Queen Elizabeth II has died, and the United Kingdom is in a state of mourning.
I wrote a piece for the i newspaper about what it's like to be in another country when something big happens - I was living in the US when Princess Diana died. I wrote about the kindess of friends, and how good-hearted sympathy never goes amiss.
But also about how I managed to shock Americans with what I revealed to them about Princess Diana. You would be unlikely to guess what it was that caused an uproar online, with people telling me I must be mistaken or lying...
Surely you mean "This idea is not so overt in the UK, where republicans feel they can say what they want about the system."
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think we should have followed the example of North Korea and kept the queen as monarch in perpetuity. I agree with Bagehot about the importance of separating the dignified and the efficient aspects of the state, and there's nothing gives someone dignity like being dead. The problem with “respect for the post” where the head of state and the head of government are the same person is that the post is held by a politician who will take every advantage they can of that respect.
Yes it should have been. When I saw it I considered asking to have it changed, but I never know if that is over-scrupulous (it's gone tomorrow) - as with almost everything, I wouldn't have minded a quick edit on the page, but you can't go forever back and forth. But clarity for republicanism/Republicans would have been the main one.
DeleteIndeed exactly about 'respect for the post'. I think it has degenerated vastly in the past 20 yrs in US, and is now just another political tool.
I always liked the idea of Evita, whose embalmbed body had to be polished up and kept tidy by Peron's subsequent wife. And then the corpse disappeared. There is - of course - a blogpost https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2014/08/blood-makes-noise-by-gregory-widen.html about the thriller aspects, with what seems to modest me a perfect set of pictures. I am particularly fond of the gaucho.
Pedro I of Portugal didn't even bother with embalming: he had the exhumed corpse of Ines de Castro, his wife, crowned at his coronation in the presence of her murderers.
DeleteI looked this up, as obv had never heard of either of them, to find out dates (mid-14th century seems safely a long time ago) and what a dramatic family story, the whole dynasty. I'm surprised there hasn't been an opera based on this (or perhaps there has)
DeleteAt least one fairly recent opera and several books I'd think. They give les rois maudits a run for their money as nasty monarchs and would carve up G.R.R. Martin's characters in no time.
DeleteAre they taught in Portuguese schools?
DeleteI would go to see that opera.
I didn't see the opera either - too deaf - but there was a photo of Ines's coronation by a review somewhere. It was at the Edinburgh Festival. I came across the story in one of Thomas Love Peacock (not a lot about clothes, but lots of talk and classical learning)'s novels. I even went to see a film a few years ago because one character was a devotee of Peacock!
DeleteThis is it? https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2014/11/scottish-opera-ines-de-castro/ - but couldn't find a picture of the crowned corpse.
DeleteThomas Love Peacock is another author I tried when young and should try again. What was the film?
Oh, I looked up to see what else the composer, James MacMillan, wrote, and he did an anthem for QE2's funeral, bringing us right round to the original subject. He MUST surely have been thinking about Ines when he wrote it....?
DeleteI can't remember the film, but I thought it deserved my support!
DeletePeacock was Shelley's saner friend, Nightmare Abbey - which puts the Romantic poets in a Gothic novel - might be a good place to start.
I think a Penguin edition of Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle was a book I decided to get rid of when doing a massive clearout (3000 books) on moving house. But for sure it will be available free online...
DeleteEngaged in a clear-out myself. One memoir - its fate undecided as yet, but i enjoyed rereading it - is Closing Times by Dan Davin - brief recollections of various writers. One writer, Julian MacLaren-Ross had an eccentric taste in clothing which might interest you.
DeleteRelevant elsewehere: I hadn't read any of C.J. Sansom's books for some time, but noticed a recent one earlier today and it was enormous. Have they never heard of deletion?
He was X Trapnel in Anthony Powell's books wasn't he, and I read a collection of his pieces afte reading Dance to the Music of Time - Penguin at that time did large paperbacks of various writers, with mixed collections of diary, letters and articles as it might be, and I found them useful introductions to those mid-century characters. I just looked up the Davin book - he had a nice collection of friends...
DeleteI rarely say this, but after the last Shardlake book I said 'no more' solely on the grounds of length. It was just ridiculous, and did not justify its length. He hasn't written any since, but I intend to stand firm unless it is a lot shorter.
I opened it towards the end, saw page 800, and put it back on the shelf.
DeleteEven for an admirer of Gaddis and Joyce (and Mantel) it was too much...
Mind you, I've never even thought of starting Samuel Richardson's books.
I read Pamela as a challenge to myself, and very much enjoyed it. With a book like that I will aim to read 100 pages a day, and it is ideally suited to kindle, as it is not a big weight to carry round, and you always know exactly where you are in terms of percentage or number of pages read. I note I got 3 x blog entries out of it, and have just found to my surprise that Pamela inspired me to write a Guardian piece about fictional diaries, so very fruitful.
DeleteI do note however that Clarissa sits on my shelf in large paperback form and doesn't seem to have been opened yet.
I seem to be turning up as "Anonymous" as well!
DeleteI was inoculated against Pamela by Joseph Andrews and Shamela!
My current Big Book experience is Les Miserables. I'm trying to read it in French with an English translation as a crib, but get carried away with the translation. A chapter (there are 365) a day. I was persuaded to try this by David Bellos's The Novel of the Century.
I borrowed Les Mis from the library and was chugging through it, and the book was due back and I thought it was worth buying my own copy. This meant I changed translations half-way through, and the difference was quite extraordinary, the library one was terrible and the Penguin one good...
DeleteWhen I decided to read Don Quixote, I had the idea to download as many First chapters as I could find onto my Kindle, and read them all to compare versions. One version was so very much head and shoulders above the rest that the decision was easy. That translator was an academic in Spanish studies. His daughter was studying DQ in high school and he asked her how she was liking it and she said it was dull and awful. He said 'but it's so funny!' and she said 'No it isn't' so he said 'show me your copy' and he read some of it and was so horrified by the way it had been done that he decided to do a new translation himself. It is still, tbh, a challenging book, it is not a joyful read, but he helped a lot I think...
Elsewhere on the blog I tell the story of how I downloaded Le Grand Meaulnes onto my Kindle and eventually decided it had literally been done by entering the text into Google Translate, and the result was completely nonsensical. I got my money back.
I came across a copy of Big Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier once.
DeleteI was not tempted to buy it. There's a very good film of it too.
"Reading a book in translation
DeleteLike gazing at a Flemish tapestry with the wrong side turned out, said Cervantes"
according to David Markson in The Last Novel.
I have never seen the film, always mistrusted the idea, so am now tempted by it.
DeleteYes, translation such a difficult topic - that's a great quote. Of course we need translated works for so many reasons, but it is never going to be ideal. I have twice loved a work of literature so much that I felt I HAD to read in the original - Proust and the Iliad.
There was a new translation of the Odyssey a few years ago by Emily Wilson, which raised all kinds of questions about previous versions. At the very least she showed dramatically how translators over all those years followed each other to a large degree: she did something very different, I absolutely loved it.
There was a series of Penguin Classics "[Eminent Foreign Writer] in English" - obviously including Homer - which had extracts from dozens of translations to compare. Wasn't Emily Wilson's selling point that she was the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English? If Samuel Butler and Robert Graves are right, it would give her an advantage. If i remember rightly, Don Quixote itself is claimed to be a translation - certainly, the field of translations of non-existent works is another interesting one. I haven't read it, but there's an interesting - and highly praised - translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley (who also wrote a novel about Grendel's mother) recently published.
DeleteI missed those classics, that would be most interesting and helpful.
DeleteYes exactly about Emily Wilson, and she writes fascinatingly about the subject - there is a long introduction to the book, and one eminent reviewer said reading it (ie the intro) closely would get you through first year classics in most universities.
She writes very strikingly of the young maids who are hanged near the end, and the choice of words to describe them.
I have blogged on non-existent books in my time: for a couple of years I did 1st April entries on books mentioned in other books. What might be considered more lightweight authors. I am particularly proud of this https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2016/04/jacob-wrestling-by-james-mortmain.html and its predecessor (linked in post), though to get the full effect you have to have read the book in which they are such a feature - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
A,D, Hope in Return From a Journey, his poem about Ulysses has a reference to the maids:
DeleteBut with the dawn he rose and stepped outside.
A farm-cart by the doorway dripped and stank,
Piled with the victims of his mighty bow.
Each with her broken neck, each with a blank,
Small, strangled face, the dead girls in a row
Swung as the cold airs moved them to and fro,
Full-breasted, delicate-waisted, heavy-thighed.
i can't recall the exact words, but in Homer's Daughter the narrator makes a chillingly casual aside about the dead maids in her own house. Deliberately or not, it shows the difference between ancient Greece as seen by Graves and now.
I'll look up your imaginary books.
I appreciated Fleur Talbot more, precisely because I didn't know the source. In fact, I wondered if you had double-bluffed by claiming a real writer as an imaginary one until I looked further! I liked what i saw of Warrender Chase - it looked like it could be like a crime novel written by Ivy Compton-Burnett!
DeleteHomer: didn't know AD Hope at all, but I just found someone reading the poem. I should add it to my post on poems about Ulysses (https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2017/05/poems-about-odysseus-and-achilles.html) - it is well up there with the two in the post.
DeleteI haven't read Homer's Daughter, but perhaps should. The last Graves I read was Antigua, Penny, Puce which I enjoyed hugely.
Imaginary books: Thank you! I just re-read it and was astonished - if I saw that passage somewhere else I can honestly say I would have absolutely no idea that I wrote it. And I would definitely want to read more - I should have written more. I will have to read the original book again (it never takes long) to see how much I took from it. I loved the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers.
Reality beat you to it with the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. It's one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies and celebrated/celebrates the 750th anniversary of its Royal Charter this year.
DeleteThey slightly defy imagination don't they? I went to a dinner a few years ago at the Barber-Surgeons Hall. It seemed so unlikely that it was still going..
DeleteAs an American, I sure wish a different photo had been chosen. Maybe someone was going for contrast: dignity and devotion to duty versus the lack thereof?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you weren't referring to my photo! Yes I see what you mean. Wouldn't it have been nice if it had been the President before him, whom one gathers was very popular with the Queen, anc vice versa.
DeleteReaction in Saskatchewan is respectful and fairly muted. While the federal government has proclaimed a holiday most provinces, including Saskatchewan, will only have a moment of remembrance.
ReplyDeleteShe was well liked here. Her visits drew large crowds. We appreciated that she was a hard working woman
Personally I think of her hats. On my Facebook page I posted a photo - https://www.facebook.com/bill.selnes/posts/pfbid02Gacse5BNHwXitdTCnxWXDwGWDgjHYh3zVS3xUa4kAcyYgFuHJqDabwnT3Rt161K3l - from a post I wrote on royal hats and fascinators.
My favourite memory related to the Queen concerns a visit to Saskatchewan over 40 years ago. A gala dinner was organized. Rather than restrict attendance to the prominent of the province our provincial government sent representatives out into the country to select guests. A representative attended the local cafe in the small community of Meskanaw where I grew up. The representative chatted with our good neighbour Dave, an amiable and friendly farmer. He then asked if Dave and his wife, Gail, would like to have dinner with the Queen and Prince Philip. They accepted and had a wonderful experience.
I enjoyed this when I read it a couple days ago.
Deletehttps://jenniferkloester.com/georgettes-lunch-with-the-queen/
Bill: what a great photo. She really suited yellow didn't she?
DeleteWhat a great story about finding the right people to meet her! I bet your friends did her proud.
Daniel: I loved that, what a great piece about both of them. And Black Sheep is one of her best, so quite right it should have coincided with that 😉
DeleteDiana Spencer worked for Universal Aunts, didn't she? A fascinating organisation, which I thought had died out around WW2, but apparently not. (Does it still exist?)
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, I just checked and they do still exist, but with a website that looks as though it belongs in Noel Streatfeild - well worth a look http://www.universalaunts.co.uk/
DeleteLike you, I was always absolutely fascinated by it, and as a child I simultaneously wanted to be met by a Universal Aunt at a London station (for adventures, obv) and also be a Universal Aunt when I grew up. Now I think about it, why aren't there dozens of novels (children's and adults) featuring them?
I once (15-20 years ago) attended a talk by somebody from Universal Aunts, which is how I learnt about Princess Diana having worked there. I particularly remember the fact that their first office was in the Harrods ladies' room. The ladies who started it all were certainly resourceful.
DeleteOh that must have been fascinating, and so brilliant about Harrods!
DeleteI have to admit I wish her funeral had been in June when I was in London; however, my professor would likely have been annoyed if I queued for 24 hours and missed class.
ReplyDeleteThere was a communal madness about it all, but I suppose no-one regrets doing the queuing. I had no interest in attending, but I was fascinated by the tracker mechanism where you could see how long the queue was in real time, and I like to have a quick look at the feed from the coffin room....
DeleteGenuinely amazed how widespread the mourning has been, in UK and elsewhere. (The US government had flags on half-mast until the funeral!) I find the tributes from those that actually met her, like one VC winner they interviewed, the most touching, while some of the political reactions rub me the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteI very much feel the same - some very genuine charm and feeling, and some performative madness. I thought many other countries showed great grace - the French President for example. And was astonished by the US half-mast flags.
Delete