Books and other things

Loss of a Great Man

2012-01-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Just after my last blog in November 2011, a dear and much loved man died of multiple melanomas on the 18th November. I didn't know it till recently when the news came along the grapevine. This man was Dr Roger Woolger, a warm, humorous and healing person with a depth of knowledge and understanding that made us all respect and love him. Roger was a Jungian therapist but his speciality was what he called Deep Memory Process, a technique he developed which helped many people get in touch with buried memories, often of past lives. Bringing these memories to consciousness was a tremendously liberating process and a healing one as I can vouch from personal experience of his workshops.

My son originally brought his work to my attention when he gave me Roger's groundbreaking book, Other Lives Other Selves, as a birthday gift. I got in touch with Roger and attended one of his workshops in Malvern in 1991. As soon as the Malvern Hills came into sight through the train window I began to choke with tears. I immediately felt this place was my spiritual home and have always felt so and in 1999 moved from London to Malvern with my husband who loves the hills as much as I do. I also made some other friends from this period who will always be special to me. Thus on life's journey, we meet some particular faces once again, people who feel so familiar. . . .this is how it seems to me. Friends who will be with one perhaps through many incarnations.

Roger became a close friend for a while but over the years we lost touch though I often heard of his brilliant work and punishing schedule as he toured the world teaching his process to others. The workshop experience was a life turning point for me in many ways. At these workshops, Roger would play us music, read poetry and he put me in touch with the sublime mystic poetry of the Sufis, especially Jellaladin Rumi. I shall never forget the regression experiences in which I had an amazing sense of coming close to the Divine, an uplift of the soul that cannot be expressed. It freed me and healed me in many ways.
Thank you, Roger, for all you gave to us at the cost of your own health.

Here is a poem from his web site http://www.deepmemoryprocess.com/ which expresses so much of the mystical view of life and death.

DEEPENING THE WONDER

Death is a favour to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just travelling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that
We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.
Death is a favour to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.

~Hafiz

From: "The Subject Tonight Is Love" (60 Wild & Sweet Poems of Hafiz translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Are we becoming a giant brain?

2011-11-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

According to an article by Jane Thynne which I recently read in the April 2011 Oldie (I always read these articles ages afterwards!) we are running out of cyberspace on the internet, no more room for any more IP addresses left. We tend to assume there is no limit to cyberspace and there isn't as far as we know, though the concept of eternity and never-endingness seems too much for our finite minds to bear. There is, of course, a limit to the Galaxy we inhabit and even a limit to the Universe. But as far as we know - and we don't really know much - there are billions and billions more universes out there that stretch on an on. Mystics would say each universe is but a cell in the body of Adam Kadmon, the Atman, and that must mean that there is even a limit to this or what sort of 'body' can we talking about? Are there billions of Adam Kadmons also stretching on and on into infinity, that are also just cells in the body of the Absolute?

I agree - it's all too mind-boggling.

Apparently a new system called IPv6 has been devised to make extra space on the Web and this, we are assured, is likely to last well up to the time the Sun decides it's a dying star. The web sites created with this will not be accessible to old computer systems. Not much of a loss as there's enough already, if you ask me. However, what interested me most was the fact that there is an enormous 'dark web' lurking beneath what we ignorant and ordinary people are so far able to access with the usual search engines. This is another world altogether, a place full of 'terrorist guides, pornography, pirated books, political samizdat and secretive networks' to use Thynne's description. This secret and hidden area needs special passwords and codes to enter and can be used without leaving any traces of the users. Lisbeth Salander springs to mind; she would surely know the codes and belong to this secret world of ideas and plottings and inventiveness, beyond the ken of most of us.

This revelation immediately put me in mind of Jung's concept of the Unconscious mind. He showed diagrams of the mind as a mountain rising from a sea. The conscious was a mere tip for the vast majority of humankind, a mere atoll even for the brightest of us, while below lies all the dark, unknown territories of our inner psyche. The Personal Unconscious is the more accessible upper regions of this sea, where we can travel and discover our own individual past, buried memories and inferior, savage feelings and confront our Shadow personality. That's the shameful part we prefer to bury and forget while working carefully on our light, bright outer, conscious image. Beneath this however, Jung also discovered the concept of the Collective Unconscious which everyone carries in them, stretching way back to pre-history, full of archetypal images, symbols, memories that belong to the whole human race and can arise spontaneously in the dreams of people from Africa to Iceland who know nothing about the other's culture.

The Web is beginning to look more and more like the collective brain of Mankind, synapses with information racing along from one neuron to another; every computer, i-pod and phone a neuroreceptor. . . something interesting is happening to us as a species and this is its product, this enormous brain that we have created which is beginning to rule our lives. It is no respecter of individuality or humanity but seems to be forcing us all into submission to its enormous power. It's hardly suprising that this Mind has a dark, unconscious side. And interestingly, like the unconscious mind of every one of us, this may be the place from which great creativity will pour out and redeem Mankind - or the beginning of a huge human psychosis. Just at the moment, the latter seems more in evidence as we gaze around us at a chaotic and unstable world.

New Things for Old?

2011-10-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

We went to buy some new mattresses recently at our local bedding shop. They are cosy memory-foam, so deep and luxurious it meant moving the large pictures on the wall over the bed as now our heads would bump into them. At the shop was a new range of bedroom furniture and it was exquisite; reproductions of Georgian style antiques, all in walnut and very expensive. I yearned.

When we got home I paced the bedroom and eyed the ill-assorted types of wood and style of furniture there and thought how lovely it would be to have all the furniture matching, in the same light walnut, the same style for chests of drawers, bedside cabinets and dressing table plus a charming, tall, slender piece of furniture in that range solely for the purpose of guarding ones undies. I might even treat myself to silk undies to go in such a delightful piece with its little secret drawers (sorry for the pun!). Then I'd have to get new curtains as well as such elegant furniture would require something far more elegant than the ones I'd hastily run up when we first moved here. The list was growing at an alarming pace of effort and expenditure. However, I wasn't rushing into any sort of decision - but woke every morning and contemplated happily just how splendid the room would look.

Then it gradually dawned on me that I couldn't part with what I already had. These old, battered pieces of furniture had a memory, a meaning, a moment in my life embedded in them. The Victorian chest of drawers, the drawers of which always stick and are annoyingly difficult, the washstand with it's quaint green tiled back on which a repeat motif of mauve pansies flourish, were bought in the 1970's when I won a prize of £20 for a play I had written. The simple, useful bedside tables were amongst my mothers first household items, bought in the late 1940's. She gave me these when we married and we cut off the cabriolet feet in an effort to 'modernise' them at the time. They are now so layered with coats of paint through the years to match every bedroom decor we have ever had that the doors scarcely shut any more. The nursing chairs I bought at my first ever auction and I love them. The Victorian dressing table was purchased when I first moved to Malvern. I felt so happy with it because it's quaint and has useful drawers beneath it. The old oak chest belonged to my late mother-in-law. I can still picture it standing in her hallway during all the years I knew and loved her. How could I now get rid of all these much-loved items with their history and their personal meaning, give them to strangers?

It made me understand that a home is an organic place that should grow with one over the years. It should contain the ancestors in it, contain one's past, present and future too, be a living entity, a part of oneself, the outer shell in which one exists and lives. This struck me with real force and feeling. I knew that everything was perfect just as it was.

So I saved our money and now take a renewed pleasure every time I awake to these items which have remind me of so many loved people and moments in my life.

Life's Crazy Mistakes

2011-07-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

Time to stop being profound, methinks. It's too wearing for the brain these days. So instead I'll reflect a little on the fact that one makes some profoundly foolish mistakes in the course of life. I often yearn to look back on a mistake free life but it isn't possible. And what's more it would mean that I'd be so smug as to be unbearable. Mistakes are humbling and humbling is good for the ego.

The latest mistake got us literally into deep waters. My husband and myself were holidaying for a few days near Newquay in West Wales. We'd been there before and I recalled that one could take a boat road round Cardigan Bay for an hour with the hope of seeing seals and dolphins. This desire stuck with me and I asked John to reconnoitre while he was down by the bay. He picked up an odd leaflet while there. Later we went to the bay and, on asking directions, were told to get tickets from the Marine Centre. This we did and then sat in the sun till it was time to go. We saw a nice little boat arrive and went to clamber on board only to be told that we had booked with a different lot and our 'trip' was to be in an inflatable dinghy!

I was absolutely horrified at this idea as I am not a lover of the sea. Ponds, rivers, lakes, I love - but the sea is absolutely terrifying and one reason why I am not a fan of cruises. All that water everywhere. No thanks. My strong instinct was to pay up and join the nice, neat boat and forgo the other tickets but my husband was having a mean turn about losing the money already paid (and more expensive!) for the dinghy ride. Right at the last minute, I had a strong urge to let him get on with it if he felt that adventurous. I would abandon him and join the boat. But I felt that wouldn't be fair, so I desisted and watched it sail away with a sinking feeling in my gut. So that was mistake number one. Being nice to others.

My next mistake, and a totally daft move, was to go and sit in the bow. We had to wear a lifebelt which says a lot. Off we went into the sea and though the vessel was going slowly it still pitched and rolled and the sea was FAR too close. However, by looking at the land instead of watching the rolling waves, I was okay and John was whooping happily, enjoying the thrill of it all. A child on board started wailing in terror and my heart was with the poor kid. Anyway, I settled into relaxing with the pitch and roll and watched the birds that were seen wheeling and screaming to one another on the amazingly striated cliffs but there wasn't a dolphin in sight.

If I thought all this was bad enough but bearable, it was when the boat turned back and we were now going against the swell that I really freaked out. Huge waves rolled up before us, the boat curved to meet them and amazingly didn't capsize. This was to be half an hour of hell returning to the jetty. I simply shut my eyes and clung to the boat and to John (his arm has bruises to show for it!) while we surged up and down. I prayed to be forgiven all the sins of my life just in case this was it. But I had a rude awakening back into this world of a sudden when an extra huge swell poured over us soaking us to the skin. Now we had to sit and freeze till we at last got out on the jetty and sloshed our way to the car where I stripped some of the clothes off and wrapped myself in a long, dry jumper. Poor John had to drive back to our lodgings in wet trousers.

Really, you'd think by now I'd learnt to follow my instincts. But no.
And we never even got to see a dolphin.

Entering the Abyss

2011-06-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Love is a funny business . . . falling in love an odd expression. What do we actually fall into?

The ancients often painted and carved a sweet, chubby, innocent little Cupid, a child - yet with those lethal bows and arrows - blindfolded as if to say, 'Love is blind' - as well as a madness, an altered state into which we 'fall'. All this seems to indicate that when we fall in love with something or someone we are no longer truly conscious anymore. And yet, at the same time we can feel more alive, more real and the world glows with joy. But if this love is not returned or those involved awaken from their dream illusion, we enter a twilight realm where we stumble about, bereft of our reasoning powers, searching, yearning for something intangible, often with no idea quite what it is we think we have found in 'the other'. A part of ourselves, our unexpressed Shadow side, an animus, anima figure? We try to reason it out thus in modern psychological terms but it doesn't help much at the time. No amount of reasoning can explain our reactions to what is stirred up within us by someone who is often a total stranger. In fact a stranger is a better a hook for our instinctual and archetypal longings. The deeper, more passionate, more compulsive the feeling of love, the darker it all becomes; if we are rebuffed or cast aside, all those caring, tender feelings and that all-embracing acceptance of another gives rise to the noxious fumes of hate, jealousy and revenge. Stalkers are a horrible example but we all feel those compulsive feelings at some time. Let's be honest!

Aphrodite, the great Goddess of Greek myth had a strange beginning according to one myth. When Ouranos the Sky God was castrated by his own son, the god Kronos (Saturn), his genitals fell into the sea and produced a mighty frothing and from the unity of sperm and sea arose the glorious form of Aphrodite (her name is translated as 'foam-born)' This falling into the sea or the unconscious seems to have been the first falling in love.
Plato in his Symposium speaks of Aphrodite or Venus as having a 'superior' and 'inferior' form, or Sacred and Profane love. He also states that Eros, her son, has this dark and light side too. He describes the two myths about their parentage. The Heavenly Aphrodite is the daughter of Ouranos and has no mother, like Athena, the daughter of Zeus, This form of Aphrodite seems linked with the Libran Venus, rational, just, calm, intellectual, beauty loving but in some ways remote. The “common” Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione and comes from a “normal” mating of male and female energies. This equates with Taurean Venus for Taurus enjoys the simple pleasures of mating and sensual joys, loves Beauty in tangible forms such as sculpture, music, painting. Yet has a darker side which feels the depths of rage, jealousy and possessiveness when thwarted. Eros too has the most ancient heavenly parentage born from the World Egg of Nix (Night, nothingness) and the Wind but in later myth we see his more ordinary manifestation as a son of Aphrodite and Hermes (or Zeus or Ares!)

Sacred and Profane Love. Why should one type of love be inferior to the other, we now ask? Isn’t it this sort of talk that created the division, later to be taken up by the Mediaeval Church, a split in consciousness into Beauty and the Beast, God and the Devil, the problem that Mankind has always battled with? Shouldn't we try to marry the two, balance the opposites within us?

We have to recall that Eros was a great God, only later denigrated to a rather sulky little boy playing about his powerful and often cruel and vengeful mother, Aphrodite; the ideal of Love in all its sheer grandeur and awfulness reduced in power to mere Hollywood sentimentality. Heroic effort is needed to grow up and learn to understand just what Love is really all about. It isn’t about 'happy ever after' or romantic idylls or constant sweetness and light. To expect that a relationship will last forever with no ups and downs is a modern dangerous fantasy and foolishness. It means that young people today prefer to remain single, lonely at heart and isolated rather than risk the dark abyss. It means couples who fly apart at the least hint of unpleasantness, betrayal or trouble. No more the ability to forgive, to understand anothers transgressions as reflecting our own - but the childlike and selfish insistence on 'my happiness, my pleasure'

Apuleius says of Eros in his version of “Cupid and Psyche, ' that he is no sweet little cherub but an evil Daimon, rash enough and hardy, who by his evil manners contemning all public justice and law, armed with fire and arrows, running up and down in the nights from house to house and corrupting the lawful marriages of every person, doth nothing but that which is evil'. Love was well conceived then as a power beyond mortal man, dangerous, painful, destructive, even evil at times but at its best, stirring men and women from the comfort of their “mother-father “marriages and unions and through this adulterous havoc helping them to mature in feeling.

It seems that in order to really experience Love, we have to fall into the heart's abyss even if it means betrayal, pain and suffering and try to climb out again as best we can when we awake from our sweet delusions. But having climbed out of the place where a passionate encounter can and still does take us, we can return clutching a piece of treasure. That treasure is a new awareness of ourselves and a new understanding of our own feelings. The pain of love can have a melting, softening effect upon the hardness of our hearts though sadly, it too often, simply hardens the heart, making us cynical and unfeeling out of fear of further pain.

quote from “Cupid and Psyche” by Apuleius trans. from Latin by William Adlington Routledge and Sons. 1906

Still determined, but maybe not so daft after all.

2011-05-30T05:12:00.000-07:00

Mrs Bertha Blackbird (as we have christened her) managed to lay her eggs. We couldn't see them as she's on quite a high ledge but my daughter climbed a ladder and putting her hand in the nest while Bertha was out foraging, felt the three eggs there. We were quite thrilled about it. I was still nervous, mind you, that they'd never all fit in this nest. However, time proved me wrong and soon we could see the little necks straining up, beaks wide open, piping to Mrs B to come and give them their grubs. She worked tirelessly and didn't seem to mind our coming and going, just flew over out heads. She chose this place so she had to get used to it.

You can just see the beady eye of one of the larger babes in this picture. One morning, I forgot to shut the kitchen door when I went into the garden. On my return there was Bertha standing in the kitchen, mouth full of worms, looking very disorientated. I had to chase her out. After a while as I went to get something in a corner of the kitchen and up flew a baby bird! It gave me quite a shock. I realised then why Bertha had come indoors like that. The babe had left the nest, flown in through the open door and its piteous yells brought her in search of her offspring.

After some chasing around the kitchen, I managed to catch the wee thing and stroked its little head to calm it down. Then left it under a bush nearby for its mother to find and feed. The next day, I had a feeling the rest of the brood had gone also and they had. So all was well and Bertha's determination paid off. Later I saw one of the youngsters, now quite large and doing it's own foraging. If only our own kids grew as fast and were independent so soon!

I tidied up her nest for her, clipping away some of the tumbling leaves and bits of straw. My husband was all for taking it away but I knew she would return. Sure enough she's there again today, sitting on a much tidier nest!... and ready to produce the next brood. It's wonderful to be so close and able to watch the process happening. I've never had that marvellous experience before.

A Suspicious Man

2011-05-07T04:25:00.000-07:00

A kindly friend bought me a copy of 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher', a true-life Victorian crime story about the murder of a little boy in a respectable Victorian middle-class home in 1860. When a child is killed so brutally . . . and this was a truly brutal murder. . . we all feel horror and disgust. It reminded me of the feelings and hysteria aroused over the murder of little James Bulger in 1993 which still raises its head in some manner even now because the killers were so young. In much the same manner, the death of little Saville Kent at Road Hill House in Wiltshire, horrifies us once more in this lucid, beautifully written and detailed account. There is no doubt that Kate Summerscale has impeccably researched this documentary work and written it with all the flair of a fascinating crime novel.

The newspapers of the day seized the story, embroidered it, made it even more sensational to the point where questions were being asked in the House of Commons about why it was taking so long to solve the case. They fed with lurid details a sensation seeking public who gobbled up all the sensation and gore. The prim, sober Victorians seemed especially ready to be titillated in this manner, a media process that has carried on ever since. We cannot pretend we aren't equally fascinated by darkness and horror in our own times, though it appears now in the form of televsion documentaries, crime series or books and plays. A remove from the reality of a situation, dipping into hell from a safe distance. We don't watch public executions any more thank goodness. My mother was taken to one in Istanbul as a child of four and it upset her so much that she became paralysed on that same day for a year. She had a morbid fear of hanging and death for the rest of her life.

It is, however, from this late Victorian period in history that the detective novel, with writers such as Dickens and Wilkie Collins, began to emerge as well as those horror stories of the Edgar Allen Poe variety and Bram Stoker's delicious sexual vampires and transylvanian castles full of dark mysteries. The story of the murder at Road Hill House provided the basis for many of the famous crime and mystery novels produced from then on. After all, it was great stuff; families full of hidden rage, jealousy, sexuality and evil feelings, all lurking beneath respectable, calm exteriors and nicely conformist public behaviour.

Jack Whicher was a highly celebrated detective sent from the newly formed detective force with the Metropolitan Police in London. Up to this point his successes had been achieved through instinct, intuition and a very keen memory for detail. He was a working class man, he understood the ways of all the hustlers and thieves and could pick a man out as if through a kind of strange affinity. Policeman, criminal . . . these two are one another's opposites, what Jung would call each other's shadow side. This is how they recognise each other. They are one another at some archetypal level. Whicher was absolutely sure who it was that had murdered Saville Kent, knew full well it was an inmate of the house and a young family member. Due to all the hoo-ha in the press and in Parliament, he was forced to try and solve the crime quickly as if evidence and answers could be found growing on bushes. Evidence was not produced and the local police Inspector, who sympathised with the family, did much to obstruct him. Plus, because of his lower class origins and the fact that his accusations were directed against a person of middle class, he was castigated, scorned and laughed out of court. Whicher never really recovered his confidence or his position after this. However, events eventually turned out exactly as he had predicted when a confession was eventually made by the guilty party many years later.

Much can be learnt from this strange, unhappy story. It's interesting that we all love sensation, darkness and despair somewhere deep in our hearts. Yet we also long for justice, revenge, exoneration and redemption. The murderer lived to be a hundred years old, paid back fully her debt to society and went on to nurse lepers and care for other people. We understand far more nowadays what drove her to the deed. Her childhood had been a terrible backdrop to the depredations and sins of her own father. In some ways, she too was a sacrificial victim, a scapegoat for the family who was driven to act out the underlying pains and traumas generatedby his weakness and lustfulness. Despite the horror of the crime and the manner in which it was undertaken, one couldn't help but feel sympathy for all those involved.

Determined but daft?

2011-04-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

A blackbird with an astonishingly stubborn and persistent nature began to make a nest in our outside back porch. She chose a ledge about five inches wide and attempted to put on it an array of long twigs, pieces of plastic, moss and varied other acquisitions from the garden compost heap. They fell of this precarious ledge every time and I had a mess to sweep up every morning.

‘Did you try talking to her?’ one of my friends asked. I did try, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was clueless and foolish. But as they assure us that the blackbird we have in the garden right now probably came from Norway in the winter and would move further south as winter approached one more, it was evident she didn’t understand a word of English. She ignored me and carried on making the demented effort to get this mess to stick on the ledge. We joked that she must be a teenager who had no notion how to set about home-making. She was certainly stroppy and stubborn.

And she did it! Eventually she managed to get a little nest . . . bit of a mess but still . . . to stick on that tiny ledge. And now she is sitting up there for hours on end. I’m in deep admiration at her determination. She’s some girl.

We still don’t know if there’s any eggs laid. But as she now spends most of the day there, we’re assuming she’s got something going. It amazes me how still she sits for hours on end, leaving very occasionally to eat and drink. I feel a bit sorry for her. It’s lovely in the garden and there she is, stuck up in a dark corner of our porch, sitting in an almost Zen like meditation on …well, on something. We dare not look, she is so sweet, and we don’t wish to disturb this almost holy act of creation. So we creep round through the French windows and take care to make no startling noises while having to use cupboards out there as they contain things we use daily. Bottles of wine for instance.

My worry is now that, if the eggs do hatch, how will it manage to contain three infants on that precarious ledge? I have a feeling it’s going to end badly. But we haven’t the heart to move her away. Nature has to go its way whatever the costs. At least she’ll feel she’s fulfilled her urge.

The Beautiful Mystery of Cycles and Seasons.

2011-03-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

Spring is the most special season of the year for me. I confess that Autumn is also alluring in its beauty. But its clamour of martial colours precede sleep and death, leading us into the cold darkness of winter. The colours of spring in their sharp freshness and vividness are all about light and birth , leading to the fullness and warmth of summer. It's this sense of joyful awakening, the movement of life stirring again and the energy that fills one at this time of year; that's what I love. So good to get out of doors, to see the lighter days, hear the birds and the bees again. I feel as if I too have been asleep, feel like Rip Van Winkle emerging, yawning, wondering where time has gone.

Just now my garden is filled with wonderful delicate flowers,the leaves swept from the lawn and flower beds, the earth rich, brown and malleable. From my window I see masses of yellow forsythia, pink and white cherry blossoms and those exquisite tiny tender green leaves beginning to burst forth and race along the stark and solemn winter branches. Yesterday, I saw a beautiful bright yellow Brimstone butterfly. Today, a Peacock butterfly. In ancient Greek the butterfly was called Psyche, or Soul. Butterflies . . . souls freed from their earthy chrysalis prison, darting about. Persephone is allowed out of Hades and the realms of her dark, forbidding lord. She's dancing everywhere and flowers spring up around her feet.

The passage of time marked by the equinoxes and solstices were very important to the ancient Celts. It was a time much revered by the Celts who named the time of vernal equinox Imbolc. I too revere it, the tremendous outburst of energy as sap rises in the tree trunks, stiff shoots poke up from the dark earth once more, revel in the mystery of renewed life each year. It brings hope and faith that life, when all is said and done, is a continuing cycle where nature repeats herself but is never ever quite the same.

Human history also follows cycles and in the same way, nothing is ever quite a repetition but always a unique, ever changing statement of something that always remains the same. Wars, floods, plagues, times of plenty and times of deprivation have been with us since biblical times. Yet we always marvel as if they have never occurred before.

The Lord´s Prayer From African Sanctus

2011-02-20T11:42:00.000-08:00

One of the most sublime pieces of music I know. Sadly David Fanshawe is no more.

Sounds from the Deep

2011-02-16T02:33:00.000-08:00

Egypt has been much in the news of late and like everyone, I felt a great sense of joy in the fact that the young of today are capable of such acts of defiance and bravery. Their voices can make a difference. We shall have to see whether the older generation, who always want to cling to their power and keeping the status quo, will respond. Nonetheless, people have proved that they can unite in this manner. This is enough to alarm the rigid regimes that exist everywhere. These regimes exist because the 'old' hates to give way to change - to the 'new' and the young. It is a cycle of history and it is important that the younger generation constantly challenges the old in this way or nothing would change, everything would atrophy and we would all still be in the Stone Age.

Egypt is a place that echoes in all our hearts here in the West. Its history has changed, stretching far back in time, long before the Fatimid dynasty conquered the land of the Pharaohs and yet it is a strangely timeless country. As one travels down the river Nile from Cairo to Luxor the scenery has scarcely altered and the people along the banks still ply much the same trades as those men and women depicted on scenes in the royal tombs.

Cairo, however, like all great modern cities has become a big, bustling place full of high rise blocks and spaghetti motorways. It looks like any other capital now, much of the old character lost due to wars and the encroachment of modernisation and the use of the car. There has also been the inevitable spread of a poverty stricken population who have ignored all efforts to keep them from building their shanty towns on the edges of the city, creeping thus closer and closer to the Pyramids. Eventually they will engulf them, swallow the past in the needs of the present. In that respect the Arabs have always been more aware of present needs and thus the pyramids have slowly been stripped of their lovely polished stones which now adorn many a Cairene house and ancient treasures have been scattered around the world. Who is to say that is wrong? Starve in the present in order to maintain past glories?

I was born in Cairo during the War and so my conscious memories are few and far between. Yet these early memories sink down into one’s unconscious and their recall can be startling. In the Eighties, a friend asked me to come to a nearby church to hear them perform David Fanshawe’s beautiful ‘African Sanctus.’ I had never heard this music before and assure you it is just stunning. The Sanctus of the Latin Mass is accompanied in its various parts by unique and rare recordings made by the composer as he hitch hiked along the Nile and Sudan in the late 1960’s. He captured a fast disappearing mixture of religious songs, recitations, tribal dances, weddings and other African sounds and blended these with the religious music of the West. It is a true uniting of the primitive and powerful emotional music of the soul and the uplifitng, soaring music of the spirit.

It was when we came to the Kyrie, accompanied by a recording of the imam calling the faithful to prayer from his tower on the mosque that I was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable, deep, almost anguished, sensation that arose from my gut and made me want to sob my heart out with an intensity that shook me to the core. Being very British, I managed to hold back these intense emotions, though tears streamed down my cheeks much to the alarm of my friends. It was only afterwards when I read the programme properly I found that this was recorded in Cairo. This early sound from my childhood, the beautiful ullulating cry to the faithful to come and worship Allah, was in my soul.

Great minds think alike...Fools seldom differ?

2011-01-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

Something in me of late feels that it has touched the depths, the sea bottom, reading-wise. I’ve explored the dark caves, confronted some monstrous beings, found a casket or two of sunken treasure. But it’s time to swim up again and break the surface into the light, take a few gulps of fresh air.

I’m a firm believer in synchronicity which is the interesting phenomena that occurs when the personal unconscious tunes in with the collective unconscious. Events, images, coincidences occur that mirror one’s personal feelings and dilemmas at a given time. Things can be dormant for a long time and then something stirs in the unconscious, as it did for me of late. Then fascinating things begin to occur. Jung saw this as being particularily associated with the creative force in oneself and the universe.

Something led me to find a little scribbled note of mine from years back. It was the title of a book by Barbara Hannah, a close friend and pupil of the great psychologist, Carl Jung. I felt an urge to order this book ‘Striving for Wholeness’ but couldn’t find a copy in the usual sites at the time so ordered her Biographical-Memoir of Jung instead. It was so uplifting to read an intimate, feminine viewpoint of the life of this truly amazing man, a man of such humility, wisdom and love of humanity. i feel I have lived with him, seen his humanity and his genius. A Great Soul or Mahatma, the Indians would have called him. This gulp of fresh air totally revived me creatively and spiritually.

For most of my life I read either classics or non-fiction books and psychology was a special study. My father suffered greatly from mental illness and I wanted to try and understand what it was that troubled his spirit so much. My own spirit was also deeply troubled at this period of life and at fourteen I suffered from an anxiety complex, a lengthy panic attack that lasted about six months. This was partly brought about by trying to read such dense, heavy material as psychology at too young an age. I simply didn't have the centredness and maturity to contain it. So I suffered a form of psychic indigestion! However, I came back to this subject again in my twenties and it isn’t being foolish to say that reading Jung’s ideas and writings saved my sanity. Particularily his great work on alchemy ‘Mysterium Coniunctionis.’

Those of us who live close to the unconscious world who are primarily right brained types find the scientific, left brained, ‘rational’ approach to life harsh, unfeeling, dogmatic and out of tune with a quite different reality. This approach has arisen since the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ when it was necessary to dispel the darkness of a preceding age full of terrors and superstitions. Now, however, rationality has aquired a darkness, ignorance and blindness of its own just as impenetrable and hard to dispel.

The best story to portray this modern attitude is Hans Andersen’s 'Little Mermaid.' She is an anima figure who emerges half human, half fish from the deeps and longs to walk in the land of humans. But her feet are full of pain, as if sharp knives were sticking into them as she walks and she finds herself unable to speak the language of the conscious, solar world. This is very much the fate of the Piscean type (Sun Moon or Rising sign in Pisces) A Piscean myself, not only are my feet always in pain but I am quite often struck dumb when with very left brain people who appear to have all the answers, backed by masses of 'facts and education.' It's almost impossible to explain my own beliefs or to move through the brick wall of their limited comprehensions. They seem to be so rational that they can bring doubt to those who are not so firmly centred. But my heart knows things they do not know and has had experiences they cannot begin to have.

It’s hard to understand this atttiude coming from intelligent people who profess to be detached and scientific. They seem terrified of all that appears to be irrational. Let’s face it, we can be sure of nothing and science and medicine are always contradicting themselves, disproving their own theories, realising more and more that we merely skirt the edges of real knowledge. So why not open the mind to the possibility, at least, that there is more in Heaven and Earth than the eye can see.

Develop perhaps an Inner Eye that gazes on profunditiy?

Is Human Life a Bursting Bubble?

2011-01-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

When I was a child in the late 1940's there were few toys to play with and simple pleasures appealed. One of my favourite pastimes was to buy a clay pipe for a penny or two, swish up a bowl of soapy water. Dipping in the pipe, I would then blow through it, creating huge glorious bubbles full of rainbow colours. Shake them loose and they would fly away and fall to the carpet where they would bounce a little. This amusement kept me happy for ages. It still keeps children happy for ages.

I was always a thoughtful sort of creature, a rather lonely, only child. Lonely partly by preference, partly because we moved so much in those days that lasting friendships were hard to form. My father was a long term serviceman in the RAF which meant a new posting every two and a half years and I had many a sad parting with a friend I'd grown to love. Yet, I don't recall ever feeling bored. Every small pleasure was enhanced and gave food for thought. And watching the slow swirling of the bubble colours, moving gently from shades of green and blue to pinks and purples was an almost mystical experience at the time. The colours entranced for a while but suddenly little black dots would begin to appear and inexorably grew and grew until the magic colours were swallowed into the black spaces and then...the bubble would burst with a big wet 'plop'. This intrigued me as a child, this inevitable dissolution of beauty and colour into blackness then nothingness.

Sometimes I look at our modern world and see it as the bubble. Around us we can see the beautiful, detailed, solid structures and architecture of the past, still standing despite wars and natural disasters. Monuments that were lovingly carved, painted and ornate remain a tribute to the ideal of Beauty and the Divine in us all. We see the artwork, clothing, jewellery of the ancients, the cave paintings made by unknown artists and realise that this longing to be creative and surrounded with what is lovely is innate in the human psyche. People once saw and longed for visions of beauty and hope. Even the poorest, hungriest, most miserable creature was allowed to enter a church or cathedral and raise eyes to what was sublime and uplifting. It took them from life's darkness to higher and lovelier, kinder thoughts and feelings, even for a few moments before being plunged once more into the battle to survive.

Humanity has always lived with fear, uncertainty, natural disasters and death. However, life is infinitely easier in many countries now, life expectancy greater in the capitalist portions of the world and the raw struggle to survive apparently conquered for many. Life is easier but at the same time death less welcome. And belief in the Divine almost a dirty word in a materialistic world. Along with loss of faith in anything that appears intangible and unproven, beautiful images or the ability to create beauty seems spent in us now. Modern humanity is fascinated with ugliness, disability, horror, murder, rape and cruelty in all art forms. We enjoy watching films, reading books and looking at images that invoke darkness and despair rather than uplift as such images were once meant to do. Taboos have been lifted till little remains to shock us any more. We've almost reached the bottom of the pit of Acheron.

Now it's all about clinging to the impossible ideal of physical beauty of the body and youth. Without faith of any kind in the Divine (whatever form that may take for each one of us) Death is the ultimate terror to our fragile yet enormous human egos. It is like the black holes appearing in the bubbles, growing blacker and blacker by the minute, an ever-encroaching sense of finality and doom. Modern art does little to raise our minds and hearts to higher thoughts or what might lie beyond this passing, fleeting mortal existence which comes and goes for as brief a moment of beauty as the bubbles from clay pipes.

The Madness of Ecstasy

2011-01-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

It would be childish of me to be jealous of another writer. Better to be lost in admiration when a superior voice is heard and better still to learn from that voice.
So let me introduce Donna Tartt (as if she needs it) and her most famous book The Secret History. This book was published in the 1990's and thus refers timewise to a period in the 1980's. Hence the lack of computers and mobiles, those modern extensions of the human brain which have taken over real communication, taking us to a time when students wrote their notes out on note-pads or typed them on old typewriters.

I actually used to type all my first novels on an old Underwood and loved that machine but it was really hard work. After typing out three copies of a lengthy novel I would end up with a painful frozen shoulder but it had to be done. My biggest grumble is that writing has got a whole lot easier which means that all these pesky people who 'have a story in them' insist on writing the darned thing where before they would never have bothered with all the hard work. Nor would a writer have had all that editing imposed upon him. Too difficult and time consuming all round. You had to be dedicated in my day, you had to have the 'writing bug',the daimon that wouldn't leave you alone despite the frozen shoulder and aching fingers.
But, my apolgies, as ever I digress to my own troubles.

The Secret History. A tale of students in the 1980's on a campus in Vermont. These aren't your everyday students though. They are a small unique clique studying Ancient Greek with an eccentric but brilliant tutor. One of the major characters, Henry, is a fascinating figure, wealthy, aloof, detached, living in his head. He seems to have little emotion or feeling and lives in an ancient world of iambic metres and linguistic excellence. However, he does have a deep understanding of that ancient world of men, he comprehends their pagan cruelty and drama, their sense of inexorable justice and fate. He understand that 'Beauty is terror'. The ancients were far closer to nature and its rule of tooth and claw. They saw the death and bloodiness that lies beneath the smiling valley in the sunlight, apparently so calm and peacfeul yet teeming with unheard cries of pain and the crunchings of eater and eaten.

Henry's best friend, Bunny, is quite his opposite. These two are each other's shadows, each other's mirror reflection. Slowly but inexorably the two men act out the ancient and yet always modern tale of Pentheus and Dionysos from the Bacchae. Order versus chaos. The essence of the story is that chaos will always rise up where there is too much attempt at control. We have to allow a little bit of Dionysos and his delicious drunken ecstatic madness into our lives; we shut him out at our peril. Democracy means allowing the element of chaos, insecurity and uncertainty to exist in our lives. The price of stability and total security is repression, tyranny and a deadness of the spirit. Nothing is allowed to change or grown in such a fixed and rigid climate. This is a theme I want to explore in my new novel The Dying Phoenix.

As a writer, Donna Tartt is one of the most excellent I have read. Her prose flows with ease and clarity. Her choice of words shows such a love of language. There are some really striking and delightful verbs and use of imagery. The chapters which describe Richard, the narrator's, lonely time freezing in a hippie garret during a snow bound, icy winter in Vermont will always stay with me. This story is beautiful, compelling, a joy to read. The characters are unusual, not likeable but fascinating, compulsively interesting. There is something of Patricia Highsmith in this thriller, something too, as one critic remarked, of The Great Gatsby. It's a work of art and will linger with me for a long long time. I shall always retain the last few paragraphs imprinted on my inner retina. I love it when an ending is exquisite and this ending is truly so.

Someone described it as a thinking person's thriller. It is.

Taking Care of Myself (for a change)

2010-12-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

My dear family bought me a Kindle for Christmas. No, dear readers, nothing in this wide world will ever put me off having a real book in my hand or on my shelf. The reason for requesting the Kindle was down to old age and arthritis. Let me explain. Huge heavy books have not, after all, gone out of fashion - despite the recession, green activitists and general accusations of an attention deficit culture - but seem to be on the increase. And I love a huge story where you can really get to know the characters and they stay with you for a long time afterwards. They become part of your existence for a long time, some characters forever. I'm now well into Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy and Lizbet Salander is definitely a never-to-be-forgotten heroine. But that's for another blog.

However, my point is this. Holding up heavy books and trying to keep open the pages is very tiring and painful for my rather arthritic hands. So I felt a Kindle would be the answer for this problem and for reading a large book. Thus my first download has been The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest which is a mega huge book. The actual process of sorting out registering on Wi-fi meant having to find a local venue where I could access wireless and this turned out to be our local MacDonald's in the Malvern retail park. This also meant having to queue amongst an astonishing amount of Boxing Day shoppers after a bargain, fights to find a seat indoors as it was deep snow outside, then wait for a fishburger which was lukewarm by the time it got to our mouths. Still, an interesting experience all in all. We hadn't been to a MacDonald's with Thalia, our daughter, since she was little, and that's some time ago now.

My marvellous daughter set up and registered the Kindle and we then came home, dowloaded (at last) and off I go. I can see it might become addictive. My wrists are certainly grateful.

(This picture included here has nothing to do with anything except the fact that I think it's great. Just bear with me. It's a Christmas Tree of BOOKS!!)

Beginnings Remembered but Endings Unknown

2010-12-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

It's some time since I penned a few dramatic and amazing thoughts to shake the world. This is because I've been watching my mother slowly passing out of this life and into the mysterious uncertain place that lies beyond our human ken. It is a painful experience losing one's parents. These are the beings who brought us to life, gave us the means to achieve consciousness and gain the much prized human body. According to the sages, a human incarnation may take thousands of lives to obtain and we should prize and honour it instead of abuse and loathe it.

My mother was a beautiful woman and remained attractive and elegant into her eighties. Her style of thought and attitude to life was dramatic, passionate, warm and loving but her love was a fire that could burn and terrify one. We were very much alike yet very much one another's opposite. Our natures and personalities clashed and we found it hard to accomodate each other, yet were fused and bonded at a very deep level. To my mother I was never a separate being but an extension of herself, her own ego. She found it hard to comprehend that I had different ideas and desires to her own.

However, it was Angela Diana that encouraged my love of literature and encouraged me to read classics from many countries. Alas, I never had her talent for languages. She could read the Greek, Italian, French and English originals. Through Mum's enthusiasm and love of books I entered the world of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Guy de Maupassant, Zola, Flaubert, Kazantzakis, Plato, and later devoured the English classics.

We forget our beginnings and only know of them if our mother chooses to tell us about what happened. We are mostly unware of our endings and there is no way we have a clue about what happens after our span of mortal life is finished here on earth. I find this annoying. It's one of the reasons I enjoy reading a biography because we perceive the whole linear movement from birth to death and it makes a good story. It has a beginning and an ending. I'm not going to know the ending to my story or know what happens to my children when I'm gone or be able to reflect upon it all. I won't be able to write my story from start to finish. Someone else will have to do it for me.

Linear as it seems, my belief is that this life is part of a circle. All life moves in spirals in the Universe and so, I'm sure, do our little lives. As darkness falls and the day's turmoil is forgotten in sleep, so we move in death into that strange sleep full, perhaps, of dreams and wonders, a sleep forgotten once we circle back once more into the wakefulness of a new life.

Or is it the other way around? Is this mortal life the dream while death wakes us to reality?

Numbers are what life is all about

2010-10-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

I was just lying in bed and contemplating the dire state of our personal finances. Life, I decided was all about numbers. No one actually has any real money, nothing solid. They have numbers that open an account, numbers written on bits of paper sent by the bank, numbers they write on bits of paper to give someone or numbers on a plastic card which can only be used when you remember the numbers that unlock them. Yet, strangely, this is no safer a method of commerce than the days when you had copper, silver and gold to trade with. Nice solid, round heavy cash you could put in a box and hide under a bed. So robbers could steal the lot. Robbers can steal numbers too.

As it was a Sunday morning, my husband and I sat in bed with a cuppa and listened to the Point of View slot on the radio at 8.45am. It was Professor Liza Jardine's last one of the series and in life's synchronous manner she spoke about numbers too. But her main drift was about history and how periods of art and culture often seem to occur in times of depression and apparent decay in society. These waves of creativity do not arise from happy times and joyful spirits but rather from the opposite.

Historians of the past delighted in battles, conquests, and recording the deeds of those famous men and women who brought about sweeping changes from greed, desire for power or pure madness. They were the movers and shakers and the masses were shaken and stirred, moved hither and thither as if at a whim. However, beneath these waves of well recorded events lies a huge flowing sea of the unrecorded events of ordinary people and their lives. And from this sea of fear, anxiety, humiliation, suffering came forth the occasional person who was able to voice what this silent majority thought and felt. The poets, artists, musicians and writers.

We are now entering a dark age all our own. Perhaps this is why so many people are taken with fantasy writing, fulfilling a need to turn away from life's anxieties and escape into Tolkien worlds of their own making. Writing sites such as the Harper Collins site, Authonomy, are awash with writers writing fantasy,YA and erotic romantic fiction set in some golden past of happily ever after. Writers have generally recorded their times through their works so what can we say about our own times filled either with fantasy worlds or else with horrifying darkness and violence? Our many crime writers fulfil this latter role as they explore the shadier side of our modern societies. Ruth Rendell, who has written almost a novel a year for some decades, has recorded the various moods and problems of English society through the 70's to the present time through her often disturbed and strange characters. Ian Rankin has probed the underbelly of elegant Edinburgh. Stieg Larsson explored Scandinavian darks and seaminess, and so forth.

In the Middle Ages the fantasy was perhaps fulfilled by myths, fairy tales,superstitious and religious thoughts while the violence and horror of battles, plagues and torture were all to real. Nowadays, in our 'civilized societies' most of life has become virtual, interior, explored through film, books, computers.
But as Liza Jardine said, it is the masses who now need to record their feelings,fears,ideas,loves and passions. We ordinary people make history now, not the great battles or the sway of Kings and Queens and generals whose days are past while the unwashed masses lived and died in obscurity. The tide has turned and swept us all up onto the shore of conscious existence with all our flotsam and jetsam. After all, there's nothing much left to be conquered in the outer world. We all must now learn to conquer ourselves from within. And writing, art, poetry and music is the way we can do this and speak of the times we now live in. A strange world of the mind, regions within, lands to be explored and conquered inside our own hearts and souls.

The Colour Crimson

2010-09-08T02:43:00.000-07:00

Crimson is one of those colours that appeals to something archaic deep within us. In my novel, The Crimson Bed, it is a colour that dominates the story and has a meaningful significance. When Ellie is first taken to meet Henry Winstone in his studio, her immediate thought is to ask if she can be painted wearing her mother’s ruby-red dress.

"Turning to the artist, Ellie said, ‘My mother’s dress is very special, Mr Winstone. Crimson is a colour that I love more than anything.’
‘I agree. That would be truly stunning. Ruby- red is one of my favoured colours. Is this the shade you have in mind?’
He brought over a jar of crimson madder paint and she looked at it and nodded.
Tipping a small amount into a dish, he regarded it pensively. ‘It’s a good choice, because this colour actually intensifies with time. It was used a lot by the old masters. Yes, a very good choice. I shall have to see how you look in the dress to decide how we shall apply it. Possibly it might need to be made even more intense by adding a little carmine. But you like it – this is what you refer to?’
‘I do, that is the colour. It was my mother’s favourite colour, too. We have an heirloom – a bed with coverings of this shade and when I think of her, I think of this bed. Our crimson bed.’
‘In my case I love the vibrant emerald green,’ said Henry, taking another jar from the windowsill and showing it to her. ‘This green is special, made from oxide of chrome by a secret process and it’s a costly colour, not so much so as ultramarine, but near enough. So you see how precious it is.’
He paused, held the jar up to the light, and waxed lyrical all of a sudden. ‘But that’s not why I love it. I love it because it represents the green of nature; fresh leaves and grass in the sunlight or the most precious of stones, rare, fragile and exquisite in its depths of beauty. It soothes me to the core of my soul to look into this colour and try to reproduce it. I would have liked to see you in this green. But I also adore the ruby red. It’s the feminine colour, the colour of passion, of the womb . . . and blood. Not your scarlet common-or-garden blood. It is the feminine blood with its intimations of birth and death . . . or arterial blood, deep hidden blood, the blue blood of the kings and queens.’
Ellie stared at him. ‘Passionate . . . the blood of kings and queens,’ she murmured. ‘I like that notion very much.’"

It may seem as if Henry was wrong to think the crimson madder was a colour that would get better with time as Crimson Madder is a ‘lake’ pigment and these were considered as notoriously ‘fugitive’ colours. In other words they could fade away in light unless treated with special binders and mixes of other red shades that could ‘hold’ the colour. But it has to be said the reds of the Pre-Raphaelites have held their colour well due to the painting techniques which they used. However, the fading madder pigment has led to loss in the shading of some pictures such as Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ where the grapes, probably once more purple shades of madder, have faded greatly.
Even during their lifetimes, Rossetti, Millias and Hunt saw changes in the original colours of their pictures. Millais admitted that the greenery in his ‘Opehlia’ had turned almost blue. But it can still be said that their paintings have so far stood the test of time well.

The original ‘lakes’ were said to have been invented by the ancient Egyptians. The madder plant was cultivated as a dyestuff in Asia and Egypt since about 1500 BC. Cloth dyed with madder root pigment was found in the tomb of Tutankhamen and in the ruins of Pompeii and Old Corinth. These’lakes’were made from plant and tree bark and the powder thus obtained fixed on an inert transparent base such as Barium White, gypsum, chalk and so on,to hold and deepen the colour. A stronger and truer shade, called Crimson Madder, was made from the insect kermes vermilio or Kerria laca (now sadly an endangered species) while Carmine, another deep red colour, was made from the cochineal beetle and used as food colouring for many years. Alizarin Crimson is another red used mainly as a dye and for years coloured the uniforms of the British army, leading to the nickname of 'the redcoats’, and is still used by the Canadian Mounted Police for their uniforms.

In 1806 the lovely shade of Rose Madder Genuine was formulated by the renowned chemist, George Field who mixed it with alum and an alkali into a Madder Lake which achieved a far more stable and permanent effect than the previous old colours. This would have been the colour used by The Pre-Raphaelite painters who obtained their colours and painting equipment from the colourman, Roberson, at that time. The recipes for colours made by Field are now exclusive to the Winsor and Newton range of colours. Apparently on visiting the Winsor and Newton stand at the Crystal Palace exhibition, Dickens said with delight, ‘ has anyone seen anything like Winsor and Newton’s cups of Carnations and Crimsons loud and fierce as a war cry and Pinks tender and loving as young girl?’ This exclamation of Dickens sums up the associations we have with these colours, the sense of blood, war, vitality on the one hand and the softer,more tender feminine meanings when diluted with white and rendered less fierce and violent.

The old crimson colour taken from the roots of the madder plant was made of alazarin and purpurin, the latter being especially unstable and liable to fade with time, espcially if kept in the light. The great painters of the past had their own special recipes for dealing with this problem, crimson being a special favourite then as now not only for effect but also symbolically. According to Culpepper’s Herbal, the plant was ruled by Mars, the God of War and red has always been associated with violence, blood, agressive energy, anger, warlike instincts and sexuality. Yet, because of the costliness of making the colours red and purple, it was used by Kings and Queens and later by the Church, thus symbolic of both temporal and spiritual power. Reds were much employed by the Pre-Raphaelite artists too, again with symbolic intent, but also to add richness and sensuality to their pictures. Thus Henry’s comment that it was used greatly by the old masters and appeared to darken and intensify with time due to the secret mixing techniques of the old masters..

This means of preserving their paints were kept secret and only passed on by the masters to their prominent and trusted pupils. William Blake was a great fan of Rose Madder. Murillo and Michaelangelo also used it widely. These great men would have intended a deeper, spiritual significance of the colour and were interested in the idea of alchemy and all its symbolism. Thus the use of Rose could also be connected with the idea of heart-felt,romantic, courtly love in a spiritual rather than carnal, sensual sense. The Rose was an allegory of Venus and later of Mary, the mother of Christ, who in older paintings is almost always seen in red robes with a cloak of deep blue, the traditional blue of the starry sky. Many churches have a Rose Window and the precious and costly red colour was widely and richly used in stained glass, particulary by Burne Jones whose magnificent red, flaming windows decorate the church of St.Philip's Cathedral in Birmingham.

Rose is also the beloved in a more earthly sense, the 'fedeli d’amore'. The five petals of the rose were considered symbolic with the five senses. And, of course, corresponded to that inner place, the heart - both the organ that pumps our blood around and also the true 'heart' where all our feelings and emotions from many lifetimes are said to be stored.

‘It seems as though the rose-coloured blood of the alchemical redeemer was another symbolic idea which derived from a rose mysticism that penetrated into alchemy and that, in the form of the ‘red tincture’ expressed the healing or whole making effects of a certain kind of Eros.’ From ‘Alchemical Studies ch. 5 The Philosphical Tree’: Carl Jung

Eros in this sense is a conscious, inward-looking erotic love. ‘Loving oneself’ it may be called. Not the egotistical love of a false and vain self-love, but the true sense of acceptance and love of all that one is, imperfections and all. A love that gives meaning to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as oneself’. How few of us truly love ourself or know how to heal ourselves?

It is this redeeming process that I attempt to portray in ‘The Crimson Bed’ as the protagonists face their inner darkness, come to terms with it and through the process of pain and suffering (which has to become conscious, acknowledged, confessed and understood) eventually emerge once more into the light and are healed. The ancient concept of the coniunctio, the mystical marriage, is important here, the uniting the Masculine and Feminine. Although in alchemical terms this is an inner process, in the sacrament of marriage we undertake both the inner and outer union so that a man and woman may become as 'one';a fact lost in these modern times of turbulent relationships where the true meaning of marriage has been forgotten and despised. To my mind, all romantic stories, however badly written, sentimental or foolish they may seem to some, have the 'coniunctio'as the end in view. They could all be called alchemical studies!

Pictures: John Waterhouse 'The Crystal Ball'(detail): Rosetti 'A Vision of Fiametta':
Murillo 'The Virgin of the Rosary': Rubia Tinctorum (Madder root plant) Burne Jones stained glass window 'The Ascension'

Dutch Island Madness and Swedish Terror

2010-07-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

Dutch Island Madness: The two books I have read recently have both been marrow chillers of the first order though set in completely different times and different locations. But the theme of both is a sadistic, power crazy person who commits horrifying acts of cruelty.

Greta Van der Rol's new book Die a Dry Death is one of those amazing stories that horrifies and at the same time forces you to read on and on. The story,set in 1629, arose from the real event of a Dutch ship, The Batavia, that ran aground on a reef, part of a group of tiny, uninhabitable islands off the western coast of Australia. When the ship foundered, the captain Adrian Jacobz, set sail in a small boat with a few of his sailors to get help. The remaining survivors, who included several women and children, were left on the islands while a substantial treasure and goods owned by the Dutch East Indies trading Co.remained on the foundered ship out on the reefs. From those who remained, a figure emerged who had hitherto been in the background, a clerical, quiet person who now took charge of the survivors. This soft-spoken, charming, cultured man now turned into a tyrant infinitely more cruel and dangerous than the sea and the reefs from which these hapless people thought they had escaped. Greta's imaginative portrayal of Cornelisz is brilliant. She shows how the desire to survive turns him into a monster and yet allows him moments of strange tenderness when in love. You feel almost sorry for him when his end is nigh. He has to my mind become The Dark Lover, the monster, who haunts so many women's books from Bronte to Mary Shelley.

DaDD is indeed a compelling tale and Greta has been fascinated by the story for twenty five years. Her writing skills are impeccable. One is drawn immediately into the scenario and carried on by the sheer power of her depiction, the characters she builds and the settings she creates. But it is an unrelentingly dark tale, so be warned, though a clever twist at the end helps to lift the story again and cheer the departing reader.

Swedish Terror: The second story I read after Die a Dry Death was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. A cold, Scandinavian atmosphere pervades this peculiar story set in Sweden (quite a contrast to my previous read set in the heat and dryness of the Australian islands.) TGwDT is a compelling, bang-up-to-date tale with real, flawed and interesting characters that one cares about. Lizbet Salander is a very modern heroine, brooding, surly, uncommunicative, angry and yet oddly tender and touching. Yet, despite her modernity, the tattoos, the rings in nose and lip, the punk hairstyles and clothes, she plays an ancient role and comes over as one of the vengeful Furies of Greek myth. She it is who really kicks ass, who turns the table deftly and brilliantly on those who offend her. She is, like any ancient goddess, in love with and protective of her hero.

But parts of the story bothered me, not because I'm sqeamish or insensate to the darkness of human nature, but bothered by the author's need to describe every horror in full, sickening detail. It left a sense like heavy meat, difficult to digest, lingering in one's mental stomach and at times quite sickening. Rape, incest, murder, animal cruelty and just about every other bestiality known to man is portrayed. Where does one go from there? These things obviously appeal as the books are now best sellers. Stieg Larsson is said to be making a point about the attitude of men to women (The original title in Swedish was Men Who Hate Women)the books are said to be a social indictment of our times. As if men's cruelty to women and the female desire for revenge was in any way new! It begs the question what sort of mind does the writer have that he or she can want to describe such horrors in detail? At the same time what sort of psyche do we all have that we wish to dive into such dark depths?

There comes a point when one must be satiated, deadened by it and will the tide then turn towards brighter, lighter, more uplifting works of fiction?

You need a strong stomach for both of these stories. But I feel they are worth reading for their power and brilliant characterisations.

Time Travelling

2010-07-07T02:02:00.000-07:00

The film Time Traveller's Wife was a suprisingly good one. It managed to encapsulate a truly original, clever and suprisingly romantic story very well. However, I have to confess that in this instance the film was far more enjoyable than the book.

Not that the writing of the novel isn't superb. Audrey Niffennegger has some truly beautiful scenes and phrases and the dialogue and characters are very real. Chapters can end beautifully like this...

'She wrote me a poem', Clare says again in wonder. Tears are streaking down her cheeks. I put my arms around her and she's back, my wife, Clare, safe and sound, on the shore at last after the shipwreck, weeping like a little girl whose mother is waving to her from the deck of the foundering boat.'

It's just that it is far too long drawn out and over detailed. Every person is described in full, every little scene played out and most of the happenings are simply commonplace and unexciting explorations of family life. I appreciate that the attempted normality of the lives of the two main characters, Clare and Henry, contrasts with Henry DeTamble's strange affliction that causes him to travel back and forth in time, split into two people so that he is able to visit himself as a young boy, and other extraordinary happenings. In some respects it expresses how little we know and understand about people who we imagine we know intimately well. This is all brilliantly handled and at first one is enthralled and captured by the plot. But I'm half way through the book and now really tired of Henry's excursions back and forth, beginning to skip through chunks of words, wondering where it's all going, if it's going to get anywhere at all and if I care anymore.

Audrey, darling, we've got the idea of what happens when Henry suddenly leaves one dimension...and his clothes... behind him. You don't have to have scene after scene after scene...

How come editors shriek at one for two words of over-description and nobody made this writer delete some of her scenes and chapters to make this a far more readable story? Don't get me wrong. I love long stories. As a child I read War and Peace in two days. Try Edward Rutherford's amazing works like London, Russia, Sarum and so on. They are riveting from start to finish and truly satisfying. TTW is like having a delicious and enjoyable cake which is then served up at every meal till one is sick to death of the taste of it.
It strives to be spiritual and poignant and indeed, many scenes are just that; much sense is spoken, many deep questions and avenues explored and I know I shan't forget the essence of this story.

In the end, we all look for different things in a book. My daughter found The Time Traveller's Wife 'entrancing'. So that's a fair enough comment.

Beginnings and Endings; which are best?

2010-06-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

I have just read a stunning book called Cathedral Street by L J Hippler. Larry is a writer of the first magnitude and like all good books, it took me a while to get into it. This was partly due to the fact that the story is set in Baltimore, USA and being a Brit,I need a little while to adjust to the different speech patterns, attitudes and thoughts of the main characters. However, the triumph of a good author is that one warms to the flawed,imperfect but very real people he creates and L J Hippler is a master of such characterisation. By the time I reached the last page with its poignant and tender ending I was immersed in and felt a part of the unhappy family whose father had bullied and browbeaten them all mercilessly. He was a truly horrible character and it was fascinating to see how his sons all went their separate and very different ways in order to try and escape the crippling influence of their past and where their efforts at escaping led them. The past, alas, can never be escaped however hard we try. It leaves its mark for good or ill.

I never give up a book until I'm at least half way through because I have so often found that a difficult start can often be a prelude to something that evolves and eventually grips one. A good ending is better in my opinion than a good start because it is the ending we are left with ultimately and that seems to round off a story whereas the start is forgotten. There are plenty of famous opening lines, it's true but they are few enough.

Too many writers nowadays feel they have to begin a story with something nasty and violent like Dan Brown's entries into most of his books; entries into a vicious, violent world that sweeps one relentlessly along, mesmerised and horrified by the author's imagination. But at least Dan Brown keeps one involved to the end. Whereas so many writers start with a marvellous few chapters that promise a lot (in order to catch an agent's eye) and then peter off into a dull, convuluted and often improbable story not worth printing in Woman's Own.

I always say that a book should be like good sex...a long, slow, exploring start that warms up to a glorious climax.

Well, try Cathedral Street, it does just that.

Entertaining Thoughts

2010-06-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

It's rather fun writing a blog that no one in the world reads but myself. I can write it as I want and not have to be massively funny, clever, modern, cranky, sexy or any other such thing. Today I want to muse upon getting older.

When I was young I considered myself serious, wise and wrote poems that meant something, that were full of deep,spiritual and lyrical thoughts. I loved to rhyme, to have a rhythm to the poetry so that it would sing like a bird. So much modern poetry tends to be disjointed and reads like prose chopped up into meaningless sections. That's not my style, no. Just like a good deal of of modern art and music, it appears pointless, sometimes contrived and even sham; an insult to rationality and good taste.

Now I'm older and I'm not so wise,serious or even sensible and this troubles me. What is more, I find I can't read heavy classical literature as I used to do because, having immersed myself this last few years in crime novels again (after thirty years of reading only non-fiction) now many classical novels seem slow, over-written and hard work. Lately I attempted Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. I loved this when young but couldn't rouse any interest or empathise with the characters and plot at all. Thank goodness I read most of these classics when a teenager.

Sadly, I confess I've become used to a faster pace and less description. Not that I'm an advocate of the 'no description and just dialogue' school. Description is the setting for the jewel of the characters and the plot. It creates and maintains the atmosphere - though too much un-neccesary description can be like wading through treacle. In my own stories I try to maintain some sort of balance between keeping the plot going and creating atmosphere. Not sure if I succeed or not - but I do battle against the modern yearning for what I call the 'Dan Brown pace' which hurtles along from chapter to chapter at breakneck speed, leaving one literally exhausted at the end. The sort of plot where the characters are simply made of cardboard, mere foils for the story.

The point is, I now can't read anything that taxes the 'leetle grey cells' anymore. My mother went the self-same road and when younger I was very critical of her change of taste from Nietzche to Barbara Taylor Bradford.
'I don't want to be educated anymore', she told me. 'I just want to be entertained.'

I understand what she meant now. It's as if one reaches a point in life when one has 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt'...as they say. One has experienced life pretty fully, desire is ebbing and there's no real wish to be told anything by anyone anymore. It's a different sort of wisdom, a leave-taking wisdom. One simply wants to be entertained. As long as it's good quality entertainment, of course. Hand me Patrica Highsmith's 'Strangers on a Train'. Now that's high class entertainment.

All in allthough, this trend toward a shallower form of reading is, I now realise symptomatic of the fact that it began to occur since I started using the computer in the 90's and since my daughter began to introduce me to modern writing in an attempt to make my writings more 'commerical'. Before that I would never touch a modern novel and yes, my style was, probably still is, 'old-fashioned'.

There is a brilliant article on the Telegraph about it brought to my attention by fellow-author M M Bennetts (May 1812). Here is a brief quote from that article.

And as for the claim that new media is turning us into shallow multi-taskers, here are some wise words from the 18th century and the fourth Earl of Chesterfield. "There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once," he said, "but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7858189/Twitter-ye-not.html

Lucy Maud

2010-05-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

This post arrives from lovely Prince Edward Island in Canada. This was where the authoress, Lucy Maud Montgomery, was born and grew up. The Gentle Island they call it and it truly is. The countryside is, as Lucy Maud put it in her journals, all ruby, emerald and sapphire...the most stunning colours of earth, sea and sky. The pace of life is still slow, courteous, friendly and feeling. Her most famous work is, of course, Anne of Green Gables. And when one is on PEI it is a must to do the Anne pilgrimage to her varied locations and museums. One must walk along leafy Lovers Lane with it's forget-me-nots blooming in the hedges, see the dancing, glittering sunshine on the Lake of Shining Waters and hear the sinister soughing of the wind in the firs of the Haunted Wood.

I have, as it happens, just been introduced to these stories by my daughter who loved them in her young days. I never knew of them sadly. Reading them now is a pleasure but I found that what was lacking is that sense of mystical absorption into the character and the author who wrote the books that one experiences as child. Thus, fascinated as I was by the personality and character of Lucy Maud, who wrote with such immense feeling and reverence about her beloved island, I could not feel that thrill I had when visiting the homes of Louisa Alcott or Mary Webb. The feeling of 'Wow, the writer actually sat here and wrote, lay in this bed, ate from these plates!' It just didn't happen. I felt detached though interested.

Still my daughter thoroughly enjoyed it all and that's the main thing. It's a shame really as I know that Lucy Maud and I would truly have been 'kindred spirits.'

Do we really want a cosy Golden Age?

2010-04-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

A writer friend sent me a list of great thinkers today and asks:

Would any of these people, world's greatest thinkers, ever have voted Tory or UKIP or BNP?

And he gives an impressive list of great men and women ranging from Socrates to Jesus.

Thanks for this, Tony; these are all indeed great writers and thinkers. So I hate to be the Devil's advocate but the truth of life is that a man's written thoughts are often at odds with the way he behaves in reality. If you look closely into the lives of a good many of the people you have quoted, you will be amazed at the causes they espoused and the lives they led. The Greek philosophers for instance had some strange notions about slavery and what constituted it. Wordsworth believed at first in the French Revolution and look where those ideals led to. Christians have been troubled because Jesus said 'I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword.' Their idea of Christianity grew to mean something full of sweetness and light,a nice white-robed, meek man surrounded by lambs and children like some Victorian moralistic painting hung over a fireplace. I see this controversial statement as a metaphor for the sword of Truth cutting through all the set-in-stone, outdated, prevailing ideas of His own times.

But what is the Truth? Times, attitudes, ideas, ideals change. Thus these changing mores cannot be Truth which is something known deep in the heart of every being. And the people you quote tried hard to express this understanding of the Truth from a side of themselves which was noble of purpose. Thank God for such nobleness within our turgid natures! Human beings are complex and dual, God and the Devil rages in us all. We say one thing, fear and self preservation makes us say or live another. A marvellous example is Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' where the hero, incapable of incorporating his own dark side, projects his wickedness, his shadow side upon the picture in the attic. And then we have R.L. Stevenson's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. So great was the problem of living with his bestial nature, Dr. Jekll splits into two beings that seem to know nothing of each other's existence. Is that not true of us all? We think we are the good thing and all the 'badness' is out there.
Speaking of political parties, MP's have of late been castigated for their expense fiddles,lies and love affairs. Yet these men began with ideals too and hoped to live by them if they could. So what went wrong? What took over? Where were the ideals compromised or lost? And...are they actually any different to the rest of us?

The world is made up from opposites and the clash of these opposing ideas and forces, even when they become full scale wars, make things change and happen, make consciousness move and grow. Peace can bring stagnation like a pond that is never ruffled by the wind or moved by the flow of water. Tories, Labour, Liberals, UKIP, BNP, Green Party...all of these apparently different ways of looking at our little modern world... simply form a part of these clashes and make peopel aware, make them think a bit, see things from another viewpoint which sharpens up their own responses.

The Sword of Truth is still needed to cut through it all some day. Time for us all to look within and sort out how much of our own fears and loathings we project upon 'the other side'.

Everyone seems to have an Opinion on Life, Love and Art

2010-03-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

And why are we all so different in our opinions? One's man's meat is another man's poison ...so very true. Well, any vegan will tell you that. But when it comes to Life, Love and Art, we all act like vegans versus meat-eaters! We all have strong inclinatiosn and tastes, natures and opinions but for some strange reason, hate every elses and condsider our own take the only opinion worth knowing!.

Frankly I hate modern art. I don't understand crumpled beds and cows in formaldehyde and rubbish stuck together and I don't want to. Chiarascuro trees and seascapes and too many Madonnas with plump Christ babies can also be boring after about the 100th one. (Much as I loved Venice...there were too many Madonnas) I love paintings that make one stop and think,in which layers of meaning can be seen and felt. They need to have passion as well as beauty of detail, but even stark ugliness can be meaningful if it tells a story. The haunting themes of Goya's black paintings in the Prado, Madrid are an example. They express the artist's fear of madness and are deeply moving and haunting.

I am now going to be told how ignorant I am by hundred's of Tracy Emin afficionados. So be it. I've plenty to say in return - but in the end it is just their taste, their opinion versus mine. Who is to say which one of us is wrong? No one. Who actually lays the rules. No one and everyone. We have our own personal rules and I've outlined some of mine. I love colour, movement, a story, beautiful women and men, myths. mediaeval themes as well as classical. That's why I love the Pre-Raphaelite painters so much and I let my characters express all these personal feelings in The Crimson Bed. Some will say I have no taste at all because I love such vivid, colourful story-telling. Yet these pictures are popular, enduring, deeply loved by many men and women who have similiar imaginations to my own.

BTW, I have just read an article by Richard Dorwent written for The Telegraph 29th June 2009 on John Waterhouse for whom he has little regard it seems. He sees Waterhouse as merely pretty and lacking in the passion of the great Pre-Raphaelite masters. And it's true that Waterhouse was not a true Pre-Raph. being born while they were just in the throes of their own artistic beginnings. To some extent, I agree with this viewpoint of Dorwent's, but at the same time, I love Waterhouse because his pictures, while lacking passion perhaps, have a quality of movement and flow and femininity that has made them some of the most appealing images of the day. I chose one of his paintings The Crystal Ball for my book cover because I love the richness of colour and the thoughtful stillness of the pose.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

2010-03-06T11:38:00.000-08:00

Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer?

Writing is considered to be a solitary pursuit and so it is while one is in the throes of creation. But it is no more solitary than any other creative work such as painting, sculpting, embroidering and so on. Anything that requires concentration, thought and effort has to be solitary because in that moment one is totally centred upon the work in hand and all else must be shut out both literally and metaphorically. In fact through writing books, I have made dozens of amazing and wonderful friends and aquaintances who have kept in touch with me for many years. Many live abroad and I will be meeting up with a fellow author in the States later on this year after many, many exchanges of e-mails and cards and gifts. This lady has helped me with her support, belief in me and useful criticsm.

However, it has to be said that most writers are reclusive at heart.
We love to sit in a study, stare out of the window and dream and then plot and let characters begin to take shape on the page. Some like to work out their plots in full detail. I cannot do this and if I do it never works. The moment I start to write the characters take over and began to interact, talk amongst themselves. I'm just the hands on the keyboard, they exist in their own right. Are they people who live within me, my own sub-personalities? They must be. Where else would they come from but within my own psyche?

It makes me understand something, very, very dimly of what the Bible must mean when it says that the Creator made Mankind in his own image, from His own substance. Creative people are pulling forth from themselves and fashioning from their own clay.

The time draws near for my book launch at Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court London. Lots of wonderful people have promised to come along for a glass of wine and a nibble and will, I hope, buy a book or two or three. Even if they slink away without so doing, it will be such a pleasure to have gathered them all together to discuss books and writing and other joyful pursuits.

Let's all start over again!

2010-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

January the First as New Year's Day is a man-made matter. In the olden days when men lived by the natural clock the new beginnings were at O degrees of Aries on the 21st March, the Spring Equinox. That's when the northern hemisphere, the world where the majority of people then lived, began to wake from its long winter sleep and 'young men's fancy turned to thoughts of love.' Now a young man's fancy is always on thought of love; there's no longer the need to endure the coldness of unheated rooms to chill passion till the warmer weather awakens it.

Our Western concept of New Year's Day has taken over. My son, who is at present in Nanchang, tells me that even the Chinese have a day off for it probably because there's no one in the Western Hemisphere sober enough to trade with. However, it's a good concept. We need a boundary line to cross in life each year. We need, like Janus, the old Roman god of the doorways, gates, ends and beginnings, to be able to look backwards with one face and forwards with the other. This time of reflection, this standing on the threshold of every year is good for us. We can look over past mistakes and hope, promise never to let ourselves do anything so foolish again. Each year we may well look back and realise to our dismay that we have committed the self-same errors in different forms - but it doesn't matter. We have to keep looking, seeing, understanding, trying. And each year the mistakes do lessen a little.

It 's a bit like Catholic confession. We sin, we repent, we confess, we try hard and then sin again. It's the constant turning of the wheel and part of the human condition. We always wish for a happy new year and some years are downright awful and some are landmarks of important and glad happenings that have turned our lives around. But there is never a year that is totally bad or totally good. Always something to be rescued, some moment of joy, beauty, shared love, a special holiday, a meaningful achievement however small.

A good many people are nursing hangovers on New Year's Day. Shame on them. It's a time to be sober, quiet, still within oneself and reflective. You can be drunk all the rest of the year but this day of all days should be one for thinking things through, making plans for new ventures, assessing all that life is, has become, can still be....

Oh, pass me the gin and tonic! It's all too depressing remembering the idotic things I've done in this past year. Will I never learn?

All the same, 2010 is going to be my year. Just watch. I've made up my mind. Um-hmm.

Dark Nights and Delicious Books

2009-11-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

Dark wintry nights are closing in. It should be an ideal time in which to read good books. No distractions from the window of sunshine on the Malvern Hills beckoning me out for an evening walk. No prospect of sitting out in the garden and watching the birds and the bees. Now it's just darkness out there and glittering little orange lights on the hills to indicate the fact that everyone is tucked up indoors. Probably on FaceBook or Twitter.

So to enjoy these dark nights with all this time to read, I took myself to London and the Diiarts launch of four fabulous new authors. Diiarts,or Dragon International Independent Arts is a new imprint and one to watch as they may in time turn to varied publications besides books,perhaps music, art and so forth. Take a look at their website www.diiarts.com. The launch was held at a most interesting venue, the London Canal Museum, near King's Cross Station. I hadn't even known of the existence of this place till now and will have to return at a quieter time to see its wonders. There were barges, a replica horse (stuffed, drugged?) and all the cheerfully painted accouterments of canal life in the olden days.
There was little time to explore all this as,with wine flowing nicely,there were lots of friendly familiar faces from the Harper Collins site Authonomy to talk with and to enthuse over everything. Some had come all the way from the States and New Zealand and were making a holiday of it, such is the enthusiasm for this new imprint. It's talented authors are like good,familiar friends, their books our books, their words our words as we have all helped one another to shape our creations with criticism, praise and even a few sibling-like quarrels and boozy Friday night flirtations. Authonomy is where we met and where the concept of Diiarts was conceived. So some good came from all our varied authorial nit-picking labours! I came home armed with a couple of tomes and am getting well stuck now into May 1812 by M M Bennetts. That'll keep me going right through the Napoleonic wars.

But somewhere I'll have to stop all this blogging and reading and Facebooking and emailing and ..yes, deal with the first proofs of The Crimson Bed. I'm a bit scared. Will I still like this novel? Of course, it's brilliant. Isn't it? Oh well, off I go to do some work on it and lay my intriguing book aside for a bit.

BTW if you want to hear my podcast about the book...where I sound as articulate as a footballer's wife or a lead guitarist of the 1960's... try this site! The actress Tessa Nicholson (who recently appeared in the first episode of BBCI's 'Garrow's Law')reads extracts from the book beautifully in contrast to my sad mumblings!

http://lorettaproctor.shortstoryradio.com/

No Time to Stand and Stare?

2009-11-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

There's a real problem these days. It's called Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Skype, mobile phones and email. All these are fine and fun and useful in their way but they take up time from actually living life. You see apparently demented people walking along a city street jabbering and gesticulating as if to themselves. They don't look around to see that it's a beautiful sunny day, skies are actually blue for once, the breeze is blowing autumn leaves along the pavement, the birds are singing in the trees that shed said leaves . . . they don't observe with interest and amusement the sight and sound of the many faces and interesting characters they pass on their way around the busy shopping malls, or take time to wander thoughtfully along the riverside of some fine old town like Worcester. Basically they don't even notice they're alive half the time. Talk-talk. That's their life. And the talk is all nonsense most of the time. Sad.

I'm just as guilty as everyone of indulging in all this displacement activity though.

In an Oxfam shop the other day I came across a 1930's blue hardcover reprint of Wilkie Collins masterpiece 'Woman in White' and a mere snip at £3.00. I took it to the girl at the counter who waxed lyrical for ages. 'It's a wonderful book, ' she said,' I couldn't put it down, read it right through from start to finish and no time to eat or anything. You'll love it, it's well worth the money, a lovely book.'

I paid for it and agreed with her that it was in great condition and said that though I had read 'Moonstone' I'd never read 'Woman in White.'

'Oh, my goodness. You won't regret it. It's a lovely book, ' she said,' I couldn't put it down . . . I really couldn't put it down.' . . . I escaped while she was still rhapsodizing.

However, I had to agree with her. It's a long, detailed book and took even a fast reader like myself some days to get through. It is one of those stories that lingers in the back of your mind and impinges on your daily activities, making you hurry your tasks till, like some delicious confectionery you are allowed to dip in, enjoy and savour the moment of indulgence.

The characters are unforgettable, fascinating and vivid. The atmosphere is enthralling from the start as the fearful, agitated 'woman in white' glides into Walter Hartright's life, arousing his pity and protectiveness.

The beauty of a long, detailed book such as this is that the characters have time to develop. They impinge on the mind and stay with one forever because one really gets to know them with all their little quirks and foibles. What could be more unforgettable than the vision of the incredible Count Fosco sitting with his little canaries, teaching them to hop from one fat finger to another and then bidding them to sing when they reach the top of the 'ladder' made by his hand?

There is no lack of action in this story though it's not of the manic, helter-skelter kind of modern writers such as Dan Brown where characters are of little importance except as vague vehicles of the frantic activity and death dodging dangers of the plot. Locations if anything seem more important than people in such a tale and the wierder the locations the better.

There is also time to be philosophical in a long, detailed story. But where do philosophies fit in any more in the fluttering, ephemeral, chattering, meaningless world of twitter, facebook, i-pods?

Case of the Disappearing Lorri

2009-10-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Due to losing a variety of hard drives, new computers, time spent writing, reading, travelling, playing...well, any old excuse really...I lost/forgot my blogspot and need to do a little catching up.
Research is half the fun when it comes to writing a book and my study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti has led me into some wonderful places. At the Ashmolean I was able to look at some of his work, read Lizzie Siddal's scraps of poetry and study her delicate, thoughtful drawings and paintings. At the Bodleian, I immersed myself in Holman Hunt's and John Ruskin's correspondence as well as many other intriguing Victorian letters and diaries. It's dipping into another world. And a world that is nothing like the recent BBC effort on the Pre-Raphaelites which showed them as boozing, womanizing fools. As some wit at the Pre-Raphaelite Society put it, the series should have been called 'carry on bonking up the easel'.

Poor Rossetti would have turned in his grave. He was hyper-sensitive to a degree and hated any criticism. In fact it was due to his long running altercation with a critic called Thomas Maitland (his real name was Robert Buchanan and he had attacked Rossetti before) who wrote a damning piece about him called 'The Fleshly School of Poetry'. In this lengthy, vitriolic, below the belt piece of journalism, Buchanan accused Rossetti, Swinburne and William Morris and their poetry as 'the mere fiddledeedeeing of empty heads and hollow hearts.'
Rossetti, nerves already strained by illness and tragic events,began to fall apart at this attack. Sadly, rather than ignore the matter and forget it, he was roused to such rage and vengefulness that he attacked Maitland back with a riposte entitled 'The Stealthy School of Criticism.'

Never a good idea. Eventually the whole thing blew out of proportion in Rossetti's mind and led to his increased drinking, sleeplessness and chloral taking. Yet in his youth he was a serious man, never drank at all, was scholarly and intellectual. He was not a womaniser by any means. His two great and idealised loves, Lizzie Siddal and Jane Morris, were by no means prostitutes that he or his friends had picked up from the streets nor were ever treated as such. It is so sad that modern writers feel they can twist a dead person's reputation to suit their own dramatic purposes and the expectations, attiudes and prurient curiosity of the time. But I suppose there's nothing new in that. It's just sad.

Photo of D.G. Rossetti

The Price of Fame

2006-09-10T03:22:00.000-07:00

Lately, as I send my little novel out into the big wide world, looking for a home, I have debated what it means to be creative. And about Fame and what a strange, elusive, nonsensical thing it is.
Sitting reading Sunday papers in bed today, I read an article on David Hockney, the artist, and how he was doing this mind-bogglingly inventive thing of painting outdoors. His work now looks very Van Gogh but nothing like as brilliant. Basically any teenager could have painted these Hockney scenes. Yet he is famous and these pictures will sell for lots and lots of money. Van Gogh? Well poor old Victor died mad, died young, died penniless and lonely. He was in the wrong era. By the time of his death he was just beginning to be appreciated and understood. Now he's worth millions but what good was that to him when he was never to know that his pictures would be admired, loved and iconic?...Sunflowers say?. Everyone knows his Sunflowers.

I thought too of Rossetti whose life I am still studying for my work The Crimson Bed. He insisted on painting his own way, refused to have public exhibitions, never made it as an RA and never wanted to either. Millias, however (the original founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood along with Holman Hunt) lost his original and individual spark, became popular, famous, met the Queen, became an RA and was knighted. Who thinks much of his pictures today? Would anyone want Bubbles and Cherry Ripe over their mantelpiece anymore? But Rossetti still fascinates us with his senusous, dramatic pictures of beautiful women and intricate, symbolic, archaic pictures of mediaval times. He had something that was oddly timeless.

Poor Rossetti also died young and penniless from drink and drugs which he took to help cure his sleeplessness and general state of nervous paranoia. Millais died in comfort.
Hmmm....which would I go for?

If one truly aims for Fame, then you want it in this lifetime and want to know about it. However, if Fame refuses to touch you with a bargepole, it would be nice to dream that one's manuscripts might be discovered in a cupboard someday and become famous posthumously.
Dream on.

picture: The Wedding of St. George and Princess Sabra by D.G.Rossetti

The Demons within

2006-08-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

In all my writings I seem to find myself exploring the tremendous force called creativity. It is an energy present in all things.

In Nature, of course, it comes forth physically, urgently, in order to keep the species going. In human beings it is equally present in this physical manner but we are unique in having another form of creativity which arises from the soul and spirit, an inner creating of brain children. We, like Zeus, can produce our creations from our heads, fully clothes and armed like his daughter Athena. And it is a most impelling urge that can actuallly eat one up from within. It partakes of the gods and the Gods have a way of taking us human beings up and working through us in however small a manner . . . and once they decide to take us up, we are done for!

Creating is inspiration, something we take in . . . 'inspire' meaning breathing in. It comes in with our first breath. It never leaves those who are destined to be impelled by its driving force; such are obliged to write, paint, sing, act till they are exhausted. We see this in the Hans Andersen's story of The Red Shoes which, once put on, could not be taken off and made the little girl dance on and on till she dropped dead of exhaustion.

Creative types will recognise this strange ailment and its effects! Take Julie Andrews. She has been singing since she was a very small girl and has always inisted on perfection, singing right into her old age and until a throat operation made it no longer possible to sing as she once did. She probably feels as if she has no purpose in life any more.

I assure you it can be a demon and may well be why so many actors, artists, writers and poets die young or turn to drink and drugs. These demons have to be exorcised somehow, the mind has to stop its maddening flow of words and images . . .

Feel another story coming up. Hang on let me get some paper . . .

Nothing puts of a determined writer!

2006-07-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

It has been so hot. Is this England we ask ourselves as we sit outside cafes sipping lattes and watching the sun dancing and shimmering on the pavements? The garden looks as if it has gone in for scorched earth policy. Yet amazingly flowers still bloom and from somewhere the trees manage to find water and look green. Nature's resistance and adaptability never ceases to amaze me. But how much can it take of this drought? I would hate it if our lovely green British countryside was to be no more and we turned into a barren landscape like Andalusia.
Suprisingly the one thing I can do in the heat is write. It is a sitting still occupation plus an absorbing one. So I pull down the blind, put on the fan and leave the heat behind while I cry and laugh and get excited with my hero and heroine. And, folks, I have finished it! (see last blog) The Crimson Bed (present working title) is all done and now being revised. So let's hope some agent feels it's the best thing ever to fall onto his/her doormat.
It is a tale set in Victorian London of 1853-62 and the story intertwines the fortunes of Gabriel Dante Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal with Frederick and Eleanor Thorpe (my hero and heroine) whose romances are contrasted with one another and yet have strangely similiar echoes. Lots of drama, passion, suspense.

So dear agent, please enjoy!

The picture shows Rossetti's drawing called How They Met Themselves. The doppelganger is a presage of death ... an odd thing to draw at such a time. It has always fascinated me and I personally see it more as an alchemical 'quaternio' a meeting with one's Higher Self or with one's Shadow self.

Crime and Romance

2006-07-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks. I’ve been a busy girl this month. Lots going on and the latest scorching weather is just melting me into a soggy pool and turning my brain to mush. I can’t move an inch without breaking into a sweat so have been sitting on my chair with a fan going and reading Agatha Christie novels.

I ought to mention going to London a short while ago for the CWA Golden Daggers Awards. My daughter Thalia and I went together hoping to see a mutual friend, Laura Wilson, win the big prize. Laura was shortlisted amongst the final six which is an achievement in itself. Her book A Thousand Lies is a stunner.

I met Laura some years ago when she was about to go to University. She was a cheeky, chatty, punky young lass with hair standing on end but now . . . she is a calm, cool blonde, elegant and utterly beautiful. Sadly, she didn’t win the prize and I totally forget who did as I was so cross about it. It would have been a nice £20.000 for Laura!
Then off to the Romantic Novelist Conference at Penrith in Cumbria, a glorious location. This was my first conference and I thoroughly enjoyed it, picked up lots of tips and hints and expertise from the speakers. The RNA is well known for its friendliness, the help members give one another and general air of comradeship rather than belligerent competition. But then a Romantic Novelist must surely be ruled by Venus, Goddess of Love so you’re generally going to find a co-operative and helpful bunch under her rule!

And at 12. noon on Monday 17th July I finished the first draft of The Crimson Bed my latest novel. Always a sublime moment of birth and an auspicious time at noon when the Sun is at its zenith. I feel like a Mum who has just given birth and, as with all births, now comes the real hard work! Glaring discrepancies already stare at me and so off I go to sort them all out before some cruel editor swoops upon them.

Crime and Romance are strange partners and the bookshop that has both used to be Murder One in Charing Cross Rd. London, now sadly closed. But there's always Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court, London with their signed first editions!

A Strange World: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

2006-06-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

So this is the adult version of Harry Potter. I don’t think so.
It is a unique work, bordering on genius. And like all works of genius neither easy to read nor comfortable to understand. It reminds me of Munch’s painting The Scream or James Joyce’s book Ulysses. These are iconic works; they are unique, make a statement and are brilliant but who would ever want The Scream facing him on his or her sitting-room wall or feel a desire to keep re-reading Ulysses?
JS and Mr. N is a marvellous work but not pleasurable...at least not for me. I skipped a lot of it as it was far too wordy and I am surprised Ms Suzanne Clarke was able to get away with it for a first novel. I think she floored everyone with the sheer volume of her ramblings.

It is such a Neptunian tale; mists, faeries, shape-changing, magic, other-worlds…it is a labyrinth with all its mazes and twists and turns and paths that lead to nowhere until one stumbles at last on the path that takes one to the dark central figure, the Raven King, who might well be the Minotaur, who knows? I feel I understand the story of the Minotaur far more since reading this book. The Raven King is also a very Arthurian figure too…also Saturn, who is said to be the King of these Isles.
The Raven or Crow is a bird associated since ancient times with the god Saturn. Saturn is embodied too in the element of fear and anxiety that underlies the tale and in the constant wintry landscapes, the snow, the grey mists, the utter dreariness. It is the most colourless story I have ever read and I have here a picture of a landscape that just suits it.

This grey world seems to be the world of borderline consciousness in which one sees strange visions and knows things that are not known in the sharpness of daylight. It is twilight, dawn, the brief moment when all is still and nothing stirs, not a leaf or a branch. We are told that it is auspicious to meditate in this time of utter stillness.

However a book isn’t just written as entertainment. A really brilliant book should be saying something or leaving one altered in some way. I know that I shall always recall this book and it will not be one of those that we read and then forget in a week or two. It isn’t perfect. It really should have been cut down and many of the elaborate footnotes left out. A few brief footnotes would indeed have given the desired illusion of reading an old tome but not so many. At times there is a little too much indebtedness to the speech in Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte or Henry Fielding. But fair enough, the sense of the Georgian period is there without intruding too much. I think it is a work of true magnitude and will become a classic. It is certainly a challenge to Philip Pullman’s work and perhaps in many ways better.

Best Way to be Cool

2006-06-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

In hot weather like this what is the best thing to do? Go swimming, lie in a cold bath? No, go to a lovely, cool, old library building. Okay, I know you think this sounds mad but truly, it was the coolest place to be on Thursday.
I rose early, caught the train to Oxford. It's a lovely journey from Malvern and the hedges were full of dog rose and the railway banks white with ox-eye daisies. Once in Oxford I went to the Bodleian and wrestled with admission procedures. Somehow I managed to get my admission form all wrong (who would have thought I was once a civil servant?) but the lady at the desk was very helpful and understanding. Maybe she realised I would have burst into tears if she hadn’t let me go through on a mere technicality as I had ordered lots of marvellous papers in advance which I was longing to look at.
I wasn’t disappointed either. After depositing my bags, I took myself off to the Modern Papers Reading room (pencils only) and was received by a lovely young man called Paul who was on duty that day. He was so helpful and I needed help as I have never been a graduate or student at Oxford and they do have some rather strange ways of cataloguing their stuff. The collections of letters were well wrapped in large grey boxes and I very tenderly and carefully removed them and laid them out. Then I sat in the lovely cool room at my desk and was lost in a world of Victorian painters till lunchtime.
Reading the letters of people like Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Ned Burne Jones is a marvellous experience. Simply to read them in a book (though easier to understand as most of the writing is diabolical, often criss-crossing and weaving all over the pages) is not the same as actually seeing their script, getting a feel of their character from the way they write, the way they space out their letters and how they express themselves. The real letters are filled with the mana of the writer and it made me feel so strange to hold in my hand these epistles from Dante Gabriel himself and see his dark, expressive face in my mind’s eye, feel the movement of the pen as he wrote in large, rapid, bold hand, stretching now and them to the inkpot to replenish the ink.
I look forward to my next visit and to losing myself yet again in this world long gone and yet still so haunting and atmospheric.

Writing about Ghosts

2006-05-31T06:20:00.000-07:00

Writing books is a strange thing to do. Inventing worlds of one’s own to live in. My very first novel at the age of 16 was called My Little World and that happened to be in Camden Town for some reason. Maybe because a lot of Greek people lived there and one of my characters was a Greek girl. Maybe because I'm half-Greek myself . Some people live in very strange worlds if their books are anything to go by. Don’t tell me anyone invents the characters from thin air or mere observation of others. That may play a part but then one has to ask…what is it about a particular person that intrigues, interests, captures your imagination? Is it not a resonance with something in yourself? These people reside inside the psyche and are like voices or like ghostly presences that float around in the mind all one’s life. Writing is actually a form of exorcism…the ghosts have to be given life and form, they have to speak out.

I once went to a past life workshop run by a Jungian therapist called Roger Woolger.
(see http://www.rogerwoolger.com This took place at Runnings Park, a beautiful venue that once existed in West Malvern. It was my very first visit to Malvern and I fell in love with the hills and the quaint Victorian town, once a healing spa, still famed for its pure springs and waters. Little did I know I would come to live here one day but I suppose deep down the pull began at that very first view of the ancient Malverns from the train. The sight of them actually made me weep with some sort of soul yearning. It seemed the only place to be at peace.
Now I look out from my window and see them every day. They never fail to soothe my spirit.

At the past life workshop, I encountered a lot of strange people, some inside my own soul, some around me in physical forms. I do believe in reincarnation but to this day don’t know if what I experienced so deeply was memories of past lives or bits of my psyche telling their story. Writing is just like this. One writes almost in a trance state sometimes and the characters begin to speak. They know exactly what to say to one another and where they are going. The conscious "I " hasn’t a clue half the time. The plots take their own twists and turns and refuse to follow any pre-ordained notions of what is going to happen.
I still keep re-writing My Little World and it changes plot every time. It’s all summed up in my favourite quote from Ignazio Silone

‘ I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book…that one book every writer carries within him…the image of his own soul’

If you are interested in writing tips take a look at Neil Whiteland’s blog. www.writing-a-book.blogspot.com

God or the Devil? .....His Dark Materials

2006-05-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Although I couldn’t put Northern Lights down, something about this trilogy was strangely annoying. Lyra lives up to her charismatic name as the constellation of The Harp that lures and enchants everything. Apparently Lyra, the harp, was the one given to Orpheus by the Sun God, Apollo. Orpheus was the one human being besides Psyche to be allowed down into the Hades, the Greek Underworld where the dead went and lived as ghosts. Pullman's young heroine, Lyra, unlike Orpheus, manages to return again and even to free the ghosts and allow them to escape their terrible limbo world. They become part of the conscious atoms and particles of the Universe. There’s some really deep stuff here.
The concept of the daemon was brilliant. I suspect most of us do intuit another person’s “animal” inner being. It’s a kind of gut feeling. Someone looks ‘horsey’, is a ‘pig’ or a ‘bear’, behaves like a ‘mouse’. But in Lyra’s world they are real, separate birds and animals who can talk with you and accompany you. How lovely a concept! We would never feel lonely if we could be in contact with this inner being, would we? I like to imagine mine sitting here with me now. I think my daemon is a Snowy Owl. I have pictures of Snowy Owls by the computer. The picture shows a strange dream I had once of a beautiful owl with one white wing and one black wing against a pitch black sky. It felt a very important dream then and now. Was this my daemon?

Pullman’s second volume, The Subtle Knife, was also enthralling. A knife that, like reason, cuts through everything and opens the mind to other worlds and ideas yet is broken and destroyed as soon as emotion and indecision take hold. Total concentration and one-pointedness are necessary to use the tool of the mind. This weapon belongs to thoughtful, clever Will, Lyra’s male counterpart. The story begins to get very adult and more complex now. It certainly isn’t childlike. But I really struggled with The Amber Spyglass, the last of the trilogy. It was sci-fi and weird, the ideas too complicated and confused and the peculiar entities Pullman invented just didn’t have the sense of reality and loveableness that Tolkien gave his imaginary beings. The Mulefa just never did it for me; they were too unlikely.

Pullman is the son of a vicar. No surprise there. Often the most anti-church people are. It’s called rebelling against authority and God the Father is, I suppose the supreme authority. And when Pullman banishes him forever, we end up with a Republic of Heaven. Hmmm…

It’s a great book for all its flaws. A brilliant concept and remains in my mind and still makes me puzzle and think about it as a truly great book should.

Lorri (www.lorettaproctor.co.uk)

Heavenly Vaults and wonderful Spaces

2006-05-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

I visited the British Library the other day to do some research on my next novel, The Crimson Bed. This is to be set in Victorian London with a Pre-Raphaelite background. So I spent a wonderful few hours reading the letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Jane Morris and Fanny Cornforth, two of his great friends and loves as well as the inspiration for many of his later pictures in oils of sensuous, lushly beautiful women. The British Library at Euston is a very modern, spacious building and well worth a visit for the exhibitions and the shop where great goodies are for sale for the book lover.
But oh, how I do miss the Round Room of the old Library that used to be at the very heart and centre of the British Museum at Bloomsbury! There was nothing to compare with the sensation of climbing up the steps of the Museum as if entering a great temple. Then passing through the milling, excited, noisy throng in the hallway and through the barriers and into a peaceful, quiet, spacious room that took one’s breath away. It was totally round, a glorious eggshell-blue in colour, and above one rose the high, gold-decorated dome like some heavenly vault. One sat in a leather chair at a leather covered desk with one’s precious books and the thought was always there…did Dickens sit here, or Karl Marx or any other great writer who has used this hallowed room? It made me think of my author acquaintance, Colin Wilson, who used to spend his time there as a penniless young man, sheltering from the elements and writing The Outsider, his famous book of the 1960’s which earned him the dubious title of “Angry Young Man”.
To be amongst these men and women was to be among the great and surely this would rub off even on me?
Speaking of heavenly vaults makes me remember a dear friend called Bill Bendon whom I knew in my early teens. He was then in his fifties, a real father figure whom I loved very much. One night I dreamt a vivid dream. He came to me in this dream and taking my hand we rose upwards into a beautiful golden vault full of light and beauty. I felt so incredibly happy there. A few days later a friend rang to say Bill had died.

John Grisham moments

2006-05-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

With nothing to read one day I thought I would tackle a John Grisham. My husband has collected the lot and loves them, so I thought... let’s see what the attraction is for him in these books? The first one I picked out was The Testament. I was immediately hooked.
The story is about a dying millionaire who alters his will at the last moment, cutting out all his greedy scheming wives and children and leaves it all to an unknown daughter. All that is known is that she is a missionary somewhere in the Brazilian jungle. A young, rather down-and-out lawyer, with a drink and depression problem is sent off to find her. He has nothing to lose and the dangerous mission could prove lucrative and save his bacon. After much detective work and many adventures, he finds the girl. Meeting her changes his life and alleviates his sense of despair.

It is a wonderful story with tense and dramatic descriptions of navigating the Brazilian waterways and of the tribes of the jungle with their Stone Age, almost meaningless, half-human existence. The character of the girl is truly inspiring and the whole story upbeat and spiritual, a tale of hope and love. I felt deeply moved by it. Grisham writes in simple, succinct prose and has no un-necessary sex or violence yet the story is by no means prissy. I was so impressed I went into a John Grisham binge and read virtually all the others. The general theme that runs throughout his body of work is about the individual little man or woman up against the impersonal, ponderous, manipulative machinery of finance, law, politics, drug companies etc. There is always a legal or court case involved and these can be skippable, but are necessary to give credibility. The pace of the books is good without being frantic, the characters believable and the tone moral without being patronising. Grisham is a committed Christian and this comes over in his stories which favour the underdog and have sympathy for the hard life that turns some people to crime. Go out and get a Grisham ...you won't be able to put it down.

Books and Other Things

2006-05-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is a book family. Everywhere I look I see books, big ones, small ones, old ones, new ones. Some quite arcane ones too full of mystery and magic. I had a Celtic spell some years back and King Arthur and Merlin smile at me from my Arthurian shelf. But since I moved here to the West Midlands, I am surrounded by magic and beauty and the longing for distant realms which I had in London has been assuaged. So I don't look at those books anymore. All the same, I won't part with them. They are filled with such beautiful pictures. Images and books should go together in my opinion. That's why modern books are such a bore. They have no pictures.
The Victorians got it right. That was a period of some of the loveliest book illustration there ever was.
Back in the late forties, my Dad, who had an eye for books himself and collected them avidly, bought me an illustrated Arabian Nights. I loved this book so much. It was a large one and the pictures were uncoloured etchings. I coloured some in myself and gazed and copied and dreamed with this book so much that the covers fell off. We were always on the move in my youth and eventually during one move or another the book was lost. (Or Ma threw it away, which is more like it) Now I really regret that I misused this beautiful Victorian book so badly. It's worth a bomb now. I saw it in an Antiquarian bookshop and had a hell of a shock.
But I loved it so much. And in the end what are books for but to give joy and pleasure and use? Not to sit unread on shelves surely?

If you want to read about my own book The Long Shadow and The Crimson Bed see www.lorettaproctor.co.uk