Inspirations | Matt Wingett

Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman – the Endless depths, the epic reach

By Matt on Friday, August 5, 2022

As Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman tv series premieres on Netflix, Matt Wingett reflects on the sprawling comic books containing Neil Gaiman’s modern-day myth cycle, and the deep roots of Neil’s mythic story-telling.

The Absolute Sandman Number 1
one of many entry points for the committed reader

When I first showed The Sandman trailer to a friend a few days ago, he shrugged and told me: “I’ve had it with superhero movies…”

“But it isn’t a superhero movie,” I shot back. “Don’t let the comic book format fool you. This is something far stranger and more wonderful.”

The Sandman, Number 1, first published Jan 10th 1989

Perhaps my friend’s confusion came from knowing there was a DC Comics crime-fighting Sandman in the 1940s who was part of the Justice Society of America… but, as I told my friend, this is not that Sandman.

Neil’s Sandman is The Sandman: the mysterious otherworldly being who leaves dust in the eyes of the newly awake. Neil’s Sandman is richer, deeper and in many, many ways far scarier than even the darkest of superheroes – or supervillains, come to that – though it’s true that both genres have shared roots in the myths and legends of distant and not-so-distant past.

Neil’s stories are born from the night monsters and daytime horrors whispered to children to keep them in check; from the instructive folk wisdom told by forest mothers to protect their wards; from the awe-filled wonder of ancient humans when they first contemplated the nature of death and dreams and destiny; from the shuddering terror felt when encountering the deeply uncanny, from the shamanic trance and the psychoactive delirium of the visionary – and from the despair born of attempts to shed light on the dread unknown.

It is from this branch of storytelling born of ancient fears and awe at a world-beyond-reason that Gaiman’s Sandman derives. Also known as Dream or Morpheus among other names, The Sandman is the God-King who presides over unbridled imagination-set-free – and whose presence is at times morally ambiguous.

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman cycle is not a conventional hero narrative. It is more a vast labyrinth chattering and rumbling with unknown yet half-familiar entities. Here, a human hero or superhero rising to a type of godhood is not the central business of the stories as per many other comics. Instead it is those eternal entities that were always gods, or who were always above and beyond the gods. Yes, human beings become embroiled in their business, but the focus is far different from the hero / superhero story.

Instead, what Neil Gaiman offers the explorer who enters his Sandman story-maze is a long walk through the myth-making potentials of the human psyche. It is a tour de force in different types and modes of storytelling, a journey through history, an epic collection of modern-made legends. It is deep and broad and profound.

The Sandman gives powerful insights into the human condition. It reawakens the superstitious dread that prehistoric humanity once felt at the uncanny nature of the real world and of imagination (which at the time were, and perhaps still are, the same thing). It speaks this truth loudly: the world we live in now is shaped not by rational people doing rational things, but by the creatures of the imagination who lurk in the shadowlands of fable and dream. Some are controlled by a reasoning mind, some wreak havoc in the world, unseen and unrecognised.

Not to overstate things (I hope) but what I found in The Sandman was an epic overview of humanity that I sometimes find in the great religious texts.

The Old Testament (that roughly patched-together mix of secret origin story, histories, supernatural horror, love poetry, tragedy, battles, laments and individual sufferings) is one comparison, though the myth cycle of The Old Testament has at its centre a bulldozing god-monoculture.

Other myth cycles and collections also find their echoes in The Sandman. The strange and wonderful Mabinogion, with its transformations and wild tales is one. The brooding beauty of the Kalevala with its epic of creation, the Greek myths, the Nordic sagas – echoes and memories of these story worlds swirl in the dark pages of Neil’s magical book.

Mythic family feuds are big in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

The Sandman thus becomes a massive collection of different types of tale and writing, from fairytales in the style of the Arabian Nights, through revenge set-pieces, hero narratives, quests, whimsical alternative realities to much more beyond.

While the books include in early parts an eponymous god-hero on a quest to recover his lost helm and realm, it also includes ordinary people, their lives and deaths – sometimes pointless, sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic.

It’s when the focus shifts from the Endless and other supernatural entities to humanity that a central quality at the very heart of this collection of tales is revealed: compassion.

I admit when I first read The Sandman I did not know what to make of the taciturn Morpheus – a Robert Smith look-alike wandering the realm of the Unconscious delivering and managing the ever-shifting world of dreams. (And if that is not a metaphor for the author, then I don’t know what is.)

But as each story unfolded and took its own course, I was increasingly overawed by something else: by the massive God’s-eye-view of the author, and also by his fellow-feeling.

Stories are told of countless people mainstream society would have considered misfits when it was written: lesbians and gays, bisexuals and transexuals, black women seeking to make a living, a once-beautiful white woman inexplicably deformed, attendees at a sex party, travelling actors bewildered at why they are acting to a strange, fay audience.

Deeply human dilemmas play out in The Sandman

What is really noteworthy is this: rather than the caricatures the popular media at the time liked to make – screaming queens and diesel dykes, freaks and outsiders – in The Sandman, they are shown as exactly what they are: real people. There are homosexuals in loving, stable relationships, a lesbian couple muddling through dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, a transwoman rejected by her home community who (like Holly in Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side) “shaved her legs then he was a she” and moved to New York City, and so many others besides. This collection of tales is something far bigger than a comic book. Somehow, these dreams on the page reveal more about real life than the real life we see before our eyes.

From A Game of You in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

The Sandman is an extraordinary, sprawling work, of which it is possible, perhaps, to say: “All of humanity is here.”

Some of the stories are uncomfortable. Some are nasty. Some are the experiments of a young man learning his craft. Sometimes you get the feeling that Neil read something about a character from history (e.g: an ancient Roman emperor) and in order to internalise what he read, he thought he would simply do a story about it. Sometimes a moment of inspiration, perhaps waking in the night to realise the extraordinary otherness of cats was enough to fire off a whimsical tale – but there is an overall pattern in the stories – a flow to the eccentric byeways and dead-ends, to the loops and reprises of characters and ideas that is genuinely monumental.

Indeed, the leather-style black bindings of my books are no less than that. 3,000 pages of coloured paper – each black slab standing as the doorway to countless possibilities, to infinite worlds.

The Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s magnum opus. Had it been written 4000 years ago, Gaiman would be the visionary God-king of his own realm, adored by his worshippers who look on at him with that mixture of wonder and fear known as awe.

Or perhaps that isn’t then, but that’s what’s happening now.

Inspirations

The Gramophone Player – an exercise in Magical Realism

By Matt on Sunday, May 15, 2022

On Thursday 12th May I was invited by Maggie Bowers of the University of Portsmouth to join her, Belinda Mitchell and Peter Vincent-Jones to join in a seminar / workshop on Magical Realism at Wymering Manor, just north of Portsmouth. It was a fun evening in which we explored the idea of layers by using LiDAR images of the house taken by Belinda as a starting point to consider what layers could exist in a magical realist context…

The second part of the session was dedicated to getting people writing their own responses to the room through a short workshop we put together. We searched the building for something that fired off our imaginations that we could respond to in a quick ten minute writing session. Here’s what I came up with:

The Gramophone Player

How many voices has that trumpet on the gramphone player played over the years?

Starting in the early years, it played the charity recording Be British – a disc made to raise funds for families of the victims of the Titanic disaster. The performer’s disembodied voice staunchly recited a patriotic poem about the Anglo-Saxon race that stirred the blood of its listeners – delivering the necessary cold compress to the bruised national psyche.

Then there was the voice of Richard Tauber, singing Schumann’s Winterreise that moved listeners to tears. And Al Bowly sang of how Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall one wistful day in 1933 as the sunlight came in through an open door allowing summer to flood in.

The Gramophone Player at Wymering Manor.

These are just some of the voices the gramophone has spoken with over the years. But what voices has the horn – that giant ear-trumpet – listened to in that room?

If one could play those voices back, it would tell of the lives of the people here. Those in anguish at the declaration of the Great War and of World War 2. The delights of a wedding party on a bright spring day, perhaps? – A photograph still hangs in that room with a garden full of august guests from that very day.

Playing those and many other voices back, we hear in the shadows of the gramophone player’s metal trumpet live accounts of woe and heartbreak, of joy and excitement. We hear the sounds that tell us of England over a period of 80 years. Simple sounds, like the fire burning in the grate or the scolding of the kitchen skivvy by the housekeeper for those dropped plates, voices raised, subdued, loud and secret.

A wheel of voices, circling, spinning round, playing back the life that was here, and somehow as we hear them, making the world anew – a world created from moments of lives not seen, but once heard.

So we come to you – the most recent person this gramophone player has heard. Now, as you stand before it, be careful what you think of when you turn that handle. For time, too, is a circle spinning the universe – and if you don’t clear your mind, you can’t know where you may end up, or when you may arrive, as the voice-rich cogs and springs transport you to that newmade world.

Inspirations Writing

Work In Progress – Section: The House of Grain – an extract

By Matt on Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Here’s the latest from the strange pagan novel I’m writing:

The sun is already climbing by the time we set out along the rough track from the fields. It is not long before heat combines with beer and my head is a hot ball of discomfort, jostled and jolted on rutted roads. I sit up to peek out over the raised sides of the cart, my head swimming. Broad fields in strips, those already furrowed are lines of bare wounds open to sky. Between each strip earth baulks strewn with weeds and low hedges. And the ox teams work on.

The alewife sees me looking out – a sharp admonition – back down, blanket pulled over face.

I think I must doze. Awake again, sweat is soaking rough cloth. I uncover to gulp air, head aspin, staring up. Not a cloud, clear blue. The oppressive air makes my is head flush with heat, and my skull develops a steady throb like the slow grinding of a quern on oats. Spots of rain fall. Surprised, I look up and around. Still no clouds. Am I drunk, then? Wherever the rain is from, I am grateful for its washing over the cart. It builds to a sudden squall, clearing my head and soothing its pain. A rainbow arches across the clear sky. The alewife huddles against the rain and stares down at me a moment, thoughtful.

The squall passes as quickly as it came, followed by the fresh nose of persichor, deep pungency of clean green: scent of spirits imbuing every bush and watching from every plant. I feel them huddling around me, growing living things. I know they sense me.

I sit up again. Ahead, in the middle distance on a low flat plain by a winding river, a low settlement squatting behind an encircling moat and palisade. Others dotted away into the distance behind it. The track we are on skirts its edge. At four points around the circumference, a tall white pole, each adorned with its own emblems. Passing the first, I see animals carved along its full length – wolf chases bull chases dog chases cat chases mouse. The next is populous with carved insect life – bee, fly, moth, wasp, ant, beetle in thousands of iterations. The third is luxuriant with carvings of wheat and barley, the fourth with sheep, cattle, goats, swine, oxen and horses. From the tops of each, blue and white cloth streamers – aflutter in the wind.

The alewife turns to me and tells me once more: “Cover up, girl”. We enter beneath a high gateway. Inside, through a crack in the cart’s side I slice the village into stolen glances: low thatched cruck houses made with arching beams rising from the ground. A woman stooping over a sheep pinned helpless between her knees beside a pile of yellow fleeces brandishes shears in sunlight. Elsewhere, a group of women gently drawing wool onto drop spindles, another leaning over a large barrel filled with red dye, holding a bolt of cloth under the water..

As we grind through, the air is thick with greetings to the alewife. Neighbours call and hail, the women asking after their menfolk in the fields and for news from other steads. It is a bright and cheery scene, far different from the sombre village of my distant boyhood that seems now only to come to me in flashes and feels as if it were never mine.

At one moment, a shadow falls and we travel in a silent place at the heart of the village. I am cold and I pull in under my blanket. A presence here, dark, brooding. Something vibrating in the air that my gossamer sense can read. Rage and repression waiting to break and destroy if it can. I quiver in my skin until the shadow that falls over me passes, and the cart continues on its way. But even though the malevolent presence dies away, the air around me vibrates my nails and hair, teeth and skin with the residue of anger.

I steal another glance. At the farther edge of the village stands a place unlike the low cruck houses we have passed. A two-storey building, dun-coloured daub over wattle walls hung between thick oak uprights, some of the ground floor panels infilled with rough clay brick. A tall lean-to barn built onto one side. Painted in black on the brown daub above the oak door: a sheaf of barley.

“Here it is then,” the alewife says cheerily under her breath. “The House of Grain. You just stay tucked away, and you’ll see.”

She drives the cart through the barn door. Here, the air is rich with the smell of malt and the dry presence of grain that sits high in the nose and at the back of the throat. She closes the door and comes to me.

“Come,” she says, helping me climb down from the cart with a gentle hand on my arms, then guiding me through the grain store loaded with sacks and guarded by three black cats who stare down at me with green, unblinking eyes. We step through a low door to another room, where a copper vat as wide as my outstretched arms is set in a rough brick block, a blackened opening below revealing its purpose for heating the copper. In the vat, a sweet-smelling liquid with a thick foamy crust and the acid smell of fermentation. I resist a strong desire to plunge my hands into that creamy surface.

The vat room is tall stretching up through both storeys. On a network of beams sits a a life-size doll, resting in a place of honour high on one beam, where it presides over the room. She is a woman of corn, braided hair winding over her head in long plaits that give the illusion of a glow like the rising sun. Her arms are outstretched towards me, palms upward, in a gesture of welcome. She is enthroned on a seat carved with ears of corn and overlooks a raised vegetable kingdom: the beams across the ceiling hung with green nature – herbs and leaves, dried or quick, some still curling and drawing sap through their stalks that wind around upright beams, growing up from where they are rooted beneath the earthen floor. Other plants are cut and hung to dry – a vista of living and once-living things: broad leaved and narrow, thick-stalked and slender. One plant has roots in the shape of a man, arms and legs splayed, head set back as if ready to shriek. Among this hanging garden, pairs of eyes of mice tremble, docile, wide eyed. Throughout all, the strong nose of grainy sweetness, and a coolness here that raises goosebumps on my arms.

Then I see her. In the shadows at one side of the room frozen in the act of cutting herb stalks is a frail young woman of the most startling beauty. White as the snow of my home, she has platinum hair and the most piercing blue eyes that settle on me with an unreadable expression…

Inspirations Writing

A Pagan Story – an early hero myth – experimental novel

By Matt on Tuesday, January 26, 2021

I have been working on a pagan story, an experimental novel, and reached a section that required a myth cycle. This is the starting point of that cycle. It just fell out of the fingers, and this is how it appears in first draft with minor corrections. I have no idea where it will take me…

How do they get here, these night visitors? I remember as if peering through a crack in a wall, seeing only a limited scene, how I asked my mother this once. As a woman and thus a keeper of the Old Lore, she told me the story with a smile on her face that told me she was telling me this for entertainment. But later when I asked about it, she was deadly serious that every word was true. She said:

Sjemantuk the brave one found the Old Gods were real by firing an arrow into the sky. This is how it happened.

Sjemantuk was a mighty warrior who had been told the Old Gods lived in the cloudland, upside down above the neathland. So, he decided to see if the sky was flat, as he had been told.

He tried once, making a mighty bow from the rib of a whale that he found sleeping in the earth waiting to wake up. But the arrow fell to earth, burying its stone tip deep in the ground and leaving a deep hole, and this is how the first sea was made. The whales sleeping in the ground awoke and swam in the waters that poured into the New Deep.

Sjemantuk made another bow from the trunk of the One Mighty Tree, Hjemfang. He flexed his muscles in a stupendous effort and after drawing this massive bow with his powerful grip, sent a great shaft with a brass tip into the sky. It glanced from the sky but did not stick, and fell to earth. Where it hit, water began to leak from the sky, and this is when the rains began. The bow also broke under the great strain, and the shattering wood of bow and arrow made all the forests in the world.

Still Sjemantuk wondered how he might best travel to the land of the sky.

One day, as he was walking, he caught the Sun and Rain in discussion over a mountain top. Watching closely, he saw their child, the Rainbow, had wandered away from them to the next mountain. Sjemantuk the hunter sneaked upon Lusjak Rainchild and tried to catch him-her. But Lusjak was too clever for him, and every time he pounced upon her, he-she was elsewhere. And so he chased him-her up the mountainside while she laughed at his bumbling efforts.

But then, high on the mountain, Sjemantuk found the magic stone that is both cold and clear, and trapped Lusjak within it as he-she taunted Sjemantuk. Now, when light shone through the magic stone, Lusjak appeared. Lusjak was frozen solid in the ice. Sjemantuk took hold of her-him and tied a string made from the hair of rainfall shedding on the mountain. In this way, he fashioned a bow that was both subtle and powerful. To this he added a lightning shaft made from the the old serpent Manark, and drawing Lusfang, the greatest bow the world has ever seen, he sent it flying to the sky. The arrow caught fast in the sky. And then Sjemantuk, having tied a rope to its tail, climbed upward to the sky.

Inspirations

Carnival Row – A fairytale for our dark times

By Matt on Monday, September 2, 2019

Having just watched the entire run of the first series of Carnival Row, I can only say – when’s the next one?

Set in an alternative world more sinister and brutal than Lyra’s in His Dark Materials, this is most definitely a fable for grown-ups.

We discover here a well-realised world in which Victorian-level technology intersects with the wonders and magic of the creatures of Tir Na Nog – a once-fabled realm of real pixies, centaurs and other mythological beasts – whose unspoiled natural homeland two rival empires battle to rule: The Iron Pact and the Burgh.

When the Burgh withdraws from the war, leaving Tir Na Nog in the hands of the even more brutal Iron Pact, refugees come flooding into The Burgh, leading to all kinds of unsettling developments which strain the already tearing fabric of Burgh society.

This, then, is the setting for a very real discussion of the nature of racism in the realm of faery and humans. The half-human half-ram race of “pucks” are essentially slaves in the Burgh, and all Fae, nicknamed Kritches, are despised by human society. But there are glimmers of civilization, and acceptance among a few – and one strand that even echoes Beauty and the Beast in a very much grittier setting.

The story is brilliantly unwound. At times a love story, at others a devastating commentary on populist politicians who seek to create chaos in order to provide themselves with opportunities for advancement, at others still a version of Ripper Street with fairies, and occasionally a commentary on inter-racial (inter-species!?) sex and relationships, the show is beautifully filmed.

Cara Delevingne has a powerful presence, and Orlando Bloom is expertly matched as the grizzled and hardened inspector seeking to track down a murderer who is killing Fae folk. The scripting is usually pitch perfect with very, very occasional lapses into predictable dialogue.

In all, it’s a steampunk dream with a very dark edge, splashed with power hunger, bigotry and the desperate need to find love and meaning in a world that before our eyes lurches further and further to the right. If this isn’t a fairytale for our dark times, I don’t know what is!

Inspirations

When The Snow Witch Escaped Me

By Matt on Sunday, September 1, 2019

As a writer, I’m going through something of an adjustment at the moment. Something I never really factored into my experience as an author is happening to me.

To explain – some time ago I wrote a novel based in Portsmouth called The Snow Witch. I personally know it’s the best piece of fiction writing I’ve ever done. I wrote it in a particularly ethereal style, but made the characters and the town really gritty and real. Some I made deliberately enigmatic. This combination led to the book coming out in the genre of magical realism.

Magical realism is a fabulous genre. It mixes the allegorical, the real and the mystical into a quite addictive brew that plays with your sense of what is possible.

I knew I had done something right when people who read it approached me and told me how much they enjoyed it. Over and over again. I was selling my books off a market stall once, telling a prospective customer about it, when a previous buyer marched across to me having spotted me, their arm outstretched, stared at me intensely and pronounced: “That’s brilliant!” then marched off.

This is deeply gratifying.

But recently, an artist, Lucille Scott from Little Duck Forge approached me and asked me if she could run an art exhibition based on the book. This was again, deeply flattering. So, we are having an art exhibition in Cascades in autumn 2019 based on the book. 40 artists have signed up for it. It is quite extraordinary.

Then, another artist came to me, asking to make the book the centre of another arts project. This has become Cursed City – which tells another new story of Donitza Kravitch, the book’s eponymous witch – that takes place in Portsmouth, though social media, street art and live events.

Much of the original story takes place in The Model Village, Southsea. Last Thursday I went down there to meet up with local artist James Waterfield and Roy Hanney, who is the creator of this project. James is a great local artist, and he had been working on a secret project as part of Cursed City.

He had created two figurines to place in the Model Village both depicting characters from my book. I looked at them and had a moment of real dumbfoundedness. Basically, I was holding an action figure in my hand that was his conception of Donitza. Someone had made a whole new work of art based on my creation!

I’ve worked with artists before, but nothing – absolutely nothing like this has ever happened to me. It felt surreal. Like, a thing that I thought of had come to life, stepped into reality, independently of me. I didn’t know what to think.

The figurines of Donitza playing her violin and Reynold Lissitch pasting up street art are now safely installed in the village. And I feel like reality is shifting for me. That Donitza has escaped the pages of my book, and begun to take on a life of her own. And I am standing, watching her move and grow, and am bewildered.

Inspirations

A New Book – Mysteries of Portsmouth, Chapter 1

By Matt on Tuesday, August 27, 2019

01. Ancient Mysteries of Portsmouth

The earliest accounts of Portsmouth

Most historians agree the little Hampshire village of Portchester is the father of the city of Portsmouth, and was already an ancient settlement when Portsmouth was a muddy island with a few fishing and hunting communities scattered across it. Portchester’s Roman castle (the best preserved example north of the Alps) dates back to the 3rd Century, and was built as part of the Saxon Shore defences designed to protect Britain from marauding Saxon invaders. But even back then when Portus Adurni was new (as the Romans called Portchester Castle), the settlement at Portchester was already ancient.

Before we jump into the mysteries and legends of Portchester, let’s look at what we know for sure about the village and castle, at the point it emerges from the mists of myth into history.

Portchester – Heart of an Empire

The man in command of Portchester Castle and the rest of the Saxon Shore castles just after they were built in the 3rd Century was also the commander of the Classis Britannica, the Roman Fleet that protected the English Channel from pirates. Carausius had started as a Belgian pilot and fighter, but proved so effective as a leader of men that he rose through the ranks of the fleet. A brilliant sea fighter, he had impressive success in quelling Saxon and Frankish piracy in the English Channel, both in Gaul and Britain and was given control of the fleet.

However, rumours soon began to circulate around Rome that Carausius often would wait for Saxon pirates to make raids before he engaged with them – thus enabling him to help himself to the treasure they had stolen, and keep it for himself.

Whether this was the gossip of jealous rivals or true, the effect was that in 286, Roman Emperor Diocletian sentenced Carausius to death. This proved to be a tactical error, because Carausius was still in Britain at the time. When Carausius heard he was being recalled to Rome to meet his fate, he realised he had nothing to lose, declared Britain a separate empire equal to Rome, and drove off Roman attacks.

Secure in his independence behind his forts, Carausius set about creating a rival state to Rome. He minted his own coins from high quality bullion that he hoped would boost his credibility over his Roman rivals and set about running an independent Britannia.

This early version of Brexit came to an end after his betrayal in 293 by his treasurer, Allectus, and Britain was once again taken back under Roman Imperial control.

Carausius’s story is a pretty exciting early history… but there are many more myths and legends. They include bloodthirsty betrayals, murder, a giant, the Holy Grail… and even King Arthur himself!

The Myth of Ferrex and Perrex

Ancient chronicler and recorder of unreliable histories, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote in his History Of The Kings Of Britain in the 1200s that the original British name for Portchester was Caer Peris. He tells the following story as to how it got its name:

Around 491 BCE, two brothers lived in terrible rivalry. They were the sons of King Sisil “The Fox”, who founded the town of Silchester, and was so successful a leader that he was declared supreme chieftain of the area.

Though he had been a great chieftain, he hadn’t been able to control the bitter rivalry between his two sons Ferrex and Perrex, and after he died, they went to war with each other to gain control of their father’s lands. Ferrex, his mother’s favourite, was forced to retreat to Gaul by Perrex after a fierce battle. When Ferrex raised an army and returned to fight his brother, things went wrong for him again. This time, Perrex defeated and slew his brother.

Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us Perrex set about founding the fortified town where the Roman Portchester Castle would later stand, naming it Caer Peris – that is, Perrex’s Castle.

This is not the end of the story, however. Perrex’s mother, Idon, enraged at the fate of her favourite son, stole into Perrex’s room while he was asleep, and with the help of her maidens “cut him all in pieces.”

This is not a recommended model of motherhood.

Gurguntus and Beline

Another mythical beginning to Portchester is told by a later historian, Stow, who attributes the founding of Porchester to Gurguntus, the son of Beline in the year 375 BCE. However, Stow also says the same thing happened in Norwich with the same people in the same year – so it might be that he got a little bit muddled.

Nothing much more is offered about this supposed founding of the fortifications – however, it should be said there are many archaeological remains dating back to the pre-Christian era in the area. So, whether there’s any truth in these early myths or not, there’s no doubt there was early settlement and the building of defensive structures in the Portchester long before the Romans came.

Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Pompey (or Cymbeline’s sons, anyway)

The next mention Geoffrey of Monmouth makes of Caer Peris brings is to the First Century, during the period the Romans were still quelling the troublesome and rebellious Britons, after the Roman invasion in the year 43.

This account involves a young British king, Guiderius, the son of one king Cunobelinus, otherwise known as Cymbeline to anyone who knows their Shakespeare.

“After the death of Cymbeline,” writes Geoffrey, “the government of Britain fell to Guiderius, his son. This prince refused to pay tribute to the Romans, for which reason Claudius, Emperor of Rome, marched against him.”

The story goes that Hamo, the commander of the Roman forces made an attack on Caer Peris, and “began to block up the gate with a wall,” probably with the view of starving the inhabitants into surrender.

In the fighting that followed, Hamo killed Guiderius.

However, this was not the end of the matter. Guiderius’s brother, Arviragus, mightily enraged, took command of the Britons. They fought so desperately under him that they drove the Romans back to their galleys.

Once more, this was not the end of the matter. Later, when the Britons had departed, Claudius assaulted the fortification again, and this time he took it for Rome.

The rest, as they say, is history. Literally.

King Arthur and the invasion of Portsmouth

Another ancient story about the defence of Portsmouth takes us fully into the realms of Arthurian Romance.

Many of the early King Arthur stories date back to a time when Britain was being invaded by Saxon tribes, just after the Romans had left Britain’s shores as the Empire came under increasing attack at the centre.

The reality or otherwise of King Arthur is hotly debated. Whether Arthur was an imaginary folk hero spoken about around British camp fires to keep up British morale hundreds of years later, a soldier in the battles that occurred between the Britons and the Saxons, a vestige of a sungod (the twelve battles he fights that push him further West, his death, disappearance in the west and subsequent promised return are an interesting echo of the twelve months of the year, sunset and sunrise) or something else, doesn’t really matter for this book. The stories that have been woven around this most enigmatic of figures who stands on the boundaries of history and mythology are as rich in story detail as he is elusive in fact. But what’s great about Arthur is the amazing amount of stories this figure has inspired.

From soldier, through war leader, to king and finally emperor of a vast land, the legends about Arthur are increasingly embellished by the romance writers of the Middle Ages. In fact, the first description of Arthur as “emperor” is found in connection with Portsmouth. It’s in a poem dedicated to the death of another Celtic hero of Welsh literature – Geraint mab Erbin, that is, Geraint son of Erbin.

Geraint was a popular figure associated with southwestern Britain and South Wales in the late 6th century. He became most famous for an entirely fictional romance written about him in Welsh called Geraint and Enid, which mimics a similar 12th Century poem by French mediaeval poet Chretien de Troyes.

But Geraint had been around in literature long before this romance, and older poems speak about him as a real person. Thus, the very much earlier poem Geraint son of Erbin appears to be a true lament for the death of a British hero, killed in battle.

The location of the confrontation is given as Llongborth – meaning “haven of ships”, which writers and historians have identified with Langport in Somerset – or with Portsmouth harbour. The poem tells of the slaying of Geraint, a Celtic prince, by the Saxons in the 6th Century.

Could the ancient poem really be Portsmouth-related? Is there any other evidence of a battle in the 6th Century in Portsmouth in which a British hero was killed?

Interestingly enough, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles also contain a mention of the invasion of Portsmouth for the year 501 , as follows:

Port and his two sons, Bieda and Mægla, came with two ships to Britain at the place which is called Portsmouth. They soon landed, and slew on this spot a young Briton of very high rank.

Is it possible that the poem Geraint mab Erbin actually tells of the death of that same young prince mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles? And if Geraint a figure of myth was real, is it possible there was an Arthur after all?

It’s circumstantial evidence, but there are plenty who are convinced it’s true!

Ancient Burials and Brutal Deaths on Portsdown Hill

Staying on the theme of slain ancient warriors, it’s worth noting that at the top of Portsdown Hill as you head east toward the cutting where the A3(M) now slices through the chalk cliffs at the Havant end, around 1816, a tantalising discovery was made by labourers. Local historian Lake Allen tells the story in his 1817 History of Portsmouth:

Some labourers being employed in quarrying chalk during the month of September last, accidentally broke into a tumulus situated on the South side of the hill near the telegraph. The form of it appeared to be a parallelogram, extending East and West about 100 feet, in breadth about 20 feet, and in height 6 feet. In this tumulus or Barrow were discovered the remains of twelve bodies, some placed in cists, others laid only on the surface of the chalk, and covered by heaping the surrounding soil on them. The skeleton that was last discovered occupied a grave distinct from the others, but evidently too short for the stature of the person interred; loose flags were placed on it, their ends resting on the chalk. The radius and ulna were laid across the frame; the latter was the only bone entire, and was rather shorter than that of a well proportioned man. The occipital bone bore marks of petrifaction, and at the juncture of the temporal with the parietal bone, on the right side, was found inserted an iron head of a spear.

What became of these relics I do not know. But is it possible that the spearhead found in this body was none other than the one used by Porta to slay Geraint mab Erbin? It’s too much of a coincidence, surely..? And since we can’t examine the orginals, how can we ever know? But a man in a tomb, killed by an iron spear, hurriedly buried under loose flagstones by a vanquished army… is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to at least wish it were true?

Bevis’s Grave

Another archaeological site with mythical connotations lies near the one described by Lake Allen on Portsdown Hill. Again, heading east toward the motorway bridge, in the fields north of the road is the site of an ancient burial mound, Bevis’s Grave.

This was a giant long barrow – around 88m by 25m long with ditches to north and south. These days, it is largely buried, with only a part of it rising about half a metre above the ground. Nevertheless, it is actually about 4,500 to 5,500 years old. Part of an antler, probably the remains of a pick, was excavated from the ditches, along with sherds of late Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery.

In fact, the whole area along the crest of Portsdown Hill is rich in archaeological sites. Nearby is an area of early medieval burials, including two Saxon burials and eighty Christian graves dating from the 8th and 9th centuries. Who knew, as you take your dog for a walk or drive down into Havant that you are surrounded by so many relics of the deep, distant past?

So, back to Bevis. Who was he? And why is this his grave?

Bevis was a mediaeval knight from a Middle English romance called Sir Bevis of Hampton from around 1324. (Those of my generation will understand when I say I don’t believe that anywhere in the text is a mention of a companion or squire called Sir Butthead.)

Here are the bare bones of the romance:

Bevis is the son of Guy, count of Hampton (aka Southampton). Guy’s young wife, a daughter of the King of Scotland is unhappy in marriage and asks a former lover, Devoun, Emperor of Germany, to kill her husband. He happily sends an army to oblige and Guy is murdered in a forest. Fearful that their ten-year-old son Bevis will seek revenge, she decides that he, too, must die.

Saved by a faithful tutor, the young Bevis is later sold to pirates. After many adventures, Bevis ends up at the court of King Hermin, which is situated either in Egypt or Armenia – the writer is a bit vague on the details of where exactly. Bevis is involved in numerous exploits, including the defeat of Ascapart, a legendary giant from English folklore, and falls in love with the king’s daughter, Josiane. The king then sends Bevis on a mission to deliver a sealed letter to King Bradmond of Damascus. Bevis, not realising the letter requests Bradmond to execute him duly delivers it. He is imprisoned, escapes, finally wreaks vengeance on his stepfather and claims his inheritance. However, he is then separated from Josiane, and both are forced into false marriages, until in the end they are reunited at last.

It would make a great movie.

So, there it is. Though the barrow’s original inhabitant is long forgotten, a wonderful story has filled it with fresh life.

And that is the nature of legends, after all.

Hayling Island – home of the Holy Grail?

Whilst we are looking at ancient mysteries and the Celts, let’s have a look at another figure from the Roman era who some legends say came to Britain. That is none other than Jesus Christ.

A particular theory I stumbled over in an unusual pamphlet some time ago comes from the pen of a now-deceased local writer called Victor Pierce Jones. It puts forward the eccentric idea that the Holy Grail was, or is, buried at Hayling Island. In his book Glastonbury Myth or Southern Mystery, the author seeks to prove that “Jesus travelled from the Holy Land as a youth, lived on the south coast and was given a cup when he departed”- a cup which Joseph of Arimathea brought back to Britain after Christ’s death on the cross, “returning it to his first disciples and friends” in no place other than Havant – which is actually the “real site of Avalon”.

Further questions raised by the author include: “Did Merlin live at My Lord’s Pond, on Hayling Island? Did King Arthur find Excalibur at Havant? Was the Holy Grail found by Benedictine monks and a Knight Templar on Hayling – and is it still hidden there?”

Along the way, the author manages to include many of the ancient sites already mentioned in this book and some of its characters. King Arthur gets a look in, as does Bevis, William the Conqueror and countless duplicitous Glastonbury monks. Argued with a passion, it is quite joyous and, I personally think, completely bonkers.

But that’s just me. The construction of the argument is a work of art, and for seekers after mysteries, it’s a slim volume with which you can fill your boots!

An Ancient Ghost, A Countess Beheaded

There are many ghost stories associated with Portsmouth and the surrounding area. Here is one from Warblington to whet your appetite:

Five hundred years ago at Warblington, by the ever-moving waters of Langstone Harbour once stood a magnificent castle, of which only a few vestiges remain, and on whose ruins in the 18th century, a farmhouse was built. In its heyday it was one of the chief guesthouses of the Earls of Salisbury. The ghost that haunts the site is that of the unhappy Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. She once lived here in great state, dividing much of her time between Warblington and Lordington Manor, near Racton, which was commissioned by her husband Richard.

Their children included Cardinal Reginald Pole, who was the last Catholic Archbishop of England during the period of the Reformation, in which Henry came into direct conflict with Rome. Cardinal Pole was unbending in his attitudes to Henry VIII and strongly criticised him for his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He also warned against his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Sensing danger from the king’s growing impatience and anger with him, Cardinal Pole went into exile in France, where he finally denounced Henry to the other princes of Europe.

The ruthless tyrant Henry VIII attempted an assassination of Pole, but when this failed avenged himself by having Pole’s family arrested. His mother, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury was imprisoned in the Tower of London for two and a half years on trumped-up political charges. She was finally beheaded at Tower Hill in 1541, the last surviving issue from the direct male bloodline of the Plantagenet kings of England. Only one family member survived, her son Geoffrey Pole, who fled into exile in Europe. The Pole family was thus completely destroyed as a dynasty by their spiteful and merciless king.

Accounts of Margaret’s execution tell of a grisly end.

On the morning of 27 May 1541, in front of a crowd of 150 people, Lady Pole was led to the scaffold where she was expected to say a few pious words and submit to her fate. But the 67-year-old had no intention of going quietly. She refused to kneel or lay her head on the block, and told the executioner he would have to strike her head off where she stood. Guards roughly took her resisting form to the block, where the executioner raised his axe… and – thrown off his stroke by her defiance – swung the blade and struck her in the shoulder.

In agony, Lady Pole jumped up shrieking, gushing blood into her white hair. The executioner chased her, wildly swinging his axe. It took eleven bloody blows before she finally died. Legend in the Tower of London says that on the anniversary of her death, her ghost is seen in the night, her white hair streaming with blood from her many wounds – forever pursued by her phantom executioner.

After the destruction of the Pole family, the estate was forfeited to the Crown, and a few years later, Thomas Cromwell had Warblington Castle demolished. What was left of it then fell into decay and farmhouses were built over part of it.

A local story tells of a different sighting of a spirit at the site. It says that the ghost of the beheaded and tragic Countess Margaret Pole haunts the ruins, as she mourns the passing of her lost life and her magnificent home.

How the mighty may fall!

Please note – There are many more ghost stories to come in the pages of this book, but first, let’s discover the Lost Lands around Portsmouth…

Inspirations

Her: Opening section to a new novel by Matt Wingett

By Matt on Friday, August 2, 2019

Love.

Am I actually glowing, or is that a trick of the light? Is this really love? Really? I mean, what do I actually know about it? She laughs gleefully. – Except – I’m in it!

Jo Parris stands ecstatic and naked before a mirror, a sensation rising in her core as if someone has reached down and benignly electrified her insides. Gorgeous-beautiful-ache happy-delirium bursting-joy-pain. This is it all right. The real thing.

The early summer air is hot around her. Even at this time of day, when the shadows are cast on the ground by the red light of dawn, she feels so hot her skin might catch fire. Glorious morning light.

“I’m home,” she says in a whisper, stepping to her bedroom’s sash window, through whose mouth cooler morning air kisses her skin.

Sol, the old currant bun, Helios, Starfire, shaking out his bedhead, she thinks, as he bounces a shaft against a car window and lights her up: a young woman exultant in a town where she only ever expected to feel marooned. She revels in the spotlight, picked out by the sungod, radiance washing through her.

Love’s like catching fire. It burns. Weird.

A passing gull dims the dazzle a moment and she recollects the meeting scheduled for later that day. A cloud of dismay dims her mood.

What will Aunt G say?

Her question to herself refers to her secret (because, yes, I have a secret!, she tells herself excitedly). Yet, today, even for Aunt G and her disapproval she feels indulgent – as if she might forgive her former attempts to shape her life and lead it in the old woman’s preferred direction –

I don’t know why, Jo puzzles to herself. – All her weirdness… Over all these years… Fuck that! This time, it’s different. He’s my secret. No answers to prying questions, no breathless revelations about relationships.

Her gut agrees – a compass-needle-north feeling that points to her resolve –

I’ll handle her. She shakes off the thought and soaks up the view from her first floor flat: green of common, leaves of palms, elms neat-queued beside a path first laid for holidaymakers when seaside was a novelty of mass transportation. Distant: a low castle, built in the time of one Henry or other. Beyond, unseen from her position, a blue margin, whose saline presence fills her sinuses.

The sea, the sea. She half-consciously registers it. Magic pool of life. Home of possibilities. Bucking road to all compass points. All life comes through this town she hugs her arms to herself and lowers her giddy head, breathing it all in as if she wants to contain the world, right here, right now. Life is fucking ‘A’.

Movement behind her – snorted breath. Pirouetting with dizzy delight to the source of her reverie, she wonders, – is he waking up!?

Earlier, before slipping excitedly from her bed, she lay for half an hour, transfixed, torn between waking him and just watching. Beautiful man. My secret.

Thus her excited turn about her bedroom – a space once a Victorian family’s living room; now, where once resided the primmery of Imperial life, her hot lover snores abed. She draws him in through her eyes. Still asleep, she registers, hoping his dreams are hooking him to the surface – and if not, they’re of her.

She stretches. Arms sideways, bracing invisible pillars; arches her neck. Yawns.

With him she is all herself. An innocent in the forest who looks up, breathless at the world around her, and loves it for what it is, knowing she is loved in return.

Maybe not actually innocent, she thinks, because he has been the source of seriously good sex from day one, – And it only gets better – she tells herself as she feels the full stretch.

Satisfactorily yawned out, she drops her arms and relaxes her shoulders.

I hated it here, she tells herself in wonder. Till two weeks ago. Hated.

She rests her elbow on her navel and plants chin on palm to think a moment. Considers The Shrine on the chest of drawers – a little resident goddess standing immobile, watching them both.

“It all changed with You,” she whispers to Her, half-playfully reverent. The target of her gratitude is a carved figure in a homemade leaf bower. A doll of exotic origin. The one she calls Her.

Jo feels the same pull she felt the first day she found Her. Steps over to Her. Imagines She is sentient – somehow watching the scene in the room.

Now Jo lifts Her. Near-religious tenderness. Eyes Her wooden face – my breath is tremoring!? – As if magic will happen!? Of course it does not, though a little bit of Jo thinks it could.

She holds Her a while longer, replaces Her on the chest of drawers, then walks back to the bed and looks down on the man she is in love – or at least in lust – with.

Still asleep. Breathing his dreams through his mouth – can I get an idea of what they are? They smell sweet.

She scents his sweat, too, the tang of last night’s sex. Jumbled sensations flash through her mind – and she remembers: exhausted, falling into black sleep together, winding around each others’ dreams, smell of fellow human, warmth of skin. This morning, her brief and by now familiar flash of surprise and joy when waking to find – Yes! he is real.

She takes a breath as all these thoughts wash over her, reaching a conclusion as she stretches her arm to wake him –

Yes. I’m in love!

Inspirations

Portsmouth: Be Inspired

By Matt on Friday, December 7, 2018

As some of you may know, one of the things I try to do with writers is inspire them to get on and write, to support them when I can and to pass on the gift of encouragement and inspiration when I can. I was reminded earlier this week of times I have done that in the past – and I will always try to do it in the future.

One of the things that I’ve really found psychologically helpful is knowing that, actually, my home town has produced the most extraordinary writers over the years. It’s very easy, especially in a town like Portsmouth that on the surface can appear bleak and provincial to start thinking “No one from this town has really made it in writing”. To think so would be wrong, of course, but the psychological effect of such thinking is to hold you back. That’s why, sometimes you need to be reminded of the counter-examples.

It’s noted that before Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, it was generally considered an impossibility that anyone would break that record. Afterwards, when the counter-example was given and the psychological boost had been given to runners, records tumbled in quick succession. A new threshold had been set. The paradigm for the possible had been altered.

A little while ago I was selling my books at a market stall, and someone pointed to my latest. With a sneer and a sarcastic grin they said: “To be honest, ‘Portsmouth A Literary And Pictorial Tour’, must be very small. It’s the literary part. Surely any book with ‘Literary’ and ‘Portsmouth’ in the title is going to be super thin.”

Of course, I set this person right, telling her about Conan Doyle, Dickens, H G Wells, Kipling, Jane Austen, Wodehouse, C J Sansom, Jonathan Meades, William Cowper, Olivia Manning, Jean Rhys, Neil Gaiman and numerous other major authors who had either grown up here, or had something to say about the town. It surprised her, I think. And it changed her beliefs.

I say it to you, too, as writers who sometimes may doubt their abilities or their purpose: Portsmouth has already produced four of the greatest writers of the Victorian era, produced some of the greats of the 20th Century and (I am sure) is poised to do more with the 21st. You can be part of that future history, too.

We all deserve to feel good about where we’re from, and we deserve to draw inspiration from success stories to feed us on our own journey. So I thought, in case you didn’t know about it, that I would let you know that’s part of why I wrote my book.

Portsmouth, A Literary and Pictorial Tour celebrates this island city’s rich and diverse literary heritage, but more than that, it asks you to imagine that perhaps one day, you will be in future editions.

In fact, some of you already are in this one, alongside those famous greats, some of whom I’ve named above. So, as Christmas and the New Year come along, I wish for all of you to have the success you deserve in the coming years and months.

Merry Christmas all.

Inspirations

Turmoil in the Marketplace for Ideas

By Matt on Tuesday, July 3, 2018

There is a story that on arriving at the scene just a few minutes after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Lord Louis Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India was met by an increasingly angry mob. One voice suddenly rose over the crowd, saying: “A Muslim shot him…” The story goes that Mountbatten, seeing the danger of a massacre by enraged Hindus shouted loudly: “You fool, it was a Hindu!”

Whether this story about Mountbatten is true or not, and whether or not a Hindu or Muslim had been responsible, the wisdom in such a reply – to quell rage and prevent scapegoating of the minority Muslim population is obvious. In fact, the murderer actually was a Hindu. But even if you put this to one side, the instinct was still sound.

As a writer, for some time I have been imagining how best one might cause a civil war in an imagined country. Suppose there were an invader seeking to destabilise the regime, but wanting to do so discreetly. What would he do? The land I imagine is low tech, pre-industrial and ruled by an increasingly distrusted Prince who has perhaps made one or two poor decisions, but who is in fact a kindly and beneficent ruler. How might agents foment revolution, I asked myself?

In a thought experiment, I imagined a marketplace, where people convene from all parts of the country to trade, meet and enjoy a two week fair. The fair-goers would include members of the ruling classes, tradesmen and merchants with connections to trade routes and fleets. It would include guildsmen, jealous of their work and their skills, guarding against impostors. There might be harlots and mountebanks and cheapjacks and performers all mingling with the general population who have come there to buy, meet others, share news, gossip and talk.

It was there that I realised that the revolution would start. In the marketplace for ideas.

It might happen thus: at one end of the market, a gossip spreads news about a well-established merchant. He uses those ships to trade in people, and whenever his ships land at ports, children always go missing. Is this a coincidence? The gossip only asks the question, but it is a question that others with no knowledge of the gossip’s agenda repeat.

In another part of the market, a rumour starts that local guildsmen were heard hatching a plan to kill another merchant because he brings in goods from the shores of Cathay that are putting local tradesmen out of work. Elsewhere a rumour goes up about the Prince, that he is using the taxes from the fair to raise an army, and will be conscripting soon. Others say that this is not true, but that he is in fact using the money to line his own pockets, or that the Prince is in the pay of foreign powers.

More rumours abound. An army was seen in the East, and those of the Eastern faith are accused as spies for that army. After all, wasn’t it invaders from the East who killed a child in the woods last year, even though no-one can quite remember the name of that child? Butchers are accused of selling infected meat and bakers of adulterating their bread with alum.

Soon, the harmony of the marketplace is disturbed by the rumours. Butchers and bakers look defensively at their rivals, tradesmen pit themselves against tradesmen, all look suspiciously at foreigners and more so at the Prince on whose watch this is all happening.

Over the next few days, factions form. Those who have been accused complain and grumble. Others of the secret invader’s agents, pretending to be on the side of the aggrieved, amplify their complaints, turning them from a mild grievance into an angry counter-accusation. The newly aggrieved on the other side respond, and soon the agents have very little to do as the factions take their grievances to each other.

For those spreading the rumours, the truth of one claim or another is irrelevant. The purpose is to spread discontent wherever possible. For those in the marketplace of ideas who have no idea of the agenda, they naturally take sides according to their preferences and predilections, their biases and loyalties, and soon, hardened factions have formed within the marketplace, where formally there was only interest in trade.

Neighbours look at neighbours on the stalls distrustingly, and guard their goods against theft. Accidental overturnings of carts, genuine accidents or planned, are immediately met with outrage and anger as proof of the ill intentions of one or other faction. The mood of the marketplace has changed so that reasonable discourse and the sorting out of problems is no longer possible. Everybody is aggrieved. Everybody is simmering and angry. The rumours become truths in the minds of those who now seek to interpret the actions of their neighbours from within the grossly distorted paradigms they have internalised.

Now the rumour goes out that groups from the East are carrying concealed weapons. They are challenged on the streets by butchers, with meat cleavers.. Though they are not carrying weapons, they soon begin to. The butchers are joined by the blacksmiths and the knife sharpeners. But these two factions already distrust each other, and arguments start between them, at the agents’ instigation.

Soon, everyone feels unsafe, and no-one trusts anything anyone says, except their own small factions. Civil society is breaking down. The Prince posts guards to ensure safety on the streets, and soon more whisperings are complaining that the Prince is both taxing and oppressing them. The guards themselves become the subject for distrust – and one night after a drunken brawl a guard is killed.

Rumours blame the people of the East, the butchers, the merchants, the traders, the guildsmen in turn. Each accuses the other and none will listen. Soon the factions are so widely separated and angry that more guards are called in as more and more discord breaks out.

And then, one man with a louder mouth who seems somehow to have the ear of the armed factions steps in. He ousts the Prince and installs himself in his place. He is a strong man He is one the crowd trust to “get things done”. Those who armed themselves are grateful for his intervention as he brings in increasingly Draconian rules to deal with foreigners and traders, and anyone who steps beyond his increasingly eccentric and tight restrictions.

Others complain that he is taking away freedoms, others that he is favouring certain groups over others, others that he is a bully.

All of these things may be true, or none may be true. The point is that while the people are thus preoccupied with their rage and accusation at each other, they do not even notice the coup that has taken place, nor fully appreciate how their lives have changed. The few who do notice and make a stand are shouted down and buried with rumours by agents. And in order to discredit those seeking to reinstate rational discourse, new rumour-spreaders join the rational side, so that there is very little rational discourse, only more and more rage, and more and more accusation.

Against those who do still persist in trying to speak their milder or more perceptive truths, it is not difficult now to raise an outraged mob. Some are intimidated into silence. Some disappear.

Meanwhile, the loudmouth who got to power continues to strengthen his hold, spreading further lies and adding to the general sense of distrust with proclamations and with increasingly sweeping powers. Those who want order at any cost rally round him, calling those who oppose his approach traitors, not seeing that what he is doing is quite the opposite of what they wanted, which was to bring them peace and liberty. And what his agenda is, nobody knows, though some suspect that the foreign power that some voices warned about in regard to the old Prince, have in fact installed this one in his place.

That is how one uses the freedom of the market to bring about its opposite. It is also, of course, an allegory of how free speech can, ironically, be democracy’s worst enemy.