else could they have risen to dominate finance, culture, government?
19th century antisemitism had a persistent anti-capitalist tone, but after the First World War it tookon a new face. Many of the most prominent of the Russian revolutionaries had been Jewish (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others), and so was Rosa Luxemburg and other leaders of the failed left-wing revolutions in Germany after 1918. It occurred to Hitler, as a great revelation, that capitalism and communism were just opposite sides of the same coin: both part of the great Jewish conspiracy for world domination. In a famous speech as late as January 1939 he said that the financiers of Wall Street were in league with the commisars of the Kremlin; and that unless they were stopped, it would be the death of all civilisation.
Hitler's attack on Russia in summer 1941 was therefore intended as the climax of his career. All his most deeply-held beliefs pointed towards it. The Slavs were an inferior race, led by Jewish communists, and for the good of humanity they must be crushed and the vast natural resources of Russia taken for the use of the superior race. The extermination of the Jews of Europe began at exactly the same time. No historian has ever found a directive from Hitler to initiate the Holocaust, and maybe no such document ever existed; but it is surely the case that such a major policy could not have begun without at least verbal instructions from the Fuhrer.
As well as the notorious rant against the Jews in Book 1 of "Mein Kampf", Hitler had some interesting things to say about democracy at the start of Book 2. He asked why, if democracy was such a great system, there were no democratic armies or democratic companies? The strongest structure, he argued, was of hierarchical command. Thus, in an army, the generals decided strategy, the junior officers provided local leadership, the sergeants imposed discipline, and the rank and file did as they were told. Successful businesses were organised in a similar manner. It was significant, he argued, that this was actually how the Soviet Union was run, despite all the propaganda about "the workers' state". The purpose of any political system was to ensure that power was in the hands of the best leaders; and democracy was clearly failing to achieve this.
Mussolini was openly contemptuous of Hitler when he met him for the first time in 1934. In that year he acted to deter a Nazi coup in Austria, which led Britain and France to see him as a useful check on Hitler's ambitions. But then he involved Italy in entirely unnecessary adventures, in Abyssinia and Spain and Albania, which are hard to view as anything other than mere headline-grabbers. As these increasingly alienated him from his Western friends, he instead hitched his wagon to Hitler's star. He signally failed to take action against Hitler's Anschluss with Austria in 1938, and joined the Axis alliance and the Anti-Comintern pact. He also passed pointless anti-Jewish laws.
In a final belated act of sanity, Mussolini declared Italy neutral when war broke out in 1939, but a year later, with France about to collapse before the German offensive, he could not resist joining in. His intervention was disastrous for Italy, and at best dubiously helpful for Hitler.
In 1945 Mussolini was shot by partizans and his body was strung upside down in Milan. It is tempting to say that it was no more than he deserved.
Wednesday, 31 July 2019
St. Mary & St. Nicholas, Beaumaris, Anglesey
Beaumaris, on the island of Anglesey, is famous for its magnificent castle, but also boasts this very fine church, which dates from the 13th century.
The finest feature of the church is the tomb of William Bulkeley (died 1490) and his wife.
In the unreformed Parliament prior to 1842, Anglesey returned one M.P., and Beaumaris another, and Bulkeley family dominated these.
The church has some fine misericords,
and an 18th century brass commemorating those patrons who donated money to help the poor of the parish. It includes the name of "Tabora the Black", presumably a former slave.
In the porch is this most unusual object.
It is the stone sarcophagus of Joan, the illegitimate daughter of King John, who was married to Llewelyn ap Jorwerth, Prince of North Wales. She died in 1237. In the inscription placed above the sarcophagus, Lord Bulkeley records how in 1808 he discovered it being used as a horse-trough, and rescued it.
He placed it in the church "to excite serious meditations on the transitory nature of all subluminary distinctions": an interesting reversion to the pre-Copernican view of the universe, where the imperfect earth lies at the centre, surrounded by the sphere of the moon, beyond which are the eternal and unchanging heavens.
The finest feature of the church is the tomb of William Bulkeley (died 1490) and his wife.
In the unreformed Parliament prior to 1842, Anglesey returned one M.P., and Beaumaris another, and Bulkeley family dominated these.
The church has some fine misericords,
In the porch is this most unusual object.
It is the stone sarcophagus of Joan, the illegitimate daughter of King John, who was married to Llewelyn ap Jorwerth, Prince of North Wales. She died in 1237. In the inscription placed above the sarcophagus, Lord Bulkeley records how in 1808 he discovered it being used as a horse-trough, and rescued it.
He placed it in the church "to excite serious meditations on the transitory nature of all subluminary distinctions": an interesting reversion to the pre-Copernican view of the universe, where the imperfect earth lies at the centre, surrounded by the sphere of the moon, beyond which are the eternal and unchanging heavens.
Wednesday, 17 July 2019
A day in Gozo
The island of Gozo lies a short distance north of Malta. The soil has more clay than Malta, so it retains water better and the island is greener and less arid.
We took the ferry across from the port of Cirkewwa to Mgarr, in the south-east of Gozo
Gozo, like Malta, has amazing structures built in the Neolithic period. In Gozo we were shown the Ggantija temples, erected between 3600 and 3000 B.C., which makes them older than Stonehenge. They consist of walls of enormous megaliths, within which are altars of softer stone cut into slabs.
The interior was once plastered and painted. It appears that cattle were sacrificed here. Some centuries later, the temples were abandoned and forgotten, and only rediscovered in the early 19th century. They were named "Ggantija" in the local belief that only giants could have built such massive structures!
Gozo and Malta were occupied by the Arabs for several centuries, before being conquered by the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in the 12th century. Eventually the islands came under the rule of Spain. With the rise of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire in the early16th century, the islands came under great pressure. In 1522 the ferocious Arab corsair Dragut devastated Gozo, carrying away all the people he could catch as slaves.
The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Hospitallers, were an order of fighting monks established in the aftermath of the First Crusade. When the crusader states were finally destroyed, they established themselves at Rhodes, from where their galleys wreaked havoc on Turkish shipping. Infuriated by this, the great Sultan, Sulemain the Magnificent, resolved to destroy them, but the Knights put up such a stout defence that in 1522, after several months of siege, the survivors were allowed to retire in good order. They were homeless for a while; but then in 1530 the Emperor Charles V granted the Malta and Gozo, in return for the annula tribute of a falcon (as in the legendary movie, "The Maltese Falcon"). From their new home, the Knights continued to annoy the Turks, but were able to survive, just, the great Turkish attack of 1565 (I will describe this in a later post)
The chief city of Gozo, in the centre of the island, is nowadays known as Victoria, in memory of the British queen, who visited and loved the place. It consists of a citadel, strongly fortified by the Knights after the great siege by the Turks in 1565, within which there is a cathedral and other buildings
Below the citadel is a town called Rabat, which is simply the Arabic word for a suburb
We saw this piece of scratched graffiti, showing a ship of this period.
From the citadel, there is a panoramic view of almost the whole of the island.
The Knights also first built this public wash-house, on the road from Rabat to Xlendi.
Dwejra is on the western coast of Gozo. Here we find the "Inland Sea"; a crater into which the sea flows through a fissure in the cliff. Little boats ferry visitors through this to the open water.
Also at Dwejra is the "Fungus Rock", where the Knights discovered a rare plant believed to have marvellous medicinal properties, and which they therefore had guarded to prevent any unauthorised access. (It is actually not a fungus at all, but a parasitic plant). The other famous sight here; the "Azure Window", a spectacular natural rock arch; sadly collapsed into the sea in 2017.
We stopped for lunch at Xlendi, a pleasant little bay.
In conclusion, Gozo is well worth a visit!
Saturday, 6 July 2019
The Unquiet Grave
The new vicar had organised a working party to bring some order to the long-neglected churchyard, and we began the daunting task of hacking our way through the brambles and the ground-ivy. In one particularly dank and overgrown corner we uncovered some broken chunks of granite, pinkish in colour, that must once have surrounded a grave. But the only one nearby was still mostly bare earth, which the surrounding weeds had only just begun to colonise.
"Well, isn't that odd!" said Philip, our vicar. He turned to our oldest member, who had lived in the village all her life, and asked, "Do you know anything about this, Polly?"
Polly considered. "I remember that when I was a little girl my grandmother said I must never go down to this corner of the churchyard", she said. "She didn't tell me why; but I learnt from other people that it had something to do with the lady who used to own the pub, ages ago. Perhaps she was buried here".
"The pub? You mean the empty place at the edge of the village? Nobody lives there now: it's been vacant for ages".
"Yes. The Queen's had been plenty of different owners over the years, but none have stayed long. Some have died, and the rest have just moved away, without saying why".
"But it can't be anything to do with her", someone argued. "Because this grave is clearly very recent. Look at that bare earth."
"Unless, of course, it's been deliberately disturbed!" someone else contributed, clearly with the intention of introducing a frisson of fear.
"Well, it's all a mystery", said Philip, "We'd better just continue with our work for now. Then before our next meeting we can ask around and see what we can find out. I'll have a look in the parish records".
On the way home I asked Polly, "The Queen is a rather odd name for a pub, surely? Shouldn't it be the Queen's Head, or something like that?"
"Yes, it is odd. Various landlords over the years tried to change the name, but something always went wrong. They put up a new inn sign, and it got blown down: that sort of thing".
"There's certainly no sign there now!"
"No. Granny said there was once a sign there, and a very nasty one it was. The face on it looked nothing like any queen she'd ever heard of: really ugly, and quite frightening. Children used to dare each other to throw stones at it, she said; but somehow they never quite had the nerve, and their parents used to warn them not even to think about doing it!"
"And what became of the lady who ran it?"
"I never found out. Granny wouldn't tell me. I think there were odd stories going around the village, but I never found anything out".
I must have been thinking too much about Polly's story, because that night I experienced a frightening dream. I was standing in the churchyard, beside the grave, which however was now covered with its granite. But something stirred beneath, and suddenly, to my inutterable horror, the stones rose up, cracked and fell away. The earth below was heaving, as if a giant mole was about to throw up its hill. But what emerged was not a mole. I watched, unable to move, as a dark figure clawed itself out from under the soil and rise to its feet. It was stooped, and a little less than human size. I couldn't see its face, but somehow I knew it was a woman, and of a great age. I was terrified that she would turn and see me, but instead she gathered her ragged black clothing around herself and drifted, rather than walked, towards the village. At this point I awoke in a sweat of fear. It was still night-time outside. I did not dare open the curtains even when it was broad daylight, from an irrational terror that she might be there, peering into the room.
At the next meeting of our gardening group, Philip told us, "I've been thinking about that grave. The surrounds are all broken, but I don't see how you could break granite in pieces without a heavy sledgehammer, and these have been snapped as if they were rotten twigs or biscuits. It's very strange. Oh, and I found something unusual in the archives. One of my predecessors was asked to conduct an exorcism! It came from the landlord at the pub. He said a ghost had been peering through his windows and frightening his children".
"And did he exorcise the ghost?"
"No: he rather pooh-poohed the idea; he thought it was all silly superstition. Soon afterwards the landlord put the pub up for sale and left the village".
At this stage I thought I'd tell them about my dream.
"Aye, that's what would have happened!" said Polly. "Granny said that the lady would come back, to see who'd taken her pub. Maybe she was just being curious, but I don't like to think of what might happen if she ever got in!"
"Oh, and one other thing", said Philip. "I had a dream rather like yours. Then, the next day, looking round the church, I discovered that a small amount of the communiion wine had been left in the chalice. I've no idea how this happened: it's most irregular. I wondered what to do. Then, on an impulse that I can't properly explain, I went and sprinkled it on that grave. Looking back, I know it was very silly; and you must promise you won't tell the archdeacon, please! I wonder what will happen now?"
We all wondered. The answer was, and still is, absolutely nothing. We try to avoid that corner of the churchyard, but the last time I looked, the grave had not been disturbed any further, and weeds had continued to colonise it. Whether Philip's unorthodox behaviour had had this effect, I cannot say. But the pub is still unoccupied and up for sale. I doubt if anyone familiar with the village will be buying it.
"Well, isn't that odd!" said Philip, our vicar. He turned to our oldest member, who had lived in the village all her life, and asked, "Do you know anything about this, Polly?"
Polly considered. "I remember that when I was a little girl my grandmother said I must never go down to this corner of the churchyard", she said. "She didn't tell me why; but I learnt from other people that it had something to do with the lady who used to own the pub, ages ago. Perhaps she was buried here".
"The pub? You mean the empty place at the edge of the village? Nobody lives there now: it's been vacant for ages".
"Yes. The Queen's had been plenty of different owners over the years, but none have stayed long. Some have died, and the rest have just moved away, without saying why".
"But it can't be anything to do with her", someone argued. "Because this grave is clearly very recent. Look at that bare earth."
"Unless, of course, it's been deliberately disturbed!" someone else contributed, clearly with the intention of introducing a frisson of fear.
"Well, it's all a mystery", said Philip, "We'd better just continue with our work for now. Then before our next meeting we can ask around and see what we can find out. I'll have a look in the parish records".
On the way home I asked Polly, "The Queen is a rather odd name for a pub, surely? Shouldn't it be the Queen's Head, or something like that?"
"Yes, it is odd. Various landlords over the years tried to change the name, but something always went wrong. They put up a new inn sign, and it got blown down: that sort of thing".
"There's certainly no sign there now!"
"No. Granny said there was once a sign there, and a very nasty one it was. The face on it looked nothing like any queen she'd ever heard of: really ugly, and quite frightening. Children used to dare each other to throw stones at it, she said; but somehow they never quite had the nerve, and their parents used to warn them not even to think about doing it!"
"And what became of the lady who ran it?"
"I never found out. Granny wouldn't tell me. I think there were odd stories going around the village, but I never found anything out".
I must have been thinking too much about Polly's story, because that night I experienced a frightening dream. I was standing in the churchyard, beside the grave, which however was now covered with its granite. But something stirred beneath, and suddenly, to my inutterable horror, the stones rose up, cracked and fell away. The earth below was heaving, as if a giant mole was about to throw up its hill. But what emerged was not a mole. I watched, unable to move, as a dark figure clawed itself out from under the soil and rise to its feet. It was stooped, and a little less than human size. I couldn't see its face, but somehow I knew it was a woman, and of a great age. I was terrified that she would turn and see me, but instead she gathered her ragged black clothing around herself and drifted, rather than walked, towards the village. At this point I awoke in a sweat of fear. It was still night-time outside. I did not dare open the curtains even when it was broad daylight, from an irrational terror that she might be there, peering into the room.
At the next meeting of our gardening group, Philip told us, "I've been thinking about that grave. The surrounds are all broken, but I don't see how you could break granite in pieces without a heavy sledgehammer, and these have been snapped as if they were rotten twigs or biscuits. It's very strange. Oh, and I found something unusual in the archives. One of my predecessors was asked to conduct an exorcism! It came from the landlord at the pub. He said a ghost had been peering through his windows and frightening his children".
"And did he exorcise the ghost?"
"No: he rather pooh-poohed the idea; he thought it was all silly superstition. Soon afterwards the landlord put the pub up for sale and left the village".
At this stage I thought I'd tell them about my dream.
"Aye, that's what would have happened!" said Polly. "Granny said that the lady would come back, to see who'd taken her pub. Maybe she was just being curious, but I don't like to think of what might happen if she ever got in!"
"Oh, and one other thing", said Philip. "I had a dream rather like yours. Then, the next day, looking round the church, I discovered that a small amount of the communiion wine had been left in the chalice. I've no idea how this happened: it's most irregular. I wondered what to do. Then, on an impulse that I can't properly explain, I went and sprinkled it on that grave. Looking back, I know it was very silly; and you must promise you won't tell the archdeacon, please! I wonder what will happen now?"
We all wondered. The answer was, and still is, absolutely nothing. We try to avoid that corner of the churchyard, but the last time I looked, the grave had not been disturbed any further, and weeds had continued to colonise it. Whether Philip's unorthodox behaviour had had this effect, I cannot say. But the pub is still unoccupied and up for sale. I doubt if anyone familiar with the village will be buying it.
Saturday, 15 June 2019
Touring Malta
Recently I had a week touring Malta and Gozo, its sister island. We stayed at Mellieha in the north of the island. Like many Maltese towns it has an enormous church with a vast dome: a recent building, but with a far older shrine to "Our Lady of Mellieha" below it. In this picture, Mellieha bay is the larger area of sea to the right of the church: Gozo can be seen on the far side of the sea to the left.
From here it is no great distance to the capital, Valletta, though it can take over an hour because of the narrowness of the roads. The bus fare was only 1.50 Euros, and travelled there three times.
Valletta was built after the Knights Hospitaller had repelled (just!) the great Turkish siege of 1565, and named in honour of the man who commanded them. Within massive fortifications, it is built on a regular gridiron pattern, and contains several fine museums and noble Baroque buildings
as well as the "co-cathedral" of St. John the Baptist, which is supremely over-the-top, and owns two Caravaggio paintings.
The view over the Grand Harbour fromValletta I would rate as one of the finest in the world
The best way to view the massive fortifications is from the little boats plying the harbour. They look like gondolas with outboard engines!
These fortifications were built by the Knights after the great siege, in case the Turks attacked again - but in fact they never did.
Mdina, the old capital of Malta, is in the centre of the island. It also has impressive fortifications.
Within the walls there are many fine old buildings,
and an impressive cathedral
From the walls, you can see almost the whole island.
Outside the walls of Mdina is Rabat (which is merely the Arab word for a suburb). It is noted for several mazes of catacombs from the early Christian period
.
Malta has several unique temples, constructed from enormous rocks. They date from the Neolithic period, around 3,500 B.C., which makes them older than Stonehenge and a thousand years earlier than the Pyramids. This is the one at Hagar Qim, near the south-western coast of the island.
There are few surviving buildings that date from before the great siege of 1565. But in more recent times there has been a massive campaign of church-building. Even quite small towns boast huge churches, often with soaring domes; the most spectacular being at Mosta
Many of the hillsides still have terraces of tiny fields, supported by drystone walls originally built by the Arabs. Some are still farmed, but others have reverted to scrub or to thickets of prickly pear cactus; another Arab introduction.
I saw no farm animalsat all: we were told they were always kept indoors.
The coast has some spectacular features, such as the Blue Grotto.
But there are also modern seaside resorts, such as Marsaxlokk in the south-east.
Gozo, the island a short distance north of Malta, is quite different in many ways. I shall deal with Gozo in a later post.
From here it is no great distance to the capital, Valletta, though it can take over an hour because of the narrowness of the roads. The bus fare was only 1.50 Euros, and travelled there three times.
Valletta was built after the Knights Hospitaller had repelled (just!) the great Turkish siege of 1565, and named in honour of the man who commanded them. Within massive fortifications, it is built on a regular gridiron pattern, and contains several fine museums and noble Baroque buildings
as well as the "co-cathedral" of St. John the Baptist, which is supremely over-the-top, and owns two Caravaggio paintings.
The view over the Grand Harbour fromValletta I would rate as one of the finest in the world
The best way to view the massive fortifications is from the little boats plying the harbour. They look like gondolas with outboard engines!
These fortifications were built by the Knights after the great siege, in case the Turks attacked again - but in fact they never did.
Mdina, the old capital of Malta, is in the centre of the island. It also has impressive fortifications.
and an impressive cathedral
From the walls, you can see almost the whole island.
Outside the walls of Mdina is Rabat (which is merely the Arab word for a suburb). It is noted for several mazes of catacombs from the early Christian period
.
Malta has several unique temples, constructed from enormous rocks. They date from the Neolithic period, around 3,500 B.C., which makes them older than Stonehenge and a thousand years earlier than the Pyramids. This is the one at Hagar Qim, near the south-western coast of the island.
There are few surviving buildings that date from before the great siege of 1565. But in more recent times there has been a massive campaign of church-building. Even quite small towns boast huge churches, often with soaring domes; the most spectacular being at Mosta
Many of the hillsides still have terraces of tiny fields, supported by drystone walls originally built by the Arabs. Some are still farmed, but others have reverted to scrub or to thickets of prickly pear cactus; another Arab introduction.
I saw no farm animalsat all: we were told they were always kept indoors.
The coast has some spectacular features, such as the Blue Grotto.
But there are also modern seaside resorts, such as Marsaxlokk in the south-east.
Gozo, the island a short distance north of Malta, is quite different in many ways. I shall deal with Gozo in a later post.
Saturday, 8 June 2019
King Louis of England?
It is often asserted that the last invasion of England was in 1066, but this is by no means the case.
When King John's disastrous reign finally came to an end in 1216, his son and heir, Henry, was no more than nine years old, and without any sign of being a forceful character. The boy was now crowned as Henry III; but many of the barons who had rebelled against John were of the opinion that Louis, the younger son of Philip Augustus of France (the greatest of the French mediaeval kings) would make a much better King of England.
Louis was already in England, and was willing to take the crown. But William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the most respected knight of his age, remained loyal to the ruling family, and attacked and defeated Louis and his supporters at Lincoln in May 1217
.
.
Soon afterwards, French ships in the Channel were defeated off Dover. Louis withdrew to France, and as a result of the death of his brother became King Louis VIII of France in 1223. But, without the determination of William Marshal, England could easily have had a King Louis I.
Young King Henry III now enjoyed a reign of 56 years, one of the longest in British history. But "enjoyed" is probably the wrong word, since he displayed complete ineptitude for the job. For a while he was little more than a prisoner and puppet of Simon de Montfort. But Henry's very incompetence proved to be of crucial constitutional importance, since it resulted in the first appearance of an English Parliament.
When King John's disastrous reign finally came to an end in 1216, his son and heir, Henry, was no more than nine years old, and without any sign of being a forceful character. The boy was now crowned as Henry III; but many of the barons who had rebelled against John were of the opinion that Louis, the younger son of Philip Augustus of France (the greatest of the French mediaeval kings) would make a much better King of England.
Louis was already in England, and was willing to take the crown. But William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the most respected knight of his age, remained loyal to the ruling family, and attacked and defeated Louis and his supporters at Lincoln in May 1217
.
.Soon afterwards, French ships in the Channel were defeated off Dover. Louis withdrew to France, and as a result of the death of his brother became King Louis VIII of France in 1223. But, without the determination of William Marshal, England could easily have had a King Louis I.
Young King Henry III now enjoyed a reign of 56 years, one of the longest in British history. But "enjoyed" is probably the wrong word, since he displayed complete ineptitude for the job. For a while he was little more than a prisoner and puppet of Simon de Montfort. But Henry's very incompetence proved to be of crucial constitutional importance, since it resulted in the first appearance of an English Parliament.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
