EXETER CATHEDRAL AND THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION: The Essence of England (25)

[This is the twenty-fifth of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Exeter Cathedral in Exeter, Devon is one of England’s finest cathedrals. Its long uninterrupted Nave with its lovely Decorated Gothic vault is made possible because, unusually in England, there is no central tower and the North and South towers are built over their respective transepts.

Exeter Cathedral

Most visitors will approach the cathedral at the West Front. Exeter’s is not very imposing and although the sadly weathered screen of carved stone figures featuring cross-legged kings is agreeably informal, by cutting off the bottom of the West window it spoils the proportions despite some fine medieval tracery; meanwhile the higher window in the gable peers out at the world uncomfortably.

The West Front at Exeter

Nevertheless, after this rather unpromising exterior, stepping into the interior of the Cathedral is to be transported to the unforgettable vista of the great Decorated vault, some say the finest of its style in the world.

The Nave and Vault

The best parts of Exeter are in the Decorated style with the boldly projecting Nave ribs, like an avenue of stately trees, alternating transverse, tierceron, diagonal to great effect with lovely sculpted bosses masking the joins on the central axis. The original cathedral was Norman (Romanesque) starting around 1112, but in 1260 a new bishop decided the building was outmoded and, apart from keeping the Norman towers, he had the entire edifice rebuilt in the Decorated manner. The building work stretched into the 14^th century but it enjoys an artistic unity only rivalled by Salisbury.

In the Nave there is a unique and pretty Minstrel’s Gallery with 12 carved angels playing various medieval instruments. A treasured astronomical clock dates from1484, though it has been much restored and the Cathedral library has many historic books, the finest of which is a 13^th century manuscript Psalter.

A visit to Exeter Cathedral greatly enhances any trip to the West Country.

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Some 14 miles from Exeter is the pleasant resort of Teignmouth and the celebrated pioneer of computation, Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871) spent his childhood there. Babbage was a key figure in the early days of The Computer Revolution and I want to celebrate the British contribution to that Revolution, which was a major one.

Charles Babbage

Part of Babbage's Analytical Engine

                    

Babbage was a brilliant mathematician and was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839. He was an enthusiast for logarithmic and actuarial tables but was dissatisfied at their accuracy. He turned over in his mind a method of calculating these tables mechanically and designed what he called a “difference engine”- by using the mathematical principle of “finite differences”, he was able to avoid multiplication and division. The two models of the difference engine were never completed (although the London Science Museum successfully reconstructed one in 1991).

A much more ambitious design, which Babbage constantly elaborated until he died, was the Analytical Engine, upon which Babbage’s reputation as The Father of the Computer rests. The designs for the Analytical Engine include almost all the essential logical features of a modern electronic digital computer. The engine was programmable using punched cards. It had a ‘store’ where numbers and intermediate results could be held and a separate ‘mill’ where the arithmetic processing was performed. The separation of the ‘store’ (memory) and ‘mill’ (central processor) is a fundamental feature of the internal organisation of modern computers. Punched cards had been developed by the French and in particular by Jacquard, to programme weaving looms in 1801.

The Analytical Engine was only produced in part and this is ascribed partly to the difficult character of Babbage and partly to the limitations of Victorian engineering tolerances. Sadly much of Babbage’s insight died with him and there was nobody to carry forward the Babbage flame. One close collaborator was Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace who is credited with developing an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers. Although there is disagreement over how many of these ideas were Lovelace's own, she is often described as The First Computer Programmer.

Babbage may have had the misfortune to be ahead of his time. I suppose it is some kind of tribute that one half of Babbage’s brain is on display at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons and the other half at the Science Museum, London.

Britain was not able to build on Babbage’s achievements and the mantle of leadership in the development of computers moved to the US, where Herman Hollerith developed mechanical tabulators using sophisticated punched cards (used for the 1890 US census), later adopted by many financial institutions. He set up his own business and it merged with two others in 1911 to become known as the famed IBM in 1924. From 1914 to 1955 IBM was led by Thomas J. Watson and grew to be the pre-eminent global brand in mainframe and personal computers: Over the 20^th century it invented the ATM, the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the UPC and the magnetic stripe card, among many other innovations.

Herman Hollerith

Thomas J Watson Sr

                             

                           

This is to anticipate many years ahead. Britain made an immense contribution to the creation of the first computers. In Germany, Konrad Zuse had produced the first fully operational electro-mechanical computer, working in intellectual isolation in the early 1940s. In Britain, under the stress of war, the finest brains were assembled at Bletchley to break the Nazi military codes. Among the cryptographers was Alan Turing (1912-54), a brilliant mathematician (Cambridge and Princeton) and computer scientist who had published a seminal paper in 1935 on the theory of computability and on algorithms.

Alan Turing

Manchester prototype computer

He was the acknowledged computing leader at Bletchley, whose successful code-breaking was critical to the war effort, and he later headed the department at Manchester University responsible with Tom Kilburn for producing the First Stored-Programme Computer. Turing conceptualised what a computer should be capable of doing and the term Turing-Complete is used as a standard in the industry. Sadly, Turing’s full potential was not realised as he was prosecuted for a then illegal homosexual act in 1952, lost his security clearance and committed suicide in 1954. He has been greatly honoured posthumously and shares the laurels as the greatest computer scientist ever with the Hungarian-American polymath John von Neumann.

The actual building of computers was more problematical. At Bletchley The First Electronic Computer known as Colossus was built by Post Office research engineer Tommy Flowers, under Max Newman (rather than Turing) an amazing and under-praised achievement for 1944. It was years ahead of its rivals but its very existence was an Official Secret and was not divulged until the 1970s.

Tommy Flowers

The Colossus computer in 1944

     

               

 Britain made various attempts to produce computers in the post-war years. The Manchester University computers were the basis of Ferranti’s Mark 1, The World's First commercially available General-purpose Computer in 1949. The UK company ICL was formed to compete with the US, but it did not succeed. In due course even IBM stopped manufacturing mainframe and personal computers as cost pressures handed over this outsourced industry to Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea and now mainland China.

The Computer Revolution has no doubt much further to run as we live in the new era of robotics, sat-nav and smart phones. Britain has historically made a large contribution, not least that of Oxford-educated Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World-Wide-Web in 1990 while working at CERN with his French collaborator Robert Cailliau.

Tim Berners-Lee

                                             

We are all on-line now; information is accessible and communication is easy. Thanks to the Web, I write this in Greece for my British friends and Blog it throughout the world.

SMD

15.12.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012

ELY CATHEDRAL AND CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY: The Essence of England (24)

[This is the twenty-fourth of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, with its high West Tower and unique and distinctive Lantern, is one of the great sights of England, as it rises high over the flat fenland surrounding it. Founded by the Saxon Saint Etheldreda in the 7^th century, the building we now see was built mainly in the Norman manner including important Early English and Decorated Gothic elements from 1082 to 1375.

Ely Cathedral

The Nave at Ely

                                

 The austere and majestic Norman Nave with its wooden painted ceiling gives way to exuberant Early English at the crossing, where the light comes from the octagonal Lantern. It was built to replace a central tower which collapsed in 1322 and it is one of the masterpieces of medieval construction. The choir and presbytery are richly adorned with fan vaulting, fine stalls and misericords. The almost separate Lady Chapel in Decorated Gothic must have been sumptuous before Puritan iconoclasts smashed the carved figures depicting the life of Mary; it is still a lovely place with the arcades below the windows carved in delicate “nodding ogee” form. The West front boasts a beautiful central tower but is incomplete as the North West tower collapsed in the 15^th century and was never rebuilt.

The Octagon at Ely

The Lady Chapel

                              

 Ely is a delight in East Anglia; a journey of discovery there is immensely rewarding.

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14 miles South of Ely lies the City famous the world over as the home of Cambridge University. The University was formed around 1209 by scholars from Oxford University who had quarrelled with townspeople there. Oxford and Cambridge universities are similar in organisation and together are often referred to as “Oxbridge”. The universities have a subtly different atmosphere and there is much friendly rivalry. Although I am an Oxford man myself, I have to say that Cambridge is in some ways more beautiful and it has in recent years marginally surpassed Oxford academically as the best university in England; it currently ranks third in the world after Harvard and MIT. Cambridge graduates have won 65 Nobel Prizes, more than any other university in the world. It is a hugely influential and admired institution.

Like Oxford, Cambridge is a federation of 31 independent and self-governing Colleges with the university providing central teaching and research facilities. The undergraduates’ first loyalty is to their College, some of which are of surpassing beauty like Trinity and King’s. The oldest College is Peterhouse founded in 1284: Computer pioneer Charles Babbage and Lord Kelvin of thermodynamic fame were graduates there: Emmanuel (John Harvard’s), Christ’s (John Milton and Charles Darwin were there) and Sidney Sussex (Oliver Cromwell an alumnus) once had a Puritan reputation. All the colleges, Clare, Magdalene, Gonville and Caius, St John’s, Girton etc etc can boast of distinguished graduates.

Great Court, Trinity College

King's College and Chapel

                                 

Cambridge has a particularly high reputation in mathematics and the advancement of science. The pre-eminent polymath Isaac Newton (1643-1727) studied at Trinity, the precursor of a glittering parade of scientific talent –J J Thomson (the electron), Cavendish (hydrogen), Crick and Watson (DNA), Cockcroft (nuclear physics), Darwin (natural selection), Turing (computers) and Dirac (quantum mechanics). Along with East Anglia generally, Cambridge was also attracted to Reformation doctrines and Puritan standards and developed a logical, austere mind-set rather at odds with the easy-going conservatism of Anglican Oxford. But all that is now history.

As an unashamedly intellectually elitist institution (although Cambridge offers generous bursaries to poor scholars) the University has spawned a number of cliques, like that surrounding the literary critic FR Leavis. The most famous is The Apostles, a secretive debating society founded in 1820 of which philosopher Bertrand Russell was a member and later Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Leonard Woolf. There was often an element of homosexuality about the Apostles and it was not surprising that gay Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt became members. Both were later exposed as members of a KGB spy ring operating in the 1930s and 40s, “The Cambridge Spies,” which also included diplomat Donald Maclean and MI6 operative Kim Philby. Certainly Philby did much damage to UK and NATO interests. These close-knit groups with their fierce loyalties accentuated a sharp dilemma: better to betray your friend or your country? I thought that otherwise admirable writers like Arthur Marshall and Alan Bennett were rather too quick to rush to the defence of Guy Burgess, who was no doubt an amusing fellow, but a traitor nevertheless.

Cambridge University is not just about laboratories and espionage. The great bulk of the undergraduate body have their wits tested for three unforgettable and civilised years in a wide variety of faculties. They also have fun and laughter; they punt lazily on the idyllic Backs, canoodling with their latest beloved.

Long may they do so.

Punting on the Backs at Cambridge

SMD

12.12.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL AND THE SAS; The Essence of England (23)

[This is the twenty-third of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Hereford Cathedral occupies a site with several ecclesiastical predecessors in Anglo-Saxon and Viking times; the last cathedral was destroyed in 1056 by Irish and Welsh raiders under the Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Llewellyn. The Cathedral we now see was built in the Norman manner from 1110 to 1250, though the fabric was not completed until 1535, 400 years later.

Hereford Cathedral

The Cathedral is one of England’s smaller ones and its handsome ball-flower Decorated Gothic tower dominates the modest rural city of Hereford, on the attractive River Wye, famous for its cider. It has a characteristic Norman nave with its round piers and an Early English Lady Chapel, with lancet windows.

The Norman Nave

The North transept is the most admired feature internally, housing the restored shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe whose supposedly healing relics attracted a large cult in the 14^th century. The cathedral suffered significant damage during the Civil War and funds for repair were lacking. Worse, the 14^th century West Tower collapsed in 1786, effectively destroying the West Front. A punitive restoration by Wyatt followed, although his West Front (“Wyatt’s Folly”) was replaced in 1902: later efforts by LN Cottingham and Sir George Gilbert Scott made Hereford structurally stable but left a legacy of much criticised fittings and some “execrable” Victorian glass.  The Cathedral has a valuable library and among its treasures is the fascinating 1300 Mappa Mundi, the largest medieval world map still in existence.

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The Special Air Service (The SAS) is a regiment in the British Army based in Credenhill, Hereford since 1960. The Special Air Service presently comprises 22 Special Air Service Regiment of the Regular Army, 21 Special Air Service Regiment and 23 Special Air Service Regiment from the Territorial Army. It is tasked primarily with counter-terrorism in peacetime and special operations in wartime. The SAS is part of UK Special Forces which also includes the Special Boat Group and the Special Aviation Wing.

The SAS usually operates covertly and the Army does not discuss its activities. Its history is rather convoluted but its founder in 1941 is agreed to be Col. David Stirling who ran raids behind German lines in the Western Desert, working with the Long Range Desert Group. Its first operation by parachute was a disaster, but later the SAS showed its worth disrupting enemy lines of communication and supply, and later undertaking extensive operations helping partisans in Italy.

The SAS badge

SAS in Western Desert 1941-43

     

There were several wartime units fighting covertly, commandos, paratroops and marines but they were not co-ordinated in any way. Indeed the SAS itself was disbanded after the war only to be gradually re-assembled as covert operations became necessary in the likes of Greece and Palestine. The SAS tended to attract tough maverick types like Roy Farran, an experienced and brave officer, accused but not convicted of the murder of a Jewish activist in Palestine, but by 1950 the SAS became formally re-established under Michael Calvert, who had led Chindit units in Burma behind Japanese lines with much distinction. Calvert left the Army under a cloud in 1953 but the SAS was very effectively deployed in the jungle war against the communist insurgents in Malaya during the Emergency there until 1959.

Doubts about the SAS’s continued usefulness lingered in some Army circles but the Regiment greatly enhanced its credibility, initially under the command of gallant Tony Deane-Drummond (who actually only died a week ago, aged 95), with a long if under-reported deployment in Oman assisting the Sultan’s forces against Nasserite and leftist insurgents in Dhofar province, including a decisive engagement known as the Battle of Mirbat in 1972. Guerrilla war in inhospitable terrain was well suited to the skills of the SAS. The war was won, but a new Sultan had first modernised his country and liberalised the regime so it was not simply a military success.

The SAS was also engaged in the murky and deadly war against the Provisional IRA in the Northern Ireland Troubles for the long years between 1969 and 1998. This story has yet to be fully told and there was some controversy over the shooting dead by the SAS of 3 IRA members in Gibraltar, planning a car bomb attack on a military band in 1988.

The SAS really entered UK public consciousness with its spectacular ending of the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980. 6 heavily armed terrorists, campaigning for autonomy for the Iranian province of Khuzestan, broke into the embassy and held 26 people hostage. After negotiation 5 hostages were released but 2 days later the terrorists murdered a hostage in furtherance of their demands. The government of Mrs Thatcher authorised an SAS assault to be led by Lt-Col. Michael Rose under the command of Brigadier Peter de la Billiere.

General Sir Peter de la Billiere

General Sir Michael Rose

The assault was seen by millions on TV as the SAS abseiled down the building, leapt over balconies, threw stun grenades, burst into the embassy and freed 19 hostages although one had been killed. 5 of the 6 terrorists were shot dead; the one captured was jailed for 27 years. The nation was thrilled and the prestige of the Army and especially that of the SAS soared.

The SAS enter the Iranian Embassy in 1980

The 1982 Falklands conflict with Argentina saw the SAS heavily involved in monitoring enemy air bases and infiltrating enemy formations. Major (later Lieut-General) Cedric Delves distinguished himself by leading an SAS squadron which recaptured South Georgia without any loss of life and destroyed 11 Argentine aircraft on Pebble Island. There were many other SAS feats in this hard-fought campaign.

The 1991 Gulf War also involved the SAS and the story of a failed 8-man patrol whose call-sign was Bravo Two Zero was the subject of a best-seller written by the sergeant leading the patrol “Andy McNab” (a pseudonym). The SAS has been deployed in Iraq and against the Taliban in Afghanistan and no doubt secretly in other places.

The SAS Regiment has won great distinction and many prominent soldiers have served in it including Field Marshal Sir Charles Guthrie. I am far from being a military type (Sir Michael Rose was an exact contemporary at my Oxford college but I never knew him) but I greatly appreciate and admire the qualities of toughness in body and mind possessed by these soldiers. It hugely comforts me and no doubt many of my fellow-citizens that such valiant people exist and I imagine their proud exhilaration at completing a gruelling training course over the Brecon Beacons, not far from peaceful Hereford.

SMD

10.12.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012

ROCOCO IN ENGLAND

I have written three articles about Rococo buildings in South Germany where some of the very finest are. It is now time to look at objects and works of art influenced by the fantastic Rococo spirit, that life-enhancing current running so strongly from about 1720 to 1770 in Europe. England was not immune from that spirit, even though no Rococo buildings of consequence were raised there. The world of art partly fell under the Rococo spell, but most of all several generations of collectors and connoisseurs loved and appreciated Rococo, when it had been deserted and become despised elsewhere on the Continent. These collectors will for ever deserve our gratitude.

The only stately home in England, in my view, deeply imbued with the Rococo spirit is Claydon House in Buckinghamshire. Several rooms were decorated in the Rococo and Chinoiserie manner by Luke Lightfoot (or better, Lightfinger, as he embezzled much of the construction money from the owners, the Verneys).

Chimney-piece at Claydon

An interior at Claydon

 

                   

Claydon has been in the Verney family 600 years and the Rococo parts were created in the 1730s by a Verney keen to outdo his richer neighbour at Stowe. He bankrupted himself in the process but he was determined to be fashionable and elegant in the French Rococo style.

There are few original Rococo buildings in England. Hartwell House near Aylesbury, now a hotel, has admired Rococo ceilings; Painswick Gardens in Gloucestershire from the mid-1730s were recreated in their original Rococo form with delightful follies and belvederes; Thomas Archer’s baroque St Paul’s Deptford echoes Rococo influences with its broken pediments and concave shapes; but we really have to go to the applied arts to see English Rococo.

The Rococo spirit was most felt in painting, furniture and porcelain. Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727-78) portraits of ladies are very reminiscent of the French Rococo masters like Lancret or Chardin, and the very different William Hogarth, who, especially in his savagely satirical engravings, is reckoned a child of the Rococo.

Hogarth's Gin Lane

Gainsborough's Mrs Hibbert

 

         

In furniture the most prominent exponent of the Rococo style was Thomas Chippendale (1718-79), with his flowing serpentine lines. In porcelain, Derby and Longton Hall were just two of the potters responding to the Rococo mode.

Chippendale Chairs

A 1755 Longton Hall Teapot

 Exquisite as these artefacts are, the glory of Rococo England lies in its collections. Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire is an enormous chateau built in the French style between 1874 and 1889 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, rather incongruously for the English countryside. Its wonderful collection of mainly French 18^th and 19^th century art includes many Rococo treasures, all donated to the National Trust in 1957.

Among these treasures are paintings by Gainsborough and Guardi, ormolu wall mounts, elaborate clocks, panelling from Paris, large quantities of Sevres and Meissen china, desks by Cressent with cupids and oak leaves, delightful snuff-boxes, a Monstrance (to display the Eucharist) design by Meissonnier and other objets d’art too numerous to  mention. It is well worth making the pilgrimage to Waddesdon.

Monstrance design 1727

Exotic china figures from Waddesdon

         

My favourite gallery in London, housing Old Masters and French art from all periods, is The Wallace Collection in Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1, quite unmissable for any enthusiast of the Rococo. While the Wallace has a wonderful range of 18^th century furniture, it is in the field of painting that it is pre-eminent. Indeed “The Swing” by Fragonard, with the young woman kicking her slipper over her love struck suitor, has become the informal trade mark of the gallery.

The Swing by Fragonard

The Musical Contest by Fragonard

 

Another delightful Fragonard has two suitors, one with a flute and the other with a musette (a form of bagpipe) trying to impress their beloved. Both these paintings exemplify the aristocratic elegance and joyful spirit of the Rococo.

The Wallace Collection was built up by the Marquesses of Hertford, especially the 4^th Marquess (1800-70). He left it to his natural son, Sir Richard Wallace, and both, with their agents, had scoured the auction rooms of Paris and beyond purchasing the cream of 18^th century art. Sir Richard’s widow donated the House and its Collection to the nation in 1897 and it opened to the public in 1900. Never was there so munificent a donation.

As you enter the gallery you are faced with a staircase and at the half-landing and first floor you are confronted with glorious paintings by Boucher, so redolent of Rococo. Then there are wonderful works by Watteau and dozens of others.

Venus and Cupid by Boucher

A Fete Champetre by Watteau

I hope I have stimulated your thoughts on Rococo and reinvigorated your enthusiasm for this most civilised and joyful of artistic styles.

SMD

7.12.12

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2012

PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL AND THE POSH: The Essence of England (22)

[This is the twenty-second of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Standing plum in the City centre, mainly 12^th century Peterborough Cathedral, with its spectacular West Front, is one of England’s great sights bringing distinction to the Cambridgeshire industrial city surrounding it.

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

 There was a succession of Anglo-Saxon and Norman buildings on the site until the present building in Barnack limestone was begun as a Benedictine abbey church in 1118. The Norman nave was completed by 1193 complemented later by the splendid painted wooden roof vault. A central tower was erected then, to be replaced by one in the Decorated Gothic style in 1380.

The imposing West Front was built in the Early English Gothic manner. It is certainly impressive but not wholly a success aesthetically. The middle arch is too narrow and the Galilee porch much too small. The Tower peeping over the Front rather spoils the proportions. Worse, the West front is in effect just clamped on to the cathedral; its doors do not lead into the aisles as they would in a properly integrated building. The West Front is a splendid tour de force but it was never repeated in other English cathedrals.

The east end of the cathedral has tremendous 14^th century fan-vaulting and in the Sanctuary there are the burial places of two queens, Katherine of Aragon, whose divorce from Henry VIII precipitated England’s breach with Rome and Mary Queen of Scots, who was later reburied in Westminster Abbey. Katherine’s standard and the Saltire and Lion Rampant of Scotland fly there still.

The Nave

Fan-vaulting in the Retro-Choir

 Peterborough Cathedral is full of interest and along with Ely and Norwich comprises the trio of great cathedrals in East Anglia.

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“The Posh” is the name given to Peterborough United Football Club. Apparently a manager in one of the predecessor clubs in 1923 stated he wanted “posh players for a posh club” and somehow the name stuck. Never was a name more of a misnomer. Peterboro (as it is often written) was for years a leading non-league club, feared for its giant-killing in the FA Cup. Eventually it joined the League but was dogged by financial and managerial problems. It was relegated in 1968 to the Fourth Division for financial irregularities but is currently in the Championship, although it is bumping along at the bottom; rough and ready journeymen footballers maybe, but hardly “posh”.

The City of Peterborough does not really do “posh”. It was for years dominated by Perkins Diesel, manufacturers of industrial engines, and its other main industry was the manufacture of bricks due to large local clay deposits. Its atmosphere is irredeemably proletarian.

Out of town however there are strongholds of “the posh”. The elite public schools of Oundle (founded 1556, alumni including economist Lord Crowther, naturalist Peter Scott and humorist Arthur Marshall) and Uppingham (founded 1584, alumni including novelist Roland Firbank, speed aces Sir Malcolm and Sir Donald Campbell and expelled polymath Stephen Fry) are nearby. So too are the ruins of once royal Fotheringhay Castle, scene of the rather bungled beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. To the East is the handsome coaching town of Stamford with its mellow stone but much the most impressive is Tudor Burghley House, seat of the Marquess of Exeter, with its wonderful art collection and the venue for famous Horse Trials - decidedly “posh”.

Posh stately home Burghley

Posh Public School Oundle

I have been using this rather unattractive word “posh”. It has come to mean “upper class, stylish or expensive”. The origins of the word are obscure (posh is the Romany word for “money”) and it first appeared in English as a synonym for “a dandy”. Another suggested derivation is that it is an acronym of “port outward, starboard home” supposedly written on tickets or chalked on luggage of wealthy English travellers sailing to the East, as this would give them the more desirable cabins in the shade. This is an ingenious suggestion but sadly has no basis in fact and is yet another urban myth.                

                             

 In the contemporary world the word “posh” instantly conjures up the celebrity couple Posh and Becks – otherwise Victoria and David Beckham. Posh was so named while she sang in the mega-successful girls’ group The Spice Girls who flourished 1994-2000 (with brief comebacks since) and were the biggest British group since the Beatles, selling 80m albums: a marketing man’s dream. Posh fell for handsome foot-balling icon David Beckham in 1997, then thrilling Manchester United and England and they married in 1999 in the usual global-celebrity style. Victoria Beckham is certainly a very hard-working fashion designer (she seldom sings these days) – I wish she smiled rather more – and she copes with the slightly roving eye of pleasant if reedy-voiced David. Her children are called Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and daughter Harper Seven. She has her merits and the couple are hugely popular, but I really cannot say she is “posh”.

The celebrated Posh and Becks

SMD

5.12.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012

CARLISLE CATHEDRAL AND HADRIAN'S WALL: The Essence of England (21)

[This is the twenty-first of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or

institution connected to the area]

Carlisle Cathedral is, after Oxford, the second smallest of the ancient Anglican cathedrals and it has been unlucky in its building history. Its pleasures are modest but it is remarkable that the City of Carlisle has a cathedral at all and all visitors to the area should seek it out.

Carlisle Cathedral

 Work began on the building in 1122 and it gained cathedral status in 1133. A basic problem is that the cathedral is constructed using the local Red Sandstone, a friable (easily crumbling) material which readily loses colour and surface quality. Originally in the Norman style it was rebuilt in the Gothic manner in the 13^th century, only to be badly damaged in a fire of 1292. Repairs were undertaken: the Choir and East End were completed by 1322 and the much admired East Window by 1350. The Nave was duly completed some years later and an attractive painted wagon-roof erected.

During the Civil War in the 1640s, the Scottish Presbyterian Army, allied to the Parliamentarians, tore down 5 of the 7 bays of the nave to build defensive walls and the bays were never rebuilt, leaving a truncated edifice. Unsurprisingly the cathedral required a thorough restoration in Victorian times and it was directed sympathetically by Ewan Christian, the saviour of Southwell Minster.

The cathedral has fine choir stalls with noteworthy misericords but its most celebrated feature is the large nine-light East Window, in Flowing Decorated Gothic. The medieval glass itself has mainly been lost but the complex window tracery (the intersecting ornamental ribwork in the upper parts of Gothic windows) is thought by many to be the finest in England – although the writer I most respect, Alec Clifton-Taylor, reckons Selby Abbey’s is marginally better.

Choir, Roof and East End at Carlisle

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 Hadrian’s Wall, which skirts Carlisle, was built from 122 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, stretching about 73 miles from Bowness-on-Solway on the Solway Firth to Wallsend at Newcastle and the North Sea. The Wall is entirely in England and does not represent the border between Scotland and England. The purpose of the Wall is puzzling; it is said to be defensive but to garrison such a long wall would be enormously expensive and anyhow the Picts and Scots north of the Wall did not pose a credible threat to imperial Rome. Maybe it was built as a symbolic demonstration of Rome’s might and vanity, or more likely it served as a controllable entrance and exit for traders, upon whom taxes could be levied.

Anyone who has visited modern Rome or Venice will know that the Romans and Venetians are dab hands at fleecing visitors and perhaps they first practised their cunning ways on the luckless Scots frozenly tottering south over the wind-swept Cheviot Hills. If the purpose of the Wall was to keep the Scots out, (the Picts took leave of history mysteriously) it must be said that its success has been mixed. The Scots now are simply everywhere

Hadrian's Wall: an unpopular posting

                                         

Mind you for many centuries the poverty-stricken Scots saw little advantage in moving South to the poverty-stricken English. The scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus, who travelled widely was an exception, and the epitaph on his tomb in Cologne tells his story; Scotia me genuit. Anglia me suscepit. Gallia me docuit. Colonia me tenet. ("Scotland brought me forth. England sustained me. France taught me. Cologne holds me.")

In due course, this tempting notion that England might sustain them gained currency among the Scots. Scottish political life in the 16^th and 17^th centuries was rather fraught and the Crowns and later the Parliaments were unified in 1603 and 1707 respectively. Patronage emanated from London so any ambitious Scot hot-footed it there. The stream of Scots became a flood in 1760 when James Stuart, Earl of Bute, became George III’s first minister, conferring profitable office on many of his fellow-Scots. James Boswell famously discovered that Scots were none too popular from the mouth of formidable Dr Samuel Johnson, whose jibes at the Scots amused all London. Boswell tried and failed to make his fortune at the English Bar but he came back to London constantly, much attracted by its company and especially its fleshpots, much livelier than whatever was on offer in mainly Presbyterian Edinburgh.

Actually, at least the company in Scotland was pretty good: The Scottish Enlightenment got under way in the second half of the 18^th century and philosopher and historian David Hume had his salon in Edinburgh, Adam Smith in Glasgow revolutionised economics with his Wealth of Nations and philosophic Thomas Reid in Aberdeen founded the Scottish School of Common Sense. Most of all the building of the New Town of Edinburgh began, creating at last a highly civilised environment.

Yet the stream of Scots across the Wall continued unabated. The British Empire in India, Africa and points East gave a multitude of opportunities to the thrusting Scots and even today the Jakarta Highland Games are the largest such event in Asia and bibulous Burns Suppers are consumed with relish from Manitoba to Mandalay. The historian and sage Thomas Carlyle swapped Ecclefechan for the cosmopolitan delights of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and J M Barrie’s Peter Pan is commemorated in Kensington Gardens rather than in his native Kirriemuir.

The 20^th century saw an influx of political Scots. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a liberal legend; Bonar Law, though born in Canada, dourly led the Conservatives: the Labour Party had a string of Scots leaders – Keir Hardie, Ramsay Macdonald, William Adamson, Arthur Henderson, John Smith and baleful Gordon Brown (Alastair Darling was much more charming). Even the Royal Family had a Scots injection when lively Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married the future George VI in 1923.  The “poison-dwarf” species of Scotsman, 5ft high, with red hair and a fiery temper prospered in England too as the career of Leeds United hero Billy Bremner testifies.

Cheerful Gordon Brown

Poison-dwarf Billy Bremner

   

So the Scots have always done well south of the Wall. Currently, devious First Minister Alex Salmond peddles his insane ideas about Scottish Independence and has wrung out of David Cameron (whose family originally hailed from Inverness) a referendum date. A No vote should be a certainty but sensible London Scots like me will not have a vote and I am not totally confident. I guess hard-headed oil-rich Aberdonians will know on what side their bread is buttered and the Edinburgh professional classes – fund managers, lawyers, prudent bankers (yes, that is a wee joke) will also vote No. But we need to beware of Weegies and their Wains (Glaswegians and their children, of course) who are irredeemably contrarian, who after all backed Red Clydeside and with whom chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism plays well.

If the vote is Yes, expect a mass exodus to England of yet more Scots anxious to protect their hard-earned bawbees and to enjoy the balmy pleasures of Southern England. The English may well leave them to stew in their bagpipes, whisky and deep-fried Mars bars.  As for me, like all Scots, I am sentimental. When I finally turn up my toes there may be a corner of a foreign field that is forever Scotland. More likely, my final appearance will be at a Home Counties municipal crematorium, but maybe some kind soul will scatter my ashes from the Brig o’ Balgownie or “Where Gadie rins, at the back of Benachie”.

SMD

2.12.12

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012