When Pope John Paul observed ‘Art is prayer with colour ..’ it aptly describes how Artists and the Church have always worked very closely together in Malta to convey God’s message. From the richly embroidered banners strung across the streets on Feast Days and the dramatic life size tableaux carried on Good Friday, to the eloquent classical paintings of Biblical scenes and lives of Saints in Art Galleries, Museums and Churches, Art has manifested the Christian message everywhere.
However Monseigneur Professor Vincent Borg, Art Historian and Chairman of the Mdina Cathedral Museum Committee is steadfastly working at encouraging new contemporary sacred art and since 1996 has been responsible for organising a series of exhibitions in this genre. They are now held every other year throughout Lent until just after Easter in the huge arched vaults of the Cathedral Museum. Mgr Borg was at pains to assure me that, like the Royal Academy it is open to everyone including foreigners, and this year artists from Poland and Italy are taking part. He is anxious for artists to find a new voice and style just as Rubens and his contemporaries broke away from Gothic Art to develop their own individual styles within Baroque. He wants them to move away from copying old styles, which have mostly come from foreign artist like Caravaggio, whose Beheading of St John the Baptist is now given a whole room in St John’s Cathedral.
At the Grand Opening of this year’s exhibition on Sunday March 12th it was obvious from talking to the Archbishop of Malta, His Grace Msgr Paul Cremona, who had come to celebrate the Inaugural High Mass in the Cathedral, that he was equally enthusiastic. He observed that from the time of Fra Angelico the Church had always used Art to teach and express Christian feelings. It was difficult to understand God’s message without help and visual aids were indispensable. He emphasised that we are always needing new sensations which help us to reach divine insights and reflect inner faith and render the invisible visible. He was delighted with the progress of the exhibitions or Biennales, as they are known.
His Eminence Cardinal Francesco Marchisano has also been a firm supporter from the beginnings and had been invited to open the exhibition but was unable to attend in the end through illness.
The committee of judges consists of six artists and six art critics and three themes had been suggested to guide the artists God is Love, The Eucharist, and Mary, the Mother of the Church. But the artist was free to choose any other theme. Christ and the Virgin Mary were the two most popular themes chosen, as they had been over the years, but the number of works on Saints had gone down this year.
Many of the 72 works exhibited expressed very personal spiritual approaches - some quite disturbing like Raymond Buttigieg’s Agony on the Cross, a disembodied head with hanging open mouth on a twisted cross of spiky branches and Valerio’s Schembi’s The suffering Servant, a rather gruesome ceramic representing the wounded side of Christ. There was also Spilt Wine at the Last Supper by Damian Ebejer with the red wine soaking into the spotless white cloth and seeping into the broken bread. Some were more narrative using an old Palestinian background and costumes in realistic scenes like Raymond Abela’s ceramic Marriage of Cana and Marco Arcidia’s oils on gold panel Christ Calming the Sea. A minority used iconography but Jessica Debattista created a fine Mary, Mother of the Church by adding modern touches to the traditional rules using mixed media on perspex. Normally the background begins dark but by adding lighter colours the spiritual progress is manifested and finally the name is written over the head. The artists also has to pray continuously for guidance while painting. Ms Debattista has added anonymous figures of the apostles and picked out the colours of the background cloth to illuminate the rest of the picture. The child Jesus hugs his shapely mother round the hips in a very human way.
Overall there was extraordinarily exciting conceptual and visual variety with the majority of artists being long standing professionals and a few new exhibitors.
We stood in front of ‘The Return of the Eschatological Christ’ a water colour with an abstract pattern enshrouding the advancing figure of Christ. The artist John Martin Borg, who has exhibited in the UK and all over the world told me how the dark hues at the back represent moments of depression and confusion frequently felt by him but they dissolve within the light of the resurrected Christ depicted here by the golden and white of the virgin paper. This confirmed for Mr Borg that the resurrected Christ was always there for him and anyone who needed him.
I was also moved by Frederick Gingell’s ‘Mary treasured all these things and pondered upon them in her heart’ [Luke 2. 19]. A realistic close up of the Virgin Mary’s face, her hands clasped under her veil looking at us with a certain sadness and apprehension and yet also joy and fulfilment.
Another very beautiful and touching ceramic was Mario Sammut’s ‘Destiny’. The fragile and suffering crucified Christ figure is stretched out like plasticine encased within three huge boulders representing Divine Love. Mr Sammut sees it as an inspiration to ‘approach our own destiny and bear our own cross with all its problems which fade out through death to release us into the fathomless bounty of Divine Mercy.’
Since 1996 Mgr Borg has edited a beautifully produced colour catalogue with full page colour photographs of all the exhibits with explanatory text and contact details of the artist and have apparently become collectors items. Though now nearly 80 the indefatigable Monseigneur’s zeal knows no bounds and he is now planning to extend the theme of modern Christian Art for longer periods within rooms of the Cathedral and eventually a permanent exhibition on show.
For further information on the exhibition telephone the Mdina Museum on 00 356 2145 4697 Email info@maltachurch.org.mt
Monday 23 July 2007
Friday 20 April 2007
Pilgrimage to Lourdes
‘I had never any desire to come to Lourdes,’ Father John told me. ‘But while I was working out in Africa as a missionary I contracted a strange tropical disease and I was going downhill steadily. People suggested Lourdes but being a born sceptic I didn’t want to know. Then someone gave me a ticket and I gave in. For the first few weeks I was so ill the doctors almost gave up on me and then .... well, something happened! I was healed! That was five years ago and I stayed on because they needed an English speaking priest.’
This incredible story perhaps encapsulates the popular image of ‘Lourdes’ as the place for physical miracle cures. The clergy like to play this down in favour of spiritual comfort and the big piece of advice given out by most priests or leaders of Lourdes group pilgrimages is ‘Don’t expect miracles!’
Miracle cures were certainly not in the mind of Bernadette Soubirous, a girl of just fourteen preparing for her first communion in 1858. In a grotto near the river in this little town at the foot of the Pyrenees she was at first terrified when without warning she saw an apparition of a beautiful lady calling herself the ‘Immaculate Conception’, followed by seventeen more appearances over five months. She was given certain instructions, two of which were to tell the priest to build a chapel above the grotto and to drink and wash in the spring nearby. Bernadette only saw dry earth where she was told to drink but obediently she scratched until muddy water began to run into her hands, gradually flowing strongly and becoming clear and sparkling. She was interrogated by the church authorities and answered their questions clearly but she took very little interest in the healing that was suddenly taking place in the waters [or indeed in the attentions of the media] and soon afterwards left Lourdes to become a novice in Nevers. Her own health, always poor, worsened and she died at the age of 35.
When a man whose face was partly eaten away by cancer had begged Bernadette to cure him she told him to pray to the Virgin and wash in the water. She would of course pray for him. He did as told and it was reported that he was cured. In the early days there were many cures like this. But the water on analysis was found to be neither thermal, radioactive nor anti-bacterial but just good mountain water [and according to people who have taken it ‘very, very cold! Although when you get out you are bone dry!’].
In the Jubilee year of 1897 three hundred people were miraculously cured but Emile Zola who had witnessed one of the cures commented that ‘the cures at Lourdes are simply the result of a trauma brought about by the unknown force which emanates from crowds during violent demonstrations of faith.’
However another witness to the cures Dr Alexis Carrel who in 1902 had approached Lourdes scientifically and sceptically wrote ‘Such events are highly significant.... They prove the objective value of the spiritual activity which has been almost totally ignored by doctors, teachers and sociologists. They open up a new world for us’.
When I arrived one early June morning at Lourdes station and walked down the hill into the pretty flower filled Swiss-like town with its river flowing through, I bumped into a long procession of bright blue wheelchairs and trolley beds cheerfully being pushed along by a multitude of carers in white accompanied by nuns, priests and friends who were making their way across town through St Michael’s gate to the Basilica in front of which morning mass is celebrated in the open air during the season. The river flows alongside with pleasant riverside walks and seats and laid out gardens. Below the Basilica is the grotto with a statue of Our Lady in the place where Bernadette saw her and where people were reverently filing past or sitting and meditating. Some people were buying the huge white candles, lighting them and placing them in a special area.
It is not possible to know how many of the sick actually expect some sort of cure. Some are very sick indeed and perhaps only pray that their last days will be as free as possible from suffering. Some disabled people may secretly hope when they see the crutches and wheelchairs abandoned by past invalids that they will be able to do the same. The many people who nurse the sick every day and suffer with them must surely long for some relief.
When Cassie Hawkes brought her daughter suffering with cerebral palsy in 1987 she prayed fervently that there might at least be some improvement but nothing seemed to change except that her daughter caught flu. ‘Maybe there were miracles when Bernadette was alive,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe they happen anymore.’
Nevertheless she encourages her other children who have minor problems to go with a group. Susie loves going. It’s her second home where she makes friends and the able and disabled mix equally and love one another. Gerard, a group leader working with children with special needs agrees that it is a wonderful spiritual experience where he gets a lot of inspiration to cope with a very difficult job.
It is also beneficial for carers who take a break every year from busy business life to live simply among the sick as helpers. I met two Parisiennes who seemed relaxed and happy and said it was a wonderful holiday coming down to help - better than staying on the riviera.
The power of Lourdes certainly seems to give great strength to those suffering emotionally. I talked to a lady whose son had been murdered abroad in a terrible way. She had lost all desire to get up in the morning and get on with life and although she had had counselling she could not cope. Here she felt among friends, fellow sufferers, and felt much of the weight of her sorrow lifting. ‘It was like Christmas,’ she observed. ‘with everyone so kind and loving towards one another. Why aren’t we like that all the time?’ She was going to come next year to experience Lourdes more deeply.
Father John said ‘It is important to really love and trust God before anything and to believe that God loves every single person and that a God of Love cannot be a cruel God and that there is a reason for suffering.’ Through his illness he knew first hand not only physical suffering but anger and feeling a burden and separated from society and is grateful for this learning experience. As Dr Carrel observed, ‘believing in God’s Love and sharing this with other people and giving and receiving love has a very healing power.’
But it seems as though every now and again there has to be a ‘Bernadette’ whose absolute devotion forms a channel for great spiritual energy to flow in powerful enough to reach the physical body. After all haven’t all Great Healers begun with loving God!
First published in Wholeness Magazine 2000
This incredible story perhaps encapsulates the popular image of ‘Lourdes’ as the place for physical miracle cures. The clergy like to play this down in favour of spiritual comfort and the big piece of advice given out by most priests or leaders of Lourdes group pilgrimages is ‘Don’t expect miracles!’
Miracle cures were certainly not in the mind of Bernadette Soubirous, a girl of just fourteen preparing for her first communion in 1858. In a grotto near the river in this little town at the foot of the Pyrenees she was at first terrified when without warning she saw an apparition of a beautiful lady calling herself the ‘Immaculate Conception’, followed by seventeen more appearances over five months. She was given certain instructions, two of which were to tell the priest to build a chapel above the grotto and to drink and wash in the spring nearby. Bernadette only saw dry earth where she was told to drink but obediently she scratched until muddy water began to run into her hands, gradually flowing strongly and becoming clear and sparkling. She was interrogated by the church authorities and answered their questions clearly but she took very little interest in the healing that was suddenly taking place in the waters [or indeed in the attentions of the media] and soon afterwards left Lourdes to become a novice in Nevers. Her own health, always poor, worsened and she died at the age of 35.
When a man whose face was partly eaten away by cancer had begged Bernadette to cure him she told him to pray to the Virgin and wash in the water. She would of course pray for him. He did as told and it was reported that he was cured. In the early days there were many cures like this. But the water on analysis was found to be neither thermal, radioactive nor anti-bacterial but just good mountain water [and according to people who have taken it ‘very, very cold! Although when you get out you are bone dry!’].
In the Jubilee year of 1897 three hundred people were miraculously cured but Emile Zola who had witnessed one of the cures commented that ‘the cures at Lourdes are simply the result of a trauma brought about by the unknown force which emanates from crowds during violent demonstrations of faith.’
However another witness to the cures Dr Alexis Carrel who in 1902 had approached Lourdes scientifically and sceptically wrote ‘Such events are highly significant.... They prove the objective value of the spiritual activity which has been almost totally ignored by doctors, teachers and sociologists. They open up a new world for us’.
When I arrived one early June morning at Lourdes station and walked down the hill into the pretty flower filled Swiss-like town with its river flowing through, I bumped into a long procession of bright blue wheelchairs and trolley beds cheerfully being pushed along by a multitude of carers in white accompanied by nuns, priests and friends who were making their way across town through St Michael’s gate to the Basilica in front of which morning mass is celebrated in the open air during the season. The river flows alongside with pleasant riverside walks and seats and laid out gardens. Below the Basilica is the grotto with a statue of Our Lady in the place where Bernadette saw her and where people were reverently filing past or sitting and meditating. Some people were buying the huge white candles, lighting them and placing them in a special area.
It is not possible to know how many of the sick actually expect some sort of cure. Some are very sick indeed and perhaps only pray that their last days will be as free as possible from suffering. Some disabled people may secretly hope when they see the crutches and wheelchairs abandoned by past invalids that they will be able to do the same. The many people who nurse the sick every day and suffer with them must surely long for some relief.
When Cassie Hawkes brought her daughter suffering with cerebral palsy in 1987 she prayed fervently that there might at least be some improvement but nothing seemed to change except that her daughter caught flu. ‘Maybe there were miracles when Bernadette was alive,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe they happen anymore.’
Nevertheless she encourages her other children who have minor problems to go with a group. Susie loves going. It’s her second home where she makes friends and the able and disabled mix equally and love one another. Gerard, a group leader working with children with special needs agrees that it is a wonderful spiritual experience where he gets a lot of inspiration to cope with a very difficult job.
It is also beneficial for carers who take a break every year from busy business life to live simply among the sick as helpers. I met two Parisiennes who seemed relaxed and happy and said it was a wonderful holiday coming down to help - better than staying on the riviera.
The power of Lourdes certainly seems to give great strength to those suffering emotionally. I talked to a lady whose son had been murdered abroad in a terrible way. She had lost all desire to get up in the morning and get on with life and although she had had counselling she could not cope. Here she felt among friends, fellow sufferers, and felt much of the weight of her sorrow lifting. ‘It was like Christmas,’ she observed. ‘with everyone so kind and loving towards one another. Why aren’t we like that all the time?’ She was going to come next year to experience Lourdes more deeply.
Father John said ‘It is important to really love and trust God before anything and to believe that God loves every single person and that a God of Love cannot be a cruel God and that there is a reason for suffering.’ Through his illness he knew first hand not only physical suffering but anger and feeling a burden and separated from society and is grateful for this learning experience. As Dr Carrel observed, ‘believing in God’s Love and sharing this with other people and giving and receiving love has a very healing power.’
But it seems as though every now and again there has to be a ‘Bernadette’ whose absolute devotion forms a channel for great spiritual energy to flow in powerful enough to reach the physical body. After all haven’t all Great Healers begun with loving God!
First published in Wholeness Magazine 2000
Wednesday 18 April 2007
The Tower Bridge Experience
It was a glorious sunny breezy day as I walked out of London Bridge station down to the Thames embankment near where HMS Belfast was moored. I could see the ancient Tower of London on the other side and another edifice simply demanding to be gazed at with admiration, standing astride the river with its proud gothic appearance and its high twin towers - the Tower Bridge.
As I took the steps up to the bridge and started walking over appreciating the wonderful London views around me the pedestrian walkway was suddenly closed, the middle of the bridge started to open and the two halves lift. Luckily no one was on it but apparently fifty years ago a No 78 bus was driving towards the centre when this happened and the driver, taking a chance, carried on driving and landed on the other side. Perhaps the passengers were so busy looking at the London sites they didn’t even notice. More recently when traffic was given adequate warning, the presidential motorcade carrying Bill Clinton on a tour round London was starting to cross the bridge when the first security car went over but the presidential car and the rest of the security were stopped. In a furious panic the remaining security men desperately tried to contact the Bridge Master to get him to lower the bridge but he being a retired Royal Naval man was not in the least perturbed
‘Nothing takes precedence over a vessel coming through,’ he told them among other things. ‘It had given 24 hours notice in writing and it was approaching and the rule of the road is that the Bridge Master raises the bridge’.
And there before me moored by Butlers Wharf on the Tower side I saw Daphne, the hundred year old sailing river barge for whom the bridge had been lifted, with her brown sails at rest and looking very smug. Not many old ladies have calmly held up a president of the United States and separated him from his security men in one fell swoop.
The Tower Bridge Experience Museum is situated within the central towers and high walks of the bridge and once inside a Blue Badge Guide David Savage accompanied a group of us into a large lift which took us up into the North tower - very atmospheric where you could see the huge steel inner structure and where we could watch a short video on how the bridge came to be built. From its appearance I ‘d had the idea that the bridge was very old but it was actually built in the 1890s and the solid gothic exterior is only granite stone cladding covering the steel structure designed to blend with the Tower of London and other ancient buildings. It seems that the ever increasing number of citizens in the Tower area got very annoyed that they had no bridge and either had to ferry across or walk or drive their carriages along to London Bridge. At first there was a lot of resistance. The docks were at London Bridge and so any new bridge would have to allow for tall vessels to pass through. Also the Tay Bridge disaster was only five years before and still fresh in everyone’s mind and would the structure be strong enough?. Finally they decided on a lifting bridge but with very high walkways which people could always use to walk across. Scottish steel was brought to London in sections and the stone from Portland and Cornwall. On the 30th June 1894 the then Prince of Wales officially declared it open, the Tower of London fired her guns and there were fireworks and great celebrations for London had never seen anything like this before
There were a number of people there from all over the world and I got talking to Susie Quilligan and William Rutledge, architecture students from Miami University who were in London on a field trip to visit British architectural sites. As we left the video area to go along the high glassed in walks with their fantastic views over the river they pointed out the sites they had visited already - now looking somewhat smaller - The Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye and they were quite bowled over by this amazing architectural and engineering feat.
‘What I’m really looking forward to seeing,’ said William. ‘Is the old engine room.’
‘Definitely the favourite place,’ nodded David.
Susie and William wandered off enthusiastically to spend time there while I began to read one of the many information panels of how the bridge opened fully only on ceremonial occasions. Everything was written in seven languages so a French lady, a Spanish man and a Japanese boy and I were all reading simultaneously and nodding in mutual understanding.
‘As a lad I saw the bridge open fully when Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral cortege passed underneath in 1965’, David told us. ‘It was very moving.’
I noticed that the bridge had also opened fully for Sir Francis Chichester after he had sailed round the world single handed on Tiger Moth and was sailing to Greenwich to receive his knighthood.
The walkways were light and sunny through the big windows and carpeted, giving a feeling of a palm court.
‘Originally the walkways were open,’ David said.’But people used to come there and throw themselves the 140 foot drop into the river and then in the evening prostitutes would ply their trade and thieves hang around and so in 1910 the high walks were closed off. Now you can only get into them through the museum. They’re hired out in the evening for special events.’
‘It would be lovely to have a reception here with this view,’ I said.
David agreed. ‘ The Bridge Master’s Victorian apartment is also hired out and I know one gentlemen hired it together with a small orchestra and caterers to propose to his girl friend. They were all stationed outside the room so no one knows if he went down on his knees or what the answer was.’
Another lift took us down and outside again and we followed a short blue line to the old engine rooms where I met up with William and Susie again . There we saw the great pile of coal and two men wheeling it and loading it to produce the steam power. Then in the actual engine room the great engine freshly painted with its brass polished and a Victorian engineer sitting carrying out some tests. Like the coalmen he looked so totally realistic I nearly asked him a question.
‘This is my favourite place,’ William from Miami said. ‘When you think that hydraulic power was used to lift the bridge until 1976, it says something for solid Victorian engineering, doesn’t it.’
‘And the bridge was lifted over 60,000 times the first year and even now about 500 times a year. That’s amazing, said Susie.
‘Now it’s lifted by electricity,’ said David. ‘I was allowed to pull the lever once. It does give you quite a thrill.’
There is always something thrilling associated with the lifting and lowering of mediaeval castle drawbridges in historic films and what more excitement could you have than pulling a lever and lifting the two sides of Tower Bridge, watching a tall vessel pass graciously through and maybe even inadvertently stopping a President.
First published in the People's Friend. May 2002
As I took the steps up to the bridge and started walking over appreciating the wonderful London views around me the pedestrian walkway was suddenly closed, the middle of the bridge started to open and the two halves lift. Luckily no one was on it but apparently fifty years ago a No 78 bus was driving towards the centre when this happened and the driver, taking a chance, carried on driving and landed on the other side. Perhaps the passengers were so busy looking at the London sites they didn’t even notice. More recently when traffic was given adequate warning, the presidential motorcade carrying Bill Clinton on a tour round London was starting to cross the bridge when the first security car went over but the presidential car and the rest of the security were stopped. In a furious panic the remaining security men desperately tried to contact the Bridge Master to get him to lower the bridge but he being a retired Royal Naval man was not in the least perturbed
‘Nothing takes precedence over a vessel coming through,’ he told them among other things. ‘It had given 24 hours notice in writing and it was approaching and the rule of the road is that the Bridge Master raises the bridge’.
And there before me moored by Butlers Wharf on the Tower side I saw Daphne, the hundred year old sailing river barge for whom the bridge had been lifted, with her brown sails at rest and looking very smug. Not many old ladies have calmly held up a president of the United States and separated him from his security men in one fell swoop.
The Tower Bridge Experience Museum is situated within the central towers and high walks of the bridge and once inside a Blue Badge Guide David Savage accompanied a group of us into a large lift which took us up into the North tower - very atmospheric where you could see the huge steel inner structure and where we could watch a short video on how the bridge came to be built. From its appearance I ‘d had the idea that the bridge was very old but it was actually built in the 1890s and the solid gothic exterior is only granite stone cladding covering the steel structure designed to blend with the Tower of London and other ancient buildings. It seems that the ever increasing number of citizens in the Tower area got very annoyed that they had no bridge and either had to ferry across or walk or drive their carriages along to London Bridge. At first there was a lot of resistance. The docks were at London Bridge and so any new bridge would have to allow for tall vessels to pass through. Also the Tay Bridge disaster was only five years before and still fresh in everyone’s mind and would the structure be strong enough?. Finally they decided on a lifting bridge but with very high walkways which people could always use to walk across. Scottish steel was brought to London in sections and the stone from Portland and Cornwall. On the 30th June 1894 the then Prince of Wales officially declared it open, the Tower of London fired her guns and there were fireworks and great celebrations for London had never seen anything like this before
There were a number of people there from all over the world and I got talking to Susie Quilligan and William Rutledge, architecture students from Miami University who were in London on a field trip to visit British architectural sites. As we left the video area to go along the high glassed in walks with their fantastic views over the river they pointed out the sites they had visited already - now looking somewhat smaller - The Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye and they were quite bowled over by this amazing architectural and engineering feat.
‘What I’m really looking forward to seeing,’ said William. ‘Is the old engine room.’
‘Definitely the favourite place,’ nodded David.
Susie and William wandered off enthusiastically to spend time there while I began to read one of the many information panels of how the bridge opened fully only on ceremonial occasions. Everything was written in seven languages so a French lady, a Spanish man and a Japanese boy and I were all reading simultaneously and nodding in mutual understanding.
‘As a lad I saw the bridge open fully when Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral cortege passed underneath in 1965’, David told us. ‘It was very moving.’
I noticed that the bridge had also opened fully for Sir Francis Chichester after he had sailed round the world single handed on Tiger Moth and was sailing to Greenwich to receive his knighthood.
The walkways were light and sunny through the big windows and carpeted, giving a feeling of a palm court.
‘Originally the walkways were open,’ David said.’But people used to come there and throw themselves the 140 foot drop into the river and then in the evening prostitutes would ply their trade and thieves hang around and so in 1910 the high walks were closed off. Now you can only get into them through the museum. They’re hired out in the evening for special events.’
‘It would be lovely to have a reception here with this view,’ I said.
David agreed. ‘ The Bridge Master’s Victorian apartment is also hired out and I know one gentlemen hired it together with a small orchestra and caterers to propose to his girl friend. They were all stationed outside the room so no one knows if he went down on his knees or what the answer was.’
Another lift took us down and outside again and we followed a short blue line to the old engine rooms where I met up with William and Susie again . There we saw the great pile of coal and two men wheeling it and loading it to produce the steam power. Then in the actual engine room the great engine freshly painted with its brass polished and a Victorian engineer sitting carrying out some tests. Like the coalmen he looked so totally realistic I nearly asked him a question.
‘This is my favourite place,’ William from Miami said. ‘When you think that hydraulic power was used to lift the bridge until 1976, it says something for solid Victorian engineering, doesn’t it.’
‘And the bridge was lifted over 60,000 times the first year and even now about 500 times a year. That’s amazing, said Susie.
‘Now it’s lifted by electricity,’ said David. ‘I was allowed to pull the lever once. It does give you quite a thrill.’
There is always something thrilling associated with the lifting and lowering of mediaeval castle drawbridges in historic films and what more excitement could you have than pulling a lever and lifting the two sides of Tower Bridge, watching a tall vessel pass graciously through and maybe even inadvertently stopping a President.
First published in the People's Friend. May 2002
Tuesday 17 April 2007
Top Secret Visit to Cabinet War Rooms, London
VISIT TO THE CABINET WAR ROOMS. LONDON
Leaving the sunlight and the fresh green trees of St James’s Park, I show my pass dated 27 July 1940 and go through a sandbagged entrance down narrow stone steps past into a dimly lit underground maze of long narrow corridors and small rooms. An air raid siren sounds and I almost expect enemy planes to zoom overhead and drop bombs on us. For we are reliving the Second World War when this basement was converted from the dank store under the Office of Public Works in Whitehall [Now the Treasury] into the Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet, Heads of the Armed Services, senior officials and a host of government office workers spent a large part of their time working to win the War.
‘As the son of a British service man and a mother working on coding at Bletchley, this place means a great deal to me’, ‘Humphrey Aylwin Selfe, one of the museum assistants told me. Then as an unmistakable voice starts speaking on the wireless, measured, firm and re-assuring, Humphrey adds. ‘This is the man who led us through the war. Mr Churchill making one of his BBC broadcasts to the nation from down here.’
I asked how far underground we were. ‘Only about ten feet,’ Humphrey told me. ‘But Mr Churchill realised that with a direct hit all the ceilings would probably come down and so you can see heavy red girders supporting the Cabinet Room and other places. At first 500 pound bombs were dropped but later 1,500 and 1,700 pounders landed so it’s lucky we’re still here.’
I make my way along the corridors installed with rifle racks and gas filters past cramped busy offices. Uniformed men are pouring over maps or answering telephones and in other offices young women in neat page boy hair styles and square shouldered 1940 blouses and suits type at heavy manual typewriters, gas masks, fire helmets and a whistle at the ready. Farther along is the map room [Churchill loved maps] with enormous maps on the walls for the minutest military move to be planned and noted. On one in the Atlantic Ocean someone has drawn a caricature of a squatting Adolf giving the Nazi salute. There is also an incredible number of heavy old telephones, black, white, red and green to indicate the different places they were connected to. Then what had been a broom cupboard gloriously delegated to become the transatlantic phone booth direct to President Roosevelt and disguised as a loo. The huge equipment for scrambling all the phones was in Selfridges basement. Then - most impressive, although still very spartan, is the Cabinet Room with tables set with papers as for a Cabinet meeting. Mr Churchill’s large chair is in the far centre facing the meeting with the red box of state papers in front of him. Nothing must be touched except for cleaning and no one must ever sit in his chair. If an air raid begins a red lamp flashes.
‘I was assistant Duty officer down here when Pearl Harbour fell and had to report it to Cabinet Ministers minutes after the 9.o’clock news. I believe a cabinet meeting was held that evening,’ William Frend [now Rev. Professor at Cambridge] told me recently. ‘It was hard work but we just carried on with calculated optimism through this worst part of the War.’
Though the gun racks are empty and the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke tinged with the distinct odour of chemical toilets and no proper drainage dispersed, and rats and other vermin exterminated, you can still imagine how it felt being cooped up here without any fresh air or daylight - never knowing in the centre of London if one’s last hour was going to come. It even makes one think what a medieval castle under siege might have been like [only without chemical toilets!]. It was even worse for the humbler office workers who had to crawl down to a basement even lower to sleep here overnight. No light, no toilet and rats.
Churchill had special living and working quarters above the underground facilities but as raids increased, living accommodation had to be created for Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff and for Mr and Mrs Churchill. In a small room typical of student ‘digs’ with a single bed, small electric fire, fan, dressing table, ewer and wash bowl a girl in a 1940s suit and wearing very bright lipstick is checking her hair in the mirror and is a bit embarrassed when I come along.
‘How do you do. I’m Miss Hughes,’ she says. ‘I’m just making sure everything is in order for Mrs Churchill in case she needs to use this room. To be honest I’m not sure she’s very keen on sleeping here.’
‘Still, no need to install oneself till Gerry floats over, what!’ Major Wade of the Royal Signals winks at Miss Hughes as he marches past with an urgent message. Miss Hughes blushes. Despite the raids and often being in tears from Mr Churchill’s impatient demands the female staff had quite a good time as eligible men outnumbered them enormously.
Even sparser single rooms always with the necessary chamber pot are along the corridor for Churchill’s aides including his faithful private secretary, later Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, his trusted aide Tommy Thompson, George Harvie-Watt, Norman Brook and Desmond Morton. Then a small simple dining room with a table set for four and on the sideboard the essential cigar cutter.
Miss Hughes kindly shows me the tiny kitchen nearby with its little electric cooker and where all waste water had to be carried upstairs and out and Churchill’s cook Mrs Landemare struggled to make appetising dishes and probably keep a number of bottles of champagne on ice.
‘Sometimes Mrs Landemare would be cooking the lunch in No. 10 when the siren sounded,’ the Churchill’s grandson the Hon. Nicholas Soames MP told me. ‘Then she had to transfer the food on to a tray cover it with a shawl to keep it warm and the chauffeur drove her round to where she finished cooking the food.’
However today Marguerite Patten looking wonderfully elegant in a delicate lavender two piece is in the kitchen talking to Gary Rhodes about recipes in the War including spam fritters. She did not cook for the Churchills but she was Food Adviser to the Ministry of Food and created all sorts of delicious recipes encouraging women to make the most of their meat ration with home grown garden vegetables and herbs.
I then come to Churchill’s own bedroom with a map on the wall behind the bed and a large bed tray where he took breakfast, smoked his cigar, read the newspapers and held meetings. His working times were erratic as he took a siesta in the afternoon and then worked till the early hours and expected his staff to be awake when he was. He was completely fearless and often went up on the flat roof of the Government Offices during air raids to watch the ‘Fire’ over London. He visited bombed sites and travelled unafraid overseas to meet other leaders. Although slightly difficult to work for he was loved and honoured by everyone as a great leader. And haven’t the British, most of whom were born after the War, chosen him as the Greatest Briton in History?
On view under glass are some touching letters written to Churchill from King George Vl from Buckingham Palace as of course the King and Queen also spent the War in London and suffered bomb damage and fond letters from the then Princess Elizabeth .
The Cabinet War Rooms open daily from 9.30 to 6.o [10.0 opening in winter] and has disabled easy access. Admission for adults £7.0, children under 16 free and concessions £5.50. There is a shop with Churchill and War memorabilia and a cafe which serves refreshments and has good toilets [not chemical]
First published in The People's Friend 2004
Leaving the sunlight and the fresh green trees of St James’s Park, I show my pass dated 27 July 1940 and go through a sandbagged entrance down narrow stone steps past into a dimly lit underground maze of long narrow corridors and small rooms. An air raid siren sounds and I almost expect enemy planes to zoom overhead and drop bombs on us. For we are reliving the Second World War when this basement was converted from the dank store under the Office of Public Works in Whitehall [Now the Treasury] into the Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet, Heads of the Armed Services, senior officials and a host of government office workers spent a large part of their time working to win the War.
‘As the son of a British service man and a mother working on coding at Bletchley, this place means a great deal to me’, ‘Humphrey Aylwin Selfe, one of the museum assistants told me. Then as an unmistakable voice starts speaking on the wireless, measured, firm and re-assuring, Humphrey adds. ‘This is the man who led us through the war. Mr Churchill making one of his BBC broadcasts to the nation from down here.’
I asked how far underground we were. ‘Only about ten feet,’ Humphrey told me. ‘But Mr Churchill realised that with a direct hit all the ceilings would probably come down and so you can see heavy red girders supporting the Cabinet Room and other places. At first 500 pound bombs were dropped but later 1,500 and 1,700 pounders landed so it’s lucky we’re still here.’
I make my way along the corridors installed with rifle racks and gas filters past cramped busy offices. Uniformed men are pouring over maps or answering telephones and in other offices young women in neat page boy hair styles and square shouldered 1940 blouses and suits type at heavy manual typewriters, gas masks, fire helmets and a whistle at the ready. Farther along is the map room [Churchill loved maps] with enormous maps on the walls for the minutest military move to be planned and noted. On one in the Atlantic Ocean someone has drawn a caricature of a squatting Adolf giving the Nazi salute. There is also an incredible number of heavy old telephones, black, white, red and green to indicate the different places they were connected to. Then what had been a broom cupboard gloriously delegated to become the transatlantic phone booth direct to President Roosevelt and disguised as a loo. The huge equipment for scrambling all the phones was in Selfridges basement. Then - most impressive, although still very spartan, is the Cabinet Room with tables set with papers as for a Cabinet meeting. Mr Churchill’s large chair is in the far centre facing the meeting with the red box of state papers in front of him. Nothing must be touched except for cleaning and no one must ever sit in his chair. If an air raid begins a red lamp flashes.
‘I was assistant Duty officer down here when Pearl Harbour fell and had to report it to Cabinet Ministers minutes after the 9.o’clock news. I believe a cabinet meeting was held that evening,’ William Frend [now Rev. Professor at Cambridge] told me recently. ‘It was hard work but we just carried on with calculated optimism through this worst part of the War.’
Though the gun racks are empty and the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke tinged with the distinct odour of chemical toilets and no proper drainage dispersed, and rats and other vermin exterminated, you can still imagine how it felt being cooped up here without any fresh air or daylight - never knowing in the centre of London if one’s last hour was going to come. It even makes one think what a medieval castle under siege might have been like [only without chemical toilets!]. It was even worse for the humbler office workers who had to crawl down to a basement even lower to sleep here overnight. No light, no toilet and rats.
Churchill had special living and working quarters above the underground facilities but as raids increased, living accommodation had to be created for Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff and for Mr and Mrs Churchill. In a small room typical of student ‘digs’ with a single bed, small electric fire, fan, dressing table, ewer and wash bowl a girl in a 1940s suit and wearing very bright lipstick is checking her hair in the mirror and is a bit embarrassed when I come along.
‘How do you do. I’m Miss Hughes,’ she says. ‘I’m just making sure everything is in order for Mrs Churchill in case she needs to use this room. To be honest I’m not sure she’s very keen on sleeping here.’
‘Still, no need to install oneself till Gerry floats over, what!’ Major Wade of the Royal Signals winks at Miss Hughes as he marches past with an urgent message. Miss Hughes blushes. Despite the raids and often being in tears from Mr Churchill’s impatient demands the female staff had quite a good time as eligible men outnumbered them enormously.
Even sparser single rooms always with the necessary chamber pot are along the corridor for Churchill’s aides including his faithful private secretary, later Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, his trusted aide Tommy Thompson, George Harvie-Watt, Norman Brook and Desmond Morton. Then a small simple dining room with a table set for four and on the sideboard the essential cigar cutter.
Miss Hughes kindly shows me the tiny kitchen nearby with its little electric cooker and where all waste water had to be carried upstairs and out and Churchill’s cook Mrs Landemare struggled to make appetising dishes and probably keep a number of bottles of champagne on ice.
‘Sometimes Mrs Landemare would be cooking the lunch in No. 10 when the siren sounded,’ the Churchill’s grandson the Hon. Nicholas Soames MP told me. ‘Then she had to transfer the food on to a tray cover it with a shawl to keep it warm and the chauffeur drove her round to where she finished cooking the food.’
However today Marguerite Patten looking wonderfully elegant in a delicate lavender two piece is in the kitchen talking to Gary Rhodes about recipes in the War including spam fritters. She did not cook for the Churchills but she was Food Adviser to the Ministry of Food and created all sorts of delicious recipes encouraging women to make the most of their meat ration with home grown garden vegetables and herbs.
I then come to Churchill’s own bedroom with a map on the wall behind the bed and a large bed tray where he took breakfast, smoked his cigar, read the newspapers and held meetings. His working times were erratic as he took a siesta in the afternoon and then worked till the early hours and expected his staff to be awake when he was. He was completely fearless and often went up on the flat roof of the Government Offices during air raids to watch the ‘Fire’ over London. He visited bombed sites and travelled unafraid overseas to meet other leaders. Although slightly difficult to work for he was loved and honoured by everyone as a great leader. And haven’t the British, most of whom were born after the War, chosen him as the Greatest Briton in History?
On view under glass are some touching letters written to Churchill from King George Vl from Buckingham Palace as of course the King and Queen also spent the War in London and suffered bomb damage and fond letters from the then Princess Elizabeth .
The Cabinet War Rooms open daily from 9.30 to 6.o [10.0 opening in winter] and has disabled easy access. Admission for adults £7.0, children under 16 free and concessions £5.50. There is a shop with Churchill and War memorabilia and a cafe which serves refreshments and has good toilets [not chemical]
First published in The People's Friend 2004
Top Secret Visit to Cabinet War Rooms, London
VISIT TO THE CABINET WAR ROOMS. LONDON
Leaving the sunlight and the fresh green trees of St James’s Park, I show my pass dated 27 July 1940 and go through a sandbagged entrance down narrow stone steps past into a dimly lit underground maze of long narrow corridors and small rooms. An air raid siren sounds and I almost expect enemy planes to zoom overhead and drop bombs on us. For we are reliving the Second World War when this basement was converted from the dank store under the Office of Public Works in Whitehall [Now the Treasury] into the Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet, Heads of the Armed Services, senior officials and a host of government office workers spent a large part of their time working to win the War.
‘As the son of a British service man and a mother working on coding at Bletchley, this place means a great deal to me’, ‘Humphrey Aylwin Selfe, one of the museum assistants told me. Then as an unmistakable voice starts speaking on the wireless, measured, firm and re-assuring, Humphrey adds. ‘This is the man who led us through the war. Mr Churchill making one of his BBC broadcasts to the nation from down here.’
I asked how far underground we were. ‘Only about ten feet,’ Humphrey told me. ‘But Mr Churchill realised that with a direct hit all the ceilings would probably come down and so you can see heavy red girders supporting the Cabinet Room and other places. At first 500 pound bombs were dropped but later 1,500 and 1,700 pounders landed so it’s lucky we’re still here.’
I make my way along the corridors installed with rifle racks and gas filters past cramped busy offices. Uniformed men are pouring over maps or answering telephones and in other offices young women in neat page boy hair styles and square shouldered 1940 blouses and suits type at heavy manual typewriters, gas masks, fire helmets and a whistle at the ready. Farther along is the map room [Churchill loved maps] with enormous maps on the walls for the minutest military move to be planned and noted. On one in the Atlantic Ocean someone has drawn a caricature of a squatting Adolf giving the Nazi salute. There is also an incredible number of heavy old telephones, black, white, red and green to indicate the different places they were connected to. Then what had been a broom cupboard gloriously delegated to become the transatlantic phone booth direct to President Roosevelt and disguised as a loo. The huge equipment for scrambling all the phones was in Selfridges basement. Then - most impressive, although still very spartan, is the Cabinet Room with tables set with papers as for a Cabinet meeting. Mr Churchill’s large chair is in the far centre facing the meeting with the red box of state papers in front of him. Nothing must be touched except for cleaning and no one must ever sit in his chair. If an air raid begins a red lamp flashes.
‘I was assistant Duty officer down here when Pearl Harbour fell and had to report it to Cabinet Ministers minutes after the 9.o’clock news. I believe a cabinet meeting was held that evening,’ William Frend [now Rev. Professor at Cambridge] told me recently. ‘It was hard work but we just carried on with calculated optimism through this worst part of the War.’
Though the gun racks are empty and the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke tinged with the distinct odour of chemical toilets and no proper drainage dispersed, and rats and other vermin exterminated, you can still imagine how it felt being cooped up here without any fresh air or daylight - never knowing in the centre of London if one’s last hour was going to come. It even makes one think what a medieval castle under siege might have been like [only without chemical toilets!]. It was even worse for the humbler office workers who had to crawl down to a basement even lower to sleep here overnight. No light, no toilet and rats.
Churchill had special living and working quarters above the underground facilities but as raids increased, living accommodation had to be created for Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff and for Mr and Mrs Churchill. In a small room typical of student ‘digs’ with a single bed, small electric fire, fan, dressing table, ewer and wash bowl a girl in a 1940s suit and wearing very bright lipstick is checking her hair in the mirror and is a bit embarrassed when I come along.
‘How do you do. I’m Miss Hughes,’ she says. ‘I’m just making sure everything is in order for Mrs Churchill in case she needs to use this room. To be honest I’m not sure she’s very keen on sleeping here.’
‘Still, no need to install oneself till Gerry floats over, what!’ Major Wade of the Royal Signals winks at Miss Hughes as he marches past with an urgent message. Miss Hughes blushes. Despite the raids and often being in tears from Mr Churchill’s impatient demands the female staff had quite a good time as eligible men outnumbered them enormously.
Even sparser single rooms always with the necessary chamber pot are along the corridor for Churchill’s aides including his faithful private secretary, later Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, his trusted aide Tommy Thompson, George Harvie-Watt, Norman Brook and Desmond Morton. Then a small simple dining room with a table set for four and on the sideboard the essential cigar cutter.
Miss Hughes kindly shows me the tiny kitchen nearby with its little electric cooker and where all waste water had to be carried upstairs and out and Churchill’s cook Mrs Landemare struggled to make appetising dishes and probably keep a number of bottles of champagne on ice.
‘Sometimes Mrs Landemare would be cooking the lunch in No. 10 when the siren sounded,’ the Churchill’s grandson the Hon. Nicholas Soames MP told me. ‘Then she had to transfer the food on to a tray cover it with a shawl to keep it warm and the chauffeur drove her round to where she finished cooking the food.’
However today Marguerite Patten looking wonderfully elegant in a delicate lavender two piece is in the kitchen talking to Gary Rhodes about recipes in the War including spam fritters. She did not cook for the Churchills but she was Food Adviser to the Ministry of Food and created all sorts of delicious recipes encouraging women to make the most of their meat ration with home grown garden vegetables and herbs.
I then come to Churchill’s own bedroom with a map on the wall behind the bed and a large bed tray where he took breakfast, smoked his cigar, read the newspapers and held meetings. His working times were erratic as he took a siesta in the afternoon and then worked till the early hours and expected his staff to be awake when he was. He was completely fearless and often went up on the flat roof of the Government Offices during air raids to watch the ‘Fire’ over London. He visited bombed sites and travelled unafraid overseas to meet other leaders. Although slightly difficult to work for he was loved and honoured by everyone as a great leader. And haven’t the British, most of whom were born after the War, chosen him as the Greatest Briton in History?
On view under glass are some touching letters written to Churchill from King George Vl from Buckingham Palace as of course the King and Queen also spent the War in London and suffered bomb damage and fond letters from the then Princess Elizabeth .
The Cabinet War Rooms open daily from 9.30 to 6.o [10.0 opening in winter] and has disabled easy access. Admission for adults £7.0, children under 16 free and concessions £5.50. There is a shop with Churchill and War memorabilia and a cafe which serves refreshments and has good toilets [not chemical]
First published in The People's Friend 2004
Leaving the sunlight and the fresh green trees of St James’s Park, I show my pass dated 27 July 1940 and go through a sandbagged entrance down narrow stone steps past into a dimly lit underground maze of long narrow corridors and small rooms. An air raid siren sounds and I almost expect enemy planes to zoom overhead and drop bombs on us. For we are reliving the Second World War when this basement was converted from the dank store under the Office of Public Works in Whitehall [Now the Treasury] into the Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet, Heads of the Armed Services, senior officials and a host of government office workers spent a large part of their time working to win the War.
‘As the son of a British service man and a mother working on coding at Bletchley, this place means a great deal to me’, ‘Humphrey Aylwin Selfe, one of the museum assistants told me. Then as an unmistakable voice starts speaking on the wireless, measured, firm and re-assuring, Humphrey adds. ‘This is the man who led us through the war. Mr Churchill making one of his BBC broadcasts to the nation from down here.’
I asked how far underground we were. ‘Only about ten feet,’ Humphrey told me. ‘But Mr Churchill realised that with a direct hit all the ceilings would probably come down and so you can see heavy red girders supporting the Cabinet Room and other places. At first 500 pound bombs were dropped but later 1,500 and 1,700 pounders landed so it’s lucky we’re still here.’
I make my way along the corridors installed with rifle racks and gas filters past cramped busy offices. Uniformed men are pouring over maps or answering telephones and in other offices young women in neat page boy hair styles and square shouldered 1940 blouses and suits type at heavy manual typewriters, gas masks, fire helmets and a whistle at the ready. Farther along is the map room [Churchill loved maps] with enormous maps on the walls for the minutest military move to be planned and noted. On one in the Atlantic Ocean someone has drawn a caricature of a squatting Adolf giving the Nazi salute. There is also an incredible number of heavy old telephones, black, white, red and green to indicate the different places they were connected to. Then what had been a broom cupboard gloriously delegated to become the transatlantic phone booth direct to President Roosevelt and disguised as a loo. The huge equipment for scrambling all the phones was in Selfridges basement. Then - most impressive, although still very spartan, is the Cabinet Room with tables set with papers as for a Cabinet meeting. Mr Churchill’s large chair is in the far centre facing the meeting with the red box of state papers in front of him. Nothing must be touched except for cleaning and no one must ever sit in his chair. If an air raid begins a red lamp flashes.
‘I was assistant Duty officer down here when Pearl Harbour fell and had to report it to Cabinet Ministers minutes after the 9.o’clock news. I believe a cabinet meeting was held that evening,’ William Frend [now Rev. Professor at Cambridge] told me recently. ‘It was hard work but we just carried on with calculated optimism through this worst part of the War.’
Though the gun racks are empty and the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke tinged with the distinct odour of chemical toilets and no proper drainage dispersed, and rats and other vermin exterminated, you can still imagine how it felt being cooped up here without any fresh air or daylight - never knowing in the centre of London if one’s last hour was going to come. It even makes one think what a medieval castle under siege might have been like [only without chemical toilets!]. It was even worse for the humbler office workers who had to crawl down to a basement even lower to sleep here overnight. No light, no toilet and rats.
Churchill had special living and working quarters above the underground facilities but as raids increased, living accommodation had to be created for Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff and for Mr and Mrs Churchill. In a small room typical of student ‘digs’ with a single bed, small electric fire, fan, dressing table, ewer and wash bowl a girl in a 1940s suit and wearing very bright lipstick is checking her hair in the mirror and is a bit embarrassed when I come along.
‘How do you do. I’m Miss Hughes,’ she says. ‘I’m just making sure everything is in order for Mrs Churchill in case she needs to use this room. To be honest I’m not sure she’s very keen on sleeping here.’
‘Still, no need to install oneself till Gerry floats over, what!’ Major Wade of the Royal Signals winks at Miss Hughes as he marches past with an urgent message. Miss Hughes blushes. Despite the raids and often being in tears from Mr Churchill’s impatient demands the female staff had quite a good time as eligible men outnumbered them enormously.
Even sparser single rooms always with the necessary chamber pot are along the corridor for Churchill’s aides including his faithful private secretary, later Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, his trusted aide Tommy Thompson, George Harvie-Watt, Norman Brook and Desmond Morton. Then a small simple dining room with a table set for four and on the sideboard the essential cigar cutter.
Miss Hughes kindly shows me the tiny kitchen nearby with its little electric cooker and where all waste water had to be carried upstairs and out and Churchill’s cook Mrs Landemare struggled to make appetising dishes and probably keep a number of bottles of champagne on ice.
‘Sometimes Mrs Landemare would be cooking the lunch in No. 10 when the siren sounded,’ the Churchill’s grandson the Hon. Nicholas Soames MP told me. ‘Then she had to transfer the food on to a tray cover it with a shawl to keep it warm and the chauffeur drove her round to where she finished cooking the food.’
However today Marguerite Patten looking wonderfully elegant in a delicate lavender two piece is in the kitchen talking to Gary Rhodes about recipes in the War including spam fritters. She did not cook for the Churchills but she was Food Adviser to the Ministry of Food and created all sorts of delicious recipes encouraging women to make the most of their meat ration with home grown garden vegetables and herbs.
I then come to Churchill’s own bedroom with a map on the wall behind the bed and a large bed tray where he took breakfast, smoked his cigar, read the newspapers and held meetings. His working times were erratic as he took a siesta in the afternoon and then worked till the early hours and expected his staff to be awake when he was. He was completely fearless and often went up on the flat roof of the Government Offices during air raids to watch the ‘Fire’ over London. He visited bombed sites and travelled unafraid overseas to meet other leaders. Although slightly difficult to work for he was loved and honoured by everyone as a great leader. And haven’t the British, most of whom were born after the War, chosen him as the Greatest Briton in History?
On view under glass are some touching letters written to Churchill from King George Vl from Buckingham Palace as of course the King and Queen also spent the War in London and suffered bomb damage and fond letters from the then Princess Elizabeth .
The Cabinet War Rooms open daily from 9.30 to 6.o [10.0 opening in winter] and has disabled easy access. Admission for adults £7.0, children under 16 free and concessions £5.50. There is a shop with Churchill and War memorabilia and a cafe which serves refreshments and has good toilets [not chemical]
First published in The People's Friend 2004
Holy Week in Malaga - Southern Spain
As the life-sized figure of Jesus Christ riding a donkey comes into view, the swaying movement of those carrying the float, the breeze ruffling his robe, and the candle flames flickering on his face, make him seem uncannily real. The people packing the sloping street watch in awed silence.
Behind the figure walk masked and white-gowned men, wearing the high pointed hoods of the Capuchin order. And behind them come more bearers carrying the Virgin Mary. In a white gown and gold crown, she looks young and lovely. Behind her comes a band playing solemn music; and hundreds more white-gowned people.
It is Semana Santa - Holy Week in Malaga. For the whole week the city will be a theatre, with scenes of the Passion, crucifixion and resurrection being carried in procession throughout the days and nights in a splendidly dramatic pageant.
I was staying in the city, and saw the floats being made ready. There are few places where they can be kept safe from year to year, so most of them are taken apart and stored in sections in churches or warehouses. During Holy Week they are carried to an assembly point on special stretchers, and are then blessed and assembled.
As I was staying near the Chapel of the old Noble Hospital, I watched their preparations in the Chapel grounds. On Monday two large bare platforms appeared: on Tuesday the cross was reverently put in place on one of them, and St John and the holy Maries fixed at its foot. On Wednesday the Virgin Mary was installed on her own platform; and people polished brass candlesticks and made wreaths and crosses with white lilies and carnations. On Maundy Thursday Jesus was fixed on to the cross, and huge white candles were inserted into the holders.
All week long processions dominated the streets. It seemed as though the city never stopped moving and people never stopped watching. Some were moved to tears. A woman told me that she and her friend stood watching every day: it was like sharing in the suffering of Our Lord and Our Lady.
Those who could afford it had seats on wooden stands erected specially for Holy Week; other lucky people watched in comfort from apartment or office windows. But most people, including me, stood on the pavements.
A few floats date back to the 11th century, but most of them developed from the period when Spain was liberated from the Moors, and the Roman Catholic monarchs [Queen Isabella especially] encouraged the carrying of religious statues though the streets as a triumphant declaration of faith.
The traditional statues of the Virgin are mostly beautiful and gloriously attired - looking not unlike Queen Isabella. Only in a few modern ones does she appear as a middle-aged woman in the dark clothes of the time.
Good Friday came, and it was time for the Noble Hospital’s float to parade. In the early afternoon, after Masses had been said all morning in the Cathedral, some 200 young men in long black gowns began wandering nervously about the hospital and chapel grounds, like actors before a play.
I talked to a woman in a Capuchin gown, cloth mask and flat hood, who told me it was the first time she had taken part in the procession, and she was anxious about getting through the six hours without food, drink or rest. But she had made a vow, she said, and she had to keep it. She had comfortable shoes - and it was said that by walking slowly, in step with everyone else, you became mesmerised and stopped noticing your aching feet.
The moment to sally forth arrived. One hundred of the black gowned men moved forward into their positions to bear the float of Jesus on the cross and the other hundred to bear the Virgin Mary. The priest blessed everyone and then with several other priests, five small children, gowned and hooded and an acolyte swinging a censer, he went out into the tree-lined road.
Under the orders of the leaders, the first hundred bearers - all more or less the same height - shouldered the Jesus float, took three steps forward in unison, lurched two steps to the side and four steps back, their gowns swinging rhythmically. Followed by the Virgin Mary float, they triumphantly burst out into the main road, moving slowly step after step behind the priests. We all cheered. Even the wino resting in the shade with his carton of cheap wine, saluted in respect.
The Spanish might be tempted to make their processions more gory spectacles if they were allowed but the Bishop keeps a firm rein on the proceedings. Not that long ago flagellation, when people walked behind the float, their bared backs being whipped until the blood ran, had to be stopped. However, despite complaints, the Bishop allows non-churchgoers and girls in mini skirts to take part in the parade.
Religion, he says, cannot stay shut up in churches. It must go out in the streets as well. And he himself walks in the procession.
First published in Church Times April 1999
Behind the figure walk masked and white-gowned men, wearing the high pointed hoods of the Capuchin order. And behind them come more bearers carrying the Virgin Mary. In a white gown and gold crown, she looks young and lovely. Behind her comes a band playing solemn music; and hundreds more white-gowned people.
It is Semana Santa - Holy Week in Malaga. For the whole week the city will be a theatre, with scenes of the Passion, crucifixion and resurrection being carried in procession throughout the days and nights in a splendidly dramatic pageant.
I was staying in the city, and saw the floats being made ready. There are few places where they can be kept safe from year to year, so most of them are taken apart and stored in sections in churches or warehouses. During Holy Week they are carried to an assembly point on special stretchers, and are then blessed and assembled.
As I was staying near the Chapel of the old Noble Hospital, I watched their preparations in the Chapel grounds. On Monday two large bare platforms appeared: on Tuesday the cross was reverently put in place on one of them, and St John and the holy Maries fixed at its foot. On Wednesday the Virgin Mary was installed on her own platform; and people polished brass candlesticks and made wreaths and crosses with white lilies and carnations. On Maundy Thursday Jesus was fixed on to the cross, and huge white candles were inserted into the holders.
All week long processions dominated the streets. It seemed as though the city never stopped moving and people never stopped watching. Some were moved to tears. A woman told me that she and her friend stood watching every day: it was like sharing in the suffering of Our Lord and Our Lady.
Those who could afford it had seats on wooden stands erected specially for Holy Week; other lucky people watched in comfort from apartment or office windows. But most people, including me, stood on the pavements.
A few floats date back to the 11th century, but most of them developed from the period when Spain was liberated from the Moors, and the Roman Catholic monarchs [Queen Isabella especially] encouraged the carrying of religious statues though the streets as a triumphant declaration of faith.
The traditional statues of the Virgin are mostly beautiful and gloriously attired - looking not unlike Queen Isabella. Only in a few modern ones does she appear as a middle-aged woman in the dark clothes of the time.
Good Friday came, and it was time for the Noble Hospital’s float to parade. In the early afternoon, after Masses had been said all morning in the Cathedral, some 200 young men in long black gowns began wandering nervously about the hospital and chapel grounds, like actors before a play.
I talked to a woman in a Capuchin gown, cloth mask and flat hood, who told me it was the first time she had taken part in the procession, and she was anxious about getting through the six hours without food, drink or rest. But she had made a vow, she said, and she had to keep it. She had comfortable shoes - and it was said that by walking slowly, in step with everyone else, you became mesmerised and stopped noticing your aching feet.
The moment to sally forth arrived. One hundred of the black gowned men moved forward into their positions to bear the float of Jesus on the cross and the other hundred to bear the Virgin Mary. The priest blessed everyone and then with several other priests, five small children, gowned and hooded and an acolyte swinging a censer, he went out into the tree-lined road.
Under the orders of the leaders, the first hundred bearers - all more or less the same height - shouldered the Jesus float, took three steps forward in unison, lurched two steps to the side and four steps back, their gowns swinging rhythmically. Followed by the Virgin Mary float, they triumphantly burst out into the main road, moving slowly step after step behind the priests. We all cheered. Even the wino resting in the shade with his carton of cheap wine, saluted in respect.
The Spanish might be tempted to make their processions more gory spectacles if they were allowed but the Bishop keeps a firm rein on the proceedings. Not that long ago flagellation, when people walked behind the float, their bared backs being whipped until the blood ran, had to be stopped. However, despite complaints, the Bishop allows non-churchgoers and girls in mini skirts to take part in the parade.
Religion, he says, cannot stay shut up in churches. It must go out in the streets as well. And he himself walks in the procession.
First published in Church Times April 1999
Monday 9 April 2007
A Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
The great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is packed with worshippers for Sunday
Mass - locals, tourists and pilgrims. People kneel on the hard stone floor, as there is a shortage of pews. When communion is offered, there is almost a stampede.
Before the high altar, glittering and gloriously ornate in the manner of Spanish cathedrals, the benediction is given in Spanish, English, French and German. Then eight well-built men in dark-red gowns heave in a huge censor and swing it, burning, high over the heads of the congregation.
After weeks in the open air, walking through remote countryside to reach this ancient shrine of St James the Apostle, it can be rather overpowering.
St James’s body was supposedly brought by boat to Galicia after his martyrdom in the Holy Land, and his neglected tomb was rediscovered there 900 years later. From then on devout pilgrims in their thousands, including St Francis, journeyed to the tomb to do penance and to seek spiritual comfort.
Now as then, pilgrimage can be a cleansing process. Walking through open countryside to a place dedicated to higher things, and meeting and talking to thinking people, focuses one’s mind on spiritual values.
In earlier times, all you needed was a staff [to help you to walk], a hat, an open scrip or wallet to give and receive alms, and, to show your destination was Santiago, a scallop shell, the symbol of the saint. These days you need to add to your rucksack toiletries, a small first aid kit, a few clothes, a light sleeping bag, a passport and some money.
In the Middle Ages travelling by land was dangerous; and safe pilgrim routes were established leading from different directions. The most popular was the French route which runs from the Pyrenees across northern Spain. The Benedictines of Cluny built welcoming refuges along the road, and issued the first pilgrim guidebook, Codex Callixtinus. It is still relevant and available in translation.
Rather than walking the hazardous roads across France to Spain, English pilgrims often chose to sail to Corunna [fortified with malmsey to prevent sea-sickness] and I followed this route by taking the ferry to Bilbao, a little further east. I then joined the French route at Pamplona in Navarra, and made my way, alone, to Santiago using some trains and buses, as well as walking.
I stayed mostly at small cheap pensiones where you share a lavatory and eat out. In the refuges, which are spaced out sensibly along the route, you share a unisex bathroom and dormitories with bunk beds, and usually prepare your own food.
Some pilgrims camp out; others spend nights in paradors which are hotels converted from historic buildings. The important thing is that all make their own way to Santiago for their own good reasons.
The French route is marked spasmodically with yellow arrows. It avoids main roads and cities as much as possible, and often takes rough tracks.
In northern Spain the light is bright but soft and the air pure because of the influence of the sea and mountains. The route takes you by pine and oak forests, streams and rivers and rocky land, with meadows and farmland growing maize and barley. Vine-covered slopes and small homesteads with geraniums and washing hanging out make up much of the scenery.
All the way along there are reminders - some in ruins - of medieval buildings that once helped pilgrims. An 11th century Spanish Queen had a beautiful bridge built, the Puenta de la Reina, and pilgrims still use it.
St Dominic of the Causeway, having been turned down by the Monastery of Santiago, devoted his life instead to building roads and refuges for pilgrims. His cathedral always has two chickens in a glass-fronted run, because of a legend about him, which concerns a boy hanged unjustly for rape. His parents, having prayed to the saint for help, begged the judge to release the boy, but the judge joked that the boy was already as dead as the chickens on his plate, whereupon the chickens sprang up and cackled.
The cities along the route to Santiago all have their interest. Burgos was the birthplace of El Cid; Pamplona has its famous Bull Week in July; Logrono is the centre of the La Rioja wine industry, which is at least as old as the pilgrimage; in Leon the 11th century cathedral has a beautiful rose window; in Astorga the Bishop’s Palace is built by Gaudy in his inimitable style.
I met many Spaniards doing the pilgrimage in their own way, in dribs and drabs. Many of them cycled in tight black suits, which slightly destroyed the traditional feel. I drank coffee in an outdoor cafe with three sisters on a week’s holiday and high on romantic religious fervour. A jolly Dutch lady with whom I shared chocolate and churros for breakfast, was on her third pilgrimage, and this time had taken nearly a year over it.
A Buddhist who was a teacher in Scotland spent a lot of time sitting in the sun meditating. He was planning to go on to Finisterre, where traditionally people take off their clothes and wash away past sins in the sea.
You catch your first sight of the Cathedral spires from Monte de Gozo [Mount of Joy], a peaceful hill just outside the city. From there it is still quite a walk and many people take the bus. New halls of residence of the university built up here include pilgrim accommodation. Close to, the cathedral is awesome. It is a baroque granite building set in stark granite plazas, where the only colour and warmth is provided by the Cathedral guides in their gorgeous velvet apparel.
Going through the Door of Glory, as so many pilgrims have done before you, is an emotional moment. You touch the Tree of Jesse just inside, and then embrace and say a prayer at the silver statue of St James behind the high altar. At 12 noon there is a daily Mass for the pilgrims.
Round the corner is an austere reception office. Here you report your arrival, and if you have walked more than 100 miles, or cycled or ridden on horseback for more than 200, you can receive a compostela [certificate].
In the Middle Ages people who were too old or sick or busy to make the journey themselves paid someone else to do it ansd received the compostela. Nowadays such people can come by coach or plane - the effort on their part is as great as that made by healthy young people walking for miles and sleeping rough.
Santiago is a medieval stone city, which is packed with churches, and the university colleges echo to the sound of their bells.
The shops sell souvenirs, including staffs, scallop shells and replicas of the saint’s statue, an amazing amount of jewellery, plastic macs, and a delicious almond cake decorated with a cross and called ‘tarta de Santiago’.
Most of the old shrines have lost their appeal and their pilgrims, but Santiago de Compostela is an exception. The reason may be partly geographical - northern Spain is still largely unspoiled and has a pleasant climate. It might also be because the Spanish love walking - they stroll for hours in the evenings and at weekends, and in Holy Week they spend about six hours in processions.
But perhaps it is also because the cult of St James took root in an ancient and holy Celtic region, and still has a healing power that is timeless.
First published in Church Times on 24 July 1998. Included in the anthology To be a Pilgrim [published Kevin Mayhew] in 2002
Mass - locals, tourists and pilgrims. People kneel on the hard stone floor, as there is a shortage of pews. When communion is offered, there is almost a stampede.
Before the high altar, glittering and gloriously ornate in the manner of Spanish cathedrals, the benediction is given in Spanish, English, French and German. Then eight well-built men in dark-red gowns heave in a huge censor and swing it, burning, high over the heads of the congregation.
After weeks in the open air, walking through remote countryside to reach this ancient shrine of St James the Apostle, it can be rather overpowering.
St James’s body was supposedly brought by boat to Galicia after his martyrdom in the Holy Land, and his neglected tomb was rediscovered there 900 years later. From then on devout pilgrims in their thousands, including St Francis, journeyed to the tomb to do penance and to seek spiritual comfort.
Now as then, pilgrimage can be a cleansing process. Walking through open countryside to a place dedicated to higher things, and meeting and talking to thinking people, focuses one’s mind on spiritual values.
In earlier times, all you needed was a staff [to help you to walk], a hat, an open scrip or wallet to give and receive alms, and, to show your destination was Santiago, a scallop shell, the symbol of the saint. These days you need to add to your rucksack toiletries, a small first aid kit, a few clothes, a light sleeping bag, a passport and some money.
In the Middle Ages travelling by land was dangerous; and safe pilgrim routes were established leading from different directions. The most popular was the French route which runs from the Pyrenees across northern Spain. The Benedictines of Cluny built welcoming refuges along the road, and issued the first pilgrim guidebook, Codex Callixtinus. It is still relevant and available in translation.
Rather than walking the hazardous roads across France to Spain, English pilgrims often chose to sail to Corunna [fortified with malmsey to prevent sea-sickness] and I followed this route by taking the ferry to Bilbao, a little further east. I then joined the French route at Pamplona in Navarra, and made my way, alone, to Santiago using some trains and buses, as well as walking.
I stayed mostly at small cheap pensiones where you share a lavatory and eat out. In the refuges, which are spaced out sensibly along the route, you share a unisex bathroom and dormitories with bunk beds, and usually prepare your own food.
Some pilgrims camp out; others spend nights in paradors which are hotels converted from historic buildings. The important thing is that all make their own way to Santiago for their own good reasons.
The French route is marked spasmodically with yellow arrows. It avoids main roads and cities as much as possible, and often takes rough tracks.
In northern Spain the light is bright but soft and the air pure because of the influence of the sea and mountains. The route takes you by pine and oak forests, streams and rivers and rocky land, with meadows and farmland growing maize and barley. Vine-covered slopes and small homesteads with geraniums and washing hanging out make up much of the scenery.
All the way along there are reminders - some in ruins - of medieval buildings that once helped pilgrims. An 11th century Spanish Queen had a beautiful bridge built, the Puenta de la Reina, and pilgrims still use it.
St Dominic of the Causeway, having been turned down by the Monastery of Santiago, devoted his life instead to building roads and refuges for pilgrims. His cathedral always has two chickens in a glass-fronted run, because of a legend about him, which concerns a boy hanged unjustly for rape. His parents, having prayed to the saint for help, begged the judge to release the boy, but the judge joked that the boy was already as dead as the chickens on his plate, whereupon the chickens sprang up and cackled.
The cities along the route to Santiago all have their interest. Burgos was the birthplace of El Cid; Pamplona has its famous Bull Week in July; Logrono is the centre of the La Rioja wine industry, which is at least as old as the pilgrimage; in Leon the 11th century cathedral has a beautiful rose window; in Astorga the Bishop’s Palace is built by Gaudy in his inimitable style.
I met many Spaniards doing the pilgrimage in their own way, in dribs and drabs. Many of them cycled in tight black suits, which slightly destroyed the traditional feel. I drank coffee in an outdoor cafe with three sisters on a week’s holiday and high on romantic religious fervour. A jolly Dutch lady with whom I shared chocolate and churros for breakfast, was on her third pilgrimage, and this time had taken nearly a year over it.
A Buddhist who was a teacher in Scotland spent a lot of time sitting in the sun meditating. He was planning to go on to Finisterre, where traditionally people take off their clothes and wash away past sins in the sea.
You catch your first sight of the Cathedral spires from Monte de Gozo [Mount of Joy], a peaceful hill just outside the city. From there it is still quite a walk and many people take the bus. New halls of residence of the university built up here include pilgrim accommodation. Close to, the cathedral is awesome. It is a baroque granite building set in stark granite plazas, where the only colour and warmth is provided by the Cathedral guides in their gorgeous velvet apparel.
Going through the Door of Glory, as so many pilgrims have done before you, is an emotional moment. You touch the Tree of Jesse just inside, and then embrace and say a prayer at the silver statue of St James behind the high altar. At 12 noon there is a daily Mass for the pilgrims.
Round the corner is an austere reception office. Here you report your arrival, and if you have walked more than 100 miles, or cycled or ridden on horseback for more than 200, you can receive a compostela [certificate].
In the Middle Ages people who were too old or sick or busy to make the journey themselves paid someone else to do it ansd received the compostela. Nowadays such people can come by coach or plane - the effort on their part is as great as that made by healthy young people walking for miles and sleeping rough.
Santiago is a medieval stone city, which is packed with churches, and the university colleges echo to the sound of their bells.
The shops sell souvenirs, including staffs, scallop shells and replicas of the saint’s statue, an amazing amount of jewellery, plastic macs, and a delicious almond cake decorated with a cross and called ‘tarta de Santiago’.
Most of the old shrines have lost their appeal and their pilgrims, but Santiago de Compostela is an exception. The reason may be partly geographical - northern Spain is still largely unspoiled and has a pleasant climate. It might also be because the Spanish love walking - they stroll for hours in the evenings and at weekends, and in Holy Week they spend about six hours in processions.
But perhaps it is also because the cult of St James took root in an ancient and holy Celtic region, and still has a healing power that is timeless.
First published in Church Times on 24 July 1998. Included in the anthology To be a Pilgrim [published Kevin Mayhew] in 2002
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