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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF WHITBOURN
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What's New OR: 'Yo, ladies ... What's happenin ? Whatever Next ? [ Downs Lord Triptych / The Two Confessions / Amy-Faith & the Stronghold] | Dispatch dated 26th July 2007 ****** It's been a long while... But sometimes silence is golden. First a snippet of news. The Ash-Tree Press' latest anthology, 'At Ease With the Dead' chances to contain a new JAW short story (well, actually more like a novella, nudging in at a shade under 10,000 words). 'A Pillar of the Church' features Bishop Beaw, yet another real life - whatever that is - character (1615 - 1706) whose rest I've cavalierly disturbed to entertain, inform and disquiet a modern readership. In the contributing authors 'Biographical Notes' at the end of the volume I take the opportunity to placate the shade of the colourful prelate thus: '...if I've traduced the good bishop I deeply apologise here and now in this world, trusting that altered perspectives will render further repentance unnecessary in the next.' Here's hoping... The setting is the supremely low-ebb of the Anglican Church in late 17th century Wales and its then ruinous Llandaff Cathedral. A cameo role is played by a little wooden carving of the death of Our Lady which took my fancy when, long ago, I lived nearby. It may, I believe, still be seen within. Even the shortest scan of said contributors' Biographical Notes reveals that once again I've gatecrashed my way into the company of some of the cream of contemporary writers of supernatural fiction. Admittedly, I'm biased, but the book is therefore highly recommended.
****** Recently completed JAW short stories still awaiting publication light of day include a treatment of the last days of Jimi Hendrix (including a novel new theory on his cause of death); a discourse on the mortal dangers of High Street clothes-shopping with your daughters, and a peep at the louche life of the last (for the moment) King of Egypt, Farouk I, 1920 - 65). Respectively:
The Hendrix tale is first of a projected series which implausibly links him and Robert Fitzroy (1805 - 65), Captain of the Beagle, who is unjustly best remembered for ferrying Charles Darwin round the world and who slit his own throat when the implications of what he'd unwittingly been midwife to sank in. A shocking waste of a genuinely good and talented man. Especially when you consider that Darwin only invented the crazy fantasy of evolution in an attempt to explain his abnormally hairy back to Mrs Darwin. The Fitzroy sequence of the series is well underway.
****** Finally, for the moment, a passage from Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' to justify the subtitle of this site: Thursday 14th July, 1763. '... at earlier periods he was wont often to exercise both his pleasantry and ingenuity in talking Jacobitism. My much respected friend, Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, has favoured me with the following admirable instance from his Lordship's own recollection. One day when dining at old Mr. Langton's, where Miss Roberts, his niece, was one of the company, Johnson, with his usual complacent attention to the fair sex, took her by the hand and said, "My dear, I hope you are a Jacobite." Old Mr. Langton, who, though a high and steady Tory, was attached to the present Royal Family, seemed offended, and asked Johnson, with great warmth, what he could mean by putting such a question to his niece! "Why, Sir, (said Johnson) I meant no offence to your niece, I meant her a great compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the divine right of Kings. He that believes in the divine right of Kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the divine right of Bishops. He that believes in the divine right of Bishops believes in the divine authority of the Christian religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig; for Whiggism is a negation of all principle."
And I think there's a lot of truth in that, somewhere... Bye for now. JAW
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