Dorset - the Final Word

After almost two months, it's time to say goodbye to my blog posts about Dorset.  It's been an interesting learning journey and also a busy time in my non-cyber life, as I've taken on a new role at work and that has kept me pretty busy (not to mention summer holidays!).

A summary of the themes

This has been my first series of blog posts about England, but hopefully it won't be my last.  Over the past couple of months, I've learned about England's Celtic heritage and the Celtic tribe, Durotriges who gave Dorset its name.  I learned a lot about Iguanadons and other 'remarkable creatures' such as Mary Anning, Dorset's most famous palaeontologist.  I learned about the different types of Doom Metal and Dorset's Wizards of Wimborne.  I learned how to make traditional Dorsetshire food, such as Tea Bread and Lyme Bay Fish pie.  I rediscovered Thomas Hardy's work and read Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach - a truly beautiful novel.  I also learned about Dorset's radical past and the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

Tools for research

I read several books as part of my research for Dorset:

Some of the books I read as part of my research

Tracey Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures.  Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. (Extracts from) Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. (Chapters from) Patricia Ingham's Author's in Context: Thomas Hardy.  (The first few chapters of) Henry Pelling's A History of British Trade Unionism and, just for the fun of it, I also read PD James', The Black Tower, which is set in Dorset!

I also watched the following movies:

Bill Douglas' Comrades (1986), Roman Polanski's Tess (1979), John Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Michael Winterbottom's Jude (1996), Michael Winterbottom's Trishna (2011), which I saw at the cinema and Karel Reisz's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), which is also set in Dorset.  I'm a big fan of John Fowles, actually and it's a shame I didn't have more time to explore his work, but I try to concentrate on writers etc that are less familiar to me (eg. PD James).

Other Themes

As usual, there were other themes that I was interested in exploring - these were:

The history of the Olympic torch, as this passed through Dorset when I was researching for this blog.
The influence of the Sea on human culture.
The chalk figures on the hillside, like the giant at Cerne Abbas.
The concept of 'Fool's gold'
George III's fascination with Weymouth
The work of William Barnes
Smuggling
Brownsea Island and the scout movement
The Dorset culture of northern Canada

Dinner party trivia

And here are is some Dorset trivia which you can use to impress people at dinner parties!

A view of Portland by me

People on the Isle of Portland are superstitious about rabbits, to the point that they won't even use the word 'rabbit' when talking about them - instead they call them 'underground mutton' or 'long-eared furry things'.  Apologies to anyone on Portland who might be reading this blog post!

Sir Christopher Wren used around 6 million tonnes of white Portland stone, to rebuild London, after the Great Fire in 1666.

The Isle of Portland was at the forefront of railway development, as rails were used to transport stone and people from sea level to the top of Portland Hill.

Bermuda was once known as The Somers' Isles after its founder, Sir George Somers, who came from Lyme Regis.  Lyme Regis is twinned with Bermuda's capital, St. George's.

In the 1780's, Lyme Regis was equivalent in size and importance to Liverpool.

The Soviet spy, Anthony Blunt, was born in Bournemouth.

One of the first recorded Viking raids on England, happened in Dorset.  Dorset is also believed to have been the entry-point to England for the Black Death, coming from mainland Europe.

Sailing off the Dorset coast by me

Over half of Dorset is designated as an 'area of outstanding beauty' and three-quarters of the Dorset coast is a UNESCO world-heritage site!

There are no motorways in Dorset.

Poole harbour is one of the world's largest natural harbours - it used to be a river valley, until water levels rose, around 6,000 years ago.

37,500 people work in Dorset's thriving tourism industry.

The Bournemouth Symphony orchestra was founded in 1893.

The writer, John le Carre, was born in Poole.

The Final word

Writing this blog always gives me the opportunity to explore new things and read writers that I would never had read otherwise.  PD James is a writer I wouldn't normally read, purely because of her genre, which is 'detective fiction', something I rarely indulge in!  I'm not very good at whodunnits, as I usually fall for the most obvious red herrings and don't have the intuitive skills required to solve whatever mystery is at hand.

I enjoyed reading PD James' The Black Tower and she seems to be a very good writer of detective fiction.  If this month's Bournemouth Daily Echo (Dorset Police clear-up rate one of the worst in the UK), is anything to go by, the characters in PD James' novel wouldn't have had much help from the local Dorset police!

Perhaps there is less crime in Dorset than in other parts of the country?  Or perhaps, it's no coincidence that crime detection rates are falling at a time when the county's police force is faced with cut-backs.  It's a far-cry from Thomas Hardy's idyll of rural England but, I guess, even Dorset will have to deal with the challenges of 21st-century life!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to re-use them under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share-alike
Non-commercial

Dorset - A Hot Bed of Radicalism?

For a county that routinely returns Conservative MPs to parliament, Dorset has a surprisingly radical history! As far back as the 1640's and the English Civil War, when Cromwell's army was fighting against the Royalists, the Clubmen of Dorset decided to have their own war, against both sides, in a bid to protect their families and property.

The Monmouth Rebellion

The Duke of Monmouth by Willem Wissing

When Charles II died in 1685, the Duke of Monmouth, who is rumoured to have been Charles' illegitimate son, lead a rebellion against James II, which started in Lyme Regis in May and ended with the Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset in July.

It's no coincidence that Monmouth chose Dorset as his landing point - he was a Protestant claimant to the throne, who was opposed to the succession of James II as a Catholic King.  Dorset has long been a Protestant stronghold and I'd imagine that many of the participants in the failed 'West Country rebellion' were Dorset farmers, who found themselves being 'transported' to Barbados (see my blog post about the Red Legs of Barbados).

The Tolpuddle Martyrs

Dorset also holds an important place in Britain's Trade Union history with the famous case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.  In 1833, a group of agricultural labourers, from the village of Tolpuddle just outside Dorchester, they were sentenced to transportation (a lovely euphemism - makes it sound like a relaxing rail journey!) to Britain's new colony in Australia.

Their crime?  Being members of a Friendly Society - which was an early form of trade union.  This wasn't illegal in itself, but the landowner who brought the case against them was determined to get a prosecution and his lawyers managed to find an archaic law about 'swearing secret oaths' which was used to find them guilty. Their real crime was that they had demanded reinstatement of their wages, after the landowner had cut their pay to a level that meant they were barely able to support their families.

In those days, being transported to Australia was a fate worse than death and the case of the Tolpuddle labourers caused uproar and led to the largest demonstrations of working-class people that had ever been seen in England.  I'm sure this rattled the nerves of the ruling classes, coming at a time when the British Trades Union movement was finding it voice.

Comrades

As part of my research, I watched Bill Douglas' film Comrades (1986). It's quite a beautiful movie and tells the story really well, although it is quite long (around 3 hours).  It was mostly shot around South Dorset and, as well as dealing with the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Douglas uses a narrative frame that addresses the art of story-telling, through the character of the Lanternist.





British Trade Unionism today

Being a trade union rep, I'm a great believer in the role of Trade Unions in a democratic society.  I think it's fair to say that Britain was the birthplace of the modern Trade Union movement, but the situation for Trade Unions in Britain today is worse than it has been in some time.  It's estimated that less than one third of workers in Britain still belong to a Trade Union.  With all of the emphasis on capitalism, privatisation, competition and individualism, it feels a little bit like collective bargaining is going out of fashion.

Union demonstration outside the National Gallery by me

I dipped into a book called A History of British Trade Unionism (1963) by Henry Pelling where he starts off by saying that Trade Unions in Britain are stronger than ever, with almost 3/4 of workers being union members.  How things have changed over the past 50 years!  Not long after Pelling published his book, there was a great shown-down between government and the Trade Unions, in the 1970's, followed by attacks on the Trade Union movement by Margaret Thatcher and successive governments and a perceived loss of political representation, as New Labour effectively 'sold out' or rather, 'bought into' the establishment.

The Future of the Trade Union movement?

So the question for many trade unionists in 21st century Britain is Where do we go from here?  The answer seems to involve regaining political power and, increasingly, trade unions are thinking about turning the votes of people like me into an effective political force, by-passing the politics of Labour.

It's a story which is far from finished and, despite many setbacks, the Trade Union movement is still relatively powerful.  It's interesting to note that the Scandinavian countries enjoy the highest 'density' of trade union membership.  It's hardly a coincidence that the gap between rich and poor tends to be much smaller in Scandinavia and everyone benefits from a higher standard of living, not just the 1%!

Tolpuddle March in 2004 by Tom Roper

Compared to a country like the United States, where a mere 1 in 10 workers are members of a Trade Union (or Labor Union),  US society appears to be increasingly wealth-divided, with little or no provision for workers who lose their jobs or fall on hard times.

Tolpuddle in the 21st century

Although it seemed to lose momentum some years back, this year's Tolpuddle Martyrs festival saw a record number of people turning out to march, commemorate, sing and make political speeches.  Although I've never been there, I'd love to visit the Tolpuddle Martyrs museum sometime soon.

Wahhabis in Weymouth?

As I've been blogging about Dorset, I've been keeping an eye on news items from the county and I couldn't help but notice news regarding the arrest of Richard Dart, aka Salahuddin al Britani.  Dart is originally from Dorset and converted to Islam, which is a pretty radical thing, in itself, in Britain in 2012!  He appeared in the BBC documentary My Brother the Islamist and is accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Britain.  He has been living in West Ealing for several years, so we've probably walked past each other on the Uxbridge Road!  He's been portrayed in the media as a mad fundamentalist who wants to bring Shari'a law to England - I can't help but wonder how historians of the future will view people like Richard Dart?

Image credits:


The image of the Duke of Monmouth is by the Dutch portrait artist Willem Wissing - this image is in the public domain - the original painting currently hands at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The Trailer from the movie 'Comrades' is taken from YouTube.

The picture of the Trade Union demonstration outside the National Gallery was taken by me.

The photo of the Tolpuddle March from 2004 was taken by flickr member Tom Roper, a Medical Librarian from Seaford. You can see more of Tom's work on his flickrstream or on his blog.  Thanks to Tom for sharing this image with us, using the Creative Commons license.

Dorset - Tess of the d'Urbervilles On Chowpatty Beach with the Spice Girls

I guess it's testament to his brilliant story-telling that the novels of Thomas Hardy are still incredibly popular more than a hundred years after he wrote them.  His more famous novels, like Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure and Far from the Madding Crowd, have been interpreted dozens of times on stage and in film. In the latter period of his life, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and concentrated on poetry, which he believed to be his true vocation. 

The tradition of lending libraries

I was a huge fan of Hardy when I was a teenager - devouring his novels, which I borrowed from my local public library, just as Hardy's readers borrowed from private lending libraries!  It's funny how I feel the need to explain that now, as if the idea of public libraries in the late 20th century is as obscure as the idea of private lending libraries in the late 19th century.  I guess, one of the great advances of the digital age is that books by writers such as Hardy are easily accessible and downloadable for free. 

Whether it's in paper format or digitally, I still get a lot of pleasure from reading Hardy - his prose is poetry and it's easy to lose yourself in his descriptions of life in 19th century Dorset (or Wessex to us Hardy fans!), far away from the complications of 21st century life!

On Chesil Beach

View of Chesil Beach by me

But, of course, I like to discover new things when I'm researching for this blog, so I saw this as my opportunity to read Ian McEwan's novella, also set in Dorset, On Chesil Beach.  As I've been re-reading a lot of Hardy and watching film adaptations, I couldn't help drawing a comparison between Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and McEwan's novella. 

There is a famous scene in Tess on their wedding night, when they both confess all of their secrets to each other and it's as though McEwan has taken this scene and turned it into a novella.  Despite having very different lives than the characters of Hardy's time, McEwan's characters are equally bound by the oppressive mores of early 1960's England.  If you haven't already read it, please do, it's a beautiful and tragic story. 

Naive Spice

In the words of The Spice Girls; If you want my future, forget my past.  Tess could certainly have done with a bit of 'girl power'.  But, if she'd been a Spice girl, I'm afraid she would have been Naive Spice.  It's the great tragedy of Hardy's novel that Tess's new husband, Angel Clare, allowed her past to get in the way of their future together. 

Hardy was brilliant at developing female characters and quite a lot of the novel deals with Tess's bitterness when she realises that different rules apply to men and women.  Men can have a past but women, when it boils down to it, really can't. 

Stag or Slut?

Although the moral context of Hardy's novel was quite different to the moral context of life in England today, the way that women behave in the 21st century is still perceived differently than the way men behave.  If a man sleeps around, he's a 'stud' - but if a woman sleeps around then she's branded a 'slut'. 

Perhaps, in his own way, Hardy was trying to further the cause of women, like Tess, who found themselves in trouble at an early age, often through no fault of their own, or because of their good looks.  I wonder what Hardy would have made of the Slut Walks of the modern age?

Florence and Edward

Chesil beach in the evening by me

McEwan's interpretation of this gender imbalance is even more complex.  Florence is the one who storms out on the wedding night, leaving Edward reeling at how badly things have gone wrong (in Hardy's novel, it is Angel who storms out and Tess who stays behind, in shock). 

Like Tess, Edward eventually follows his partner and they confront each other during a really beautiful sequence set on Chesil Beach.  Also like Tess, Edward is essentially innocent and it's Florence's hang-ups that prevent them from having a future together.  But like Tess, it's hinted that Florence has been abused at some time in the past, which explains why she is frigid.  Both of McEwan's characters have elements of Tess, which is what makes the situation even more beautiful and tragic. 

Tess on Chowpatty Beach

As part of my research I watched Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Tess which is set in modern-day India and renamed Trishna.  I really enjoyed this movie and the sense of tragedy that might be missing from a woman's position in 21st century Dorset, is still very tangible in 21st-century Rajasthan.  Part of the movie is set in Bombay and was filmed on Chowpatty beach, a nice contrast with Chesil Beach in Dorset (I've been on both!)

Winterbottom combines the two main male characters into one, Jay Singh.  The change in Jay's attitude towards Trishna, when he finds out the truth about her, makes it seem as though he's become a different person.  Trishna's story is interesting in its own right and I'd definitely recommend the movie.  I'm posting a trailer to entice you . . . oh, and it has a wicked soundtrack - enjoy!



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Both photos of Chesil Beach were taken by me, please feel free to reuse under the Creative Commons license:

- Attribution (especially to this blog post)
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Dorset - How I made Dorset Tea Bread and Lyme Bay Fish Pie

In my search for a recipe to represent Dorset, I found myself ordering a copy of Favourite Dorset Recipes: Traditional Country Fare by Amanda Persey.  The book is part of a series of Favourite recipes and I already have copies of the Favourite Devonshire, Cornish and Irish recipes, having bought copies of the first two when I was hiking the South West Coastal path and being given the Irish recipe book by my friend's daughter, who knows how much I enjoy cooking!

I like these little books, as the recipes are fairly straight-forward without too many fancy or unattainable ingredients - I'd definitely recommend them, if you're interested in learning about English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh cuisine.

I want to cook everything in Favourite Dorset Recipes but, for the purposes of this blog, I decided to limit myself to just two things.

How I made Dorset Tea Bread

It's more of a heavy, rich cake really than a bread - I can see myself making this one again in future.

The ingredients

Ingredients for Dorset Tea Bread

180g butter
1 cup of tea (without milk)
3 medium sized eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground mixed spice
225g soft brown sugar
350g mixed dried fruit
350g self-raising flour (the book advised self-raising wheatmeal flour, but I couldn't find this, so settled for self-raising plain white flour and it worked fine!)

Process

First I melted the butter in a saucepan, then added the brown sugar, dried fruit and black tea.  I let this simmer gently until the fruit had expanded a bit.



Melt the butter

Add the brown sugar, black tea and dried fruit

Whilst the mixture was simmering, I sieved the flour into a bowl, then added the cinnamon and mixed spice, before adding the beaten eggs.

Sieve the flour into a bowl

Add the ground spices and beaten egg

After this, I slowly stirred the tea, sugar and fruit mixture into the flour and poured the entire mixture into a cake tin, which I had already greased with butter. 

Mix everything together and put in a cake tin

I'd preheated the oven to 170 - the recipe recommended leaving the cake there for 2 hours, but I thought this was a bit excessive, so I left it for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  In retrospect, even this was too long and the 'crust' of the Tea Bread was a bit hard, as a result.  Perhaps this is the desired effect though, as the bread preserves well.  I can vouch for its tastiness after a few days in an airtight container!

Dorset Tea Bread

How I made Lyme Bay Fish Pie

After reading Remarkable Creatures - I couldn't resist cooking a dish from Lyme Bay!  In comparison to the Tea Bread, this dish was really easy to make.  I got my hands on some really nice white fish and seafood, which makes all the difference with a dish like this.

Ingredients:

The Ingredients for Lyme Bay Fish Pie

A bunch of scallions (spring onions)
120g white mushrooms, wiped and sliced
4 tomatoes, chopped into thin slices and with the seeds discarded
2 fillets of white fish
500g of assorted seafood (I used scallops, prawns and mussels)
1/2 pint of fish stock
30g plain flour
1/4 pint of white wine
60g butter
250g filo pastry

Process

First I fried the scallions and mushrooms, until they'd gone fairly soft. Then I stirred in the flour, before adding the fish stock and white wine, allowing the pot to come to the boil before reducing the heat slightly.

Chopping the scallions

Cooking the mushrooms and scallions

Next I added the fish, seafood and tomato slices, again allowing the pot to boil before reducing the heat.  I allowed it to simmer for about 10 minutes, until the fish and seafood was cooked.

Add the fish, seafood and tomato slices

Whilst I was simmering the ingredients in the pot, I prepared the filo pastry.  I've never used filo pastry before, so I was surprised to see how paper-thin the sheets of filo are.  They also seemed quite large, so I decided to cut them in half. 

Experimenting with filo pastry

When the fish and seafood had cooked, I poured the mixture into an oven-proof dish and started putting the strips of filo pastry on top.  Following the recipe in the book, I melted the butter in a small pan, so I could use the melted butter to glaze the strips of filo pastry. 

Put the cooked ingredients in an ovenproof dish

Cover with sheets of filo pastry

Glaze with melted butter and cut triangular shapes into the pastry

Basing my knowledge of pastry on previous experience with puff pastry, I allowed the slices of filo to hang over the edge of the dish, but I wonder now if it isn't better to keep them inside the dish, on top of the pie mixture.

Anyway - I popped the dish into the oven with the Tea Bread and left it for about 30 minutes.  I had pierced the pastry and tried to cut triangular shapes in it, to make it look good.  The end result looked fine and tasted amazing! 

Lyme Bay Fish Pie (closed)

Lyme Bay Fish Pie (open)

Image credits:

All photos in this blog post were taken by me.  Please feel free to re-use then with the following Creative Commons license:

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Dorset - the Wizards of Wimborne

Wimborne Minster seems to be the musical capital of Dorset.  Last month saw the Wimborne Folk Festival take place - folk music, ceilidhs and morris dancers.  It's been going for 33 years and attracts thousands of people from all over Dorset, England and (indeed) the world!  I'm totally down with Morris dancing (skipping around waving handkerchiefs, how hard can it be?), so I decided to challenge myself a little bit by concentrating on Wimborne's other famous musical export, Doom Metal band Electric Wizard.

So what is Doom Metal?

Doom Metal is a sub-genre of Heavy Metal.  It's more extreme or 'heavier' than Heavy Metal, with a slower tempo and a lot of electric guitar, bass guitar and drums.  I must admit, I'm no great fan of Heavy Metal (or Doom Metal!) - I find it repetitive and depressing - but this blog is all about challenging myself to learn new things, so I downloaded the album Electric Wizard and I've been listening to it over the past few weeks.

Stoner Doom

I've learned that within Doom Metal, there are more sub-genres, depending on the kind of Doom Metal a group plays.  Electric Wizard are considered to be a 'Stoner Doom' band, as many of their lyrics refer to drug-taking, especially marijuana or hashish, leading to hallucinations.  Something I like about Electric Wizard is that their lyrics are quite interesting. 

Stone Magnet

Electric Wizard album cover

The first track on the album Electric Wizard is called Stone Magnet - which is a reference to 'getting stoned', but also, I think, doubles up as a reference to the ancient stones that dot the English countryside (Stonehenge being the most famous) and their supposed magnetic qualities.  The lyrics include images like 'the ultraviolet sun' and 'Spinning eye of the Lord' and the hallucinatory effect of smoking dope is described in the line '[I] can see a thousand worlds, right here in my bed'

I'm also including a video from YouTube, so you can listen for yourself.


Other forms of Doom


Other sub-genres of Doom Metal include; Epic Doom (which uses elements of classical music), Sludge Doom (influenced by Punk), Funeral Doom (which uses funeral dirges), Drone Doom and Death Doom.  It's a whole world of Doom that I didn't even know existed!

Religion and Black Sabbath

One of the original 'doom' bands was Black Sabbath and, indeed, Electric Wizard takes their name from a combination of two well-known Black Sabbath songs, The Wizard and Electric Funeral.  I also listened to a bit of Black Sabbath, as I was researching this blog post and, I must admit, I quite liked their first album and I can see it was a very original concept, when it was released in the early 1970's.

One theme across the Doom genres, is the pagan element of the music.  This often comes through as satanism, but I can't help wondering if it's merely an expression of something in English (and Northern European) culture that is pre-Christian?

Evil woman

Metal music, in general, is incredibly male-dominated.  It's all about men dealing with their fear and anxiety and there is hardly any place for a woman to get involved.  Women are either portrayed as being evil witches, who trick men and break their hearts (like Black Sabbath's song, Evil Woman) or helpless virgins whose only purpose in life is to be sacrificed to dark powers, as with Electric Wizard's songs, Devil's Bride and Black Butterfly.

Memories of Ancestral trauma?

It's interesting that Heavy Metal also tends to be dominated by white, 'Anglo-Saxons' or Northern Europeans.  It's been incredibly popular in countries like England, Germany, Sweden, but also amongst descendents of northern Europeans in the United States and Canada. 



Cover of Come my Fanatics

In my first blog post about Dorset, I talked a lot about the 'Celtic Heritage' of England and, listening to the death and destruction of Doom Metal, I can't help but speculate on the ancestral memories of a people who have suffered invasion after invasion - perhaps, musical genres like Heavy Metal have inherited some of that 'ancestral trauma'?  When I listen to the songs of bands like Electric Wizard and Black Sabbath, I hear the voices of pre-Christian paganism, but Anglo-Saxon paganism rather than Celtic paganism. 

English folk songs are often quite violent in their underlying meaning, I'm thinking of songs like John Barleycorn and I wonder if Heavy Metal has inherited an angst and despair that is particularly Germannic?

Environmental Destruction and the Apocalypse

I've learned that Doom Metal is quite Apocalyptic which, in the late 20th-century world of Electric Wizard, has translated into anxiety about environmental destruction.  You just have to listen to songs like Mourning Prayer with its lyrics about 'poison clouds in the sky/Acid rain in my eyes' to see what I mean.  I'm pasting in a video from YouTube below, so you can listen for yourself.


The political side of Doom Metal

At first, it might not seem as though Doom Metal is overtly political, but some of Electric Wizard's lyrics in songs like Mourning Prayer and Stone Magnet deal with the corruption of the political systems 'Politicians, can't they see/Their greed is destroying me' and the despair of young men living in a society where the economic future is bleak 'No hope, no future, no fuckin' job'. 

Even after listening to Doom Metal for a couple of weeks and trying to understand the concepts behind the music and lyrics, I can't say that I've grown to like it, but I can see how appeals to young, especially teenage, men who are full of anxiety about their place in an increasingly alienated society.

Doom Metal today

Electric Wizard are still recording and touring, in fact, not long before the Wimborne Folk Festival, Doom Metal bands from all over the world, including Electric Wizard, gathered to play at the Maryland Deathfest.  Featuring bands with names like Dying Fetus and Church of Misery - I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my weekend - give me skipping and hankie-waving any day!

Dorset - How the English invented Dinosaurs

It was only when I first visited Dorset that I heard of the county's 'Jurassic Coast', one of the UK's 28 UNESCO World Heritage sites.  It starts in Devon, actually, not far from Exmouth and continues all the way to Swanage in East Dorset.  It includes geological wonders such as the Isle of Portland, which is a tied island, ie. only linked to the mainland by a spit of gravel, known as a tombolo.  Portland is famous for its limestone and Portland stone has been used in important buildings like St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and the UN world headquarters in New York.

Remarkable Creatures

The Jurassic coast became the haunt of geologists and palaeontologists, in the 19th century, when scientists became interested in fossils of 'remarkable creatures' that were abundant along this coast, notably in the area around Lyme Regis.  I've just finished reading a wonderful book called Remarkable Creatures by the London-based US writer, Tracy Chevalier (she also wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I really loved, about the life of Vermeer).  

Mary Anning and the fossils of Lyme Regis

Dinosaurs at Musee des Science Naturelles

Remarkable Creatures brings to life the story of Mary Anning, Lyme Regis' most famous fossil collector and her close friend Elizabeth Philpot.   Anning came from a very lowly background and started off fossil-collecting as a child, earning money to keep her family out of the poorhouse.  She had an incredible talent for spotting and preparing fossil specimens and, as she gained more experience, she herself became a leading expert on the fossils she was collecting and selling - her advice was sought after by prominent geologists such as William Buckland and the Reverend William D Coneybeare. 

Of course, in the 19th century, the doors of Scientific institutions were completely closed to women, even more so to working-class women with no education and, towards the end of her life, Mary Anning felt aggrieved by the lack of recognition she'd received in a male-dominated world.  In her novel, Chevalier very cleverly explores the tensions between Anning and Philpot who, despite coming from different social classes, had an incredible friendship and united against the adversity they both faced, as women working in a new scientific field. 

The Englishmen who invented the Dinosaur

The work of Mary Annings and other scientists paved the way for the work of early palaeontologists such as Richard Owen and Gideon Algernon Mantell.  I mention Owen and Mantell in particular, as they had a rivalry which was every bit as fractious and intense, as the friendship between Annings and Philpot.  When I say the English 'invented' Dinosaurs, what I mean is that Owen and Mantell were amongst the first scientists who tried to conceptualise dinosaurs.  Considering how little material they had available to them at the time, the work of the first palaeontologists was both revolutionary and visionary.

Owen v Mantell

Richard Owen coined the word Dinosaur

Richard Owen first coined the word dinosaur from the Greek for terrible lizard in a publication in 1842.  The -saur part had already been used for the first specimen found by Mary Anning, the Icthyosaur or fish lizard.  Owen's conceptualisation of dinosaurs was of large, slow-moving, elephantine creatures that walked on four column-like legs.  This conceptualisation was popularised by his dinosaur models at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in the 1850's.  Largely ignored by his contemporaries, Mantell's conceptualisation of large, fast-moving, two-legged creatures, turned out to be a more accurate conceptualisation, backed up by further fossil finds in later years.

Nowadays, thanks to a myriad of books and movies, an image of dinosaurs is well-and-truly imprinted on our minds.  It's hard for us to imagine the difficulty of trying to conceptualise what a dinosaur looked like, but it's worth bearing in mind that early palaeontologists were working with often incomplete fossils, pressed into rocks, with no obvious indication of what these creatures might look like, if they were stood upright.

The influence of Australia?

Something that really interested me, as I was researching all of this, was how the conceptualisation of dinosaurs co-incided with the colonisation of Australia and the 'discovery' of lots of new creatures, like the kangaroo which had never been seen by Europeans before.  Early examples of dinosaur skeletons were often juxtaposed with skeletons of Australian animals, like the wallaby and cassowary and I can't help wondering whether or not the physiognomy of these Australian animals influenced palaeontologists like Mantell, as they tried to conceptualise the stature of dinosaurs?

In his book, A Very Short Introduction to Dinosaurs (part of the OUP series), David Norman outlines the importance of paleobiology as a branch of palaeontology that can clearly inform, not only the stature of dinosaurs, but also their eating habits, sex and movement patterns. 

Dinosaurs and Darwin

It's also hard to imagine the societal attitude towards palaeontology at that time.  For many people in the 19th century, the idea that creatures existed before Noah's Ark was inconceivable.  Not only did the study of dinosaurs challenge the widely held belief in Bishop Ussher's biblical theory about the age of the Earth (ie. that the Earth was created on the 23rd of October 4004 BC!), but the idea that God would create life and then let it become extinct was considered sacrilegious.  The dinosaur debate fed into and supported Darwin's theory on Evolutionary gradualism, an even greater discussion that was to revolutionise 19th-century thought. 

Why are we so fascinated by dinosaurs?

Some dinosaurs were quite small!

Accepting the idea that God might let the dinosaurs become extinct, opened up the possibility that some day God might let humans become extinct.  A lot of the 19th-century anxiety around the study of dinosaurs was tied up in greater concerns about the fate of the human species.  Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the eternal fascination we have with dinosaurs.  Very few branches of science have captured the imagination more than the study of dinosaurs - what they were, what they looked like and what happened to make them 'suddenly' die out. 

It's also interesting to note how fascinated children are by dinosaurs.  As part of my research, I visited the famous Bernissart Iguanadons in the Musee des Sciences Naturelles in Brussels and I realised I'd never seen a reconstructed dinosaur before.  It's a fantastic place to bring children and their awe of dinosaurs reminded me that, even today, the conceptualisation of living dinosaurs requires a lot of imagination. 

Did dinosaurs have wings?

Dinosaurs and Dragons

I also think that there is something deep in the human psyche that 'remembers' a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  Of course, we know that this is impossible, dinosaurs became extinct long before the human species had evolved.  But how do we explain the stories of dragons and mythical beasts in many world cultures?  Isn't there something in our 'ancestral memory' that haunts our dreams and children's fairy tales?  It's quite apt that the English invented dinosaurs, a symbol of St George conquering his dragon!

Dinosaurs today

Something that I didn't know, before I started researching this topic, is that birds are believed to have evolved from dinosaurs!  Studies of bone structures show amazing similarities between dinosaurs and birds and it's quite possible that when the continents moved and the Earth flooded, dinosaurs simply became smaller and took to the skies to survive.  I don't think I'll ever look at birds in quite the same way again!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me at the Musee des Sciences Naturelles in Brussels.  Please feel free to reuse these images under the Creative Commons license:

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Dorset - England and the Celtic Dawn

It's 6,333 miles (more than 10,000 kilometres) from Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to Dorchester, the county town of Dorset, the next place that I have decided to blog about.

Blogging about Dorset and England will be a bit unusual for me, as England is where I currently live and most of the places I've blogged about are in countries I've not yet had the chance to visit.  With a population of just over 700,000, it's also one of the smaller places I've blogged about, slightly bigger than Luxembourg and smaller than Rhode Island. 

Dorset was the home of Thomas Hardy, one of my favourite writers, when I was younger.  I'm looking forward to learning more about Hardy during the next few weeks.  I'm also interested in Dorset's role in the development of modern Trade Unionism, with the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.  I also want to learn about the fossil collectors of Dorset's Jurassic coast and the development of palaeontology. 

Ramparts at Maiden Castle, Iron Age fort in Dorset

I've been to Dorset twice - once to Portland and Weymouth and once, on one of my 'Chester' trips (see my partner walking blog), to Dorchester.  During my trip to Dorchester, I was really impressed by Maiden Hill, a famous Iron Age fort, just 15 minutes walk from the town centre.  On most of my 'Chester' trips I've seen Roman ruins and discovered a lot about Roman Britain, but Maiden Hill got me thinking about 'Celtic Britain' and the people who lived here before the Romans, Vikings, Angles, Saxons and Normans arrived. 

It's quite common to see a 'retrospective' or exhibition about 'Roman Britain' or 'The Vikings in Britain' or 'The Normans in Britain', but I can't remember ever seeing any major exhibitions about Celtic Britain and it makes me wonder what it is about Celtic culture that Britons find hard to embrace. 

When we think of Celtic culture and Britain these days, we mostly think of Scottish music, the Welsh language or Cornish ghost stories.  But I'm curious to find out what happened to Celtic culture in other parts of the island of Britain - whether it's the Durotriges of Dorset and Somerset, or the more famous Iceni of East Anglia, or the Brigantes of Northern England.  Like most people, I know very little about the people who lived in Britain (south of Hadrian's wall) before it was conquered by the Romans. 

Information board at Maiden Castle, Dorset

The use of the term 'British' is a controversial one and there is an ongoing debate as to what it means to be British.  I guess in the strictest sense, British describes anyone born on the island of Britain.  In a much narrower way, British could describe the descendants of those pre-Roman tribes, if that is at all meaningful in the 21st century.  It's interesting to compare the use of 'English' and 'British'.  The concept of 'English' feels much more tangible and defines England as a Germannic (not a Latin or Celtic) nation.  But that might also explain why the word 'British' somehow feels more inclusive and less dependent on the values of white, Anglo-Saxon culture?

The term 'Celtic' is equally problematic.  What we think of as Celtic in the 21st-century is very heavily influenced by a 19th-century resurgence of interest in pre-Roman Britain that romanticised the freedom and creativity of the Celts.  Nowadays, Celtic is synonymous with Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Cornish, but I doubt that many English people would acknowledge much of their Celtic heritage.  Although the word 'British', in its strictest sense, could also mean 'Celtic', I don't think many people see it this way and, certainly where I grew up, on the border with Northern Ireland, British and Celtic are seen as polar opposites. 

So is there any Celtic blood running through English veins?  I find it hard to believe that the subsequent cultures that influenced Britain (Romans, Saxons etc) completely replaced the cultures that already existed on this island.  To me cultures can be piled one layer on top of the other and, through centuries of time, I wonder if we still can't find whispers of Celtic Britain in the misty dawns over Hampshire fields or the anarchic eccentricities of English people?

When we think of Celtic music, we think of fiddles and harps and a ceilidh, but I wonder if there isn't a hint of Celtic sensibility in the music of Kate Bush or PJ Harvey.  I hear it when I listen to Florence and the Machine.  Not just the music and lyrics, but also the wild, red-haired, pagan image of Florence, who looks like she has stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, seems to herald a Celtic revival in England.  Perhaps the cultures that exist on this island aren't that different after all?

I'm going to leave you with a Youtube video that shows one of my favourite Florence and the Machine songs, Shake it out - I've chosen a version with lyrics, so you can decide for yourself!




Image credits:

All images were taken by me.  Feel free to reproduce these using the Creative Commons license:

- Attribution (especially to this blog post)
- Share Alike
- Non-commercial