Of Luddites and Lothlórien

For me the Luddites are ultimately just as misguided as the technologists. Recalling one's Tolkien, the Elves' greatest desire (which is perfectly understandable) is that things stay the same - but that is the very way that Sauron ensnares them. The Elvish refuges in Middle-earth - to wit the Grey Havens, Rivendell and Lothlórien - are protected by the Three Rings, but the Three Rings themselves depend for their power on the power of the One Ring. So there may very well be modern "environmentalists" (including the modern, Cameronite "crunchy conservative" Tory Party) who think they're on the side of the Shire, but really they're just doing the will of Mordor.

Of course the real purpose of environmentalism (and all the so-called politically correct lifestyle movements - from vegetarianism to "sexual health", etc.), as a friend writes from America, is to transfer moral paradigms to purely trivial issues. To my mind this is "scapegoating" in its clearest form. In the same way as politicians are keen to plant trees in public so that they can get on with destroying the English countryside so condemnation of "bogus asylum seekers" allows for unprecedented legal immigration, and blood-curdling punishments for "paedophiles" allow for classroom sex-ed that is ever more grotesque and abusive. Standard innoculation theory!

But recycling unfortunately is not just morally indifferent. It's positively vicious, in that it's wasteful and deceitful. And it's not just a case of removing personal conduct from the moral sphere. It's a case of replacing real virtues with completely imaginary ones.

Misconceived Wolverine?

Young, gorgeous, delightful, stunningly talented! Troye Sivan was a preteen YouTube breakout hit when Dan Hannan had hardly been heard of.

So WTF was he doing in half-arsed rubbish like X-Men Origins: Wolverine? It's hard to imagine a take on Wolverine more misconceived.

Apart from possibly this, that is!

The Boorman Kids

The other thing about Excalibur is the Uther-Igrayne shagging scene at the beginning. What with the grinding and tit-sucking and all, as a kid it used to turn me on and freak me out in equal measure. (Dude, this is King Arthur. But I shouldn't be watching this! Etc.) Uther, it just so happens, was played by the aforementioned Gabriel Byrne. But it's only when one bears in mind that the Igrayne in question was actually Boorman's daughter that the real freakiness of the scene starts to emerge.

And just to, er, top that, here's beautiful Charley Boorman (who appears in Excalibur in his undies, being oiled up by Helen Mirren) in The Emerald Forest.

It's a fairly recognisable syndrome - doting dad decides that his kid (female or male) is the most gorgeous thing in the world and gets her or him a plum part in some little remembered movie (or, in the case of Excalibur, in a well remembered one). Danny the Champion of the World, for example, is actually a sweet enough film, but it's still little more than an Irons family home movie.

Boorman's home movies would presumably have been along the lines of not just Hope and Glory (which really is glorious) but also I Dreamt I Woke Up (which is weird and interesting, but not quite as interesting as I wanted it to be). Taken together though, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest make Robby seem positively normal.

Flashes of Mythos

Well the Chrimbo Doctor Who was pretty rubbish even by the low standards of the new series. The Ood used to be really exciting and scary. Now they're boring. Bernard Cribbins used to be embarrassing. Now he's boring and embarrassing. The John Simms Master used be entertaining in a camp sort of way. Now he's just boringly embarrassing in a camp sort of way. Even David Tennant looks as if he's just going through the motions.

In fact I was asleep long before the climax, and only really woke up at the end when Timothy Dalton announced, in camp, spittle-flecked, un-Time-Lordly tones, that the Time Lords were back. Well, whoop-de-doo! Unfortunately if their return is anything like most of the revivals we've seen so far - the Master, Davros, the Daleks most of the time and even the Cybermen some of the time - then let's not get our hopes up. There'll be a few special effects shots. A bit of campness from David Tennant. And that'll be more or less it.

I always sigh when fans seek to transcend their innate "fan-wank" tendency by condemning the series' mythology. It is true enough that any series that's only interested in its own imaginary universe is always bound to disappear up its own rear end. But that's exactly what the new series started doing in its second episode, when Rose gives her mum a 'phone call from the space station at the end of the world. And besides, as with The X-Files, it's frequently the case that it's the "mythology" episodes of a series that are the best ones. (OK, this isn't actually true for the new Doctor Who series. None of the Dalek stories could possibly touch Steven Moffat's stuff, for example. And as for dodgy Sontarans vs. UNIT, drivel - let's not even go there! But I think the point is generally true.)

In the old days, however much quality and even character motivation (and all that) might have varied from serial to serial, at least each new serial was new and imaginative (and this even when, towards the end, there were only four serials to a season). Story arcs were minimal, and only popped up when they actually added to the excitement of a story (e.g. in the case of Fenric, where the villain's implicit revelations about a handful of the Doctor's recent adventures add to the thrill of his confrontation with the Doctor instead of distracting from it). Nowadays though almost every episode has be knitted into some sort of tight but silly narrative involving prophecies and Ood and Time Lords and, quite probably, Daleks and Cybermen and the Slytheen as well.

Well bollocks to the lot of it! The only times when the new series actually sounds half-way decent nowadays is when there's some occasional dip into the mythos - by which I mean the old mythos, of Gallifrey and Skaro and so on. So in yesterday's episode it was the Master's wittering on about his father's estates on Gallifrey that made my ears briefly prick up. It didn't add much to the plot. But it did for a moment suggest that there might be more to the new series than just chavs and modern TV cliches.

More importantly, there's always been a sense with the series' mythos throughout the show's history that when the individual writers refer to it - and, hopefully, expand it - they're dipping into the show's "collective unconscious". To take one fairly obvious example, although it was never written down or publicly announced that the Doctor should be "a bit like a Buddhist holy man", or indeed that he was really 750 years old, these things very much in the characterisation that William Hartnell had in mind when he played the Doctor back in the early 1960s, and to a certain extent they were still there as part of the Pertwee and Tom Baker characterisation(s) in the late '70s.

The point here is that it's this mythology, and indeed his Doctor Who collective unconscious, that really holds Doctor Who together - that somehow connects Totters Lane junkyard with whatever bollocks the BBC are putting on in the New Year. So really it's these occasional flashes of mythos that give the viewer a sense that the show will actually carry on - and indeed that there is some scope out there for it to be if not quite as good as it used to be then at least better than this s**t!

The Psychology of Harry Potter

For the last couple of months I've been reading M. Scott Peck's book The Road Less Traveled. I've been "deliberately" reading it slowly and thinking a great deal about it as I've been going along. In fact I've mostly been reading it on trains and 'buses, not to mention whilst waiting for them. And whether deliberately or not I have probably assimilated more of it than I woud have if I'd just sat down and read it straight through. And perhaps too I've benefited from reading it this way!

Most of what Peck has to say is actually very good. As a highly decorated military psychiatrist, his interest is very much on the "real world" rather than with fanciful theorising. Almost all of what he has to say is very interesting. There are only one or two bum notes, such as when he refers to himself and his own experience of "growing up" by funking prep school. His take on religion is somewhat disappointing - though according to his website he has taken a good deal more interest in his own religion (he's a sort of non-denominational, C S Lewis-type "Christian") since he wrote the book back in the 1970s. And there are one or two claims he tries to make that are just plain wrong. (For example, western society is not psychologically healthier now than it was in the 1950s, or, one imagines, than it was in the '70s, when he was writing. Quite the reverse, in fact, as Oliver James, for example, has been at pains to point out.) But all-in-all it is well worth reading.

I think I would particularly recommend this book for any "non-religious" person who is nevertheless still interested in spiritual growth - and indeed for anyone who has been let down by the modern Catholic Church (Ahem!) or who is simply ready to accept that "religion" only provides the tools and the starting point for spiritual growth and does not in and of itself cause the soul to open and expand. Prayer and the Sacraments, after all, are essential, but spiritual combat can only take place in the real world. If one confines one's spiritual efforts to the chapel and the confessional then either one must stay there twenty-four hours a day or one is lost.

I think it would be fair to say Peck takes a Jungian attitude to myth. His own, slightly idiosyncratic reinterpretations of Biblical passages are fairly grating. But he does make use of Buddhist and indeed classical myths in a way that is intelligent and engaging.

Perhaps the most important myth in his thesaurus is that of Orestes, which he refers to in the book's final chapter. A few years ago, various corners of the Internet were buzzing with all sorts of views about what the Harry Potter books were really all about. One of the most delightfully dotty theories I came across was that the Harry Potter stories were actually based on the Oresteia (of Aeschylus and, more generally, others as well). According to this theory, the character of Harry Potter himself was based on the hero Orestes, Ron was Pylades, and Hermione was, well, Hermione. This, by the way, was round about the time when one could find slashy fanfic out there (and some of it really was and is very "out there") for just about any coupling between any two characters in the Harry Potter universe one could think of. And it was said that J K Rowling herself, who was certainly no slouch at engaging with Internet-based fandom, was not a little perturbed by some of what was, er, "coming out".

For me the most wonderful thing about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when it finally hit the shelves was discovering all the little scores that Rowling settles with her readers (not to mention her critics) in its pages. The book opens with a thank-you message to the fans who have been following Harry's adventures from the beginning - written, with not a little charm, in a "Carolingian" "mouse-tail" meter copied from Alice. Although officially the eponymous Deathly Hallows themselves are Voldemort's horcruxes, the thematic crux of the book is Harry's visit, long foreseen by fans, to his parents' "hallows" on Christmas Eve in Godric's Hollow. The inscriptions on their graves act as a gentle but powerful riposte to those who over the years have accused the Harry Potter books of being un-Christian. So too, in fact, is the scene with the Sword of Godric Gryffindor, guiding Harry to one of the horcruxes by its light in the shape of a cross. (Funnily enough, the hug that Harry gives Ron after the horcrux is destroyed rather suggests that even the slash-fic writers were not entirely missed from Rowling's thank-you list.)

The thematic significance of the scene in Godric's Hollow though is perhaps really brought out by the book's frontispiece quotation from The Libation Bearers (the only such frontispiece in any of the books, thus giving this one, the last in the series, a definite sense of being more "grown-up" than its precursors). The conclusion, that the scene in Godric's Hollow is Rowling's own version of the scene the quotation is taken from, and that Harry really is Rowling's Orestes, is hard to avoid. Harry and Hermione aren't actually carrying libations, nor are they actually brother and sister - though, as Harry later confesses to Ron, that is very much the nature of their relationship. But in general terms the two scenes are analagous. Moreover it is also hard to avoid the probability that J K Rowling, herself a classicist by education, knew exactly what she was doing.

Is the real point then of the Harry Potter books a psychological one - that it is only when we confront our demons and take responsbility for ourselves that we can conquer them, at the same time, nay at the very instant that we finally achieve full spiritual adulthood? It is when Orestes takes responsibility for his own actions, rather than blaming them on the curse that has been placed on his family the House of Atreus, that the gods take pity on him and revoke their curse. The Furies then become the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, and the hero is spiritually healed. Similarly it is only when Harry finally takes up his personal responsibility for destroying the Dark Lord, and indeed when he stops being merely a pawn in Albus Dumbledore's (somewhat obscure) masterplan, that Voldemort, himself very much the embodiment of schizophrenic mental illness, is defeated and banished forever.

Obviously there's always a danger that one can read too much into popular stories, not to mention popular children's books and indeed all myths and fairy-stories. But it's just as possible, and more unfortunate, to read too little into these things, and given the huge success of the Harry Potter franchise it is probably worthwhile giving the boy-wizard and his world at least a passing thought along the way.

Frank Cottrell Boyce

On his children's novel Millions:

Was it always such a spiritual story?

No, I think it's become more spiritual. I mean, I am Catholic, but saints are not part of an official religion, although they are made by the Vatican. Saints come out of popular culture, because people admire somebody, or they come out of folklore or legend. They're sort of part of the magic of ordinary life; it's not dogma, you're not talking about evangelical religion in that way, you're talking about a popular way of thinking about the transcendence.

To me, having those images from El Greco and Michelangelo mainlined into housing estate in Widness, it's fantastically potent, though for people who are not from that background it might really seem odd and surreal. But if you've been bought up around there as a Catholic, you live on a council estate and then every Sunday morning you open that church door and there's incense, brass, weird music, saints, stained glass. You open this door to the infinite and then you close it again - that's just part of growing up to me.

[Time Out]

On the Pope's meeting this month with "cultural" figures:

Holding the symposium in the Sistine Chapel reminds us that Catholics have an astounding artistic heritage to draw on. We tend to idealise art and artists nowadays but the Sistine setting also underlines the fact that great art is parasitic on great power. The field of modern art in Britain, for instance, is sustained by money from banks and advertisers. And it expresses all the things they want to say - that the individual comes first and that life is meaningless (but you can give it meaning by buying stuff).

I think as a Catholic writer I feel my mission is to do what St Paul said and "think on what is good", to remind people that life, even in the worst circumstances, contains the possibility of joy. In a world which is dominated by governments and corporations that feed on fear and misery, this is a profoundly subversive message.

I used to feel anxious about pushing my Catholicism but in fact the two things I've done that have been most warmly received - Millions and God on Trial - are the things in which I was most upfront and honest about my faith.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is a novelist and screenwriter. Millions, directed by Danny Boyle, was released in 2004

[The Catholic Herald]

The Once and Future Ring King

The slightly eye-watering news that Kenneth Branagh is directing the new film of Thor (the Marvel Comics character, not his rather more interesting mythological predecessor) is closely followed by the rather more amusing news that Bryan Singer is to produce and possibly direct a new film version of John Boorman's Excalibur.

So, what have we here? A fancy English film director, whose big break was a mediaeval romance in the 1980s, is due to make a film based on a comic-book character inspired by mediaeval myth and legend (i.e. the Eddas, and so on). And at the same time a man whose really big break came with making films about comic-book characters (though, yes, he had done The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil and so on) is now due to re-make a 1980s film based on a mediaeval romance - albeit a film that arguably introduced the entire Matter of Britain into the world of comic-books and into the "Sword and Sorcery" genre.

The real genius of Excalibur, as with any proper modern rendering of a classic work, is that John Boorman picked up Malory's dog-eared, 500-year-old blockbuster and steadfastly refused to admit that it was boring. Yes, there are lots of boring bits in it. Yes there are hundreds of footling minor characters, the plot goes hither and yon, and the author probably didn't know very much about ancient British mysteries or Jungian mythic archetypes. But hey! It's got wizards, magic swords, magic forests, magic caves, magic castles, handsome knights galloping to battle in shining armour, damsels in distress (and various states of undress), lots of violence... and lots and lots of SEX. Throw in a bit of mumbo-jumbo about the King and the Land being one, and with a pinch of Carl Orff and lashings of Wagner you've got yourself a pretty sharp movie.

Yes, arguably Excalibur only really wins because the overwhelming majority of King Arthur films have been rubbish. Hollywood, sadly, tends to be scared of things they think people won't know about. So re-packaging Arthur, Merlin and Guinevere and the rest as a sub-sci-fi genre piece was a smart move. It wasn't even meant to be King Arthur in the first place. It was meant to be Tolkien (according to Boorman himself in a recent Indie interview). And of course Tolkien was another one of those things that Hollywood used to be scared of.

But then the lesson of every superhero movie made in the last three decades is that a pop cultural phenomenon (such as Superman or Spider-Man) really has to have been around for forty years or more before Hollywood is comfortable enough with it to allow a "proper" film to be made. Why else did we have to wait until the late '70s for the Man of Steel? Why did we spend the '80s enduring drivel like Legend and Willow and Krull and Dragonslayer and God-only-knows-what, when what everyone really wanted were hobbits and High Elves and Mordor and the One Ring? (To be fair, Conan was a pretty good film-version of Conan, who by then had more than done his pre-Hollywood four decades: famously poorly reviewed by Time with a single line - 'Star Wars... as done by a psychopath!' - it's hard to imagine that the original psychopath Robert E Howard himself would have disapproved.)

Well, for better or for worse, the Jackson films (as I feel compelled to refer to them) have most likely burst Hollywood's fantasy dam once and for all. In the long term Middle-earth itself seems likely to become one of those gifts that just keeps giving. (Personally in my lifetime I'm predicting Turin and Lúthien and bloody Gondolin. But never mind!) And given that The Hobbit is now held up, it's presumably time to have a crack at Malory again.

Singer, as it happens, is not the only one going back to Camelot for his movie magic. In the last couple of years we've had King Arthur (though really we'd rather we hadn't) and the enjoyably silly The Last Legion, both giving utterly ahistorical "historical" versions of the Once and Future King. Now, as Splash Page puts it, we've got 'a surprising amount of comics-savvy creators flocking to the Arthurian legend in some way, shape or form.'

Just last month, it was revealed that "Transmetropolitan" writer Warren Ellis is scripting a currently untitled King Arthur movie. Ellis noted on his blog that his project is different from Singer's, effectively dispelling any hopes that the one-time "X-Men" director and the "Astonishing X-Men" writer would be in cahoots on the same film.

But Ellis isn't the only comics writer taking a stab at the Arthurian legend. For some time, "Y: The Last Man" scribe Brian K. Vaughan has been attached to "Roundtable," an action-comedy update on the King Arthur story that has Merlin assembling modern-day knights to combat an ancient villain. Clearly, this isn't the film that Singer is set out to make, either.

And that's still not the only Arthur-inspired film that has comic book roots. John Woo is still attached to direct "Caliber," another retelling of the Arthurian legend, but set in the American Wild West. Based on a Radical Publishing miniseries, the story focuses on a magical pistol meant to be used by only one man—just like Excalibur and its wielder, King Arthur.

It's not hard to understand the appeal of the Arthurian mythos to comics-minded people: there's the mythical aspect, a plethora of dynamic characters and the chance to reinterpret a classic legend. But with Singer, Ellis, Vaughan and Woo all working on different King Arthur projects at the same time, it's almost too good to be coincidental. Somewhere out there, Merlin is most assuredly working his magic.

Well, best of British luck to all of them, I say. The Rings books may have been ruined for a generation of fans, but King Arthur, whether he ever really existed or not, has genuinely stood the test of time. It'll take a good deal more than a bit of wobbly CGI to finish him off once and for all.

Prince Philip of Greece

UPDATE: New photograph of Prince Philip's childhood visit to Saxmundham discovered.

Julien Green

Julien Green was a French born American author of several novels including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness. He wrote primarily in French, but was not a French citizen.

He was born to American parents in Paris on 6th September 1900, a descendant on his mother's side of a Confederate Senator, Julian Hartridge (1829–1879), who later served as a Democratic Representative from Georgia to the US Congress, and who was Julien Green's namesake. (Green was christened "Julian", the spelling was changed by his French publisher in the 1920s to "Julien.")

Born into a Protestant family, he converted to Catholicism in 1916. The next year, at the age of 16, he volunteered his services as an ambulanceman in the American Field Service. When his age was discovered his enlistment was annulled. He immediately signed up with an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross, and when that six-month term of service ended in 1918, he enlisted in the French Army, in which he served as a second lieutenant of artillery until 1919. He was educated at the University of Virginia in the United States from 1919-22. His career as one of the major figures of French literature in the 20th century started soon after his return from the United States. In July 1940, after France's defeat, he went back to America. In 1942, he was mobilized and sent to New York to work at the United States Office of War Information. From there, for almost a year, five times a week, he would address France as part of the radio broadcasts of Voice of America, working inter alia with André Breton and Yul Brynner. Green went back to France right after the end of World War II.

A devout Catholic, most of his books focused on the ideas of faith and religion as well as hypocrisy. Several of his books dealt with the southern United States, and he strongly identified with the fate of the Confederacy, characterizing himself throughout his life as a "Sudiste." He inherited this version of patriotism from his mother, who came from a distinguished southern family. Some years before Julien's birth, when Julien's father was offered a choice of posts (with his bank) in either Germany or France, Julien's mother urged the choice of France on the grounds that the French were "also a proud people, recently defeated in war, and we shall understand one another." (The reference was to France's 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War).

In France, both during his life and today, Julien Green's fame rests principally not on his novels, but on his journals, published in ten volumes, and spanning the years 1926-1976. These avidly-read and well-known volumes provide a chronicle of his literary and religious life, and a unique window on the artistic and literary scene in Paris over a span of half a century. Green's style, austere and employing to great effect the "passé simple", a literary tense nearly abandoned by many of his French contemporaries, found favor with the Académie Française, a fact mentioned in his election to that august body. Green resigned from the Académie shortly before his death, citing his American heritage and loyalties.

While Green wrote primarily in the French language, he also wrote in English, being entirely bilingual. He translated some of his own works from French to English (sometimes with the help of his sister, Anne). A collection of some of his translations is published in Le langage et son double, with a side-by-side French-English format, facilitating direct comparison. Despite his being bilingual, Green's texts remain largely unknown in the English-speaking world.

Thus far three of his books have been turned into films: Léviathan (1962), for which he wrote the screenplay, is the most famous. Adrienne Mesurat (1953), and La Dame de pique (1965) were also adapted to film.

He died in Paris in 1998 and was buried in the parish church of Klagenfurt, Austria. Apparently, Green was greatly moved by a statue of the Virgin Mary during a visit there in 1990. Subsequently, he expressed a desire to be buried in one of the church's chapels.

Julien Green adopted gay fiction writer, Éric Jourdan, as his son. According to Jourdan, Green decided to move to a house belonging to Caterina Sforza in Forlì, Italy, in 1994. However, Green did not move to this house because his health was failing.

Green was the first non-French national to be elected to the Académie Française. Fittingly, he succeeded François Mauriac, taking chair number 22 on the 3rd of June, 1971. It was commonly believed he had dual citizenship, but in fact, although born in Paris and writing almost exclusively in the French language, he had never become a French citizen. President Georges Pompidou offered him French citizenship in 1972 following Green's election to the Académie, but - faithful to the patriotic, "sudiste" spirit his mother inspired in him - Green refused it.

He revealed in his fiction and non-fiction that he was homosexual. However, he was capable of writing about women and heterosexuality as exemplified in his surrealist novel Minuit (Midnight) that explores the sexual awakening of an adolescent young girl.

French Scoutisme Photography in the 1950s

Robert Manson, circa 1950

Jacques Simonot, circa 1958

[H/T: Visual Vintage]

Blood Brotherhood

Blood-brotherhoods and similar rites have been employed by men to mark friendships and alliances for thousands of years. Evidence of the practice can be found in the lore, literature and recorded history of most cultures—from Norse and Celtic mythologies to the tribes of Africa, Australian and the South Pacific, to the fiction of Jack London and Mark Twain.

Today, many homosexual men are adopting and adapting marriage rites and relationship ideals that were designed to unite males and females, and which remain steeped in millennia of culture, tradition and imagery inspired by heterosexual unions. Blood-Brotherhood offers an alternative mode of perception: why not remove the feminine element and the trappings of heterosexual romance from the equation altogether and model bonds between androphiles after the bonds that men have made between each other for thousands of years? Why not base these unique unions between men on a tradition that honors male friendship?

Blood-brotherhood is not an attempt to “homosexualize” history or to “homoeroticize” the practice of blood-brotherhood, which has traditionally been practiced between heterosexual male friends. Rather, it is an attempt to inspire homosexual men to think about and solemnize their relationships differently—no matter what legal arrangements they decide to make.

Blood-Brotherhood is a toolbox for the imagination, containing a wealth of research about blood-brotherhood myths and practices from a wide variety of cultures and time periods, including excerpted texts and original translations by Nathan F. Miller. Blood-Brotherhood also documents Jack Donovan’s own bond with his compadre in a unique blood-brotherhood rite, presented as modern adaptation of this ancient ritual.

[Jack Donovan]

Superman and Jon Ross

Seriously though, I've never really understood why Superman never had his bona fide cute teenage sidekick in the same way that Batman had Robin and Captain America had Bucky. The comicbook Supes was always exclusively straight - though, according to Jonathan Ross, perhaps not always so narrow.

A plot for gods at the end of the rainbow

According to this story just in from AFP and also running in the Norway Post: Norwegian worshippers of the ancient Norse gods are to get a special burial site in Oslo.

The new grave will be shaped like a ship, and cremation urns of ashes of followers of the 'old religion' will be 'buried' there.

The special space in one of the city's cemeteries was requested by the Bifrost fellowship. In Norse mythology, bifrost is the rainbow bridge that connects the realm of the gods, asgaard, to earth. It means the 'tremulous way'.

Margaret Eckbo, the director in charge of Oslo’s cemeteries, told AFP that the city wanted to respect the last wishes of all its citizens. 'We already have spaces reserved for Muslims, Baha’i, the Salvation Army, Humanists, Romani,' she said.

Bifrost spokeswoman Stine Helen Robertson said the group had long been performing marriage ceremonies in accordance with ancient Norse customs. 'It was also important to offer a burial site,' she said.

The group wants to build a pile of stones shaped like a ship inside which the ashes of up to 200 of their Norwegian members can be kept. 'It will take time before it’s full,' said Robertson.
Funeral ceremonies could include readings from the Havamaal, an anthology of ancient Norse poems, and mourners holding up burning torches. 'We can also drink to the deceased by passing round a bowl of mjoed,' said Robertson, referring to a beer brewed by the Vikings over a thousand years ago.

Top of the Norse gods is Odin, who plucked out his own eye and later hung himself. Odious indeed. Thor was his son, who some have used to supplant the father.

Odin wrote the Havamaal, it is believed.

Here are his maxims for all men to take you all into the weekend, (yes even you, Elizabeth R!)

80.
Praise day at even, a wife when dead,a weapon when tried, a maid when married,ice when 'tis crossed, and ale when 'tis drunk.

81.
Hew wood in wind, sail the seas in a breeze,woo a maid in the dark, -- for day's eyes are many, --work a ship for its gliding, a shield for its shelter,a sword for its striking, a maid for her kiss;

83.
The speech of a maiden should no man trust nor the words which a woman says;for their hearts were shaped on a whirling wheeland falsehood fixed in their breasts.

84.
Breaking bow, or flaring flame,
ravening wolf, or croaking raven,
routing swine, or rootless tree,
waxing wave, or seething cauldron,

85.
flying arrows, or falling billow,
ice of a nighttime, coiling adder,
woman's bed-talk, or broken blade,
play of bears or a prince's child,

86.
sickly calf or self-willed thrall,
witch's flattery, new-slain foe,
brother's slayer, though seen on the highway,
half burned house, or horse too swift -
be never so trustful as these to trust.

87.
Let none put faith in the first sown fruit
nor yet in his son too soon;
whim rules the child, and weather the field,
each is open to chance.

88.
Like the love of women whose thoughts are lies
is the driving un-roughshod o'er slippery ice
of a two year old, ill-tamed and gay;
or in a wild wind steering a helmless ship,
or the lame catching reindeer in the rime-thawed fell.

[Ruth Gledhill]

A plot for gods at the end of the rainbow

According to this story just in from AFP and also running in the Norway Post: Norwegian worshippers of the ancient Norse gods are to get a special burial site in Oslo.

The new grave will be shaped like a ship, and cremation urns of ashes of followers of the 'old religion' will be 'buried' there.

The special space in one of the city's cemeteries was requested by the Bifrost fellowship. In Norse mythology, bifrost is the rainbow bridge that connects the realm of the gods, asgaard, to earth. It means the 'tremulous way'.

Margaret Eckbo, the director in charge of Oslo’s cemeteries, told AFP that the city wanted to respect the last wishes of all its citizens. 'We already have spaces reserved for Muslims, Baha’i, the Salvation Army, Humanists, Romani,' she said.

Bifrost spokeswoman Stine Helen Robertson said the group had long been performing marriage ceremonies in accordance with ancient Norse customs. 'It was also important to offer a burial site,' she said.

The group wants to build a pile of stones shaped like a ship inside which the ashes of up to 200 of their Norwegian members can be kept. 'It will take time before it’s full,' said Robertson.
Funeral ceremonies could include readings from the Havamaal, an anthology of ancient Norse poems, and mourners holding up burning torches. 'We can also drink to the deceased by passing round a bowl of mjoed,' said Robertson, referring to a beer brewed by the Vikings over a thousand years ago.

Top of the Norse gods is Odin, who plucked out his own eye and later hung himself. Odious indeed. Thor was his son, who some have used to supplant the father.

Odin wrote the Havamaal, it is believed.

Here are his maxims for all men to take you all into the weekend, (yes even you, Elizabeth R!)

80.
Praise day at even, a wife when dead,a weapon when tried, a maid when married,ice when 'tis crossed, and ale when 'tis drunk.

81.
Hew wood in wind, sail the seas in a breeze,woo a maid in the dark, -- for day's eyes are many, --work a ship for its gliding, a shield for its shelter,a sword for its striking, a maid for her kiss;

83.
The speech of a maiden should no man trust nor the words which a woman says;for their hearts were shaped on a whirling wheeland falsehood fixed in their breasts.

84.
Breaking bow, or flaring flame,
ravening wolf, or croaking raven,
routing swine, or rootless tree,
waxing wave, or seething cauldron,

85.
flying arrows, or falling billow,
ice of a nighttime, coiling adder,
woman's bed-talk, or broken blade,
play of bears or a prince's child,

86.
sickly calf or self-willed thrall,
witch's flattery, new-slain foe,
brother's slayer, though seen on the highway,
half burned house, or horse too swift -
be never so trustful as these to trust.

87.
Let none put faith in the first sown fruit
nor yet in his son too soon;
whim rules the child, and weather the field,
each is open to chance.

88.
Like the love of women whose thoughts are lies
is the driving un-roughshod o'er slippery ice
of a two year old, ill-tamed and gay;
or in a wild wind steering a helmless ship,
or the lame catching reindeer in the rime-thawed fell.

[Ruth Gledhill]

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

by William Frederick Yeames

The oil-on-canvas picture, painted in 1878, depicts a scene in an imaginary Royalist household during the English Civil War. The Parliamentarians have taken over the house and question the son about his Royalist father. Yeames was inspired to paint the picture to show the crises that could arise from the natural frankness of young children. Here, if the boy tells the truth he will endanger his father, but if he lies he will go against the ideal of honesty undoubtedly instilled in him by his parents.

The boy in the pictures is based on Yeames' nephew, James Lambe Yeames. Behind the boy, a sobbing little girl, probably the daughter, waits her turn to be questioned. The girl was based on Yeames' niece, Mary Yeames. At the back of the hall the mother and elder daughter wait anxiously on the boy's reply. The scene is neutral: while the innocence of the boy is emphasized by his blond hair, open expression and blue suit, the questioners are also treated sympathically; the main interrogator has a friendly expression and the sergeant with the little girl has his arm on her shoulder as if comforting her. The painting is now held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Madame Tussauds in London has a life-size waxwork tableau of the scene, faithfully reproduced from the painting.

'Peoples of Europe, protect your holy heritage'

Britannia is clearly identifiable, followed by (from left to right) Italia, Austria, Russia, Germania and (standing for France) Marianne. The angel is the Archangel St Michael. This painting by the German artist Hermann Knackfuß in 1895 was a present by Kaiser Wilhelm to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. It represents the challenge to Christian Europe to unite against the godless "Yellow Peril" of the East.

Another Country

I saw this film on an old DVD that had been given away free with some Sunday 'paper. I just managed to save it from the recycling bag.

I must say, I hadn't expected much, but it was still bitterly disappointing. It's beautifully set and, up to a point, quite attractively cast. Colin Firth, it turns out, was marvellous even when he was cute. Rupert Everett, similarly, turns out always to have been awful. But there's Guy of Gisburne from Robin of Sherwood as well, smouldering away in the background looking blond and posh and, well, just smouldering. And there's even a young Cary Elwes - not even bothering to act, but just being posh and cute and lovely and sweet and smiling oh-so-nicely and... Ahhhh!

And I suppose the rest of the film could so easily have been like that - a sort of Sound of Music with cricket. And one can feel that it's what the filmmakers really wanted to do. But the convention by the 1980s was that beautiful blond young men were always evil, beautiful old schools were evil, the mililtary and the British Empire were always evil - and buggery was a beautiful, liberating thing.

Oh, fuck it! It's moral drivel from beginning to end. It's a film about communists in England at time when England already knew about the horrors of Lenin and Trotsky. What makes it worse is that it was made at a time just when the whole gruesome Soviet experiment was starting to fall apart. (Having said that, the BBC made The Curse of Fenric virtually as the Berlin Wall was tumbling. For failing to gauge the mood of the times, no one has ever beaten the British media-Establishment - and that, in some ways, is a comforting thought.)

The film's moral inadequacy has an inevitable knock-on effect on its characters. The "good", leftwing characters are almost all drawn hideously badly. Everett is supposed to be a sympathetic gay character but he's not: he's the most annoying, snivelling excuse for a gay stereotype ever seen. And Firth is a splendidly enjoyable prick, but he never grows or develops. Just to expand on that unfortunate metaphor, his character remains limp throughout: he starts out as a prick and carries on as a prick all the way until the end - when he's still a prick; and there's never any clue as to why he's a prick. He's just a prick. And a Marxist prick at that!

The goodies are of course gays in denial and sadists and militarists and (worst of all!) praying Christians. Again, the inadequacy of the writing is such that we don't even find out whether they're supposed to be hypocrites or fanatics. All we're supposed to take away (or rather, because this is a film that was really only ever playing to the gallery, it's a prejudice that we're supposed to take to it) is that Christianity and the military are yucky and nasty. And that's all there is to it.

The most interesting characters in the film are Fowler - who is played by far and away the most handsome young hunk on display - and his favourite fag. The fag himself is a standard-issue, handsome little prepubescent love-muffin. But he is the only character towards whom anyone in the film shows any genuine affection or tenderness, and Fowler is the one character who shows it. (It's just one line: 'All right, Tomkins! You've done a decent job on my boots.' or some such.) But then a film that really explored the human condition, and tackled the emotional relationships - hero worship vs. emerging paternal fondness - between young men and younger boys, in school or out, would have been unthinkable in pro-Marxist 1980s Britain.

It would be even more unthinkable now.

Tea and Death

Does David Blair really think that Iran is becoming more pro-western simply because Iranian young people are adopting western fashions, drinking Coca-Cola and ignoring the Koran?

Any visitor to Tehran is struck by how young Iranians have embraced Western – and specifically American – popular culture. This does not simply extend to fashion, films, music and the regime's famously futile attempts to ban satellite dishes. What struck me on my last visit was how the bookshops outside Tehran University sell dictionaries of American idiom and helpful guides on how to adopt an American accent.

So what, I say? Even if you approve of American culture - and I don't - it won't stop the Iranians from hating us (wether or not you even believe there is a meaningful "us" left for them to hate).

Why? Because this sort of "culture" has very little to do with anything! The worst wars ever fought have been between enemies that were culturally almost indistinguishable. For me the most startling pictures from modern histories of the Second World War aren’t the shots of death-camps and mass graves. They're the photos and bits of film footage of Hitler and his cabinet at the Berghof, dressed up in tweeds with their hair neatly parted, having afternoon tea. One can almost hear Gilbert & Sullivan playing on the gramophone. A year or so later Hitler was ordering the bombing of Britain – which, after Germany, was his favourite country. “Culture” had absolutely nothing to do with it, and trying to pretend that the current “Long War” is about culture (rather than about what every war is about – i.e. politics) is seriously to misapprehend our enemies.

Could it all come back?

The above is from a stunning collection of colour photos, apparently from Life magazine and currently available on line here. [H/T: Irving] Click to enlarge.

Could it all come back? Up to a point one would have to say certainly not. For one thing we simply no longer have a culture of militarism, either in this country or in any other (and certainly not in Germany). And nor is there even any fondness for order and discipline generally, in private life or in public. People nowadays are in love with slovenliness and degradation, and their children are always inevitably worse.

Again though, I say only up to a point. The greatest pity is that much that was wicked and evil about National Socialism (e.g. the nationalism, not to mention the socialism) is still very much alive today. For example, a couple of days ago Irving also linked to a rather ugly story from The Daily Mail. I'm not really into physical fitness, and whenever I've taken myself down to the gymn most of the other boys and girls there have been reasonably civilised. But now it would seem that if the balding old coot on the treadmill next to yours turns out to be a ranting fascist nutter then it's not impossible that he'll be a senior civil servant at the FCO as well.

Similarly, I suspect (or is it just the usual gut instinct?) that Gerard Warner is wrong when he says that fascism is ideologically 'exhausted and discredited'. Morally, of course, fascism always was discredited. But ideologically it would seem to be very much alive. Ideologically it is, after all, merely a "scientific" approach to human existence, based on the theories (now elevated to the level of revealed truths) of Charles Darwin - who is still very much a celebrity du jour. It dismisses rationality and spirituality as mere sentimentality and weakness, prizing the will above human reason and "reality" above religion. Modern science and modern politics, which set no store by the mere humanity of their victims (whether old or unborn - to which latter extent modern doctors are a good deal worse than their Nazi forebears), simply take these principles to their logical extremes.

'Be a good Scout'

What with exciting recent goings in the world of the Roman Catholic clergy (for which see my other blog), and what with the obvious implications these goings on will have for traditional Roman Catholic Scouting, perhaps at some point I should get back to what this blog was supposed to be about when it started.

In the meantime though, here's one last taste of America.

Gay Republicans for Prince Harry!

OK, I've always been slightly sweet on Prince Harry. As a boy he was a red-headed little angel and regular posh scamp. Normally of course men don't do much for me, but now that he's a bona fide hero as well - as well as being third in line to the throne - well, why not? Yes, I was a bit shocked about that costume. (The swastika! With the uniform of the Afrikakorps! Does the lad know nothing?) But I'm prepared to accept that it was just a bit of fun, and not intended to be historically accurate. (Much like Schindler's List, I suppose!)

Even before he came back from fighting the good fight in Afghanistan, Prince Harry was "Britain's Pin-Up Prince". The OMG blog a couple of years ago was just one blog that got excited by pics of him with his shirt off. Then after Afghanistan of course even the blogsphere's "liberal" elements (i.e. the same sorts of people who were into yummy little Tom Daley, although not literally, one hopes) all enjoyed at least some of the pics of the soldier prince on active service in far off lands. The blog When Only Hot Will Do had a nice post about him here. The blog AskaGayMan.com didn't even have to be asked. Even the Miami Herald took an interest.

And now comes the news that even homo-Nazi Peter Tatchell may have been, er, "turned" by this young man's charms.

Mr Tatchell, who is a gay rights campaigner and a leading member of Republic, heaped rare praise on our twenty-four-year-old Prince describing him as "liberated and enlightened" after Prince Harry was filmed kissing and licking a male Army friend. For in that video, obtained by The News Of The World newspaper, Prince Harry is caught on a night out with friends in which he mouths to one soldier: "I love you" before kissing him on the cheek and also licking his face. Another extract from the tape shows our Harry asking a colleague how he felt after an Army exercise, adding: "Gay, queer on the side?"

In his press statement Mr Tatchell said he had no problem with Harry's use of the word "queer" and praised his show of affection. Mr Tatchell said: "For him to happily give his soldier friend a public kiss and lick his face strikes me as rather liberated and enlightened - for a straight man. If only more heterosexual men were relaxed about same-sex affection like Harry, the world would be a better place. The context and intention of words is crucial in deciding whether they are offensive or not. I don't find anything objectionable about the context in which Harry used the word queer."

In a statement Neil Welton, the leader of Monarchy Wales, said he was "delighted" that such a prominent member of Republic's team was now backing Prince Harry. He urged Republic's Campaign Manager, Graham Smith, to publicly state whether he agreed with Mr Tatchell's assessment of Prince Harry as "liberated and enlightened". Neil added: "Last Monday morning, Graham Smith of Republic was describing Prince Harry as a disgrace and unfit to be a possible future Head of State. By Wednesday afternoon, Peter Tatchell of Republic is describing Prince Harry as liberated and enlightened. Which is it? Are they having a laugh? They can't have it both ways."

[The Monarchist]

In the absence of any pics of Prince Harry "having it" both ways, the above is one of his old Afghan pics again. Enjoy!

You'll never read the bitchfests about Chelsy Davey the same way again!