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Adventures in the Balkans 2010

If you recognize the upper part of the image, that is because some scenes from Game of Thrones were set in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The bottom part of the image features the famous bridge in Mostar, Herzegovina, which was built in the 1500s.

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Many years ago, my husband and I visited Mostar in Herzegovina. As many of you know, the town is Mostar is famous for its storied bridge, commissioned by our friend Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), whose tomb I visited recently in Istanbul.

During the Bosnian War of 1990s, this bridge was destroyed. However, by the time my husband and I arrived in Mostar in 2010, it had been restored to its former glory.

My husband lives on inspiration so nothing about this trip was exactly planned. We left Dubrovnik, where he had been attending a conference, and drove north from Croatia to Herzegovina. Somehow – I don’t remember how – we found a Muslim family who agreed to let us stay for a few days in their B & B.

I don’t know much about Muslims, but I tend to think of them as being very conservative. So imagine my surprise when I discovered a television in our bedroom, which allowed us to watch the Italian Fashion Week from Milan. Obviously, their target audience was not conservative Muslims living in Mostar!

The next morning, my husband and I went downstairs to breakfast. I may not have mentioned this before, but he is unable to function without his coffee. But it can’t just be any coffee. It has to be an espresso, preferable made to the exactly standards of a Milanese caffè. So, imagine his disappointment to discover a machine, which only delivered Nestlé coffee!

The young man who was serving breakfast, was very polite, but his English was not up to my husband’s demands. So his uncle appeared. When my husband explained the problem, this older gentleman offered to have his wife make Turkish coffee. Immediately, my husband brightened. 

“By why,” he asked, “if they could provide Turkish coffee did they have a machine that provided only Nestlé?” 

“It’s the German tourists,” explained the gentleman. “That is what they like.”

Ten minutes later, he reappeared with a brass tray on which stood a Turkish coffee pot emanating coffee fumes, with a brass bowls of sugar cubes squatting beneath some tongs, and two bone china cups and saucers. 

I have never tasted Turkish coffee before and was rather taken aback by its power. But my husband was in seventh heaven. Inspired by the assault on his senses of the black liquid he was imbibing, he engaged the uncle in a long conversation about the history of Mostar and recommendations for what to visit. 

We had a wonderful stay.

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THE BRIAR CLUB by Kate Quinn ~ A Book Review

If, like me, you go to Google Maps to find Briar and Wood streets in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington DC, you would be disappointed. For they do not exist. But it has to be said that the old neighborhood has undergone huge changes since the 1950s, when THE BRIAR CLUB is set. The biggest change is the creation of the I-66 highway which travels from Washington DC, through the Northern Virginia suburbs to Front Royal, where it connects with I-81. 

I-66 starts in Foggy Bottom, snaking south from K Street, across Virginia Avenue past 25th street, G, F, E and D Streets to begin at the back of the Kennedy Center before flowing over the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge. It doesn’t take much to see that a huge amount of real estate is involved in collecting all that traffic and moving it over the Roosevelt Bridge to Virginia, real estate where old neighborhoods vanished forever when I-66 was constructed in the 1960s and 1970s.

So you can view this book as a homage to the sleepy city that Washington DC was in the 1950s, before it was connected to the rest of the country by the new highways that have sprung up in the last 70 years.

The great strength of this books is the way it is written. It starts with the murder(s) that happen on Thanksgiving Day 1954, when the inhabitants of Briarwood House (so called because it is on the corner of Briar and Wood) are about to enjoy their Thanksgiving turkey. However, Kate Quinn cleverly neglects to say who is murdered. Instead, she takes you into Pete’s head, the son of the family responsible for being the Man of the House at the age of 13, due to an absent father. We hear all about Grace March’s arrival at this downtrodden boarding house four years before from Pete’s point of view. Next is Nora, a proper young Irish woman who is appalled at her attraction for a gangster. Then there is Reka, an elderly Hungarian woman, who has fierce opinions, Fliss, a young English woman with an absent husband who is just overwhelmed with baby care, Bea, a former professional sports-woman, and Claire, a friendly con woman with light fingers. The best is saved for last when we finally get to know Grace, the mysterious yet kind woman who transforms a dreary boarding house into a venue for laughter, love and life, and her polar opposite, the rather poisonous Arlene.

All of these characters jump off the page, mainly because we are given approximately 20,000 words in their point of view which ensures that we know them well. What a clever piece of writing! If you are interested in what it was like to be a woman in McCarthy-era America, you should read this gem. 

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Marie Blaise and the Franco-Prussian War

The history of Alsace-Lorraine is turbulent. It is the most German part of France, right up against the German border, and so it is no surprise that German traditions have spilled west into Alsace-Lorraine.

My husband’s great-grandmother, Marie Blaise, witnessed the arrival of the German army in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war. If you look at photos of this event, you see these large German men – looking even larger under their plumed helmets – riding huge horses. To a young girl, they would have seemed terrifying. And she was right to be alarmed, for the photos of the Franco-Prussian show an unbelievable level of destruction, which is sadly all-too-familiar to us today.

Having taken over Alsace-Lorraine, the Germans demanded that everyone change their names to make them seem German. And so poor Marie’s last name would have become Bletz, rather than Blaise. 

The final insult was requiring its French-speaking inhabitants to speak German. But like so many, her parents refused to kow-tow to the Germans, leaving for Paris to open a bistrot instead. 

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THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY by Margery Allingham ~ A Book Review

THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is a typical Country House Cozy, where the house – with its hidden passages, cupboards that lead to priest holes, and sullen aura – becomes another character. And, like many talented whodunit writers, the person who actually committed the crime is the last person you would suspect.

We arrive on Friday evening to a house party at the aged mansion of Black Dudley, just as the guests are getting to know one another. Everyone is bubbling with the fun of it all, and they sit down to dinner. After dinner, someone notices an amazing piece of art – a magnificent dagger that is intricately designed. No-one seems to know when the Petrie family – who own Black Dudley- acquired it. But it seems to be Venetian, and it may date from the 1300s. The host, Wyatt Petrie, retrieves the dagger and it somehow comes about that the guests agree to a charade whereby the lights are extinguished and the dagger is passed around the various guests. At some point the game ends when the gong is sounded, and whoever is still holding the dagger loses and has to pay a forfeit. The forfeit can be money. It can be kisses. Or it can be some daring act. But no-one wants to be seen with the dagger when the lights come up.

It all seems harmless enough. However, the protagonist of this story Dr. George Abbershaw, not fancying being in the dark, in a creepy house with a dagger on the loose, strolls out to take a look at all the cars occupying the garage. George is fond of cars, and is not surprised to meet another guest – Albert Campion – loitering there. They make a surprising discovery, for one of the cars that seems extremely old-fashioned, turns out to have a state-of-the-art Rolls Royce chassis and motor underneath. Whose car could it be?

However, this mystery is chased out of their minds when they both return to the mansion, only to find that Colonel Coombe – an uncle-by-marriage to the host Wyatt Petrie – has suddenly died. His private physician claims that he has been carried off by a heart attack, but George Abbershaw – a pathologist by trade – doesn’t believe him.

And so the engine of the story starts. The very next morning, after breakfast, our guests find that they have actually been imprisoned at Black Dudley and cannot leave. And this fact leads us into places that are darker than the usual cozy. But at least, the reader gets a happy ending.

This story was published in 1929, and it shows it. The story gets off to a slow start, and also takes its time in ending. Despite that, I think you will find that Margery Allingham is a talented writer, with a great ear for the speech of others. 

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The Ball Family ~ Relatives of George Washington’s Mother

In 1772, when she was around sixty-five years old, Mary Ball Washington moved to 1200 Charles Street in the charming town of Fredericksburg. It was not far from the property that she had managed most of her adult life, being only two miles away from the land that is now called Ferry Farm. 

Mary Ball Washington was the only daughter of Joseph Ball and Mary Johnson. This was a second marriage for both of her parents, and Mary was the only child of that union.

Mary’s father was an English-born justice, who became an important member of the planter class in Lancaster County Virginia. Born in 1649 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in the same year that Charles I was executed by Oliver Cromwell, Ball would have spent his first years in a Puritan Theocracy, in an England where singing, dancing, or any form of entertainment were banned. With the arrival of Charles I’s son Charles II, in 1660, the pendulum swung the other way, for Charles II was notorious for his extravagant dress, his gambling, and his mistresses (he had at least fourteen illegitimate children). 

What young Joseph Ball would have made of this is hard to say. His own father, William, moved to the colonies in 1657 before the accession of Charles II, to become a trader and planter, eventually settling in Lancaster County in the community of Millenbeck.

Joseph Ball did not follow his father. Perhaps his (mother’s?) family thought him too young. After all, he would have been only seven going on eight in 1657. And so he remained in England until the 1670s. Of course we do not know the exact date that he left England. However, he was in Lancaster County Virginia by 1680, when his father died.

Like many young men who have to make their way, Joseph Ball did not marry until he was in his thirties. His marriage must have occurred around 1682 – when he would have been around 33 years old – because his first child was born in 1683. HIs wife Elizabeth Romney gave him five children before dying some time in the early 1700s.

Joseph Ball’s most famous child Mary, was born in around 1708, and so he must have married his second wife Mary Johnson shortly after his first wife’s death.

By this time, the children of his first marriage were all adults, and presumably settled. So when he died in 1711 at the age of 62, it was his youngest – four-year-old Mary – who bore the brunt of that unfortunate event. When Mary’s mother died ten years later in 1721, she was made a ward of George Erskine, whose sister Jane had married into the Washington family. Which is how Mary Ball met Augustine Washington, and how our first president George Washington (1732-1799) came to be.

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BY ANY OTHER NAME by Jodi Picoult

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet”

~ Romeo & Juliet by “William Shakespeare”

BY ANY OTHER NAME is a tremendous novel. Taking as its premise that William Shakespeare could not possibly have written 37 plays, 156 sonnets and two (or three) long poems – The Rape of Lucrece, Venus & Adonis and The Lover’s Complaint –  while he was employed as a full-time actor, with a side-hustle of businessman, Jodi Picoult posits that the famous plays were authored by many hands. The Henry plays were probably written by a stable of writers organized by the Earl of Oxford, while Mary Sidney, sister of poet Sir Philip Sidney, provided some of the other writing. But the star of this novel is the first female poet to publish her own work in England, (Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum in 1611): Aemilia Bassano, also known as Emilia Lanyer (1569-1645). Her Italian family probably came from Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto, and were the court musicians to Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

According to Ms. Picoult, Emilia is probably responsible for most of the Italian-themed plays such as The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo & Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, and Othello the Moor of Venice. She may have also written As You Like It, (with its strikingly feminist heroine Rosalind), although Mary Sidney (1561-1621) is another contender, as the first performance may have been given at Wilton House, a focus for her literary activity. 

Ms. Picoult also argues that Emilia Bassano wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet. It is easy to see that A Midsummer Night’s Dream might have come from a woman’s pen. But Hamlet? However, events of Emilia’s early life support that contention. She was a ward of Susan Bertie Countess of Kent, whose brother Peregrine Bertie journeyed to Denmark in 1582. Bertie’s purpose was to invest the King Frederick II with the Order of the Garter. In return, he hoped that the Danes would protect English merchant ships from being molested while in Danish waters. 

Records show that he arrived in Elsinore on 22 July 1582 and left on 27 September of that year. Suppose twelve or thirteen-year-old Aemilia Bassano accompanied him? This may have been a distinct possibility as Susan Bertie embarked on a second marriage that very same year.

How interesting to think that a moody teenaged boy may have been based upon the memories of a teenaged girl!

If you enjoy this sort of thing, you are in for a treat! Five Stars.

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Adventures with Cecylee ~ Part II The Wall Walks

Lady Cecylee Neville, the protagonist of my first novel Thwarted Queen, was the youngest daughter of Ralph, Earl of Westmorland, and grew up in the family home at Castle Raby, now in County Durham. Built by the Saxons, and rebuilt near the end of the fourteenth century by Cecylee’s grandfather John, Castle Raby is a castle of towers. There are Clifford’s Tower, located just inside the gatehouse, built to withstand attack, the kitchen tower, Mount Raskelf Tower (named after family lands in Yorkshire), the chapel tower and Bulmer’s Tower. 

This last has an unusual five-sided plan, not unlike similar five-sided towers found in Denmark and used to stand apart from the rest of the castle. In Thwarted Queen I imagine it used as a keep where everybody went when the castle came under attack. It seems to be the oldest part of the castle, possibly built in Anglo-Saxon times, perhaps to a Scandinavian design to ward off the Vikings. 

It is named after Bertram de Bulmer, a powerful magnate who lived at the time of King Stephen (1096-1154). In 1176, Bertram’s daughter Emma de Bulmer, heiress to the Bulmer estates, married Geoffrey de Neville. In turn, their daughter Isabel de Neville, heiress to the Bulmer and Neville estates married Robert Fitz Maldred, who owned Raby Castle. For some reason, their children took their mother’s surname of Neville, thus founding the great Neville family of the Middle Ages, whose members included Warwick the Kingmaker (1429-1471), one of Cecylee’s nephews.

When Cecylee lived there, Castle Raby was full of armed men. Her father Earl Ralph was made Warden of the Western Marches by Henry IV, and his task was to repel the Scots during numerous border raids. When I visited it back in 2007, the docent told me that there used to be wooden walkways that went from the tops of one tower to the next, which Earl Ralph’s men would patrol constantly, on the lookout for danger. The wooden walkways allowed the men to get from one tower to the next quickly and efficiently, without having to descend twisting staircases to the mud of the courtyards, and climb all the way back up again. In Thwarted Queen, I have a scene where Cecylee herself had to walk on these walkways. Imagine what it must have been like to wear a henin (cone-shaped headdress) with a silken veil fluttering off the end, as you made your way from one tower to another in a stiff breeze!

If this has whetted your appetite for Thwarted Queen, please click here.

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MORIARTY by Anthony Horowitz ~ A Book Review

MORIARY is a very different book than THE HOUSE OF SILK. Whereas THE HOUSE OF SILK focuses on Sherlock Holmes and his side-kick Dr. Watson, MORIARTY focuses on—well, on Moriarty. Except that he isn’t there, at least not until the very end.

Obviously, with the title of Sherlock Holmes’ famous nemesis, Moriarty must be around somewhere, but readers will enjoy trying to guess who, if anyone in the large cast of characters, he is. 

As many have noticed, Anthony Horowitz is a brilliant writer. My husband loves his FOYLE’S WAR series for their moral dilemmas. I loved reading the MAGPIE MURDERS series, especially the first one where we find out about half-way through the novel that we have actually been immersed in a manuscript. I loved that out-of-body sensation as Horowitz deftly executed his plot twist.

And now, in MORIARTY we see Mr. Horowitz’s formidable writer’s craft in full play as he occupies the reader with the first-person point-of-view of Frederick Chase, Senior Investigator for Pinkerton’s of New York. Everything about this novel is filtered through the mind of Mr. Chase – his long journey from New York to find out what happened to Jonathan Pilgrim, his chance meeting at the Reichenbach Falls with Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective, and what happens thereafter.

The two gentlemen strike up a friendship and travel back to England together to get rid of evil criminal genius Devereux before he can wreak more havoc on the streets of London. Unfortunately, Mr. Devereux is an American citizen, currently residing at the American Legation, so Chase and Jones are going to have to come up with a clever scheme of winkling him out so that he can be held accountable for his actions.

The novel is a little slow-going at the start, but really catches fire when Perry, a very plump young man, appears on the scene. After that, the novel is hard to put down. Four Stars.

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Adventures in Wales ~ Chirk Castle

North Wales is surprisingly close to Liverpool. In fact the Wirral Peninsula is bordered by the Mersey to the East, the Irish Sea to the North and the Dee to the West. If you are visiting relatives in Wallasey, and they live in a house that sits high up on the Wirral Peninsula, you can see the lights of Liverpool by turning your head to the right and the Welsh Mountains by turning your head to the left.

So it is not hard to reach Wales by car. In about an hour or so you can find yourself wending your way along narrow Welsh lanes hemmed in by the vibrant greens of trees and shrubs. So when you come to a pair of showy white gates (as seen in the image) the sight makes you stop. Further along you will find a field full of sheep with a castle in the background. 

You have arrived at Chirk Castle built in 1295 by Roger de Mortimer. At that time, England was ruled by Edward I (1239-1307), known as The Hammer of the Scots. Before he turned his attentions to Scotland, Edward was busily crushing the life out of Wales. Chirk castle guards the entrance to the Ceirog valley and is part of a chain of castles that he built in North Wales. These include Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech and they are massive. Driving up to Conwy, you are struck by the hugeness of the castle that dominates the tiny town. 

Was Edward I trying to send a message to the Welsh? 

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Among the Mad ~ Maisie Dobbs #6

What I love about Jacqueline Winspear’s novels is that she doesn’t just portray the froth and fun of the 1920s and 1930s. She also probes deeper into the lives of the men and women who inhabited those times to give us a full picture of what it was like to be alive then.

I love her descriptions of life in London at that time, with its “cold-water flats”, old-fashioned buses that you could climb onto from the back (the bus conductor would walk up and down to issue you with a ticket) and the sense of a nation brought low, of the poverty that everyone suffered due to the enormous economic costs of the Great War plus the Depression that followed at the end of the twenties.

And so we have Miss Maisie Dobbs, still single, living alone in a flat in London, where she cooks herself an enormous pot of soup once a week, so that she can have a quick supper after a long day’s work.

We are in the Christmas season of 1931, and even though the Great War has now been over for thirteen years, still there are so many people who have never got over their experiences of this horrifying war. It will surprise no-one to learn that veterans were treated badly. During the war, people who had what we now call PTSD, were patched up and sent back to fight. Yes, their physical body may have been well enough to go back to France, but from the point of view of mental health, they were completely shot (pun intended.) I know that everyone was desperate to replace the approximately 9.7 million military men who had been killed, but I still think that sending such a person back to the front is the height of cruelty.

In this novel, we have one such man. An army veteran injured in both body and soul. He feels that he cannot get the government to listen to his plight. It is not clear whether the issue is just about his pension (which presumably he hasn’t received) or something else. But this man is determined to make the British government in Whitehall listen. And so he makes terrorist threats, saying that he will detonate a bomb in London.

Unfortunately, this man is brilliant enough to devise new kinds of horror. We are not just talking about Molotov cocktails or IEDs. We are talking about new forms of mustard gas and chlorine gas, which could cause devastation amongst crowds of people celebrating Christmas and the New Year. And so Maisie finds herself working during the Holiday Season of 1931 to 1932, as a consultant for Scotland Yard as the police try to catch this man before he causes massive amounts of death.

As always, Maisie comes up trumps and the whole affair ends very satisfactorily. But the reader is haunted by Ms. WInspear’s expressive writing that delineates the pain and suffering of so many of those war wounded whom the government chose to ignore. Five Stars.

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