News from Nowhere

On Saturday Channel 4 devoted nearly two hours of prime time to a documentary which promised to shed new light on the mystery of the Princes in the Tower: on Sunday we watched it. I was sceptical, but I wasn't going to miss it - see the title of this post. Philippa Langley, described as "the writer who located the final resting place of Richard III" has apparently discovered new documentary evidence, and enlists Rob Rinder, wearing his criminal barrister's hat (his other career in daytime tv is never mentioned) to assess it critically.

Since the trailer shows Philippa Langley murmuring "I think they survived..." I don't think it's a spoiler to say that my immediate expectation - that this was going to be about the pretenders known as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck - was correct. With the aid of an army of volunteers across Europe, she had apparently unearthed four significant documents. I say "apparently" because I don't actually know how new this material is: it was presented as shattering and world-changing, but so were things that I already knew - that's how Saturday night television works. They are, if I am remembering correctly: an entry in the accounts of Emperor Maximilian for weapons to support 'the son of Edward IV' to claim his throne; an account from the court of Maximilian of the Emperor recognising Richard by certain birthmarks; a document, complete with royal seal, in which Richard promises to pay 30,000 florins to Duke Albert of Saxony after gaining the English throne; and a first person account (in old Dutch) by Richard of his escape and (very circuitous) travels.

In order to examine these, Langley and Rinder had to visit several European libraries, and other places associated with the story. This provided a generous helping of eye-candy. I was particularly impressed with somewhere I think was Mechelen, where Margaret of York had her court (I didn't recognise the name, but the internet suggests a French name, Malines, which does ring a faint bell): worth a visit... The camera also lingered lovingly over each of the documents in turn, and that, too, was a pleasure, picking out words and phrases (often obligingly highlighted, which always makes it easier).

So there was much to enjoy. But.

Great emphasis was placed on establishing that the documents were genuine, but it was assumed throughout that if they were genuine, they must be true: lying had apparently not been invented in the fifteenth century. If the seal says 'Richard, King of England, then the person who affixed that seal must be the rightful king of England, even if he has not yet taken possession of his throne - somehow, the seal has come into being. If the accounts show that money has been spent on weapons, then the cause in which those weapons were carried must be a just one. To introduce some last minute jeopardy, Rob Rinder consults Janina Ramirez, and she points out that the first person narrative is a touch too good to be true: it reads like something concocted to present its audience with the sort of exciting story they want to hear. He is shaken by this, but he gets another expert to look at the document, and pronounce it genuinely of the time and place of its purported creation, so faith is re-established.

Philippa Langley is partisan, and I sympathise: I can see why she believes the narrative she builds on these documents. But I don't believe that Rinder doesn't see the flaw, and I am insulted that he thinks I won't notice it either. I didn't expect much from this programme in the way of depth or historical background; if anything, I expected less than there was. But I was left speechless at its brazen disregard of the big hole in the middle of its case.

That previous post from Bouillon took me by surprise: until I sorted through the photographs, I didn't realise how much I had to say about that evening walk. What had stuck in my mind was the following day, the Monday - Easter Monday, in fact, and it happened to be my birthday. This wasn't a big deal. We hadn't particularly planned to be on holiday on my birthday, it just so happened that when we looked at dates, the period that worked best for us had my birthday in the middle of it. So we were on holiday, every day was a special treat, and a birthday, well, that's just another day.

I woke up, however, feeling every bit of a year older - more than a year. I blame hotel pillows, I can never find the right combination of 'enough but not too much': for whatever reason, I woke up with a painfully stiff neck, and spent much of the day moving very cautiously, and not looking up.

Easter Monday, say my notes, is the new Sunday. We'd been surprised the previous evening how much was open; now we were surprised all over again how much was closed. Specifically, the pharmacy: there was no chance of replenishing my supply of paracetamol. But the Castle was open, which was the main thing, and we enjoyed our explorations - in the rain.

Then a longish drive to our next destination. Birthday: a day for crossing borders with no observable difference on the two sides, between one year and the next, between Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. The best thing about the drive was something we saw trice on the motorway, a heavily wooded bridge carrying a strip of undergrowth to allow wild animals to cross the road safely. This is a Wildbrucke in German and a passage à gibier in French; if it has an English name, I don't know what it is.

Then we reached Trier, and it stopped raining. There are many things to say about Trier, but for the moment what matters is that it was a major Roman city and doesn't intend you to forget it, so durham_rambler celebrated my birthday with the Roman menu at Zum Domstein.

I posted at the time about how we spent Easter Saturday morning: we went to church. That is, it was grey and rainy and seemed like a good opportunity to visit the cathedral, and admire the famous altarpiece. Later in the day we found ourselves back in the cathedral square, and I took the classic photo of the building head on, and glowing in the evening light, but I prefer this shot from the morning, as we navigated through the back streets - the not very many back streets, because our hotel was so ridiculously central - towards that tower:



( Rest of the story behind a cut to spare your bandwidth / patience )

We hadn't registered our cards until quite late on Friday morning; we could have fitted in another museum visit before we left Ghent on Sunday. Instead we went to the book market, and I don't regret it.

I've already posted the condensed version of our day in Bruges: here's the longer version, with illustrations. As I said, we parked in the car park next to the station, which gave us free bus travel into town - and this is what we saw when we got off the bus:

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( There's more, under the cut: )

At the last bookstall of the market, up by the bridge, there was a fine collection of English-language poetry. In among the Yeats, and the Rattle Bag, there was Ode to Bully Beef, a collection of unofficial poetry of the Second World War, edited by Rosie Serdiville and John Sadler; Rosie Serdiville is a friend of a friend of ours, whom we know well enough to stop and chat when we run into her, but we had not expected to run into her here. We were discussing this with sufficient animation for the stallholder to notice, and comment that we had come a long way to buy English poetry. We said nice things about her stock of English poetry, which deserved them, and she repeated them to her partner, who, it turned out, was English - and not just English but with roots in County Durham: his father was from Stanley and his mother from - Tow Law, I think it was. They had visited Durham a few years ago, and enjoyed Beamish .

What Durham and Ghent have in common is that they are small cities with big universities, but they were positive about this. The students, they said, kept the town lively: compare it Bruges, which is beautiful but closes down at 8.00 pm. Though I note that they don't live in the city, but just outside; we had heard Ghent's vibrant night life from our city center hotel, and were less enthusiastic. I'm not sure how far the similarities go, either - but interesting, all the same.

It rained overnight, and was still overcast and damp when we went out this morning, so we started the day with some indoor sightseeing: where else but the cathedral? For one thing, it's a cathedral, and for another it's the home of the painting which I have always thought of as the Ghent altarpiece, which we are now apparently to call 'The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb', which the tourist guides agree is one of the most important paintings of all time (I'm pretty sure I read someone claiming that it is the best painting of all time, but I can't track that down, and anyway what does it even mean?).

Somewhere inside all that baroque ornamentation is a gothic cathedral, but what caught my eye was all the black and white frills and furbelows, black wood and white marble (and, I suspect, a lot of paint, but I was reluctant to touch) like an ice cream sundae with licquorice sauce and billows of whipped cream. I don't have many pictures: a noticeboard as you enter greets you with illustrations of all the things you must not do, and of course photography is one (no, two - still and moving) of them. My initial reaction was "Must photograph that!" and then, of course, "Oh. No." In fact the prohibition was widely ignored, and once I had reached peak irritation, I too began sneaking shots. Here's one of them, showing a seriously over-the-top pulpit by Laurent Delvaux (thankyou, Routard guide, for this information). I'd love to have taken more details, but hope this gives some idea:



In contrast, the adoration of the Great Work is performed in a small side chapel (which will ultimately, when the renovation is complete, be a separate designated display space). You pay your money, or hand over your City Card, and go in past a desk where, for another euro you can have an audio guide, and then you join the crowd in front of the painting, whose multiple panels fill almost the whole height and width of the room; everyone else is also listening to the audio guide. I'm very bad at taking in information aurally, and after a bit I handed the listening task to Roger, who very kindly gave me edited highlights. I am also not good with crowds, but this process allowed me to squeeze through to the front and look for the details we had picked out as of interest (as far as my eyesight allows). What this preamble is saying, I think, is that I have gone through the motions of adoration, but somehow failed to adore. I saw details which were pleasing, but I never saw all those panels as a unity, the parts did not add up to more than their sum. Your mileage will probably vary, but I am generally a person who likes detail. who does not believe that less is more. Generally.

There's one thing, though. By chance we were there at midday, when the attendants close the wooden shutters of the triptych, so that you see the scenes painted on the outside, and the middle tier is a wonderful Annunciation, the angel Gabriel and Mary facing each other across a bare, wooden room, with a window looking out over the city, and a jug and towel ready for use - it's almost in trompe l'oeuil, and I loved it as I did not love the gem-like symbolism of the interior. But I did wonder what it would have been like to see the process in reverse, to arrive when the shutters were closed, and to see the lamb revealed?

After this we went for a much needed beer at the theatre bar.

We spent today in Bruges. After breakfast on board, it didn't take long to disembark and drive to a car park Roger had previously identified, next door to the railway station, not excessively expensive and whose price includes a bus ticket in to the centre. In fact it's close enough to walk, and we ended up walking back - but that's another story. Anyway, we had a splendid time not doing any of the deeply cultural things people had recommended to us, just admiring the streets and the buildings and the many, many chocolate shops... I hope there'll be a post that relives that walk, when I get home and can sort out the photos. But for the time being, just two silly pictures: ( oh, all right, then, under a cut )

After that - but no, I said I'd save 'after that' for another post. Eventually we returned to retrieve our car, and it wasn't a long drive to Ghent, where we will spend the next few days.

...is not the same as Belgium in twenty-four hours.I would have liked longer to explore - after all, the idea of spending a holiday following the Meuse had its origin in the Ardennes, the wooded area shared between France and Belgium. We might have used our day in Monthermé to visit Bouillon, if we hadn't gone walking instead - ah, well, another time!



So we followed the river out of France and into Belgium, and came to Dinant, where we spent the night at a B & B called "Au Fil de l'eau", right next to the Meuse and just along from the tourist office. THe town is stretches out along the narrow space between the river and the rocks, with the citadel perched up above it. There's a church with an extraordinary bulbous spire, there are interesting shops and old houses, there's the birthplace of Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone) and we wandered about exploring until the light was completely gone.

More photos of Dinant.

The next day was grey; there was no sunshine on the Meuse at breakfast-time, though we had a fine view over the river from the upstairs room, and a good breakfast too, with the first home-made jam of the trip (on our previous visit to France, a year earlier, home-made preserves, some more successful than others, had been a recurring theme; this year, though, we didn't see any until we left France for Belgium).

Back on the road, industry gradually became a larger and larger part of the landscape. The river ran between dramatic walls of rock, and equally dramatic quarries. A blanket of grey dust relected back the grey of the sky.

We stopped to look round Huy, a town I'd never heard of, but which evidently has quite a history: according to Wikipedia, it's the birthplace of both Peter the Hermit, whose preaching did so much to launch the First Crusade and Jean-Joseph Merlin, inventor of the roller skate. Brass scallop shells set into the cobbles suggest it's on one of the pilgrim routes to Compostella. We enjoyed our walk around the old town and the market, but crossing the river was a mistake, leaving us tired and hungry and looking for lunch in the wrong place, We became fractious, and failed to find the post office...

Pictures of Huy.

Along the road into Liège we began to wonder how much further it would be practical to follow the river. The huge industrial buildings were not beautiful, but there was a pleasure in seeing the Meuse as a working river, busy with barges. Eventually, though, we tired of continually adjusting our course, threw in the towel and took the motorway to Valkenburg. Even so, we arrived late and weary. I had not realised quite what a tourist centre it is - but this had one benefit, that there is a dense agglomeration of pavement cafés (all offering slight variations on the same menu) the like of which I had not seen since Budapest. We opted for the tapas.