Tucked away in a central Parisian museum that was once a railway station, there hangs an Easter painting quite unlike any Gospel masterpiece created before or after it. It is not painted by a Rembrandt or a Rubens or the patron saint of artists, Fra Angelico. The painting is the work of a little-known Swiss painter. For those who make a trip to see it, viewing the canvas is a special spiritual experience in their lives.
The work does not even show the risen Jesus. It merely portrays two witnesses, Jesus’ oldest and youngest apostle. The youngest who was the only man brave enough to stay by Jesus’ cross and the only one who did not die a martyr’s death as a result of it. The oldest apostle who first denied Jesus in fear, yet ultimately chose to be crucified upside down by the Roman authorities rather than deny Christ’s resurrection.
'Twas on Good Friday morning, All in the month of May, A German Ship was signalling, Beyond out in the Bay, We had twenty thousand rifles All ready for to land, But no answering signal did come From the lonely Banna Strand.
"No signal answers from the shore", Sir Roger sadly said, "No comrades here to meet me, Alas, they must be dead, But I must do my duty And at once I mean to land", So in a small boat rowed ashore On the lovely Banna Strand.
Now the R.I.C. were hunting For Sir Roger high and low, They found him in McKenna's fort; Said they: "You are our foe", Said he: "I'm Roger Casement, I came to my native land, I mean to free my countrymen On the lonely Banna Strand.
They took Sir Roger prisoner, And sailed for London town, And in the Tower they laid him, A traitor to the Crown; Said he "I am no traitor", But his trial he had to stand, For bringing German rifles To the lonely Banna Strand.
'Twas in an English prison That they led him to his death, "I'm dying for my country" He said with his last breath, They buried him in British soil Far from his native land, And the wild waves sing his requiem On the lonely Banna Strand.
They took Sir Roger home again In the year of '65, And with his comrades of '16 In peace and tranquil lies, His last fond wish, it is fulfilled For to lie in his native land, And the waves will roll in peace again On the lonely Banna Strand.
Roger David Casement born September 1st 1864 to an Anglo-Irish family, known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat and later became a humanitarian activist, poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations", he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru.
Influenced by the Boer War and his investigation into colonial atrocities against indigenous peoples, Casement grew to distrust imperialism. After retiring from consular service in 1913, he became more involved with Irish republicanism and other separatist movements. During World War I he made efforts to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence.
He was arrested, convicted and executed for high treason. He was stripped of his knighthood and other honours. Before the trial, the British government circulated excerpts said to be from his private journals, known as the Black Diaries, which detailed homosexual activities. Given prevailing views and existing laws on homosexuality then, this material undermined support for clemency for Casement. Whether Casement had written the diaries or not remains still unproven.
In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the Easter Rising began, a German submarine had put Sir Roger ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Suffering from a recurrence of the malaria that had plagued him since his days in the Congo and too weak to travel he was discovered at "McKenna's Fort", an ancient ring fort now called Casement's Fort, in Rahoneen, Ardfert, and arrested on charges of high treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown.
At Casement's highly publicised trial for high treason, the prosecution had trouble arguing its case. Casement's crimes had been carried out in Germany and the Treason Act 1351 seemed to apply only to activities carried out on English (or arguably British) soil. A close reading of the Act allowed for a broader interpretation: the court decided that a comma should be read in the unpunctuated original Norman-French text, crucially altering the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" referred to where acts were done and not just to where the "King's enemies" might be.
Casement himself wrote that he was to be "hanged on a comma", leading to the well-used epigram.
On the day of his execution, Roger Casement was received into the Catholic Church. He was attended by two Catholic priests, Dean Timothy Ring and Father James Carey, from the East London parish of SS Mary and Michael. The latter said of Casement that he was "a saint … we should be praying to him instead of for him". Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916. He was 51 years old, his body was buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville.
During the decades after his execution, many formal requests for repatriation of Casement's body were refused by British Governments. In 1965 Roger Casement was finally repatriated to the Republic of Ireland.
Despite the withdrawal of his knighthood in 1916, the 1965 UK Cabinet record of the repatriation decision refers to him as Sir Roger Casement.
The true genius of British sitcom becomes first and foremost apparent in Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder. Only the Brits can make a sidesplittingly funny sitcom where one cries one's eyes out in the end and I know that not just I did.
Produced 1989, Blackadder IV is set in the trenches of Flanders 1917. The premise of the series are Captain Blackadder's attempts of avoiding combat, which drives the humour of the series from the very first episode and he always succeeds or at least gets out of it unharmed.
Not so in the end.
In the final scene of the last episode Goodbyeee (title taken from a contemporary popular Music Hall song), the protagonists gather. The cynical career soldier Captain Edmund Blackadder, who deep down knew all the time what was coming to him and that he would one day run out of his luck, the coward Captain Darling who'd thought that he could ride it out on a cushy staff desk job, but was sent to the front line by his General, whose trusty "pyjama folder" he so far had been. (One has probably never seen a finer piece of acting genius than Tim McInnerny's when Captain Darling finally understands the truth - and, above all, comes to terms with it in the end.)
"Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says, "Bugger.""
The others are the naive and not very bright hooray-henry-ish young aristocrat Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St. Barleigh and Private Baldrick, the touching eternal underdog from Cockney London. They are scared and, for the first time, say so, but then, maybe it hadn't occured to them before that they had a reason to be scared.
It shows as well what an excellent actor Rowan Atkinson is and how subtly the script deals with the situation. When Darling arrives at the trench, the Captains greet each other the first time without contempt, a premonition of things to come and when he throws his hat down on the suitcase we know that he has succumbed to his fate.
For the two syllables "Well, quite" alone, his reaction to the admissions of the others (he never says how he himself feels) he'd deserved at least an Oscar.
And in the end, "Good luck everyone", his final words and the last words in the series, are the first, not just in the episode, not just in this series, but in the entire show, he utters without cynicism.
"Good luck everyone."
Historic parenthesis: The only superficially funny figure of Lieutenant George is actually shockingly close to a tragic historic reality.
When the First World War arrived, in 1914, the aristocracy welcomed it. They saw this as a chance to justify their position, by assuming the mantle of military leadership that had been the original role of many of their ancestors. But the war was disastrous for them: frequently, the young lords were given junior commissions on the battlefront, leading their men with bravery in their hearts but only a pistol or a baton in their hands. They were first in the German machine-gunners’ sights. While one in eight British soldiers perished during the four-year conflict, the ratio was one in five for the nobility... After peace, it seemed that the aristocracy was spent. As a political observer wrote at the time, “The Feudal System vanished in blood and fire, and the landed classes were consumed.” [Highlighting by me.]
In the end, they go over the top, slowly vanish in the debris and finally in the mists of history.
The writer of these lines is a historian by training (not by profession and WWI hadn't been among my subjects). Still, although I've read (and hopefully understood) one of the probably best books on the topic of the "Great War", it had taught me less about it, about war generally and about soldiering (as far as a woman can understand it in the first place) than this little bit of TV genius.
Transcript:
(Darling enters, wearing helmet) George: Sir! (salutes) Edmund: (hangs up the phone, turns) Captain Darling... Darling: Captain Blackadder. Edmund: Here to join us for the last waltz? Darling: (nervous) Erm, yes -- tired of folding the general's pyjamas. George: Well, this is splendid, comradely news! Together, we'll fight for king
and country, and be sucking sausages in Berlin by teatime. Edmund: Yes, I hope their cafes are well stocked; everyone seems determined
to eat out the moment they arrive. George: No, really, this is brave, splendid and noble! (hesitates) Sir? Edmund: Yes, Lieutenant? George: I'm scared, sir. Baldrick: I'm scared too, sir. George: I mean, I'm the last of the tiddlywinking leapfroggers from the Golden
Summer of 1914. I don't want to die. I'm really not overkeen on dying
at all, sir. Edmund: How are you feeling, Darling? Darling: Erm, not all that good, Blackadder -- rather hoped I'd get through the
whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the
Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way
here. Simply says, "Bugger." Edmund: Well, quite.
(a voice outside gives orders) Edmund: Ah well, come on. Let's move. Voice: Fix bayonets!
(They start to go outside) Edmund: Don't forget your stick, Lieutenant. George: Oh no, sir -- wouldn't want to face a machine gun without this!
(outside, they all line up as the shelling stops) Darling: Listen! Our guns have stopped. George: You don't think...? Baldrick: Maybe the war's over. Maybe it's peace! George: Well, hurrah! The big nobs have gone round the table and yanked the
iron out of the fire! Darling: Thank God! We lived through it! The Great War: 1914-1917. George: Hip hip! All but Edmund: Hurray! Edmund: (loading his revolver) I'm afraid not. The guns have stopped because
we're about to attack. Not even our generals are mad enough to shell
their own men. They think it's far more sporting to let the Germans
do it. George: So we are, in fact, going over. This is, as they say, "it". Edmund: I'm afraid so, unless I think of something very quickly. Voice: Company, one pace forward!
(everyone steps forward) Baldrick: Ooh, there's a nasty splinter on that ladder, sir! A bloke could
hurt himself on that. Voice: Stand ready!
(everyone puts a foot forward) Baldrick: I have a plan, sir. Edmund: Really, Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one? Baldrick: Yes, sir. Edmund: As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning
at Oxford University? Baldrick: Yes, sir. Voice: On the signal, company will advance! Edmund: Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was
better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad.
I mean, who would have noticed another madman round here?
(whistle blows) Edmund: Good luck, everyone. (blows his whistle)
(Everyone yells as they go over the top. German guns fire before
they're even off the ladders. The scene changes to slow motion,
and explosions happen all around them. [An echoed piano slowly plays
the Blackadder theme.] The smoke and flying earth begins to obscure
vision as the view changes to the battlefield moments later: empty
and silent with barbed wire, guns and bodies strewn across it. [A
bass drum beats slowly.] That view in turn changes to the same field
as it is today: overgrown with grasses and poppies, peaceful, with
chirping birds.)
Captain Edmund Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
Private S. Baldrick
TONY ROBINSON
General Sir Anthony Cecil
Hogmanay Melchett
STEPHEN FRY
Lieutenant The Honourable
George Colthurst St. Barleigh
HUGH LAURIE
Captain Kevin Darling
TIM McINNERNY
Complete transcripts for the entire series and full credits here.
Germans were warned that if they staged another truce, they would be shot. British soldiers were threatened with court martial. But many of the men who took part in the Christmas truce refused to fire on their opponents again until the day they were rotated out and other soldiers came to take their place. Many memorials in Britain remind us of it and it was widely publicised in the British press. In Germany it wasn't and there is no memorial.
"On the whole, people don’t generally like to kill one another."
The story is quickly told. Nth in the line to the throne and granddaughter to the Queen weds nice young upper class man in October, no inappropriate Social-Justice-Warrior-aspect, no embarrassing and disingenious African-American pageantry. Boring.
However, every time a royal weds, the media reactions are more, well, let's call it "inspiring" than the event itself. No, dear press rabble, the groom hadn't been a waiter. No rags to riches story here. He is sheer and undiluted upper class and comes from more than one titled family.
Then there was the gushing over the bride and her dress. And no again, dear media mob, although she comes across as very nice, and her friends are credibly adamant that she is, not even they would call her beautiful or her appearance "stunning". (The worst thing is, that, so I suspect, those despicable jaundiced hacks are laughing their sorry arses off while gushing about her and at the same time opt for the most unflattering pictures available.)
Out of respect for the bride, here is the most flattering picture I was able to find.
To watch the unselfconcious and genuine happiness in her kind, open, face is touching. Like her mother's more than 30 years ago, hers was all about "her man".
Then there was the usual parade of glossy magazine scum and some highlights, mostly, but not exclusively, from the royal family. I confine myself for once to the nicer aspects of such a pageant, because there are more important things to come to later in this entry.
Her Majesty in powder blue, regal, dignified and beautiful as always.
I like her pastel outfits best and she may have made a special effort to underline the importance of this wedding
as a counterpoint to a royal wedding earlier that year. (I may be wrong.)
The Princess Royal, aunt to the bride, with her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence.
I admire her for many things. Her dress sense is not among them. However, this is much less awful than her usual choice of wedding guest attire.
This is Lady Sarah Chatto, first cousin, once removed to the bride.
And no, scum shmoks, she's not Her Majesty's "favourite niece". She is her ONLY niece. (And one of the nicest members of the royal family who has always kept a low profile and who is a "working girl".)
The Duchess of Cambridge, best dress, best smile, best legs, ray of sunshine, as usual.
Mother and sister (and maid of honour) of the bride with the little bridesmaids and pageboys.
Children are always "cute" (a word I normally dislike) and so are these, but the long trousers for the
boys are a big no-no and deplorably suburban.
(The matching colours of the children and MoB and MoH are nice though.)
The younger branch of the Greek royal family.
Couldn't be better. That's how "regal but modern" goes. Princess Olympia's dress is Dolce and Gabbana.
Poppy Delevingne, another well-connected young woman, model and actress, and, so it used to be reported, another "romantic" (a word I hate even more than the word "cute") interest of the groom, in Oscar de la Renta.
Absolutely stunning dress, pity for the daft "fascinator".
Zara, Mrs. Michael Tindall, the Queen's granddaughter and cousin to the groom, with her rugger star husband.
Nobody would neither her nor her mother accuse of being particularly well dressed, however, she is, like her mother used to be 40 years ago, one of the best three-day-event-riders of her generation and makes a living from it.
Chelsy Davy, another one of Prince Harry's ex-girlfriends, and although she DOES come across as a bit, well, common, at least she's a lawyer now and not some tinpot American actress with a cringe-making background and a sleazy past.
But don't get me started about those breast appliances.
No, dear glossy magazine gutter scum, this is NOT Sofia Wellesley, the grand-daughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington, with some singer as her armpiece, this is James Blunt, an officer, gentleman and
close friend of Prince Harry, who happens to be a singer now, with his wife Sofia Wellesley.
Lovely dress for an autumn wedding, perfectly turned out couple!
Undoubtedly the best-dressed attendant.
I love it!
That's it. I spare you the many other "celebs". They are either well-preserved but tend to hit their staff with bejewelled communication devices, depress me because they are my own age group but decrepit, or unknown to me. Let's talk instead a bit more about the efforts of the media hacks.
Magic Meghan was attenting as well
Imagine my surprise! Absolutely sensational! Shiver down my spine. Her husband is, after all, only first cousin to the bride.
Elitist Eugenie set strict rules for the wedding and had the cheek to even let them be known
Well... it WAS a royal wedding, wasn't it?
Demonic Duchess of Cornwall didn't attend because she had a tiff with "Fergie" in the early 14th century
Liar liar pants on fire!
It's a symptom for the zeitgeist, that it is impossible or almost impossible to find photos of the extended royal family who attended, for example the Earl and Countess of Snowdon, first cousin, once removed to the bride, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the bride's first cousin, twice removed and his wife, the Duke of Kent, the bride's first cousin, twice removed, or, from the Mountbatten family, the Marquess and Marchioness of Milford Haven, the bride’s third cousin and his wife. I came only by chance across the photos of Lady Sarah Chatto and the Greek royal family.
Too straightlaced? Not vulgar enough? Good God, some of them are even seriously working for their living (the Duke of Gloucester for example is an architect). How boring! I am hatching the pet theory that the mainstream (media and public) are only interested in royalty now if they are connected with glossy magazine scum. That would, too, explain the maniacal interest in the tinpot actress with a long history of riding the cock carousel who recently married into the family.
This gushing approval of everything that goes against tradition, established, proven and tested values, dignity, common decency and good taste, THAT is the frightening bit.
Some of my regular readers may wonder why I spared the mother of the bride. The explanation is easy. I am tired of shooting sitting ducks and frankly, hat and dress ARE nice, just worn by the wrong person.
Much, MUCH more interesting in this context is a look back at the past. During my research I came across the video below and was amazed how likeable and genuine the young Sarah Ferguson comes across in the pre-nuptial interview early in the video (13:41 - 16:43). But that's an upper class young lady for you who has attended finishing- but not "acting school", whatever hash she may have made later of her marriage.
Yes, nobody can deny that she is upper class. At that time she seemed the ideal choice as the wife for a son of Her Majesty the Queen. At that time, too, the first doubts about the Princess of Wales had gathered at the horizon. Sarah Ferguson was "worldly", yet a country girl with many common interests with many members of the royal family. Her father was Prince Charles' polo manager. She was goodlooking in a rather tomboy-ish sort of way, yet didn't have a smidgeon of the Princess of Wales' fateful star quality, all of which spoke for her.
I couldn't resist and watched most of the video, which was an eerie experience for somebody like me who isn't all that laid back about growing old. We saw a young-ish and beautiful Queen, we saw a dashing young Prince Charles, we saw a Prince Edward with a head still full of hair and an amazingly well dressed Princess Anne, we saw a mischievous Prince William (who hadn't quite the star quality his son George shows now) as a page boy and we saw the toddler Prince Harry on his mother's arm, we saw Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (Chatto) and Zara Phillips (Tindall) as girl bridesmaids.
We saw those who are not with us anymore, the beloved Queen Mother, a very young and beautiful Princess Diana, Princess Margaret Rose, yet not quite so obviously marked by illness, and many more.
I re-played "God Save The Queen" at least three times.
And we saw what a nice young man Charles Althorp, now the Earl of Spencer, used to be. He co-commented the footage for an American station. (The fabulous hair seems to go in the family.) Alas, nobody would call him a nice old man now, which maybe can be seen as emblematic for the changing times.
Just a final thought about the disastrous marriages of two of Her Majesty the Queen's sons and the part the gutter press played in the drama. In the eyes of their mentally retarded readership, the wives had been "victims" of the oh-so-cold royal family, which they, adulteresses both, had left for a (and I quote) "more honest" life. Btw, both girls knew the royals and life in the royal family from an early age, both were only too happy to marry into it.
Methinks they were victims of quite a different sort of agents.
Sarah Ferguson, then thirteen, and her sister were dumped on their father when their mother bolted to marry an Argentinian polo playing grease ball, which earned her the not very original epithet "the bolter" among her peers, whereas the mother of Diana Spencer left her husband and her four children for the heir to a wallpaper fortune when Diana was four or five. The then Viscount Althorp eventually won a bitter custody battle over his children, in which his mother-in-law, Ruth Lady Fermoy, lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty the Queen Mother, testified against her daughter.
