Napoleon

Battles and Josephine.  And not much else.  To be fair to Ridley Scott, Napoleon’s main legacy was the Code Napoleon, but a film about making changes to the legal system wouldn’t exactly have made for spectacular viewing.   All the same, he could at least have mentioned it!   And, whilst I appreciate that you can only fit so much into two and a half hours, it was rather confusing and bemusing that the film suggested that Napoleon was ousted from power straight after the retreat from Moscow.  And why was there so little mention of the rest of Napoleon’s family?   Madame Mere only appeared two or three times, and there was absolutely no mention of Napoleon plonking his relatives on thrones all over Europe, or even of the marriage between his brother and Josephine’s daughter.

The battle scenes made for dramatic viewing, but they weren’t at all accurate.   There were a lot of cavalry charges which never actually happened.  We saw lots of people falling through the ice into a frozen lake at Austerlitz.  Which never actually happened.   We also saw Napoleon firing at the pyramids, which definitely never happened!   And, whilst I believe that a lot of people in France are moaning that the film’s anti-French, I thought it was anti-British.  Incidentally, people kept saying “England” instead of “Britain”, which was annoying, but it’s hard to criticise when Nelson himself did exactly the same thing!   And there seemed to be a bit of confusion between George III and the Prince Regent.  To get back to the film being anti-British, the Duke of Wellington was portrayed as doing nothing at Waterloo other than moaning that he wished the Prussians would hurry up – whilst Napoleon was shown as being a superb horseman, which he wasn’t.  And one dramatic moment which actually did happen, the meeting with the Tsar on a raft in the middle of the River Neman at Tilsit, wasn’t shown.

We did, however, see Napoleon meeting the Duke of Wellington.  They never met.  Why do film makers have this thing about people meeting when they didn’t?  See also Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots!  We also saw him witnessing the execution of Marie Antoinette.  Which he didn’t.  And why has everyone got this thing about the execution of Marie Antoinette?

So what did we see?  Well, we saw a lot of Josephine.   Played by Vanessa Kirby, who’s 14 years younger than Joaquin Phoenix, who played Napoleon, whereas in fact Josephine was 6 years Napoleon’s senior.  I don’t understand that casting.  It’s not the 1950s.  Heroines in films do not have to be younger than heroes.  Joaquin Phoenix is too old to play Napoleon in the 1790s, and I kept thinking how much he’d aged, which was rather depressing because he’s almost exactly the same age as me.  I suppose I still expect him to look like he did in Parenthood.  In 1989.  Because I tend to forget that I’m not 14 any more.   Marie Louise, whom I like – I love how she did her own thing after Napoleon’s death – barely featured.

The film ended by telling us how many people died in the Napoleonic Wars, the implication being that that was Napoleon’s fault.  That’s rather unfair, and maybe that’s what’s upset the French.   For half a millennium leading up to Waterloo, there’d been one war after another in Europe.  OK, they mostly weren’t on the same scale as the Napoleonic Wars, but many of them involved several countries.   And it was the French Revolution which upset a lot of apple carts, before Napoleon came to power.

As a film, it does make for spectacular viewing – the battle scenes are exciting, and Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby play their roles well.   But it’s very frustrating when there’s a lack of historical accuracy, especially when it’s for no obvious reason.   All the same, I’m glad I went to see it.

 

I Should Be So Lucky – Manchester Opera House

The plot of this new musical is beyond stupid, OK.  And some of it feels more like a pantomime than a musical: I’d be interested to know if the local jokes are going to be adapted for each area it plays in.  But it’s brilliant entertainment!   Back in the late ’80s – and my music collection has never got out of the late ’80s – the “in crowd” type kids used to sneer at anyone who liked Stock Aitken Waterman songs.  Well, we’re getting the last laugh now, because those songs are still going strong!   Everyone was up and dancing to Never Gonna Give You Up at the end, but some of the less obvious songs got people going as well – You Spin Me Round for one, and Toy Boy for another.   Oh, and Kylie Minogue kept appearing in a magic mirror.  I knew she appeared as a hologram, but I’d assumed it’d just be briefly.  But no, she was there over and over again, encouraging the heroine Ella to be “strong and fabulous” … which was the nearest to a plot that the show had.

The plot?  Bride Ella was jilted at the altar by groom Nathan, but decided to go on their honeymoon to a luxury resort in Turkey (this calling it “Turkiye” thing isn’t really happening, is it?), accompanied by her mum, grandma, sister and two friends.   An old school bully then turned up, pretending to be married to a conman who then went off with the sister, whilst the entertainments manager chased after Ella, one of the friends went off with the masseur, the mum felt neglected by the dad until he turned up too, and then the groom and the best man turned up, the best man went off with the other friend, and it turned out that the whole jilting was due to a misunderstanding involving the grandma and the groom’s grandad, and Ella and Nathan got back together.   And the resort manager suggested that all the couples could get married/renew their vows there.  Which they did.  And hooray for the fact that not just slender Ella but also her two plump friends all bagged the men of the dreams.

Everyone follow that?   I did say that it was beyond stupid.   But I really did enjoy it.   If you’re of the Stock Aitken Waterman generation, or even if you’re not, you’ll have a great time and you’ll leave with a smile on your face.

 

The Princes in the Tower: the new evidence – Channel 4

This was a programme in which Philippa Langley tried to convince Rob Rinder and TV reviewers that the Princes in the Tower were not murdered by Richard III, but escaped and went to the Continent.  There was nothing in it which couldn’t quite reasonably be explained by the traditional story, and none of Philippa’s claims convinced me at all.  Sorry, Ricardians, but I remain convinced that Richard III murdered the princes.   But it’s very frustrating that we just can’t know for certain.

Some of it wasn’t “evidence” at all.  The story of what happened was written in Henry VII’s reign, we were solemnly informed.  Well, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t true, does it?   And there were reports all over Europe that the princes had been murdered by Richard.  Even less convincingly, we were told that no-one would have murdered children because it was a religious society.  Tell that to Arthur of Brittany!   And, if you’re talking about religious people, how likely is it that Thomas More would have written a pack of lies?

Then we were told that Henry needed to know that the princes were dead because he was going to marry Elizabeth of York, effectively declaring the children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville legitimate.  Well, there are plenty of grounds for believing that Richard was also thinking of marrying Elizabeth, even though she was his niece.   Anyway, Henry claimed the throne by conquest, not in right of his wife.  I’m not sure how any of what was said about that was supposed to be relevant to anything, except that we were told that Henry looked for the princes and couldn’t find them.  Well, that would have been because they were dead!

The programme made virtually no reference to Elizabeth Woodville.  Some people think she was involved in the Lambert Simnel plot, but Philippa Langley didn’t mention it.  Nor did it say very much else about Elizabeth of York, who would presumably have recognised her own brothers had they turned up.

So what about the actual “evidence”?  Well, we were told that Margaret of Burgundy ordered weapons “for Edward V”.   That admittedly is a bit odd, given that this was around the time of the Lambert Simnel plot, and Simnel was pretending to be the Earl of Warwick, not Edward.  The whole Simnel plot’s pretty odd, it has to be said, because there’d been no speculation that Warwick was dead, so they must have known that all Henry had to do was produce the real Warwick.  But pretender plots are odd.  I mean, there were four False Dmitriis!

Philippa then claimed that the whole Simnel thing was actually about Edward V, and that the person crowned in Dublin was Edward V, her argument being that a lot of people turned up and a lot of people fought for him.   Well, a lot of those who fought for him were foreign mercenaries, who’d have fought for anyone as long as they were paid.  And a lot of people turned up at the coronation because Ireland was pro-Yorkist and they thought Simnel was Warwick.   They didn’t have Hello! magazine and the Daily Mail website to check what Warwick looked like, did they?!  And are we really supposed to believe that the Tudors somehow managed to suppress every bit of writing saying that Edward V was invading, and replaced it with writing about Simnel-claiming-to-be-Warwick?  Hardly seems very likely, does it?  And Philippa admitted that there was absolutely no “trail” of Edward after the Battle of Stoke.  OK, he could have been killed there, but could that really have been hushed up?

We then moved on to the younger prince, Richard.   Margaret of Burgundy apparently had a room in her palace known as “Richard’s room”.  Well, that would have been for Perkin Warbeck, wouldn’t it?   Maybe Margaret even genuinely believed that Warbeck was Richard.  He does seem to have pretty convincing.  The King of Scotland have him his cousin in marriage.   Margaret had never met Richard.  Nor had the Emperor Maximilian, who was also supposedly involved in backing “Richard”.  And a document was unearthed which was supposed to be Richard’s testimony of what happened to him after he was imprisoned.  Again, that could have been written by or on behalf of Perkin Warbeck: he’d have had to’ve given some sort of explanation of how “he” “escaped” from the Tower.   There was a mention of birthmarks.  What, like the Anastasia toe thing?!   Who would have known about any birthmarks which Richard had?   Maybe someone who’d attended him as a baby was wandering around Burgundy or the Holy Roman Empire, but it hardly seems very likely.

Next up, “Richard” pledged some money to Albert of Saxony, to be paid when he became King of England, in return for his support.  Again, this could all have been Warbeck.  The whole Warbeck thing went on for years.   There were lots of documents referring to “Richard” by name.  Well, of course they referred to “Richard”.  They weren’t going to say that Perkin Warbeck was planning to invade England, were they?!

Why didn’t Henry VII imprison, or even execute, Warbeck immediately?   Well, who knows?  He put Lambert Simnel to work in the palace kitchens!   The programme argued that Henry wouldn’t have wanted to execute his brother-in-law, if that was whom he genuinely believed Warbeck to be, but surely that’s exactly what he’d have wanted to do.  He’d have wanted him out of the way.

Historian Janina Ramirez commented that “Richard” ‘s testimony seemed a bit too good to be true – as you would expect from a forgery.   Experts confirmed that it was indeed from the 15th century, but, as they said, that didn’t prove who wrote it.

Rob Rinder said that Philippa’s argument was very persuasive, and that he was inclined to believe it.  Well, I’m not!   And what wasn’t even discussed was how the princes might have escaped.  It’s not exactly easy to escape from the Tower of London, is it?  And, if they’d escaped and gone to Margaret of Burgundy, Richard III’s sister, would Richard really not have found out about it?  Sorry, but none of what was said in this programme convinced me at all.

But, at the end of the way, we just do not know.  What’s really frustrating is that there are those bones which were found in Charles II’s time, and, now that we’ve got the DNA science, it would be possible to find out whether they really are those of Edward and Richard or not.  OK, it wouldn’t prove exactly when or how they died, or who was responsible, but it’d prove that they didn’t grow up and that they didn’t escape.   I understand the late Queen’s point that it’s not very nice to go around digging up bodies, but … well, it’s hard not to hope that the King might see things differently!

 

Body and Soul by Marcelle Bernstein

This was November’s “reading challenge” book.  I read Sadie and Salka many moons ago, when I was in my early teens, but I didn’t know that Marcelle Bernstein had written a book about the lives of nuns, which was apparently quite groundbreaking at the time.  She then went on to write this novel about a nun, Anna, who lost her vocation.   We were clearly meant to sympathise with Anna’s internal struggles, but all I could think was what a fast worker she was.  Even before she’d been officially released from her vows, she had two men on the go!

Anna, or Sister Gabriel, was living in an enclosed order in the Welsh hills, when she was told that her brother Simon, who ran the family wool mill in Bradford, had committed suicide, leaving a pregnant wife, two young children, and a vast amount of debt.   She was granted permission to go home to help out, and, already having doubts about the life she was living, decided that she wanted to re-enter the mainstream world after helping her sister-in-law give birth and getting involved with not one but two men, Hal and David.   First she snogged Hal.  Then she very nearly did the complete deed with David.  Then she asked to be released from her vows, got agreement from the Vatican – and then, very shortly afterwards, spent the night with Hal on their first official date.   As I said, she was a fast worker!

The book was actually quite depressing.   Surely some nuns must be happy in their convents, but this book made it sound as if none of them were.  And it made it sound as if the life of a woman had to be either being a nun or marrying a man and bearing children.  It did acknowledge that some women were lesbians, but not that some women chose not to marry/have a male partner, never met Mr Right, and or were unable to bear children for medical reasons.   And surely most nuns who do ask for release from their vows don’t go jumping straight into bed with a bloke on their first date, five minutes later!

I loved Sadie.  I quite liked Salka.  I wasn’t overly impressed with this.

Hamilton – Palace Theatre, Manchester

  I wasn’t sure that I was going to enjoy this, because I’m not a great fan of rap/hip-hop, and I’m not a great fan of the Federalists either.  But it was brilliant.  It genuinely does live up to the hype.  I don’t think any of the songs from it are going to become an intrinsic part of popular culture in the way that songs from, say, The Sound of Music have done, but it was excellent.  I’ve got to take issue with it on a few historical matters :-), but they’re matters of opinion more than issues of accuracy.

My main issue with it was the portrayal of George III … but it was the way he seems to have been seen by the American revolutionaries.  Thanks to Laura Ingalls Wilder, my very young self was entirely convinced that all Americans knew the Declaration of Independence off by heart, and that it was read out at all Fourth of July parties!   I’ve never been in America on the Fourth of July, OK.  It clashes with Wimbledon!   I therefore assumed that it was very short, and consisted entirely of idealistic stuff about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I got quite a shock when I found out that it was actually rather long, and consisted largely of a series of vituperative complaints directed straight at poor George III, who seems to have been regarded as a tyrannical despot.  I’m totally with all the “no taxation without representation” stuff, don’t get me wrong.  I mean, in 1776, Manchester didn’t have any MPs either, and we were a major British city, not a colony.  The whole system was ridiculous.   But I don’t understand how the signatories, intelligent, educated men, didn’t seem to get that the monarch really didn’t have much power by then.  Poor old Farmer George was very definitely not a despot.

I do actually own a copy of the Declaration of Independence.  It’s in a booklet along with a copy of the Constitution and a copy of the Gettysburg Address.  I even went to the National Archives in Washington to see their original version of it.  And I got very excited when I went to Liberty Hall in Philadelphia.  I just don’t get this idea of George III as a despot.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t come off too well in this either, but I’m not sure whether that was because it was meant to be from Alexander Hamilton’s viewpoint or whether it was some sort of anti-Southern thing.   Quite possibly an anti-Southern thing, because Adams and Madison didn’t come off too well either.  We didn’t hear much about Jefferson’s personal life, but, when he got back from France, he said something about giving his luggage to “Sally” … but, unless you knew the story of Sally Hemings, you wouldn’t have got that.   Aaron Burr, who’s largely known as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton, was presented as someone with no political convictions, but some sympathy was shown towards him at the end.  Benjamin Franklin didn’t feature, which was a bit odd.  Ask someone to name one of the Founding Fathers other than Washington or Jefferson, and I’d think most people would say Franklin.

George Washington was portrayed favourably, but you’d expect that.  John Laurens also featured, but there was no real hint of the idea some historians have that there was a romantic relationship between him and Hamilton.   However, a lot was said about how close Hamilton was to his sister-in-law Angelica.   Eliza Schuyler Hamilton had some lovely songs (it wasn’t all hip-hop/rap!), and, at the end, it pointed out that she lived for many years after her husband’s death – she lived to be 97 – and worked very hard both to help orphans in New York City and to promote her husband’s legacy.  Oh, and there was a brief reference to Betsy Ross’s flag.  I know that most historians dismiss the Betsy Ross story, but it’s a nice story!

As for Hamilton himself, way too much was made of his being an “immigrant” – was that the lyricists trying to make some sort of political statement, or some sort of American Dream thing? – and the “son of a whore”.  His mother was married to someone other than his father, but he wasn’t a whore.  And Hamilton was born in the British West Indies, the son of a British father and a half-British mother, and moved to British New York whilst young.  If you want to make an issue about “immigrants”, then Charles Lee, Washington’s rather useless second-in-command, lived in Cheshire for most of his life!  And the show made out that Hamilton’s political career was ruined by his admission that he’d had an affair with Maria Reynolds and then been blackmailed by her husband.   That’s an exaggeration.

Moan over!   Whilst obviously they couldn’t fit everything into the show, which was quite long as it was, there was loads of history in there.  And it was all explained!   Well, OK, there were brief references to tea and whisky without spelling out the details of the Boston Tea Party and the Whisky Rebellion, but the main things were explained.  As much as I love Les Miserables, people get confused and think it must be 1789 or 1848 rather than 1830, because it’s not explained properly.  Could we have more musicals with this degree of historical detail in them, please?

And is Hamilton the forgotten founding father?   Well, if he was, he’s not any more, because this musical’s got everyone talking, with its runs on Broadway and the West End.  The Manchester Evening News described it as “the hottest ticket in town”.  And it is.

 

 

Tackle! by Jilly Cooper

We could probably all do with a good laugh, and you always get that with Jilly Cooper.  This book sees Rupert Campbell-Black taking over a local League 1 football club, and leading them to the pinnacle of English and European club football.  I’m not at all convinced that he could have done that by selling a few paintings, and with a relatively small fan base and stadium, which is how it’s portrayed, but never mind!

The book was apparently inspired by Sir Alex Ferguson.  Fergie knows all there is to know about football.  Jilly Cooper definitely doesn’t, but the book’s very entertaining anyway.  Read it and chuckle!

The players all have long, complicated Cooper-esque nicknames, whereas real footballers are known as Smithy, Johnno etc.  I doubt that even the most dedicated of Arsenal fans has a picture of Arsene Wenger on their wall.  Members of the royal family do not present medals at the League 1 play-off.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about the away goals rule.  And no-one – except those people who used to own Cardiff City – changes the team colours!   Well, I suppose they did in the past, or United’d be playing in green and gold, but not now.   But it’s a good laugh.   Lots of people are having affairs.   Lots of people are getting on other people’s nerves.  The usual Cooper stuff!  There’s a lot of rivalry with another club.  But, of course, Rupert Campbell-Black wins out in the end.

Jilly Cooper says in the afterword that it’s set between 2016 and 2020, so there’s no Covid, but the date given for the last match of the final league season in the book puts it firmly in 2021.   I appreciate that she must have had it all planned and didn’t want to have to rewrite it all to include Covid, but it’ll be interesting to see what authors do about that as time goes on.

There’s also some serious stuff in the book.  I don’t think that the storyline with Taggie’s breast cancer is handled particularly well, but other people may disagree.  And the club’s struck by a tragedy … and I’m not sure that that’s handled particularly well either.   Jilly Cooper does best when she sticks to comic stuff.

 

 

 

Prize Women by Caroline Lea

This book’s based on the strange but true story of “the Great Stork Derby”, a “contest” which ran from 1926 to 1936, after Charles Vance Millar, a wealthy man with an extremely warped sense of humour, left the bulk of his large estate to the Toronto woman who could produce the most children in the decade following his death.  The courts got involved, and declared that only births properly registered counted (that bit, I suppose, was fair enough), that only legitimate children counted,and, cruelly, that stillbirths didn’t count.   Some of the characters in the book were real people, but the story revolves around two fictional women: the author says in an afterword that she doesn’t feel comfortable writing about real people.   Some aspects of the story aren’t very believable, but it’s an interesting book, and it’s one of those cases of fact being stranger than fiction.

Apparently there’s a film about “the Great Stork Derby”, starring Megan Followes of Anne of Green Gables fame, but I think it’s only been shown in Canada.  In real life, eleven women “competed”, but seven were disqualified as some of their children were illegitimate, stillborn or not properly registered – very unfairly in the case of one woman whose twins were accidentally registered as one child.  Two of those disqualified did however get pay-offs after they threatened to appeal.

The main characters in this book are Lily, an Italian immigrant who’s suffered a series of miscarriages and one stillbirth and has one living child, and Mae, who comes from a poor background but has married her wealthy boss, and is producing children at a furious rate.   Lily’s violent husband is killed in an earthquake, and she moves to Toronto, where she becomes a nanny to Mae’s children.   She then remarries … and, suddenly, she doesn’t miscarry any more, and she keeps having twins.   Meanwhile, Mae carries on having one child a year.   This puts both of them in with a chance of winning the prize.  Mae becomes desperate for the money when her husband loses most of his wealth in the Wall Street Crash, and then one of her children becomes seriously ill and needs expensive medical treatment.

Lily’s second husband is killed in an industrial accident.  But then her first husband turns up.  He isn’t dead after all.  She gets back with him because he offers financial security, even though he’s violent.  And keeps on having twins – so the earlier miscarriages weren’t anything to do with blood group incompatibility or whatever.  As I said, some parts of the story definitely aren’t very believable.

When the contest ends, Lily is discredited in court, partly as a result of work done by Mae’s lawyers, because she was a bigamist, even though it was unintentional.  She’s also told that one of her children doesn’t count because he wasn’t registered properly, and that a stillbirth she had doesn’t count.   Mae, however, gets a share of the prize.  In a rather unlikely ending, Lily’s horrible husband is then killed in a road traffic accident, Mae’s husband kills himself, and the two women become lovers and presumably live happily ever after with all their surviving children.

Although it’s well-written, the story isn’t particularly convincing because some parts of it just don’t ring true.  But the story of “the Great Stork Derby” is grimly fascinating in itself, and this book’s well worth a read.

American Duchess by Karen Harper

  Following An American Adventuress, this one’s about Consuelo Vanderbilt, the “dollar princess”, who married and divorced Randolph Churchill’s nephew, the 9th Duke of Marlborough.

It shows how, as an 18-year-old girl in love with someone else, she was forced into the marriage by her ambitious mother, then both the High Society life which they lived and the charity work which she carried out both around Blenheim and in London, and then her happy second marriage to a French war hero.

Consuelo’s shown as being faithful to the Duke throughout their marriage, which she wasn’t.   And it’s not made very clear why she wanted a formal separation, instead of just living separate lives as so many aristocratic married couples did.   But it’s still an interesting book about an interesting person, and I quite enjoyed it.

Ithaca by Claire North

Another re-telling of a Greek myth, but not one of the better ones; although I did like the author’s portrayal of Penelope.   This tells the story of part of the period during which Odysseus was taking a ridiculously long time to get home from Troy, and Penelope was being pursued by umpteen suitors … but it’s told from the viewpoint of Hera, which makes very little sense given that Hera had no particular link to Penelope.  It’s written in the present tense, with a lot of swearing in the narrative, which isn’t the best of styles.

It also shows Clytemnestra turning up on Ithaca, and then Orestes and Elektra turning up in pursuit of her.  I’m not sure what that was about!   However, I liked the portrayal of Penelope, and the women of Ithaca in general – keeping everything together whilst all the men of fighting age were away and all the island’s money was being used to help fund the war effort.  Penelope was also shown as warding the suitors off because of the political risks of choosing one of another.   She certainly wasn’t just hanging around waiting for Odysseus to get his backside back home.

I wasn’t keen on the style of writing, though, and I thought Hera was an odd choice of narrator.  This is the first of a trilogy, but I won’t be getting the other two unless they come up as 99p offers.

The Gunpowder Plot – Channel 5

  Thank you to Channel 5 for this.  The miserable council have cancelled the Heaton Park bonfire and fireworks display again, and it feels as if Bonfire Night’s getting squeezed out between all the over-commercialised Halloween rubbish and the shops putting out the Christmas stuff four months early.  The failure of the Gunpowder Plot was an important event in our history, and the tradition of commemorating it should live on.  This two-hour programme largely followed the traditional narrative, although just before the end it did suggest that Francis Tresham might actually have been spying for Cecil.  It also made the point that, had the plot succeeded, a large number of people would have been killed in the explosion.  The idea that the gunpowder of the time wouldn’t have been strong enough to blow up Parliament just isn’t true.

You know the basic story.  Guy Fawkes & co – “the gang”, as the programme referred to them, led by Robert Catesby – rented a cellar underneath the House of Lords, smuggled a load of gunpowder in, and planned to set it all off during the State Opening of Parliament.  But someone sent an anonymous letter warning Lord Mounteagle to stay away, and so the plot was discovered.   The programme also went into the lesser-known story of how the plotters were found at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, and Catesby, Percy and some of the others were killed in a shoot-out.   Holbeche House is currently disused after the nursing home which used to occupy it closed down, and there’s some talk of the National Trust taking it over, although I doubt that they’ll want to pay for it.

And so we remember, remember, the Fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.  I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.   I know it used to get a bit out of hand at one point, but it was always good fun when I was a kid, and I think it’s really mean of the council to cancel the free public events!    Enjoy the fireworks, and eat some bonfire toffee and parkin buns.