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Personal Note Archive March 2007

 

3rd March 2007

William Blake's Paolozzi Newton, outside the British Library

In some ways the modern world is coming together, with globalism, and the internet: in some ways it is becoming more divided, as illustrated by the fact that there are some who would now like to see a national anthem for England. The usual piece suggested for this anthem is the Jerusalem Hymn, the words of which are by William Blake, who was born 250 years ago this year.

And did those feet in ancient times

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

Ironically Blake was always a man to seek freedom from boundaries, national, mental and physical. I hesitate to speak of the point of these lines because a point is a small limited thing, and Blake would never have accepted such limits. But if anything, Blake is saying that national boundaries are too small to hold the truth of life. Spirituality has no centre and no periphery, and in this sense, Jerusalem could exist in England's green and pleasant fields, or amidst its dark Satanic mills. He really did cast aside all the demarcations of the world, and perhaps one of his poems would not be quite right as a national anthem! Or maybe it would be perfect, celebrating a country at the same time as encouraging us to forget about the divisions of national boundaries.

 

 

10th March 2007

You might be thinking this looks a site for the discerning. But appearances can be deceptive, as becomes apparent when you visit the Globe in Southwark, London. Nowadays Shakespeare is held up as the torch of civilisation, but back in Elizabethan times Southwark, where the Globe sat, was definitely the wrong side of the tracks, a place of thieves, brothels, bear baiting pits, and theatres. The businessmen in the City on the other side of the Thames thought it all most unsavoury. High art and low entertainment are much more closely linked than is sometimes thought, and in fact the highest ideals of our society often come out of what was at sometime judged dangerous or improper. The brothels of Elizabethan Southwark were all run by the Bishop of Winchester, who used the revenue they generated to fund the glories of Winchester Cathedral. So take a risk, live dangerously, go for an adventurous day out exploring history and literature.

 

 

20th March 2007

Scotney Castle Garden

Spring is coming, and the gardens of Britain will soon be busy with visitors. Visiting a garden, for most people at least, seems a perfectly sensible thing to do, but in Tudor times and before, nature was something dark and dangerous and best avoided. The builders of the Globe Theatre did not like all the beautiful wood it is made from. Nowadays people would have found the wood tasteful, and would have been reminded of their wood effect flooring back home in the kitchen. The builders of the Globe covered as much of the wood as they could in gaudy paint. Diarmuid, the Irish television gardener who likes natural stone and wood would have had to find another career. A garden reveals how we view nature. Gardens through history from Roman times to the Eden Project show how our relationship with nature has changed. Botanic gardens where both poisonous and therapeutic plants grow paint a picture of the ups and downs of that relationship. See our History of Gardens section for details of gardens from all periods of British history.