It's Always More Complicated

Romantasy All Along! Tansy Rayner Roberts on the constant merry-go-round of constructing publishing categories, and the dropping-out from memory of forebears....

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Dropping out of memory: Five things young women need to know about the menopause. Maybe I was an outlier, but if you read pretty much any mainstream women's magazine in the Days of My Youth, sooner or later (there was probably a principle of recurrence which at that time I did not grasp) there would be an article about The Change, what to expect, how to deal with, etc, not to mention the questions about to the resident agony aunt. Gone, gone, with the dodo, apparently.

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‘Better a bad image than no image’: interview with Richard Dyer on organizing the UK’s first lesbian and gay film season - 1977 at the National Film Theatre (okay, I missed it , that was a fraught personal year for me of other stuff going on):

Reflecting on the films included, Dyer now displays ambivalence in his personal feelings towards them. Indeed the season featured many notable works that, though now viewed as evocative relics of a bygone sexual epoch, are challenging for their representational politics.

Ursula at Book View Café: Navigating the Ocean of Story:

In 2015, a few months before the publication of the revised edition of Steering the Craft, Ursula began “an experiment: a kind of open consultation or informal ongoing workshop in Fictional Navigation,” which was hosted at Book View Café. She took questions about writing from readers, and offered generous answers.

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William Blake's early doodles: Engravings discovered on reverse of copper plates thought to be the earliest produced by William Blake.

More great stuff from the Cambridge Population people: How dangerous was childbirth in the past? Interesting that it seems rather more dangerous to have been an elite woman - I'd possibly factor in there that upper-class babies were wet-nursed, so maybe elite ladies were also having closer together pregnancies? (or at least women who nursed their own were maybe getting some protection from immediate conception.)

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I was interested to see this - British children the least happy in Europe – and Dutch kids the happiest? Don’t believe the hype - at least in part because I remember my Dutch hist-of-sex pals being fairly cynical about the Netherlands rep for being o-so-sexually-cool-and enlightened.

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Memorialising poets:

Campaign aims to renovate Sussex home where artist and poet wrote Jerusalem in time for 200th anniversary of his death:

The couple are said to have been enamoured of their flintstone-walled garden, where they grew vegetables and flowers and allowed their kitten to prowl. According to legend, they were once discovered sunbathing naked in the garden, allegedly prompting Blake to say to the visitor: “Come in! It’s only Adam and Eve, you know.”

Volunteers work to reopen land that inspired poet

The nature 19th Century poet John Clare grew up in Helpston, Cambridgeshire, which at the time was part of Northamptonshire, and wrote about the loss of the scenery he loved as a child. The John Clare Countryside Project, led by the Langdyke Countryside Trust, will connect Peterborough to Stamford in Lincolnshire, through green corridors of farmland.

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Large fauna is At Large:

You would think a capybara was large enough that it would be easy to find.... Cinnamon, a one-year-old female, escaped on Friday and has eluded inventive efforts to recapture her.

UK’s first ever bison bridges under construction in Kent woodland:

When Europe’s heaviest land mammals were introduced into a woodland on the edge of Canterbury, it was hoped they would flourish and make space for other wildlife. But the European bison have been so successful in West Blean and Thornden Woods that more space must be made for them – in the form of Britain’s first ever bison bridges. Four bridges costing a total of £1m are being built in to allow introduced bison, which are classified as dangerous wild animals in UK law, to cross the maze of public footpaths in the ancient woods without interacting with people.

Groan. Actual living birds, animals, reptiles, insects, plants and other living organisms are currently going extinct or are currently endangered.

So you set about raising $150m to bring dodo ‘back to life’ - the dodo which went extinct in C17th. And okay, they do claim that maybe the research

could assist conservation efforts for many other threatened species around the world, as it would develop techniques that could allow scientists to discern and preserve key traits in those existing species that could be vital to helping them adapt in a changing climate.

Prof Ewan Birney, deputy director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, who was not involved with Colossal’s work, said it would be “very very challenging” at a technical level to recreate the dodo genome. He said: “There is no doubt this is an iconic bird. I’ve no idea whether the mechanics of this will work as they claim, but the question is not just can you do this but should you do it. There are people who think that because you can do something you should, but I’m not sure what purpose it serves, and whether this is really the best allocation of resources. We should be saving the species that we have before they go extinct.”

Which rather intersects with thoughts I was having last week about it's not just people going back to the past, it's people going back to different, if equally awful, bits of the past - parliamentary corruption that recalls the C18th - attitudes to the poor which don't even say 'are there no workhouses', because workhouses at least put roofs over heads and 3 bowls of skilly a day - was reading something about neo-Nazis in US which suggests that they are taking Victorian anti-wanking tracts as their play, or rather, anti-play, book - and don't get me started on those 'back to the lovely 1950s housewife' gals.

Take it away, William: 'In every voice: in every ban,/The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.'

And haven't the Tate given you a particularly spectacular birthday card!

To celebrate William Blake's 262nd birthday, Tate is collaborating with St Paul's Cathedral to project the artist's final work, Ancient of Days, on to its dome.

It was always Blake's ambition to have his work displayed on a huge scale. St Paul’s was a key site for Blake: he referred to it in his poetry and the architecture influenced his religious and historic artworks. Today, it houses a memorial to him.

The artwork will be projected on the south, river-facing side of the dome from 28 November – 1 December 2019 (16.30-21.00 each evening). For the best view, we recommend approaching St Paul's Cathedral across the Millennium Bridge* from the south bank. It will be free to view.

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Best wishes to all who are involved in Thanksgiving celebrations, that they go well and are not as fraught as the reading of online advice columns leads one to suspect is too oft the case.

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And in further news, among the distinguished recent deceased we note Dr Jonathan Miller: my bragging rights include once encountering him at an academic seminar at an institution with which I was at the time very loosely associated, and being able to correct him on a point of medieval literature (Criseyde being struck with leprosy was Henryson, not Chaucer). Not many people can say that...

Paging the shade of Dr Marie Stopes, not for the usual reason, on account of she got a Royal Society grant to go to Japan to study cycads and chase up the Japanese professor she was keen on before she ever got into human reproduction, and wrote a really not at all bad travel book on the episode, A journal from Japan : a daily record of life as seen by a scientist (1910): Global heating: ancient plants set to reproduce in UK after 60m years: Cycad in Isle of Wight produces outdoor male and female cones for first time on record

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‘Nobody’s ever asked this before’ and other research question misconceptions. Alas, we can think of people who have writ whole books and gone around publicising them to the max (I mention no names here) on the basis of just such misconceptions.

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O dear, o dear, o dear.

"[T]he reason women watch romantic comedies and read romantic fiction novels is because it plays into their fantasy of how they’ll meet the guy of their dreams."

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Those lines are, perhaps, the C21st equivalent of the 'harlot's cry from street to street' (weaving England's winding-sheet) - I forgot to commemorate dear Mad William's birthday on the appropriate date this year, but do have this advance notice of a forthcoming splendid Blake exhibition at Tate Britain.

Born on this day, 1757.

How to celebrate?

The weather is perhaps not quite what one would wish for playing Adam and Eve in the garden, as is reputed he did with his wife.

We could wander through the chartered streets, to where the chartered Thames doth flow, and see in every face we meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe.

We could visit Peckham Rye, though I doubt we would see any angels in the trees.

If we saw any robin redbreasts in cages, we could let them out.

If we saw any tigers burning bright, we could alert the fire brigade. We also feel that there must be Health and Safety regulations appertaining to chariots of fire and bows of burning gold.

Mind-forged manacles, however, may be deployed in a safe, sane, and consensual fashion, possibly in conjunction with arrows of desire.

London garden bridge project collapses in acrimony after £37m spent.

And I can't help wanting to say to Boris J that in Ye Bygone Days when people built follies they did so on their own estates and with their own money (though on reflection this was probably ill-gottens from the Triangle Trade and dodgy dealings in India) and didn't ask the nation to pay for them.

(And aren't there already memorials to Princess Di? How many do we need?)

And, you know, it's a pretty idea and in theory I am there with Thomas Heatherwick that 'London needs new bridges and unexpected new public places': except that that is not a part of London that required Yet Another Bridge, there are so many that taking the boat journey along that stretch of river is more like going into a tunnel.

Also, it was not properly a public space:

a link that would be privately run, would be able set its own rules for access, and would close at night and be available to hire for private events.

I am also boggled by the suggestion that the river is not already pretty much 'centre-stage' in our great city.

I think Mad William would have had things to say along the lines of

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

I might go along on the line suggested by this to comment that what good is a garden bridge if the land lies waste?

Lately saw this somewhere: Christian 'naturism' advocate appointed Bishop of Sherborne.

What this enquiring mind wants to know is, does she cite the tradition of the Ranters? Or Blake playing Adam and Eve in his South London garden?

(I am not sure why the scare quotes round 'naturism' in that headline.)

I didn't realise it was a mystery, but this sad story of Constance Wilde, retrospective diagnosis, and medical malpractice looks like a classic case of 'anything wrong with a woman must be down to something in her reproductive organs'.

Crowdfunding saved Timbuktu’s manuscripts:

[T]he woman behind T160K is relaunching it with a bigger team and expanded remit: to find money for other cultural projects in Africa. Stephanie Diakité, a 56-year-old cultural development specialist who helped her friend, the Timbuktu librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, evacuate the manuscripts, wants to revolutionise the funding of culture in Africa by connecting communities, often in different parts of the world.

I dunno, but when somebody avers English radicalism needs to recapture the spirit of Blake, I tend to think, 'English radicals, so not his Mastermind special subject', because, while Crazy William had some nifty points to make, I would not put him in charge of anything.

This was the salt mine I visited in the summer as a works jaunt (note that it also operates as an archive store).

Traditional skills at risk of dying out, says craft group: I rather wonder whether there is any demand for some of these crafts.

The importance of making sure you record accurate provenance information: Skeleton of zebra’s extinct cousin is treasured exhibit of Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London:

It took a very long time for the museum to realise what a treasure it had; there are many oddities in a collection which only three years ago discovered it had half a dodo in a drawer, filed as a crocodile. In 1911 the quagga was a cheap and quick job: she was mounted with five other large skeletons for a total cost of £14. “To be fair to them, they had no idea they were dealing with such a rarity,” Ashby said. “She came into the collection as a zebra. It’s one of the Grant’s more embarrassing stories, actually. We used to have two zebras, now we have none.” It was only in 1972 that experts took a really close look at the zebras. One turned out to be a donkey, now leaning rather forlornly against the balcony railings and in need of restoration work himself, and the other was revealed as the quagga.

The National Archives' newly released documents.

Like vast numbers of people, yes, I can be moved by the mass singing of Blake's Jerusalem in the Parry setting (a different take).

And I can quite see why it is that and not London by which most people remember Mad William. Privatised water supply and mind forg'd manacles (among other things) not so rousing as bows of burning gold and arrows of desire, right?

Was thinking about doing a twofer for St George and Mr S with John of Gaunt's famous speech, but boy, how oppressively monarchical it is, even when the lines about 'teeming womb of kings' are omitted.

Thoughts brought to you by being English on 23rd April.