History

An LGBT-HM Day Out in London

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday I headed up to London for the day, and managed to get back before the snow got heavy. Thanks to someone else being unable to go, I was able to snag a free ticket to a workshop being run by Write Queer London as part of LGBT History Month.

The main thing of interest to me was the historical talk on LGBT people in the 1950s. The obvious lesson from it was that tabloid newspapers have always been scum. Also, people believe the strangest things. Alongside the usual scare stories about the corruption of youth, the tabloids ran “queers under the bed” stories. How can you tell if someone you know might be a secret queer? Some of them look just like humans. It might even be your wife/husband.

The theory was that guys going to the pub together, or women having afternoon tea together, might in fact be having secret homosexual orgies. And this led to a truly wonderful headline: “The vicar drank cups of tea in secret”.

The vicar in question was trying to divorce his wife on suspicion of her being a secret lesbian. The court was told that she called her women friends “darling” and sometimes hugged them and kissed them on the lips. This was highly suspicious. But the vicar’s main beef with his wife appears to be that she nagged him mercilessly about his habit of having tea and biscuits before giving sermons. Apparently she was very High Church and regarded this as deeply inappropriate. So the poor vicar had to drink his tea in secret. Dreadful.

If you are able to get to London in the evening you might like to check out Wednesday’s talk in which Robert Mills will be addressing the issue of “Discipline and Desire in the Medieval Cloister”. That sounds fascinating.

The workshop took place in the Geffrye Museum in London, which I think is in Shoreditch, but Gideon & Jen may take me to task for my lack of understanding of London geography. It is a fascinating place. The museum is built inside a terrace of old alms houses. The interior walls have all partially knocked down, and a corridor opened up along the front of the building. So you walk along with front walls and doors on one side, and a sequence of rooms on the other. Each room is furnished from a different historical period. Much of it is hideous, but some of the earlier furnishings would be quite nice if you could add cushions.

The Geffrye is essentially a museum of middle class life, which makes it very British. Of course most of the visitors will be middle class too, and doubtless most of them disapprove of the majority of the decor in some way, just like I did, that being a very middle class thing to do. I should note, however, that they have a few very retro futurist pieces that were, of course, futurist at the time. This was my favorite piece.

Space helmet televisionYou can read more about it here.

LGBT History Month

~ Cheryl

February, at least in the UK, is LGBT History Month. Somewhat unexpectedly, I have found myself involved in this. My friend Eugene Byrne, who has a keen interest in local history, introduced me to a group called Out Stories Bristol (OSB). That had no trans members at the time, so I figured I should stick my hand up. One thing led to another, and I found myself organizing some events.

The full list of local events can be found at the newly launched OSB website. If you are not local, you might find something of interest on the national site. If you want to see what I have been helping make happen, the literary stuff is all on the Hydra Books website.

I’m delighted that Juliet Jacques and Louis Bailey have agreed to come to Bristol and give talks. As you may notice, I’m also giving one myself.

I have also been asked to appear on Shout Out, Bristol Community Radio’s LGBT show, to talk about the events. That will be on Thursday night, local time. The show should be available internationally as a podcast after the live broadcast. With me on the show is Andy Foyle, who knows far more about local history than I do, and is also an expert on architectural history.

I think I’m giving that talk elsewhere later in the year as well, but I’ll wait until the publicity is online before promoting it.

Now That’s What I Call A Train

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As many of you will know, one of Kevin’s ambitions is to own a private railway car. So this morning, when I saw Nick Harkaway tweet excitedly about one such thing, I immediately forwarded the link to Kevin. The link is question was not just about any old train, it was about a train belonging to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and it served as a mobile Imperial palace. Check it out.

Of course luxury is only one option. There are other ways to make a train seriously cool. For example, you could add artillery. I found out about armoured trains during the opening day talk at Hydro Books. Andrew McKie forwarded me a link to some of the trains used by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Take a look.

However, I still think that the coolest armoured train is the “Orlik”, captured from the Russians by the Czech Legion. I found this picture on a Czech website.

The Orlik

I Have Seen The Apocalypse

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I had an unexpected free day in London on Wednesday thanks to the strikes at Heathrow. It was lovely to be able to catch up with my friend Judith Clute, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to visit Apocalypse, an exhibition at Tate Britain. It is a collection of paintings and prints by the 19th Century artist, John Martin, who has had a profound influence on the art of the fantastic.

The Bard - John Martin

Martin began his career painting gothic landscapes in the style of the 18th Century, some of which are quite reminiscent of the vision of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings movies. His early work drew strongly on fantastical works from the classics, particularly Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and also more contemporary writers ranging from Byron to Bulwer-Lytton. His work has been cited as an inspiration by Ray Harryhausen, and you can see his influence most clearly in disaster movies such as The Day After Tomorrow and 2012.

As time went on and the Victorian era began to take hold, Martin’s work became more religious and more melodramatic. His primary inspirations became Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the Bible. The highlight of the exhibition is a massive triptych based on the Book of Revelation. To the right the world is destroyed in fire, to the left the New Jerusalem descends upon the plains of Heaven, and in the center is a detailed depiction of “The Last Judgment”. This, naturally, divides humanity into the Saved and the Damned. The former include Martin’s friends, people from history he admired, and people he needed to suck up to. Most prominent amongst the latter are Catholic clergy and the Whore of Babylon. While a fair amount of nakedness can be seen amongst the Damned, the Whore is depicted as a respectable, middle-aged matron, so I guess she’s based on someone Martin knew.

The Last Judgment - John Martin

The Tate has provided a 10-minute audio-visual drama based on these paintings, with lights illuminating specific parts of them while the narration reads stentoriously from Revelation and perhaps Milton as well. Listening to it, I couldn’t help seeing the two groups in “The Last Judgment” being not the Saved and the Damned, but the Hypocrites and the Queers. The former would spend eternity in Heaven desperately trying to abide by enumerable pretty regulations (chief amongst which would be being white), lest they be cast down, while the latter would have a very long party, and lots of sex.

My favorite painting from the exhibition is “Pandemonium”, which is the palace of Satan from Paradise Lost. H.P. Lovecraft was a fan of Martin’s illustrations of the Milton epic, referring, in his inimitable style to:

“… the darkly thunderous, apocalyptically majestic & cataclysmically unearthly power of one who, to me, seemed to hold the essence of cosmic mystery… Night; great desolate pillared halls; unholy abysses & blasphemous torrents; terraced titan cities in far, half-celestial backgrounds whereon shines the light of no familiar sky of men’s knowing; shrieking mortal hordes borne downward over vast wastes & down cyclopean gulfs.”

Certainly a common feature of the work of both Martin and Lovecraft is the insignificance of humans in the face of the majesty of the universe, and the mighty powers that rule it. I, however, love “Pandemonium” for an entirely different reason. As the Tate’s description of the painting points out, the palace bears a distinct resemblance to another ornately gothic construction that stands next to a mighty river, not at all far from where the painting now hangs.

(Both buildings use the Perpendicular Gothic style. Construction of the Palace of Westminster didn’t begin until 1840, and “Pandemonium” was painted in 1841, but Martin also worked as an engineer, including helping redesign London’s sewers, and probably had access to the plans for the new parliament building.)

Pandemonium

(That image, by the way, is linked from British Paintings, which looks to be a fine little blog. It is one of the few images I could find that also showed the magnificent frame that Martin created for the picture.)

I have to admit, though, that my favorite painting from the exhibition is not by John Martin, but by his brother. Jonathan is much more famous for having been sentence to an asylum after having set fire to York Minster. While he was in Bedlam he produced this painting, “London’s Overthrow”.

London's Overthrow

There’s more about Jonathan Martin, and the image I’m linking to, here.

The Tate is also currently running an exhibition of paintings by the Romantics, yet more artists who have had a profound influence on our vision of the fantastic. That includes dear Rossetti, a gentleman beloved by curvaceous redheads the world over. The painting I was particularly pleased to see, however, was “The Death of Chatterton” by Henry Wallis It depicts the death of a teenage prodigy, Thomas Chatterton. Chatterton was from Bristol, and the house in which he was born is just across the road from the hotel where BristolCon is held. Harriet Castor has more on the story.

Mummer’s The Word

~ Cheryl

While I was in Bath, I had a look around. The Christmas Market isn’t open yet, though the chalets are all in place. However, something very strange was going on. In fact, it was something Unconventional.

No, not the Fortean Society. This weekend Bath has been home to an International Unconvention of Mummers. Consequently the city center was full of people in bizarre costumes, either marching around to medieval music, or performing their plays. There are lots of fascinating links on the Uncovention website, and hopefully in a few days there will be lots of photos of the event there too. My apologies for not getting any.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today is November 5th, or as us old folks say, “Guy Fawkes”. I say “old folks” because the tradition of Guy burning has pretty much died out. Indeed, an American ex-pat friend of mine tweeted today that she’s been in the UK for 9 years and has never yet seen anyone ask for a “penny for the Guy”, or seen a bonfire be anything other than a bonfire. These days the festival is known as “Bonfire Night” and, given the health and safety concerns surrounding fireworks, it is increasingly being replaced in the popular imagination by Hallowe’en.

That’s kind of ironic, because Hallowe’en is a much older festival than Guy Fawkes. The date of the Gunpowder Plot is a matter of historical fact. However, given the religious nature of the Plot, I am sure that the Protestant rulers of the UK found it useful to be able to impose a celebration at almost the same time as the old Catholic festival of All Saints Day (also known as All Hallows, so the day that Hallowe’en preceeds). And of course All Hallows Day was, in turn, a Catholic invention intended to replace the old Celtic festival of Samhain. We have almost come full circle.

These days, of course, fear of Catholics is much less prevalent than it was, even 20 years ago. No one worries about Catholic terrorists anymore, at least in England. The Prime Minister is even proposing to allow the monarch to marry a Catholic, which would have caused an outcry when I was a kid. So it is perhaps appropriate that we no longer spend one night a year burning an effigy of a Catholic terrorist. Indeed, thanks to David Lloyd and V for Vendetta we have re-imagined Guido Fawkes as an anarchist revolutionary rather than a right-wing religious fundamentalist. Clearly there is a need for such a figure.

For an historical point of view, however, something is being lost. Guy Fawkes Day has been a grand tradition here for centuries, and some communities have made a very big deal of it. If you still want to celebrate the failure of Guido Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, Darkest Somerset is a good place to go.

Hundred Stories Update

~ Cheryl

You may recall Liz Williams commented on my mention of her Hundred Stories project to the effect that donations under $100 were OK, but there were problems with PayPal accepting them. It appears there is some sort of issue between IndieGoGo and PayPal, so Liz has put a donate button on her LJ. She says she’ll add anything received there to the project. Details here.

Digging Up The Dark

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I often joke about living in Darkest Somerset (which I don’t quite now as Trowbridge is just over the border into Wiltshire), and these days the country doesn’t amount to much save for a cricket team famous for losing finals. Years ago, however, Somerset was one of the more important parts of Britain. And of course a few millennia back Wiltshire was home to the civilization that built Stonehenge. So archaeology is important here. I like to support it.

Now it so happens that Liz Williams’ partner, Trevor, is embarking on a Masters degree in community archaeology that will involve a project somewhere close to their home in Glastonbury. No, Trevor isn’t going to dig up Arthur & Guinevere. That grave is mediaeval fake. There are plenty of other sites worth investigating, including the Sweet Track, an ancient causeway across the Somerset Levels. (That was one of the things I took Kevin to see when we did a whistle-stop tour of Somerset a few years ago.)

As Liz explains here, doing this requires money for tuition fees, and she’s helping out by running a funding campaign on Indiegogo. The minimum donation is $100, which I guess will be a bit steep for many of you, but the premium is rather impressive. Liz says:

I’m starting the Hundred Stories Project. From January 1st, 2012, I’ll be writing a story a day, about the people who have lived in and around Glastonbury from Neolithic times. You’ll get 7 stories at the end of each week, plus the extra. They’ll be short stories, a page for each person, and when the project is finished I’ll be binding the stories for display.

There’s also a $1,000 level option that involves a 4-day stay with Liz & Trevor and a guided tour of the area.

If you want to participate, the project page is here.

Loadsa Photos

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the jobs I have been working through this weekend is processing the photos that Kevin took while he was over here at Eastercon. My apologies for him for having taken so long. Hopefully his mom, sister and nephew can get to see them now.

We have a selection of photo albums taken in London:

And couple taken at the convention:

The Admiralty Ball ones, of course, include pictures of us in costume.

Finally I have posted my own photos from Alt.Fiction. These are actually taken in and around Derby, in particular the magnificent exhibition of Rolls Royce engines in the Old Silk Mill.

Cheese Shoppery

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I had to go into Bath today. I had run out of my stock of paper copies of Dark Spires so I needed to collect some more from Colin before I go to London this weekend. If you are going to be at the British Fantasy Society meeting on Friday night I’ll have copies available there.

But as I was going I figured I might as well get a celebratory wedge of Cornish Blue. After all, what’s the point of having awards if it doesn’t encourage people to buy things? While I was in Paxton & Whitfield I also noticed a cheese called Richard III. As you might guess, this is from Yorkshire. In fact it is a Wensleydale. But it is a lot creamier than the usual Wensleydales you get in grocery stores here. The makers claim that it is more true to the traditional recipe for the cheese. Of course this may all be part of an evil plot to make people think that Richard III was a really nice guy after all. Paul Cornell has something to say about that in an upcoming issue of Knight & Squire. But the cheese is very nice, unless you are a Lancastrian in which case you may not be able to stomach it.

Bath has a big craft market on for a couple of weeks at this time of year, and wandering through it on my way back to the railway station I noticed one of the Gorwydd chaps had a stall there. I trotted over to congratulate him and replenish my stocks. On the basis of our conversation it looks like there may be some more exciting awards news soon, but that will have to wait for the official press release.

Bristol Under the Blitz

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

My pal Eugene Byrne has provided the script for a local history project in Bristol. You can now get an iPhone app that will take you on a guided tour of Bristol, pointing out areas where the city was changed as a result of the heavy bombing it experienced during the Second World War (Bristol was both a major port and a centre for aircraft production). The idea is to produce something like the guided tour recordings you get in museums, except that it is something you can do yourself out in the city streets. Ideally, of course, you should be in Bristol, but I’m wondering how it would work if you used Google Streetview instead. Eugene has more details on his blog.

This Is England

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As per my excited post yesterday, I spent the evening in Bath listening to my favorite historian, Michael Wood. He was talking about his recent book and TV series, The Story of England [buy isbn=”9780670919031″] (which Nick Waller recommended in comments yesterday). There was lots of interesting material, but considering my international audience what I want to focus on was giving you some idea of what we Brits mean by living in a “class society”.

Wood’s book tells the history of England through the medium of one village in Leicestershire (not that far away from Hinckley, the site of many Eastercons). I say “one village”, but Kibworth is actually two very separate villages: Kibworth Harcourt, where the upper class people live; and Kibworth Beauchamp, where the lower class people live. Field names in the area suggest, but my no means prove, that this division dates all the way back to the 6th Century when Anglo-Saxon migrants arrived to lord it over the local Britons, but you would be laughed at today if you suggested that class distinctions between white people in the UK have any ethnic basis.

That doesn’t make them any less real. The church in Kibworth has two doors: one for Harcourt people and one for Beauchamp people. But the anecdote that really illustrates the difference between the two villages comes from much more recent history. Not that long ago (I think early 20th Century) a new sewerage system was being proposed for the village. This was the cause of considerable dispute. The people of Kibworth Harcourt wanted to have two entirely separate sewerage systems built, because they did not want their effluent contaminated with that of Beauchamp people.

My thanks to my pal Marjorie for providing me with a souvenir of the event.

Michael Wood

A New Henge

~ Cheryl

A major news item here in the UK today was the discover of the remains of a large wooden circle some 900m from Stonehenge and apparently aligned with it. The archaeologists are falling over themselves with delight. More information is available from the BBC.

Unseen History

~ Cheryl ~ 41 Comments

The weekly podcast by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe had a guest conversationalist last weekend. Amelia Beamer was on hand to talk about her debut novel, The Loving Dead, and join in the general flow of conversation. I now very much want to read that book, but the part of the podcast I want to highlight is on a rather different topic.

Jonathan, lover of short fiction collections that he is, was talking about the recent SF Signal Mind Meld on essential short story collections. Discussion has apparently happened (though I’m not sure where, it doesn’t seem to be in the SF Signal comment thread) about the gender balance of the selections. Mike Resnick’s picks are almost exclusively male. Mike (again allegedly, I’m going by the podcast here) defended himself by saying that he had focused on the old days when few women were writing. Other people then came back with names like Margaret St. Clair and Zenna Henderson who, coincidentally, were people from the Periodic Table of Women in SF whose names I was not familiar with.

Of course this is the way it works. As I have explained elsewhere, one of the primary reasons for gender imbalance is that women are invisible to many men. Consequently, when men come to write history, they often only write about what men have done. When we look back on a period in time through the lens of history we see a world in which only men were important, but that’s because it is only what the men did that got written about.

In science fiction criticism history is of interest primarily as a means of tracing influence. There is this idea of The Conversation, in which what each author writes is seen as being a response to what has gone before. In the podcast Jonathan speculates on the influence of these invisible early women writers on the field, and suggests the possibility of an alternate past for SF — a sort of reversal of the traditional alternate history idea in that we still got to where we are today, but we actually got there by a different route.

Is this plausible? If the male writers didn’t “see” the women writers, surely they would not have been influenced by them. Well, no, because one of the things you learn as a a feminist — indeed one of the things that tends to make you a feminist — is that men do hear what women say, they just do so subconsciously.

There is a common phenomenon in office life where a group of people will be having a meeting and the woman in the group makes an innovative suggestion. Everyone ignores her. Ten minutes later one of the men in the meeting makes exactly the same suggestion, and everyone praises him for his cleverness. If you don’t believe that this happens, ask any trans woman who has seen office dynamics from both sides of the gender divide. I assure you, it is very real.

So yes, I suspect that the likes of Margaret St. Clair and Zenna Henderson did have an influence on the early development of SF. One day perhaps some feminist scholar will trace those links. Writing history is an ongoing act of discovery.

(By the way, I’m sure that this phenomenon of selective seeing applies to many other social dynamics besides gender. I’m discussing it in a gender context here because that’s how it arise in the podcast.)

Hopeless Fangirl

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Quite by chance while looking though what was available on the BBC iPlayer I came across a program called Guitar Heroes which is simply a compilation of performances by rock bands and other guitar players from the BBC archives. The episode in question caught my eye because it included a performance by one of my favorite rock groups: Horslips. The track that they played was “Dearg Doom”, from a performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I was pretty sure I’d be able to find it on YouTube, and I was right. Here it is.

The song comes from the album, The Táin, which is a musical retelling of the Celtic legend, Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). The song title means “Red Destroyer” and it is the signature tune of the Ulster hero, Cúchulainn, who single-handedly holds back an invading army while the rest of the Ulster warriors are suffering from a curse.

Much of what Horslips did in The Táin, and also in The Book of Invasions, was re-tell Irish myths in rock music, but using themes from traditional Irish tunes. The guitar riff from “Dearg Doom” is based on “O’Neill’s March” which, as I understand it, was the battle song of the Uí Néill, a prominent Ulster clan whose badge, a red hand, has become the official badge of the modern province of Ulster. Here it is being performed, rather incongruously set to scenes from Braveheart.

Somewhat topically, the song eventually ended up being used as part of a theme tune for the Irish soccer team during their 1990 World Cup campaign. Here Eamon Carr and Barry Devlin of Horslips talk a little bit about the history of the song.

If Jason Heller ever does an article about fantasy-based rock albums to partner the science fiction one he did for Clarkesworld I expect Horslips to feature in in.

Taking Tea (Somewhat Early)

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

This morning I decided to head out to explore the nearby town of Bradford on Avon. It looked very pretty from the train, and it proved to be just as nice on foot.

I managed to get lucky on the way. As I was heading off for the station Marjorie drove past. She was also headed for Bradford and was able to both give me a lift and show me round the best places. Mostly Bath is better shopping, as you would expect, but there are some nice little shops in Bradford, including an excellent picture framer where we engaged the young man who served us in a lengthy conversation about Neil Gaiman and comics.

The best thing to do in Bradford, however, is drink. Not alcohol (though I did spot a shop offering local cider), but tea. Because Bradford is home to The Bridge Tea Rooms. This is a place that would make Gail Carriger die of happiness. It is in a lovely old building, is done out as a proper Victorian tea room, serves rather splendid food and ever better tea. The waitresses are all in maid costumes. Marjorie and I would love to turn up there with a bunch of people in steampunk costumes. And in 2009 it was voted the best tea place in the country, so you don’t have to take our word for its quality. It is, of course, totally Theme Park Britain, but as the food and tea is good I’m not complaining.

We didn’t actually have Afternoon Tea, because we both needed to be back home in the afternoon, but I am certainly planning on going back soon. I had their Empress of China tea, in honor of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven (which I am currently reading). The tea was so nice I bought a packet to take home.

There are a few photos below.

[shashin type=”album” id=”34″ size=”medium”]

More Bits and Pieces

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Here are a few more things that may be of interest:

– First and foremost, the Hugo Voter Packet has been released. For a mere £25 (currently rather better value that the US$50 price, though it may not be after the election) you can get a massive collection of ebook goodness, including all six nominees for Best Novel. Bargain.

– Talking of Worldcon news, Reno is going to hold a film festival. That’s excellent news as it shows they are working hard on attracting a new and diverse membership.

– On to some archaeology, and it appears that the Maya were pretty clever at urban plumbing.

– Back in Melbourne, scientists claim to have proved that Phar Lap died of arsenic poisoning. Of course this doesn’t prove murder, so they have not yet declared war on the USA…

– And finally, another plug for James Maliszewski’s excellent Grognardia blog. Although it is ostensibly about role-playing, it has many posts about pulp fiction. Here’s James talking about Lovecraft and Conan. His latest post is about the history of role-playing and its connections to the SCA and science fiction fandom. My knowledge is a bit fuzzy, but if one of you would like to point Lee Gold, Diana Paxson etc. at him I’m sure he’d be very grateful.

Catchup Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Here’s a bunch of things that came in over the past few days:

– Margaret Atwood likens Twitter to Fairyland.

– Cherie Priest explains what aspects of publishing authors can and cannot control.

– The Science Fiction World saga rumbles on. News here (via Neil so you have probably read it). Analysis at World SF News.

– The Independent wonders whether the ancient inhabitants of Scotland were literate. Little do they know that when Pictish writing is deciphered it will turn out to be largely early drafts of Culture novels.

A Little Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Hmm, what have we got for you today?

– “Bring me the head of Amenhotep III!” Or maybe not. It is 2.5 meters tall and made of solid granite. I’m not sure there is room on the patio. Those Egyptians sure did do BIG.

– “The name’s Dare, Dan Dare.” PS Publishing announces a tribute to the great Frank Hampton, creator of many a British schoolboy’s (and schoolgirl’s) dreams. That looks like a must-buy book.

– Time on women’s ski jumping, including IOC member, Dick Pound, trying his best to sound like a Chicago Crime Boss. (hat tip: Zoe Brain)