Instead, this small taste of Sir Christopher White’s 175000 word manuscript,
A Definitive History of England
(Complete with footnotes)
Chapter 25
Charles 1 1625-1649 (The Martyr)
The first Charles should have been a roaring success. He had jolly good taste, dressed as a gent should, looked corking on a horse, and had a suitably grand idea of who he was. He should have been a seriously romantic Monarch, but somehow loused it all up. Unfortunately, he had inherited his Dad’s groggy legs, and sadly also, a degree of that unworthy’s narrow-minded – we are loathe indeed to find ourselves obliged to use that expression for a King, and a King of England, too – almost suburban finickiness and indecisive lack of moral fibre. This last, he disguised with hauteur and considerable stubbornness.
Continuing with my introduction to Sir Christopher White and his works
The Baronet & friend
My conversation with the Baronet rambled all over the map, and I did not see fit to press for a chronological autobiography. His childhood, he writes about eloquently in his memoir-as-novel, Shadows In Between. I know that he has been married three tines and that he once drove an MG from London to Rome and slept under the stars every night on the Spanish Steps, until via a series of scarcely creditable coincidences, he landed his first teaching job.
Hello all my tomorrows… Oh dear. I’ve been posting vacation snaps again on Facebook instead of writing in my blog. Naughty. To make good, my first travel story for a while.
‘The past is a foreign country’, famously observed genteel English author LP Hartley, ‘they do things differently there’. Well, this is a postcard from the so-called ‘city of yesterday’. It’s a town called Oradea, in Transylvania. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you haven’t heard of it. (Oradea I mean, not Transylvania.) This small city in North Western Transylvania is a repository of faded grandeur, which just happens to be just my favourite kind – of grandeur that is. Though not as well known as other Transylvanian towns such as Braşov, or Sighişoara, it has a baroque and art nouveau splendour all its own and an historic timeline teeming with incident; from the inspiring to the tragic. For inspiring, look to its role as a centre of humanism and the Renaissance in Central Europe, and the university originally built here in that time; for tragic, try the burning down of Oradea Fortress in the Tartar-Mongolian invasion of 1241 – described in the famous poem Carmen Miserabile. Nine hundred years later and the city’s Jewish population were all but annihilated in WWII. The remaining Jewish population is miniscule; as evident in the decrepit state of the synagogue.
There is however a significant Hungarian population in Oradea, and you can recognise the language being spoken on the streets. You can recognise it that is, if you know what geese choking on foie gras sounds like looped backwards. Romanian of course, is a curious tongue with its own peculiar charm; sounding like Italian spoken with a thick Russian accent. (Is there any other kind?)
Meanwhile back here in Hungary, there are nationalists who believe Oradea should be within Hungarian borders, as it was before WWI, for example. Read More »
Well, it’s Discop this week in Budapest, which may or may not mean anything to you. According to Wikipedia, this was “originally founded in 1991 started as an audiovisual television content market for Eastern Europe”. It’s certainly grown since then, and now rivals even Mipcom, another TV market with a not particularly alluring sounding name, that takes place every year in Cannes. Anyway, as well as everything else that’s going on – especially in the Third Dimension – I have a historical drama series in the hunt at this festival. It’s called Valint, and it is based on the life and times of a real life Hungarian bard and brawler, named Balint Balassi. Specifically, a smart and enterprising young Producer named David Timar is taking it to market. Here’s a taste:
VALINT
Valint, the famous Warrior Poet of Renaissance era Transylvania, goes on a life-long quest for glory and true love on the frontier land between warring empires. Romance and mystery follow this 16th century James Bond…
Yes. It’s been a while, but then Time as we understand it is mostly an artificial construct. While we have in the last century or so arguably gained some understanding of both Matter and Space, it seems to me we still know rather too little about the other two legs of the table, which I take anyway to be Time …and Luck. (Prove me wrong if you can.)
My qualifications to comment on the Nature of Luck, we’ll have to discuss in another post – but while we’re still on the subject of Time, how do The Dark Ages grab you? Well, bear with me for it was only a few days ago I clambered out of my Time Machine from a stint in the Medieval Era. But I hope to be back soon. I refer of course to the 3DTV pilot The Medieval Trip, which I’ve been working on, off and on, since March.
Filmed on location in Hungary: quite possibly the most medieval country in the world, and I say that with no disrespect intended.
In The Medieval Trip, a very fine Hungarian bloke named Attila Muller is plunged back into a reconstructed Medieval Hungary where he has to find food and shelter, learn to fight and hunt and connive his way out of serfdom…
Ex-Romanian Dictator Ceauşescu Exhumed: Forensic scientists have exhumed what are believed to be the bodies of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena at the request of their children. Ceauşescu ruled Romania for 25 years with an iron first before being ousted and executed during the 1989 anti-communist revolt in which more than 1,000 people were killed. Some Romanians doubt that the Ceauşescus were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest.
Strange echoes of the legends surrounding Romania’s other famous tyrant Vlad Ţepeș AKA Dracula. It seems hard to believe there were any doubts about the Ceauşescus really being dead. They were hauled in front of TV cameras after being seized by an angry mob, and lined up against a wall to face a firing squad on Christmas day 1989.
The New European Environment – starring my brother Craig Young
An Emotional weather report
So, as usual after coffee and various salves I began my day with a check of the headlines and see Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called a snap election which she’ll probably win. Speaking of woman premieres, it seems Margaret Thatcher’s family are appalled by the idea of Meryl Streep playing Mrs T in a movie.
Speaking of …ecological disasters BP think they might have finally put a cap on the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But I see also an oil pipeline has exploded in China and is keeping 2000 firefighters busy, which sounds like a pretty big blaze to me. The phrase “It’s a wonder these kind of things don’t happen more often” is fast becoming redundant. We’re all going to have to be brave to make it in this scary new world. Meanwhile, the environmental update from the Hungarian capital is that it’s hot… How hot? Well, it was 85 degrees Fahrenheit last night at 11pm in Budapest and this evening it is, as I like to say in a voice like Sam Elliott’s, still “hotter than a snake’s hide in a wagon rut” now at 7pm CET.
And I’m sitting here in the living room of this rather suitable-for-one apartment, trying to write with the television on. Christ, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. CNN is the only English language channel I can get in my otherwise well equipped and well appointed gentleman’s quarterings in the 7th district, the oh-so boho old Jewish quarter of Budapest. Well, I can’t complain but sometimes I still do. I go to sleep every night in a bed fit for a Transylvanian Prince, in a heavy, antique furniture filled and airy apartment, equidistant to practically everything I need.
Finding gainful employment has been as slow as Continental drift, but that all seems to change around September, when the weather will also be agreeably cooler. Tomorrow, at least according to Wunderground, Budapest has a chance to cool down in the wake of a few welcome rainstorms that’ll wash the streets clean(ish) and give us all some relief. The so-called Jet-Set Hobo (might be time to hang up those spurs) is not cut out for this kind of heat – Not unless I’m near a beach with a pile of good books and someone nice to rub in the sun screen lotion. The position is open by the way, so if you’re glamorous and amorous, drop me a line. I make a good dry martini, I’m a good conversationalist and er, well that’s about it really I suppose.
*
‘At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.’
George Orwell
Lunched today with my friend Kiki today and not quite all we could talk about was the Mel Gibson affair. Read More »
Saturday evening in Budapest, and as I write, either war has broken out on the streets around the apartment I’m renting, or there is a big fireworks display going on nearby. That’s Budapest for you, at least when the temperatures are hot. Every night in the Summer, something different. The Hobo is definitely housebound this evening however. Last night’s carousing with the Tasmanian Princess and the Welsh/Hungarian actress/antique dealer was quite enough high voltage bonhomie for one weekend. Probably.
Anyway, today we hoisted ourselves up to the highest point above Budapest we could (using our best petard but for good this time) in order to take a look at those not-so-distant London lights. Okay, I used Google Earth. Well, as previously noted, commentary on the British sociopolitical landscape has been part of the Jet-Set Hobo’s loosely assembled, journalistic beat. It might as well continue this way until the end, which may be nigh. So no more ado, here’s a quick round-up of today’s headlines from the Old Dart. (Colonial slang for Great Britain).
Raoul Moat manhunt: Investigation into Taser shots fired at fugitive
According to The Grauniad, sorry the Guardian, shots fired from a Taser could have caused the Northumberland gunman to shoot himself after a six-hour standoff with police. Investigations have already begun into the actions of local police in the hours before the death of Raoul Moat. They are apparently focusing on whether the two Taser shots fired at the fugitive may have pushed him over the edge.
A photograph of Winston Churchill giving his victory salute has been airbrushed to remove his signature cigar. The original image (left) was taken in 1948 during the opening of a new military headquarters, and (right) the airbrushed image. In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a “V” shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth. But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques via Winston Churchill’s cigar airbrushed from picture – Telegraph.
For once, this soi disant Jet-Set Hobo is speechless, well, just about. This photograph hangs over the door of The Winston Churchill room at the Britain at War Experience museum.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, or you know & care nothing for British politics, you will have heard the story about soon-to-be outgoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his encounter with a 66 year old lady named Mrs Gillian Duffy. More or less accosted on the street by this redoubtable woman, Gordon Brown appeared to respond well or at least functionally to her questions about immigration and student tuition fees, even moving the conversation on to the subject of her grandchildren’s names in his condescendingly genuine fashion, with the rather ghastly pasted-on smile Brown has been forced to adopt since roughly the time he became prime minister by default.
And then, a Sky ‘news’ microphone still taped to his waistline, he got into his car and was driven away. Forgetting the microphone was still on, the Prime Minister almost instantly began complaining to his aides. “Just some bigoted woman who used to vote labour” he said, and “totally ridiculous – who arranged that? Sue?” or words very close to that effect. Sue Nye was the aide he blamed wrongly as it happened for arranging the ‘chat’ with Mrs Duffy, who remarkably, had just happened to be walking by. In any case, it was interesting that Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister immediately wanted someone else to blame for what he obviously considered to have been a fairly grisly encounter. Read More »
