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Recent JAW Developments:

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Dispatch dated 26th July 2007

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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.

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    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:

• 'I Need Help Bad, Man...!'

• 'Consumer Awareness'

• 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellah...'

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.

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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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Dispatch dated 15th June 2006

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    This time around, a relaxed summer discourse, devoid of literary content, comprising quotes and comment regarding three gentlemen who might be considered justifications for carbon becoming complex and forming humanity.   Some, or maybe all, are examples to us all or some of us - some of the time, in certain circumstances...

     Firstly, Robert Edward Lee, the famous 'Robert E. Lee', 19/01/1807 - 12/10/1870.  He was a life-long career army officer and the most successful commander of the secessionist Confederate forces during the American civil war of 1861-85, rising to become general-in-chief.   He won victories  - with style - against the numerically Northern superior forces, although brute economic power eventually wore him and the Confederacy down.  As Belloc or G. K. Chesterton - or, who knows, maybe Oscar Wilde – once said - 'in the struggle between virtue and organised money don't bet the farm on the former'.

     At the same time (or more likely, once the war was safely won) Lee won cross-party respect for his courtly persona, humanity and for rejecting a continued guerrilla struggle in favour of post-war reconciliation.  Additionally, he has come to symbolise a iconic personification of the best of the Confederacy's aspirations - and thus some sort of solace to the battered - indeed, ravished and humiliated - Southern states.  Amidst gathering darkness and the death of old ways, I presume he was a beacon of hope.

     Something of the same spirit must have inspired the writer who put the following words into the mouth of a chastened and wiser Rhett Butler towards the end of 'Gone With the Wind':

    'I'm going back to Charleston, back where I belong...  I'm through with everything here.  I want peace.  I want to see if somewhere there is something left in life with charm and grace...'

    Incidentally, he was the chap in the same eons-long film who was motivated to express that wonderful catch-all, fits-all-sizes-of-problems, sentiment:

            'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn...'

    Wise words indeed...

    But I digress, as I so often do.  More generally, Lee draws upon the romance of all failed causes nobly upheld.  Witness the residual appeal of Jacobitism or Enlightenment thinking.  Actually, no, upon reflection, scrub that last one, but you get the drift...  Also, Lee could be taken as the last gasp of the Christian warrior ideal before modernity wrung even the concept of glory out of war.

    Thinking on, that particular grim process first really came to inescapable attention in Lee’s time.  At the start of the American Civil War soldiers advanced into battle in massed formations dressed in colourful uniforms.  By its end men in mud hued overalls lay on their bellies and shot at distant shapes.  Machine guns made their first hesitant appearance on the battlefield, bayonets were used solely for opening ration tins and dashing cavalry charges were suicide.  People had their face shoved into (often literally) the wonderful advances of science.

    If only senior soldiers had been paying attention the American Civil War would have prefigured 1914 for them in all its deadly lack of martial glory...

    According to that perception, Lee was an anachronism: an attempt to put a fine face on sordid slaughter.  Naturally, for that I rather warm to him...

    From the public record - which seems to be in entire accord with private recollections - Lee seems to have been an admirably, perhaps even painfully - upright man.  Someone you could trust with your wallet, wife or life - but maybe not first choice for an evening of lager and laughs.  Which may be more of a comment on me than Lee...

    Anyhow, in the States you can buy a pack of 70 beautifully produced cards to be taken one-per-day like medication, each containing an inspirational incident from Lee's life, his recorded reflection on it and a modern commentator's stern moral drawn from both.  I flunked the course by day three...

    The following are not drawn from those cards-of-good-intention but give the flavour of the man and his memory...

 Ø      'Study human nature, more by experience than by precept.  Learn not to be deceived by the low, the cunning and the envious.'

 Ø      'You must be aware of one thing, that those you deal with will consider their advantage and not yours.  So, while being fair and just, you must not neglect your interests.'

 Ø      'Do not worry about things you cannot help.'

 Ø      'Desire nothing too eagerly, nor think that all things can be perfectly accomplished according to our own notions.'

 Ø      'Shake off those gloomy feelings.  Drive them away.  Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you.  … All is bright if you will think it so.  All is happy if you will make it so.  Do not dream.  It is too ideal… too imaginary, dreaming by day, I mean.  Live in the world you inhabit, look upon things as they are.  Take them as you find them.  Make the best of them.  Turn them to your advantage.'

 Ø      'I consider the character of no man affected by a want of success provided he has made an honest effort to succeed.'

 Ø      'The struggle which you describe you experience between doing what you ought and what you desire is common to all.  You have only always to do what is right.  It will become easier by practice, and you will always have enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an approving conscience.  That will be worth everything else.'

 Ø      'My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health.'

 Ø      'Men need no stimulant; it is something, I am persuaded, that they can do without.'

 Ø      'You will find it difficult, at first, to control the operation of your mind under all circumstances … but the power can be gained by determination and practice.  If it had not been by this power, I do not see how I could have stood what I had to go thorough with.'

Ø      'Nothing is more instructive than the perusal of the deeds of men in other ages.'

 Ø      '… our God mixes in the cup he gives up to drink in the world, the sweet with the bitter.'

 Ø      'In the end I trust all things will work together for our good.'

 Ø      'Let us all so live that me may live that we may be united in that world where there is no more separation and where sorrow and pain never come.'

Ø      'What a beautiful world God in his loving kindness to His creatures has given us!  What a shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge of right should mar His gifts.' 

 Ø      'Above all things , learn at once to worship your Creator and to do His will as revealed in His Holy book.'

 Ø      'We are all in the hands of our Merciful God, whom I know will order all things for our good, but we do not know what that is or what He may determine, and it behooves us to use the perception and judgment He has given us for our guidance and well being.'

 Ø      'Find time to read and improve your mind.  Read history, works of truth… get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true  light.  It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.'

    And finally, the classic;

 Ø     'Exterminate all the brutes!'

    Actually, I confess the last one wasn't really from Lee but another figure of interest with an alternative perception of the 19th century and life in general: Mr. Kurtz, of Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ fame.  I admit I irresponsibly inserted it to liven things up.  But who is nearer the truth, Lee or Kurtz?  Who can say for sure?  Answer: all of us - later, allegedly.

 In the immortal words of that loveable appalling cynic, Charles II of England ( for more of whom, see below )

            ‘At Doomsday, we shall see whose arse is blackest...'

    The specific context was upon being reproached in 1681 on his morality by all-round bad-egg, the Earl of Shaftesbury, but those who have lived a certain span of years on this Earth may well see a more universal application...

    Meanwhile, returning to the good general Lee, I imagine a scene, from the crueller kind of comedy show, resurrecting General Lee in full uniform to wander through the mean  - indeed Darwinian - streets of some modern American city and seeing how far his dignity and decency gets him there.  I fear that spittle and abuse would be the least of his problems... 

    Fortunately, as a young man he learned to be handy with lethal instruments.  Therefore the comedy sketch develops as a SWAT team is mobilised to deal with a saintly retired general who has just sabred some street scum....

    Next, moving on from a good man to a man who admired good men but couldn't copy them, we come to England’s ‘Merry Monarch’… (all quotes drawn from 'King Charles II' by Arthur Bryant. 1931).

    ‘Alone, vilified, driven on every side, Charles remained clam and patient.  This middle-aged roué who liked to be easy and see those about him so, was now fighting almost single-handed against an utterly unscrupulous caucus and a maddened populace for the preservation of the English monarch and of decent dealing in public life.  To that contest he brought a cool courage, a temper that to the outer world remained imperturbable, and a skill in gauging the deepest designs of his adversaries that amounted to genius.

     But that was just for show - inward reality seeped through to the outside even in this master deceiver.  In the anxious weeks that followed, the King preserved his outward calm, declaring that he would give the people all imaginable freedom in returning whom they chose.  But those near him noticed that he bit his nails to the quick - so much sop that his thumb festered and he could obtain no sleep for pain.'

    'Gazing that Christmas from his bedroom windows down the river, the king could see the vanes of the city he had helped to build - symbolising in its ordered red brick houses and classical temples, a new age of wealth and far-reaching responsibilities - and above it, rising higher every week, the walls of its vast cathedral; on Saturdays he could almost follow the upward passage of his little surveyor going up in his basket to view the progress of his handiwork.  He had not done so badly, he reflected, by his people; he had given them peace and prosperity after many years of unquiet; he had stood by his friends; had kept his father's throne and honour.  There were, of course, many things he regretted: the scandal he had given by his far too easy Court and life.  But he was sensible of his misspent time, and lamented it.  He was not impatient to be reproached for these things; once he remarked to those about him that he was going to hear little Ken * whom with his unfailing eye for true humility and saintliness, he made that Christmas a bishop, tell him of his faults.'

    * [ Thomas Ken (1637 - 1711),  Bishop of Bath and Wells.  When visited in 1683 by Charles and his... lively court, the Bishop refused accommodation to the King's 'special friend', Nell Gwynne.  Charles immediately forgave but never forgot this rare outbreak of Anglican backbone. ]

    'Not that he set any great store by spiritual teachers and dogmas: he was apt to agree with his favourite, Mr. Dryden, that priests of all religions were the same.  ....  But though Charles thought of all kinds of worship and Church government as but different fashions of the same cloak, he was no agnostic.  He had large notions of God's mercy, and could never believe that He would damn one of His creatures for taking a little irregular pleasure by the way.  Long ago he had told his sister that he was one of those bigots who regarded malice as a much greater sin that an poor frailty of nature.  To design mischief, to be cruel and deny compassion, of these at least he had not been guilty; somehow, he trusted, he would climb up to Heaven's gate.'

            In my book, The Royal Changeling (Simon & Schuster 1998), I perhaps presumptuously, took it upon myself to confirm that he made it...

    And last but by no means least, from Charles II's peppery days comes the possibly very wonderful but certainly very interesting Thomas Clifford, 1st Baron Clifford of Chudleigh (1630 - 1673), English statesman and politician.

    'Out of these divergent elements arose one man of fire and iron - Thomas Clifford, a Restoration Stafford - heroic, passionate and reckless. Wedded from boyhood to bold measures, rugged and tempestuous as the Dartmoor from which his ancient race sprang, he stood that year at the King's side, a dark and sinister figure.  Yet the gentle Evelyn spoke of him with affection as "a valiant, uncorrupt gentleman, ambitious and not covetous; generous, passionate, a most constant, sincere friend".  Hotspur, ever ready to pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, he was the very antithesis of Charles, and therefore perhaps appealed to him the more.  On this rough hero the mantle of Minette [ Charles' beloved and recently deceased sister] fell.  For those things for which she had pleaded he now urged - monarchy absolute, the ranks of ordered chivalry riding arrogant over traitors, and the Catholic Church at peace once more in an ancient land.'

 'King Charles II' by Arthur Bryant. 1931)

    Clifford had dishonoured his integrity by becoming a lawyer but redeemed himself by distinguished participation in the naval wars of the time.  Meanwhile, he became one of the five Counsellors who formed the infamous 'Cabal' who got up to all sorts of intriguing and high risk things (though Thomas was probably the least important of them)

    Clifford served as Lord High Treasurer 1672 to 1673, until he declined to forswear his faith and take an oath under the anti-Catholic 'Test Act'.  Tired of all the degrading wrestling around in the iguana-pit of politics, he first resigned from his job, and then, possibly, from life itself.  He died, allegedly by his own hand ('strangled with his cravat upon the bed' **) a few months after his retirement.

** Evelyn's diaries. 18/08/1673.

    'But one counsellor was past the reach of "the mighty terrible Parliament" and the judgment courts of men.  From the lonely Devonshire valley of his forefathers, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, leaving behind all baubles - 'White Staff', vast pictures of hunted beasts, Court, City and Country, and all the timid hearts that dared not face their destiny - went out to meet his God.

     The last words of this man, who had followed his faith so blindly and heroically, were:

            'Well, let men say what they will; there is a God, a just God above.'

     Fine final words - and for Clifford instantly verifiable once that cravat had done its work.  Were, I wonder, his high hopes immediately vindicated?  We shall see...

     And to end, not with despair but on a note of optimism - unsettling, stomach-acid inducing Parthian-shot optimism granted - but optimism nevertheless:

            'When the sins and errors of an age have made the world impossible to live in, the next generation, seeking to make life tolerable again, may be able to find no way save by the surrender of cherished ideals, and so may find themselves compelled to cast about for new dreams and purposes.'

    Herbert Butterworth.  ‘The Whig Interpretation of History’.  1931.

    Once the melancholic pall of the above quotes has passed, enjoy the summer!

  JW

 Dispatch dated 2nd April 2006

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Just to keep things ticking over, please find herewith a new batch of quotations for 'Quote Qorner' - a gallimaufry of wisdom, ranging from Talmudic and Scriptural gems to the last word on a famous film producer.

Enjoy ! ( if you can.  If not, endure... )

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Dispatch dated 18th March 2006

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If apologies are due for the prolonged absence of an update to this site, then consider them offered.  And thank you for the kind e-mails from fans as far afield as Australia, Israel, the Baltic States and Berkshire, which have prodded me into long overdue action.  I didn't know you cared...

Blinking in the unaccustomed light of the world-wide web, this troglodyte can only offer the following stumbling defence for the coma-style holiday:

• A demanding contractual deadline for a new book.
• Accidie.
• The lack of anything pressing to say.
• The fact that this site was never meant to be a blog.

Having said that, there are, I suppose, a few things to impart to those who wish to know.

Item:    The aforementioned book got finished and was delivered, sleek (well, as sleek as 100,000 words can be) and shiny into the misguided hands of those who commissioned it, well before deadline.  Thus 2005 gave birth to 'Frankenstein's Legions', mentioned before in this site ( see 'Dispatch 19' ).  It awaits the editorial equivalent of circumcision and then, shortly after ( not, I hope, the prescribed 13 years ) its bar mitzvah and entry as a notionally grown-up tome into the wicked world of publishing.

As to what it's about, the premise is that Frankensteinian science didn't die with its inventor but passed down the family line ( like haemophilia, or a curse ) and into promiscuous usage.  There, of course, it was straightaway put to nationalist and warlike work...

Already, the livelier sort of reader will have conceived the notion that the existence of recyclable armies with little quality of life to lose might well make wars more likely, longer and... some other alliterative word beginning with 'l' meaning ghastly.  They're quite right.

I hasten to say, however, that the book is not some gore-drenched hack n' slay zombie fest.  How could that be so when the subtle spirit of one of my favourite Machiavellians, Charles Maurice Talleyand de Perigord, master diplomat and statesman ( 1754 - 1838 ) directs much of the events therein ?  Instead, expect Christmas-proportion presents of gothic style and gallows humour, all wrapped up in a ripping good yarn.  Though I say so myself...

And no, I've deliberately never so much as opened a copy of Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', let alone read it, for fear of cross-fertilisation (if you see what I mean...).  That is a treat I shall have to postpone.  But in the meanwhile, good luck to the charming Ms Clarke ( who I've met, courtesy of her consort, Mr Greenland ) and her publishing sensation.  May she sell millions more.

Item: The prospect of a JAW short story collection, via 'The Ash-Tree Press', has risen its gorgeous, pouting, head again.  At their request, I've written the necessary introduction and 'explanatory story-snippets', and even had success in persuading the 'Celtic Marxist bon-viveur', Professor E Griffiths, the unofficial patron of my writings, to supply his blessing in the form of a few words.  The latter, after protracted negotiation and subtraction of the more shockingly obscene, albeit subtle and scholarly, quips, should be publishable without risking prosecution soon.

The provisional title is - you guessed it - 'Altered Englands' ( don't worry - the subtitle is more amusing... ) and the book will cover my shorter fiction, both published and unpublished, from the late 80s to the present.  It may - indeed, should - come out in 2006.

Item: After a voyage of some 10,000 words, the proposed project, 'Nelson & the Meaning of Life', mentioned hitherto, has run foul of the rocks of lack of time and the imperative to write honestly. Certainly, more research is needed on the fascinating period of the 'Dark Nelson' and his much criticised ( by Guardianistas and other blue-faced wowsers ) actions in Naples in 1799.  Which is a pleasure I look forward to. For the moment however, that vessel is grounded on shoals, though not, I trust, fatally holed.  It may yet see service and find glory in battle, but presently awaits a refit, ( as do we all, as does our civilisation ), in more spacious times...

Which is about it, as regards anything anyone normal could want or need to know. Which leaves me free to blather:

Now added to the 'Favourite Links' of this site is a hyperlink to the website of the officially very wonderful indeed, 'folk-noir' singer songwriter ( and guitar maker ), Kirsty Mcgee.  Benevolent Providence directed a wander I presumed to be random to her first album in the Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly in Babylon last year.  Ever since, in the grip of a powerful compulsion which I wish to share, I've acquired her two succeeding CDs, a rarity early demo EP, and indeed the high pleasure of meeting the lady herself at several gigs.

I appreciate that contemporary late-capitalism is a cacophony of competing commercial imperatives all shouting madly for attention, saying 'GIVE US YOUR F*****G MONEY!'  However, in this exceptional instance I beg from the very best of non-lucre driven motives to respectfully direct your attention to Ms Mcgee and the following shiny silver circular treats-in-store:

• Honeysuckle.  Fellside Recordings Ltd. 2002.
• Frost.  Park Records. 2004
• Birds.  Park Records. 2005.

All are obtainable via Ms McGee's website, which for terminal slackers I take the opportunity of supplying HERE: http://www.kirstymcgee.com/

If there is any justice in this side of the grave - which I agree, even a cursory glance around leaves open to doubt - this artist should be huge and playing to hordes.  Suffice it to say, if my books should have given anyone reading this a degree of pleasure I would account it ample return for them to sample Kirsty's music at my request.

But I leave it up to you - save to mention that Hebrew scripture maintains that when we come before the Throne of Judgement, every soul must one day account for every ( permitted ) pleasure missed.  When the Almighty, in His kindness and wisdom, has supplied comforts to His children during their fleeting separation from Him, it seems churlish to spurn them.  No pressure though...

In England, the serious TV news always used to be rounded off with what was generically termed 'the skateboarding duck item' - a whimsical bit to leaven all the previous weighty stuff of wars and woes.  In that same spirit, I thought I'd offer up, motivated by either gratuitous generosity or malice, a short-short story I wrote some years back, just for the Hell of it.  Which was quite appropriate, now I consider it - since the micro tale does indeed concern separate worlds jointly heading for that very destination...

Bear with me for 1000 words as I consider the definition of:

"Death is better than shame or innovation !"

The teeming servant castes hissed approval. That was the prescribed phrase on being handed the masterly blade. Each successive wielder, back into hazy legend times, said the same in the sublime ritual of gearing for war. The menial-of-the-sword was allowed, as high favour, to slash his thumb on its edge and show first blood.

"A taste before a feast !" Unused to raising his voice within Castle precincts he was both exultant and afraid. That acclamation was also strictly laid down. Like all his ancestors before him, the salutation was his supreme privilege.

Probably the sword predated everything. It perhaps helped the very first Master to win the Castle from .... whoever had it before. Scribe records scarcely reached so far back, and told a sketchy tale even then. For the millions who lived in, around - and most certainly under - the thrall of Castle Slovo, there was nothing else, no time before or notions of an after to its rule.

"Behold the harness of The-Subtle-King-whose-name-is-forgot."

The head-man of the dresser caste also got to speak. Whilst he strapped his Lord into the myriad faceted gold and mirror armour, a dozen bards were sacrificed to the ONEGOD, who was merciful and allseeing and pleased to make the CastleLord his vice-regent in all the planes of existence. It was sad but time-hallowed, and beyond questioning. The poets' final compositions were recited even as their lifeblood flowed away.

"May this breastplate acquire further honourable scars" said the dresser, as he belly-crawled back. It was awesome to consider that the present Lord's ten times great grandfather was thus attired when he fought at Middlezog Bridge and smote the Demon Debbi-of-the-Maw ( or so it was said ). The glittering golden vision reflected arrows of light to every corner. To intercept a beam was accounted a blessing.

The CastleLord stepped over the dead poets, past the crimson attired and fury-faced satraps of the inner retinue, through the terrified ranks of his children. Beside the chamber doors stood the dowager CastleLady, holding out the ancient mask of appalling intimidation.

"Come home with glory - or not at all" she advised him as he donned it, with the concern befitting a mother - and then prostrated herself creakily to the floor.

In the courtyard the higher ranked harems tracked in stately dance, singing the shrill 'incitement to libidinous return'. Their faces and forms were painted with courage inducing runes from pattern books a thousand years old. He knew each houri well, as they did him, and they avoided his eye.

Beyond, in the 'gathering in splendour' arena, the household regiments were already mounted up, reining in eager horned steeds. It was their proud boast that every weapon they held, every item of rainbow coloured equipment, was handed down from at least three generations of honourable usage. Each chosen warrior could recite his lineage for ten times that.

Their Lord was winched astride his war-beast, to the acclamation of men and the ululations of women. He took up the lance of his forefather 'Impale-Him VI'. Around the walls the priests blessed him and read Suras wherein the ONEGOD plainly stated that HE was beside those who did well for HIS sake. There was no more to be done, no more that could be said. Ceremony and the ancestor-spirits and HE who saw all were placated. The CastleLord rode forth and his army followed.

The foot-troops, the mailed broadsword men right down to near-naked archers, were waiting in each successive courtyard and followed in the cavalry's trail. It took five hours for the last of them to escape the gargoyle-shadow of the mighty CastleKeep and issue into bright purple day.

These were merely the regular troops. The levies of the rice-plains and corn-deltas, the leathery half-men of the cactus lands and the forest-tribe hordes awaited outside. Together they darkened the land and made thunder as they marched to battle.

************

Mik 23(ii) lived in a 'humihap' or 'capsicle' ( or even 'plasti-coffin dorm' as the real old timers called them ). He had only dim recollections of his mother, and as for dad, well, not even the Navy knew. It was fairly certain he was born on Earth - somewhere.

Family, as far as Mik was concerned, were the four other draftees in his team. They went by the name ( and he had to remember this ) of Marine-inf AB/34: 12/23. All others were just part of the sea of faces passing through the ship without cease. Thinking on, he didn't even rate his team-mates much. They went days without speaking.

What Mik 23(ii) did like was cacooning in his plastic nest, watching sim-porn and sucking on a high-gain nutri-bag with nerve-spice in it. Doing that made the hours and days slither right on by. He was quite fond of his gun as well.

Mik didn't know any songs and would never write anything. Reading more than labels and weapon-blurb caused his lips to move, tugging painfully on his attention span. He had his uniform, a weapon, some still-prints off the sim-porn on his coffin walls, and nothing else; no other possessions worth keeping. He was a happy man, as fortunate as anyone in those days. There was no pay, but the Navy fed and housed him - which was a hell of a good deal to a 27th century Earthman.

On the minus side they made him work, like now when a klaxon screamed through his humihab, calling him to battle.

************

It required only a few teams, two or three at most, spat out of the mother ship

to 'reincorporate' a 'lapsed' colony world. Most were long lost and had gone pretty primitive. They just required reminding of the benefits of civilisation.

And thus the CastleLord came to meet Mik 23(ii) - albeit briefly and at a distance. The marines hosed the charging hordes away with energy weapons and Mik wondered briefly who that golden guy had been.

************

I'll try not to leave the next update so long - so long as I feel like it, so long as my beloved son and heir hasn't 'upgraded' my computer as disastrously as he 'upgraded' my Internet linkage, and so long as there's anything material to impart.  Likely nonsense that comes to mind are some more quotes for 'Quote Qorner' to sustain or shrivel your soul, some life counselling from the implausible source of upright-but-on-the-wrong-side Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, and maybe some musings on Talleyrand - who Napoleon, with some justification, described as 'shit in a silk stocking' - but who was also a much misunderstood man...

Maybe.  Meanwhile, as an Egyptian kindly said some four millennia ago, 'may the Almighty be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk...'

Wæs þu hæl !

******

Dispatch dated 29th January 2005

A belated Happy New Year to all JAW readers and apologies for the hiatus in site updates.

The main reason for that web passivity is commitments on the writing front - which for an author should constitute full excuse.

Recent JAW publications include my short story 'THE SUNKEN GARDEN' in the Ash-Tree Press anthology 'ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT' ,published December 2004 ( hardback ISBN 1-55310-075-1, paperback 1-55310-076-X ).  Therein an elderly Methodist minister 'enjoys' a memorable Golden Wedding anniversary celebration and makes the trip of a lifetime - in the sense he ain't coming back.

Also, there's been two JAW SFX magazine interviews, one with ace English author Phil Rickman (see A hymn to merrily), and another with 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant' creator, Stephen Donaldson.  He was in the UK to promote his twenty years delayed return to the series ( 'The Runes of the Earth' ) and we met up for a enjoyable chat in a Covent Garden hotel.

See SFX issues 124, December 2004, and 127, February 2005, respectively.

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Current projects underway include:

• BABYLONdon.  Research, a detailed synopsis and 12,000 words to date, on a novel set in  the anti-Catholic ( and then anti-authority ) Gordon Riots in 1780.  A book broadly similar to my long considered CHAOS & CATHOLICKS ( see Other Synopses ).  Its hero is the diminutive and dapper Cavaliere, concerning whom there is both more and less than meets the eye ...  Vying with him for star status in the book is uproarious 18th century London itself.

• FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGIONS.  A novel extrapolating the events of Mary Shelley's classic novel into the 1840s.  Revival of the dead is now commonplace, though desperately harmful to the social fabric of the nations involved.  An otherwise exhausted France promiscuously recycles its dead soldiery to prosecute the Napoleonic Wars into their fifth decade in a devastated Europe, and those allied against her must reluctantly fall into line to augment their own forces.  Principle characters include Julius Frankenstein ( nephew of the Frankenstein ) an exile in England, and Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and patron of Charles Babbage, inventor of 'The Difference Engine'.  The book has been commissioned by a games company developing a computer game of the same name.

******

    And finally, I have a new agent, the redoubtable John Jarrold, who also commissioned and published four of my earlier books !  Full details available for perusal at: http://www.sff.net/people/john-jarrold/press.html

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Dispatch dated 3rd October 2004

In my last update I made a request of anyone with knowledge of Old English.  Noting the trend of people 'Gaelicising' or 'Scotticising' their names, plus little books of 'Names for Cornish Children' and such, I asked if a similar thing was possible with English personal names, grafting on some degree of 'Old Englishness' ?

As if by magic, there came news of 'GIVE YOUR CHILD AN ANGLO-SAXON NAME', published by Joseph Biddulph Publications of Pontypridd ( ! ) this very month.   I've known of Mr Biddulph for some years ( and indeed suggested such a book to him ), and thoroughly recommend his range of modestly priced esoteric linguistic and heraldic works.  Personal favorites include a hypothetical 'What-if-the-English-never-arrived' Devonian language and, best of all, ELDSAY, a purification of modern English to exclude Norman-French impositions. 

A catalogue may be obtained for a stamped addressed envelope from:

Joseph Biddulph

32 Stryd Ebeneser

Pontypridd

Wales

CF37 5PB

As may 'GIVE YOUR CHILD AN ANGLO-SAXON NAME', for a mere £4.34 ! including postage.  You can even ask for a  short greeting to be added,  so that the book can be sent a gift to a third party.  As Mr Biddulph puts it: 'A little book to give to parents and parents-to-be everywhere'.

Buy ELDSAY whilst you're at it, for a joint price of under a tenner !  Less than a round in a pub but infinitely more beneficial and long lasting.

******

Coming soon, in SFX magazine no. 124 probably, a JAW interview with ace author Phil Rickman (see A hymn to merrily) and, from the same poisoned source, a review of Stephen King's hernia-inducing seventh and concluding book of 'The Dark Tower Cycle'.  Strange as it may seem, it's called 'THE DARK TOWER' and  isn't at all bad.

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A start has been made on the implausible and perhaps impossible work now provisionally entitled 'NELSON IN LIMBO' or 'NELSON & THE SECRET OF LIFE' ( see Dispatch dated 10th June 2003 )

' ... even so the mad idea of a new book occurred to me:  'NELSON & THE MEANING OF LIFE', subtitled 'THE REIGN OF REASON BREEDS MONSTERS' ( nicked and twisted from Goya's famous painting. )

Without giving the game away too much ( my argument needs proper exposition and explanation ) the gist is the potential ... fineness of a life lived free of Reason's straitjacket.  Naturally, I exclude that quality of 'Reason' discussed by the ancient stoics but refer instead to the dreary dogma bequeathed us ( cheers ! ) by the ideologues of the 18th century so-called 'Age of Reason, such as Voltaire, and descending in grey line to Polly Toynbee and Salman Rushdie today.

Plus !  Perceived continuities between Nelson's personality and his Old English ancestors, the concept of 'Southern English Stoicism' (most of the Royal Navy's captains were south country men) and the intertwining of three 'nesses': fearlessness, kindness and ruthlessness, that can on rare occasions combine to make a loveable human predator ...

In fact, I really ought to prioritise this project because the 'anti-book' to 'NELSON & THE MEANING OF LIFE' has already been written - 'Nelson' by Terry Coleman ( a Guardian journalist, surprise, surprise ), Bloomsbury (suspiciously apt ), 2001.  A 427 page long ungenerous and low-minded whinge, siphoning the Immortal Memory of style or interest.  I understand it's favoured reading material amongst the Null.'

Hmmm ...

Well, so far, a character called 'Talleyrand II' has recruited a motley collection of tourists from around Cleopatra's Needle on the pretence of a guided tour, only to whisk them into other dimensions to explore aspects of Nelson's after-life.  The standard sedate Jane Austen-ish plot in other words ...

******

I've also made a tentative start ( or at least set the stone rolling )on that long postponed essay 'Guildford - Birthplace of English Democracy !  Surrey and the Levellers in 1647' ( see Dispatch dated December 2000 ).  In a nutshell, in 1647 radical delegates elected by five New Model Army cavalry regiments billeted in Surrey and surrounds met in Guildford, together with civilians from the Leveller Party, and released a document called 'The Case of the Army Truly Stated'.  Amongst other treasures it included an all-England-first demand for ( almost ) universal ( male ) suffrage and, prefigured the 1832 Great Reform Act by calling for fairer Parliamentary constituencies.  'The Case' then directly fed into the famous and nationally important 'Putney Debates' later that year.  Strangely though, the event seems to have totally disappeared from Guildford collective memory and isn't mentioned in any of the town histories.

Quite aside from the intrinsic significance of the event, Guildford's past isn't exactly overstocked with the dramatic ( happily for those who lived there then ) and so I'd like to make the event more widely known.

‘Oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or pensive mood,’ I have visions of Guildford Borough Council signs saying:

'WELCOME TO GUILDFORD - BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLISH DEMOCRACY

Well, if Jane Austen can lay claim to the whole of Hampshire ( always a bit of a spine-chiller as you drive past the road signs ... ), why not ?

******

Plus I've posted another serving of quotations to 'Quote Qorner' , Batch the Eighth, including, as a departure, a selection of toasts to either gild or kill-stone-dead ( or both, simultaneously ) any social gathering.  You're welcome.

******

Dispatch dated 7th July 2004

I've added two short essays to 'As a historian ...'

First, there's 'Angles, Saxons, Normans & Vandals ( & Scots )', a spiel inspired by a 'discovery' made during a trip to Battle Abbey in Sussex, mournful site of the biggest disaster to ever hit the English people ( though Henry VIII runs close second ).

Next is 'Looking For New England', which started life as a talk about a little known but amazing incident in English history, given to a Science Fiction convention in Portsmouth ( 'that horrid place' as per Admiral Nelson in 1803 ).  It was subsequently written up as a article at the request of the proprietor of '3SF Magazine' and published in its inaugural issue in 2002.

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 A request to anybody out there with specialist knowledge, particularly of Old English.

I've noticed a recent development of people 'Gaelicising' or 'Scotticising' their names, plus little books of 'Names for Cornish Children' and such.  Is a similar thing possible with English personal names, grafting on whatever degree of 'Old Englishness' ?

For instance, could there be an Old English equivalent to John, even it were only the one in most common usage, much as the Russian 'Ivan' corresponds to our 'John' ? 

******

Dispatch dated 26th June 2004

As of last week I was able to type the traditional celebratory 'Old English' font 36 point

'THE END'

to the second in my projected 'Amy-Faith ...' young adults series.  Sustained activity to that 'end' is an almost total explanation of recent website procrastination.  However, Euro 2004 is also implicated.

After a spell of revision 'Amy-Faith & The Enemy of Calm' should be leaving home to go out and do the rounds in the harsh cold world.  And there's few worlds either so harsh or cold as publishing ...

******

SFX Magazine number 119 ( July 2004 ) contained my five star ( max. ) rave review of Phil Rickman's 'The Prayer of the Night Shepherd'.  This is the sixth in his Merrily Watkins, arch Anglican exorcist, series of 'spiritual procedurals' ( as Mr R calls them ).  In my humble opinion it constitutes a major literary event unfolding before our very eyes.

SFX made it their lead review, edging even Stephen King into the page margin.

Not entirely coincidentally, SFX should be carrying a JAW interview with Mr Rickman in the next few months.

For the uninitiated, an earlier appreciation of the Merrily Watkins books may be found at 'A Hymn to Merrily' on this very site and by this very pen.

Likewise, for non SFX readers here's what I said in SFX 119:

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd - The Sixth Merrily Watkins Mystery

 by Phil Rickman.  Published by Macmillan.

ISBN: 0 333 90806 6

Pages / Price: 535.  £16.99

If this book was a bottle of wine it would be vintage champagne -  exquisitely chilled and intoxicating.   Exquisitely chilled is also how it leaves the lucky reader.  Rickman can evoke evil - supernatural and otherwise - like no other author around.  He has your neck-hairs at his command.

Merrily Watkins is an Anglican (well, no one's perfect ...) priestess and exorcist (‘Deliverance Consultant’ in namby-pamby CofE speak) for the Diocese of Hereford on the Anglo-Welsh border.  This is her sixth outing and, astoundingly, the series just goes on getting better and better.  Collectively, it now constitutes a major achievement - a likely 'apart from the Bible and Shakespeare ?' Desert Island Discs literary request           

This time around a newcomer hotelier is investigating local legends, hoping a spot of spookiness will draw the punters into his failing enterprise.  However, this being the 'Rickmanverse' he thereby manages to lift some stones, both spiritual and secular, that really shouldn't have been lifted.  Murder and mayhem ensure - and the grave is absolutely no guarantee of an end to it.

Enter, willing or not, the quietly heroic, silk-cut puffing Merrily.  Family links and Christian charity lead to her entanglement in a curse that's already centuries old when meddling arrivals from 'Off' (anywhere not local) manage to give it fresh life.

Rickman writes akin to one of the spiritualist mediums he describes - like he's channelling words from a better place.  His characters leap off the page and follow you around when you've stopped reading - which, given the personalities involved, isn't always pleasant.  The 'sense of place' is just as good.  The plotting's even better.

Add to this a connection to Arthur Conan Doyle and the true (?) prototype for the hound that bothered the Baskervilles; a generation-hopping unclean (and randy and bloodthirsty) 'presence'; plus proper, grown-up, meditations on matters spiritual and criminal, and you have the aforementioned champagne brew.  Unreservedly recommended.

FIVE STARS.

P.S.    You'll now find Rickman's 'Spiritual Procedural' novels where they always should have been - in the flourishing and fashionable ‘Crime’ section.  For indeed it would be a crime to miss out on Merrily.

******

Post 'Amy-Faith II' I amused myself with a couple of ( sort of ) literary essays - but a brief explanation is required:

There's a highly popular set of wargame rules called 'Hordes of the Things' ( HOTT for short ) that allows gamers to fight battles featuring armies inspired by fantasy books, legends, imaginary worlds and so on.  For the curious there's a very good website devoted to the rules called 'The Stronghold' ( synchronicities with Amy-Faith's Universe ... )  which may be found at http://www.btinternet.com/~alan.catherine/wargames/strong.htm.

Full enlightenment lies within, plus a wealth of entertaining reading, including myriad 'army lists' submitted by enthusiasts.  

And therein my musings about the world of James Thurber's 'The Thirteen Clocks' may now be found.  To follow in due course should be similar spiels regarding J P Martin's six book 'Uncle' series and Anglo-Saxon * 'Men versus Monsters' conflicts.

[ * Actually, I prefer the term 'Old English' since 'Anglo-Saxon' - designedly I think - serves to deny any link between the English and their pre-1066 ancestors.  Of course, the English predate the Norman catastrophe by half a millennia and to infer otherwise, namely that 'England' emerged fully formed the day after the Battle of Hastings, is to serve a ruling class agenda. ]

In the meanwhile, all three efforts may be found here:

Warfare in the world of James Thurber's 'The Thirteen Clocks'

Warfare in the world of J. P. Martin's 'Uncle' books

Warfare in the monster-ridden world of the Old English

If nothing else, consider each as literary incitements - particularly regarding the criminally out-of-print Uncle series, for which see 

http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/j/j-p-martin.html

and:

http://www.video-design.demon.co.uk/jpmartin.html

******

Finally, I've added a couple of spirtually enriching quotes to Quotes Qorner' - Batch the Seventh.

******  

Dispatch dated 23rd December 2003

It occurred to me I ought to top up this site's professed 'Counter-Reformation' and 'Anarcho-Jacobite' credentials.  Not only that, but we are approaching the festive season and a High and Holy holiday.  Therefore, please find in this update a selection of appropriate quotes.  'Quote Qorner':  Batch the Sixth.

On a related note, kindly accept as a Christmas gift the following, which in my humble opinion is one of the finest poems ever written in English.  Not at all festive, granted; inappropriately melancholic perhaps; but certainly 'fine' ...

Epitaph on a Jacobite

'To my true king I offer'd free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,
Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.'

 Thomas Babington Macaulay.  1800–1859.

******

Also, imagine if you will, my DEEP JOY in discovering the most unlikely juxtaposition of two pet subjects in a recent 'Weekly Worker' ( journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain - see Favourite Links ).  If you'd previously asked me to bet on the likelihood of pro-Jacobite article in a Marxist-Leninist journal I wouldn't have wagered the farm on it ...

See and marvel for yourself at:  http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/507/scotland.html

Finally, may I take this opportunity to wish all readers a very merry Christmas.  May you receive all that you deserve.

******

Dispatch dated 6th December 2003

There's the prospect of an Ash-Tree Press volume of JAW short stories in 2004 ( for which see: www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ashtreeinfo.html and also the Ash-Tree entry in 'Favourite Links' ) 

Likely contents include the definitively last 'Binscombe Tale', plus a couple of mini-series, such as 'Ports & Phantoms' ( yes, that's right, Ports, not Popes & Phantoms ) spanning half a century amidst the port producing English expat community in Portugal.  And, probably, my 'Allah the ... ' set, a triptych concerning contemporary Islam, plus the 'Sir Robert Holmes' series concerning 17^th century piracy and debauchery in the Isle of Wight.  And ... a glittering horde of other treasures.  Maybe. Insha'allah ...

Meanwhile, for your edification and harrowing, there's another wagon-load of wisdom added to 'Quote Qorner':  Batch the Fifth.  Enjoy.

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Dispatch dated 5th November 2003 - Guy Fawkes Night !

An interesting thought for St Guy's Day:

After his capture Guy Fawkes was taken before Scottish King James ( James I of England and VI of Scotland ) himself.  Until then he had not spoken save to give a false name, John Johnson, hopeful that delay would enable his fellow conspirators to get away.

His monarch demanded of him: "Why would you have fired the powder ?"

Fawkes answered:

"I wished to blow you and all you Scottish beggars back to your mountains !"

James' reply is not recorded.

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A sweeter ( in the long term ) alternative future for Mr Fawkes than annual burning in effigy by his countrymen was imagined as the introduction to my: 'To BUILD JERUSALEM' ( Gollancz 1995.  Page 11. )

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             'We gather today to honour one of the great men of English history; a true son of the Church, a patriot, a soldier and a martyr.  Recognition of his rare qualities was put beyond doubt when, a hundred years ago to this day, Mother Church sanctioned his canonisation.  Distinguished by a life of selfless sacrifice to his country, Church and the cause of justice, he now sits in a deserved place of special exaltation in Heaven.  We who venerate his life and example, have come together on this, his feast day, to add our more humble, purely English, but no less fervent, honours to one of our Land's finest sons.

            When, in a few moments, I unveil this statue, we will add a small but sincere contribution to the chorus of acclamation and approval which our brother, his earthly tribulations over, now enjoys in Paradise.  The English people, who by their generous donations to a subscription fund enabled this statue to be raised, will be joining their prayers to both those of Christ's Church-in-Pilgrimage on Earth, and those of the Church-Triumphant beyond.  Our veneration will surely not go unrewarded, both in this life and the one to come.

            We know surprisingly little of the man: the times in which he lived were not conducive to fulsome declarations.  His baptism, at least, is a matter of record, we read of it in the records of St Michael le Belfry, York, for the sixteenth of April, the Year of Our Lord, 1570.  Likewise, we can hardly fail to be unaware of his untimely, grisly, end, here in London, in the Churchyard of St Paul's Cathedral, on the thirty-first of January, 1606.  But what of the years between, we ask ?  We know that his father was a lawyer and that he attended St Peter's school in York.  It is said that he grew tall and stately, over six feet in height, and had long light-brown hair and a reddish beard.  His commanding officers praise him for his courage, loyalty and integrity.  And that my friends, is more or less all.  We have no clear glimpse of his life and works until that fateful night, three centuries ago, when he smuggled 'two hogshead and 32 small barrels of powder', as Black Robert Cecil records, into the old Parliament building.  Aided by spells of silence cast by accompanying wizards, the perilous task was accomplished.  We are all familiar with the heart-stopping incident of their discovery by a yeoman of the Guard, and his nick-of-time felling by a conjuration of 'anathema'.  I doubt that at any time in the thousand years since its discovery and codification, has magic been put to better use in these Isles.  Fortunately, after many such adventures, all went well.

            Modern engineers have reconstructed events for us.  The usurping Scottish King, his arrogant Scottish courtiers, the lickspittle Lords and 'protestant' parliament; they were struck at first by an enormous blast.  Then they fell into the blazing cellar beneath, hotly followed, in every sense of the word, by the burning wreckage of the House of Lords.  Those few who survived this treatment had to contend with the famous black cloud, which all London saw, rich in choking smoke and gas.  Together it was sufficient to send every single one to give account of themselves to their Maker.  Indeed, those same engineers calculate that the Saint gathered twenty-five fold more explosive than was needed for the job.  That may be so, but we today applaud his pains-taking caution.

            True. he was betrayed and taken.  True, he was subject to undeserved torture and a traitor's painful death.  However, that is a mere sad postscript to a great mission fulfilled.  He had done his duty and now has his reward in heaven.  Meanwhile, those of us still concerned with earning our place in Paradise, may look at this man - together with his fellow conspirators - and say, never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many, to so few .....'

            Extract from the address given by His Majesty's Chief Minister, Lord Winston Spencer Churchill, upon the unveiling of the statue to Saint Guy Fawkes, Parliament Square, London, on the Fifth of November 1940.

Plus !

Another serving of quotations delivered to 'Quote Qorner' 

Someone told me that the last lot were somewhat downcasting and best not read whilst alone in the house and/or melancholy.  Sorry about that !

Try this gallimaufry as an antidote and pick-me-up.  You'll find it a lot more cheery ! *

 [ * Warning !  You are being lied to. ] 

******

Dispatch dated 21^st October 2003 NO. 2 !  TRAFALGAR DAY'

'England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty'

Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's penultimate [1] signal.  11.15am, 21st October 1805.

Today, 21^st October, is TRAFALGAR DAY, the anniversary of Admiral Lord Nelson's last and greatest triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  His posthumous victory against the combined French and Spanish fleets put a seal on England's supremacy of the sea and, better still, ended Napoleon's longstanding ambition [2] of invading our islands.  If we laboured under a less patrophobic political culture it would be a national holiday.

On this day Nelson's inspiring signal is once again hoisted up the yardarms of his flagship, HMS Victory [3], in her dry dock at Portsmouth.  Better still, since Trafalgar the tradition has arisen of toasting 'the immortal memory' of Horatio Nelson each 21^st October with a tot of rum or grog.

 A Brief Digression on RUM & GROG

Around the time of Trafalgar, each sailor was entitled to a ration of 2 gills (½ pint) of rum per day, equally split between morning and evening issues, in the ratio of one part rum to 3 parts water.  The resultant cheering mix was called grog.  A cynical pseudo-Marxist interpretation would be that the intention was to keep the proles too bemused and befuddled to ever query their harsh servitude in a cause not their own.  On the other hand, at least it gave them something to look forward to, prior to premature death or impoverished old age.

 Post Trafalgar, rum acquired the nickname 'Nelson's Blood'.  One explanation for this derives from the fact that his body was preserved in a barrel of spirits for the long journey home to honoured burial [4].  Legend then accounts for natural evaporation of  the spirits by alleging thirsty sailors had refreshed themselves with them.  Alternatively, there's talk of the term originating in some sort of folk communion thing , whereby sailors connected poorly understood eucharistic notions to their daily rum ration and thus a communing with their beloved Admiral's spirit.  Hmmm …

Maybe, just maybe, it was a metaphor.  Presumably even badly educated and ill-treated 18^th century Jack Tars were up to metaphors, weren't they ?

 The rum ration was progressively reduced and by steam-navy times sailors could forego it in return for a slight increase in wages.  The Royal Navy finally dispensed with the quaint custom on 31^st July 1970 ( 'Black Tot Day' ).  

To revive it in the comfort and privacy of your own home, here's a cultured grog recipe:

1 shot rum.
1 teaspoon sugar ( finer the better ).
Lime juice to suit.
Cinnamon stick if you fancy.
Hot water ( put a metal spoon in the glass so it doesn't crack.)

Combine all the above.
 Stir and imbibe - or chuck it out the window - I don't care: it's your house and loss.

 But I digress.

 It is more seemly and in keeping with the day to conclude with Nelson's prayer, written in his personal diary on what proved to his last day on earth: [5]

******

 "May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet.  For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen.  Amen. Amen."

TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY !

Notes

[1]  The truly last signal was almost as good ( and useful as a rule of life ):  'Engage the enemy more closely'.

&

In my normal writing I'm not allowed many footnotes.  I like footnotes.  I'm going to indulge myself.

[2]  In August of 1805, Napoleon wrote to his admirals: "Come into the Channel. Bring our united fleet and England is ours. If you are only here for 24 hours, all will be over, and six centuries of shame and insult will be avenged."

[3] The oldest commissioned warship in the world !  Launched on 7^th May 1765, She is still on the official 'books of the Royal Navy and is manned by RN Officers and Ratings.  The Victory currently serves as the flagship of the Second Sea Lord and Commander in Chief Naval Home Command.

[4]  Nelson had expressed a preference not to be put overboard.

[5]  Pedants and/or accountants will contend that it was his last day on water.  

    ******

Dispatch dated 21st October 2003

 Here, as promised ( see dispatch dated 14th October 2003 ), quarantined into its own separate page ( see across ), is the full text of:

 'THAT DEVIL WILKES !'

And just in case you wondered, the title comes from the description of Mr W by his exasperated monarch, George III.

[ IMPORTANT - PRIOR TO PERUSAL.

This script contains salty, even saucy, 18^th century style plain speaking, wherein a spade is unlikely to be termed a manually operated excavation implement.  Or in other words and in 21^st century speak, BEWARE: ADULT CONTENT. ]

What more is there to say ?  In Mr Wilkes own favourite and immortal words:

'I wish you joy !

******

******

   
Inspired by the Wilkesian theme I also append a slight journalistic piece, commissioned back in 2002 for some or other government department.  It never saw light of day for reasons that may become apparent ...

******

WILKES & LIBERTY - FOR ENGLAND !

That loveable rogue, John Wilkes ( 1727 - 1797 ) would have absolutely loved modern English politics.  In playful opposition to our present government, as stuffed with self-importance and duplicity as it is with Scots, he'd have felt quite at home !

Tony Blair would also find himself up against someone who'd fight fire with fire.  After all, it was Wilkes who said:  

'Give me a grain of truth and I will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood, so that no chemist shall ever be able to separate them !'

New Labour's spinners would find Wilkes winging deliveries their way which would get even Mandy out.  Shameless and thus immune to blackmail, brave as a lion, witty, charming and radical, Jack Wilkes, the man the London mob hailed with 'Wilkes and Liberty !' would cut a swathe through our modern day hollow men who are suits and spin and not much else.

So 'oos this bloke', you may ask, that should be around today ?  And how come not much is made of him ?  One pugnacious statue in Fetter Lane, one blue plaque on the site of his 'villakin' in Sandown, Isle of Wight ( now a ladies' dress shop - and how his ghost must relish lurking round the changing room there ) and, oh yes, Tony Banks MP, tribune of the people, is apparently rich enough to afford a collection of Wilkes-related antiques.  That's about it.

That's it for the man who risked his neck to secure our right to elect candidates of our own, not the government's, choice; squint-eyed Jack who ensured the wise words of our MPs should be recorded for our perusal in Hansard ( against their bitter opposition, just like they fought tooth and nail to stop TV showing the empty chamber ).  He who wore down an autocratic and Scots-dominated anti-English regime by his sturdy opposition and survived  their hireling assassins; he who kick-stated the National Gallery project ... and all the rich rest of his crowded life: that's his nation's entire thanks and remembrance.  A disgrace.

A disgrace but not entirely an accident I think.  Because high in the modern obscurity-earning stakes, John Wilkes was the last English nationalist politician ...

Since at least George III ( Wilkes' inveterate enemy and coiner of the immortal phrase: 'that Devil Wilkes !' ) we have been ruled by British nationalists.  German George said he 'gloried in the name of Briton'.  Whether you date it from him or Scottish James I, from the misty  past to the bright shiny present, the one thing guaranteed to get you a curled lip and ruling class condescension is a specifically English perspective.

Similar noises from the Scots and Welsh, being minor crew-components in HMS Britain, could be tolerated and bought off with English tax largesse and, recently, toy assemblies, but surly sounds from the English engine room are just too too ghastly, darling, - and highly dangerous for existing cosy arrangements.

Wilkes faced all that in the 18^th century - and lost.  He won other victories, he stayed alive until a ripe and roguish old age ( a result in itself  ), but merely one man against a whole ruling class he lost the patriotic struggle.  England as England went to sleep during the century and a half of Empire.  'For England - see Britain'.

Profiting from that era themselves, Scottish and Welsh gripes were kept to a grumble ignorable by London, articulated only by Jacobite nostalgics and neo-Druids.  

But nothing lasts for ever.  Not even Empires on which the sun never sets.  A couple of World Wars later Britain found itself Empireless and alone.  The EU came along and suddenly Scotland might do as well, if not better, outside Britain.  They needed placating and got a Parliament - of sorts.

Yet paying the Danegeld carries hidden costs.  Scottish and Welsh devolution has revived old issues thought safely buried centuries back.  Veteran Labour gadfly, Tam Dalyell, formulated the so-called 'West Lothian Question' in response to devolution proposals in the 1970's, but it's become a burning question today.  On the street that question is manifesting itself as a sea of Crosses of St George on houses and vehicles and clothing.  And mostly, mark you, in the non Guardian/Independent reading, non big house owning, non au-pair and dinner party part of society.  In other words, Wilkes' old mob constituency.  Even the Guardian can't pretend they'll all in the BNP.

Of course, for some it's just World Cup fever and nothing more.  Their flags will be folded away until Euro 2004 and gather dust in the interval.  But not all or even most.  They are the visible sign of something bigger going on ...

Still drowsy after centuries of zzzzz,  the English are beginning to awake.  It is a remarkable sight and an interesting time to be alive - if you're English.

And some are organising.

'Why should they have a say in our affairs' asks Tony Linsell, Vice-Chairman of the 4 year old 'Campaign for an English Parliament', speaking of Scottish and Welsh MPs, 'when we're denied any input to theirs ?  We aren't extremists: we're simply asking for basic fairness !'

He's right - and basic fairness is a tricky thing for politicians to deny.  They can't be against it - any more than politicians can be against motherhood or fluffy animals.  So they try to ignore it.  Thus says Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, the answer to the West Lothian question is to simply 'stop asking it'.

But in case that's insufficient, maybe you can tug the rug from under these Saxon peasants asking impertinent questions.  You could try and abolish England so that they'd have only memories to campaign about.  You could claim to be enhancing democracy by splitting England into a set of competing 'regional assemblies' - toothless talking shops, home to unelected fifth rate politicians and dodgy business men flinging themselves at the gravy train.  The EU will collaborate by ( alone of the historic nations of Europe ) erasing the name 'England' from the map of regions.  A clever stratagem - if you can get away with it.  Clever but high risk ...

So, what a shame that Wilkes isn't alive today, because he could have taken on their shabby tricks.  Imagine his lightning wit pitted against 'verbally-challenged' John Prescott, supposedly architect of the project to Balkanise England.  You could video the results and sell them as slapstick comedy.  Or visualise Wilkes pitted against Blairite self-righteousness during Prime Minister's Question Time.  As one of his former Scottish adversaries testified, smooth as he may have looked, a Wilkesian verbal mauling was 'as rough as a bear's arse'.

Alas, Wilkes died in 1797, cheerful and composed after a life replete with mobs and mistresses - but we can learn from him today.  Strangely enough, as history turns full circle, his time has come again.

Look out for ambitious Young ( English ) Turks reading his biography.

June 2002  

  ******

Dispatch dated 14th October 2003

Coming soon to this site for your delectation and corruption !  My pilot TV script 'THAT DEVIL WILKES !' in all its dirt-and-lace and dancing bear strumpet glory.

 'Who's ee ?'  You may well ask.

 At the risk of repetition ( see 'Yo, ladies ... What's happenin ?'  dispatch dated November 2001 ),  Mr Wilkes is not the man who spoilt Mrs Lincoln's theatre outing in 1865, for a start (although a much removed ancestor of John Wilkes Booth, coincidentally).  In fact, he was: ( are you sitting comfortably ?  Then I'll begin ... )

John Wilkes ( 1727 - 1797 ): inspiration for the once popular London street cry 'Wilkes and Liberty !'.  English Radical politician and profligate, born in Clerkenwell, son of a distiller father and pious mother.  A Rake and member of the infamous 'Hellfire Club', a colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia.  Founder and editor of the scurrilous 'North Briton' newspaper, translator of the classics and persecuted author of the shocking 'Essay on Woman'.  Four times elected and three times excluded Member of Parliament for Middlesex, Wilkes survived three government sponsored duels and assassination attempts, was made prisoner in the Tower and declared 'outlaw'.  In exile, he toured Italy with Boswell and an courtesan called Gertrude, finally returning to tempestuous triumph and a serene old age.  As Lord Mayor of London, MP, duellist, lover, pioneer tourist to the Isle of Wight, early sponsor of animal rights, and darling of the London 'mob' and 'middling and inferior sets of people', Wilkes dominated the political scene of his day.  By his fearless efforts John Wilkes established the freedom of the press, the rights of electors to chose their candidates for Parliament and the illegality of general arrest warrants.  A staunch defender of the American Revolution and tireless thorn in the side of George III's autocratic and Scots dominated government, he was the last ( for a while ) English nationalist politician.

And he's a hero of mine.

My script focuses on Wilkes and his interaction with the politics and events of the day, whilst also lovingly dwelling on his menagerie of colourful acquaintances - like Charles Churchill, the bear-like poet/disreputable vicar; or the Chevalier D'Eon, a French transvestite duellist.  There's also Wilkes' harpy wife, his string of strumpets and mistresses, the 'Hellfire Club' gang, the Dowager Queen who's having an affair with the Scottish Prime Minister, Bute - and a host of memorable - actual, historical - others.

In a nutshell, I had in mind a half hour per episode TV series featuring Mr Wilkes as its hero - and sometimes anti-hero.  With a small-ish cast list and only internal sets, the series would constitute a pretty anarchic romp through history, all the time drawing parallels to up-to-date politics and life.  If a gun was held to my head to enforce a comparison re the general 'tone, I would say 'a bit deeper and a bit wilder than 'Black Adder''.  Or like 'Bilko' - only in the past and with more sex and politics ...

There's a lot of ideas on paper for future episodes, basically trawling through the implausibly eventful events of Wilkes' life. Foremost amongst them are:

• 'The Essay on Woman' - The pornographic verse Wilkes wrote and published in conjunction the Archbishop of Canterbury's son - which led to duels and imprisonment.

• 'Our Man in Constantinople' - Wilkes' convoluted attempts to become Britain's Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and taste the vices of the Orient.

• 'Democracy' - Where Wilkes stands for election and arranges for a whole shipload of opposing voters to be diverted to Norway ( which he really did !).

And, just to give you a flavour of my own personal 'take' on the thing, here's my vision for the opening music and titles: Wilkes and lady-friend plus three or four other couples, stylishly dressed in gowns, silk frock coats, elaborate coiffeurs or powdered wigs, dance demurely to the sound of a spinet or harpsichord. Then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the music changes in tempo and type - as does the dancing - to punky howling guitars ( say like the 'Buffy' theme or even 'The Sex Pistols' themselves ) and frenzied pogoing. The audience would realise that this was not going to be 'Northhanger Abbey' ...

As I said in the 'Dedication' to 'Downs-Lord Day' ( 2000 )

'To: John ( 'Wilkes and Liberty !' ) Wilkes ( 1727 - 1797 ) whose time has come again.'

 'Give me a grain of truth and I will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood, so that no chemist shall ever be able to separate them !' John Wilkes.

Anyhow ...

I submitted this script to the BBC back in the latter part of 2000 and not long after a functionary actually rang me expressing enthusiasm.  You need to be a toiling slave amongst the writing helot hordes to realise how rare that is.  A reply of any sort, even 'go away you frightful oik: you're not dear, dear Stephen Fry', is a red letter day.  Further details, re staging, re casting even ( ! ), were requested and speedily supplied.  The daydreams of several succeeding weeks were thereby gilded.

And then, and then ...  In a process all too familiar radio-silence gradually fell.  Not dramatically, but gradually.  If the relevant nerve endings weren't already dead, the feelings would have akin to those of an abandoned army.  The High Command is sorry, embarrassed even ... but you're on your own, old chap.  Don't lose heart, hold your ground till the last round and man ...  Er ... just don't expect reinforcements dear boy.

My dark suspicions were reinforced.  UK publishers and broadcasters aren't really media outlets or businesses.  They're actually covert fanatic evangelists for the Stoic Philosophy.  Their success rate puts Christianity and Islam to shame.  Think it through.  All modern writers are stoics - and if they aren't stoics to start with they soon become converts.  The conspiracy extends to all current output too.  You just try watching Saturday evening television or read what passes for modern 'Fantasy' fiction without recourse to stoicism.  See what I mean ?  So you've been subject to their indoctrination too !  And another thing ...

But I digress ...

Just to whet your jaded appetite, detailed below is the cast list itemising  the colourful characters waiting in the wings, just dying to meet you.

Not only that, you lucky people, but generosity extends to two imagination-fuelling pictures, both by Hogarth, of the principal characters. Wilkes is depicted as the Devil (  complete with horned wig ) and Charles Churchill, his parson/poet best friend, is shown as a drunken bear in clerical garb. Hogarth's dog is centre stage, copiously peeing on a slim volume - or 'epistle' - geddit ? - of Churchill's verse.  Which only goes to prove the truth of the Norman Douglas (  a really wicked old pagan ) quote in my 'Quote Qorner's batch the second'.  The 18^th Century didn't mince its words like we do ....  

And so, without further ado:

THAT DEVIL WILKES !

CAST LIST

[ Actual Historic Personages denoted in bold ]

JOHN WILKES.  A rascal and politician.  1727 - 1797

THE REVEREND CHARLES CHURCHILL.  Famous poet and Anglican cleric.  A huge bear-like roisterer and talented, ferocious, versifier, notoriously caricatured by Hogarth.  Rector of Raynham in Essex.  1731 - 1764

POUTING COMPANION.  Mistress Betsy Carr of Struddleduck Hall, daughter of Sir Ogram Carr,    Knight.  A flighty, feisty piece, and wealthy heiress.

THE CHEVALIER D'EON aka.  MADAME D'EON.  A Frenchman, soldier, noted duellist and transvestite.  WILKES's self-appointed fiery bodyguard.

LORD COBHAM or 'LORD GOBB'EM'.  A tall, foppish, irresolute, MP, statesman and famous expectorant.

LORD HERVEY.  An elderly and respectable MP.

INN-KEEPER.

PRIM GENTLEMAN.  A Gentleman-traveller who is also prim.

SCOTS READER.  An outraged Highlander in traditional dress. 

KING'S MESSENGERS 1 & 2.

THE GAOLER of the Tower of London.

THE GAOLER'S LIVELY DAUGHTER

PLUS:  VARIOUS SPEECHLESS SCOTCH WOMENFOLK, FOPS & DANDIES.

******  

Mr Wilkes, in all his beauty, by Hogarth.

******

The Reverend Charles Churchill, in all his sober dignity, by Hogarth.

See you soon, insha'allah ...

******  

Dispatch dated 26th September 2003

Another serving of ( somewhat gloomy/shocking Zion-tinged ) sayings delivered to 'Quote Qorner'

******  

Dispatch dated 19th September 2003

Another serving of quotations delivered to 'Quote Qorner' 

******

Dispatch dated 31st August 2003

Ever since the long lost misty, indeed almost sepia, days of the early 80's I've kept a 'commonplace book', noting down quotations and references that strike me. The impulse stemmed from numberless flailing 'I read ... somewhere that ...' type conversations and thus a resolve to trap passing profundity and preserve it in the temporary amber of print. There was also the notion of such volumes becoming the solace reading of immobile old age and/or a troubling legacy to those who come after ...

******

Dispatch dated 14th July 2003

Well, it came to pass ( see final item of 10/06/03 dispatch below ).  At 10.15 on the scorchingly hot day of Sunday 13th July in the Year of Our Lord 2003, there was held the last regular act of worship at St Francis' Church, Littleton.  Present were a congregation of 8, including the author ( who is NOT an Anglican ).  All was concluded by 11.30, the Church was locked up and ... institutional Christianity retreated from the tiny hamlet of Littleton.  A melancholy occasion to be 'privileged' to see.

'Wulfwy the hunter' lived in Littleton, circa 1080 A.D.  In the Norman's 'Doomsday Book' tally of their loot, he is recorded as about the only English person in Surrey to keep his land post Conquest.  I dedicated my first book of collected Binscombe Tales', 'Sinister Saxon Stories', to him - as 'a figure of hope' ...

******

Dispatch dated 10th June 2003

The sequel to 'Amy-Faith & The Stronghold' is now more than half complete - some 35,000 words.  'Amy-Faith & The Enemy of Calm' follows on from soon after the first book's Universe-changing conclusion, during the deceptively peaceful 'phoney-war' days which ensue.

The Null are concentrating on mere survival in the island-like 'desiccated worlds'  that remain to them, although thoughts of revenge against their young human nemesis are never far away.

In the meanwhile, a new threat emerges.  A former creature and pet of the Null rouses from ancient sleep to discover that Amy-Faith's actions have cleared the way for it to rise and conquer.

Blissfully ignorant of that for the moment, Amy-Faith plans a Stronghold rescue mission for her lost friend, Merlin, who surrendered himself to an awful and eternal fate in order to save her.  Yet, in so doing, she will be advancing into the jaws of terrifying danger.  Worst still, she is eagerly awaited ...

 ******

I've also been busy with writing short stories and three tales have emerged from the keyboard in 2003.  They comprise:

• 'I CAME TO COMPTON NOT FOR GLORY BUT TO SAVE MY SOUL'

 A medieval tale of crusading and the supernatural set in the most numinous Surrey wood I have the privilege of knowing.

The title is stolen ( or 'liberated' ) from an inscribed bracelet found on the body of a Turk after the 'great siege' of Malta in 1565.  Actually, I recall he ( or his jewellery ) said he was there not for booty but salvation - but the admirable sentiments are the same ...

• ' THE SUNKEN GARDEN'

 A ghost story wherein an elderly Methodist minister celebrating his Golden wedding anniversary gets more than he bargained for during a hotel 'leisure break'.

             &

• 'IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE COMPASSIONATE ?'

A companion to 'In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent ?' ( published in  'Interzone' no 135 September 1998 ) and second in a projected trio of Islamic tales.

Set in modern Bosnia, the story concerns a former cheerful-chappie deejay who saw and did things in the Yugoslavian Civil War that he'd now rather forget.  In rediscovering religious faith and striving to do good as a Sarajevan policeman he encounters the apparent reality of the world that Allah ( and His creation, Man ) has made.

My long-standing and trusted first-reader ( who thus selflessly serves as food-taster to the public ) said he ended this tale clutching his face in horror.  Therefore, I may have stumbled on something here.  Not one for under 18s or to be read when alone or feeling down ...

****** 

It is estimated that there have been over a thousand biographies of  Horatio Nelson written.  There's even a book devoted to his five, frustrated, 'years ashore' in Norfolk when peace and official disapproval meant he couldn't get a ship.

Therefore, even if I read, say, one a month, twelve a year ( as I sometimes do ), I still couldn't exhaust that reading list even in the course of a long and leisured life.  A decent enough way of getting through life though ...

Likewise, the devotion of a decade-minimum necessary research and required maritime background knowledge, not to mention other commitments, preclude me adding to that list celebrating 'The Immortal Memory'.  Better qualified authors than I are about that task this very minute I'm sure, and I can  anticipate their fresh takes on an inexhaustible subject with pleasure.

And yet even so the mad idea of a new book occurred to me:  'NELSON & THE MEANING OF LIFE', subtitled 'THE REIGN OF REASON BREEDS MONSTERS' ( nicked and twisted from Goya's famous painting. )

Without giving the game away too much ( my argument needs proper exposition and explanation ) the gist is the potential ... fineness of a life lived free of Reason's straitjacket.  Naturally, I exclude that quality of 'Reason' discussed by the ancient stoics but refer instead to the dreary dogma bequeathed us ( cheers ! ) by the ideologues of the 18th century so-called 'Age of Reason, such as Voltaire, and descending in grey line to Polly Toynbee and Salman Rushdie today.

Plus !  Perceived continuities between Nelson's personality and his Old English ancestors, the concept of 'Southern English Stoicism' ( most of the Royal Navy's captains were south country men ) and the intertwining of three 'nesses': fearlessness, kindness and ruthlessness, that can on rare occasions combine to make a loveable human predator ...

In fact, I really ought to prioritise this project because the 'anti-book' to 'NELSON & THE MEANING OF LIFE' has already been written - 'Nelson' by Terry Coleman ( a Guardian journalist, surprise, surprise ), Bloomsbury (suspiciously apt ), 2001.  A 427 page long ungenerous and low-minded whinge, siphoning the Immortal Memory of style or interest.  I understand it's favoured reading material amongst the Null.

******

Prompted by my crippling sense of responsibility, I wrote  'A Hymn to Merrily' which was published in 'All Hallows', Journal of the Ghost Story Society.  No. 32.  Feb 2003.  It seeks to alert everyone to the writings of Phil Rickman and in particular his now five book series concerning Merrily Watkins, Anglican priestess and 'deliverance consultant' for the Diocese of Hereford in England.

Since, in such a worthy cause, I tried to phrase it as best I can, I can ... do not better than supply the text below:

A HYMN TO MERRILY

‘Oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or pensive mood,’ ( being a good GSS member ) my thoughts turn not, like Wordsworth’s, to daffodils, but to ghost stories ( or Israel women soldiers – but that’s another story … ).  Specifically, I ponder just what would comprise my personally tailored template for the perfect ghost story ?

Years of contemplation have honed it to the following:

• An English setting, preferably countryside, preferably very English.

• A contemporary setting – but with deep links to a still living ( and breathing and throbbing and eager for revenge ) past.

• Profound characterisation.  Cardboard cut-outs, walking placards and thinly disguised authorial wet-dreams, need not apply.

• The full continuum from unease to terror.  Expressed with economy in words that thrill even on re-reading - but never through gore.  Plus, the glamour of evil ‘and all its empty promises’ – but never through cheap thrills.

• Deep issues like religion and ethics – via the medium of the story itself rather than as a bolt-on or pause in the action.  In other words, realisation that all these ghosties and supernatural business surely implies something …

Imagine then my joy when I recently discovered that there is such a writer ticking off my wish-list.  Imagine also my horror at realising I almost missed him.  For not only is he woefully under-promoted but his books are stacked on the ‘horror’ shelf, you see - when you can locate them at all.  But for a chance recommendation and the promiscuous reading ( amongst other ) habits of a friend, I could so easily have missed out on meeting the Reverend Merrily Watkins ( and her creator, Mr Phil Rickman )

Therefore the purpose of this ‘hymn’ is to share and spread that ‘joy’ - as all joy should be.  I also write inspired by that chilling thought of joy almost aborted.

 To business:      

Merrily is an Anglican priestess,.  A widow blessed and burdened with a stroppy teenage daughter, she humbly tries her best in the bumbling, milk-and-water-kindness context of the contemporary C of E.  That soon entails taking on the mantle of diocesan exorcist - or ‘deliverance minister’ in modern mealy-mouthed parlance.  Cue manifestations around Herefordshire’s Anglo-Welsh border, where Saxonry meets Cymry and history festers just below the bright secular surface.

And that’s about it really.

Except that it isn’t, not by a monstrous chalk.  It so happens Rickman is a wizard of characterisation, a better than Baron Frankenstein creator of flesh and blood.  Merrily is made a living breathing person and conviction develops, via mere marks upon paper, that she, and daughter Jane, and Lol the damaged ex-rocker and Gomer the wiseacre et al. are only a drive to Hereford and lucky encounter away.

Also, Merrily is on a spiritual journey, whilst simultaneously wading through the mundane.  In the course of her days, she encounters good and evil, often from unlikely sources.  The good is believably human and the evil ditto – except when it’s from a superbly hinted beyond.  There’s real theological depth here and passages to ponder long after the book has been set down.  Not to mention untelegraphed lines that crackle like electricity and raise the neck hairs: genuine ‘I’ll just check I’ve locked the back door ‘ quality writing.  Rickman can convey malignity like no other writer I’ve encountered.  Ditto unease.  Ditto supernatural events forming round you, sudden and clammy as a sea-mist.  And he’s chosen to do so in our own beloved ‘ghost story’ genre.  We should be honoured.

I fondly believed myself familiar with every technique for depicting the uncanny, right from Victorian pioneers to contemporary, lazy, splatter-fests. Yet, time and again, in book after book, Rickman astounds with pages that quicken the pulse and chill the room.  This is modern supernatural fiction come of age; proper adult writing – and the closest thing you’ll get to experiencing the supernatural on demand in the safety of your own home.

There are currently four books out – four phenomenal books comprising a series which is more than the sum of its parts.  Collectively, they call out for a big-budget Saturday Inspector Morse style TV series.

In order they are:

1. 'Wine of Angels'

2. 'Midwinter of the Spirit' ( my favourite )

3. 'A Crown of Lights

4. 'The ‘Cure of Souls'

To whiz through them without spoiling, ‘Wine’ deals with apple-lore and  ancient injustices.  ‘Midwinter’ introduces a chilling hierarchy of evil.  In 'Lights', a 'new-age' 'Wiccan' ( tree-hugging, not cat-strangling, variety ) couple buy a deconsecrated church, but the idea of 'reverting' it to pagan use proves less than wise.  Meanwhile, about her hospital-visiting duties, Merrily encounters a man who refuses to accept the fact that his wife has died.

Finally ( only it’s not – see below ), in ‘Cure’ Merrily collides with possession, unhealthy communication across the ‘Great Divide’ and Rickmanian trademark resurrection of rural memories better left buried.  In this case, the hop industry and Romany lore feature, leavened with spirituality and rock n’ roll references.

From such disparate elements spring stories as engaging and credible as life itself.  High praise or what ?

And there's even humour.  ‘Crown’s Mr Wiccan, an artist, covets the cover-art commission for a best-selling Fantasy series starring 'Lord Madoc the intergalactic Celt'.   Rickman reviews it as '700 pages of total bollocks'.  This particular fantasy book reviewer punched the air and said ‘Yowsa !’ when he read that.

A fifth Merrily novel is apparently in the pipeline.  If there's any justice ( which Merrily sometimes doubts ) Rickman and Merrily deserve to be huge.

Which is where you and I come into it.  The Merrily series represents a major talent unfolding before us. To miss out on it would be to deny yourself a rare and exquisite pleasure in this short life.  It would also be a crying shame to let this author and character pass by without their due reward.

Thus kindly consider this ‘hymn’ as my humble exhortation to buy.

******

Since writing, that mooted fifth Merrily has been published - 'The Lamp of the Wicked' ( Macmillan, 2003 - a mere £10 for a bumper hardback ! ) and I had the honour to review it ( maximum 5 stars ) for SFX Magazine.

Mr Rickman has a website ( http://www.philrickman.co.uk ), he has books for sale - what are you waiting for ?

 ******

 And finally, Fate deals a possible disaster.

In an earlier 'dispatch' I referred to my desire to write The Definitive - and only - History of St. Francis' Church, Littleton, Surrey.  Because ... it is a lovely bargate building, formerly the village school, and tucked away in rural obscurity such that even many car-bound so-called locals, Surreyites don't know of its existence.  If you time your pass just right, the morning sun daily illuminates the stained glass of the eastern window like revelation and you can imagine its old wall clock inside ticking away the moments to no one - an image to store and savour for when in down-casting surrounds like Babylon or Heathrow.  There's a war-memorial to the Littleton men who the British state somehow found the resources to whisk away from their tiny hamlet to die in foreign climes, there's a carved 15th century pietas that Pevsner admired, there's  .... numinousness you could slice.

Two days ago whilst walking past the chapel on the way to Guildford I saw a typed notice on the board outside.

'After July the monthly services are to be discontinued'.

Change and decay about in all I see ...

******

Dispatch dated February 2003.

'Amy-Faith & the Stronghold' is complete, all 400+ pages of it, and the heroine has learned wisdom, made a discovery, taken revenge and changed the Universe for ever.  Not bad for a 13 year old.  Also the best thing I've ever written, though I say it myself …

Now it goes to a ruthless reviewing committee and then back again for JAW revision.  And then, who knows …

But what is it about ( something I've not really mentioned before ) ?

Well, it's a sort of fantasy fable - young, down-trodden heroine stumbles upon an infinite fortress which travels the worlds and times in conflict with an ancient enemy.  The Null ( see 'The Royal Changeling' and all my books onwards ) reappear in universe overwhelming form, strange places are visited and fought over and Amy-Faith, said heroine, has a wild and interesting time, far removed from her workhouse-orphan destiny. In short, the whole thing is a enjoyable new departure for me, and there's room and ideas-to-bursting for sequels.

I also haven't forgotten those aforementioned 'drippingly sensual' alternative Oxford short stories either.  The trouble is my thoughts are also being barracked by another, as yet half formed, tale about a faithful ( or maybe waveringly faithful ) Imam of a falling-down, lazily-persecuted  mosque somewhere in the Asiatic tassels of the Soviet Union, somewhen during President Brezhnev's ( late 1970s ? ) time.  It would form a pair with 'In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent ?' ( Interzone no. 135, September 1998 ) wherein a devout and humble Muslim clerk takes on the memory of terrible events in the Tunisian Embassy in Moscow.  This tale is taken from 'real-life' in that the Tunisian Embassy is situated in the former residence of Stalin's amoral, murderous and foamy-mouthed sex-beast right-hand man, Lavrenti Beria.  The poor Tunisians have actually petitioned the Russian authorities to be moved elsewhere because of the ghosts therein ... 

I also want to revive my 'Sir Robert Holmes' short story series ( of which two, 'Mercy To None' and 'The Protestant Wind', are glittering and complete. Sir Robert ( 1622 - 1692 ) was a real-life historical figure, an Admiral and sort of licensed pirate who, amongst many other things, fought in the English Civil War, sailed with Prince Rupert into exile, started a couple of wars, burnt a whole Dutch merchant fleet ( 'Holmes' Bonfire' ), explored Africa, imported the first gorilla into England and pursued Mrs Pepys, much to her diarist husband's displeasure.  He's also widely - but erroneously - recorded as the taker/renamer of New York from the Dutch.  In later life he ended up as perpetual governor of the Isle of Wight, a large and strategic ( and lovely ) island off the south coast of England.

My stories visit him in crippled ( by arthritis ) but still bloodthirsty old age in his castle-home in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.  'Mercy To None' has him dabbling in theology and supernatural endangered species conservation, whilst 'The Protestant Wind' sees him causing grief to one of my least favourite ( after Henry VIII )  'English' Kings, William of Orange, and also disrupting the space/time continuum.

By the bye, one of my most prized possessions is a Henry VIII ashtray I picked up from a charity car-boot sale.  I'm thereby enabled to snub out each and every smoko on the waiting Tudor monarch's fizzog

 'Downs-Lord Doomsday' was published on 04/02/02 and, having an copy to hand, I can say it is a thing of beauty - to look at, at least.  Others must speak for the quality of the contents ( I did my best ... ).

Kevin Jenkins' cover painting captures my inner-image of the 'New-Wessex' world perfectly.  An illuminated paddle-steamer navigates the Nile past the majestic remains of an Egyptian temple, under stealthy bankside observation by a predatory Null.

Set alongside the other two volumes in the 'triptych', 'Doomsday's 'Egyptian-yellow' cover sits well alongside the South Downs-green of 'Dawn' and Channel sea-blue of 'Day'.  They'd make a lovely boxed set seen spine-on.

Sadly, human nature being what it is, the feeling of satisfaction you get on handling your newly published book gradually diminishes with each successive volume.  Familiarity breeds indifference.  Likewise, as J K Rowling recently said during a BBC interview, there isn't - and cannot be - any experience to compare with that first phone call or letter to say you're going to be published ( with me it was a crowded hall at a convention in London, and the announcement, in Miss World, reverse-order style, of a literary competition result - but the principle's the same )

However, that said, I was exceedingly glad 'Downs-Lord Doomsday' has appeared and thus given me the opportunity to dedicate it - for all its imperfections - to the memory of my beloved Mother, Joan.  RIP.   

And so, except in imagination, I leave that world - but not her - behind.

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Dispatch dated November 2001:

'Downs-Lord Doomsday', final 'panel' ( pretentious ?  moi ? ) of 'The Downs-Lord Triptych', replete with maps and strange diagrams, is now complete, proof-read and awaiting 'Earthlight' / Simon & Schuster's publishing pleasure.  The Downs-Lords' baroque progress across a transmogrified and monster haunted Surrey and Sussex ( and Egypt ) thereby comes to a close, and I, for one, wish them well in their unobserved future

Also drawing nearer to conclusion is 'Amy-Faith & the Stronghold' ( formerly just plain old 'The Stronghold' ), 80,000 words long and going, to coin a phrase, strong.

The BBC have also shown passing, possible, provisional, potential etc. etc. interest in my historical-comedy pilot TV script, 'THAT DEVIL WILKES !' - which would be nice ...

And who was Wilkes ?  Well, not the man who ruined Mrs Lincoln's theatre outing in 1865, for a start ( although a much removed ancestor of John Wilkes Booth, coincidentally ).  In fact, he was: ( are you sitting comfortably ?  Then I'll begin ... )

John Wilkes ( 1727 - 1797 ), inspiration for the once popular London street cry 'Wilkes and Liberty !'.  English Radical politician and profligate, born in Clerkenwell, son of a distiller father and pious mother.  A Rake and member of the infamous 'Hellfire Club', a colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia.  Founder and editor of the scurrilous 'North Briton', translator of the classics and persecuted author of the shocking 'Essay on Woman'.  Four times elected and three times excluded Member of Parliament for Middlesex, Wilkes survived three government sponsored duels and assassination attempts, was made prisoner in the Tower and declared 'outlaw'.  In exile, he toured Italy with Boswell and an courtesan called Gertrude, finally returning to tempestuous triumph and a serene old age.  As Lord Mayor of London, MP, duellist, lover, pioneer tourist to the Isle of Wight, early sponsor of animal rights, and darling of the London 'mob' and 'middling and inferior sets of people', Wilkes dominated the political scene of his day.  By his fearless efforts John Wilkes established the freedom of the press, the rights of electors to chose their candidates for Parliament and the illegality of general arrest warrants.  A staunch defender of the American Revolution and tireless thorn in the side of George III's autocratic and Scots dominated government, he was the last ( for a while ) English nationalist politician.

And he's a hero of mine.

My script focuses on Wilkes and his interaction with the politics and events of the day, whilst also lovingly dwelling on his menagerie of colourful acquaintances - like Charles Churchill, the bear-like poet/disreputable vicar; or the Chevalier D'Eon, a French transvestite duellist.  There's also Wilkes' harpy wife, his string of strumpets and mistresses, the 'Hellfire Club' gang, the Dowager Queen who's having an affair with the Scottish Prime Minister, Bute - and a host of memorable - actual, historical - others.

In a nutshell, I had in mind a half hour per episode TV series featuring Mr Wilkes as its hero - and sometimes anti-hero.  With a small-ish cast list and only internal sets, the series would constitute a pretty anarchic romp through history, all the time drawing parallels to up-to-date politics and life.  If a gun was held to my head to enforce a comparison re the general 'tone, I would say 'a bit deeper and a bit wilder than 'Black Adder''.  Or like 'Bilko' - only in the past and with more sex and politics ...

There's a lot of ideas on paper for future episodes, basically trawling through the implausibly eventful events of Wilkes' life. Foremost amongst them are:

• 'The Essay on Woman' - The pornographic verse Wilkes wrote and published in conjunction the Archbishop of Canterbury's son - which led to duels and imprisonment.

• 'Our Man in Constantinople' - Wilkes' convoluted attempts to become Britain's Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and taste the vices of the Orient.

• 'Democracy' - Where Wilkes stands for election and arranges for a whole shipload of opposing voters to be diverted to Norway ( which he really did !).

And finally, just to give you a flavour of my own personal 'take' on the thing, here's my vision for the opening music and titles: Wilkes and lady-friend plus three or four other couples, stylishly dressed in gowns, silk frock coats, elaborate coiffeurs or powdered wigs, dance demurely to the sound of a spinet or harpsichord. Then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the music changes in tempo and type - as does the dancing - to punky howling guitars ( say like the 'Buffy' theme or even 'The Sex Pistols' themselves ) and frenzied pogoing. The audience would realise that this was not going to be 'Northhanger Abbey' ...

 And, as I said in the 'Dedication' to 'Downs-Lord Day' ( 2000 )

'To: John ( 'Wilkes and Liberty !' ) Wilkes ( 1727 - 1797 ) whose time has come again.'

 'Give me a grain of truth and I will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood, so that no chemist shall ever be able to separate them !'

John Wilkes.

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Dispatch dated June 2001 - 'WHAT'S BEGUN IS HALF DONE ...'

 With brave young heroine 'Amy-Faith' leading the attack under cover of an inspiration bombardment, JAW has advanced the frontiers of his bold change of direction, 'THE STRONGHOLD', 25,000 words into Null-Mundania territory, establishing a defendable beachhead whilst the 'DOWNS-LORD DOOMSDAY' proofs divert him.  With one third of the book safely gathered in, Amy-Faith stands on the threshold of the eponymous baroque fortress-cum-crusade, a dead solicitor behind her in Godalming High Street, and hordes of ravening Null in hot pursuit. And after that it livens up.

            Also mooted, but presently less concrete, is a new short story series of ghost and/or 'erotic' tales set in a variant 18th century Oxford University.  Not quite Oxford as it was, indeed, not quite England, but a close relative of both, albeit with the weight of history and sensuality enhanced to almost drippingly oppressive proportions.  Standing in relation to reality as does, say, a gothicised platoon of Kate Bush ( circa 1976 ) look-alike Israeli women-soldiers, to the cast of ''Eastenders'.  Or the 'Brittas Empire's cunning and sultry 'Laura Lancing' ( criminally under-acclaimed actress Julia St. John ) to Madonna ...

Recently published were:

'Excuse Me'.  'Shadows & Silence'.  The Ash Tree Press.  2000

A Heathrow-based short ( ghost ) story, partially written in authentic 'saarf'  [ south of England ] dialect and also, alas, somewhat laced with authentic 'industrial language'.

'Just Hanging Around'. 'Ghosts & Scholars'. No. 31. 'Haunted Library'. 2000

Another ghost story ( an English living tradition I'm fond of ) set in and around St Andrew's Church in Farnham, Surrey, resting place of all-round South-country yeoman hero, William Cobbett ( soldier, writer, radical, politician and farmer 1763 - 1835 )

'The Hills Are Alive'. 'Interzone' no.165.  March 2001.

A sullen, randy, city-boy roams the South Downs and meets ... someone interesting in the best pub ( I know of ) in England:  The Lewes Arms, Lewes, East Sussex.

 Incidentally, someone has pointed out that, together with 'Bury My Heart At Southerham ( East Sussex )', published in 'Midnight Never Comes',  The Ash Tree Press, 1997 and 'Furriners' ( unpublished ), this story completes 'The Mount Caburn trilogy' of linked short stories.  That same high and beautiful hill / hillfort just outside Lewes, so beloved of myself and hang-gliders, features prominently in each.  A nice thought that never occurred to the stories' author at the time.

I also did a couple of interviews:

'Confessions of a Counter-Reformation Green Anarcho-Jacobite'. Interview. 'Starburst' Magazine. No. 266. October 2000

'Whitbourn's Wisdom'. SFX Magazine Interview. SFX No 73. January 2001

The latter was adorned with an ... unfortunate picture of some middle-aged bloke with my name inexplicably attached beneath.  Clearly an impostor ( see 'Behold the Man' elsewhere on this site ).

There's also been lots of SFX books reviews ( including a 'we-are-not worthy' one of 'Lord of the Rings' and, ditto, for Phil Rickman's latest two 'Spiritual Procedurals' featuring Merrily Watkins, Anglican priestess and exorcist for the diocese of Hereford ).  On the assumption that the reader already has some degree of familiarity with Tolkien's work, may I respectfully suggest they purchase a copy of Mr Rickman's 'Wine of Angels' / 'Midwinter of the Spirit' / 'A Crown of Angels' /  'The Cure of Souls'  ( in that order ) and thus assist another major talent to deserved megadom.  This jaded old ghost story reader and writer never thought to have his neck-hairs raised in such a manner ever again, but Rickman achieves it with nigh faultless writing and without recourse to gore.

            And so to bed.

JAW

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Dispatch dated December 2000

Recently on the shelves (4/12/00) is
DOWNS-LORD DAY - Earthlight/Simon & Schuster - £6.99.
Complete with maps, sketches, 'personal cosmologies', choreographs and other illustrations of high beauty and weirdness.

To follow: (those lovely words: 'The End' having been typed 04/09/00) is DOWNS-LORD DOOMSDAY, somewhen in 2001/2, insha'allah. However, rest assured, the greatly feared DOWNS-LORD SUPPERTIME (2002) is unlikely to be written.

Then, also Deo Volente, there ought to be:

Excuse Me
Shadows & Silence. The Ash Tree Press. 2000

PORTS & PHANTOMS
Collected short stories. The Ash Tree Press. 2002 ?

THE TWO CONFESSIONS
Someone.  2003 ?

Right now, being in that delicious aftermath of 'The End' (see above) I can now at last address my pen to:

The Stronghold - young adults' novel.

The Definitive - and only - History of St. Francis' Church, Littleton

Guildford - Birthplace of English Democracy - Surrey and the Levellers in 1647
(article)

Up to my Middle in Mud
Benjamin Franklin in the Isle of Wight' (article)

Plus, probably, notes re 'Joe Haines', my never-to-be-written Greek Tragedy, more reading towards 'The History of the Eskimos' and my exponentially expanding revision of Machiavelli's The Prince: 'The Regime'.  Watch this space.

  
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