The Last Enemy

The Air Forces Memorial, Runnymede

Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea........  (Isaiah, 11:9)

Something is not quite right, down by the river.  The footpath has disappeared by Old Windsor, and garden cherry trees in Wraysbury emerge from the waters like mangroves.

Looking across the Thames, we can make out Heathrow airport, just beyond the King George VI reservoir and the Perry Oaks Sewage Works.

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a......

Closer in, the houses of Hythe End appear to be surrounded by waters, at least.....

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, 
shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; 
and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

But one fine House of  Windsor (the home of the once Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family) sits above the hurly burly of the river flows, for the moment....

I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, 
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.  (Luke 6:46-49)

Though if I were Queen, I would probably do something about the flight path overhead, with its score of merlin decibels chinkering my Meissen every thirty seconds.....

Anyway, I sense ironies about the place.  The place where King John sealed the Magna Carta is flooded.  King John was also famous for losing his treasure in the Wash.  Perhaps not a king for stability. But then next year the American Bar Association will revisit their memorial here to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Great Paper, which subsequently formed the basis of the American Constitution. Not, note, the English, British or United Kingdom Constitution (for we do not have one) [which might perhaps have presented something of an obstacle to Alex Salmond?]

There is another little irony here in the Lutyens Lodges, which guard the north-western approach to the meadows. These were designed as memorials to Urban H Broughton, MP, in 1929.  Notice the lack of gutters - a design feature allowing rainwater to cascade straight off the roof to soak away through slits in the paving below.

As can be seen.....

[I gather they are taking the roof off Castle Drogo because of rain water too!]

Anyway, that is an aside.  The main concern here is with the elements, and we've seen enough of water for the moment. So, climbing up the National Trust earth of Cooper's Hill, we come to the sky, the air, and soaring above is an Astral Crown in blue and gold, topped by a single star that pierces the heavens.

This is the Air Forces Memorial, Runnymede, designed by Sir Edward Maufe (who also designed Guildford Cathedral), opened by the Queen in 1953, on land donated by Sir Eugen and Lady Effie Millington-Drake, and, despite all that, it is a most moving monument.

It is perhaps another irony that we now take for granted the conquest of the air, while we flay ourselves and each other, gnashing teeth and wailing, when river waters rise a few inches above lawns down by the banks.....

But those magnificent men in their flying machines did not all have it easy, and this great shrine is to some of the 116,000 men and women of the Air Forces of the Commonwealth who gave their lives in service in the Second World War, many of whom were lost without trace.

This place of reserve and quiet commemorates over twenty thousand of these who were lost in operations from bases in the United Kingdom and North and Western Europe.  Most of them, 15,462 in fact, served in the Royal Air Force, but there were many from the Royal Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and Indian Air Forces, the South African Air Force, as well as from the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).  

Their names are engraved on the walls, reveals and mullions of the windows, grouped according to the year of death, in alphabetical order.

And relatives and friends still visit to leave mementoes to show their love and respect:

And wreaths record more formal tributes in the shadows:

The building itself, in keeping with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's style (Sir Edward Maufe was their principal architect in the years following the Second World War), is cool and sober.  The great north window of the shrine is engraved with words from the 139th Psalm, sometimes called the Airman's Psalm:

If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there Your hand shall lead me,

And Your right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” 

Even the night shall be light about me; 

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, 

But the night shines as the day; 

The darkness and the light are both alike to You

And these words are flanked by angels and vapour trails, copied (the vapour trails that is) from photographs taken during the Battle of Britain. Above is a gallery, with another engraved window.  This poem was composed by Paul H Scott, a student, soon after the memorial was completed.

We shall see the memorial still, and over it
The crown and single star.  And we shall pray
As the mists rise up and the air grows dark
That we may wear
As brave a heart as they.

And then above this is the roof terrace, beneath the crown, with views across the gardens, and also down over the Thames.

One name that is not found here is that of Richard Hillary, a young airman who was not lost without trace.  His ordeal was by fire, when, on September 3rd, 1940,  just below me and to my left, I saw what I had been praying for - a Messerschmitt climbing and away from the sun. I closed in to 200 yards, and from slightly to one side gave him a two-second burst: fabric ripped off the wing and black smoke poured from the engine, but he did not go down. Like a fool, I did not break away, but put in another three-second burst. Red flames shot upwards and he spiralled out of sight. At that moment, I felt a terrific explosion which knocked the control stick from my hand, and the whole machine quivered like a stricken animal. In a second, the cockpit was a mass of flames: instinctively, I reached up to open the hood. It would not move. I tore off my straps and managed to force it back; but this took time, and when I dropped back into the seat and reached for the stick in an effort to turn the plane on its back, the heat was so intense that I could feel myself going. I remember a second of sharp agony, remember thinking "So this is it!" and putting both hands to my eyes. Then I passed out.

He was thrown from the cockpit and parachuted into the sea, some miles off Margate, whose lifeboat picked him up many hours later.

He had extensive burns to the face and hands (he, like many other Spitfire pilots, refused to wear goggles or gloves) and suffered months of agony undergoing revolutionary plastic surgery.

He never regained complete fitness, but, having recorded his experiences in The Last Enemy, he returned to flying. He was killed on the night of January 7th 1943.  Hillary, on a training flight with his navigator, Walter Fison, died instantly when his Bristol Blenheim crashed in a field near RAF Charterhall.  

His charred remains, weighted with sand in his coffin, were returned to his parents, together with his cigarette case, and his will, in which he had written:  

I want no one to go into mourning for me.  As to whether I am buried or cremated, it is immaterial to me, but, as the flames have had one try, I suggest they might get their man in the end.

Richard Hillary was 23 when he died.  

1 Corinthians 15:26

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death

Richard's story is one of the best known accounts of a fighter pilot's experience in the Second World War. It is now in print again, with an introduction by Sebastian Faulks, who also wrote about Hillary in The Fatal Englishman.  The isolation and almost medieval duelling of airmen is perhaps best expressed by W B Yeats, however, in his poem An Irish Airman foresees his Death, written in 1918, for Major Robert Gregory, the only son of Yeats's friend, Lady Gregory.

I know that I shall meet my fate 

Somewhere among the clouds above; 

.....

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, 

Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, 

A lonely impulse of delight 

Drove to this tumult in the clouds; 

I balanced all, brought all to mind, 

The years to come seemed waste of breath, 

A waste of breath the years behind 

In balance with this life, this death

It is a final irony that the names, carved into stone, outlive these men and women.  But as Richard Hillary wrote in his will:  I want no one to feel sorry for me.....  In my life I had a few friends, I learnt a little wisdom and a little patience. What more could a man ask for?

It is too late to feel sorry, but it is never too late to remember. And even when our memories have gone, others will be reminded of those who gave their lives.  

On the earth, in the water, in the air, and in the fire.

.

Windsor Great Park

A Right Royal Entertainment

One summer, many years ago, I was a guide in Dunrobin Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes (and then the Countess) of Sutherland. My job was to sit in a window seat of the grand drawing room and to make sure no one touched the displays, which included vast Canaletto paintings of the Doge's Palace and Mortlake Tapestries, as well as priceless furniture and objets d'art. The flow of visitors was steady, and some would stop to ask a question or two. One day I remember two couples from Yorkshire came through, and, at the risk of stereotyping, I can still see one of the men before me now. He was tall, late middle aged, with thinning grey hair and a red face. His brown corduroy trousers were held up by golden braces over a check shirt finished off with a woollen tie. He looked around, with something like ecstasy, surveyed the gardens below the window, laid out on the model of Versailles, breathed deeply, clutched his braces, and sighed, "EEEE, th' very atmosphere gives ee Kulchur!"

In more recent times I lived quite near Windsor for some years, and recently had reason to return. By chance, one of the grand dames of belles lettres had just been misinterpreted in a speech she delivered for the London Review of Books at the British Museum (on February 4th) and a twitrumpus had broken out about how she dared attack a member of the monarchial family.... As has now been widely discussed the Prime Minister clearly had not read the speech and other commentators had leapt to "defend" Kate Middleton/Cambridge without seeing that Ms Mantel was pointing out the dangers of misrepresentation in the press, and in history, of women in royal marriages.

Eton College

Anyway, having been stirred to consider the effect of royalty on our insignificant lives, I wandered the precincts of the castle at Windsor, ventured across the river to peer into the hallowed courts of Eton College, and then walked the distance through the Great Park, admiring the ring-necked parakeets in the ancient oaks of this royal hunting ground. 

Ring-necked Parakeet - Gorgeous Invaders

The four thousand eight hundred acre park is wonderfully varied, from the horticultural pleasures of The Savill Garden, on the East side of the park, near Englefield Green; through the neatly clipped polo pitches past Smith's Lawn; to the rhododendrons and azaleas of the Valley Gardens; 

along the shores of Virginia Water, 

past the ruined Roman colonnade of Leptis Magna (which George IV had imported); to the Village (built in the 1930s to house estate workers), where you can buy ice creams in the Post Office; across the A332 into the relative wilds of Cranbourne Chase; 

then back up to the peak of Snow Hill with its equestrian statue of George III modelled by Sir Richard Westmacott as Marcus Aurelius (though said to emulate Étienne-Maurice Falconet's late eighteenth-century statue of Peter the Great in Decembrists Square, St Petersburg).

The Long Walk

This statue, known as The Copper Horse, dominates the two and a half mile view down the Long Walk, or rather closes the view from the Castle, across the deer park.

Looking the other way from the hill you can see the Royal Lodge (for fifty years the residence of the Queen Mother, but since 2004 that of the Duke of York) as well as the Royal School and Cumberland Lodge. 

Marcus Georgius III - Rex Imperatore

My favourite spots are the wild woods of The Dell near Bishopsgate, and the Heather Garden, which is fenced off just near the Polo Grounds at the top of the Valley Gardens,

but I must acknowledge that the park has given me, and my family, much fresh air and relaxation over the years, and it is a great resource for all, from wayward princes to the hoi polloi. 

Prince Harry (on right of picture), bodyguard and friends

But back to the Castle. Founded by William the Conqueror and then built up by Henry II on a rocky rise above a bend in the Thames, this is the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world (it has five hundred residents). It has apparently been the home of 39 monarchs, several of whom have enlarged and restored it from time to time, and it is now the favourite residence of Queen Elizabeth II, who had to do her own bit of restoration when the State Apartments were drastically singed in 1992.

Stand-up entertainment - Victoria Regina

This is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the UK, and at £17.75 a head it is probably one of the most lucrative, though there is plenty to see, once you get in past security. The glorious gothic of St George's Chapel and the miniature masterpiece that is Queen Mary's Dolls' House (with flush toilets and working lifts) are particular highlights, but the Royal Collection, with paintings by Rubens, Holbein and Van Dyck, takes some beatings. The very atmosphere gives you culture!

And this is where I am reminded of the controversial lecture by Hilary Mantel. "Is monarchy a suitable institution for a grown-up nation? I don’t know. I have described how my own sympathies were activated and my simple ideas altered. The debate is not high on our agenda. We are happy to allow monarchy to be an entertainment, in the same way that we license strip joints and lap-dancing clubs." It is splendid entertainment, from the Changing of the Guard to the pageantry of a service in the Chapel. Windsor Castle is a living piece of history, not, like, for example Schonbrunn or Versailles, an example of past glory preserved in a block of amber. 

But the question still provokes me. Is monarchy a suitable institution? Is the continuation of the aristocracy and an antiquated system or privilege and honour acceptable. Doesn't the phrase "William the Conqueror" cause some discomfort? What if we thought about each succeeding dynasty as a conquering one? With William the Norman French language became the tongue of the court. With George I came German and the House of Hanover (he spent about one fifth of his rule abroad and though fluent in several languages, was reputed not to handle English that well, certainly at the start of his reign). And when did we get this House of Windsor? I doubt if Michael Gove will insist that future generations of school children are taught the Royal Proclamation of King George V in The London Gazette: no. 30186. p. 7119. 17 July 1917, which went: "Now, therefore, We, out of Our Royal Will and Authority, do hereby declare and announce that as from the date of this Our Royal Proclamation Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all the descendants in the male line of Our said Grandmother Queen Victoria who are subjects of these Realms, other than female descendants who may marry or may have married, shall bear the said Name of Windsor......" nor that the name he wanted to lose was Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a branch of the House of Wettin), and why? Well, there was a war on, and ordinary citizens, such as David Herbert Lawrence, for example, were made to feel very awkward by their compatriots if they had any sort of connection with Germany (D H Lawrence had a German wife.....) [And wasn't it rather obvious at the same time that Mountbatten was only an attempt to anglicise Battenberg?]

The Queen - out of steam?

And why Windsor? The word derives from Old English for a winch by the river, though that was probably not considered relevant. I expect it was more that the castle is one of the most imposing and resilient pieces of masonry since the invention of the Motte and Bailey, and it had a convenient railway station, and was only 21 miles from Marble Arch..... I wonder if the location would have been so popular had George V anticipated the current tendency for one jet aeroplane every thirty seconds to take off from Heathrow and roar only a few hundred feet over the royal bedchambers?

Anyway, continuing in republican train of thought, I would make a proposal. Despite Kate Middleton/Cambridge's bump and the plethora of other royals who might leap to the throne given half a chance, this dynasty cannot go on indefinitely, and so perhaps it really is time to modernise the monarchy? Firstly, the title: I suggest we call the leader the Quing? Get rid of the sexist distinction between King and Queen, and regularise in the spirit of actors..... Then abolish all other titles as being obsolete, redundant and divisively unnecessary (as Italy did with no loss of any notable pride among the proud).  So Charles is just Charles, and Fergie is, well, nobody.  Then remove this problem of inheritance. Need a constitutional monarchy be hereditary? I don't see why it should. This would have saved Henry VIII so many wives, and would save us so many column miles of speculation over the Cambridge progeny. And then have an election, ad ogni morte di papa as they (used to) say in the Vatican. Everyone could then have a say in the continuation of the realm. And finally, the name. The House of Windsor has had its day, and seems to me to smack of domination. How about somewhere more proletarian, more cosmopolitan, more egalitarian? Somewhere not far from Windsor, perhaps? How about the House of Slough? A perfect recognition of the reality of the United Quingdom.

I feel better now. No hard feelings, Liz. We do all love you, though perhaps not everyone feels so good about some of the others in the family.

But then, wait. What did Hilary Mantel actually say? "The debate is not high on our agenda. We are happy to allow monarchy to be an entertainment, in the same way that we license strip joints and lap-dancing clubs......" Do I detect a derogatory note here? Or is this pure pragmatism in muscular prose? Is my proposal taking the whole issue too seriously? 

And then, wait again. Suppose my plan was adopted, and we had an election? Good Grief! We could end up with Sandi Toksvig (or should that be Talkswhig?) who would say things like, "It's my country and I'll do what I like..." in her State Opening of Parliament speech, and refer to "My wife and I..." at Christmas. Or perhaps worse, we could have Hilary Mantel..... Or Barbara Windsor? Of the House of Slough???

No. I have overstepped the mark. I retract my proposal. After all, what is wrong with being designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, precision-made, and capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother? 

Let's leave things as they are? At least for the moment..... The royal family gives us grand entertainment and, "Th' very atmosphere gives ee kulchur!"

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensoftheUnitedKingdom/TheHouseofWindsor/TheHouseofWindsor.aspx

http://www.royal.gov.uk/theroyalresidences/windsorcastle/windsorcastle.aspx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21502937#TWEET612285

No Photographs, Please.... We're Royal

Acute Mourning Sickness

I am in bed.  I have been so for more than a week.  The death of Larry Hagman has laid me low, and were it not for a serious lack of Bupa I would be in a private hospital.  A cute mourning sickie they call it.  Terminal Dynastic Syndrome.  I could not go on.  A world without JR.  How could that be?

I have been infected with a worldwide virus.  Somehow someone none of us knew has affected all with deep superficiality.  OK someone shot JR.  But someone shot JFK and then Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald and then James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King and then two months later Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy, and then Squeaky Fromme tried to shoot Gerald Ford but misfired, then John Hinckley Jr had a go at Ronald Reagan (but only punctured a lung).  I mean.  People shoot people (when they have guns).

I am distressed.  The word Dynasty sends me into tube stations or finds me buying sandbags on ebay.  This virus is dangerous, and it seems that millions may be infected without even recognising the symptoms.

Not that I ever watched soap.  My closest encounter with the genre was when, in 1969, I asked Warren Beatty how he was getting on in “Compact.”  Never been good with names.  I should have known it was Doug Beatty I wanted to meet.  Ever since then, perhaps in subliminal shame, I have eschewed all TV programmes that run in sequences.  There was something called “Beautiful” my wife used to watch when we lived in Italy, but I would leave the room at the opening chord of the theme.  Same with Corrie, East Enders, and so on…..

Then Larry Hagman suffered and degenerated into dust.  Ozymandias.  And yet I am brung down.  My feelings outweigh my understanding.  Black holes appear all over my body and I find myself in need of a House Doctor. 

So I am wasting away.  Made ill by the absence of a Dynasty I no more asked for than I elected to invade Britain with Willie the Conqu.  The subconscious is a wonderful thing.  As long as it doesn’t surface.  In my bed I play mental scrabble with myself to while away the hours and forget Dallas.  I have the letters SXAECBGURO in my hand and cannot think of a word or phrase (valid since 1917 – the Windsor Rules) that I can make with this.

Tish.  My nurse brings me a cold compress.  A tisane. Royal Jelly.  Anything to soothes my frets.

And then I hear that the Duchy of Cambridge is pregnant.  The third in line to the thrown is about to be bored.  A certain Dynasty is not to be Terminated. Yea!! I can rise from my frailty, cast off my mourning shrouds and breathe again the cool air of Windsor….. Hyperemesis gravidarum notwithstanding (and no memory of my stopping the family commute every day for weeks for my wife to gracefully vomit on the verge before work will affect this); I wish no one ill, but I want to dance down the street, shimmy on the trestle tables left out from the Jumbly party, and shout Halleluiah, Who Cares!  The Dynasty is on the road again!  Without any rancour we can all look forward to a secure future of Honours and privilege and everything that Grates about Britain….

Bring back Larry Hagman.  At least he was a star! 

The Larry Hagman Foundation: 

“Evil does Good” (That's what it says!)

http://www.larryhagman.com/