Hell Hath no Fury like Jemima Scorned

“He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad”, so says the Gospel according to Saint Matthew.  It’s a sentiment that finds fulsome echo in the Gospel according to Saint Julian.  You know who I’m talking about, surely you do?  It’s our very own Saint Julian Assange of Wiki; our own – worse luck – because he’s still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 

Apparently Jemima Khan, a former acolyte, recently went to Utah’s Sundance Film Festival, the showcase for independent film makers.  She was there to see the launch of We Steal Secrets, a documentary about WikiLeaks.  Much to her chagrin, Saint Julian of Wiki denounced it without having seen it (Perhaps it came to him in a vision?).  He didn’t like the title, you see, tweeting that it was “unethical and biased...in the context of pending criminal trials.  It is the prosecution’s claim and it is false.”

Jemima was just a bit miffed.  Stealing Secrets is her baby; she executive produced it into life.  The title, as she pointed out to the Holy One, is actually an observation by Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, that it was the US government that was in the business of stealing secrets from other countries.  To this He replied “If it’s a fair film, it will be pro-Julian Assange.”  Yes, yes; always beware those whose egos have grown to third person grandeur!

Hell hath no fury like a Jemina scorned.  An executive editor of the New Statesman, she took to its pages last week in a major exercise in apostasy and iconoclasm.  Oh, how are the mighty fallen in the midst of leaking!  From a prophet of new age honesty, Julian has degenerated into an Australian version of L Ron Hubbard, he of scientology fame, who spread the gospel of abject devotion...or else. 

How the scales have fallen from the Khan eyes.  She once stood bail for Assange after he was arrested on allegations of sexual assault in 2010.  It was all a fabrication, she was convinced, all a conspiracy, a plot by the Pharisees and the Sadducees to bring down the new Christ.  Now she’s not so sure; now the Swedish women who raised accusations of sexual assault against Assange actually may be worth a hearing.  Most important of all, she concludes, there is no evidence that extradition to Sweden would automatically be followed by on onward extradition to the United States, a narrative that does not fit the Assange script at all. 

I was never a disciple, so I was wise before the event.  I always saw this man as a self-publicising, egotistical fraud, who’s only objective was the greater glory of Julian.  It amused me to see all those leftist guardians of moral rectitude and women’s rights, all the Jemima Khans of this world, lining themselves up behind their prophet.  Oh, no; he could not possibly be guilty of sex crime; the women in question were obviously lying, rape fantasies, no doubt.  Or at the most Julian’s forced and unwelcome attentions were, in the words of George Galloway, no more than “bad sexual etiquette.” 

Last summer the Saint, fleeing those who would crucify him, or send him to Sweden, took sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy.  At the time I asked, why Ecuador?  I suppose the reason might be that this banana republic – are there bananas? – is a bastion of truth, justice, human rights and panama hats. Or it might be that Rafael Correa, its leftist president, is almost as childish a narcissist as Assange himself, a little man who wants to cut a figure on a bigger stage.  

About this time Jemima asked Julian to respond to the view of the New Statesman’s legal correspondent that he was no more in danger of extradition to the US from Sweden than he was in England.  Answer came there none.  That’s not quite true; answer, of a sort, came from one Mark Stephens, speaking as Assange’s lawyer, saying that Sweden was “one of those lickspittle states which used its resources and its facilities for rendition flights" - that is, sending suspected terrorists to bad places where they got worse treatment.  Actually, says Jemima, the lickspittle state stopped rendition flights in 2006, a fact inconveniently pointed out by WikiLeaks itself.

My pity always went to the poor women who had the temerity to accuse Saint Julian of rape.  At once his wretched army of left-wing disciples got to work, naming and defaming them on the internet.  If they hadn’t been raped they were now threatened with rape.  Pictures of them were also posted with bull’s-eyes through their faces. 

As I say, Jemima now thinks there may be a case to answer.  I always thought that there was a case to answer. Assange, as I wrote last year, is fleeing from Swedish justice, O. J. Simpson style, which I take to be a measure of his innocence. Quite right, too. Sweden is notorious for its lack of democratic accountability, its biased system of law and its atrocious abuse of human rights. Then there is Correa’s Ecuador, the victim of another campaign of spite and misinformation. It’s simply not true that the country has no culture of human rights and freedom, not true that dissidents are jailed on trumped up charges, not true that journalists are arrested and TV stations shut down for daring to criticise El Presidente. Assange really would be at home there.

Jemima doesn’t regret, she writes, putting up bail for Assange.  Oh, yes, she does!  “WikiLeaks – whose mission statement was 'to produce ... a more just society ... based upon truth' – has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion".  That sounds like regret to me. 

Hmm, I might be charitable enough to say that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents and so on and so forth, but I won’t!  Assange was never more than an L Ron Hubbard manqué and she was a simple-minded devotee.  I’m minded to quote Kaiser Bill, of all people.  He, in his wisdom, said that stupidity was also a gift of God, but one musn’t misuse it.  Jemima, I fear, is overdrawn at this particular bank.  

Oh, the scorpion simply can’t resist one final sting.  Jemima, the poor little rich girl, writes for the New Statesman, that ancient castle of left-wing rectitude.  This is a publication graced in the past by such lions of English letters as Cyril Connolly, H. G. Wells, J. B. Priestly and George Orwell.  Now, aside from Ms Puddle-Duck, it's a showcase for the likes of John Pilger, Will Self, Mehdi Hasan and, best of all, somebody called Laurie Penny. 

The latter is especially noteworthy.  If ever there is a museum of bad prose and political idiocy Penny Red – her stamp on the world - will be a cherished exhibit; I feel sure she will. Formerly shortlisted for the Orwell prize (poor George!), she was apparently included on a Tatler list last year of the top 100 people ‘who matter.’  My; is Penny what matters? It seems to me that she would be best placed on a list of fashion victims and ugly women.  Alas, this truly is the age of Asses, Pennies and tiresome mediocrity.  

Psycho Rising

Seeing Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic, for the first time is a bit like losing one’s virginity: one never forgets. I was sixteen. It was a slumber party with a group of friends. There was a TV in the bedroom. Psycho was the late night feature. Oh, gosh, it’s so old; it’s so black and white. But that mood did not last, especially after the sudden and wholly unexpected demise of the woman in the shower, the point where the story changed so rapidly that the gears grinded. For some time after no shower came easy. Oh, those screeching and stabbing violin sounds!

Since then I’ve seen several Hitchcock movies, though none quite as compelling as Psycho. Quite recently I saw The Girl, set while the director was making The Birds. This depicted him as a bit of a psycho himself, particularly in his semi-sadistic relationship with Tippi Hedren, the actress he threw to the birds. Now I’ve seen Hitchcock, a more nuanced and balanced portrait, set around the troubled and uncertain birth of Psycho.

Actually it might just as readily have been sub-texted as A Portrait of a Marriage, and a very good one too. Beyond Psycho it tells of the relationship between Hitch and Alma Reville, his wife and amanuensis, a brilliant dual performance by two of the brightest stars in the British acting Milky Way – Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren. There is Hopkins, padded out to Hitchcock proportions, Joe, the Fat boy from Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, who wants to make your flesh creep!  There is Alama, the one certain anchor in his life, supportive but not uncritically so. 

Directed by Sacha Gervasi and based on Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the movie opens with Hitchcock at the height of his career. Parading the streets like a Roman emperor after his latest triumph, North by Northwest, he is asked by a reporter if it would not be better to quit while he is ahead. Hitchcock, now sixty and with over forty movies behind him, begins afterwards to reflect on being left behind. Like Alexander, for him there would seem to be no more worlds to conquer. Oh, but there is; there is the real life world of Ed Gein, and there is the fictitious world of Psycho, a recently published novel by Robert Bloch, which brought the mother-fixated Norman Bates to the world.

Hitchcock is all surprises and Psycho is his latest. To begin with it’s a struggle to find acceptance (why not go for something safe like James Bond and Casino Royale?). To begin with Alma is not convinced. Barney Balaban (Richard Portnow), the studio boss to whom Hitch is under contract, is certainly not convinced. He only agrees when Hitch and Alma say that they will raise the finances themselves.

Then comes the visit to the censor. I’m not sure how this sort of thing is done these days but surely not as pettily censorious! Hitchcock cannot resist making jokes, not at all pleasing to the censor-in-chief, Geoffrey Shurlock (Kurtwood Smith). There is that shower scene with Janet Leigh (Scarlet Johansson). Will she be naked, the prurient Shurlock asks? “No”, Hitchcock responds, “She won’t be nude. She’ll be wearing a shower cap.” What I find particularly droll was the debate over whether a toilet should be shown or not. Apparently, up to that time, the great American viewing public had never seen a toilet on screen!

Generally speaking the movie is quite lightweight, with none of the directorial tautness that is such a feature of Hitchcock’s own movies. At points the screenplay is almost as flabby as Hopkins’ fat suit, particularly the relationship or non-relationship between Alma and Whitefield Cook (Danny Huston), a hack screenwriter who hopes to get to the director through collaboration with his wife. But it serves to show a more vulnerable side of the imperious and self-centred virtuoso, concerned that his beloved Alma might be having an affair.

There are good supporting parts. Johansson is a convincing Janet Leigh as is Jessica Beil as Vera Miles, Hitchcock’s one-time star that he was gradually casting into a B light. Tony Colette playing Peggy Robertson, Hitchcock’s secretary, is also worth an honourable mention. But above all - and too little on screen - there is James D’Arcy, a man who was clearly born to recreate Anthony Perkins creating Norman Bates! The imagined and occasional dialogue between Hitchcock and Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) did not work so well, a little too contrived for my taste.

In the end Hitchcock and Alma – the supporting role of Alma really does have to be emphasised – surprised them all. Little or nothing was expected from Psycho by the studio. The movie was given a limited screening with minimal marketing and no premiere. This was a movie that was clearly intended to die its own death. But Hitchcock hams it up, in what must be one of his best off-screen acts of huckstering showmanship. The public is intrigued. In a wonderful moment of high tension, Hitchcock leaves the auditorium just before the shower scene, conducting madly in the foyer to the mad music, as the audience gasp and scream in shock and amazement.

Hitchcock is far from being a great movie; perhaps it’s not even a true depiction of a slice of Hitchcock life, but it is a clever one, warm, engaging and enjoyable in an entertaining and memorable way. It’s a movie about dedication, it’s a movie about movie making, it’s a movie about a couple; it’s a movie about one of the great double acts of cinematic history, recaptured in a sublime double act.

The Sixteenth Pluviôse of David Cameron

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Karl Marx said that everything in history occurs twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.  The Eighteenth Brumaire is a reference to the date on the French revolutionary calendar when Napoleon Bonaparte – the tragic hero – seized power in 1799 in a coup d'état.  Louis Napoleon is the nephew, a grotesque mediocrity, who had his own Eighteenth Brumaire in 1851, subsequently creating the comic opera Second Empire.

It’s not often that I agree with anything that Karl Marx said or wrote, but here I think he has a point – tragic greatness is succeeded inevitability by laughable mediocrity.  In the history of British Toryism, for instance, we have Sir Robert Peel, the man who shaped the modern Conservative Party and then almost destroyed it by later supporting the repeal of the Corn Laws, thereby undermining the economic power of the landed gentry.  In this instance Peel put Country above Party.  It was for him an issue of necessity and of principle, an issue that destroyed him personally, an issue that divided the Party irrevocably. 

Peel is the tragic greatness.  Now at last we have the farce; we have David Cameron, the present leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister under a Coalition government.  He, too, has fought on an issue of principle; he, too, has laid down the lines of battle; he, too, has presided over a new split in the Party.  And what is his great issue of principle; what is his Corn Law moment?  Was it the level of public debt, was it unemployment, was it the danger of another wave of mass migration from Eastern Europe; was it over our ancient constitutional liberties?  No, his Corn Law moment is...same sex marriage.  This is Cameron’s gay moment in history.

Parliament voted on this rainbow flagship policy on Tuesday 5 February (Sixteen Pluviôse!), with a healthy majority in favour.  Unfortunately for Cameron, who did not even have the courage to attend the debate, 134 Tory MPs voted against with 35 abstentions.  Even some members of the cabinet and the government’s own top lawyer voted against.  Only 126 voted in favour.  The measure was carried with the overwhelming support of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.  Is this the beginning of the end for the Cameroons, I have to ask?  Toryism, in any meaningful sense, is already dead.

I’ve been re-reading George Orwell.  My, what fun he would have had with modern politics, the lies, the absurdity, the dissimulation and the hypocrisy.  I look at David Cameron, I look at Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister, and I look at Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour opposition, and what do I see?  I’m not sure.  A terrible sameness, that much is clear, as if they had all been cast from a single mould.  Wait; I know exactly what I’m reminded of, the concluding words of Animal Farm – “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”  I cannot say which is which. 

Social conservatism died last week.  No, it did not; it’s alive in the country at large, but in Parliament it lacks representatives among the leadership of the three main parties, a point made by Charles Moore writing in the latest issue of the Spectator.  It’s a momentous disenfranchisement, as he puts it.

He makes some other points, things I’m wholly in agreement with.  Personally I could not care less if a fat nancy boys (oops; sorry; it’s the Orwell influence) like Elton John go through some parody of Christian marriage or not.  I’m wholly indifferent, just as I would be if dogs decided on nuptials; it’s no business of mine.  Besides, I suspect that there is a comedy goldmine here.  Oh, the joys to come, like gay divorce and gay custody battles. 

But, surely, the onward march of equality is not to be halted?  By what right, Moore asks, do we oppose polygamy?  After all, Muslims believe that a man has a right to take up to four wives.  Why does our present law disrespect their traditions?  Pure prejudice, clearly.  And there is more.  For, you see, Moore has logic and history and progress on his side;

The same-sexers express old-fashioned disgust at their opponents’ suggestion that their arguments could justify incest, but I do not see why. The gay marriage case is that marriage is good if people love one another very much. Why, by their argument, should this not apply to siblings who feel that way about each other or parents and their (adult) children? Are they saying that certain sex acts are disgusting? If so, on what grounds? Besides, gay incestuous marriages could not possibly pose any genetic risk, since they can produce no offspring. What taboo from the dark ages is holding the reformers back?

Good questions, Charles, you soft old leftie; what is holding the pig politicians back?  Surely not the fear of an adverse reaction by the public, who, as we all know, are fully behind the progressive agenda.  Oh, don’t take my word for it; the Economist has spoken here, and we all know how perspicacious and prescient the Economist is.  The opponents of gay marriage, you see, are a lot of old fogies (Zimmer-framing the issue, 9 February).  The grey vote may be the stronghold of bigots but look to the young, fully behind progress and equality;

To win in 2015 the Tories must target younger voters, who are disproportionately present in marginal seats.  Whisper it softly, but in setting himself against many of his MPs, Mr. Cameron – the party’s greatest electoral asset – may have improved their prospects of re-election.

An interesting viewpoint, don’t you agree?  Hey, but why whisper it softly?  David Cameron, the party’s great electoral asset, Mr. Bullingdon Club himself, will ride back into government, possibly with a decent majority, on the back of a lot of metropolitan fads.  Yes. England has turned into Islington! 

I’m quite prepared to admit that most people in my age group will give the soft soap response when asked for their opinion on equality.  It’s only fair, innit?  But what is clearly beyond the wit of the arses on the Economist is that when people vote, if they vote at all, and when voting is not simply a reflex, they do so because there are matters of deep personal concern to them.  Just imagine all the proles approaching the ballot box in 2015, in a fey and gay mood.  It’s just so, so difficult to control my natural cynicism.  How many divisions does the Pope have?, Stalin asked in dismissive scorn.  How many votes are there in gay marriage?  Oh, don’t look to me for an answer.  Ask David Cameron. 

George Orwell (him again!) wrote of Jonathan Swift, the great eighteenth century satirist, that he was “one of those people who are driven to a perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment.”  I was driven to perverse Toryism at an early age, the influence of my much loved grandfather, a county gentleman of the old caste.  But since Toryism in its Cameron mutation has become part of the progressive folly of the moment I can’t be sure what the future holds for me politically. 

I welcomed the Coalition government in 2010, not the best of all possible worlds, but the best we could get; at least the ministry was headed by a Conservative.  I was wrong; it’s headed by a worthless idiot, a mediocrity of the first degree, one whose personal politics are based on nothing but condescension, faddishness and guilt.  He even makes Louis Napoleon look good, which really is quite an achievement. 

So far as his wretched government is concerned I call to mind the words of Oliver Cromwell in dismissing the Long Parliament in 1653;

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go! 

You see, now I’m in agreement with Karl Marx and Oliver Cromwell.  The world has been turned upside down!  Alas, this is what Cameron has driven me to.  

“You are no Longer a Human Being.”

In 1946 George Orwell published How the Poor Die, an horrific account of his experience in a French public hospital in the late 1920s.  In this he drew the following conclusion;

In the public wards of hospitals you see horrors that you don't seem to meet with among people who manage to die in their own homes, as though certain diseases only attacked people at the lower income levels. But it is a fact that you would not in any English hospitals see some of the things I saw in the Hôpital X. This business of dying like animals, for instance, with nobody interested, the death not even noticed till the morning—this happened more than once.

Orwell! thou should’st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; her hospitals are fens of stagnant waters.  OK, my apologies to Wordsworth for my free adaptation of one of his most memorable poems.  But what I say is true: English hospitals, it’s coming to light, are stagnant fens, places were healthy people go to die, at least if the the example of Stafford Hospital can be taken as a benchmark. 

I’ll say more on this dreadful case in a  moment, but first a word on our National Health Service (NHS), the great sacred cow that politicians criticise at their peril.  We have here a system of socialised medicine set up in the immediate post-war period by the then Labour government of Clement Atlee. 

Orwell, a self-defined socialist, though of a unique kind, was a supporter.  What would he have made of the dream if he had been alive now?  Here we are, seventy years on, and English hospitals are reproducing some of the things he witnessed in France all those years ago, yes, including the business of dying with nobody interested.  The horror here is almost impossible to imagine. 

It has been calculated that between 2005 and 2009, a mere four year period, some 1200 patients at Stafford Hospital in central England died needlessly.  Last week an inquiry headed by Robert Francis, a senior lawyer, published its report, the second into the hospital’s failings.  And the failings are truly appalling, a complete abdication of all duty of care, examples of incompetence, negligence and outright brutality, in some ways worse than anything Orwell witnessed in his foreign charity ward. 

Patients were left lying in their own urine and excrement for days.  Those in desperate thirst were forced to drink water from vases.  People were sent home with life-threatening conditions.  One old man suffering from dementia and Parkinson’s disease was pulled from a lavatory in a state of undress, the nurse screaming at him “You are no longer a human being but an animal.  I hate you.”  Not only were the patients unwashed, in some cases for up to month, but wards were shockingly unhygienic, covered in blood, used dressings and bloody needles. 

One woman arrived to find her 96-year-old mother-in-law “completely naked… and covered with faeces… It was in her hair, her nails, her hands and on all the cot sides… it was literally everywhere and it was dried.”  Another was so concerned about the welfare of her mother, who said she was frightened of the staff, that she mounted a 24-hour vigil by her bedside.  She was horrified by the things she witnessed;

Patients were screaming out in pain because they could not get pain relief. Patients would fall out of bed and we would have to go hunting for staff.  It was like a Third World country hospital.  Things were so bad on the ward that I started feeding, watering and taking all the other patients to the lavatory. It felt like it was not just my mum I watched dying, but all the others as well.

Those who complained were dismissed with contempt by senior management.  A twenty-year-old man was sent home with painkillers after a serious fall from his bike.  Doctors completely failed to diagnose a spleen injury.  He bled to death at home in agony.  The hospital’s chief executive, later reacting to complaints from his mother and family, wrote to them, saying that they should “put the matter behind them and move on.”  

Well, now we have moved on; now we know exactly what was involved, a culture of turnarounds, tick boxes and statistics, all encouraged by the government of Tony Blair, a culture of quick fixes and negligence, encouraged by those who trumpeted the endless virtues of our ‘much-loved’ NHS. 

Charles Moore, writing in the Telegraph, rightly said if negligence on this scale had been discovered in the private sector the management would be sacked and criminal charges would quickly follow.  But with the ‘much loved’ NHS a different culture prevails.  What happens?  Why, nothing, merely reports that take years to produce and end by blaming nobody.  The latest instalment effectively concludes, after much pious hand-wringing, that those in charge should stay in charge.  It was all a ‘cultural failure’, you see, not a question of individual responsibility .  That must be a great comfort to the relatives of the dead.

No sooner was the latest tome published than Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, was interviewed by the BBC.  This man in a previous life was head of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority between 2005 and 2006, and thus the senior figure responsible for the Stafford Hospital.  In a previous life he was also a member of the Communist Party.  He was “shocked,” he is “sorry” for past ‘cultural failures.’ No matter; he is staying, backed by the present Health Secretary and David Cameron, the Prime Minister. 

In a public statement launching his report, Mr Francis began by saying: “Many will find it difficult to believe that all this could occur in an NHS hospital.”  No, quite frankly, I don’t.  Stafford may be an extreme case but it is by no means an atypical feature of our rationed, managerial-conscious and patient-negligent ‘much loved’ NHS.

The point is, as Moore also says, this dreadful bureaucratic monster was never about patient care; it was about taking charge of delivery by centralised diktat.  It was for people who produced the service, not those who received it.  The truly shocking thing is we now see that those like Nicholson, effectively responsible for the death of hundreds of people, can escape blame for fear of ‘scapegoating.’  Could this happen in any country that is not called Cuba or North Korea?  It has happened in England.  It must be of some benefit to have a former communist in charge. 

Pleased do not think the Stafford case is an isolated incident.  Other hospitals and other NHS trusts are now under investigation.  It’s estimated that a further 3000 patients have died needlessly elsewhere over the past two years.  Inquiries – more delaying tactics – have been ordered into hospitals where death rates are persistently high.  Solicitors are preparing to act against nine trusts accused of neglecting elderly patients.  You might like to remember all of the above facts in considering the alleged virtues of rationing and socialised medicine.  Come to England; we know how to do it, we know how to deliver health care with dignity and comfort.  There again you might be better advised to go to a charity hospital in France. 

The dread of hospitals probably still survives among the very poor, and in all of us it has only recently disappeared. It is a dark patch not far beneath the surface of our minds. I have said earlier that when I entered the ward at the Hôpital X I was conscious of a strange feeling of familiarity. What the scene reminded me of, of course, was the reeking, pain-filled hospitals of the nineteenth century, which I had never seen but of which I had a traditional knowledge.

Ah, George; the future is not a foreign country; we do things pretty much the same here. 

Arise, King Dick

So now we know: the skeleton found under a municipal car park at the end of last summer really is the long lost King Richard III.  I certainly share the excitement of the archaeological team from the University of Leicester: this is indeed one of the most significant finds in recent English history, finally putting to rest a mystery half a millennium old.  DNA testing, according to investigators, puts it “beyond reasonable doubt that the individual exhumed at Grey Friars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.”

I’m really am so pleased for them.  What academic would not kill for a coup like this?  It’s also pleasing that a story from English history has hit the headlines, displacing the usual tripe about talentless celebrities, even if for only the briefest of moments.  Richard Taylor, Leicester University’s deputy registrar, can be excused a spot of hyperbole – “Today we bear witness to history.”  What tremendous publicity! 

Richard was killed on 22 August, 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the Plantagenets then giving way to the Tudor parvenus.  The skeleton found in Leicester carries mementos of a fairly gruesome death, bearing ten wounds in all, eight of them to the head.  The spine also shows an abnormal curvature, proving in part Shakespeare’s contention that Richard was “deformed, unfinished”, though not nearly quite as extreme as the full description given in Richard III. 

He was only thirty-two when he died, after a mere two years on the throne, a throne he had usurped from his nephew, Edward V.  The latest plan is that his remains are to be interred at Leicester Cathedral, though some Conservative member’s of parliament have suggested that he be given a state funeral. 

My, my, this is a tricky one, given that on the balance of probability Richard was responsible for the death of Edward and his younger brother, Richard, duke of York, the tragic little princes who disappeared into the Tower of London in the summer of 1483, never to be seen again.  I can’t imagine that any of our modern royal family would welcome a state occasion given the blackness of the record.  Still, the past is the past and Richard, for all his perceived faults, was king of England.

I have to confess to being initially quite lukewarm about the Leicester investigation.  For an academic project I thought there were too many assumptions and far too much speculation.  These things are best treated in a low-key and cautious way.  But it made all the difference, I suppose, not least to the funding, that the archaeological investigation is to be the subject of a telly splash.

Ah, well, such is the reality of modern academia, almost invariably strapped for cash.  If the publicity served a greater good, so much the better.  My greater concern was the involvement of the Richard III Society in the whole project. This would be a bit like involving Doctor Goebbels in a hunt for the remains of Hitler.  Yes, this Society is a partisan organisation, absurdly so.  Richard, for them, is more sinned against than sinning.  For them the real villain of the story is his successor, Henry VII.

The involvement of this Society has come dangerously close to damaging the impartiality of the Leicester team.  From the outset they were determined to advance their own agenda.  For them the discovery of Richard would end the “enormous disparagement” of his reputation.  In what way, one has to ask?  Do bones speak?  Do they proclaim their innocence of past accusations?  I’m tempted to think that some might believe so.  All they tell us, all they can tell us, is that the King’s alleged crookbacked deformities were based on an exaggerated caricature, deformed in shape, deformed in nature.  But few serious historians would have been seduced by the legend.  Hunchbacks, with withered arms, as I wrote last year, do not generally ride into battle.

I’ve said previously that I’ve never quite understood why Richard, who ruled for only two fairly disastrous years, has excited such fascination.  He was a bad king, a bad politician and an appalling strategist.  But for his miscalculations the Lancastrian cause, comprehensively defeated in the so-called Wars of the Roses (it was the Scot Scott who gave it that title) may itself have been buried forever. 

His fall began with a crime - the murder in the Tower.  Oh, there is little doubt about that, despite the objections of the Richardians, as anyone who has the least knowledge of medieval records, like Close Rolls and Pipe Rolls, will confirm. 

These documents are an exhaustive account of royal grants and expenditure, mention often being made of the most politically insignificant people.  The Princes are there, at least until the summer of 1483, when they vanish altogether from the record, receiving no further mention.  To save himself, and to completely undercut Henry Tudor in 1485, Richard only had to produce them in public.  He could not.  He was Macbeth and they were the ghosts at his feast. 

Still, for all that, it’s a great find.  Well done, Leicester, well done the Raiders of the Lost King.  Perhaps you might now take the trouble to find him a horse.  There is a kingdom at stake.  

Richard reconstructed

Stands Egypt where it did?

Two years ago exactly I wrote an article focusing on the evolving political situation in Egypt, then the high noon of the so-called Arab Spring (Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt, 6 Feb, 2011).  Of course the title was deliberate, a nod in the direction of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, his brilliant conservative dissection of an event that was still well short of its most extreme and murderous phase.  I began my piece by quoting Burke’s most pertinent observation;

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Now here we are, two years on; now we see what it has pleased the present Egyptian authorities to do.  It’s just as well that, unlike some, unlike the BBC, for example, we did not offer congratulations.  We see that Mohamed Morsi, the Islamic Brotherhood President, is taking the country in the direction of a new tyranny.  Meet the new boss, pretty much the same as the old boss.  Actually, no; for all his faults Hosni Mubarak was at least a secular tyrant. 

In my frustrated Cassandra-like manner (who listens to me?) I made my own observations at the time:

What is it, I wonder, that will please the mobs, beyond the departure of President Mubarak? What is to come after Ozymandius has left nothing but footsteps in sand and time? If one tried to find answers here, if one tried to penetrate beneath the surface of transient events, one is best to ignore the reports of the BBC, unbelievably banal in their shallowness and lack of understanding. Jeremy Bowen, their Middle East editor, was heard to say of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamental face of Egypt, that they are a “fairly moderate force here…they don’t want to rock the boat too much.” No, let the boat keep rocking; they will be there to steady it afterwards.

Well, now we know.  Bowen’s ‘fairly moderate force’, endorsed by the Economist and all liberal idiots at the time, has been busy, like the Bolsheviks in 1917, concentrating all power in its own hands.  Alarmed by recent developments, thousands gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, protesting that the revolution had been betrayed.  Thousands more gathered outside the presidential palace, chanting ‘leave!’ ‘leave!’ in the empty hope that Morsi would really leave. 

Meanwhile, under the guidance of the Brother of the Brotherhood, Egypt slips still further into chaos.  The economy is in ruins and the vital tourist industry is in sharp decline.  I was in the country two years ago and still keep up some of the contacts and friendships I made then.  It really breaks my heart to see how bad things have become, to learn that people are being gunned down in the streets for taking the message of freedom too literally. It gives me no pleasure at all to say - see, I was right; democracy cannot be grafted on to a country with no tradition of democracy.  Now in place of freedom comes a state of emergency and a curfew.  Now in place of Mubarak comes Morsi. 

Even Egypt’s most precious treasures have come under threat.  Last year Murgen Salam al-Gohary, a jihadist who claims he has links with the Taliban, called for the destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids.  The pyramids have laughed for thousands of years at time, but they cannot laugh at ignorant fanatics who simply pass through time. 

“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he said, according to Al Arabiya News. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

Yes, a nice reminder of a past cultural atrocity and a present warning of what Egypt’s future may bring.  The future may also bring the Salafists, the second most influential party in the country after the Muslim Brotherhood.  They have agreed with al-Gohray’s view, saying that they also want the country’s Pharonic statues covered. 

They may as well cover up what remains of Egypt’s democracy as well.  Stands Egypt where it did?

Alas, poor country, 
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot 
Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing, 
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; 
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air, 
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems 
A modern ecstasy The dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for who, and good men's lives 
Expire before the flowers in their caps, 
Dying or ere they sicken. 

Ley, Lady, Ley

 “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” so Hamlet tells his old friend and intellectual sparring partner in the play. Actually there are more things in heaven and earth, particularly earth, than are dreamt of in most philosophies. Shakespeare knew this; for he was in possession of a wisdom and understanding long vanished, sublimated under a heavy defensive crust of rationalism.

Let me give you some more words, this time from A Midsummer Nights Dream, the most magical of the bard's plays, full of mystery and music. The words in question are those of Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow;

Now it is the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the church way paths to glide.

Perhaps you know the play well, seen it performed or even performed in it yourself. I did, when I was at school. When I was fourteen years old I was Titania, Queen of the fairies. Ever since it has had an abiding fascination for me, particularly some of the more enigmatic lines. Do you know, for example, what a church way path is? I didn't that midsummer of my teens. I do now; I have done for some time.

I'll tell you in a bit, but first a word on ancients paths or roads. Alfred Watkins was an amateur archaeologist born in the county of Hereford on the Welsh border. The Welsh name for Hereford, incidentally, is Henffordd, meaning an old road, a striking coincidence, considering that old roads were to have a major impact on his life. In the early 1920s, while examining some county maps, he noticed that various ancient sites, including barrows, standing stones and stone circles seem to occur in an exact alignment. Straight lines could be drawn between them. Looking deeper, he subsequently found that old churches built atop pagan shrines could be similarly aligned.

In 1922 he published his findings in Early British Trackways, followed up three years later by The Old Straight Road, the book he is best known for. Watkins had discovered what came to be known as 'ley lines', chosen because the tracks passed through place names that often ended with the syllable 'ley.' Yes, he named them, that's true, but he 'discovered' them, in might be said, in the same way that Columbus 'discovered' America!

In Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience ley lines are defined as follows;

Ley lines are alignments and patterns of powerful, invisible earth energy said to connect various sacred sites, such as churches, temples, stone circles, megaliths, holy wells, burial sites and other locations of spiritual and magical importance.

In fact what Watkins had stumbled upon was a feature that for centuries before his time had been known as fairy roads; spiritual highways, in other words. Shakespeare knew, hence the mysterious (not for him) reference to church way paths. This is just the English name for something that occurs across so many different cultures and ages, the belief that that spirits of one kind or another, living or dead, move through the physical landscape along special routes.

The church way paths constitute a special class here, known elsewhere in Europe as 'corpse roads.' In Britain they are also known by other names, such as burial road, bier road, coffin road or lych way, the latter derived from lyches, the Old English word for corpse. In Saxon time they were known as the 'deada wegg.' I don't think there is any need for translation here, is there?

The church paths were simple enough: they were the prescribed route by which the dead were carried to their allotted burial place, straight to the gate. But more than this they accumulated a long tradition of spirit lore, routes believed to be followed by the dead after death, as Shakespeare revels in A Midsummer's Night Dream. This was a belief so widespread in Medieval Europe that the remains of those whose return was not desired in any form were often buried at cross roads, specifically to confuse their spirits. Unable to travel, the spirit would thus be 'locked' in a single location.

Just as Watkins had inadvertently stumbled across church paths, the people of the Middle Ages had stumbled across something even older, a more archaic spirit lore. We now know of Neolithic earthen avenues called “cursuses” linking burial mounds. These features can run for a considerable distance, some for many miles, and are largely straight. All of them connect funerary sites. We know the exist, yes, but we have no idea what the were for. It's not beyond possibility that they were specifically intended to serve as spirit paths. Some Neolithic and Bronze age graves, particularly in Britain and France, are fitted with blocking stones. Why? What was being blocked?

We are not simply dealing with man-made features or human superstition here. In 1987 the New Scientist magazine published an article suggesting that species as diverse as pigeons, whales, bees and -of all things – bacteria can navigate using the earth's magnetic field. Ley lines may be human but we know that they, too, have a close relationship with the same magnetic field. So, take your pick: the lines are are simply areas of altered magnetic fields or they carry traces of all past energies, of those who have trodden these mystical ways since before history and before time.

Puck's words, you see, have a wider significance than even Shakespeare may have understood. They connect with a spirit lore that extends all the way from Ireland in the west to China in the east. It's possible to come across references time after time and place after place. In Germany they were called Geisterwege, routes to be avoided at night. The Handwortbuch der deutschen Aberglaubens describes them thus;

The paths, with no exception, always run in a straight line over mountains and valleys and through marshes...in towns they pass the houses closely or go through them. The paths end or originate in a cemetery...therefore this way or road was believed to have the same characteristics as a cemetery...where spirits of the deceased thrive.

In Ireland these were the fairy paths, routes that had such physical reality in the minds of the living that building patterns were adapted to ensure that they were not obstructed. Does this sound familiar? It should do if you have any acquaintance with Chinese culture; for the same belief underpins feng-shui divination, in which homes and other places have to be protected, so to speak, from the straight and narrow! The belief is that troublesome spirits travelling along such ethereal pathways will bring bad luck if blocked on their journey. In Ireland those who suffered unforeseen misfortunes, or sudden illness, were said to live in houses that were in a “contrary place.”

Now a real life story, one I got from Paul Devereux, writing in the Fortean Times. There is a croft, now a cattle shed, at Knockeencreen in County Kerry. In an interview carried out in the 1980s, the then occupant told of troubles his grandfather experienced with cattle dying from wholly unexplained reasons. The front door is exactly opposite the back door. A passing gypsy told the grandfather that the building stood on a fairy path between two hills. “Keep the doors slightly ajar at night”, she advised, “to allow the fairies free passage.” And so he did, and so the cattle stopped dying. No more bad feng-shui.

The important thing here is that the energy is not obstructed, either on the ley lines or the dragon paths of Chinese tradition. For if they are...well, you've been warned. If you would like to discuss this further you might care to join me for a drink at the Ancient Ram Inn in Wooton-under-Edge in the county of Gloucestershire. I should warn you, though, that it is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in England. A few years ago an investigation was carried out by a team from the UK Paranormal Study, headed by Kieron Butler. Mr Butler – silly man – decided that a spot of Ouija game play was called for, which called for an unexpected entity:

We asked for a sign outside the board and we heard a deep kind of groan or yell. I felt his presence rush across the attic towards us as did Mr Al and the others felt a freezing blast of air hit us with force. I felt him at first right behind me, we continued then I felt him stand in the spot I was sitting, I felt overcome by a feeling I cannot explain but I think he was trying to get into me as if I could be used as a channel. This was getting unbearable and I then felt a terrible stabbing pain in my back, moments later the board spelt out stab & die...then I felt all the pain and feelings return before I passed out.

What's the problem with the Ancient Ram Inn? Why, it's right over a ley line.