Remembering Angela Lansbury

 The magnificent Angela Lansbury, star of some of the most magical films, has died at the grand old age of 96. Although best known nowadays for her long running role as Jessica Fletcher, the crime busting novelist in Murder She Wrote, she gave some other literally enchanting performances.

As Apprentice Witch, Eglantine Pryce in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, in the company of three evacuee children and a charlatan professor, she raised the ancient warriors of Old England in defiance of the invading Germans. Surely as children we all tried our hand at some amateur witchery by reciting “Treguna… Mekoides… Trecorum Satis Dee!”, didn't we? Well, I know I did! 

She was the voice of Mrs Potts in Disney's 1991 release Beauty and the Beast. Here we have behind the scenes footage of the recording session on June 8, 1990, of Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Also seen is Jerry Orbach singing as a Maurice Chevalier-like candlestick named Lumiére. 

But my absolute favourite must be her performance as Granny in The Company of Wolves, Neil Jordan's film version of Angela Carter's dark interpretation of the Red Riding Hood story. This nightmarish folktelling is no Disney bowdlerisation conjuring as it does nightmarish fears and dire warnings.

Granny: "They say that priests' bastards often turn into wolves as they grow older! If the child is born on Christmas Day, if he's born feet first he'll be the one, if he's born feet first and his eyebrows meet in the middle! Oh yes, very bad! One day he'll meet the Devil in the wood". 

Rosaleen: "That's a horrid story! I didn't like it at all".

Granny: "It's not a story, child, but God's own truth. So if you should spy on a naked man in the wood, run as if the Devil himself were after you! Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet!"

Here Mark Kermode Reviews the 'boldly pyscho-sexual reworking' of the story from Angela Carter's Fairytale anthology The Bloody Chamber. As Kermode says, "if you like your fairytales to have teeth, then this is the film for you."

 What a bewitching legacy for a grand talent - farewell Dame Angela Lansbury and thank you for the magic.

As an FYI The Company of Wolves is currently availalble to watch free on ITV Hub. 

Sunflowers, war and ancient magic

 

A Ukrainian woman has gone viral on social media after she confronted a heavily armed Russian soldier and offered him sunflower seeds – so that flowers would grow if he died there on Ukraine’s soil. Some are suggesting she was offering a lovely flower with which she hoped to bring peace, not war. In fact her message was one of properly chilling malediction – a curse – with a powerful message.

So what did she actually say?

Who are you?

We have exercises here. Please go this way.

What kind of exercises? Are you Russian?

Yes.

So what the f*** are you doing here?

Right now our discussions will lead to nothing.

You’re occupants. You’re fascists! What the f*** are you doing on our land with all these guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.

Let’s not escalate this situation. Please.

What situation? Guys, guys, put the sunflower seeds in your pockets please. You will lie down here with the seeds. You came to my land. Do you understand? You are occupiers, you are enemies. You are cursed. I’m telling you. And from this moment you are cursed.

Now listen to me –

I’ve heard you.

Let’s not escalate this situation. Please go this way.

How can it be further escalated? You f***ing came here uninvited. Pieces of sh**.

The symbolism

The national flower of Ukraine is the glorious yellow sunflower. Although sunflowers are New World natives they found their way to Ukraine during the 17^th century where this oil-rich seed formerly unknown to the Church, was able to skirt the prohibitions against butter, fats and oils during Lent.

The potential for this region of sunflowers to become a major oil crop especially during lean times of Lent led to its proliferation.

Final of the 62nd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Kiev, on May 13, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Genya SAVILOV

The vinok, is a traditional Ukrainian flower crown. These glorious flowered headpieces may bring to mind hippy-style at festivals but in Ukraine, the vinok isn’t merely a pretty accessory. Various flowers are used symbolically in the headdresses, notably the sunflower which is the national symbol of Ukraine. 

The meaning of the wreaths traces back to Ukraine’s early history, when they were associated with virginity, marriage, and womanhood, fertility and connection to the land.

Professor Slavic Literature, Alexander Mihailovic, says, “Ukraine has preserved the original Greek and Byzantine tradition of wedding head wreaths. However, in Ukraine there is yet another tradition, of young unmarried women wearing the wreaths during the spring, which, I suspect, explains why female dancers in Ukrainian folk dances wear floral crowns, whereas their Russian counterparts generally do not.”

So what did our lady of the seeds mean by it?

In full Slavic pagan folkloric tradition, she cursed them in defence of her land, protecting it by damning the invaders to an ignominious death which would merely fertilise her soil.

Well said, my lady!

Stock Photography


Photo Servian Stock Images

This post is just a place to note down stock photography sources that seem to offer a useful selection of historical or magical subjects which I might at some point want to include in a book cover or for social media. At this point I'm not recommending any of them - just noting their existence.


https://servianstockimages.com/
https://kathyservian.myportfolio.com/historical-costumes-1

https://rjenkins.co.uk/

https://wuestenhagen-imagery.photoshelter.com/index

https://www.deviantart.com/phelandavion/art/Medieval-Knight-DSP-767888584

https://pixabay.com/images/search/knight/

https://photos.anniespratt.com/floral-space/

https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/medieval_knight.html?sti=lefpywk9y4o4sq5kwg|

https://unsplash.com/s/photos/old-book

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/historical-novel-book-cover.html

https://www.shutterstock.com/search/romance+novel+cover?kw=&c3apidt=71700000014798292&gclid=Cj0KCQiAmKiQBhClARIsAKtSj-kN6naCdvZCTNNYFGz8O2NpVrSWqttN-RTA25C30i2yGrpsSHL4kUUaAqowEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/romance-novel.html

https://www.romancemfa.com/romance-stock-photos/

https://blog.reedsy.com/book-cover-pictures/

https://stock.adobe.com/si/search?k=woman+fantasy+archer

https://lightfieldstudios.net/69750045/stock-photo-elf-woman-holding-sword.html

https://www.trevillion.com/categories/historical.html

https://www.periodimages.com/m/-/galleries

 

I’ve just binge listened to the audiobook of Unsettled Ground  by Claire Fuller. I’ve had it on my TBR list since my favourite local bookseller, Emma at Hungerford Bookshop featured it as a local story from a local author. Sadly I didn’t manage attend the ‘do’ – (but can I say the events at Hungerford are fab).

Unsettled Ground is set just down the road from here and references Newbury, Hungerford etc. but while is a story of tight localism, squirming into an almost 19^th century Hardyesque village setting that is suffocating,  yet open air and wide, it’s a rural story that could have been played out in an urban tower block. It is a story that is a slow burn – that is literally the point - but oh so compelling. There is no ‘twist, it unfolds with a relentless grind. The outcome is satisfying because it needed to be acknowledged, not because it was surprising.

The weaving of folksongs and music into the fabric of the text is something that I have a particular interest in. There was no music included in the audio, but the verbal delivery of the lyrics (as one would read from the printed page) was well done.

I say I’ve listened rather than read it, which is unusual for me. While I enjoy audiobooks, mostly I find the narration to be intrusive to my interpretation, so that I flick back to the written word and ‘co-read’ in order to progress. But this narrator, Rachel Bavidge, is splendidly self-effacing. She uses accents sparingly and judiciously, even if she slides occasionally from Berkshire / Wiltshire into a sort of Irish-ish, it didn’t spoil it for me. As I say, I binge listened to the whole thing today (and I don’t like to speed up into Pinky and Perky territory), and I was captivated, saddened, and then raised up again.

I liked this book – a lot. I recommend it as a full-on 5 star. I give the narrator 5 stars too.

 

Diana Statue

 

So there has been an erection of a statue to the sainted Diana.

Her stiff likeness has been raised in iconographic superiority over a couple of random ethnically diverse little people who have been represented as small adults in the same way that Empress Victoria was elevated above the teeny tiny subjects of her Colonial Realms.  Ian Rank-Broadley has not depicted these little people as children—their tiny heads render them as little adults—but of lesser status in the same way that we see in the hierarchies in most religious iconography.

OK it's not very good but, why was the hideous message of the icon size superiority not picked up at the maquette stage? Surely, this has got to be an appalling choice by the powers that be?

Over and above that, can we all agree that statues have not really been 'the thing' since General Lee and old Colston got themselves toppled? 

So, why have the Brothers pursued this ghastly course at all?

Echoes of the Runes: A sweeping, epic tale of forbidden love byChristina Courtenay

 

https://amzn.to/2ZfdNIl

This is timeslip romance at its best. The story moves along at a brisk pace, elegantly interweaving the old and the new, the researched and the eternal, yet pauses long enough to smell the flowers along the way. Energy suffused in ancient artifacts and their connection to the past afford Mia and Haukr a shared paranormal experience which is plausibly real. The stories of the 9th and 21st century characters parallel each other, yet dovetail together in a way that is extremely satisfying. This is a book I really enjoyed - this is what timeslip is all about! 5 stars.

The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson

I received this pre-publication e-book from John Murray/Two Roads via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

‘The Ninth Child’ tells the story of a massive 19^th century engineering project of pipes and aquaducts bringing fresh water from the Highlands into Glasgow’s disease ridden heart.

Isabel Aird’s husband is appointed doctor to the engineering camp, and accompanying him takes her to a world entirely at odds with her prior life of drawing rooms and miscarried babies. There she meets and employs, Kirsty the wife of a navvy, whose back story and the story of the engineering project and life in the camp are quite compelling. Kirsty’s residual fairy faith lends credence to the proposition that a ragged clergyman is in fact Robert Kirke who disappeared into fairy 200 years earlier and has been returned to the mundane world via a pact to deliver up a ninth child in his stead. We also have curious snap shots of the private lives of Victoria and Albert which are diversions from the plot but allow the author to show off some solid research.

The story is told variously from the points of view of Isabel, Kirsty, Prince Albert and Robert Kirke. The distinctions between the voices are poorly drawn and the formatting of the ebook supplied by the publishers offered no assistance in distinguishing them - often one voice continuing on from the next without so much as a paragraph break. Kirsty is the ‘main’ narrator and a fabulous character, yet we don’t hear enough of her and her take on life and events. The multitude of perspectives makes for a disjointed narrative and diverts the reader from investing strongly enough in any of the characters, which is a shame given how interesting they all were individually. It feels as though the author couldn’t decide at the planning stage which of the aspects to prioritise so stuck them all in for good measure, which serves to dissipate rather than strengthen. 

A firm editorial hand might have made this a much better book than it is - as it stands, 3 stars.