And the conversation turned to the idea of how exactly would you expect the results of the battles to be announced? What would happen if the result of the battle wasn’t actually in? Would you have the broadcaster reading out something like:

Greece vs Persia (Second leg, Thermopylae). Pools panel, away win

And then if you had a pools panel to decide ancient battles, what other sorts of results could you have?

Atlantis vs Sparta. Match abandoned, waterlogged pitch

So as well as these daft little things, when wars are comprised of a series of different battles, you’ll pretty much find that whichever side wins the final battle wins the war. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will have won most of the battles in a particular conflict (although they may well have done). So we decided that instead of the victors of a war being determined by who won in a strictly military sense (i.e. had troops left at the end), we should decide who won a particular war by means of producing a league table.

So here are the results from the English Civil War… (using commonly accepted ‘winners’ of each battle, or a draw where no clear winner; particularly decisive victories are shown as such). The results of the battles I have listed show that the Civil War was remarkably close, finally being decided on goal difference…

Despite getting off to a tremendous start to the season, and at one stage opening up a 30 point lead over the Parliamentarians, the Royalists struggled badly towards the end of the season, and were pipped at the post by the Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians. This terrible run for the Royalists, which brought King Charles I only three victories in the final eighteen fixtures is believed to now leave Royalist manager King Charles I facing the axe.

Results of each individual ‘match’ are available below the fold…

1. Parliamentarians 1-3 Royalists (Powick Bridge)
2. Royalists 2-2 Parliamentarians (Edgehill)
3. Royalists 2-3 Parliamentarians (Aylesbury)
4. Parliamentarians 0-2 Royalists (Brentford)
5. Parliamentarians 0-0 Royalists (Turnham Green)
6. Royalists 4-0 Parliamentarians (Braddock Down)
7. Parliamentarians 1-1 Royalists (Hopton Heath)
8. Royalists 4-0 Parliamentarians (Seacroft Moor)
9. Parliamentarians 1-2 Royalists (Camp Hill)
10. Parliamentarians 0-2 Royalists (Stratton)
11. Royalists 1-0 Parliamentarians (Chalgrove Field)
12. Royalists 2-1 Parliamentarians (Adwalton Moor)
13. Parliamentarians 4-5 Royalists (Lansdowne)
14. Royalists 5-1 Parliamentarians (Roundway Down)
15. Parliamentarians 0-3 Royalists (Bristol)
16. Royalists 1-2 Parliamentarians (Gainsborough)
17. Parliamentarians 3-1 Royalists (Hull)
18. Royalists 0-3 Parliamentarians (Winceby)
19. Parliamentarians 4-1 Royalists (Gloucester)
20. Royalists 2-2 Parliamentarians (Newbury — 1st Leg)
21. Parliamentarians 3-0 Royalists (Alton)
22. Royalists 1-5 Parliamentarians (Cheriton)
23. Parliamentarians 1-0 Royalists (Nantwich)
24. Parliamentarians 2-3 Royalists (Newark)
25. Royalists 0-3 Parliamentarians (York)
26. Parliamentarians 0-4 Royalists (Bolton)
27. Royalists 2-1 Parliamentarians (Cropredy Bridge)
28. Parliamentarians 5-0 Royalists (Marston Moor)
29. Royalists 3-0 Parliamentarians (Lostwithiel)
30. Parliamentarians 1-1 Royalists (Newbury — 2nd Leg)
31. Royalists 1-8 Parliamentarians (Naseby)
32. Parliamentarians 1-0 Royalists (Langport)
33. Royalists 0-2 Parliamentarians (Stow-on-the-Wold)

I’m quite into local history and finding out about stuff I didn’t know, so I’m quite a fan of Heritage Open Days, where you generally get a chance to see certain historical thingummies and find out about them for free. Obviously, the “for free” part is another thing which adds to the attractiveness of the event.

So I thought I’d try and take in a few things with the kids over the Heritage Open Days weekend. I booked up to attend the historical tour and the technical tour of Newcastle Theatre Royal, and I also had the plan to visit one of the Swing Bridge tours, get to see the motor control rooms and so on, but it turned out this was fully booked, which was a bit of a bugger.

But myself and BTP (who is six soon) were going to the Theatre Royal, which is something we were both interested in. Him because he still fancies the idea of being an actor, and therefore wanted to find out a bit more about the theatre, find out what it was like backstage and so on, me because of my interest in local history (and of course, my own pre-children theatre career) and also because of a family connection with the Theatre Royal.

My Uncle Andy died quite a few years ago now, but in my memory he is permanently associated with the Theatre Royal, where he worked. I don’t know if he ever worked anywhere else, but I do know he worked there — sorting out electrics, lighting, and generally being one of the unseen, but still vital figures necessary to the productions. As a child, I also got taken backstage after a pantomime once, although to be honest I can’t really remember too much about it.

And so I wanted the chance to look backstage again, to see Andy’s world, and both the historical and technical tours seemed to offer this opportunity.

The historical tour started in the foyer, where we found out some of the history of the building — that the original theatre had been built elsewhere, but as part of a redevelopment of the city, the old one closed, and the new, larger theatre opened in its present location in 1837.

We got to hear about how much the class system was in operation in the theatre — depending upon the type of seats you paid for, you’d have your own particular entrance to the theatre, meaning that the toffs wouldn’t have to mingle with the likes of me the working classes, and how in fact these separate entrances had remained until the 1980s.

There’s also some very interesting paintings of ‘backstage’ on the ceiling of the foyer in the theatre, and these are of a type called … oh, I dunno, it probably begins with an ‘M’ … where they were painted on canvas and then the canvas was attached to the ceiling. Anyway, they were apparently painted by a transvestite (now that’s a bit of local colour) who included himself — dressed as herself — in one of the corners, along with some other people, including a semi-naked man drinking a pint in one of the corners.

So the next time you wander into the theatre, don’t just look at the posters on the walls, actually look around yourself and take it in.

We then got taken backstage, where we got to see some of the technical equipment used during the performances. We also had the opportunity to wander onto the stage itself, which was interesting because despite having been to the theatre a number of times before, I had never actually noticed that the stage was on a slope (known as a rake), tipping down towards the audience at a 1:24 ratio, and angled thus to add ‘depth’ to the perspective. This also means that certain productions — particularly those involving dancers — need to have the chance to rehearse first, particularly if they have only previously been performing on flat stages.

While we were onstage, a large logo appeared from ‘the heavens’ and lowered itself down towards us. It read ‘Never Forget’, which was the logo for the Take That tribute production that was on at the theatre at the time. This was also the technical tour appearing in view during the historical tour, as the technical tour took place from the fly floor.

After the historical tour finished, we were straight onto the technical tour, where we were shown how scenery was raised and lowered. Out of interest, I asked the man doing the tour whether he had known my uncle, and his answer — that Andy’s passing had been a shock to all of them, and that he had been a ‘fine gentleman’ — I thought was a lovely testament to my Uncle.

I did idly wonder whether, if my Uncle had come back as a ghost (the Theatre Royal supposedly only has one, so it’s probably due a few more as theatres go) whereabouts in the theatre he would be, but then I decided that my uncle’s ghost wouldn’t be restricted to the theatre. He’d hang about watching people set up a performance, and then he’d most likely nip across to the Adelphi for a pint…

But getting back to the tour, and while the instructions for the fly floor looked complicated, the guy showing us round did his best to explain them, and what at first had seemed an incomprehensibly bewildering set of numbers and codes became clearer until finally it only comprehensibly bewildering. The codes relate to different ropes to shift different bits of scenery up and down, with instructions on whether they are coming in or out, fast or slow, whether they are being faded with anything else and so on.

It really was enjoyable to find out a little bit more about how the productions get put on, and about the history of the theatre, and I’d recommend both the historical and technical tours of the theatre to anyone the next time there is a Heritage Open Days weekend on: of course, if you can’t wait until then, you can gather together a group of people and get yourself on one of the paid tours (at £40 for 1 hour, for a group of up to 30, that’s not bad if you can get a decent sized group together).

We’ve got two novelisations of real events: first up we’ve got John Boyne’s Mutiny on the Bounty, and then I’ll take you through Robert Ryan’s Death on the Ice.

Mutiny on the Bounty

I picked up Mutiny on the Bounty because I had heard enough people banging on about how John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was so utterly brilliant that I thought Boyne might well be worth reading but at the same time I was fighting against the fact that I had to feel I’m being pushed towards a particular book, so picking up a different John Boyne seemed like the ideal taster.

Mutiny on the Bounty (let’s call it MotB from now on) tells the story of the (fictional) pickpocket John Jacob Turnstile, how he is caught, and he is given the choice to avoid a jail term by serving as the captain’s valet on a sea voyage. The captain is of course Lieutenant William Bligh (not actually a captain; only nominally termed so as he was given command of the ship) and the ship is HMS Bounty.

You are therefore very much aware that at some point there is going to be a mutiny, with a certain chap called Fletcher Christian being involved — but that foreknowledge didn’t stop the film Titanic being a commercial success — and it didn’t stop me enjoying this book either.

What I found particularly interesting and well done about the book was the apparent authenticity. I say apparent, because to be honest with you, I wasn’t really starting with a great degree of knowledge about how ships were run in the British Navy in the 18th Century, but I can say that it certainly appears to be well researched and put together. I was reminded of a lot of facts about the journey that I had long-forgotten, although the fact and novel are woven together well and it’s difficult without checking to work out which is novelisation, and which is historical fact.

The crew are certainly earthy with earthy appetites (John Jacob Turnstile seems to spend a fair bit of his time “at tug”) and a leery anticipation of the female natives on Otaheite (the name they used for Tahiti), and are also a superstitious lot, with a particular ceremony which they perform when crossing the equator which involves Turnstile (or Turnip as he is inevitably nicknamed) a little more centrally than perhaps he would have liked.

You quickly come to like Turnstile and hope that he comes out of the story well. As he is the narrator, it’s kind of important that you identify with him and like him, and John Boyne does this extremely well. Most of the other characters you are a bit more ambivalent about — Fletcher Christian is something of a scented fop, and while William Bligh seems to be almost the opposite of a disciplinarian (in common with more modern tellings of his tale, as opposed to the cruel man frequently portrayed in film) he’s also portrayed as very human with his own faults.

Obviously, just after they leave Otaheite, Fletcher Christian and some others (not much over half of the ship, mind you, I’d assumed it was more) m- m- no, it’s no good, the word has gone. Something beginning with M. Anyway, they do the M-word and then dump Bligh and those who remained loyal to him in a little launch, in what must have been to most intents and purposes, murder. The likelihood of Bligh and around twenty others surviving a journey of several thousand miles with virtually no food and no instruments must be around nil.

However, navigation was certainly not one of Bligh’s faults, and the final part of the book tells the story of the voyage of the launch, over 4,000 miles and 47 days, during which only one life was lost — and that to natives of Tofua, rather than poor seamanship. It’s an extraordinary story, not so much of courage (it’s not like they had much choice after being dumped in the launch) but of excellent seamanship and navigation, and survival against the odds.

It’s also made me a lot more interested in the actual historical events, and, even if we can’t know for sure what kind of a man William Bligh was, or what prompted Christian and the others to mutiny, there is still a lot of information which can be determined, and I’d suggest the Pitcairn Islands Study Center might be an ideal place to start.

Death on the Ice

In contrast to survival against the odds, the next book tells more a tale of those who, even when the odds were heavily stacked against them by fate, turned out not to survive in the end. Again, this is a novelisation of a factual event, so even without the title Death on the Ice, I had something of an inkling that Robert Falcon Scott, Lawrence Oates, and at least a couple of others, would not be returning home.

The book starts considerably later — and earlier — than expected, with the meta-story being that in 1917, Norwegian Tryggve Gran (part of the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition — but not one of those who made that last fatal polar journey) is fighting for the British as a pilot in World War I (posing as Canadian ‘Teddy Grant’ to be allowed to fight) when he is approached by Scott’s widow who knows his identity and wants him to help her finish a book on the expedition.

We then flash back to 1900, where Scott is preparing for the Discovery expedition, and meanwhile Oates is serving in the army. The first section of the book takes us through the discovery expedition, increasing tensions between Scott and Shackleton, and Oates’ military career, leading up to a Boer bullet striking his thigh, shattering the bone, and eventually leading to his left leg ending up an inch shorter than the right.

Again, it’s tempting to read the novelisation as fact, particularly since many factual things — the Discovery expedition, Scott’s marriage, Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition, Scott and Amundsen’s ‘race’ to the pole are very soundly based in historical fact, and excerpts from Scott’s letters are used in places, but obviously the dialogue is pretty much mostly invented, and while the idea of stresses and strains within the group are supported by historical evidence (letters from Scott and Oates), it’s impossible to know to what extent the writers were simply ‘letting off steam’ — as there are certainly allusions to this — and to what extent it reflects the actuality of their emotions.

The last section of the book, where Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Edgar Evans strike out for the pole is well written but can’t help but to make for slightly gloomy reading: you know they won’t be first to the pole, and what is worse, you know they won’t make it home again. Obviously some of the reasons for the failure are guessed at, but again where possible they are based on at least one historical source, such as Scott’s diaries or letters.

In the book Oates’ sacrifice — the famous “I am just going outside and may be some time” — is prompted by the fact that his feet are gangrenous and dying beneath him. This sacrifice — to allow his companions to move on without him is no less noble for the fact that by then he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it back anyway., and he knows that he at least will not be able to make it back anyway, but his companions might have a chance to move on without him. However even here, where it seems most speculative, there is still a great deal of historical fact: Scott had recorded eleven days earlier that Oates’ feet were already in a wretched state, and also that he went outside without his boots, presumably because he couldn’t face the pain involved in putting them on again.

The remaining three died only eleven miles short of the food depot they needed to reach, and fully aware of that fact — it was simply that their reserves of energy were so low, and fuel and food nil, that they did not have the energy to fight on any further, and that any potential chance was slammed shut by a blizzard which prevented them leaving their camp after the 19th of March, and was still apparently whirling outside the tent on the 29th, when Scott made his final diary entry.

Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far.

It seems a pity but I do not think I can write moreRobert Falcon Scott, 29th March 1912

Robert Ryan’s book is quite a remarkable story — even though in reality much of it is not his story, it’s the story of the Terra Nova expedition, but he’s still done a remarkable job of telling it, and even takes the time at the end to explain where he’s taken liberties with actual events, telling you about what the survivors ended up doing and demonstrating that Scott did seemingly put together quite a remarkable team.

The story is not a whitewash though: there is certainly evidence that different members of the expedition made mistakes at different times, including Scott, which contributed to their eventual demise. However I think it’s probably unfair to go around apportioning any blame as any one (or two) of the mistakes would probably not have been crucial in of themselves: it’s the cumulative effect, coupled with some bad luck (particularly with the weather and the lack of fuel at the depots) that proved fatal.

Again, as with John Boyne’s book, but in this case even more so, I feel that I really ought to read more of Scott’s polar expedition. I feel privileged to have read Scott’s story — and I am deeply grateful to Robert Ryan for that, as Scott had never particularly been someone I was that interested in, so without coming across a work of fiction, I’d probably have never picked it up.

Now, in addition to having a far better understanding of what actually happened out there, I have a list of other books relating to the expedition, thoughtfully provided by Ryan at the end of this as his sources, but also obviously as a useful reading list for those wanting to find out more about the Terra Nova expedition or the characters that peopled it.

It’s also quite a simple task to find a few sources on the web for those who are interested. Apart from the obvious (wikipedia), you might want to look at Cool Antarctica or South-Pole.com. And it’s worth looking up the quite remarkable story of Tryggve Gran also. You might also want to consider picking up Robert Ryan’s book…

I’m quite a fan of old historical buildings. This is partly because I love the idea that people used to introduce architectural features on buildings (seemingly up to around the 1940s) just because this would make them look nice, as opposed to the generally more ‘functional’ type building introduced after that.

Old church buildings are frequently wonderful examples of this. The builders built them with a purpose of glorifying God in mind, and therefore they would frequently be bigger, taller, more ornate as opposed to the utilitarian building type I abhor. These sorts of buildings remind me that our history is important, and when considering events of the past, it is important to consider them in context, as opposed to judging them by today’s standards, and measuring them up against the relevance to the today’s generation.

Of course, this gives me an opportunity to quote one of my favourite bands:

They started work this morning down at city square
They’re pulling down the statues of our great grandfather’s hero
The new books say he wasn’t such a great man after all
And anyway remember that the times they are a-changing.

Pull it down, drag it down, drag it down, pull it down
Till there’s nothing to look up to but the brand names on the posters all around.

‘Drag It Down’, New Model Army

In other words, if we airbrush out our history, what are we left with — adverts and branding for global corporations. No thanks, I’ll keep the history.

Which is why when I was at a wedding in Barrow and was staying at the Abbey House Hotel, and discovered that nearby there were some ruins of a 12th Century Abbey nearby (not really that much of a surprise, given the hotel name) I had to take the opportunity to take a wander along and some pictures.

I was particularly interested to note that there was a Furness Abbey electricity substation. I had previously been under the impression that electricity was not widely available to 12th century monks, and had not thought that the national grid was in place to supply electricity to these sorts of sites at the time but hey, you live and learn…

You had to pay to get in (boo, hiss) but I don’t really begrudge English Heritage the money for the work they do not only in preserving historical monuments like this, but also in carrying out further investigations on the site.

Obviously when you go along to these sorts of things with a three year old and a five year old in tow, you don’t get quite the same things out of it that you do if wandering around with ample time and a guidebook. On the one hand, you get photos of the kids on spiral staircases and have fun explaining to the kids what an abbey was, and what the people who lived there would do, but on the other you don’t generally get to find out the specifics of the site at the time and have to look them up later.

For example, later reference to the guidebook tells me that the abbey was originally part of the Order of Savigny and was merged with the Cistercians in 1147 (although the Abbott of Furness opposed this and did not accept Cistercian rule until around 1150) at which time the church and cloister buildings were probably finished. The guidebook has a fascinating colour coded map of the site which shows when different parts of the Abbey were built — the North Transept being one of the earliest parts being built in the period from between 1127 and 1170.

The North Transept is quite interesting because you can clearly see that the supporting pillars are at an angle, rather giving the impression that they are tipping over. The guidebook actually explains that they were tipping over and had to be heavily underpinned with concrete in the 1920s as the original foundations (oak piles) were insufficient and parts were suffering from sinkage.

A little further along, the remains of the West Tower (15th/16th Century) gives some idea of the scale and grandeur of the abbey at its height. The remains currently stand at around sixty feet high, and as if that isn’t impressive enough, it is reckoned that this would have originally reached a height of some one hundred and sixty feet. That’s a big tower by anyone’s standards.

Furness Abbey was apparently implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was a protest against the suppression of the monasteries and support for religious autonomy. The last abbot of Furness Abbey (quite sensibly in my opinion) chose to hand over the abbey and its possessions to King Henry VIII in 1537 rather than face trial for treason, and was then apparently the first of the major monasteries to be dissolved.

It was only a little over ten years later that the first reference to the ‘Halle and other howses’ being in a ruinous state was made, and that’s the way they remained pretty much ever since. Whilst never completely ‘lost’ they were rediscovered to the national consciousness in the 19th Century as a result of being featured in William Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes (also available online).

A water course which separates the Abbot’s house from the rest of the site runs is visible along much of the site and also runs directly underneath the 13th Century kitchen, but like many parts of the site, little remains of the kitchen itself. However, despite the fact that large sections of the site are so collapsed as to be non-existent (many walls barely emerge from the ground at all), the the sheer scale of Furness Abbey means that an awful lot is still there — and enough of it in reasonable consition to make it well worth a visit. It’s a bit tucked out of the way near Barrow in Furness, so it’s not necessarily somewhere that you’ll have come across or encountered in passing, but if you are in the South Lakes area, and you like a bit of ancient architecture, I’d suggest it may be worth a trip… but don’t just take my word for it…

Conveyances are in attendance on the arrival of the Steamer at Bardsea to take passengers forward to Ulverston, three miles distant, from which place the Excursion to Furness Abbey, a circuit of fourteen miles, may be conveniently made…Complete Guide To The Lakes, comprising minute directions for the tourist, with Mr. Wordsworth’s description of the scenery of the country

The commonly understood legend is that Dr. John Snow understood that the outbreak was clustered around a water pump near 40 Broad Street in London. Those using that water pump were much more likely to get cholera; those using a different pump still had a chance of catching it (as it wasn’t exactly uncommon), but much less. Dr. Snow explained this to various civic leaders, who removed the handle of the water pump and ended the outbreak.

And this is true, sort of. Only it misses out a lot of the detail, like the fact the civic leaders didn’t really believe in his water-borne contagion idea, but closed the pump because of the risk analysis — if they were wrong, shutting off the pump would save lives; if they were right, it would mean people would have to walk a few streets further for their water. It also misses out the point that it was a lot of follow up work after the outbreak which ultimately (but not for some years) established cholera as water-borne; and perhaps most strangely it suggests that the Broad Street pump was actually cholera-free at the time it was closed down, but that a second outbreak was prevented…

And all of this is what Steven Johnson’s book The Ghost Map explains. Firstly it tells the story of the urban conditions in London at the time (generally squalid and overcrowded), and of course how there was no form of sewer system. Instead, people just had cesspools and for hundreds of years, people had been paid to empty them:

The collecting of human excrement was a venerable occupation; in medieval times they were called “rakers” and “gong-fermors” [...] While the rakers and their descendants made a good wage, the work conditions could be deadly: in 1326, an ill-fated laborer by the name of Richard the Raker fell into a cesspool and literally drowned in human shit.The Ghost Map, p8-9

The history of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak is also explained: a particularly virulent form of cholera which could take the afflicted from no symptoms to dead within twelve hours, killing 127 residents of the area within three days.

The cholera outbreak is also traced back to its index case: a five month old baby girl. This was discovered later by the Reverend Henry Whitehead who initially had sent out to debunk Dr. Snow’s theory, but ended up becoming convinced of it himself, and ending up being responsible for collection of some of the evidence that would finally convince the vestry report on the water-borne nature of the epidemic (although the official report at the time believed no such thing). You have to bear in mind at this time, there wasn’t a germ/microbial theory of infection, which makes the ability to track this down even more astonishing.

Basically, some of the dirty cholera-infected nappies of this baby girl were dumped in a cesspool at the front of Broad Street.

The walls of the cesspool were lined with bricks that were so decayed that they could “be lifted from their beds with least force”. Two feet and eight inches from the outer edge of the brickwork lay the Broad Street well. At the time of the excavation, the water line in the well was eight feet below the cesspool. Between the cesspool and the well, York reported finding “swampy soil” saturated with human filthThe Ghost Map, p179

…although by the time the pump handle was removed, people were drinking the water without succumbing to infection, as since the baby’s death, no more cholera-infected material was being added and the bacterium might have been dying off in the well.

The “Ghost Map” of the title was a map produced by Dr. Snow to compare where the deaths occurred. It’s basically a simple map of the street layout, with all of the deaths marked against the properties with a black bar, with the water pumps also marked on. It shows a fairly obvious clustering around the Broad Street pump — but it was the exceptions (those nearby not infected, those further away who were) who provided some of the clinching detail.

The massive engineering project that was London’s sewer system is also described, as well as how, once complete (as opposed to “not quite complete when people thought it was” in 1866) it provided protection to Londoners who never suffered another serious outbreak once cholera contamination was kept out of the drinking water supply…

For me, though, the thing that sticks in the mind is that cesspool that leaked into the water supply; and the human tragedy of one family — the Lewis family of 40 Broad Street — who were ultimately responsible for the outbreak:

It is not known if Sarah Lewis ever learned that the final days she spent tending to her daughter had triggered the most devastating outbreak in the history of London. If so, the weight of the news must have been unbearable, because the outbreak she had unwittingly set in motion eventually killed her husband as well. Thomas Lewis had fallen ill that Friday, within hours of the pump handle’s removal. He fought the disease for much longer than most, surviving for eleven days.The Ghost Map, p187

…and this is where it was fortunate that the handle was removed from the well. Because some of Thomas Lewis’ cholera-infected waste was dumped in that same cesspool (of course, Sarah Lewis was certainly not to know this at the time — not having been interviewed until the outbreak was over), providing a fresh new supply of cholera into the well, and could potentially have triggered a second wave of cases, had the pump handle not been removed.

It’s a powerful work; it’s not always pleasant reading, but it is captivating. Steven Johnson has done an excellent job of bringing the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak to life, explaining why the urban conditions led to cholera outbreaks — and how they led to the cholera bacterium evolving to become more virulent, and bringing the main players — Dr. Snow and the Reverend Whitehead very much into focus.

Anyone with an interest in science, in history, in ‘detective mysteries’, in urbanisation, in living conditions, or in any combination of the above will find something for them in here. This is not a dry, dusty history, but one that springs vividly off the page, hopefully not bringing Vibrio cholerae with it. Well worth a read.

I thought it was you…

The Hancock Museum is near Haymarket Metro station in Newcastle. It’s been a Newcastle institution for years. I visited regularly as a child (mostly, I think, because every time I went, my parents would buy me a small plastic dinosaur to add to my collection), and I remember all sorts of things that they had, with stuffed animals, fossilised trees, absolutely ginormous crabs and a selection of other stuff.

Over the years, the building got a bit, well, scruffy-looking, as did many of the displays. Some of the displays tried to be hip, modern and up-to-date — stuff on pollution, for instance, — but generally ended up telling you little you didn’t already know and feeling like you personally were being held responsible for the whole thing.

It closed on the 23rd April 2006, for a great deal of refurbishment, after merging with Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery to form the Great North Museum. This caused me some concern — not the refurbishment, which was clearly necessary, but the name change.

The Great North Museum tells you it’s a museum, and it’s in the North, but beyond that it sounds rather smug and self-congratulatory. It also doesn’t have any character or soul to the name. The Hancock Museum was named after the local brothers John and Albany Hancock who collected some of the contents. The name had a definite local link, and it told you something of the history of the museum. This character has been wiped out in the name of corporate rebranding. And it’s entirely wrong.

The Museum was then closed for three years, re-opening on 23rd May 2009. And because myself and the GLW had been quite fond of it, we wanted to go back and see what we believed would be the new, improved museum.

There was new, certainly, but I’m not entirely convinced on improved. Well, that’s probably being unfair. It’s better than it was, but I’m not convinced that the level of improvements seen should really have required three bloody years to complete.

Firstly, there are some things missing which used to be there.

They used to have a bee hive inside one of the windows, so you could see the bees going about their business as you wandered up or down that particular staircase. This was great for watching with the kiddies, and I think it’s a great shame that this is no longer there. A kids ‘play area’ may well be ideal for parents to sit down and have a few minutes rest, but if I wanted them to go to the park, I’d take them to the park. I want them to go to the Museum where they can learn things, get inspired by nature and so on.

There used to be a ‘night time’ display with stuffed animals: badger, fox, and various other small animals which was very much in the dark and you had to look at it carefully, allow your eyes to adjust and then gradually try and spot all the animals. There’s no sign of this, either.

They also used to have a pirhana in a tank, which was well worth looking at because you could see it had teeth. You could easily imagine that biting a big hole out of you if given the chance: you could certainly imagine a river full of them stripping a large animal down to the bone quite quickly. Only there’s no sign of that either. Presumably with the museum having been closed for three years, there haven’t been enough small children dangling their arms in the water to keep it fed…

But they’ve still got the big Japanese Crab. No, really, it’s a big Japanese crab, and well worth a look. This is one of the things they’ve done right: previously it was stuck up high on the wall and easy to miss unless you were specifically looking for it; now it’s much more visible.

But this is also part of the problem. Large parts of the old Hancock museum still had a Victorian museum/collection feel, with lots of boxes and cases of stuffed and mounted animals of various sizes on the walls. One the one hand, it’s not what museums tend to be about today; on the other it added a certain character to the museum. I can understand that they wanted to reduce the amount of this, but I can’t help but feel they’ve reduced it too much.

…but back to the “Living Planet” exhibition which contains a mixture of these stuffed animals and a series of models. The Great White shark is a model; I presume the lion is stuffed. This for two reasons; firstly it’s in a case, and secondly the mane is rather mangy-looking, and has definitely seen better days. Possibly could have done with being removed from the display…

And then you’ve got the dinosaur; they’ve got a model of a T-rex skeleton. Look, by all means have a picture of a dinosaur — indeed they have a video — but if you don’t have your own fossil bones, then why bother with a model skeleton? The kids would rather a model of a living T. Rex, and fake bones don’t mean much to anyone… if you don’t have T. Rex fossils, display the fossils of something else…

Although I will make an exception for the replica Rosetta stone in the Egyptian Gallery, as this is a unique object, which also illustrates how we learned about the demotic script and hieroglyphics. The Egyptian Gallery is one of the things the Hancock Museum still does well (look, I’m not going to call it the Great North Museum, okay? It’s a shit name!).

Of course, what boils my piss* is the fact that I wasn’t one of the people they surveyed in the opening day or so:

One hundred percent of visitors to the Great North Museum: Hancock agree that it deserves to be called ‘Great’ according to an exit poll conducted at the museum following its launch last week. Putting ‘Great’ into Museums

…good job they didn’t survey me then, isn’t it? I would have rather scuppered their headline…

*It doesn’t really boil my piss, but it’s such a good phrase (meaning “very much annoys me”) that I wanted to use it somewhere.

Where was I? Oh yes: the Roman display is very good too, particularly the focus on Hadrian’s wall, and the model showing not only the wall but people and different points at various lengths along it. The Explore area is well done too, as is the Ice Age to Iron Age display.

Another down side was that it seemed quite a few of the displays weren’t actually on display at all. There was a Wolf Fish aquarium and something else where the animals were not actually present because they were in quarantine. On one hand, this is fair enough: animals need to be quarantined appropriately. On the other, couldn’t they have timed this a bit better — surely they knew when the museum was due to be open?

Similarly, at least one of the ‘interactive’ displays — something where you are supposed to be able to compare footprints — wasn’t working, as it seemed to be missing paper or something. If you work for a museum, read this next bit, as it is important. There is absolutely no point having an interactive display if it doesn’t work. You’d be better off with some form of static display if you can’t actually make your interactive display work, as a broken interactive display looks crap. Really, seriously, if you can’t have it working, don’t even bother with it. Okay?

We didn’t visit the planetarium, which is chargeable and requires an extra ticket. This wasn’t because we didn’t have time, but we were rushing off to try and grab some lunch before rushing further off to see someone at a wedding, before rushing home to watch the FA Cup final. However, the planetarium would definitely be on our list for a subsequent visit.

On the whole, they’ve done a good job with the refurbishment to be honest. I just think that they’ve tried to be too modern, and they’ve stripped some of the character, some of the soul, out of the museum. I also don’t think the changes that I’ve seen really justify the museum having been closed for three years.

For those of you who saw my initial reaction on Twitter, my views won’t be too much of a surprise:

Not impressed with the #GreatNorthMuseum It’s like the #Hancock museum always was, only seemingly tidier and – crucially- with less stuff.@ThePickards

…but it’s also important to point out that I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t gone with small children, as then I would have actually been able to properly look at various exhibits and read the information associated with the displays instead of generally trying to have to herd the children, prevent them climbing on things, try and get them to follow us around the museum and so on. But then again, as they get older (particularly when they will actually read things themselves, instead of just wanting to climb about), I think it will be somewhere we would enjoy more.

So while I’d certainly not call it a Great North Museum, I might settle for calling it a Quite Good North Museum, or a “slightly improved in some respects but at a loss of some of the character Hancock Museum”, or even ideally just “the Hancock Museum”.

[Flag photo by Charlie Hawkins - follow photo link for more details]

As Jaybee said the other day, most people seeing the cross of St George flying probably associate it with football hooligans and racism. And that’s not right. The Scots are rightly proud of their flag, as indeed are the Welsh (and they should be, it’s got a dragon on it), so why shouldn’t we be?

Why shouldn’t we celebrate St George’s day? How come every year there are more English people celebrating St Patrick’s day on March 17th than there are English people celebrating the birthday of their patron saint, St George (who incidentally is also patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, and Russia — busy chap).

Oh, I already know the answer. It’s ‘cos Guinness put a lot of effort into their St Patrick’s Day promotions, because it sells a lot of Guinness…

But it is just as lazy to pretend that the English don’t care about their day as it is to assume that the cross of St. George is only associated with football and racism. Increasingly, more people promote events on St. George’s Day. Charles Wells have been promoting St George for some time, frequently associating it with their extremely pleasant pint, Bombardier:

Charles Wells wishes to encourage the English Nation into once again championing their sadly neglected patron saint. Wells Bombardier and The Royal Society of St George intend to spearhead a campaign to promote Englishness in all it’s glories be it from our heritage and history to new contemporary pursuits such as film and music. The long term goal is to make St George’s Day as big a celebration in England as St Patrick’s Day is in Ireland. Wells and Youngs [brewers]

Damn right. Sometimes it’s difficult to separate ‘England’ from ‘Britain’, particularly since England, Scotland and Wales have been joined together for quite some time now. It’s also difficult, as an Englishman living in England, to know whether certain sentiments are ‘English’ or ‘British’ as I don’t have a token Welshman and Scot I can use for comparative measurement.

However, it’s still appropriate and fair for us all to support our own country in sporting events — I couldn’t believe Andy Murray (Scottish) took stick for tongue-in-cheek comments about supporting whoever was playing England. What’s wrong with that?

Half the fun in supporting different teams is in taking the mickey out of your mates when their teams don’t win and yours does. Of course, as a Newcastle fan, I’ve not exactly experienced much of that this season…

In 2007 I wrote a St. George’s Day post called For England And St. George! In February 2008, I returned to the theme, inspired by a post on Britishness, with For England And St. George! (again). In these I talked about ten things I love about England and the English and I also talked about English/British values.

So this time, I’m simply going to list ten places in England that I think are beautiful, or stunning, sell nice beer, or are worth visiting for some reason or other… here they are, in no particular order

• The Natural History Museum, South Kensington: dinosaurs, insects, lots of well, natural history and nature stuff.
• St James’ Park, Newcastle. Home of Newcastle United, the finest football team to play at St James’ Park (even admitting I’m biased, I think we qualify as better than Exeter City).
• Friar’s Crag, Derwentwater. Ideally watching the sun set.
• Looking down towards Red Tarn from the peak of Helvellyn in the Lake District.
• The Aletaster, Low Fell. Some good quality ales (if not as cheap as I would like), a friendly atmosphere, and quality conversation.
• Warkworth Castle, Northumberland. There may be finer quality castles, and in better condition than this one, but I’ve always enjoyed visiting.
• Hadrian’s Wall. It’s not often you get the opportunity to visit something built 1,850 years before you were born. Stunning, particularly if they are having a re-enactment or something.
• Lancaster. It may be a small city, but it’s a city I grew to love when I was a student, and have been back a few times since. It’s maybe approaching time to go visiting again…
• Crathorne Hall, North Yorkshire. As ’stately homes’ go it’s quite a late-built one, but it’s really quite nice, with fantastic grounds. It also holds a special place in my affections as it was the site of my wedding and I had an absolutely fantastic day there.
• Beamish Museum: an outdoor museum with different micro-sites from history: a small town shopping street from circa 1910, a farm from 1913, a colliery village from the early 1900s, a railway station from 1913, and a Manor house and a Waggonway from the early 1800s. Oh, and a coal mine (used between 1855-1958 and now set up to resemble the conditions of the early 1900s). In addition, you can travel between the different sites on trams built between 1900 and 1925. You can really step into history. See details of my visit for more gushing about it…

For those of you who remember, I would have obviously included The Mayfair (facebook group) — the planet’s finest rock club — only it’s not there any more, so I haven’t…

And that’s a shame.

Harry Patch — now 110 and counting [update: Harry died age 111 on 25th July 2009] — is the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches of the first world war. To many of us now, the Second World War is remote history, known only from film cliche, and not from any real experience, even if you have a family connection that is remembered. The First World War is considerably more remote — virtually beyond living memory.

For a book called ‘The Last Fighting Tommy’, I would maybe have expected the book to focus very much on life in the trenches, the suffering and bravers of the ordinary soldiers, and so on. The beauty of Harry’s book is that it doesn’t just do that.

It’s basically the story of his life, not just the first world war, and so in many ways it provides a snapshot of what life was like ‘back then’: what kids got up to, what school was like and so on. There was certainly a lot more ‘discipline’ (of the physical kind) at school, people would let their kids wander off and play in caves in quarries, and children would fire catapults trying to hit bats living in the caves. The past surely is a different country.

Obviously there is a lot about the First World War, some of which may well be different to your preconceptions of it some ninety years later…

We heard rumours, for example, that people in the towns were being given white feathers to embarrass them into joining up, casting aspersions on their manhood if they didn’t. I didn’t see anyone receive one, and no-one tried to hand me one eitherHarry Patch

However, when Harry reached 18, he was soon called up… and qualified as a marksman, not only earning a little extra pay but ending up as the No. 2 for a Lewis Gun team. At this point in the book, Harry’s story is now and again interrupted by other text, setting the scene and giving a more overall view so that it is easier to slot Harry’s memories into the overall context of the war.

You can’t really appreciate what it must have been like to go through simply from reading about it: despite listening to Harry’s stating that there was no sanitation, no clean clothes, sinking into mud, filth, the inevitable rats, how lousy the whole thing was (in terms of both lice and unpleasantness), and boredom interspersed with not knowing whether you would be alive to see the sun set, it’s difficult to actually truly understand the conditions. But sometimes the anecdotes can be very vivid:

We came across a lad from A Company. He was ripped open from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel, and lying in a pool of blood. When we got to him, he looked at us and said, “Shoot me”. He was beyond all human help, and before we could draw a revolver he was deadHarry Patch

Harry was wounded, and sent home to recover, but before he could return to active service the war ended. He returned to his previous career — plumbing — and was improving his status in his chosen profession, and briging up his family, and then the Second World War broke out, during which time Harry served in Britain in the AFS.

We dealt with fires all night as best we could until around 9 a.m. We were just damping down smouldering houses when a warden came along and said that we’d parked our pump across an unexploded bomb. We had no idea. When we bent down, we could see the bomb lying on the road: in the dark we’d almost driven right over the top of itHarry Patch

As a piece of history, viewed through the memories of one man, you get a astonishing picture of what life was like ‘back then’, and not just through the impersonal means of reading a history book: you’re reading about the life of one man, and his memories.

Of course, memories can be fallible, and while I don’t wish to be cynical or disrespectful to Harry, but he is almost always presented in a favourable light in the book. That’s not to say he’s being deliberately misleading, but maybe over the passage of time, some memories have been twisted more towards what he would like to have happened.

Maybe this is just 21st Century Cynicism™, but when Harry is almost always unfailingly painted in a good light — taking a more risky shot to injure an enemy soldier rather than kill him; being elsewhere when his squad have a mini-mutiny; uncovering a scam that was costing his employers money; being sceptical that Chamberlain’s ‘piece of paper’ would work and so on, you start to wonder whether all of these can possibly be correct. If they are, then Harry is even more of an extraordinary man, and deserves my apology.

But it may be the editing: when quoted elsewhere, Harry can be disarmingly honest. For example, in reference to the German soldier he deliberately injured:

Now, six weeks after that, a fellow countryman of his pulled the lever of the gun that fired the rocket that killed my three mates, and wounded me. If I had met that German soldier after my three mates had been killed, I’d have no trouble at all in killing him.BBC History: The Last Tommy Gallery

Now that’s honesty for you. Not always portraying himself in the best light. This book maybe suffers a little from pro-Harry editing which — until I encountered that other source — gave me the impression that maybe Harry’s memories were ‘edited’. But they obviously weren’t: it was the book which was edited — and I think inccorectly so. Harry’s warts-annd-all experiences and thoughts would have told the story better.

But none of this detracts from the story, from the social commentary. For example, the attitude to Black GIs was something that I’d heard of before…

…the warmth and friendliness of British people for Black American GI’s caused the American Military to insist that certain restaurants, hotels in pubs impose a colour bar. In Manchester a number of pubs retaliated by imposing a colour bar of their own, allowing ONLY Black GI’s into their establishments.phrases.org.uk

…but it’s still surprising to hear the differences between the way the British looked upon the black American GIs, and the way the white American GIs looked on them.

One thing I noticed straightaway was that none of the black and white GIs shared a tent. Nor would they walk down the street together. It was very marked that the whites couldn’t stand the blacks. I didn’t know why. I was surprised at the antagonism; in fact, I got on very well with the black troops, not least because I found them better behavedHarry Patch

Harry Patch’s memoirs are fascinating: not simply as a record of what it was like to serve in the First World War (as well as being badly injured and having your mates killed around you) but also in reflecting what society was like in South West England from 1900. It’s a war memoir, but it’s far from being just a war memoir — Harry’s time in the army covers only about 40% of the book.

I’ll leave the last word to Harry, though. I think he deserves it.

They will have written their pieces in the papers for when I finally go; the last trench fighter has to be newsworthy. [...] Well, if they have written the obituary, all I can say is that I hope to live long enough that they will have to update it, and more than once! Then I can fade away. Isn’t that what old soldiers are meant to do?Harry Patch

In the cold light of history, the miner’s strike was a victory for Margaret Thatcher and the coal industry. After a year, the strike came to an end, and the remaining strikers went back to work; the Government and Coal industry got what they had been after. But what has remained with me was not so much the outcome of the strike, but the way the machinery of the state and big business swept into action against the miners.

The “winners” were big business. The losers were miners, miners’ families, and all of the other families torn apart by the strike. In some respects however, miners’ families, and in particular the women, were also winners. The miners’ wives and partners became active initially in setting up soup kitchens and the like, but also taking a more political role, a more active role, and whereas previously the miners had tended to be socially very small-c conservative in terms of women, a lot of the women took on greater responsibility and more actively embraced equality. But that was a grassroots, longer term shift in attitude. The strike itself was won by big business, thanks to the big business machinery they rolled into action.

The day to day reporting from the media was misleading, never really allowing the arguments of the strikers to be given equal value (or anything approaching it) with that of the Coal Board. The police were used as a weapon of the state against the miners (police being told to look to target Arthur Scargill, the miners leader, and find reasons to prosecute him), with one of the worst examples of the machinery of the state being used against the miners being from the generally quite trustworthy BBC.

In relation to what was dubbed ‘The Battle of Orgreave’, the BBC showed footage of striking miners throwing hails of stones at the police, eventually provoking a police baton charge to try and quell the stone-throwing. However, this footage had actually been reversed by the BBC, and the stone-throwing by the miners was actually a response to being repeatedly baton charged by the police. It took until 1991 for the BBC to apologise, although they still claimed that the footage had been ‘inadvertently reversed’ (but if this was the case, why didn’t they admit it at the time?). Also in 1991, South Yorkshire Police were paid out £425,000 (and a further £100,000 in costs) to miners arrested at the time who claimed unlawful arrest.

Police brutality at the time was quite horrific: strikers and supporters were indiscriminately beaten including people just stood with cameras.

And more than anything else, that is what stayed with me. As a child, I had thought that things like the police and the media were independent and didn’t take sides. I thought the police just went for the “baddies” (and sure, there were some amongst the miners who were violent and deserved arrest), but I was shocked that the police were entirely indiscriminate about who they beat and brutalised. I had thought the police were supposed to be better than that. I do understand that it wasn’t necessarily easy: that they were scared too, but that’s precisely why policing ought to be such an important job and ought to be above political concerns.

Now I’m not claiming the behaviour of the striking miners was exemplary either: it wasn’t comfortable or even safe to be a strike-breaker. A taxi driver was killed simply for taking a miner to work. I can understand tensions running high: when I have taken part in a one-day strike before, I have been very annoyed at people who choose not to take part, earning money that I have given up to fight for a pay rise that they will also benefit from. That ’strikes’ me as somewhat unfair, and I can understand tensions running high… but that wouldn’t mean it’s right to attack those people.

But while it opened my 9-year old eyes to the ‘real world’ to a great degree, what I also remember, and what I think is the great tragedy was the damage done to families. I remember seeing families split up: some family members who were effectively starved back to work, while other members of the family continued striking. I remember the resentment, the hate and the bitterness you’d see expressed on television. The faces of parents looking through piles of toys which had been donated to try and find something they could give to their children for Christmas.

I remember these people suffering; the families forced out of their homes; families split up; resentments, bitterness and the continuing human cost. And that for me is the tragedy: the real human suffering not only because many families had no money at all coming in for a year — no help with school meals for their children, nothing — but also the inevitable hatred and bitterness splitting up families as many people were starved back to work.

For many people, on both sides of the divide, the Miner’s Strike will have left memories, even scars, that will be carried forever. But it’s the suffering I remember, and that’s why I view it mostly with sadness.

I don’t necessarily think it’s right that when I think of certain individuals, now very aged and suffering from dementia, I think it’s appropriate that they are suffering. Or at least, until I remember the callous indifference and contempt with which the suffering families of the striking miners were treated — that she saw that level of human suffering as necessary to defeat the unions — and then I remember the line about why I wouldn’t piss on her grave.

‘Cos I hate queuing.

25 years on from the miners strike, then, there’s two things it brings back to me. Firstly, is the sadness at the suffering caused; the people with no money whatsoever coming in, continuing to struggle on because they were fighting for what they believed was right. Secondly, and more personally, the Miners’ Strike represents a loss of innocence: this was when I stopped believing that life was going to be inherently fair.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.“For the Fallen”, Laurence Binyon

The image is © Simon Kimber.

Instead of talking about what Remembrance Sunday or Armistice Day mean to me, I thought it would be nice to instead invite everyone to be alone with their own thoughts about it. The blog equivalent of two minutes silence, if you will.