There was an uptick on Malcolm’s visit-stats for a post from May 2010. These things come and go, but they do tickle the wondering-buds: why?
Well, today’s Times bricks and mortar (the Friday property porn supplement, and on page 3, too) supplies a likely cause:
Stiffkey, Norfolk, NR23
Detached period cottage
What you get Two bedrooms, bathroom, study (or third bedroom), kitchen, sitting room, former wash-house and gardens.
Where is it? In the village of Stiffkey, a mile from the North Norfolk coast.
Upside The cottage, which was owned by the author Henry Williamson in the 1930s, has a garden that goes down to the river and is thought to have inspired his book Tarka the Otter.
Local residents remember Williamson using the wash-house for writing.
The cottage has a light, modern feel and some pretty period features.
Downside Only two bedrooms upstairs but there is scope to extend the house with planning permission. The house backs on to the coast road, which can be busy.
Note the missing detail about the back wall, which runs alongside the A149 coast road.
As for the Local residents who, so clearly, remember Williamson using the wash-house for writing, they’d need to be in their eighties.
Whatever Williamson was writing, holed up in his wash-house, was more likely to be columns for Oswald Mosley’s fascist rag, Action, than about any otter.
Tarka the Otter(which is firmly rooted in North Devon, not North Norfolk) was published in 1927, well before 1936 when Williamson bought Old Hall Farm in Stiffkey.
As it so often says on estate agents’ publications:
Reasonable endeavours have been made to ensure that the information given in these particulars is materially correct but any intending purchaser or lessee should satisfy themself by inspection, searches, enquiries and survey as to the correctness of each statement.
That under the headline, itself a direct lift from Freedland:
Chris Huhne’s downfall heralds a winter of discontent, say newspapers
He could have added many, may more, including Peter Brookes being busy, busy in The Times:
It’s how they draw it
Suddenly there is a re-discovery that Richard of Gloucester suffered as did Jessica Rabbit:
I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.
Those of us who chewed our way through Paul Murray Kendall‘s biography, still in print but originally published in the mid-1960s (the copy on the Redfellow Hovel shelves arrived through marriage to the Lady in Malcolm’s Life, soon after), are not surprised by the re-appraisal.
Kendall achieved a small literary sensation with that book. Yet, it wasn’t ‘revolutionary’ among medieval historians — or even Shakespearean critics. Shakespeare’s immediate sources for his history plays (we’ll come back to those in a while) were:
Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548);
The Third Volume of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587);
The Mirour for Magistrates (1587).
Each of those “borrowed” from Thomas More’s hatchet-job, written between 1512 and 1519, buttering up to Henry VIII.
Even Kendall was long after Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, which came out in 1951 (and was much later the CWA‘s greatest mystery novel of all time). For all the brilliance of this novel, it in turn has a remarkable origin.
Sir Clements Markham
Young Markham, born of an ecclesiastical marriage (he a canon of Windsor, she the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet) joined the Royal Navy at the age of fourteen. That took him to the South American station, where he learned Spanish, and then to the Arctic search for Franklin. He passed for lieutenant, then left the Navy for adventure and exploration, with Peru and the Incas a lasting interest.
When his father died, he needed a regular income and joined the India Office. One of his missions was to bring seeds from Peru to India that quinine might be cultivated and produced in India and Ceylon. Then he set about building a department for geographical research (not as innocent and academic as it might sound) at the India Office.
His frequent (and unauthorised) absences from the India Office took him to Abyssinia and the Arctic, and led to his forced retirement. he was already deeply involved in the Royal Geographical Society. This commitment meant, later, he was a prime mover in the Antarctic expedition of 1901-4. Indeed, it was his insistence on a navy man, rather than a scientist, that put Robert Falcon Scott in command (and he arranged the relief vessels that brought the expedition home). His reward was Scott naming Mount Markham.
All that is incidental, but establishes Markham’s credentials.
Since had been involved in something of a spat with historian James Gairdner, over Gairdner’s 1878 History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third. In 1906 Markham responded with his own thoroughly-researched Richard III, His Life and Character, seeking to establish that Richard of Gloucester was a maligned and misunderstood man. This, then, was the prime source for Josephine Tey’s novel.
The Shakespearean connection
First up, Richard III is an early play. It is generally dated at 1592, and needs to be seen at the end-piece of the “First Tetralogy”, after the three parts of that dreary apprentice-work, Henry VI. It’s a history play, not a tragedy — and even further from the mature tragedies Shakespeare knocked out a decade later. It owes a lot to the bombast of Christopher Marlowe, whose Edward II(probably of 1593) then showed Shakespeare how it ought to have been done, and so changed the English chronicle play into something more solid and coherent.
When all the misquotations and false connections between the play and the exhumation of these skeletal remains have been exhausted, perhaps someone other than Malcolm may find time to muse on whether Shakespeare later regretted his grotesque Richard.
Henry IV (both parts) — not Henry VII, please note, has a shadowy King Henry tormented by the way he came by the throne from Richard II. As he may well have been; but it’s in the context of the moment (compare Hamlet) and Shakespeare’s persistent interest in the morality of regicide — George Buchanan, Scots poet and philosopher, but also tutor to James VI and I, deserves consideration here. When we reach the end of the Second Tetralogy, Henry V has a prayer, the night before Agincourt:
Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard’s body have interred anew; And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood: Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a-day their wither’d hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon.
And so to the car-park
After Bosworth Field, the Franciscan Friars of Leicester took possession of Richard III’s body. Polydor Vergil, Henry VII’s official ‘Historian’, tells that Richard was buryed two days after [presumably 25 August, 1485] without any pompe or solemn funerall … in the abbay of monks Franciscanes at Leycester. In summer 1495 Henry VII had a tomb and monument built in the abbey choir: Walter Hylton, a Nottingham worker in alabaster, got £50for the job.
In 1538 the Greyfriars of Leicester were closed down, and bits of the abbey were either sold off, pilfered, or left to decay. Robert Herrick (yes,indeed: same lot) later bought the land and had a house built on the site. When Christopher Wren (no, not him, but his dad) came a-calling in 1612, he saw the memorial Herrick had erected:
… a handsome stone pillar, three foot high, bearing the inscription Here lies the body of Richard III, some time King of England.
After that came the legends, including the plaque on Bow Bridge, set up by a local builder, Ben Broadbent, in 1856.
After which, with urban redevelopment, slum-clearance and the various monstrosities local authorities impose on the landscape, Richard’s supposed burial site disappeared under the tarmac.
And now [1]?
We have an incomplete skeleton. Carbon dating suggests late 15th/early 16th century. The DNA narrows it to 1% of the population — which still leaves considerable doubt. There is the spinal curvature, which could connect to the anecdotes of Richard’s reported deformity (of which there was a lot about in those days). There is the location, none too distant from Market Bosworth. A lot of coincidence and circumstantial evidence; but it needs an imaginative leap to “this is Richard III”. That’s what Mary Beard means by I want not just a story, but a validated story.
If we need convincing that times are hard, look no further than, eponymously, The Times‘s list of les Grands Projets that are supposed to bring Britain out of its slough of economic despond. Or as David Wighton’s piece puts it: Quick fixes to get economy up to speed.
Wighton sets the scene:
Thirty-five road and rail projects got the go-ahead yesterday as George Osborne made infrastructure investment the centre of his economic package.
So, where’s Blasted Boris’s airport (some £50 billion)? After all, that has again been a main feature in The Times these recent days, even given the Wighton Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval as recently as … well implicitly, today, actually:
Maintaining a hub airport was identified as a key government commitment yesterday as part of 500 infrastructure projects worth more than £250 billion to be deliver over the next few years.
Only later, in the fourth paragraph,do we realise this is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, because:
About two-thirds of the £250 billion will come from the private sector and the Government is in talks with two sets of British pension funds that are expected to invest more than £20 billion over the next five to ten years.
£20 billion! Wowza! That’s a whole 8% of the £250 billion already at the “in talks” stage. Perhaps a third or a quarter of just one year’s income received by UK pensions funds —money that has to be invested somewhere. Convincing, what? And the UK pensions pot totals in excess of a trillion — so there’s a contribution, even if not a staggering one.
But George Osborne is sadly not thinking as BIG as Mr Wighton. He is proposing those 35 projects cost much as £5 billion for the next three years. Which is a fair bit of difference — a factor of fifty-fold reduction to be a trifle more precise.
And those 35 projects really do scrape the tun’s bum:
a by-pass for Immingham (£6.3 million);
up-grades on the Tyne and Wear Metro (£4 million);
replacing a railway bridge in Derby (£6.9 million);
a couple of park-and-ride schemes in York (£21.9 million, which seems a grotesque inflation);
a bus station in Rochdale (£11.5 million).
But what really caught Malcolm’s eye was the item for “More Sheffield supertrams”. Malcolm has ridden the Sheffield trams, and (like those of Nottingham, but sadly not that intended to bring the Croydon trams into and across central London) they are very nice indeed. Still, can anyone imagine a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer — a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Lloyd George, a Churchill, even (heaven help us!) a Philip Snowden — bragging about four extra trams for Sheffield?
Any one spared the front page of today’s Times escapes this image:
Now, we all recognise that the Press has an agenda. It amounts to a demand for a constantly-changing cast of characters, like some continuing soap opera. Personalities are invented, built up, then slaughtered, that a new face might then be introduced to continue the drama.
Politics is treated like a Moebius strip. In Britain, though, the same side has been in focus for more than a decade. In David Cameron the Press have discovered one of their own, one with whom they can readily identify: the former PR smoothie of a failed television company. Here is a new leading light, a metropolitan face, to be enhanced, photoshopped and deified: only then can his feet of clay be chipped away.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Murdoch’s Morning Moan.
1946 and all that
The hyperbole of this image is breath-taking. There are no points of recognition between the Britain of 2009 and that of sixty-odd years previously.
To suggest a parallel is to belittle the intellect of a reader.
It simply overdoes the doom and gloom.
Now, let’s strike an equally relevant comparison. This is another image of London in 1946:
Malcolm has commented, at length, on this one before. It is as propagandist as that picture used by the Times. It is as positive and upbeat as the other is negative and defeatist.
What further irritates is that the Times story is predicated to the IMF forecast, published on Wednesday (yesterday). Now, IMF forecasts tick along with metronomic regularity: how many of us check their subsequent accuracy?
For example, last November the outlook for the UK was growth for 2008 at 1% (down from its earlier shot of 1.8%) and -0.1% for 2009 (down from +1.8%). Around the same time, the IMF was predicting average oil-prices for this year at $68 (down from a previous guess of $100): yesterday, oil closed at $42 or so.
This is Mystic Meg stuff, with as much value as a fortune cookie. Just because it’s got a fancy label, doesn’t make it Château Lafite. Just because it has the IMF good-housekeeping seal of approval doesn’t make it come true.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Malcolm returned from the local supermarket. Within a hundred paces of his front gate are eight — no, count them again, nine — tradesman’s vans. Garden walls are being built. Kitchens replaced. Double-glazing installed. Blockwork is being ground for paths and driveways. Here is an electrician. There a plumber. Someone is upgrading their tv reception. It was on a Thursday morning that the gas-man came to call.
The immediate neighbourhood of Redfellow Hovel is a hive of activity, and paid and productive labour.
Nice to see that the rear-end of today’s Times (though, worryingly, sandwiched between finance and obituaries) managed to find two whole pages to devote to Britain’s canals, and their success. [As far as Malcolm can see, the piece by Simon Midgley is behind the subscription wall.]
Simon Midgley produces a panegyric of the achievements of British Waterways (under the constant pressure of amenity and environmental groups, of course) in restoring our canals. Not only are 2,200 of the original 5,000 miles now operating, 200 miles have been added in the last decade. There are a further 600 miles still in need of restoration.
The article makes it clear that the canals are not simply a leisure provider: they still carry freight, and a growing amount of it. Canal beds are channels for fibre-optic cables, and tow-paths (now mainly used by cyclists and joggers elbowing aside the casual walker) are often conduits for electric cables. They are important simply as water-courses, for providing tap-water and for flood relief. They are highly desired as locations for residential development: where development does not happen, they are havens for wild-life.
It is difficult to find any real way of not enjoying and applauding canals:
The narrow boat, that familiar denizen of Britain’s canal network, was recently voted the third most iconic image of England in a Campaign to Protect Rural England poll. Pub signs and post boxes took first and second place.
Presumably, that makes sitting at a canalside pub, writing a postcard, the ultimate enjoyment of the British countryside. Malcolm hopes so: he has happy memories of the likes of several such hostelries, and unpleasant recollections of none. He cannot recall finding time there to waste on postcards, when he was busily occupied watching boats travelling at two miles-an-hour, sweating bodies toiling at lock-gates, and the froth-level sliding down the pint glass.
Only one passing notion dimmed his uninterrupted delight in this article. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the rumoured privatisation of British Waterways, could it?
Except Mr Boggis lives near Southwold, on the Suffolk coast. His family have been there for over a century, and naturally resent the persistent erosion. Perhaps he should have heeded the phantom bells of Dunwich. It was one of the major towns of East Anglia after the Norman Conquest.
now 236 burgesses [holders of land or a house]; and 180 less two poor men … now 3 churches and they pay £4 and 10 shillings. In total, the value is £50 and 60,000 herrings as a gift.
By the time of the Great Reform Act, Dunwich had almost disappeared, but still had two MPs.
The Times includes a helpful graphic, which encloses the entire south and east coast (exempting only Kent and East Sussex) with a red warning marker under the title “Disappearing England”.
As if.
One arrow in this graphic seems to point precisely to Holkham Bay. This is widely known as the location where happily-already-widowed Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) wades ashore at the end of Shakespeare in Love (see image at top of post):
… a perilous voyage to an unknown land… a shipwreck… the wild waters roar and heave… the brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned… all save one… a lady… whose soul is greater than the ocean… and her spirit stronger than the sea’s embrace… not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story… for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name… Viola.
It might occur to the GCSE (failed) Geography students at the Times that erosion is not the problem at Holkham, or indeed along much of the North Norfolk littoral. On the contrary, the reason why Cley, Blakeney, Wells and Overy Staithe (where Horatio Nelson learned basic boatcraft) no longer feature as major ports is because of silting and deposition. Malcolm remembers the Run and the Bar at Wells from childhood. He can assure all and sundry that the access to Wells Harbour has shifted significantly westwards over the last half-century.
It’s called longshore drift. The cobbles of Sheringham are ground down to the pebbles of Blakeney, and eventually arrive at Holkham as fine sand.
Mr Boggis is heaving a quarter-million tons of material into the Suffolk sea, ultimately only to build beaches further north and so enhance the Norfolk Riviera of the globally-warmed mid-century.
… a recollection from a reader of the time when London phone numbers were all preceded by letters, displayed in arrays of three of the dial. If you wanted the time, you dialled “TIM”, the cricket score was “UMP”, and so on.
One chap, perhaps seeking divine inspiration, dialled “GOD”. He was shocked when the phone was picked up and a suave male voice asked: “How may I help you?” Because of the layout of the telephones, he had also dialled “INF”, for “Information”.
Which prompts Malcolm to wander Redfellow Hovel doing the Manhattan Transfer’s Operator.
Whatever Williamson was writing, holed up in his wash-house, was more likely to be columns for Oswald Mosley’s fascist rag, Action, than about any otter.
Malcolm arrived home with several posts, for here and 
