Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘For Richard, Anne was more or less the ideal bride. While he already had his portion of Warwick’s lands in the north, Anne embodied the familial link that his lordship in the region lacked. Marrying Anne, Warwick’s daughter, would make Richard a true heir to the Nevilles, giving him more heft among the dead earl’s followers in the region and allowing their allegiances to transfer more instinctively to him’

‘He is saddened by Brandon. To Norfolk, a Cromwell is just a block to be erased, like a discrepancy in book-keeping. But Brandon’s family made their name by audacity. He hoped there might be some fellow-feeling.’

I’m getting sick of Lyra and Pan arguing.

‘He steps back to admire her, a shining princess who is more metal than flesh. Her clothes mould her, like the armour of some goddess, and look as if they would stand up by themselves. You drag your eyes upwards from her gleaning breastplate to her face. It is a serene oval, vulnerable, bare. It is not so young and rosy as Christina’s, but shows a modest charm. She has tender eyes, veiled’

I’m loving this book, I forgot how much I enjoyed these books. Why did it take me so long to read this one?

‘As the king’s doctors remark, the ailments of great men have too little credit, when their lives are passed in view. They inherit thrones, but so much else. When the Emperor speaks, his words rattle like pebbles in the cavern of his overshot jaw. François is paying for his sins: he has lost so many teeth to the mercury cure that his wishes are expressed as spit’

‘What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.’

This is very out of character for Ianto.

Owen: “Sometimes you have to let the mad men win, because losing is what drove them mad in the first place.”

Well this is certainly the darkest of the Torchwood audio dramas.

Oh Owen, I missed him... why did they have to kill him off (twice)?

I have heard nothing but bad things about this one, but have to give it a go.

‘The threat of pandemic flu is as severe as that of a terrorist attack. According to Professor Oxford, the impact of a flu pandemic in Great Britain would be the equivalent of blowing up a nuclear power station.31 The police, hospital staff and military and local authorities therefore conduct regular contingency exercises in preparation for such an event.’

‘Taubenberger subscribed to the theory that the virus provoked an auto-immune response known as a cytokine storm. Ironically, the healthier the patient, the more likely they were to die. The 1918 H5N1 produced a marked inflammatory response, causing secondary damage to the patients’ lungs. ‘It’s not the virus that kills you but your own body’s immune response,’ explained Taubenberger.’

‘Giving his youngest brother into Warwick’s care was a conspicuous act of trust and favour on Edward’s part, one designed to underscore Warwick’s continued place at the heart of the regime - whatever impressions anybody might have gained to the contrary following the king’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Warwick’s household was the perfect place for Richard to continue his education.’

‘That has stayed in my memory through all the years told of a little boy who, feeling the pinch of hunger, went to ask the butcher for some meat. He then asked the butcher how to cook it. The butcher asked why his mother wouldn’t be cooking it. The little boy replied that his parents had been asleep in bed for two days. The butcher accompanied the lad home to find that they were asleep permanently.’

‘Typically of Spanish flu, the disease was fatal among the ten to forty age group, and more women died than men. In total, around 17 million people died of Spanish flu between June and December 1918. Bombay suffered terribly. Between 10 September and 10 November 1918, the total mortality was 20,258.’

This is a fascinating read but so awful. I wonder how I will feel if I re-read it again once everything going on right now is over. I wonder if I will feel as angry as I do now, there are so many similarities, yet we just repeat the same mistakes. I hope everyone reads this book.

‘Young men who had never experienced sea sickness before presented themselves to the sick bay and were admitted by inexperienced medics. Meanwhile, a stream of men with genuine flu symptoms were turned away for lack of space, and, so delirious that they were unable to find their way back to their own quarters, they simply laid themselves down on the deck.‘

‘Gregory says, “My lord father, who will you let the king marry next?”’

‘Jane was lucky and unlucky, she says: lucky to become queen of England, unlucky to die of it. They will always make ballads about her, Bess says. And the king will give her a magnificent tomb, he says, in which he may lie with her in time to come. But I would rather be alive, Bess says, than have a great name: would not you, Lord Cromwell?’

‘Clarence, still in his ‘tender youth’, was Edward’s project. In his mind’s eye, as he later put it, Edward saw his brother as his right-hand man: exceeding all other noblemen in his ‘might and puissance’, alive to all the king’s ‘good pleasures and commandments’ and aiding him in ‘all that might be to the politic weal of this land’.’

‘In a strange twist on the concept of flu prevention, ‘vaudeville theaters were only allowed to be half full – members of the audience had to leave the seat on either side empty so that they would not breathe on one another. To further protect themselves many wore surgical masks, so that even when they laughed the sound was muffled.’’

‘Whenever one of his queens has been with child, Henry has always been sure it is a male. Once he has an heir in the womb, once he can say again, ‘God is pleased with me,’ what will there be to refrain Henry from every desire? He might free all the prisoners in the Tower. Or he might go to war on a whim.’

‘Hundreds of teachers, unable to work since the schools had been closed, also volunteered; Archbishop Daugherty assigned 200 nurses from the Order of St Joseph to the emergency hospitals; Roman Catholic nuns worked at a Jewish hospital under the direction of a Doctor Cohen, while the St Vincent de Paul Society offered food, clothing and care, with its members prepared to dig graves if required.’

‘Until the epidemic, death had seemed kindly, coming to the very old, the incurably suffering or striking suddenly without the knowledge of its victims. Now, we saw death clutch cruelly and ruthlessly at vigorous, well-muscled young women in the prime of life. Flu dulled their resistance, choked their lungs, swamped their hearts . . . There was nothing but sadness and horror to this senseless waste of human life’

‘the cause of the summer outbreak in Britain and prevent further outbreaks later in the year, writing that he would be grateful for any help investigating the epidemic. One solution, Fletcher suggested, would be to control the numbers travelling by public transport, which had to be playing a part in spreading influenza across the entire country. But Newsholme remained indifferent to Fletcher’s pleas’

‘Ostensibly, the Yorkist cause remained that of a reformed government under the sovereign authority of Henry VI, and indeed, in these hastily drawn-up lists, the idea of an alternative Yorkist monarchy had been played down... the name of Edward - head of the house of York and now, by act of Parliament, heir to the crown - appeared not first in the list, but fifth’

Had to read this after watching the BBC documentary The Flu That Killed 50 Million and with what is going on now. Seems like we never learn, we should have been prepared after what happened in 1918, yet we just have been repeating the same mistakes.

‘I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant’