USURPER OR DEFENDER OF THE LAW? A RICHARD III MYSTERY

Richard III (York) and Henry VII Tudor (Lancaster).

A propos of the autentication of the remains of Richard III, currently top news in the UK, fellow Ricardians (those who think he may be innocent of the charges brought against him by Tudor propaganda, most famously in Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Richard III), and those open to persuasion, should check out the wonderful book The Princes in the Tower by Josephine Tey (Scottish author Elizabeth Mackintosh, 1896-1952), which presents an engaging investigation of the deaths of the two young princes, for which Richard is usually held responsible (though the truth of this claim is subject to serious debate by historians). Tey presents the evidence in the form of a historical whoddunit in which Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant digs up a whole range of historical records, most of them real, concluding that Richard was innocent.
Meanwhile the evidence of Richard's life (he died aged 32), shows him to have been an extremely able administrator and military commander as well as an exceptionally brave soldier who, during his last charge during the battle of Bosworth, managed to unhorse a famous jousting champion and get within a sword's length of Henry Tudor himself. Having attained his first independent command aged 17, and thereafter becoming the right hand man of the king, his brother, Richard was given control of the north of England, where he helped establish the Council of the North, an innovative organisation through which provinces formerly economically dependent on London could jointly articulate their interests and administer them in a more coherent and effective manner. His legacy also includes reforms which were wholly remarkable for the time, such as creating an early form of legal aid, a court (later known as the Court of Requests), where poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply to have their grievances heard. He also passed legislation banning restrictions on the printing and sale of books and had the text of laws translated into English. He founded the College of Arms and endowed Kings' College Cambridge. Contemporary historian John Rous characterised him as 'a good lord' who 'punished oppressors of the commons' and had 'a great heart'.

The case Shakespeare makes against Richard is based on his (undeniable) ambition and the fact that most of his close associates seemed to die, some on his orders, accused of conspiracies (which were real enough). However, these deaths do not seem so extraordinary when one considers that this was an incredibly unstable and violent period in English politics, when the power of the state and king were tenuous at best, against a political landscape characterised by continually shifting loose coalitions of competing warlords who sought to outpower rival factions. Strategic marriages also played a big role, and many of the barons who appear in the Shakespeare play, most notably Stanley whose betrayal brought about Richard's death at Bosworth, were related to both the Plantagenet and Tudor camps, and could draw on these complex kinship alliances as needed.
Even if Richard were guilty of the violent death of the Princes in the Tower, had he lived, his administrative talents, enlightened legislation and support for scholarship and letters mean he would most likely be remembered as a great monarch. And this is the remarkable thing about Richard, that having ruled for only for two years, he appeared as such a threat by the Tudors that they made him the the focal point of an intense smearing campaign.
One must also remember that according to cultural assumptions at the time, a visible handicap such as his would have been interpreted as a symptom of odiousness in the eyes of God, or a sign of secret guilt or sin. His achievements seem all the more remarkable for being won against serious wide-spread prejudice.
The other remarkable and fitting thing about the rediscovery of Richard III is that it has given Leicester University such a boost at a time when university departments are being closed and the whole British higher education system is reconfigured from the ground up in response to radical cuts. A rather fitting contribution from a scholarship loving king!
 Check out the hillarious Daily Mash post 'Richard III to pick up where he left off'.
A contemporary chronicler records that in the wake of the Battle of Bosworth Field the king dreamt he was surrounded by demons, and that he looked pale in the morning. In Shakespeare's play, he is surrounded by the ghosts of the people he had killed.

EXTRACT FROM William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Richard III with the Landing of th Earl Richmond and the Battle of Bosworth Field. Act V Scene III. Full text available online here.

Enter the Ghost of Prince Edward, son to King Henry VI

Ghost of Prince Edward
[To KING RICHARD III]

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!
Think, how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth
At Tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die!

To RICHMOND

Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged souls
Of butcher'd princes fight in thy behalf
King Henry's issue, Richmond, comforts thee.

Enter the Ghost of King Henry VI

Ghost of King Henry VI
[To KING RICHARD III]

When I was mortal, my anointed body
By thee was punched full of deadly holes
Think on the Tower and me: despair, and die!
Harry the Sixth bids thee despair, and die!

To RICHMOND

Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror!
Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be king,
Doth comfort thee in thy sleep: live, and flourish!

Enter the Ghost of CLARENCE

Ghost of CLARENCE
[To KING RICHARD III]

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!
I, that was wash'd to death with fulsome wine,
Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death!
To-morrow in the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!--

To RICHMOND

Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster
The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee
Good angels guard thy battle! live, and flourish!

Enter the Ghosts of RIVERS, GRAY, and VAUGHAN

Ghost of RIVERS
[To KING RICHARD III]

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow,
Rivers. that died at Pomfret! despair, and die!

Ghost of GREY
[To KING RICHARD III]

Think upon Grey, and let thy soul despair!

Ghost of VAUGHAN
[To KING RICHARD III]

Think upon Vaughan, and, with guilty fear,
Let fall thy lance: despair, and die!

All
[To RICHMOND]

Awake, and think our wrongs in Richard's bosom
Will conquer him! awake, and win the day!

Enter the Ghost of HASTINGS

Ghost of HASTINGS
[To KING RICHARD III]

Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake,
And in a bloody battle end thy days!
Think on Lord Hastings: despair, and die!

To RICHMOND

Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake!
Arm, fight, and conquer, for fair England's sake!

Enter the Ghosts of the two young Princes

Ghosts of young Princes
[To KING RICHARD III]

Dream on thy cousins smother'd in the Tower:
Let us be led within thy bosom, Richard,
And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death!
Thy nephews' souls bid thee despair and die!

To RICHMOND

Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy;
Good angels guard thee from the boar's annoy!
Live, and beget a happy race of kings!
Edward's unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.

Enter the Ghost of LADY ANNE

Ghost of LADY ANNE
[To KING RICHARD III]

Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife,
That never slept a quiet hour with thee,
Now fills thy sleep with perturbations
To-morrow in the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!

To RICHMOND

Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep
Dream of success and happy victory!
Thy adversary's wife doth pray for thee.

Enter the Ghost of BUCKINGHAM

Ghost of BUCKINGHAM
[To KING RICHARD III]

The last was I that helped thee to the crown;
The last was I that felt thy tyranny:
O, in the battle think on Buckingham,
And die in terror of thy guiltiness!
Dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death:
Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath!

To RICHMOND

I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid:
But cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismay'd:
God and good angel fight on Richmond's side;
And Richard falls in height of all his pride.

The Ghosts vanish
KING RICHARD III starts out of his dream

KING RICHARD III
Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu!--Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.

TEA AT BLANDINGS CASTLE: WODEHOUSE'S UNFORGETTABLE LORD EMSWORTH

EXTRACT FROM: P G Wodehouse 2002 [1921] Summer Lightning London: Penguin Books, pp 16-7.

 For two hours after this absolutely nothing happened in the grounds of Blandings Castle. At the end of that period there sounded through the mellow, drowsy stillness a drowsy, mellow chiming. It was the clock over the stables striking five. Simultaneously, a small but noteworthy procession filed out of the house and made its way across the sun-bathed lawn to where the big cedar cast a grateful shade. It was headed by James, another footman, with a gate-leg table. The rear was brought up by Beach, who carried nothing, but merely lent a tone.

The instinct which warns all good Englishmen when tea is ready immediately began to perform its silent duty. Even as Thomas set the gate-leg table to earth there appeared, as if answering a cue, an elderly gentleman in stained tweeds and a hat he should have been ashamed of. Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, in person. He was a long, lean, stringy man of about sixty, slightly speckled at the moment with mud, for he had spent most of the afternoon pottering round pig-styes. He surveyed the preparations for the meal with vague amiability through rimless pince-nez.

'Tea?'

'Yes, your lordship'.

'Oh?' said Lord Emsworth. 'Ah? Tea, eh? Tea? Yes. Tea. Quite so. To be sure, tea. Capital.'

One gathered from these remarks that he ralized that the tea-hour had arrived and was glad of it. He proceeded to impart his discovery to his niece Millicent, who, lured by that same silent call, had just appeared at his side.

'Tea, Millicent'.

'Yes'.

'Er-tea,' said Lord Emsworth, driving home his point.

Millicent sat down, and busied herself with the pot. She was a tall, fair girl with soft blue eyes and a face like the Soul's Awakening. Her whole appearance radiated wholesome innocence. Not even an expert could have told that she had just received a whispered message from a bribed butler and was proposing at six sharp to go and meet a quite ineligible young man among the rose-bushes.

'Been down seeing the Empress, Uncle Clarence?'

'Eh? Oh, yes. Yes my dear. I have been with her all the afternoon'.

Lord Emsworth's mild eyes beamed. They always did when that noble animal, Empress of Blandings, was mentioned. He had never desired to mould the destinies of the State, to frame its laws and make speeches in the House of Lords that would bring all the peers and bishops to their feet, whooping and waving their hats. All he yearned to do, by way of ensuring admittance to England's Hall of Fame, was to tend his prize sow, Empress of Blandings, so sedulously that for the second time in two consecutive years he would win the silver medal in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show.

END OF EXTRACT

BBC is currently airing a new series inspired by Wodehouse's Blandings books. Being away, I haven't seen it, but apparently the audiences have panned it as being overly hammed up caricature. Certainly the casting doesn't seem to have paid any heed to Wodehouse's descriptions of the characters. In an article published in the Daily Telegraph last month, novelist Tom Sharpe tells of his encounter with Wodehouse, both literal and figurative. Below is an extract dealing with his search for the real settings that inspired the Blandings books (read the whole article here).

[Pinning] down this miniature world is hard as Wodehouse always maintained that Blandings was a mixture of places he remembered. Many years ago, I travelled around England with Norman Murphy, looking for the sites that might have inspired Blandings. Murphy would later go on to write A Wodehouse Handbook and we spent many happy hours learning about the world the Blandings books evoked: how to run a large estate, the importance of looking after your timber, and the bitter rivalry among landowners showing their animals at the county show.
One place to inspire Wodehouse was Corsham Court in Wiltshire where, as a boy, he took tea with his aunts in the servants’ hall and skated on the lake in the park. This aside, however, there is little else at Corsham to remind us of Blandings.
A more likely candidate is Weston Park in Shropshire. Wodehouse and his elder brother, Armine, would often accompany their parents to the estate. It was home to the Countess of Bradford whose oldest friend married Wodehouse’s uncle, the Reverend Frederick Wodehouse. Another uncle was rector of the parish in which Weston Park stands. Those familiar with Blandings will recognise many elements there, from the picturesque cottage in the wood that was ideal for concealing stolen necklaces or purloined pigs, to the magnificent cedar tree with its hammock, assiduously claimed by Lord Emsworth’s ne’er-do-well brother, Gally.
As for the actual castle, there is much to suggest that Wodehouse was inspired by Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, now, famously, home of the Dent-Brocklehursts. In 1902, Wodehouse’s parents moved from Stableford in Shropshire to Cheltenham and some time afterwards P G walked up Cleeve Hill and looked down on Sudeley. He would never forget that first sight of the great building – Cleeve Hill is, I believe, one of the few places in England where you can look down on a castle (Tom Sharpe 2013).

HOW CHILDREN COPED WITH GRANDMOTHERS IN THE 1940s: MOLESWORTH ON GROWN-UPS

EXTRACT FROM: Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle 1999 [1953] Molesworth London: Penguin Books, pp 196-7, illustrations p193.

HOW TO COPE WITH GROWN UPS: GRANDMOTHERS

Grandmothers are all very strikt and they all say the same thing as they smile over their gin and orange.

It's a grandmother's privilege to spoil her grandchildren GET OFF THAT SOFA NIGEL YOU WILL BREAK IT.

Grandmothers are very tough when you get them in a bate so it is better not to zoom about among the dresden china or direct space bombs at the best tea set.

You usually get parked on grans when your mater can stand you no longer or go abroad to winter sports (such a change from the kitchen). So you get left behind it might just as well be with jack the ripper for all they care.

Aktually grans are not bad. Gran you know our gran is a wonderful old lade hem-hem she made munitions during the war and was also a lade porter. Now she fly round the world in comets stiring up trouble, so pop says, and beating black men on the head. Pop says why bother about an atomic bomb if you can drop gran over rusia. She would soon tell them how to manage their affairs e.g. you simply can'tbe a communist mr malenkov. That's quite beyond the pale.

All grans show boys the tower of london and westminster abbey and think it so amusing when molseworth 2 says 'So what?' when told that the crown jewels are worth five trillion pounds. After that they take you to st. pauls science museum national galery madam toussauds statue of peter pan buckingham palace and wonder why their feet hurt. Mine were simply killing me, my dear. Madam tussauds is not bad as gran says there is a man who murded 3 people. Molesworth 2 says thats nothing I hav done 5 already he is a swank and a wet.

One chiz about gran is that she hound and persekute all shopkeepers. She take you along and you have to listen while she send for the manager. She says I have dealt here for 30 years why can you not deliver on tuesdays ect while I try to pretend I am not there chiz, also the gorgonzola is not wot it was. Personaly I think no gorgonzola is worth sending for the manager for but it must be diferent I supose when you are 723.

END OF EXTRACT

The Molesworth books were written by Geoffrey Willans (creator of the St. Trinian's books), illustrated by Ronald Searle, and first published in the 1940s by Punch. Willans went to Blundells School in Tiverton and later became a schoolmaster there. According to Searle, he was delighted that masters, far from feeling offended by his books, were giving them away as school prizes.  He died tragically early, at the age of 47, in 1959.
Searle, who was from Cambridge, studied at Anglia Ruskin University and served in Singapore during the war, being taken prisoner by the Japanese and made to work on the Siam Burma 'Death Railway'. He served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg trials and later had a long distinguished career as a cartoonist for the world's top magazines (he was one of Matt Groening's influences). He died on 30 Dec 2011.

In the book's Introduction, Phillip Hensher sees Nigel Molesworth as the quintessential post-war cynic. "You can never rely on Molesworth not to start joking about Proust, trade unions, the Welfare State or Stalin's show trials". Yet, poised as he is, in the late 40s, on the threshold of a new age, this self declared 'young Elizabethan' looks forward optimistically to space travel and all that atomic energy has to offer.

OTTOMAN GRANDEUR AND MYTH IN BOSNIA: IVO ANDRIC'S NOBEL WINNING THE BRIDGE ON THE DRINA

The Bridge over the Drina, and Ivo Andric.
EXTRACT FROM: Ivo Andric 2008 [1945] The Bridge on the Drina (Lovett F. Edwards transl), Belgrade: Dereta, pp 25-7.

They knew that the bridge had been built by the Grand Vezir, Mehmet Pasa, who had been born in the nearby village of Sokolovici, just on the far side of one of those mountains which encircled the bridge and he town. Only a Vezir could have given all that was needed to build this lasting wonder of stone (a Vezir - to the children's minds that was something fabulous, immense, terrible and far from clear). It was built by Rade the Mason, who must have lived for hundreds of years to have been able to bulid all that was lovely and lasting in the Serbian lands, that legendary and in fact nameless master whom all people desire and dream of, since they do not want to have to remember or be indebted to too many, even in memory. They knew that the vila [fairy] of the boatmen had hindered its building, as always and everywhere there is someone to hinder building, destroying by night what had been built by day, until 'something' had whispered from the waters and counselled Rade the mason to find two infant children, twins, brother and sister, named Stoja and Ostoja, and wall them into the central pier of the bridge. A reward was promised to whoever found them and brought them hither.
At last the guards found such twins, still at the breast, in a distant village and the Vezir's men took them away by force; but when they were taking them away, their mother would not be parted from them and, weeping and wailing, insensible to blows and to curses, stumbled after them as far as Visegrad itself, where she succeeded in forcing her way to Rade the Mason.
The children were walled into the pier, for it could not be otherwise, but Rade, they say, had pity on them and left openings in the pier thorugh which the unhappy mother could feed her sacrificed children. Those are the finely carved blind windows, narrow as loopholes, in which the wild doves now nest. In memory of that, the mother's milk has flowed from those walls for hundreds of years, That is the thin white stream which at certain times of the year, flows from that faultless masonry and leaves an indelible mark on the stone. (The idea of woman's milk stirs in the childish mind a feeling at once too intimate and too close, yet at the same time vague and mysterious like Vezirs and masons, which disturbs and repulses them). Men scrape those milky traces off the piers and sell them as medicinal powder to women who have no milk after giving birth.
In the central pier of the bridge, below the kapia [terrace] there is a larger opening, a long narrow gateway without gates, like a gigantic loophole. In that pier, they say, is a great room, a gloomy hall, in which a black Arab lives. All the children know this. In their dreams and in their fancies he plays a great role. If he should appear to anyone, that man must die. Not a single child has seen him yet, for children do not die. But Hamid, the asthmatic porter, with bloodshot eyes, continually drunk or suffering from a hangover, saw him one night and that very same night he died, over there by the wall. It is true that he was blind drunk at the time and passed the night on the bridge under the open sky in a temperature of -15 degrees Celsius. The children used to gaze from the bank into that dark opening as into a gulf which is both terrible and fascinating. They would agree to look at it without blinking, and whoever first saw anything should cry out. Openmouthed they would peer into that deep dark hole, quivering with curiosity and fear, until it seemed to some anaemic child that the opening began to sway and to move like a black curtain, or until one of them, mocking and inconsiderate ... shouted 'The Arab' and pretended to run away. That spoilt the game and aroused disillusion and indignation amongst those who loved the play of the imagination, hated irony and believed that by looking intently they could actually see and feel something. At night, in their sleep, many of them would toss and fight with the Arab from the bridge as with fate until their mother woke them and so freed them from this nightmare.

This epic novel is built around the story of the magnificent bridge at Visegrad, Bosnia, completed by the Ottomans in 1577 and still standing today. Linking the predominantly Bosniak and Serb sections of the town, this vast construction (nearly 200 m long) has survived unscathed the periodical flooding of the Drina, as well as much fighting.
Ivo Andric won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 for this wonderful novel, built as a vast historical tapestry, well paced and reminescent, in its scale and tone, of Marquez' A hundred years of solitude.  He was an ethnically Croatian author from Bosnia/Herzegovina (born in Travnik, the subject of another great book of his, A Bosnian Chronicle). He built a diplomatic career in pre-socialist Yugoslavia, being attached to the Holy See and later the League of Nations. After the war he settled in Belgrade, working as a Member of Parliament for Bosnia and academic. He donated the Nobel prize money to Bosnian libraries.
Respected across ethnic boundaries, Andric was and remains a key figure of the Yugoslav cosmopolitanism promoted by Tito (and still regarded nostalgically by many in ex-Yugoslavia) and his portrait of Bosnia is sometimes used to argue that ex-Yugoslavia is not just characterised by tribalism and conflict, but has equally strong historical traditions of ethnic conviviality and cooperation upon which it can draw today (but his historical analysis is far from symplistic).

...AND A NORDIC LOST CITY FANTASY: SELMA LAGERLOF'S ADVENTURES OF NILS HOLGERSSON

EXTRACT FROM: Selma Lagerlof The wonderful adventures of Nils Holgersson. Available on the Guttenberg Project.

To start with, the boy intended to climb a sand-hill and see how the land behind it looked. But when he had walked a couple of paces, he stubbed the toe of his wooden shoe against something hard. He stooped down, and saw that a small copper coin lay on the sand, and was so worn with verdigris that it was almost transparent. It was so poor that he didn't even bother to pick it up, but only kicked it out of the way. But when he straightened himself up once more he was perfectly astounded, for two paces away from him stood a high, dark wall with a big, turreted gate. The moment before, when the boy bent down, the sea lay there--shimmering and smooth, while now it was hidden by a long wall with towers and battlements. Directly in front of him, where before there had been only a few sea-weed banks, the big gate of the wall opened. The boy probably understood that it was a spectre-play of some sort; but this was nothing to be afraid of, thought he. It wasn't any dangerous trolls, or any other evil--such as he always dreaded to encounter at night. Both the wall and the gate were so beautifully constructed that he only desired to see what there might be back of them. "I must find out what this can be," thought he, and went in through the gate. In the deep archway there were guards, dressed in brocaded and purred suits, with long-handled spears beside them, who sat and threw dice. They thought only of the game, and took no notice of the boy who hurried past them quickly. Just within the gate he found an open space, paved with large, even stone blocks. All around this were high and magnificent buildings; and between these opened long, narrow streets. On the square--facing the gate--it fairly swarmed with human beings. The men wore long, fur-trimmed capes over satin suits; plume-bedecked hats sat obliquely on their heads; on their chests hung superb chains. They were all so regally gotten up that the whole lot of them might have been kings. The women went about in high head-dresses and long robes with tight-fitting sleeves. They, too, were beautifully dressed, but their splendour was not to be compared with that of the men. This was exactly like the old story-book which mother took from the chest--only once--and showed to him. The boy simply couldn't believe his eyes. But that which was even more wonderful to look upon than either the men or the women, was the city itself. Every house was built in such a way that a gable faced the street. And the gables were so highly ornamented, that one could believe they wished to compete with each other as to which one could show the most beautiful decorations. When one suddenly sees so much that is new, he cannot manage to treasure it all in his memory. But at least the boy could recall that he had seen stairway gables on the various landings, which bore images of the Christ and his Apostles; gables, where there were images in niche after niche all along the wall; gables that were inlaid with multi-coloured bits of glass, and gables that were striped and checked with white and black marble. As the boy admired all this, a sudden sense of haste came over him. "Anything like this my eyes have never seen before. Anything like this, they would never see again," he said to himself. And he began to run in toward the city--up one street, and down another. The streets were straight and narrow, but not empty and gloomy, as they were in the cities with which he was familiar. There were people everywhere. Old women sat by their open doors and spun without a spinning-wheel--only with the help of a shuttle. The merchants' shops were like market-stalls--opening on the street. All the hand-workers did their work out of doors. In one place they were boiling crude oil; in another tanning hides; in a third there was a long rope-walk. If only the boy had had time enough he could have learned how to make all sorts of things. Here he saw how armourers hammered out thin breast-plates; how turners tended their irons; how the shoemakers soled soft, red shoes; how the gold-wire drawers twisted gold thread, and how the weavers inserted silver and gold into their weaving. But the boy did not have the time to stay. He just rushed on, so that he could manage to see as much as possible before it would all vanish again. The high wall ran all around the city and shut it in, as a hedge shuts in a field. He saw it at the end of every street--gable-ornamented and crenelated. On the top of the wall walked warriors in shining armour; and when he had run from one end of the city to the other, he came to still another gate in the wall. Outside of this lay the sea and harbour. The boy saw olden-time ships, with rowing-benches straight across, and high structures fore and aft. Some lay and took on cargo, others were just casting anchor. Carriers and merchants hurried around each other. All over, it was life and bustle. But not even here did he seem to have the time to linger. He rushed into the city again; and now he came up to the big square. There stood the cathedral with its three high towers and deep vaulted arches filled with images. The walls had been so highly decorated by sculptors that there was not a stone without its own special ornamentation. And what a magnificent display of gilded crosses and gold-trimmed altars and priests in golden vestments, shimmered through the open gate! Directly opposite the church there was a house with a notched roof and a single slender, sky-high tower. That was probably the courthouse. And between the courthouse and the cathedral, all around the square, stood the beautiful gabled houses with their multiplicity of adornments. The boy had run himself both warm and tired. He thought that now he had seen the most remarkable things, and therefore he began to walk more leisurely. The street which he had turned into now was surely the one where the inhabitants purchased their fine clothing. He saw crowds of people standing before the little stalls where the merchants spread brocades, stiff satins, heavy gold cloth, shimmery velvet, delicate veiling, and laces as sheer as a spider's web. Before, when the boy ran so fast, no one had paid any attention to him. The people must have thought that it was only a little gray rat that darted by them. But now, when he walked down the street, very slowly, one of the salesmen caught sight of him, and began to beckon to him. At first the boy was uneasy and wanted to hurry out of the way, but the salesman only beckoned and smiled, and spread out on the counter a lovely piece of satin damask as if he wanted to tempt him. The boy shook his head. "I will never be so rich that I can buy even a metre of that cloth," thought he. But now they had caught sight of him in every stall, all along the street. Wherever he looked stood a salesman and beckoned to him. They left their costly wares, and thought only of him. He saw how they hurried into the most hidden corner of the stall to fetch the best that they had to sell, and how their hands trembled with eagerness and haste as they laid it upon the counter. When the boy continued to go on, one of the merchants jumped over the counter, caught hold of him, and spread before him silver cloth and woven tapestries, which shone with brilliant colours. The boy couldn't do anything but laugh at him. The salesman certainly must understand that a poor little creature like him couldn't buy such things. He stood still and held out his two empty hands, so they would understand that he had nothing and let him go in peace. But the merchant raised a finger and nodded and pushed the whole pile of beautiful things over to him. "Can he mean that he will sell all this for a gold piece?" wondered the boy. The merchant brought out a tiny worn and poor coin--the smallest that one could see--and showed it to him. And he was so eager to sell that he increased his pile with a pair of large, heavy, silver goblets. Then the boy began to dig down in his pockets. He knew, of course, that he didn't possess a single coin, but he couldn't help feeling for it. All the other merchants stood still and tried to see how the sale would come off, and when they observed that the boy began to search in his pockets, they flung themselves over the counters, filled their hands full of gold and silver ornaments, and offered them to him. And they all showed him that what they asked in payment was just one little penny. But the boy turned both vest and breeches pockets inside out, so they should see that he owned nothing. Then tears filled the eyes of all these regal merchants, who were so much richer than he. At last he was moved because they looked so distressed, and he pondered if he could not in some way help them. And then he happened to think of the rusty coin, which he had but lately seen on the strand. He started to run down the street, and luck was with him so that he came to the self-same gate which he had happened upon first. He dashed through it, and commenced to search for the little green copper penny which lay on the strand a while ago. He found it too, very promptly; but when he had picked it up, and wanted to run back to the city with it--he saw only the sea before him. No city wall, no gate, no sentinels, no streets, no houses could now be seen--only the sea. The boy couldn't help that the tears came to his eyes. He had believed in the beginning, that that which he saw was nothing but an hallucination, but this he had already forgotten. He only thought about how pretty everything was. He felt a genuine, deep sorrow because the city had vanished.

END OF EXTRACT
Selma Lagerlof (1858-1940) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, not for a single book, but rather for the whole of her work. Lagerlof's father was against her furthering her education, but in her Nobel Prize speech she mentioned the debt of gratitude she owed him for the songs and laughter he brought into the family home. As a supporter of women's suffrage movement, she did much to pave the way for other creative women in the public domain. The Gosta Berling Saga, centrepiece of her oeuvre, is one of the most fascinating books I have read, but the Adventures of Nils, one of the favourite books of my childhood, is a truly wonderful work. In it farmer's son Nils is punished for his naughtiness by being made small. He flies away with a group of migrating geese and has lots of adventures, learning about the places he passes on the way.  This magical book was written in 1902, the result of a request by the National Teachers' Association for a work which would help teach Swedish geography to school children.

A BRUSH WITH IMMORTALITY IN 1920s LONDON: BORGES' THE IMMORTAL

EXTRACT FROM: Jorge Luis Borges 'The Immortal' In The Aleph (Andrew Hurley Trans) London: Penguin Books, pp 3-4, 9.

Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
Francis Bacon: Essays LVIII
In London, in early June of the year 1929, the rare book dealer Joseph Cartaphilus, of Smyrna, offered the princess de Lucinge the six quarto minor volumes (1715-1720) of Pope's Iliad. The princess purchased them; when she took posession of them, she exchanged a few words with the dealer. He was, she says an emaciated, grimy man with gray eyes and gray beard and singularly vague features. He expressed himself with untutored and uncorrected fluency in several languages; within scant minutes he shifted from French to English and from English to an enigmatic cross between the Spanish of Salonika and the Portuguese of Macao. In October, the princess heard from a passenger on the Zeus that Cartaphilus had died at sea while returning to Smyrna, and that he had been buried on the island of Ios. In the last volume of the Iliad she found this manuscript.
It is written in an English that teems with Latinisms; this is a verbatim transcription of the document.
As I recall, my travails began in a garden in the hundred-gated Thebes, in the time of the emperor Diocletian. I had fought (with no glory) in the recent Egyptian wars and was tribune of a legion quartered in Berenice, on the banks of the Red Sea; there, fever and magic consumed many men who magnanimously coveted the steel blade. The Mauritanians were defeated; the lands once occupied by the rebel cities were dedicated in aeternitatem to the Plutonian gods; Alexandria, subdued, in vain sought Caesar's mercy; within the year the legions were to report their triumph, but I myself barely glimpsed the face of Mars. That privation grieved me, and was perhaps why I threw myself into the quest, through vagrant and terrible deserts, for the secret City of the Immortals.

My travails, I have said, began in a garden in Thebes. All that night I did not sleep, for there was a combat in my heart. I rose at last a little before dawn. My slaves were sleeping; the moon was the colour of infinite sand. A bloody rider was approaching from the east, weak with exhaustion. A few steps from me, he dismounted and in a faint, insatiable voice, asked me, in Latin, the name of the river whose waters laved the city's walls. I told him it was the Egypt, fed by the rains. 'It is another river that I seek' he replied morosely, 'the secret river that purifies men of death'. Dark blood was welling from his breast. He told me that the country of his birth was a mountain that lay beyond the Ganges; it was rumoured on that mountain, he told me, that if one travelled westward, to the end of the world, one would come to the river whose waters give immortality. He added that on the far sore of that river lay the City of Immortals, a city rich in bulwarks and amphitheatres and temples.

…

 I emerged into a kind of small plaza – a courtyard might better describe it. It was surrounded by a single building of irregular angles and varying heights. It was to this heterogeneous building that the many cupolas and columns belonged. … Cautiously at first, with indifference as time went on, desperately towards the end, I wandered the staircases and inlaid floors of that labyrinthine palace. (I discovered afterward that the width and height of the treads on the staircases were not constant; it was this that explained the extraordinary weariness I felt.) This palace is the work of the gods, was my first thought. I explored the uninhabited spaces, and I corrected myself: The gods that built this place have died. Then I reflected upon its peculiarities and told myself: The gods that built this place were mad.

END OF EXTRACT
The short story The Immortal, by the Argentinian poet Borges, was first published right after the war, in February 1947. It reflects on the futility of culture and civilisation, the collective nature of seemingly personal, individual achievement, and the tantalising nature of death. It is well worth a read – philosophically enchanting, imaginatively rich. There is a twist in the story which makes is more than just another one of these alien lost city fantasies, and renders it quite thought provoking. Needless to say, Borges' image of the mad immortal city, with stairs that lead nowhere, grand doors that open onto shafts or cells and so forth, a construction of the most exquisitely complex irrationality, continues to fascinate architects and artists. This also puts one in mind of the Winchester house in San Jose California, an actually existing irrational construction born from the fear of Sarah Winchester, widow of the Winchester rifle magnate William Wirt Winchester, that, should construction works in the house ever cease, she would die. What she was building, for 38 years, both day and night, was a home for herself and the souls of all the people killed by Winchester rifles.