A STORY OF EXCESSES, RAGES AND A BAD APPOINTMENT

This weekend following the British Museum exhibition “Beckett: Murder and the Making of a Saint”, we are going to a conference which is about Thomas in Canterbury.

It’s the 12th century. England has been ravaged by 14 years of civil war between Stephen and Matilda. The country is in chaos. In 1153 Henry 1’s grandson, at 21, becomes King.

What’s he like? He has hyper-energy, eats standing up, is always on the move, he’s petulant and impetuous. But in his short reign this man-of-action restores order. The barons submit to him; castles built without permission are torn down. The mercenaries who’d been hired in the Civil War have a few days to leave England or be executed. They decamp in a hurry. He sets up trial by jury and assizes (old French for “sittings”) where judges hear cases. Prisons are built and villages and towns are repurposed with proper market days. The country becomes less mediaeval, more civilised and calm; much of this owing to Henry’s decisiveness. 

Yet he only speaks French and Latin and lives 2/3 of his life in Anjou. A key to his success is Thomas Becket, who is recommended to him by his Archbishop, Theobald. They get on tremendously well, so well that Henry makes him Lord High Chancellor. Thomas is smart, charming, a fixer and a man who makes things happen. He’s the King’s right hand but also his best friend.

He’s a show-off, dandy and poseur. He keeps monkeys and wolves. He has a vast array of silk garments. When he goes to France to negotiate the marriage of the King’s daughter he does so in fabulous luxury with a huge entourage. He behaves as if he were King. He loves bling.

Then something awful happens. When Archbishop Theobald dies Henry has a brainwave. Why not make Becket Archbishop as well as Chancellor?  Henry has been irked for some time by something called “benefit of clergy” which simply means whatever a member of the clergy does they’re immune to civil law. So, if they commit murder, say, a Bishop’s Court might defrock them or exact a penance. That’s all. But there’s a bigger game to play. The church represents a sixth of the population and is very wealthy. Henry wants to clip its wings. Thomas is the man to do that job. He’s proved this before.

 Huge mistake.

Becket’s transformation from super-rich courtier to Man-of-God takes two days. One day Thomas next day the Reverent Thomas, next day Archbishop Thomas, answerable to the Pope as well as the King. 

But he won’t do what an increasingly bemused and enraged Henry wants. He becomes as saintly now as he’d been epicurean before. For 8 years he’s an absentee Archbishop in France. From brilliant Chancellor and best friend  to intransigent churchman and obstructive foe (as Henry sees it). Thomas cannot be judged a success in his new role. He has constant rows with Henry causing great distress to the people who’d seen this previous effective partnership  collapse and create national disharmony..

Henry’s increasing frustration and rage is interpreted by four loyal but not too bright knights as a wish that Thomas be silenced. So, they come over from France and butcher him in Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s the most infamous murder ever. For the last 19 years of his life Henry bitterly regrets it, lamenting the loss of a friend, his own rashness and poor judgement, the tarnishing forever of his previously brilliant reign and becoming just a footnote in history.

We instead have the most famous Saint. 

Lesson for today: Be very careful about senior appointments. Especially if it’s a friend.

 

TAKING A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Try it. In conversation, when people  are bemoaning the uncertain world we live in, try the “not more uncertain than the Industrial Revolution” or “Ruskin would have had something about Brexit”. They’re conversation stoppers but go back nearly 2700 years and even my conversational capability grinds to a halt.

I went to the British Museum recently to see the exhibition “I am Ashurbanipal, King of the world, King of Assyria”. He ruled from 669 – 632 BC from his capital Nineveh. Nineveh was the largest city in Assyria and the world for 50 years and its location would have been where Mosul is now in Iraq on the Eastern Bank of the River Tigris.

It was apparently magnificent with 15 great gates and fascinating frescoes and sculptures. This is where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were allegedly located. Ashurbanipal himself was not first in line as successor to the throne but was picked out as “the talent” and was trained as warrior, scholar and diplomat, shadowing his father and being made Assyrian spymaster which helped him develop an intimate knowledge of the vast Empire incorporating Cyprus, Judah, Egypt, Iraq, Syria.

He  was clearly unusually gifted and popular. Assyria became everything he boasted it was and he made Nineveh awe inspiring . What’s more he knew how to party.

“When I inaugurated the palace at Calah, I hosted for 10 days with food and drink….  altogether 69,574 invited guests…”

So what went wrong? We really don’t know. Records of him disappear… did he die of natural causes, was he assassinated? Whatever happened Assyria weakened, imploded and Nineveh by 612 BC was sacked and destroyed. (Imagine Paris being wiped off the map.) The exhibition showed work of heart-stopping  beauty and skill. It all seemed incomprehensible that this happened when Rome was still a muddy bunch of huts and London was over 600 years from being even started.

And then sometime around 610 BC with a huge plume of smoke, some screams and horrors it was gone. It was a memento mori moment. From King of the world to barely remembered.
Such exhibitions are like a rather strong medicine, purging us of our certainties and our  overweening attitude to our history.  We underestimate our perpetual conflicts with the Danes, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans and ourselves in the English Civil War in 1642 not to mention our repression of the Scots, Irish and Welsh.  Our history makes that of Ashurbanipal look almost sophisticated and civilised.

The Queen has asked us to pull our socks up and “come together”. Matthew Parris wishes she wouldn’t interfere in politics, my own problem is her plea is like asking Arsenal supporters to applaud a Tottenham goal. In the argot of today “that just aint going to  happen.” Just look at history.

The Assyrian adventure I had last week confirmed my view that Brexit will play out messily. But the historians will have such fun with it.

HALLO DORSET ARE YOU THERE?

OK, this joke about Dorset, where we’ve just spent the first chunk of a rather longer holiday than usual, a place which T- Mobile and broadband forgot, a place where it’s always “whatever-o clock”, slow, measured and clotted-creamy, has gone on long enough.

Dorset is a tiny county which it takes longer to reach by car than a return trip by Easy Jet to Venice. Above all Dorset belongs to the memory of Thomas Hardy. He’s the creator of names like Eustacia Vye, Damon Wildeve and Bathsheba Everdene. He’s the writer of novels in which the dreadful hand of fate constantly touches the shoulder of the unlucky or amoral - the nearest we have to a writer of Greek tragedy.
But there’s something else.

An award for exceptional marketing goes to Dorset.

We were entertaining our grandchildren (or vice versa). Over three days we did the following:
Visited the ruins of Corfe Castle (one of the few strongholds to withstand the parliamentary forces in the south of England in the mid-1600s) where we learned to use a sword - “aim for the nose” -  a halbert - “great for gouging at close quarters” and a bow and arrow - lethal wounds were delivered to head, groin, legs and upper body of the targeted strawmen.

And so on to Abbotsbury - an award winning sub-tropical garden - huge Monterey Cypresses, brilliant succulent plants ; the Swannery - 600 of the white feathered thugs whom the children all fed with grain and we learned about their habits (did you know that the wretches bask in the reputation of being “one-swan-guys” but they all pop off for constant “surreptitious affairs” at the “Bonking Swan” no doubt.)

And then their farm. There’s more money to be made now by tarmacking fields and having kids ride plastic tractors, have pony rides, watch lamb races, have close contact with exotic birds (in the cage with the budgerigars and parakeets) and operate radio controlled pirate boats on the lake - than there ever could be by growing stuff.

Finally the museum day - “oh no Grandpa not museums!” Dorchester is about the same size as Goldaming, Newport Pagnell or Kenilworth… so quite small. It has a Town Museum and five (yes -  five) others. A Teddy Bear Museum; a reproduction of the Terracotta Warriors, a Dinosaurs Museum (where else have you heard “kids - you can touch anything here”);

an abbreviated version of the British Museum Tutenkhamun Exhibition and the Mummies (the boys loved these dead bodies so much that they eyed me as if to say “not long now.”).  Where else could there be this much enterprise, enthusiasm to please and involve and overall sense of drama?  If everyone attacked their cultural opportunity as well as this then all would be well in the sector.

Dorset I’ve heard you loud and clear.

And one other thing. Dorchester has a Michelin star restaurant. Proof that there’s more to life than my smart phone.