Cruising

In an age when words take on increasingly diverse meanings, it can be challenging to make the nature of your intended topic clear.  Take the word ‘cruising’ as an interesting example. It can refer to driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and to socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner, often in specific locales, and in this use, it is a term that became historically associated with gay male culture in the second half of the 20^th Century.  In my use of the term, I am taking up another common use of the term, referring to ‘ocean cruising,’ which describes taking a vacation on a large ship, and calling in at different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.

The ocean cruise market has grown dramatically, and in 2025, an estimated 37 million passengers enjoyed a holiday travelling by ship for a number of days.  Industry projections suggest the global cruises market revenue is expected to grow from $44 billion today to reach r around $54 billion by 2029.  There are around some 323 cruise ships currently in operation globally, managed by 51 ocean cruise lines, and a further 27 river cruise lines.  It isn’t just a growing area of business, but the ships are growing, too!  Today, on average a cruise ship can host around 3,000 passengers.  One final statistic:  it is an activity somewhat focussed on older passengers, with an average age of around 47 years old.

In practice, cruise ships are really rather large passenger ships, and they are run in a way that suggests the best way to think of them is basically as floating hotels, with a large number of hospitality staff in addition to the usual ship’s crew. Given what are often significantly high passenger numbers, ships restaurants often organize two dinner sittings per day, and besides having one or two formal dining rooms, most cruise liners also have one or more casual buffet-style eateries.  Total meal outlets on a ship can number eight to fifteen of more.

Cruising began to be a serious vacation pastime in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, but the industry experienced fluctuations in popularity over the next hundred years, almost ceasing in the 1970s and 1980s.  However, this began to change in the late 1980s with the appearance of  “megaships” built specifically for the mass cruising market.  Cruise ships appeared with such innovations as having multi-story lobby, often  with a glass elevator and one or more decks with cabins each with a private balcony.  In more years, cruise ships have been designed to maximize the range of passenger amenities including several different kinds of cuisine in the various restaurants and other meal venues, meeting spaces, cinemas and cabaret venues.  They have been described as ‘balcony-laden floating condominiums’.  It is not uncommon for the more luxurious ships to have more crew and staff than passengers.

Since the 1980s, the pace of change has been amazing.  One clear indicator is that between 1988 and 2009, the largest class cruise ships have grown a third longer from 268 to 364.7 metres, (879 feet 3inches in 1988, up to 1,196 feet 8 inches), they have doubled their widths (going from 32.2 to 65.7 metres, (105.5 feet up to 215.6 feet 7), nearly tripled the total passenger count (2,744 to 7,600), and more than tripled in volume (going from 73,000 to 248,000 gross tons).  In addition they have changed from offering  a single deck with verandas to all decks having cabins with verandas.  However, to offer a sense of perspective it remains the case that hotels still dominate, with the total number of cabins on all of the world’s cruise ships amounting to less than 2% of the world’s hotel rooms.

Cruise ships are organized much like floating hotels, with the numbers of hospitality staff equal to exceeding those for the ship’s crew.  They’re needed, as most cruise ships offer a wide variety of facilities, including:

• Buffet restaurants
• Card room
• Casino – Only open when the ship is at sea to avoid conflict with local laws
• Childcare facilities
• Cinema, and/or theatre with Broadway-style shows
• Fitness centre
• Hot tubs
• Indoor and/or outdoor swimming pool with water slides
• Library
• Lounges, often including an ‘Observation lounge’
• Indoor activities including karaoke, ping pong and pool tables
• Shops – usually only open when the ship is at sea to avoid merchandising licensing and local taxes
• Spa
• Teen lounges

Some of the huge ships travelling on the oceans today can also include such features as bowling alleys, ice skating rinks, rock climbing walls, sky-diving simulators, miniature golf courses, video arcades, ziplines, surfing simulators, water slides, basketball courts, tennis courts, ropes obstacle courses, and even roller coasters.  They are floating cities!

Most cruise ships sail the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, but some travel to other areas including the Arctic and Antarctic oceans (pack-ice free areas, of course), the South Pacific, the Baltic Sea and New England, among others.  There are also ‘Expedition ‘cruise lines, which usually operate small ships, and visit certain more specialized destinations such as ports in the Arctic and Antarctica, or the Galapagos Islands.

The Caribbean region is one of the largest cruising areas in the world, responsible for over $2 billion in direct revenue to the Caribbean islands in 2012, employing over 45,000 locals.  An estimated 20 m cruise passengers visited the islands annually, with The Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Jamaica and other locales seeing at least 1 m visitors a year.  Alaskan cruises see more than  5 million passenger and crew visits, annually, but Europe is the world’s second-largest cruise market, only a little behind North America. Over 8 million European passengers cruised globally in 2024, with around 18 million passengers going  through EU ports in 2023.  Today, there may be 100 million people going ocean cruising annually.

All this data leaves to one side the nature of life aboard a cruise ship.  If these huge ships are often described as similar to a small – and exclusive – town, that description slips past many of the interesting interpersonal issues.  Perhaps that takes us to another meaning of the word ‘cruising’, in this case referring to spending time with a previously unknown group of people, where there are no continuing ties to be considered (even if people often create friendships).  This gives the people on a cruise ship a novel kind of freedom, both between themselves and other passengers, and between themselves and crew.

There are a number of aspects to this – including the much discussed ‘shipboard liaisons’ in popular literature.  However, a rather different perspective comes from looking at matters to do with class, status and social deference.

Social status issues on ocean liners historically involved stark class divisions (steerage vs. cabins), crew-passenger hierarchy, national/ethnic segregation among crew, and challenges for marginalized groups like female seafarers facing gender bias, all affecting access, amenities, and respect, and creating distinct social classes or segments which mirrored or even exacerbated real-world inequalities.  In many ways it might seem ocean liners offer a microcosms of society, reflecting and sometimes amplifying existing class structures, a function of ticket prices, crew demographics, and operational structures.  Together these can create distinct social worlds within the same vessel.  For many ocean liners, their business model is to identify top-of-the-line customers and, for a minimum of $10,000 a week, to pamper them with special amenities like a full-time butler, house them in an elegant suite with two-story views of sunsets over the waves, with access to a private swimming pool and the guaranteed company of  elite people like themselves.

Is that also true for cruise lines?  Some of the research suggests that there is some softening of these distinctions.  Modern cruise lines target a middle-class audience, creating contained “metaspaces” that can ameliorate existing social hierarchies, although there is always a clear distinction between the passenger experience of luxury and escapism, and the working conditions of the crew.  The workforce is often segmented by nationality and race, with workers from the “global South” (particularly the Philippines and the Caribbean) frequently occupying lower-waged, service-oriented roles like cabin cleaning.  In many ways, it is the divisions between crew from different backgrounds and in lower level positions that most clearly mirror global economic inequalities.

Another criticism of the cruise line industry is that it presents ‘Europeanised’ representations of destinations, which some have compared to ‘plantation tourism’. Some have built private destinations (like Royal Caribbean’s Labadee, Haiti, and CocoCay, Bahamas), and most vertically integrate their services, ensuring passenger spending generally stays within the company’s ecosystem rather than significantly benefiting local economies.  However, cruise operations can bring some revenue to local governments through port fees, which have been increasing in recent years, and through the commercialization of local culture to meet tourist expectations, creating a potential disconnect between the insulated onboard experience and the realities of the destinations visited.  However visits can be so well managed, using carefully chosen transport and tour guides, that the local experience is essentially curated.

All this is true, but part of the ‘luxury’ on being on a cruise is that, albeit briefly, passengers can forget about the realities of daily life.  The overall broad homogeneity of the people on the ship in terms of relative social status is reinforced, by some cruises lines, in making certain there are no obvious class-based activities or areas.  In that sense, the cruise is an ‘out of the everyday world’ experience, an escape.  Isn’t this the intention of a holiday, to get away from normal work, tensions and social issues, and indulge in a fantasy by living in a way that is unlike everyday life.  The guest on the cruise ship knows this, just as the same form of artificial living is evident by enjoying hotel and resort experiences, experiences that are costly and special and thereby quite different from and ‘outside’ normal activities.

Perhaps this is like going to the cinema or reading a book.  You are being ‘transported’ to another realm, albeit briefly, where you can enjoy a series of experiences that you know aren’t ‘real life’.  This alternative is far more expensive, of course, but people will save for that ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to escape and enjoy a life that is otherwise inaccessible.  As with reading, there is a distinction between being merely entertained and learning.

It is helpful to distinguish between two aspects of ocean cruising.  These are the experiences on the ship itself, and then the visits and tours of the places that are included on any cruise itinerary.  The ways these two aspects of the cruising experience are managed are very revealing.

Some cruises are almost exclusively focussed on the on-board experiences.  Ships offering this approach are often full of entertainment options, with cinemas, gambling, functions and even libraries to give the passengers alternative activities. Of these, there is one, the swimming pool, that is an attraction for many.  All these experiences are focussed on the same underlying purpose:  you eat, sleep and enjoy yourself on board, an approach that can easily turn into mindless relaxation.  This is the ‘indulgence’ side of ocean cruising.

The alternative focus in cruising is to call at many ports on the itinerary, and arriving at some ports there can be ten or more different onshore visits available for ship guests.  Some support that theme of indulgence, offering  a day at a spectacular beach, or dining at a special  restaurant.  Many provide opportunities to learn and explore, visiting sites in famous cities, museums, stately homes and other attractions.  Here, the explicit aim is educational, inviting those passengers going on land tours to learn, and broaden their understanding of past events and present communities.  This is the ‘learning’ side of ocean cruising.

Another perspective on cruising is to step aside from cruise lines and ships and focus instead on the varieties of passengers.  As noted at the beginning of this essay cruising can refer to “driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner  …  [but] another common use of the term, referring to ‘Ocean Cruising,’ which is taking a vacation on a  large ships, visiting different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.”  What are those cruise line passengers seeking when they go on a cruise?

The challenge sits in that word ‘cruising’.  It implies entertainment and relaxation.  Certainly, many of the passengers seem to be focussed on those two, perhaps with the addition benefit of eating and drinking without preparation or washing up!  For them, the cruise ship is one big service provider, and all they need to do is to sit back, relax and enjoy, although they may indulge in some sightseeing, taking videos or photographs to show to family and friends back home.  Key in for many people who go on cruises is to avoid housework, cooking, washing clothes and bed linen, and bedmaking.  It is like going on a beach holiday, but in this case the bedroom goes with you, along with facilities and staff to meet your needs.

For others, the cruise is an adventure, not a merely a way to relax.  They want to see new places, to go on trips to visit towns and buildings all the way from hamlets to palaces and cathedrals, and look at novel vegetation, landscapes and mountains.  Not just to see, but to learn, to tour with an expert who will point out the obvious and the hidden, and who will provide a historical overview to sights on each trip.  For them, the ship is more like an elegant caravan, principally a place where they can eat and sleep.  Their moving hotel is taking them to places they really want to explore.  While they enjoy having meals prepared for them, sleeping and resting in a cabin kept clean by staff, while being able to look out of their window and see the passing scenery, they want more than the ship and its facilities .  It is possible this might be a minority of cruise passengers today, these are the people for whom it is the places they visit, rather than merely what is on the ship that is at the core of their enjoyment.  They are in a hotel that takes them to fascinating new places every day!

Brick by Brick

It must be a strange sight for a young child, to be confronted by a pile of plastic bricks, with no instructions as to what to do.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, many small children find the big and brightly coloured blocks fun to play with, and pile on top of one another.  Then they begin to fit them together and eventually find there are ways to connect wheels to their creations.  Moving toys!  Around 6 or seven years of age, they find there is another, smaller set of blocks, still interlocking and still using primary colours (although some other shades are included).  Soon, they discover they are being given bigger boxes, and each contains an assembly of component blocks with which they are able to build much larger structures, ranging from houses and commercial stores through to racing cars and familiar places, a diverse range including models to build of such places as the Eiffel Tower, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Antarctic exploration vessel Endurance.  Of course, not all children as they grew up abandon their hobby and continue to use their Lego collection to become AFOLs, Adult Fans of Lego, thereby remaining as lifetime Lego builders (LLBs?).!

Lego first appeared in 1932, and at that time it comprised wooden toys made in the workshop of a carpenter from Billund, in Denmark.  By 1934 the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, had named his company ‘Lego’, a name which was based on the Danish phrase leg godt (meaning ‘Play Well’).  Several years later Lego began producing plastic toys, and by 1949 it commenced a new product line, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, and called them “Automatic Binding Bricks”.  They were initially manufactured from cellulose acetate, offering an enhancement of traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.  The company adopted Christiansen’s motto, “only the best is good enough”, a comment still reinforced by the company today.  The motto was to serve as a way to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value in which he believed very strongly.   By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company’s output, even though many had initially believed  plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys.

Lego was first sold in Denmark in 1957, and the company expanded its sales across Europe towards the end of the 1950s, before expanding outside the European continent from the 1960s.  It was Christiansen’s son, Godtfred, who saw the immense potential in Lego bricks in becoming a system for creative play.  However, the bricks still had problems:  their locking ability was rather limited, nor were they particularly versatile.  In 1958, a new modern brick design was developed; using ABS for manufacturing, which allowed the company to make use of an attractively coloured manufacturing material five years later.   ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, is a durable, tough plastic which Lego has used since 1963 for most of its bricks.   Duplo, an alternative for younger children based on larger bricks was introduced in 1969 becoming a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.

Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces.  Bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made today, and sets for younger children are compatible with those made for teenagers.  As an aside, it turns out that six bricks with 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.  This ‘simple’ system makes massive manufacturing demands:  when two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly yet be easily disassembled.

Despite various mis-steps and challenges, overall the company grew and grew.  On 7 June 1968, Legoland Park opened in Billund, featuring elaborate miniature towns built entirely from Lego bricks. The three-acre (12,000 m²) theme park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year alone. Over the next two decades, the theme park grew to more than eight times its original size and eventually attracted close to a million visitors annually. Sales of Lego sets also reached more than eighteen million units in 1968.  This pattern of growth was increased in the following year, 1969, when the Duplo system came into shops.

Designed to be used by younger children, Duplo bricks are much larger than Lego bricks, safer for young children (preventing them from eating them!), and the two systems are compatible: Lego bricks can be fitted neatly onto Duplo bricks.  Indeed, the name Duplo comes from the Latin word duplus, which translates literally as double, meaning that a Duplo brick is exactly twice the dimension of a Lego building brick (2× height by 2× width by 2× depth) so that a Duplo brick is eight times the volume of the Lego brick alternative.

Despite overall growth, like any business Lego has had its ups and downs over the years.  However, The Guardian reported that by August of this year Lego had recorded sales of £4bn and sales rose by 12%.   Their Chief Executive suggested this recent surge in growth could be the result of parents’ desire to keep children – and themselves – away from smartphones, helped by strong sales of its Botanicals and Formula One grand prix-themed sets.

CEO Christiansen said:

“We see ourselves as competing for children’s time. The most important thing is to provide relevant and exciting experiences” and has seen the company signing deals to produce toys linked to the Bluey and Pokémon cartoon series and launching the She Built That campaign to encourage girls to use Lego creatively. The company has seen success with its Botanicals range of plant-inspired building sets for adults, especially for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

Lego is clearly a global business.  Recently, sales have begun to grow in China, after a tough start to 2024, and the company expects worldwide sales to continue to rise by about 9% in the second half of the current year given the existence of “strong consumer demand”.  The company now has six factories in operation, in Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico, China, Vietnam, with a further addition planned to open soon in Virginia, USA.  It uses an international business model, with several facilities focusing on molding and others on decoration and packaging.  The production process involves injecting molten plastic into molds to create bricks, with rigorous quality control checks to identify defects and ensure colour accuracy. The company has to aim for high precision; with the result their approach ensures bricks made today continue to fit with those made back in 1958.  The manufacturing process starts with plastic granules heated and injected under high pressure into molds to form bricks.  Today, Lego recycles almost all its plastic waste from manufacturing, with non-reusable plastic sold to other industries. 

The group has benefitted from its strategy of having manufacturing facilities as close to markets as possible, and also adopting a lean production approach whereby it seeks to produce only what is needed and simultaneously keeping stocks tight.  Lego has talked about taking steps such as making  some of its toy tyres from a material derived from recycled fishing nets, ropes and engine oil. The company is also introducing e-methanol, a material made from mixing renewable energy and CO₂ from biowaste, to create rigid Lego elements such as wheel axles and minifigure hands.

Actually, it is much more than that.    According to an article in Sustainability, it seems ‘Lego is Building Towards a More Sustainable Future’ (in a report by James Darley, 7 September 2024), as Lego expands its supply chain, smart choices and thinking are helping the Danish toy company meet its sustainability targets and achieve growth.  Surprisingly in a toy industry grappling with market downturns, Lego has not only maintained its position at the top of the tree but has also posted record-breaking results for the first half of 2024.  However, Darley reports the Danish toymaker’s success goes beyond profit margins. It is commitment to sustainability, particularly within its supply chain, which is setting new standards for the industry and providing a blueprint for responsible manufacturing.

James Darley writes that a key to this approach is using sustainable materials as the foundation for operational changes.  Recently Lego has made major increases in the proportion of sustainable materials it uses in its bricks. During the first half of 2024, the company reported that 30% of all the resin it purchased was certified under the mass balance principle, translating to an estimated 22% of material sourced from renewable and recycled sources.  This is a substantial improvement from 2023, when only 18% was certified mass balance, equating to 12% sustainable sources for the full year. Sources suggest that if it  continues to make similar year-on-year progress, it could reach the point where its products could be 100% sustainable within the next two decades.

Carsten Rasmussen, COO at the LEGO Group, says:

“We continue to invest in expanding our global supply chain network, maintain a strong focus on harvesting productivity and have made significant progress on our sustainability ambitions by increasing the amount of sustainable raw material used in our products.”

The company has set ambitious targets for the coming years, aiming to purchase more than half of its raw materials from sustainable sources, seeking to reduce its use of virgin fossil materials.  At the same time, a key initiative in this area is the launch of a Supplier Sustainability Programme, which mandates that suppliers set emission reduction targets by 2026 and further targets by 2028. Lego has even linked annual carbon emissions reductions to employee bonuses, creating strong incentives for its sustainability team.  While Lego seeks to focus on expanding its supply chain, they locate production and distribution facilities close to major markets.  Recent developments include opening factories in Vietnam and Virginia.

It’s sustainability initiatives are not just good for the planet, they’re also good for business. The company reported revenue growth of 13% and consumer sales growth of 14% in the first half of 2024, significantly outperforming the toy industry. Operating profit grew by 26% and net profit by 16% compared to the same period in 2023.  Niels B Christiansen, the current CEO, emphasises sustainability in the company’s strategy, achieving double-digit growth while significantly increasing sustainable materials in our products.”

Perhaps it is almost superfluous to say it, but the other strength of Lego is design, of course.  The company’s product development cycle is focussed on ensuring adherence to the Lego approach and  style.  Proposals go through a rigorous assessment process before they move to testing and production, ensuring the attractiveness of the kits isn’t compromised .  Their CEO notes “We used our solid financial foundation to further increase spending on strategic initiatives, which will support growth now and in the future to enable us to bring learning through play to even more children.”  He might have added ‘through offering compelling and engaging products to delight our customers’.

Oh, and one more comment.  My partner is a long term AFOL, and I’m a recent convert.  It offers a great range of buildings and vehicles to construct, using an astonishing range of building components.  Our local Lego store is a place we visit frequently, trying to decide which model we ‘ll build next.  Surprised  to learn we’re fans?

St Martin’s Cathedral Utrecht

Major cities across Europe become packed in the summer months.  It’s not just Paris, Rome and Berlin:  a day in Vienna, Bucharest or Prague is going to be equally overwhelming, and today the tide of tourists is sweeping through Split, Dubrovnik and Valletta.  Packed cities have to respond to the needs of their visitors, and so the roads in the centre of these cities are lined with shops selling souvenirs, food (tea rooms and cafes offering snacks), and cheap summer clothing alongside the usual range of international fashion stores.  Municipalities are trying to work out how to manage the influx, which often runs for six, eight or even ten months.  Cars may be banned, tourist buses have to go to special areas, and public transport is limited in most inner city areas.  In the centre holidaymakers can be found sitting at a streetside coffee shop while another member of the family braves the flood to go shopping.

So it was in Utrecht in the summer of 2025, as this formerly quiet city in the Netherlands now receives hundreds, no thousands, of enthusiastic visitors.  After a coffee and pastry at the Winkel van Sinkel and continuing to battle through the streets, they can see a church tower behind some of the shops.  It is the 112-metre-high (367 ft) Dom Tower, the hallmark of the city.  Navigating the narrow streets, you eventually arrive at the Domplein, where you realise the church tower is quite separate from the Domkerk, the gothic cathedral!

Well, perhaps we’ll leave that a sight for a moment ‘over there’ and return to the Winkel van Sinkel.  Anton Sinkel was born in 1785, and in 1806 he established a store selling fabrics and textiles.  He was a pioneer in  retail business with his haberdashery store which dealt in clothing fabrics, stockings, hats, and more .  His ambition is described in the popular song “In de Winkel van Sinkel is van alles te koop” (In the Winkel van Sinkel, everything is for sale)”. However, the store became famous because of four caryatids that supported the building’s façade colloquially known as the ‘British harlots’, as “Due to their visible décolleté, these figures were believed to be a potential threat to the moral values of the citizenry.” Today they are seen as less offensive, but according to legend, “only at midnight, the caryatids swiftly and inconspicuously fly across the canal to the opposite side and back again.”

Returning to the cathedral, the best way to see it is from the air, a balloon flight out of the reach of most of us.  However, the proportions become clear, a massive spire towering above much of the city, separated by a small park area, and the other side of the open space the remains of the rest of the church, a major building in its own right, but its height diminished by that spire:

So much for what you see.  The story of St Martin’s is fascinating in its own right.  Wikipedia reveals the first chapel was founded around 630 AD by Frankish clergy, but it was destroyed during an attack shortly after, and its site remains unknown.  It was the beginning of a cycle of rebuilding and destruction.  A second chapel devoted to Saint Martin was built close to the site of the current building soon after, but was destroyed by the Normans during a raid on Utrecht in the 9th century .  It was rebuilt by Bishop Bladeric in the 10th century, by which time St Martin’s had become the principal church of Utrecht, the site of the see of a bishop.

The life of the cathedral remained challenging.  The church was repeatedly destroyed by fires and then rebuilt.  Then Bishop Adalbold built a Romanesque style church, which was  consecrated in 1023, only to be  partially destroyed in the fire of 1253 which ravaged much of Utrecht.  Undaunted, another bishop, Henry van Vianen, began building the next cathedral in 1254. but the  construction of the Gothic style cathedral was to continue into the 16th century.  The work was in stages: the Dom Tower was started in 1321 and finished in 1382.  By 1515 financial difficulties prevented completion of the building, and in 1566, the Iconoclast Fury swept across the region, a movement based on the Calvinist doctrine, which asserted statues in a house of God were idolatrous images which must be destroyed. As a result, many of the ornaments on both the exterior and interior of Utrecht’s cathedral were destroyed.

In 1580 the Utrecht city government decided to delegate some of its controls over the Diocese of Utrecht to local Calvinists, and now it became a centre for Protestant services.  However, the building’s saga continued, and in  1672-3, during the upheavals of the Franco-Dutch War, Catholic Masses recommenced – for two years!  After the French retreat, the unfinished nave collapsed on 1 August 1674 during a massive tornado. From that time on, much of the building fell into further neglect.  Despite significant renovations in the early twentieth century, much was left incomplete and the nave was never rebuilt.

Images and history are important, but both can only offer a partial insight to a place.  However, as the saying goes, ‘you have to be there’.  Visually, there are two very different perspectives on St Martin’s today.  For the visitor to Utrecht standing outside the cathedral area , the only visible perspective from a short distance away is of the tower as it rises above the surrounding buildings.  It soars above the shops and other buildings in the town centre, but you are well aware you are only seeing the upper part of the construction.

Moreover, although you can see it from a distance away, it is hard to reach.  As you get closer, passing the Winkel van Sinkel, it seems to be one of those illusions where the tower retreats behind buildings and never appears to become any closer.  There are some streets that take a straighter line, but for the visitor walking alongside the Oudergracht, which takes a couple of 90° around the area, any direct line of sight at ground level is impossible.

The second perspective is from the Domplein itself.  Once you are there, there are buildings close by to the West and North.  The best perspective is from the South, but even then the tower seems to reach up so high you can’t really encompass what it is like.  It’s an impressive sight, as is the cathedral building and other offices and meeting rooms across the way, but close by the tower rises above any normal sight line.  It is a little frustrating.  In many other cities the authorities, or possibly the church itself, would be able to keep quite a large area clear.  In Utrecht, the height of the tower combined with closeness of the retail area, and some offices, means that a real appreciation of the height is impossible. That balloon flight mentioned earlier would be ideal.

A completely different way of seeing the cathedral is from the inside.  On entering you’re shocked as it appears almost empty.  Just two stained glass windows to grab your attention, and the internal decoration is simple to the point of being austere.  There’s an altar in the Choir, with a beautiful screen and carving behind.  Overall the church has a simple beauty, but it is found in its simplicity, the very opposite of so many cathedrals in other places.

However, then you turn around and see the organ.  The case and pipes are set on one of the side walls, with the keyboards and pedal board below.  Built by Jonothan Batz, the instrument dates from 1831, although it incorporates parts of an earlier organ, built by Pieter Janszoon de Swart between 1569-1571.  It is said to precisely conform to the type of instrument that was being built in the Netherlands throughout the 19th century.  Some research revealed that a “church architect, Tieleman Franciscus Suys, from Brussels, designed the case and ornaments, as well as constructing a small building at the back of the church to house the nine wedge-shaped bellows. The case is in a kind of neo-classical style, although in size and proportion  (the length of many of the front pipes are far longer than what is required for the pitch needed ), not strictly functional.”

Wikipedia advises that the organ had  been superbly designed internally “so that every pipe and each division, with all of its parts can be easily accessed for maintenance and tuning, which was very favourably commented on by probably the greatest organ builder of the 19th century, Aristide Cavaille’-Coll (1811-1899), about the spacious internal layout during a visit he made here in November 1844.”  There were many changes over the years.  Eventually the organ finally “underwent an extensive restoration between 1972-73 by the Van Vulpen company, which replaced all the stops that had been removed over the last 107 years, and a new modern wind supply with internal regulators was built within the main case, because there was nowhere outside to house a bellows chamber based on the space as originally constructed.”

The organ today is said to be widely acclaimed for its “mild tone and expressive tremulants which makes the instrument far more suitable for the late romantic or modern periods of composition, rather than for the strict Baroque counterpoint or fugal music of Buxtehude and Bach.“  It was wonderful to see.  Alas, I don’t know if it was wonderful to hear, as there was no-one playing on the organ, or even practicing when we were there.  Despite this it was a gem in a rather surprising building.

Barges

When I was at school, I discovered and loved Cargoes, a poem by John Masefield:

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

(Salt-Water Poems, © 1902).

How could you not love the images.  A cargo for distant Ophir with ivory, peacocks, sandalwood, sweet white wine.  A galleon returning with diamonds, gold and other jewels – probably plundered for another ship, out there on main.  And then that lovely British coaster, dirty, carrying dirty industrial materials – and fighting its way up the English Channel.  Nostalgic, vivid, and somehow pulling off the trick of making that British coaster just as noteworthy as a quinquereme or a galleon.

The sailing ships of old were romantic and exciting., especially when they appeared in films packed with swashbuckling sailors.  There’s the Black Pearl,  the pirate ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, captained by Jack Sparrow.   The Black Pearl was originally a merchant vessel named the Wicked Wench, sunk and  resurrected by Davy Jones, renamed, and with its new name became infamous for its black sails and hull.  It was a symbol of freedom for Jack Sparrow, known for being “nigh uncatchable, and a symbol for freedom on the high seas.

The Black Pearl was far more exciting than the captain of that legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, who once found himself struggling to round the Cape of Good Hope during a ferocious storm.  He swore that he would succeed even if he had to sail until Judgment Day. The Devil heard his oath and took him up on it; the Flying Dutchman was condemned to stay at sea forever.  Even the Hispaniola, the ship on which Jim Hawkins sailed to Treasure Island, plays a minor part in that adventure.  In contrast to these, the Black Pearl was rather more exciting as it kept sinking and reappearing!

Against such alternatives, Masefield’s short poem provides us with a brief but vivid commentary on the history of ships, shipping, consumption, and empire.  Much had changed. If Masefield is to be believed, once ships had exotic names and sailed through idyllic climes to and from faraway destinations with strange and marvellous cargoes. However,  by the turn of the 20^th Century, dirty, polluting ships made their way through bad weather in the English Channel, with a cargo not only produced in the same country it was shipped to, but was cheap and plentiful—a cargo for the masses instead of the kings and queens of yesterday. These three snapshots offer us both the lushness of poetry, and an insight into change.

I suspect that even that British coaster is just about lost to change.  Today, if you travel by sea, one of the more familiar sights among the huge cruise liners are container ships.  Massive, slow-moving, they always seem top-heavy.  Cargo ships provide the essential underpinning for trade, and these ships can be separated into two broad categories by the goods they transport:  bulk cargo and break bulk cargo.  Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular form, and includes such goods are crude oil, grain, coal, and gravel.  Bulk cargo is usually dropped or poured into a ship’s hold.  Break-bulk cargoes, in contrast, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods.

Much has changed since Masefield’s day.  Up until the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time.  The only interesting variations prior to this time came through the development of standardized load units, which I learnt were first used in the late 18th century for shipping in England. In 1766, James Brindley, an engineer, was asked to assist in the transportation of coal, and designed the box boat “Starvationer” with 10 wooden containers, which operated between Alford and  Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal.

The idea was slow to catch on, but by the 1930s ships were used to carry the baggage of luxury passenger train customers in containers from London to Paris on flat rail cars.  In February 1931, the first container ship in the world was launched; the Autocarrier, owned by the Southern Railway, with 21 slots for containers.  Slowly the idea progressed, and the earliest recognised container ships appeared after the Second World War.  They were  converted oil tankers.  In 1951, the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark and in the USA between Seattle and Alaska.  Wikipedia records the first commercially successful container ship was the Ideal X, developed by Malcolm McLean, which on its first voyage on April 26, 1956, carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas.

It marked the beginning of a revolution in modern shipping, and from then on, progress accelerated.  By 1964, Adelaide Steamships had launched the world’s first fully cellular, purpose-built container ship.  This was the critical step in eliminating requirements for the individual hatches, holds and other storage dividers. The hull of a typical container ship is similar to an airport hangar, or a huge warehouse, which is divided into individual holding cells, using vertical guide rails. These cells are designed to hold cargo containers, typically constructed of steel, though some are made from aluminium, fiberglass or plywood.

Today, about 90% of non-bulk non-worldwide goods are transported by container, with around 50,000 container ships. Containers vary in size, carrying anything from, 1,000 to 3,000 cubic feet (28 to 85 m³) of cargo, with the result each can move up to about 64,000 pounds, (29,000 kg), at a time.  Global maritime container traffic is now around 160 Million TEUs (estimated to be more than 3 bn tons of goods).  TEU, the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is the standard unit of measurement used for cargo capacity in shipping, particularly for container ships and ports.  It is based on the volume of a standard 20-foot long container.

All very interesting, but my fascination isn’t with ships of old, pirate ships, British working ships or with container ships.  No, it’s with barges.

Just recently, I saw some Rhine barges.  Many of these are flat-bottomed, non-self-propelling vessels that are pulled (and can be pushed) by tugboats.  The ones I saw  were the powered versions, the flat bottomed design allowing them to deal with falling river levels.  Many of these barges are very large, far from easy to manoeuvre, and often rather slow moving.  They don’t share the immediately attractive features of many other varieties of shipping, but they are curiously hypnotic.

However, my enjoyment in looking at barges is really an exercise in nostalgia.  My childhood home was close to the Grand Union Canal.  Barges, known in those days as ‘narrowboats’ were the vehicles for  commerce on the canal from the late 1700s until the 1970s.  Initially horse-drawn, they were one of the most important ways to transport raw materials and finished goods .  It was competition from railways and the growth of  road traffic in logistics that led to the decline of traditional commercial barges in the mid-20th century, but when I was young I was just in time to see the horses disappear, and the transition to motorized and steam-powered vessels take place

That transition had begun in 1934 on the Grand Union Canal, when a company was formed to modernize the waterway, allowing the introduction of new, larger boats and modernizing locks to accommodate these wider barges, an initiative supported by the government in the hope of making the canal more competitive with railways.  There was some respite from the. decline in usage when the canal and its barges played a vital role in transporting war supplies during WWII.  Women even took on the work of operating the barges, as many men were in the armed forces.  Despite this, traffic continued to decline after the war ended.  The last regular long-distance cargo service ended in 1970. While some traffic continued into the 1980s, mainly sustained by the transport of aggregates, the rise of containerization and growth in road transport led to the commercial decline of the Grand Union Canal.

Today Britain’s canals are no longer the functional working canals of former centuries.  Instead, these water highways provide visitors and holidaymakers an opportunity to enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside, taking a barge holiday.   A few professional boatmen still live in communities on canal boats throughout Britain – gliding easily through the locks, keeping their self-decorated boats in good nick and going about their daily lives.  This is documented in Life on Britain’s Canals and Waterways  : a history of the canals of Britain and their people, (denhamhistory.online).

A part of my childhood, I wasn’t aware back then that waterways and canals had been a lifeline for British industry and agriculture for a very long time.  Indeed, canals can be traced as far back as Roman times when the Romans used canals for irrigation purposes and to connect existing waterways with one another.  Indeed, Romans built the Foss Dyke in Lincolnshire for drainage and navigation and the Caer Dyke around AD 50, shortly after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD by the armies of Emperor Claudius.

What did I see?  I was watching the so-called “slow” boats on the canals, which often worked twelve to fourteen hours each day, and only in some cases tied up on Sundays. On the narrow canals these boats were operated by one man and a boy, occasionally two men, and later one man and his family. Slow boats were slow in another sense, as they didn’t operate on a strict timetable and would often wait until they had a full load before starting out.  They were distinguished from from the faster, lighter so-called “fly” boats which were first introduced in Scotland in 1830 to provide and “express” service for some commodities. No, I liked the slow boats!

The narrowboat was less than 7 feet in width and could be pulled by a single horse. They were designed for the waterways,  traditionally 21 m (70ft) long, just short enough to fit in the locks, which were usually 22 m (72 ft) long.  Most carried a load of approximately 25 tons.  They were usually horse drawn up until around World War I, and the steam engines which some boats used were considered to take up too much space.  However, diesel engines began to take over boats in the 1920s, and after the Second world war, horses were hardly ever seen.  The fly boat trade tended to be concentrated in the hands of big public carriers such as Pickfords who operated large fleets of boats and employed many men and horses.  After 1840 much of this trade was lost to the railway companies, and the last company, Fellows, Morton & Clayton failed  in 1948 – though its name and livery can still to be found, rather nostalgically, on boats on the canals today.

To protect and deliver the cargo safely and as quickly as possible, the boatman captain needed to steer a barge and keep a horse moving on the towpath.   The faster he got the cargo to its destination, the quicker he got paid.  The boat captain could earn extra money if he (and/or his family) could unload the cargo as well.  A woman who lived on board the barge would be expected to steer the boat occasionally and sometimes lead the horse on the towpath.  Reformers sought to remove female and child labour from the boats,  concerned with sanitation, morality and education rather than working conditions.  The number of women working on canal boats increased during the First World War to make up the gaps in the labour force which were created by men leaving to join the armed forces.  The number of men working independently on their own account appeared to double after the first World War.  At the same time the female labour force increased by 50 percent, and the proportion of women remained high until after WWII.

For a boy, the barge and life travelling along the English canals seemed attractive (and perhaps I thought it would have meant I could avoid going to school.  Did I think about the downside – no Meccano, no Eagle comic, little free time, and cramped living quarters?  I think what attracted me was the idea of freedom, always travelling.  I never whent on a barge, not even when barge holidays began to become available, but I suspect that sense of wandering that appealed to me was part of the source of the desire to move often in my adult life.

Hagia Sophia

Seeing a great building is a fascinating experience.  By a great building, in this case I mean one that is historic (there is quite a different commentary to be made about seeing a new but equally extraordinary construction, like one of the new Guggenheim museums).  To be clear, there are two reasons to consider a building as ‘great’:  first there are those considered so because of their history, the events in which they have played a part, the people with whom they’ve been associated; and second, those that are great in their own right, architecturally compelling and internally rich in such ways as to be striking, imposing, or simply intriguing.  Quite often the attraction of historic great buildings lies in the stories in which they played a part, the past events in which they were implicated, or even those which were based at home, a resting place or a meeting place, places that mattered in the conduct of human affairs.

This building, the Hagia Sophia, has been important for centuries, as a religious centre, as a landmark, and as a meeting place. The photograph shows it in 2025, with one of its minarets under repair.  If it’s only seen from the outside, the building offers only a limited sense of its amazing interior, and the history that interior reveals.  To the casual external observer, it is big, somewhat squat, with some evidence of its complicated past.  Briefly, from around 360 AD through to 1453 AD (with a few minor interruptions), it was a major Eastern Orthodox church, the greatest in Christendom, with a dome that was unequalled until Brunelleschi’s in Florence in the 15^th Century. One of the Hagia Sophia’s interruptions was between 1204 and 1261 when for a short time it became a Roman Catholic church.  Following that, from 1453 to 1934, it was a Sunni Moslem mosque.  Then, in 1935 it was deconsecrated and became a museum, a major attraction for visitors to Istanbul.  In 2020 it reverted back to being a Sunni mosque once more, but this time one that is still allowing tourists to visit.

For those who might be hoping for a kind of striking beauty, outside it appears to be rather big but not especially graceful.  One of the minarets was under refurbishment in 2025 which was somewhat disconcerting to those who want their travel photographic images to mirror some kind of unrealistic form of perfection.  The reality of repair got in the way!  There are gardens around the building, nicely tended, but unremarkable.  More to the point, the few trees tin the gardens gave rather little shade, in a location that is often hot, and sometimes unrelentingly so.  It is only on entering that you realise the true beauty is inside.

What you see was built by Justinian 1 between 532 and 537 AD and was formerly called the Temple of God’s Holy Wisdom.  It was the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, and was considered as the quintessential example of Eastern Orthodox church design.  In various iterations it was to remain a religious centre until 1931, when it was closed to the public, only to re-open in 1935 as a museum.  In 2020, it was reclassified back as a mosque, a controversial decision which remains widely debated.  As a major tourist attraction, visitors today can freely enter the first floor of the building, but the ground floor is restricted to worshippers and their invitees.

It is impossible to briefly describe the many features of the Hagia Sophia.  It is regarded as one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture.  It used masonry in its construction, but it is the decorations inside that have ensured its fame.  The interior is decorated with mosaics, marble pillars, paintings, and other items of great artistic value. As it was being constructed in the Sixth Century AD, Justinian achieved his vision by his determination to oversee the completion of what was to be the greatest cathedral ever built up to that time.  The basilica was simultaneously the culminating architectural achievement of late antiquity together with being recognised as a masterpiece of Byzantine architectural style. Its influence, both physically and liturgically, has been widespread and enduring .

Of particular interest is the complex structure of the vast interior. The central nave is covered by a huge dome, which rises to 55.6 metres (182 ft 5 in) above floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. Not perfect, however, as repairs to its structure have left the dome somewhat elliptical, with the diameter varying between 31.24 and 30.86 metres (102 ft 6 in and 101 ft 3 in).   At the western entrance and along the eastern liturgical side, there are arched openings extended by half domes of identical diameter to the central dome, built up to create an overall vast oblong interior crowned by the central dome with its uninterrupted span of 76.2 metres (250 ft).

The overall design is clearly geometric and is said to be based on mathematical formulae from Heron of Alexandria, which avoided the use of irrational numbers for its construction.  Research suggests the architects used Hero’s proposed values for constructing the vaults. The measurements were calculated using a side-and-diagonal number progression, which results in squares defined by the numbers 12 and 17, with 12 defining the side of the square and 17 its diagonal, numbers which had been used as standard values as early as cuneiform Babylonian texts.  Each of the four sides of the great square at the centre is approximately 31 metres long, previously thought to be the equivalent of 100 Byzantine feet. However recent research has determined the side of the central square of Hagia Sophia is not 100 Byzantine feet but instead 99 feet. This measurement is not only rational, but it is also embedded in a system of number progression (70/99) used in the applied mathematics of antiquity.

Over the centuries, there have been restorations and enhancements.  One remarkable moment was in 1453 when 21 year old Mehmet II decided not to obliterate all the mosque’s Christian mosaics when he conquered Constantinople:  he was not there simply to destroy.  Another and more recent phase was the 19th-century restoration ordered by Sultan Abdulmejid I, which was completed between 1847 and 1849 by eight hundred workers supervised by the Swiss-Italian architect brothers, Gaspare and Guiseppi Fossati.  Given concerns about stability and evident slippage, the brothers consolidated the dome with a restraining iron chain.  At the same time they strengthened the vaults, straightened the columns, and revised the decoration of the exterior and the interior of the building.   Upper gallery mosaics were exposed and cleaned, but many were re-covered ‘for protection against further damage’.

Restoration did more than preserve.  Eight new gigantic circular-framed discs were hung from the cornices on each of the four piers on either side of the apse and the west doors, designed by Kazasker Mustafa Izzet Efendi, and emblazoning the names of Muhammad, Allah, the first four caliphs and the two grandsons of Muhammad.  They are simply stunning.

Given continuing deterioration and problems, the need for restoration continued, aggravated  by decisions like those during in the Second World War when the minarets of the mosque housed machine guns!  Sadly, today the condition of the structure continues to deteriorate, and it was included in the 1996 and 1998 Watch Lists of the World Monuments Fund.  The building’s copper roof had cracked, causing water to leak down over the fragile frescoes and mosaics. Moisture entered from below, increasing the humidity level within the mosque.  Work has been undertaken to repair of the cracked roof, and preserve the dome’s interior.  Despite all the care that has been shown, major problems remain.  Most experts have concluded the dome will collapse soon, a tragic outcome signaling the end of this remarkable building. Thrilling to see, the Hagia Sophia is close to the end of its life, unless amazing and unlikely efforts are made to save it:  indeed some suspect it might collapse before 2040.

Truth

When Felipe Fernandez-Armesto wrote his book Truth, he added a comment at the bottom of the book cover: “A History and a Guide for the Perplexed”.  It’s a brief book, and yet I go back to it because it tries to address the most important issue I see us as facing today:  what is ‘truth’?   On that same book cover, we read “We need to know how we have got to where we are in the history of truth – how our society has come to lose faith in the reality of it, and lose interest in the search for it.  We need a history of truth to illuminate the unique predicament of our times …  [which]  can still help us survive contemporary uncertainty and rebuild life after doubt.”

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a British history professor, his father a Spanish journalist and his mother a British-born journalist.   He had spent most of his career teaching at the University of Oxford, has lectured at universities all over the world, and  been the recipient of numerous awards.  He has written many books, for which Truth is probably not the most well-known.  However, Truth is a helpful commentary on an issue that is often on my mind.  In conducting discussion groups on issues ranging from economic determinism through to the limits of individual responsibility, one underlying and nagging concern is how to determine what is ‘really the case’.

Indeed, in our increasingly confusing and confused world where postmodernism confronts scientific determinism, and empirical studies confront philosophical explorations, there is no clear way of knowing what is ‘true’.  It is popular today to suggest that it is who we are and what we have experienced determines what we think, and that truth is a matter of personal preference.   This view  suits the diverse nature of current society.  But it’s a perspective that doesn’t really help us, as we confront a situation when everyone feels free to define truth as that which he or she prefers, and we end up with intellectual and moral confrontations, often becoming shouting matches in which the people with the loudest voices are most likely to be heard.

In Truth Felipe Fernández-Armesto asserts that to an unprecedented and dangerous degree, our society has abandoned the pursuit of truth, “a long-standing, widely shared project of mankind.” His book was an attempt to explore this modern predicament and suggest that the quest for truth is not dead, despite the conflict between religious fundamentalists who claim to know all truth and secular nihilists who think it can never be known. He suggests that we can find the answer in human history. His interesting and challenging book takes us on a whirlwind guided tour of human thought, telling us just as much about the various sights as we need to know for his purposes, entertaining us with amusing vignettes of biography, explaining difficult concepts with well-chosen metaphors.

When seen in this perspective, present-day confusion seems almost normal. Humankind has always been asking the same questions, and struggling to find answers in much the same old ways. People in primitive societies are just as capable of reasoning as people in advanced societies, and sophisticated people are often prepared to trust in irrational approaches. According to Fernández-Armesto, people throughout history have sought to get at the truth in one or more of four basic ways. The author illuminates this theme by sketching the development of four basic epistemological categories: (1) the “truth you feel,” characteristic of primitive society, in which emotions and non-sensory or nonrational kinds of perception convey truth; (2) the “truth you are told,” important in archaic society, in which truth flows from oracular, divinatory, or scriptural sources of authority; (3) the “truth you think for yourself,— or deductive or rationalist methods of pursuing truth, which evolved from ancient origins to reach an apex of prestige in the 17th and 18th centuries; and (4) the “truth you perceive through your senses,” or that derived from direct perceptual experience, which is dominant today. All four, Fernandez-Armesto argues, have always been around, though the ascendancy of the fourth is a relatively recent phenomenon.

What do these four categories mean in practice?  The first he addresses is truth through feeling. Truth is a tangible entity, something you know, even something residing in your soul.  The third-century B.C. Chinese sage Chuang Tzu stated, ”The universe is one.” Others described the universe as a unity of opposites. To the fifth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Heraclitus, the cosmos is a tension like that of the bow or the lyre. The notion of chaos comes along only later, together with uncomfortable concepts like infinity.

Then there is authoritarianism, the second variety of truth,  ”the truth you are told.” Divinities can tell us what is wanted, if only we can discover how to hear them. The ancient Greeks believed that Apollo would speak through the mouth of an old peasant woman in a room filled with the smoke of bay leaves; traditionalist Azande in the Nilotic Sudan depend on the response of poisoned chickens. People consult sacred books, or watch for apparitions. Others look inside themselves, for truths that were imprinted in their minds before they were born or buried in their subconscious minds.

Reasoning is the third way Fernández-Armesto cites, and this takes us much closer to the modern world.  He argues that since knowledge attained by divination or introspection is subject to misinterpretation, eventually people return to the use of reason, which helped thinkers like Chuang Tzu and Heraclitus describe the universe. Logical analysis was used in China and Egypt long before it was discovered in Greece and in India. If the Greeks are mistakenly credited with the invention of rational thinking, it is because of the effective ways they wrote about it. Plato illustrated his dialogues with memorable myths and brilliant metaphors. Truth, as he saw it, could be discovered only by abstract reasoning, without reliance on sense perception or observation of outside phenomena. Rather, he sought to excavate it from the recesses of the mind. The word for truth in Greek, aletheia, means ”what is not forgotten.”

Plato’s pupil Aristotle developed the techniques of logical analysis that still enable us to get at the knowledge hidden within us. He examined propositions by stating possible contradictions and developed the syllogism, a method of proof based on stated premises. His methods of reasoning have influenced independent thinkers ever since. Logicians developed a system of notation, free from the associations of language, that comes close to being a kind of mathematics. The uses of pure reason have had a particular appeal to lovers of force, and have flourished in times of absolutism like the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, there is his fourth category, truth through sense perception.  Unlike his teacher, Plato, and many of Plato’s followers, Aristotle realized that pure logic had its limits. He began with study of the natural world and used evidence gained from experience or experimentation to support his arguments. Ever since, as Fernández-Armesto puts it, science and sense have kept time together, like voices in a duet that sing different tunes. The combination of theoretical and practical gave Western thinkers an edge over purer reasoning schemes in India and China.

The scientific revolution began when European thinkers broke free from religious authoritarianism and stopped regarding this earth as the centre of the universe. They used mathematics along with experimentation and reasoning and developed mechanical tools like the telescope. Fernández-Armesto’s favourite example of their empirical spirit is the gruelling Arctic expedition in 1736 in which the French scientist Pierre Moreau de Maupertuis determined (rightly) that the earth was not round like a ball but rather an oblate spheroid.

Scientific progress inevitably led to questions about previously established certainties about God and the purpose of human existence. Did one exist simply because one thought, as Descartes famously suggested? Was Kant right in supposing intuition to be more important? Is art ”truer” than science, realism and even meaning, all of which it now apparently disdains? Does God exist because many people believe in him, as William James proposed? If so, is truth basically opinion, as the modern American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty seems to suggest?

Such scepticism appears to be reinforced by recent discoveries in science. Einstein’s theory of relativity implies that time and space as we understand them, the very elements in which we live, cannot definitively be measured. The work of the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg shows that experiments cannot be perfectly objective; ”laws” of nature can be overturned by random events; beyond infinity lies infinity. History, as the British philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood suggested, can be regarded as literature, but language itself deceives, as Wittgenstein demonstrated. No wonder the French philosopher Michel Foucault supposed that truth was defined by whoever was in power, and many of his followers have concluded that there are many coexisting truths, from which (in effect) we must pick and choose.

What happens when some of these truths conflict with one another? Fernández-Armesto advises against searching for the answer in religious fundamentalism or escaping into a fantastic artificial world of what is often called ”Oriental thought.” He explains why certain new philosophical terms are deceptive. ”Intersubjective agreement” and ”community reasoning” merely reiterate James’s notion of truth by consensus. Instead he advises us to return to the four methods that have served mankind so well in the past: the truth you feel, the tradition of the past, reason and sense perception. No one approach alone can guarantee that we can discover the truth, but each method can help to correct the mistakes of the others.

Fernandez-Armesto’s profound analysis of a crisis that pervades both the academy and the larger world points a way beyond the timid equivocations of our time. Examining the modern abandonment of truth in the humanities and the growth of relativism in our culture, which he views as ominous developments, he urges a return to traditional approaches to truth and advocates “hounding subjectivism and relativism until truth is run to earth.”

The first important step is to take notice of what other people are saying. Here language plays an essential role, because arguing about meaning (as Plato saw) helps us to understand how we know what we know. Whenever we get an intimation of the truth, we should try to express it for others. Searching for truth (however imperfect the process) is fundamental to education. Fernández-Armesto recommends reasoned arguments, supported by evidence, instead of the shouting down and dismissiveness that have regrettably been characteristic of much recent academic discourse. One place to begin to look for the truth is in between the extremes of authoritarianism and scepticism, the middle ground that Aristotelian logic is reluctant to explore: something is not entirely false just because it cannot be shown to be entirely true, or entirely true because it cannot be shown to be entirely false.

Perhaps another source, much used in present times, is to find out more about the author.  In an interview with Felipe Fernández-Armesto, (The Crop, 28 March 2004) Neil Scott asked “You were, possibly, the first academic I had met who was openly religious. Do you think this has influenced your work?”  He replied “I suspect not. I always assume that other people think that my Catholicism affects my view of the past. I always mention if I feel that it might excite people’s anti-Catholic sentiment, in case it makes them hate me: I wouldn’t want to deprive them of that pleasure. Sometimes it backfires. I was once giving a lecture in New Zealand: The subject was ‘Truth in the Works of Frank Sargeson,” a novelist. I did mention that I was Catholic and some drunken man in the audience made an opprobrious remark about the Pope, after which another person took offence and then a third person got annoyed and it broke out in fisticuffs. And it was a great occasion in New Zealand. I felt a bit like a saint as these penitents came up to shake my hand saying ‘We’re not really like that in New Zealand.’ It was very gratifying. For the first time, I felt I had stimulated a reaction in a lecture.”

Scott observed that Fernández-Armesto didn’t seem to place the same importance on religion as some others do.  He asked another question: “Do you believe in the idea of a universal human nature?”  He replied, “There are two answers to your question: the first is yes, the second no. There is no point in talking about human kind unless you think there is something that they have in common. On the other hand, I don’t think there is any thing that is exclusively human, because we are products of evolution. We know that there have been other species – Neanderthals, homo habilis, homo erectus – there are lots of species that are not homo sapiens that have had the same nature, the same abilities and that have done everything that we consider peculiarly human. The more we think about other primates the more we see that we’ve got in common with them.”

In relation to the suggestion he seems to be attempting to capture this elusive universal human nature in his work, he replied: “I’m not interested in human nature for its own sake. I’m interested in constructing the narrative, constructing the story of human divergence and reconvergence. If you think of the history of homo sapiens from 150,000 which goes back to a common ancestor. How do you characterise what has happened? We have got different from each other. It is such a short time. And yet we’ve developed all these different kinds of cultures: it is amazing if you compare it with any other kind of social animal. You know, ants don’t have that kind of diversity in a single species. Even chimpanzees which are the animals most like us – do have some cultural divergences – but they’re tiny compared with the vast differences in human history. The big story is how it happened and the big question is why it happened and the current phase of the story seems to be a kind of reconvergence in which in the last few hundred years we have been exchanging culture. That is what I am really interested in. The universal is a by-line in the way I have been thinking over the last few years.”

He adds:  “For me, history is about what it meant to live in the past. It doesn’t mean experiencing it directly. One of the things about being a historian is that you do live vicariously, learning about things not by the senses but vicariously. I relish that. History is sources, I am much more interested in them than in what actually happened, if you could ever know them.”

He’s a compelling writer, and in this brief book introduces so much to consider.  I wish I could write as engagingly as he does.  Please read Truth.  It’s well worth the time!

Sometimes to attempt to write about a book in just four pages is ridiculous, almost an affront to a work that demands a significant exegesis, not a few rather cursory paragraphs of introduction.  To do so about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1967 book in this series of blogs so briefly is close to offensive, but it is a novel I have loved, reread and constantly thought about, and I can’t leave it alone.  In Wikipedia, it is introduced as one of the supreme achievements in Hispanic if not world literature, an extraordinary example of what is often called the ‘magical realist’ style.  It has been received numerous international awards, and it was central to García Márquez’s receipt of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. According to Wikipedia it topped the list of books that have most shaped world literature over the last 25 years, based on a survey of international writers.

If you haven’t read it, and want to know something about the story, it is about the life and eventual death of a town called Macondo, isolated and almost entirely out of contact with the rest of the world (except for a group of Gypsies, who arrive once a year).  It was created by a couple who have run away from their hometown (in a fictional party of South America), emerging in the dreams of one of them, José Acadio Buedia, as a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it.  José decides to establish his city by the river.  Soon after it has been founded, it becomes clear Macondo is a place of extraordinary and magical events.

Eventually and several generations later, Macondo is exposed to the outside world, only to come under the control of the government of the newly independent Colombia.  Next the railway comes to the town, bringing in new technology and foreign settlers. An American fruit company establishes a banana plantation nearby, and it decides to build its own segregated village across the river. This ushers in a period of prosperity that ends in tragedy as the Colombian army massacres thousands of striking plantation workers.  By the novel’s end, Macondo has fallen into a decrepit and near-abandoned state, seemingly about to go out of existence.

Well, this isn’t a book to be presented in a summary.  As the saying goes, you will have to read it for yourself, if you haven’t already done so.  In offering this commentary, the point is not so much the content as the themes this extraordinary book explores.  In doing this, I have relied on the Wikipedia entry on One Hundred Years of Solitude as a key source.

For any reader, there are some obvious themes and metaphors.  Perhaps one of the most important is the sense of inevitability and the repetitive nature of history.  Right from the extraordinary beginning to the equally extraordinary end, the characters manage to be both real and yet the victims of ghosts, and themselves live on in unexpected ways.  Daniel Erickson explained this well in his comments of fatalism in the story: “Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities. The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create.” (in Ghosts, Metaphor, and History, Macmillan, 2009).

A second fascinating theme is the use of colours.  Commentators have noticed yellow and gold are the most frequently used, probably because they are common symbols of imperialism.  In particular gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction.  However, particularly intriguing is the image of Macondo as a glass city.  This is an image that is the basis for the original choice of the city’s location.  It is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. However, not only is it the reason for Macondo’s location, but it is also a symbol of its fate. Higgins writes, “By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history” (in Gene Bell-Vilada’s casebook compilation of essays on the novel, OUP 2002).

Finally, the use of particular historic events and characters renders the book an outstanding work of magical realism, as Garcia Marquez compresses decades of cause and effect within the framework of his story, while drawing on Latin American history.  It is possible to read One Hundred Years of Solitude as an abbreviated history of  Latin America discovered by European explorers. The book can be read as an archive of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument.  It’s a clever concept, as  “the world of One Hundred Years of Solitudeis a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain.” (this comes from Michael Wood’s 1990 analysis of the text, published by CUP).  Within the compass of the story of Macondo, we are exposed to humankind’s actions, in every variety, whether creative, amusing, compelling, sad, funny and yet always fascinating.

Why is it magical realism?  Well, it is a fiction, with the events, the place and the story all invented, but it is also a form of myth, putting events and their consequences in the context of the realities of South American politics, economics and history.   Like the myths studied by social anthropologists, García Márquez manages to combine an account of the prosaic and everyday life of his characters with magic, with fabulous events and with almost surreal flights of fancy.  It has been described as giving literary voice to Latin America:  “A Latin America which neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration” (from The Dialectics of our America by José David Saldívar, Duke University Press, 1991).

García Márquez Is something of a magician himself.  He manages to make the fictional blend in with the real, the magical and extraordinary seamlessly intertwined.   Cleverly, much of the story is told in a laid-back style, so that it is impossible to separate different realities, different kinds of events and even the borderline between imagination and reality.  After reading for a while, what you absorb no longer seems strange or surreal:  you’ve been cleverly, almost surreptitiously, absorbed into a different world.

To quote from Wikipedia: “Perhaps the most dominant theme in the book is that of solitude. Macondo was founded in the remote jungles of the Colombian rainforest. The solitude of the town is representative of the colonial period in Latin American history, where outposts and colonies were, for all intents and purposes, not interconnected.  Isolated from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and selfish. With every member of the family living only for himself or herself, the Buendías become representatives of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate Latin America, a living style in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in the novel.  This egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios the Beauty, who innocently destroys the lives of four men enamoured by her unbelievable beauty, because she is living in a different reality due to what some see as autism.  Throughout the novel it seems as if no character can find true love or escape the destructiveness of their own egocentricity.”

Above all, A Hundred Years of Solitude is a stunning example of myth.  Anthropologists have long been interested in myths, and especially Claude Levi-Strass, who has asserted “myth is language”.  Using the approach of structural theory, he has argued “Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at ‘taking off’ from the linguistic ground on which it keeps rolling.” (Structural Anthropology, page 210). He has proposed that meaning is not isolated within the specific fundamental parts of the myth, but rather within the composition of these parts. Although myth and language are of similar categories, language functions differently in myth. Language in myth exhibits more complex functions than in any other linguistic expression. From these suggestions, he draws the conclusion that myth can be broken down into constituent units, and these units are different from the constituents of language, words, structure and narrative all interwoven.

Finally, unlike the constituents of language, the constituents of a myth, which he labels “mythemes,” function as “bundles of relations. A myth is categorized sequentially and by similarities. Through analysing the commonalities between the “mythemes”, understanding can be wrought from its categories. Thus, a structural approach towards myths is to address all of these constituents. Furthermore, a structural approach should account for all versions of a myth, as all versions are relevant to the function of the myth as a whole. This leads to what Lévi-Strauss calls a spiral growth of the myth that is continuous while the structure itself is not. The growth of the myth only ends when the “intellectual impulse which has produced it is exhausted.”  The complex story of Macondo and its inhabitants is a representation of South America, its people and its character.

In other ways, García Márquez addresses some more prosaic themes.  One is his criticism of the Latin American elite through the stories of the members of a high-status family who are essentially in love with themselves, to the point of being unable to understand the mistakes of their past and learn from them, as Elsa Brendy points out (in her lecture on “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” at Hofstra University in March 20200.  Other commentators have observed how elites in Latin America do not pass down history that remembers them in a negative manner.  In the same way the Buendía family honour their unique background by using the same names for their children over and over again. “José Arcadio” appears four times in the family tree, “Aureliano” appears 22 times!  The action takes place a  Big House, or hacienda, the centre of a large land holding in which elite families lived and managed their lands and labourers.  Colombian ‘Big Houses’ were known for being a grand one-story dwellings with many bedrooms, parlours, a kitchen, a pantry and a veranda.

If some of the story is magical, and some prosaic, the key figures are similarly complex.  José Arcadio Buendía is the patriarch of the Buendía family and was the founder of Macondo.  He had left his hometown in Colombia, along with his wife Úrsula Iguarán after being haunted by the corpse of Prudencio Aguilar (a man he’d killed in a duel), a corpse which constantly bleeds from its wounds and he tries to wash it.  José Arcadio Buendía is an introspective and inquisitive man, as well as the possessor of immense strength and energy, obsessed by scientific pursuits. He flirts with alchemy and astronomy and becomes increasingly withdrawn from his family and community.

Another key figure is Úrsula Iguarán, the matriarch of the Buendía family who is both wife and cousin to José Arcadio Buendía.  She sits as the centre of One Hundred Years of Solitide, living to be well over 100 years old and overseeing the Buendía household through six of their seven generations.  Like her husband, she is a person very determined.  At the same time she fears her family will continue with incestuous practices, that her inbred relatives will tend to have animalistic features.  In keeping with the magical elements of the novel, she is reduced to a plaything for the family’s sixth generation, Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano in her last years, slowly shrinking to the size of a newborn baby before she finally dies.

To describe the complex, fantastical and compelling character of One Hundred Years of Solitude can’t explain why it has such a hold on its readers.  García Márquez’s book isn’t short, but it absorbs many readers from beginning to end.  It’s continuing influence and dominating place among Spanish-language books is unarguable. Over 30 million copies have been sold, (second only to Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which has had a four-century head start).  It is the only other book to receive the honour of a Real Academia Española edition.  Perhaps its enduring fame is because, through magic realism, Garcia Márquez found a way to describe modern human reality in its fluidity and strangeness, life as a fever dream of history and family from which we are never more than half awake.

As Robert Kiely observed in his review in the New York Times back in 1970, “If this is a book with magical elements, there is nothing here about elves, moonbeams and slippery mountains, nor midgets and fairies.  Many books of this kind seek to forget the earth. At least that is one idea of enchantment.  It is obviously not shared by the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who has created in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” an enchanted place that does everything but cloy. Macondo oozes, reeks and burns even when it is most tantalizing and entertaining. It is a place flooded with lies and liars and yet it spills over with reality. Lovers in this novel can idealize each other into bodiless spirits, howl with pleasure in their hammocks or, as in one case, smear themselves with peach jam and roll naked on the front porch. The hero can lead a Quixotic expedition across the jungle, but although his goal is never reached, the language describing his quest is pungent with life:

‘The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders. For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood.”

This is the language of a poet”

The final character to have the name Aureliano is also the town and the family’s lone survivor, and the novel’s culminating figure of solitude. His final act is to make sense of the prophesies that surrounded him: “He began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror.” Here is a reader and a character reading the same lines at the same time. This identification between reader and character invests the novel’s abiding sense of solitude with a subtle if literal sense of fellow feeling, which makes the apocalyptic final sentence the more bearable:

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that [Macondo] would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment Aureliano . . . would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

The End of Time

Nearly a quarter of a century later, it is hard to recall all the excitement – and angst – that surrounded the impending millennium in 1999.  Eventually, attention focussed on a rather unlikely problem, although it seemed very real at the time.  This was that electronic calendars and timers all had not been designed to deal with year 00:  many were operating on the basis that the only year identifier needed was the last two digits.  But if we hit year zero, what would happen.  This was seen as a computer flaw, described at the time as the ‘Millennium Bug’, all the result of the fact that when complex computer programs were first written in the 1960s, engineers used a two-digit code for the year, leaving out the ‘19’.  As the year 2000 approached, many began to believe that these automated systems would not interpret the ‘00’ correctly, and as a result there would be a major glitch in many systems.

It was considered possible that banks could face real challenges as interest rates might be affected:  instead of using the rate of interest for one day, the computer might calculate interest for minus 100 years!  Others worried about transportation which also depended on knowing the correct time and date. Airlines were considered at risk, especially as there were no airline flights in 1900!  As a result of these and other concerns, companies worked to fix the ‘bug’ by developing ‘Y2K-compliant’ programs. The simplest solution was the best: the date was simply expanded to a four-digit number.  In the end, there were very few problems.  Given the lack of dramatic disasters, many dismissed the ‘Y2K-bug’ as a hoax.

Panic over a Millennium Bug was the modern world’s example of an apocalypse, a catastrophe that marks a significant moment in the history of mankind.  In The End of Time, Damian Thompson gives a detailed analysis of millennial thinking and predictions of disaster.  It is one situation where the modern world offers a poor version of something the ancients did with far more verve and drama.  Before turning to his commentary, I should point out that we do have some fine contemporary apocalyptic movements, however, with a number of  predictions over the past 25 years.  At this point, I should add that I consider 2001 the last year of the second millennium.  New post-millennial predictions commence from 2002!).

In terms of forthcoming disasters, I might mention that we can look forward to 2026, when the Messiah Foundation International predicts the world will end when an asteroid collides with Earth in accordance with predictions in The Religion of God.  If that seems rather close we can go back to Newton writing at the end of the Seventeenth Century who predicted that  the world would definitely not end before 2060.  One Sunni Muslim theologian Said Nursi, has offered 2129 as the date for the world’s demise.  That leaves one more key source, the Talmud, which indicates the Messiah will come within 6000 years since the creation of Adam, with the world  destroyed 1000 years later, so that the period of ‘desolation’ will begin in 2239, and end in 3239.

Actually, we’ve survived some narrow squeaks already.  Starting with the most recent, an American religious leader, F Kenton Beshore had worked out that Jesus would return in 1988, before realising the definition of a biblical generation was incorrect:  on this revised basis  the second coming of Jesus would take place between 2018 and 2028 and the final rapture by 2021 at the latest.  Many predictions of the end face revisions of this kind, so that David Meade first chose 2017, but revised it to 23 April 2018; Ronald Weinland told everyone the end would come in 2011, and then changed to 2012; and Jeanne Dixon initially explained the world would come to an end on 4 February 1962, and then revised her prediction to 2020 (better vision, I guess).  Out of many others, I must acknowledge 2011 as a bumper years, with Harold Camping joining with Ronald Weinland in going for 2001, accompanied by a whole group that became convinced that Comet Elenin, travelling between the Earth and the Sun would cause massive earthquakes and tidal waves, or even collide with Earth (on October 16).

It is clearly time for me to get back to Damian Thompson’s book.  Part One deals with history, and especially event around 1000 AD.  Perhaps one of the early and clearly exciting forerunners was the Secular Games in Rome in AD 248, which were held to celebrate the one thousandth anniversary of the founding of Rome.  Rome was already in decline, and the emperor, Philip, saw the need for an exercise in restoring self-esteem and traditional Roman religion.  All the more interesting in that Philip was an Arab!

“Along the Tiber he burned lambs and black she-goats to the Fates, who caused men to proposer or fail.  He sacrificed white bulls to Jupiter the Best and the Greatest, king of gods and patron of Rome; a pregnant sow to Mother Earth, who gave the empire food in abundance or held it back and made men starve.  He offered cakes and burned incense to Ilithyia, goddess of childbirth, without whose assistance the empire’s population dropped.  Matrons knelt to Juno, in supplication for blessings.  Twenty seven aristocratic youth and twenty seven highborn young virgins, their lives unpolluted by the death of either parent, chanted ancient hymns to Apollo and his chaste sister Diana.”  (from G C Brauer, The Age of Soldier Emperors, 1975)

In his chapter The Mystery of the Year 1000, Damian Thompson pulls ff a great trick.  We read the “population of Christendom lived through the year 999 in a state of mortal fear, convinced that, with the completion of a thousand years since the birth of Christ, history had run its course.”  People fled cities and countries, building were abandoned, debts were revoked, prisoners freed, and terror was rampant.  If you think this sounds rather like the predictions of Donald Trump assuming the US Presidency in January 2025, you’d be right.  Just as we have no idea what will happen, with the result imaginations take over, so the same is true for AD 1000.  Current historical research has discovered there were no ‘Terrors of the yar 1000’.  As Thompson observes: “It is a romantic invention, dating back no further than the sixteenth century”.  How did this happen.

Historians have identified some small number of decisions and plans that centred around the end of the first millennium, but one reality is uncontested and critical:  in 1000 AD the vast majority of people didn’t know what year it was.  For almost everyone, 1000 was ‘a year like any other’.  Not everyone, however.  Recent work by historians of the tenth and early eleventh centuries do offer accounts and evidence suggesting gloomy presentiments about various misfortunes about to affect the population.  It seems that Princes and preachers used the date as the basis for offering warnings, while at the same time planning celebrations to shake off fears and a sense of danger.

As in so many things, we are using the past, in this case, the turn of the millennium, as a canvas on to which to focus our current fears and uncertainties.  It seems that telling a story what ‘happened’ is also a way to offer a warning about what might happen now.  We often give space to accounts of unsuccessful peasant uprisings in medieval times, to reassure ourselves that contrary views do emerge, and, at the same time, to recognise they almost always fail.  If there are stories about the year 1000, they both illustrate the power of religious belief, miserable existences and that ‘audacity of hope’ that can motivate us.  At the same time, they are reminders that nothing really changes.

The second part of A Brief History of End-Time takes us to the end of the 20^th Century.  Prior to 2000 were a series of events at the end of the 19^th Century, associated with image of fin-de-siècle.  That term was a modern invention, first appearing in France in 1885.  There were many odd but memorable episodes at the completion of eighteenth century.  There’s the story of Miss Agnes Ozman, (unrelated to the Wizard of Oz), a student at Bethel College, a Texas bible school.  On January 1, 1901, she was heard speaking in tongues.  She explained:

“During the first day of 1901, the presence of the Lord was with us in a marked way, stilling our hearts to wait upon Him for greater things.  It was nearly eleven o’clock on this first day of January that it came into my heart to ask that hands be laid upon me. …. As hands were laid upon my head the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I began to speak in tongues, glorifying God.  I talked several languages.  It was though rivers of living water were proceeding from my innermost being.” (Recorded in a 1964 book on the Pentecostal movement)

Little has been written about Agnes Ozman and consequences of this episode. but it has been attributed with starting the modern Pentecostal-Holiness movement in the early 20th century.

However, Agnes speaking in tongues was unlike most stories about events associated with the end of the twentieth century, if not so different from so many other curious episodes recorded at the turn of previous centuries.  Today, we seem to have become rather more interested in technology that spiritual ad religious happenings.  If the general public still believed in ‘miracles’ back then, our capacity for such beliefs has declined – unless, of course, you consider Donald Trump winning a second term as US President as similarly miraculous, together with the extraordinary ability of certain foods and cures to make you instantly attractive.  Have we have decided to ignore warnings about the ‘end of time’ and the like?

Perhaps in an increasingly secular world, we are likely to be concerned about rather more prosaic problems.  Attention on many peoples’ minds is given to threats of having our computers or mobiles phone ‘infected’ by a virus, by which means our personal life is known, manipulated, our cash savings stolen, and our thoughts replaced by scurrilous texts sent to people in our address book.  That isn’t all.  We also worry about banks failing, the cost of living continuing to increase, Covid returning in some new and horrible form, about what the government is going to do next, and how conflicts in Europe Asia and the USA will spill over into disastrous confrontations here.  This isn’t apocalyptic thinking, nor is it millennial fervour, it is stubbornly pedantic and ‘here and now’.  It isn’t about ‘the end of time’, it’s about personal financial obliteration:  in the 21^st Century it is our financial presence that takes precedence, rather than religious or spiritual concerns.

However, apocalyptic thinking has remained.  In Thompson’s book we are reminded of all the crazy cults and concerns about a ‘New Age’ that emerged in the latter part of the Twentieth Century.  Some were interesting, some were odd, and some were – well, bizarre.  How about the 11:11 Doorway Movement. They claimed, “mankind had entered a twenty year period of opportunity to end the earth’s period of conflict between light and dark”.  The ‘doorway’ would open on 12 January 1992, and end on 31 December 2011.  The groups leader, Solara, explained the 11:11 symbol of the group was precoded in our memory banks ‘long, long ago’.  Ah, but here’s a further key point “this numerical revelation came to Salara, incidentally, while he was staring at a digital clock”.  I always new that digital technology was a problem!

It is easy to make fun of many of these movements, but some had very serious consequences.  There was the amazing case of Aum Shinrikyo in Japan.  This was a sect led by Asahara, where, after a great deal of confusion, the police discovered the group was manufacturing the deadly sarin gas.  Rumours swirled for some time, following sarin gas outbreaks in Kamikuishiki and Matsumoto.  Eventually, the investigators found, under a Buddha sculpture in Kamikuishiki laboratory packed with vats of foul smelling chemicals.  Eventually, they revealed that Aum was planning a war on society (!), using whatever weapons it could acquire or make.  The more the investigators dug into the details, they found Aum was “developing biological weapons, trying to secure uranium, assembling guns and rifles, , manufacturing LSD and using truth serum on its followers.  The initial gas attacks in Tokyo were intended as the precursor to a terrorist war.

If the sarin gas attacks had been alarming, it was almost chance that led to two vinyl bags being found in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku station.  The two bags were close to being broken open by a fire, and if that had happened the result would have been the production of enough hydrocyanic gas to kill an estimated 10,000 people.  Quite what Aum was seeking to achieve, and how far the cult was responsible for all the apparently related attacks and other events remains unclear.  What was clear was the Aum Shinrikyo was a violent millennial cult, seeking to deal with (and perhaps promote) a coming apocalypse.

Another series of equally disturbing events took place in America, a place famous for ‘fights for the soul of the country’.  One of the more famous was back in 1993, when a group of fundamentalists built a compound, Mount Carmel, just outside Waco, Texas.  In February of that year, US federal agents raided the compound, in the belief if held a cache of illegal arms.  Four occupants were killed, but that was the precursor to a fifty-one day siege.  The siege came to an end with impatient government agents decided to send in tanks and CS gas.  A fire swept through the building, and eighty of the apocalyptic believers died.  The group of believers had been led by David Koresh, who had managed to persuade them the ‘end of time’ was imminent, drawing on a variety of complex – and bizarre – views centred around the breaking of the seven seals in the Book of Revelation.  Bizarre or not, his views had led his followers converting rifles into machine guns, the development that had precipitated the raid; it remains unclear how the fire started that killed the sect members.

In many ways, Waco can be seen as just one example of the many so-called ‘culture wars’ that were rampant as the second Millenium was approaching, wars that pitted right-wing extremists, seeking to save the American state from totalitarian plots devised the government and its various secretive and repressive hidden institutions.  Another of these events to receive worldwide attention was the Oklahoma bombing by Timothy McVeigh.  McVeigh wanted revenge against the government for the Waco siege, and the 1992 death of several people at Ruby Ridge.  In a way that was to become increasingly familiar, he was concerned about ‘the rights of US private citizens, and agencies like the FBI.  He wanted to inspire a revolution, and in 1995 he masterminded and carried out a bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing  168 people, including 19 children, injured 684, as well as partially destroying the building.

Especially in a country where incidents of these kinds abound, the Second Millennium is characterised by many instances where it is the role of government, not religion, that attracts fears about the end of time, global catastrophes and the need for violent uprising to save the nation.  Just as had been true a thousand years before, there are disaffected people who are easily motivated to ‘restore’ their country or their group to the way it had been before government intervened.  The dates of the millennia may seem arbitrary, but they offer a focus for those who fear their world is being overrun.  The only change over 1000 years is that todays’ apocalypses are more likely to be focussed on earthly politicians, not cosmic beings!

Fionavar

Re-reading The Summer Tree, the first book in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Trilogy is both a delight and a puzzle.  The delight I’ll explore shortly, but the puzzle?  The puzzle is why I am drawn to books like this, stories about elves and magicians, other worlds and fantasy kingdoms, books that are often in several volumes, books that require a preface giving the names and relationships of the thirty or more key characters about to appear.  It isn’t the complexity, which at times can be a might frustrating:  who was Na-Brendel again?  Yes, I’m fudging here.  The answer is clear.  These books are the stuff of dreams, the tantalising if foolish and momentary belief that all this could happen to me, pulled out of a humdrum earthly life into an amazing adventure, thrilling, risky, and yet fulfilling.

How many pages did it take for Kay to grab my attention?  Precisely one!  Chapter 1 of The Summer tree begins like this:

In the spaces of calm almost lost in what followed, the question of why tended to surface.  Why them?  There was an easy answer that had to do with Ysanne beside her lake, that didn’t really address the deepest question.  Kimberley, white-haired, would say when asked that she could sense a glimmered pattern when she looked back, but one need not be a seer to use hindsight on the warp and weft of the Tapestry, and Kim, in any event, was a special case.

White-haired Kimberly, a seer;  the Tapestry; and she was a special case.  Phrases like that tend to ensure I’ll read on, and just a few pages later we are at the University of Toronto and people are going in to a lecture theatre to hear a paper being presented at the Second International Celtic Conference.  Dave Martyniuk is there, feeling uncomfortable, (his brother is a speaker, but the topic’s not his thing), and then he sees Kevin Laine, Paul Schafer (both of whom he might prefer to avoid), and meets Kim Ford and Jennifer Lowell.  Whoa, it’s complicated already.

A couple of pages later, we learn that high up in the hall, effectively invisible, there are two observers, a dwarf and an older man.  They watch the five – they are the five, whatever that means, and the older man looks carefully at each one.  When he is studying Paul Schafer, Paul finds himself pulled away from the inside of the hall, and finds himself in a forest, confronting the ‘haunted eyes of a dog or a wolf’.  As he looks round, he sees a tall man, with great antlers of a stag on his head.  You might not be lost in this story at this stage, but I was, and was again when I reread it.  I don’t mean lost in the sense of confused, but rather entranced, and I have to know what is going on.  Once again, I won’t be satisfied until I reach the end of The Darkest Road, the final book in the trilogy.

Some books when you read them again are familiar, comfortable even.  When I reread The Hobbit recently, it was like an old friend.  I knew the shape of the book, and felt comfortable with the knowledge that I could already see the journey we were about to make.  There would be details that I hadn’t remembered, but it was as if I knew the underlying shape of what was to come.  Kay manages to make that harder, in part because he keeps throwing in details, presentiments, warnings and irrelevancies at every stage.

It is rather like trying to follow a magician’s tricks.  You know what you are seeing has been carefully constructed, and you know what you want to see is being hidden.  This trilogy is worse in the early stages because what you want to see is there, to be picked apart from all the other information, but everything in front of you has its place.  It is far too tricky to follow it all.  It is as if Kay wants to keep you reading, and then, every so often, go ’Ah, now I see what that meant.’  Isn’t that a literary jigsaw puzzle of the best kind, bits and pieces embedded in the narrative, waiting to be pulled out and used later on?  Perhaps it reflects the structure of the books:  there’s much to be covered in the early sections, often as background, only to make sense when you have it all available to you, once the story has progressed.

There is a wonderful section early on when one of the five who has crossed into the world of Fionavar, Paul, plays chess with the King.  It’s a game that is fascinating in itself – youthful aggression played against older wisdom and patience.  But it is also a preliminary to a long and important discussion, as Paul learns about some of the complexities of the world he has entered.  We also pick up hints and understand that the two women are to play key roles in the future: Kim has some kind of connection to Ysanne, a seer; and Jennifer’s beauty will draw to her a key figure.  We learn about the Summer Tree, where a king must go and die.

It is as if we are getting some outlines of a complicated three-dimensional sketch.  As each tentative line is added to the picture, it becomes more complex, not less.  As we get deeper into the story, we begin to worry some of the things we thought were clear are not.  And, to pursue that sketch analogy, it is now apparent that some of the lines are green, some are red, some are indistinct and uncertain.  This is an intellectual game.  What is really going on?  What is true? Dangerous games, for sure, and just as intoxicating as the events you read about.  Guy Gavriel Kay can write:  if Tolkien swept you up with adventures, Kay has the same ability to construct compelling events, but also has the same skill to entrance you.  Even now, as I’m writing, I want to keep reading.

Let me ask again:  why are stories of this kind so compelling?  I wonder if they represent some kind of progress in our thirst for fiction.  When we are young, the stories that entrance us are only gently complex.  In The Wind in the Willows, much of the story is an account of friendship, leisure and small adventures.  Toad is foolish, but not excessively so.  Rat is heroic, but manageably so.  Mole is loyal, but not blindly so.  And Badger is wise, but not oppressively so.  There are dramas and excitements, but they are at an easily appreciated pace.  Even the battle at Toad Hall is easily won, and without much bloodshed.  Similarly Alice, in Wonderland’, goes through amazing changes, and confronts difficult people, but there is a sense it will all be resolved and nothing really frightening will take place.

The next step up, for boys when I was that age, are adventures with more of an edge.  Treasure Island is my best example.  There are real fights, real dissensions, and the risk of being marooned, of death, of disaster.  At the same time we meet people who are more than just nasty:  some of the characters are frightening, some are evil, and some are paradoxical.  Long John Silver is sufficiently complex to make him a memorable character, a mixture of good, caring, manipulative and downright dangerous.  From there it is only a short step to Bilbo Baggins and the dramas of Lord of the Rings.  Now our heroes are complex, and they face very real dangers.  People die, and these include characters that you had come to love.

I think the Fionavar trilogy takes us to the next stage.  It isn’t just that the story is complex, just as it was with Tolkien. It’s not just that we are meeting varieties of evil, and horrible challenges.  Now we face another development, where even the heroes are themselves complex, their actions often foolish or self-serving.  More to the point, you realise they have some critical flaws, and that they won’t always be ‘heroic’.  We’ve reached the point where, as adults, we are reading about individuals who are closer to ourselves, flawed, confused, driven by unsettling passions, tempted in various ways, and weak enough to lead them on to places and relationships they should have avoided.

As I reread the Fionavar trilogy, I felt Guy Gavriel Kay was offering me two books.  One is a marvellous, complicated, twisting story, concerned with overcome evil and risks to the world.  As in all stories of this kind that get us involved, things go wrong, mistakes are made, and for a lot of the time it seems like evil will triumph.  If not sitting on the edge of our chair, we are certainly thrilled, worried, occasionally flattened, and sometimes delighted.  Like many of the excellent fantasy books I’ve read, it is a compelling adventure.

However, the ‘other book’ is about the key people.  Dave Martyniuk, Kevin Laine, Kim Ford, Paul Schafer and Jennifer Lowell are very real.  They are driven by muddled emotions as much as by logic.  They have their personal flaws ad predilections.  You want them to triumph, but every so often you groan.  How could he have done that?  Is she really that oblivious to how she’s seen?  Like friends over the years, they become both close and yet frustrating.  These people might be in a book, but there are moments when you feel like giving them a serious talking to, and other times when all you can do is despair.

As older adults, we want story and person:  we like a complex twisting set of events.  We like the unexpected, the challenging, and the sense that everything might go really bad before – almost by the thinnest of threads – everything is pulled back from the brink.  But without those people, those very real characters, that wouldn’t be enough.  Is Dave really that blind to what is happening?  Is Kim aware of what will happen to her?  With a really good author, we are, as we are reading, partly inhabiting the people of the story.  Well, I am, as I groan at a choice that’s been made, or smile at a moment when love or understanding breaks through.

Compelling fantasies offer a subtle way to think about ourselves and those around us.  Novels set in our world, exploring complex relationships also do that.  But fantasies give us a freedom to step out of the self and enjoy experiences that are no longer ‘typical’.  They can invite us to ask questions about our motivations and expectations, about what we value and what we assume.  They have the advantage that is all at a distance, but, for me, they are no less personal.  In the case of some excellent fantasies I am reduced to tears at various moments.  How could that have happened?  I often feel I should shake myself at moments like that and remind myself ‘it’s just a story’.  But literature isn’t just a story, it’s a window, a window into humanity and a window into ourselves.

To use the word ‘window’ seems to suggest that this is all about looking at ourselves, using a story to make us reflect:  is this something I would have done?  Have I made mistakes like that?  However, fantasy does far more than tell ‘good stories’ and sometimes make us look back at our own mistakes and misunderstandings.  That makes the role of fantasy sound like a reflecting board, but it offers far more.  It is also a means to stretch us, to pull us out of the happy reflective times sitting in a comfortable chair with a novel on our lap.

No, really good fantasy doesn’t just entertain, it makes demands of us.  Like all really good fiction, we are being invited to learn, to reflect, but also to change, to see more possibilities in what we might do.  I don’t mean that it suggests we should start looking in the back of cupboards in the vague hope our wardrobe will offer a doorway to a fantasy world.  CS Lewis was helping his younger readers understand more about the adult world they were entering.  Others provoke more than simple understanding (and even Lewis managed to sneak in some Christian thinking, and a place for God in his readers’ eyes).

Good novels do more than offer escapism, and a sense that our world is acceptable by suggesting all the nasty, exciting and alarming stuff taking place somewhere else.  No, they keep reframing and rethinking what we think we know.  Lewis did an excellent job in helping his characters, and hence his readers, appreciate some of the complexities of the adult world, and, most important that what was happening in Narnia was also happening in Hull, or Bermondsey or Adelaide. Situations change as you grow older, and you have to take on roles and responsibilities that once seemed irrelevant (the stuff your stuff parents did) as you move through adolescence.

Kay takes that further.  As in any novel, he presents the reader with real interpersonal dilemmas and misunderstandings.  The twist of his fantasy in that it does something more, in that it allows us to imagine our way past present and future relationships in the world we ‘understand’ on to worlds, and therefore ways of understanding and behaving, which sit outside our experience.  That’s why magic matters:  it creates something new.  In Fionavar, magic is uncertain, dangerous, and yet it also holds out the promise that we can do more, be more than are today.

Fionavar offers another important perspective, as excellent novels often do, it allows us to imagine who we might do mor than out current lives suggest, to get us ‘breathe out’ as it were, expanding our world to offer space to what isn’t really or possible, and yet which is important if we are going to grow past the prosaic.  It isn’t surprising that children, as they grow up, delight in the possibilities of these other worlds.  Rather, the problem is that as children grow up, they – what’s the phrase – set aside childish things.  I would like to catch up with Paul one day and explain to him how his vision in Corinthians is essentially conservative.  What did he suggest?  “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (I Corinthians 13:11).  The idea of becoming grown up in Corinthians is limiting, entering and succumbing to the confines of adult world.

I’d much rather adults read books like to Fionavar Trilogy, and so many of the other excellent storis like them.  I want adults to retain their fascination with fantasy, not as mere stories, but as explorations of what could be, how our visions are compromised by our careless ‘sensible thinking’, and how our ability to remain interested in what might be is actually keeping us alert to possibilities and the benefits of escaping from sensible thinking – well, I concede, at least some of the time!

As far as I am concerned, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar trilogy is one invitation alongside many others to keep on seeking something more.  It is a reminder that our aspirations and hopes are often wrong or at least confused.  However, it is also a series that reminds us there are alternative paths to explore.  I might be getting older (just a little!), but I never want to lose that aspiration to seek another way, to step past increasingly out-of-date conventions and restrictions, and try something new to help us do better than we have in the past – both individually and in society as a whole.  Right now we are witnessing political parties and national leaders who are dragging us back to familiar and traditional ways of behaving.  I can’t think of a mor important time to toss all that stuff aside and find ways to take new steps forward, to want to create better ways of living for our friends and families, and to want to keep improving society.  Kay has it right:  it’s often messy, sometimes riddled with failure, but the desire to change and grow must be supported.  Read the Fionavar Trilogy and allow fantasy to help you keep the radical mid-set alive.

The Railway Children

Remembering children’s books is a serendipitous exercise.  In my case, some are established favourites, and so Pooh, Rat and Mole and Alice will always be close to me.  The same is true of the Rev. W (Wilbert Vere) Awdry books about Thomas the Tank Engine and the others in his railway series.  Other characters and stories float in and out of my attention without any clear or obvious reason.  So it is with The Railway Children.  In fact, I should be honest, because what I remembered first, and just recently, was the movie, which came out in 1970.  It was a family film, with just the right mixture of fun, sad moments, and excitement – and it had trains!  The two actors who played the daughters were especially memorable.

I recently learnt that Sally Thomsett, then aged 20, was cast as Phyllis, the youngest of the three children, despite the fact that when it was being filmed Jenny Agutter, who played her older sister, Roberta, was actually two years younger than she was (I should add that it worked visually, as Jenny Agutter was tall for her age, and Sally Thomsett short).   Sally Thomsett was forbidden to reveal her age during production, not allowed to smoke, drink, drive a car, or be seen in public with her boyfriend.  The bizarre result was that the crew treated her as they would a child (giving her sweets), while addressing the younger Jenny Agutter as they would an adult!

I’ll return to the film later, but I recently reread the book, which was first published in 1905.  If I could remember the film and its characters, the book was less easy to recall, and to settle down with it again was a revelation.  Like so many very good books for younger readers, it is easy to forget how well it was written.

The opening was deceptively simple:

“They were not railway children to begin with. I don’t suppose they had ever thought about railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne and Cook’s, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud’s. They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bathroom with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and ‘every modern convenience’, as the house-agents say.

There were three of them. Roberta was the eldest. Of course, Mothers never have favourites, but if their Mother HAD had a favourite, it might have been Roberta. Next came Peter, who wished to be an Engineer when he grew up; and the youngest was Phyllis, who meant extremely well.”

Did I say ‘simple’.  Two paragraphs in, and we are already on alert: ‘just ordinary suburban children’ and ‘Phyllis, who meant extremely well’.  Young ears listening, or slightly older eyes reading would be on alert.  Ordinary children?  Meant extremely well?  As for an adult reader, you could already sense that some of this text was going to be directed at you!

Part of what makes a really successful children’s book is that it also appeals to adults – whether a parent or just an older reader. There are two techniques. It can deliberately include adult materials or sections, almost as a book within a book. Alternatively it can be far more subtle, allowing an older reader to see more. Done this way, the book exists at more than one level. The Railway Children is definitely in this second group.

At the first level this is a heart-warming adventure, with moments of excitement, moments of sadness, even scenes where an older reader will allow some tears (several in my case).  It is undoubtedly the kind of story that will grip a younger audience, even today despite the older style, set in the early 20th century rather than 21st.  Indeed, it was appreciating this timeless character that offered the basis for an excellent film version in 1970.  Unsurprisingly, though it was an excellent adaptation, it did lose just a little in translation from book to movie.

At another level, this apparently simple adventure story achieves a great deal more than drama and excitement.  In part it is because of the book’s style, old-fashioned certainly, but also engaging.  Here’s a moment from later in the book:

“I hope you don’t mind my telling you a good deal about Roberta. The fact is I am growing very fond of her. The more I observe her the more I love her. And I notice all sorts of things about her that I like.

For instance, she was quite oddly anxious to make other people happy. And she could keep a secret, a tolerably rare accomplishment. Also she had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it’s not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you. That was what Bobbie was like. She knew that Mother was unhappy—and that Mother had not told her the reason. So she just loved Mother more and never said a single word that could let Mother know how earnestly her little girl wondered what Mother was unhappy about. This needs practice. It is not so easy as you might think.

Whatever happened—and all sorts of nice, pleasant ordinary things happened—such as picnics, games, and buns for tea, Bobbie always had these thoughts at the back of her mind. ‘Mother’s unhappy. Why? I don’t know. She doesn’t want me to know. I won’t try to find out. But she IS unhappy. Why? I don’t know.’ She doesn’t say, and so on, repeating and repeating like a tune that you don’t know the stopping part of.”

Nesbit was clever, weaving the story with ‘author’s reflections’.  Today we are more likely to expect a story to stay ‘on track’, but there were writers who did like to communicate directly with you (and some still do).  As in the example, it is like a privileged moment, where you are able to stand back from events and share in this brief interlude of reflection.  Nesbit realised that rather from detracting from the story, it enhanced it.  This was before cinema and television, and she was giving us the alternative to a story appearing on a screen:  time and events were moving forward in the text in front of you, but you could pause for a moment, and reflect with the writer on what had been happening, on the characters in the story, and on the hidden thoughts of the children.  It was the use of this technique that conspired to make Roberta ‘real’ in a way that fed your desire to have a special insight into her.

To be clear, The Railway Children is an adventure story.  After their unexpected move from a house in London and middle-class wealth to poverty and a house in the country, the children have escapades.  Some are dramatic, and some are simply the result of living in a new world of expereinces, where village life, gardens, trains and local commerce become engaging.  There are dramatic moments, ranging from discovering a refugee to a boy having an accident, from sickness and a canal boat fire to a landslide on the railway line.  Yet all the excitement is balanced with sharp insights about children growing up, all combined with the teasing, snappy responses and moments of guilt that are central to being around your siblings.

Nesbit also addresses the relationship between children and adults well, especially when Roberta, Phyllis and Peter find themselves involved with other people in the village.  Some interactions are uncomfortable, some clouded by misunderstandings and false assumptions, and some by wariness.  However, one curious aspect of the story is that it is mainly concerned with the three children and several adults:  for the most part, other children are largely ignored, at least until they rescue the injured Jim.  Even then, spiky moments between his rescuers and a man in the signal box close to the station take up an important part of the events.  If Jim hadn’t required nursing, he would have disappeared from the story quickly (and with it, any potential emotional interest for Roberta!).

The three children in The Railway Children aren’t perfect, nor would any reader expect them to be.  What makes Nesbit’s approach clever is that she manages to show the good and the bad, but at the same time offer a commentary, as if she wants you to do more than follow a story.  Here’s is Peter deciding to upset his sisters with an explanation – as he saw it – of setting a broken bone:

“I’ll tell you what they do,” said Peter. I can’t think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all.

“I’ll tell you what they do,” said Peter; “they strap the broken man down so that he can’t resist or interfere with their doctorish designs, and then someone holds his head, and someone holds his leg—the broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit in—with a crunch, mind you! Then they strap it up and—let’s play at bone-setting!”

I’ve put the part of the paragraph which is ‘out’ of the story in an italic font.  It’s an explanation for the children listening to the story, and it’s a commentary aimed at parents too.

Incidentally, within a couple of pages, the three children are playing at setting bones, with Peter the recipient of their efforts.  It comes to an end when the doctor, who has been setting a real broken bone elsewhere in the house, enters the room and sees what they are doing.  He points they’re being a bit insensitive when the boy upstairs is in real pain.  It’s an unexpected scene.  Sadly, the chapter ends in a place where modern views confront the ‘dated’ text – as the doctor explains to Peter that women are ‘softer’ than men, and that men should be careful, adding “a man has to be very careful, not only of his fists, but of his words”.

Should sections like that be edited today?  The version I was reading was the version currently available in Books, the Apple online library.  Perhaps modern print editions are different.  I find it hard to answer my own question about editing.  Before I respond to my query, a slight detour takes me over to commenting on The Railway Children on film, although I should admit I have only seen one version.  I know there was a new adaptation for television in 2000, and a sequel, The Railway Children Return, appeared in 2022.

That 1970 film version of the story was an absolute delight.  In addition to the actors playing the children, Bernard Cribbins was just perfect for the Station Porter, Mr Perks (perfect as Perks!).  The setting, the acting and the style of the movie caught Nesbit’s story well.  Of course, it was a movie, and so we lost some of the subtle style when it appeared on screen, and certainly we no longer had that extra voice, offering insights and asides that made the book so successful, at least as I saw it.  The other effect of the film was the usual one:  now Phyllis and Roberta are fixed images in my mind, they are Phyllis as portrayed by Sally Thomsett and Roberta by Jenny Agutter.  As far as I’m concerned, the old rule still works:  read the book first, and then allow a later movie or television series to be an alternative version, it can be equally enjoyable (as it was in this case), but it’s not the same.

Written 120 years ago, there are plenty of commentaries that have been written on Nesbit and on The Railway Children, some of them concerns about past values and behaviours.  Born in 1858, Edith Nesbit was a prolific writer.  She wrote more than sixty books for children, and more than 30 for adults.  Perhaps less well known, she was a co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation that was later to link up with Britain’s Labour Party.

Her personal life was complex.  In 1877, aged just 18, she met Hubert Bland, a bank clerk.  They married when she was  seven months pregnant in 1880, but they didn’t live together immediately after their wedding, as he remained with his mother.  Their marriage was tumultuous.  Nesbit was to meet another woman who believed she was Hubert’s fiancée and had also had a child of his.  If that wasn’t enough, she then discovered that her friend, Alice Hoatson, was pregnant by him.  She’d already agreed to adopt Hoatson’s child and allow her to live with her as their housekeeper.  Despite discovering the truth and quarrelling violently with her husband, she allowed Alice Hoatson to continue residing with them in the dual roles of housekeeper and secretary.  Hoatson became pregnant by Bland a second time, 13 years later.  Once again, Edith was supportive, adopting Hoatson’s other child, John.

Despite her unconventional private life, in more recent decades criticism has been directed at her ‘Victorian’ values.  In a New Yorker article published in September 2022, the comment was made that Nesbit’s books were at times “blighted by racist and colonialist language and anti-Semitic tropes” (by author Jessica Winter).  I don’t know how to respond to this.  She was the family breadwinner, and, famously, as the father in The Railway Children observes “Girls are just as clever as boys, and don’t you forget it!”.  However, she wasn’t a champion for women’s rights, although Winter concedes that that this was because “She opposed the cause of women’s suffrage—mainly, she claimed, because women could swing Tory, thus harming the Socialist cause.”  Then Winter goes on to add, “And, most crucially her …  books are constructed from a blueprint that is also a kind of reënactment of the author’s own childhood: an idyll torn up at its roots by the exigencies of illness, loss, and grief.”

After reading the book twice more, and watching the movie, I’m sure those are all valid observations.  Perhaps I shouldn’t wander into this dangerous territory, but my weakness is that I accept books like these as they are, stories that reflect a past that we view today with a jaundiced eye:  I still love The Railway Children, just as I love the works of other writers whose lives and books reflect values that are uncomfortable echoes of the past.

If I was to become too unrelenting, I’d have to give up a lot more than The Railway Children.  Pride and Prejudice depicts a world and values long gone, and far from one we would want to entertain today.  I suppose what this reveals is that I am willing to abandon what I know is the way things should be, and enjoy alternative worlds and times.  It’s a willing suspension of belief I adopt when reading fantasy and science fiction, and no less important when I read novels from a century ago or more.  Through novels I can live in other worlds for a while, without compromising my values and concerns about society today.  They make my life richer, in part by allowing me to imagine how things could be and have been different; and in part by helping me appreciate how much we have achieved by the beginning of the 21^st Century.  Sadly, I guess I have to end by adding, “how much we seem to have achieved”.