EU funds Fountains Abbey project
Richard Harris
2 November 2007
York Press
A HUGE £125,000 project is under way at Fountains Abbey to give visitors a history of the World Heritage site and an insight into the lives of the medieval monks who lived there.
The scheme is being funded by the European Union and will see a contemporary building built within the ruins of the gatehouse, which is known as the Porter's Lodge.
Currently visitors can find out about the estate's history by buying a guide book, hiring an audio tour or joining a free guided tour.
The National Trust now hopes the new Porter's Lodge Interpretation Centre will make it possible for people to imagine what the abbey was like in its day-to-day life via a new medium.
They say it will introduce a new audience to a deeper understanding of the history of the daily life of the monks and wider community, as well as the uses of different rooms in the abbey, both prior to and following exploration of the ruins.
Exhibits will include sections on medieval beliefs and the popularity of religious ideals, how the abbey was built by skilled craftsmen and how the monks spent their time each day, as well as interactive elements.
Jenny Coupland, a spokeswoman for Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, said: "We are delighted to have been the UK participant of this leading example of partnership working within Europe, which has enabled the National Trust to complete a number of conservation and interpretation projects here at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. Porter's Lodge will be a fabulous addition to the interpretation of this unique World Heritage Site and is an excellent opportunity to promote learning and understanding of this particularly interesting period of history."
The Porter's Lodge is part of a 13th century building and although the Interpretation Centre will be a modern construction, the National Trust says it will be screened by the walls of the lodge.
Jenny said: "It will blend into its surroundings sensitively, striving to employ maximum use of natural light and ventilation and will provide innovative explanation of the history of the abbey from its inception in the 12th century to the Dissolution Of The Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539."
The Interpretation Centre is due to be finished by Easter next year.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Archaeological discoveries in Lichfield
Digging into history beneath shopping site
Helen Draycott
1 November 2007
Lichfield Mercury
Developers have found themselves in a bit of a hole over the site of Lichfield's new shopping centre. And they couldn't be more intrigued.
Pedestrians walking along Frog Lane may have wondered what the big holes outside the city's cop shop were for; and it's all for a dig into Lichfield's past.
For a team of archaeologists are currently investigating what lies beneath the site of the planned £100 million Friarsgate leisure and retail development.
The diggers from Onsite Archaeology, employed by Lichfield District Council's development partner S Harrison Developments Ltd, started the excavations in late September.
And having already combed areas near Lichfield bus station and the city's multi storey car park, the ditch which formed the city boundary in medieval times - which the team is hoping to find - still remains buried treasure.
Onsite Archaeology project officer, Dave Pinnock said: "Lichfield is a good case study of the development of a medieval town, and so it is important to carry out this work and to record any findings.
"So far we've discovered buried medieval plough soil, which shows the land outside the assumed line of the ditch was used for agriculture.
"We've also found pits and post holes from medieval buildings, and the foundations of a large building thought to date from the 16th or 17th century."
Following excavations outside the police station, and in the garden of a council-owned property next to the district council offices, the team - armed with their trowels - will explore the Tempest Ford Garage site.
This first phase of investigations is expected to last several weeks.
Helen Draycott
1 November 2007
Lichfield Mercury
Developers have found themselves in a bit of a hole over the site of Lichfield's new shopping centre. And they couldn't be more intrigued.
Pedestrians walking along Frog Lane may have wondered what the big holes outside the city's cop shop were for; and it's all for a dig into Lichfield's past.
For a team of archaeologists are currently investigating what lies beneath the site of the planned £100 million Friarsgate leisure and retail development.
The diggers from Onsite Archaeology, employed by Lichfield District Council's development partner S Harrison Developments Ltd, started the excavations in late September.
And having already combed areas near Lichfield bus station and the city's multi storey car park, the ditch which formed the city boundary in medieval times - which the team is hoping to find - still remains buried treasure.
Onsite Archaeology project officer, Dave Pinnock said: "Lichfield is a good case study of the development of a medieval town, and so it is important to carry out this work and to record any findings.
"So far we've discovered buried medieval plough soil, which shows the land outside the assumed line of the ditch was used for agriculture.
"We've also found pits and post holes from medieval buildings, and the foundations of a large building thought to date from the 16th or 17th century."
Following excavations outside the police station, and in the garden of a council-owned property next to the district council offices, the team - armed with their trowels - will explore the Tempest Ford Garage site.
This first phase of investigations is expected to last several weeks.
Renaissance Siena: Art for a City is at the National Gallery, London
We are Sienese, if you please
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
30 October 2007
The Times
Who could ask for a more graceful hostess of a gathering? St Catherine of Siena greets you as you enter this show. Never before has she left her native city, where, from the little chapel built on the site of her father's basement workshop, she annually performs such invaluable functions as the blessing of the horses that are to enter the famous Palio race. It is deeply significant -and favourably auspicious -apparently, if one of the equines defecates in her sacred presence.
But, now, as the first of many signs of the significance of the National Gallery's latest show, St Catherine steps down from her niche above the altar and travels to London. Now she meets you at the doorway of Renaissance Siena, a symbol of all that is most delicate, most moving and lovely about Sienese art.
When you think of the art of this city, the work of its medieval masters most probably comes to mind. You may think of Duccio breathing sinuous life into old Byzantine forms; or his pupil, Simone Martini, lending spiritual grace to a Gothic ideal. Sienese art in the Middle Ages is universally admired. But with the dawning of the Renaissance, thoughts tend to drift away from this walled city towards its neighbour and long-standing rival, Florence. We turn from the ethereal serenity of what has started to feel like an outmoded aesthetic towards the thrilling discoveries of the great Tuscan masters who were introducing a striking new sense of reality to their work.
It is hardly surprising -not least since Florence finally conquered Siena in 1555 and history is written by victors. But as, for the first time, the National Gallery presents a survey of the work of this city between 1458, when Pius II (a member of the powerful Piccolomini family of Siena) was made Pope, and 1530, when the Habsburg troops marched into the city (marking the beginning of the end for the once independent republic), it focuses less on cliches of cultural progress than on the way that a vision develops organically out of a society, presenting a cumulative picture of its place and times. The linear march of Renaissance history is replaced by a more subtle, shifting, side-stepping, dancing life in a wonderful show that appreciates the ways in which a city speaks of its own distinctive character through the work it produces. This is a show to celebrate a Renaissance of another sort.
Siena, as this exhibition presents it, was a tough, proud, stubbornly independent place. Dedicated to the Virgin and protected by a panoply of saints, it clung to the spiritual legacy of a medieval era as it had been embodied by the works of such painters as Martini. His precious images were even used as illustrations in the sermons of local-boy-made-good St Bernardino, who appears in this show preaching from what looks like a home-made soap-box pulpit.
This distinct Sienese style, so expressive of spirituality, is the artistic equivalent of a dialect. It remains at the root of the city's aesthetic throughout the period that this show covers. We may see it adapted and altered as such Renaissance advances as perspective and modelling are introduced; as Siena, in what must have been seen as a great propaganda coup, lures Florence's most famous sculptor, Donatello, to work within its walls; or, under the auspices of the powerful Piccolomini family (who produced not just one but two Popes) plays host to such trophy talents as Raphael. But again and again that innate lyrical elegance, that light dancing touch that sets solid figures swaying, saints leaping on tiptoe, patterned draperies swirling and spidery fingers pointing, infuses these images with an almost frolicsome levity that brings them to what feels more like a spiritual than a physical life.
The bottomless glow of Byzantine icons may slowly give way to perspective, for instance, but in Neroccio di Landi's Annuncation notice how wilfully non-explanatory this is. It does not serve to articulate realistic spaces. Rather it draws the eye inwards to rush it up to ethereal realms. Donatello may have introduced ideas of three-dimensional modelling into narrative paintings, but look how the Sienese flirt with his sculptural solidity. One moment they are lending patterned outlines a new bulging bas-relief dimension, the next they are portraying living saints like sculptures in niches, as if the gaze of God was a Gorgon's stare. Renaissance advances are not rejected, but adapted and augmented as they are subtly blended with native traditions.
This happens for many reasons. A scholarly catalogue discusses them -from the civic pride of a stalwart republic, through a fear of being overwhelmed by more powerful states, to the vagaries of differing patrons or the influences of artistic companies that encourage chameleon individuals to adapt their talents to suit site-specific jobs.
But as this show reassembles the magnificent altarpieces that for centuries have been dismembered, bringing together beautiful panel paintings, sculptures and drawings by a series of mostly unfamiliar (and often anonymous) masters, it gathers also a sense of a spiritual aura. Despite all the damage, the fading, battering, the clumsy restorations and the garish finale of Beccafumi's works, the spectator is drawn ever deeper into a distinct imaginative space. He enters a world of melancholy, sloe-eyed maidens, of gesticulating dramas, of figures set dancing by a shimmering energy.
Look at Liberale Da Verona's two pictures illustrating scenes from the life of St Peter. As he heals a lame beggar, we see him standing slightly stiffly in a conventionally classical pose. But in the next scene alongside it, as we watch him refusing a corrupt offering of money, he seems suddenly to be set swaying to an expressively sinuous rhythm. His shrinking refusal of the cash comes to fresh life as this outsider artist picks up on and appropriates local stylistic traits.
Or step on to the stage of Benvenuto di Giovanni's little tempera painting of Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise. It may be tiny but it has immediate impact.
As the angel stands foursquare in the centre, he becomes a pivot for the struggling contortions of the pair of distressed humans whom he has been sent to banish. You can feel the shove of the angel's sinewy forearms. The tensions knot and tangle across the picture plane. And as Eve is shunted away, still indignantly arguing, you can almost hear her cries ringing shrilly amid the harsh swirl of the rocks.
In the images of Renaissance Siena, art is brought to life by a strange rhapsodic force.
Renaissance Siena: Art for a City is at the National Gallery, London WC2 (020 7747 2885; nationalgallery.org.uk)
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
30 October 2007
The Times
Who could ask for a more graceful hostess of a gathering? St Catherine of Siena greets you as you enter this show. Never before has she left her native city, where, from the little chapel built on the site of her father's basement workshop, she annually performs such invaluable functions as the blessing of the horses that are to enter the famous Palio race. It is deeply significant -and favourably auspicious -apparently, if one of the equines defecates in her sacred presence.
But, now, as the first of many signs of the significance of the National Gallery's latest show, St Catherine steps down from her niche above the altar and travels to London. Now she meets you at the doorway of Renaissance Siena, a symbol of all that is most delicate, most moving and lovely about Sienese art.
When you think of the art of this city, the work of its medieval masters most probably comes to mind. You may think of Duccio breathing sinuous life into old Byzantine forms; or his pupil, Simone Martini, lending spiritual grace to a Gothic ideal. Sienese art in the Middle Ages is universally admired. But with the dawning of the Renaissance, thoughts tend to drift away from this walled city towards its neighbour and long-standing rival, Florence. We turn from the ethereal serenity of what has started to feel like an outmoded aesthetic towards the thrilling discoveries of the great Tuscan masters who were introducing a striking new sense of reality to their work.
It is hardly surprising -not least since Florence finally conquered Siena in 1555 and history is written by victors. But as, for the first time, the National Gallery presents a survey of the work of this city between 1458, when Pius II (a member of the powerful Piccolomini family of Siena) was made Pope, and 1530, when the Habsburg troops marched into the city (marking the beginning of the end for the once independent republic), it focuses less on cliches of cultural progress than on the way that a vision develops organically out of a society, presenting a cumulative picture of its place and times. The linear march of Renaissance history is replaced by a more subtle, shifting, side-stepping, dancing life in a wonderful show that appreciates the ways in which a city speaks of its own distinctive character through the work it produces. This is a show to celebrate a Renaissance of another sort.
Siena, as this exhibition presents it, was a tough, proud, stubbornly independent place. Dedicated to the Virgin and protected by a panoply of saints, it clung to the spiritual legacy of a medieval era as it had been embodied by the works of such painters as Martini. His precious images were even used as illustrations in the sermons of local-boy-made-good St Bernardino, who appears in this show preaching from what looks like a home-made soap-box pulpit.
This distinct Sienese style, so expressive of spirituality, is the artistic equivalent of a dialect. It remains at the root of the city's aesthetic throughout the period that this show covers. We may see it adapted and altered as such Renaissance advances as perspective and modelling are introduced; as Siena, in what must have been seen as a great propaganda coup, lures Florence's most famous sculptor, Donatello, to work within its walls; or, under the auspices of the powerful Piccolomini family (who produced not just one but two Popes) plays host to such trophy talents as Raphael. But again and again that innate lyrical elegance, that light dancing touch that sets solid figures swaying, saints leaping on tiptoe, patterned draperies swirling and spidery fingers pointing, infuses these images with an almost frolicsome levity that brings them to what feels more like a spiritual than a physical life.
The bottomless glow of Byzantine icons may slowly give way to perspective, for instance, but in Neroccio di Landi's Annuncation notice how wilfully non-explanatory this is. It does not serve to articulate realistic spaces. Rather it draws the eye inwards to rush it up to ethereal realms. Donatello may have introduced ideas of three-dimensional modelling into narrative paintings, but look how the Sienese flirt with his sculptural solidity. One moment they are lending patterned outlines a new bulging bas-relief dimension, the next they are portraying living saints like sculptures in niches, as if the gaze of God was a Gorgon's stare. Renaissance advances are not rejected, but adapted and augmented as they are subtly blended with native traditions.
This happens for many reasons. A scholarly catalogue discusses them -from the civic pride of a stalwart republic, through a fear of being overwhelmed by more powerful states, to the vagaries of differing patrons or the influences of artistic companies that encourage chameleon individuals to adapt their talents to suit site-specific jobs.
But as this show reassembles the magnificent altarpieces that for centuries have been dismembered, bringing together beautiful panel paintings, sculptures and drawings by a series of mostly unfamiliar (and often anonymous) masters, it gathers also a sense of a spiritual aura. Despite all the damage, the fading, battering, the clumsy restorations and the garish finale of Beccafumi's works, the spectator is drawn ever deeper into a distinct imaginative space. He enters a world of melancholy, sloe-eyed maidens, of gesticulating dramas, of figures set dancing by a shimmering energy.
Look at Liberale Da Verona's two pictures illustrating scenes from the life of St Peter. As he heals a lame beggar, we see him standing slightly stiffly in a conventionally classical pose. But in the next scene alongside it, as we watch him refusing a corrupt offering of money, he seems suddenly to be set swaying to an expressively sinuous rhythm. His shrinking refusal of the cash comes to fresh life as this outsider artist picks up on and appropriates local stylistic traits.
Or step on to the stage of Benvenuto di Giovanni's little tempera painting of Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise. It may be tiny but it has immediate impact.
As the angel stands foursquare in the centre, he becomes a pivot for the struggling contortions of the pair of distressed humans whom he has been sent to banish. You can feel the shove of the angel's sinewy forearms. The tensions knot and tangle across the picture plane. And as Eve is shunted away, still indignantly arguing, you can almost hear her cries ringing shrilly amid the harsh swirl of the rocks.
In the images of Renaissance Siena, art is brought to life by a strange rhapsodic force.
Renaissance Siena: Art for a City is at the National Gallery, London WC2 (020 7747 2885; nationalgallery.org.uk)
Review of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure, by Michael Chabon
'Gentlemen' prefer blades; FICTION Puffed-up novella's engaging buddies find themselves heaving steel in medieval Jewish empire
Randy Michael Signor
The Chicago Sun-Times
4 November 2007
Chicago Sun-Times
GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD: A Tale of Adventure
By Michael Chabon
Del Rey, 224 pages, $21.95
Jews With Swords was Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon's half- joking working title while writing his new novel, Gentlemen of the Road. When he talked about the book-in-progress, using the working title, he writes in the new novel's Afterword, hardly anyone failed to picture a Woody Allen-like schlub, round glasses and all, attempting to heft a large, heavy blade.
That would be a far cry from the sword-wielding Jews in this wild, wild adventure. Not much more than a puffed-up novella, this tale would have taken no more than one night's telling around a campfire, bedrolls at hand. Or appeared, perhaps recast in different costumes, as a dime novel glorifying a pair of Wild West Desperadoes.
The book's voice has that same kind of pumped-up, mythologizing quality -- with an important difference: whenever the reader begins to recognize a convention, Chabon sets it on its head. The prevailing tone is not unlike a contemporary buddy flick; Zelikman and Amram, Chabon's oddball, mismatched (or perfectly matched) protagonists, yammer at each other like Newman and Redford's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The time is 950 A.D., and much of the action takes place in the medieval Jewish empire of the Khazars, though all the other religious players swim in this cultural stew. The world is rife with armies, ebbing and flowing across the map. Life is harsh, short and uncertain.
The two old friends are bigger than life. Amram is the aging Abyssinian giant, on his stallion, swinging his Viking battle ax, named Defiler of Your Mother; Zelikman is tall and thin, a scarecrow, a blond Jew from what is now Bavaria, trained as a physician, or barber as his profession was termed, given to brooding, he has an overaffection for what seems to be hash.
The novel opens with Zelikman and Amram running a con game on a group of travelers. Soon they are entangled in the fate of a young stripling lad who professes to be the rightful heir to the Khazar kingdom, now led by a false bek, or king. The lad, Filaq, is willful and gifted with a tongue sharp enough to annoy all within earshot; the two friends are torn between helping Filaq and strangling him.
The pair find themselves drafted into Filaq's plot to regain his title, leading a rebel army across the steppes to the capitol city of Atil, where they meet their fate. It's a complicated story, populated with an invisible king, sacred elephants, roaming Jewish traders, wicked rulers, and secrets enough to pull the reader forward as though led by a leash. There are battles and escapes and chases and intrigue, all the elements of an old-fashioned Saturday matinee.
In addition to Zelikman and Amram, there are other men in search of something lost: a child, a wife, a conscience or even a soul, whatever it was that took them from whatever safety there was and out into the broiling world. These haunted men become gentlemen of the road. It is how you find things in that world, be it knowledge, or a loved one snatched away or disappeared in one of the wars that swept back and forth over the land in those days like bloody tides.
Few would confuse these men with any kind of gentleman. But they are of the road, loose in the world together, seeking whatever it is they lack, adventure or escape or revenge or whatever excuse they press to their breast for leaving or returning home, as Chabon reduces all adventure to in his Afterword. Home, we are safe; away from home, anything can happen.
Gentlemen of the Road is tight, spare, yet abounds with lush language chosen, it seems, solely for how it echoes in your mind. This book roars to be read aloud -- except it is also illustrated; Gary Gianni's drawings look timeless -- like they could have adorned a dime novel in the 1800s, or a romance published in 1920s.
Randy Michael Signor was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction.
Randy Michael Signor
The Chicago Sun-Times
4 November 2007
Chicago Sun-Times
GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD: A Tale of Adventure
By Michael Chabon
Del Rey, 224 pages, $21.95
Jews With Swords was Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon's half- joking working title while writing his new novel, Gentlemen of the Road. When he talked about the book-in-progress, using the working title, he writes in the new novel's Afterword, hardly anyone failed to picture a Woody Allen-like schlub, round glasses and all, attempting to heft a large, heavy blade.
That would be a far cry from the sword-wielding Jews in this wild, wild adventure. Not much more than a puffed-up novella, this tale would have taken no more than one night's telling around a campfire, bedrolls at hand. Or appeared, perhaps recast in different costumes, as a dime novel glorifying a pair of Wild West Desperadoes.
The book's voice has that same kind of pumped-up, mythologizing quality -- with an important difference: whenever the reader begins to recognize a convention, Chabon sets it on its head. The prevailing tone is not unlike a contemporary buddy flick; Zelikman and Amram, Chabon's oddball, mismatched (or perfectly matched) protagonists, yammer at each other like Newman and Redford's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The time is 950 A.D., and much of the action takes place in the medieval Jewish empire of the Khazars, though all the other religious players swim in this cultural stew. The world is rife with armies, ebbing and flowing across the map. Life is harsh, short and uncertain.
The two old friends are bigger than life. Amram is the aging Abyssinian giant, on his stallion, swinging his Viking battle ax, named Defiler of Your Mother; Zelikman is tall and thin, a scarecrow, a blond Jew from what is now Bavaria, trained as a physician, or barber as his profession was termed, given to brooding, he has an overaffection for what seems to be hash.
The novel opens with Zelikman and Amram running a con game on a group of travelers. Soon they are entangled in the fate of a young stripling lad who professes to be the rightful heir to the Khazar kingdom, now led by a false bek, or king. The lad, Filaq, is willful and gifted with a tongue sharp enough to annoy all within earshot; the two friends are torn between helping Filaq and strangling him.
The pair find themselves drafted into Filaq's plot to regain his title, leading a rebel army across the steppes to the capitol city of Atil, where they meet their fate. It's a complicated story, populated with an invisible king, sacred elephants, roaming Jewish traders, wicked rulers, and secrets enough to pull the reader forward as though led by a leash. There are battles and escapes and chases and intrigue, all the elements of an old-fashioned Saturday matinee.
In addition to Zelikman and Amram, there are other men in search of something lost: a child, a wife, a conscience or even a soul, whatever it was that took them from whatever safety there was and out into the broiling world. These haunted men become gentlemen of the road. It is how you find things in that world, be it knowledge, or a loved one snatched away or disappeared in one of the wars that swept back and forth over the land in those days like bloody tides.
Few would confuse these men with any kind of gentleman. But they are of the road, loose in the world together, seeking whatever it is they lack, adventure or escape or revenge or whatever excuse they press to their breast for leaving or returning home, as Chabon reduces all adventure to in his Afterword. Home, we are safe; away from home, anything can happen.
Gentlemen of the Road is tight, spare, yet abounds with lush language chosen, it seems, solely for how it echoes in your mind. This book roars to be read aloud -- except it is also illustrated; Gary Gianni's drawings look timeless -- like they could have adorned a dime novel in the 1800s, or a romance published in 1920s.
Randy Michael Signor was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction.
Medieval Coins
Hoard of medieval coins
1 November 2007
Wells Journal
The first in a series of identification surgeries at Wells Museum has uncovered a hoard of medieval coins. Naomi Payne, finds liaison officer For Somerset, is holding surgeries in the museum on the first Wednesday of every month.
At the first on at the beginning of October, there were a number of visitors including two gentlemen who had discovered the medieval short cross coins. Since then the coins have been taken to the British Museum where they were examined by one of the curators in the Department Of Coins and Medals. They date back to some time between 1185 and 1236 (during the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John and Henry III).
Eleven of the coins are pennies and five are cut halfpennies. At this time coins were cut into halves and quarters to form smaller denominations. Any groups of two or more coins made from precious metals are covered under the Treasure Act 1996 and so this collection has been reported to the coroner as potential Treasure.
If you have something for Naomi to identify but can't make it in on the right day you can drop items into the museum any time during opening hours and she will examine them and leave them for you to collect.
She can help with any archaeological artefacts, for example worked flints, pottery, coins and metalwork. This is a free service and donations are welcome.
1 November 2007
Wells Journal
The first in a series of identification surgeries at Wells Museum has uncovered a hoard of medieval coins. Naomi Payne, finds liaison officer For Somerset, is holding surgeries in the museum on the first Wednesday of every month.
At the first on at the beginning of October, there were a number of visitors including two gentlemen who had discovered the medieval short cross coins. Since then the coins have been taken to the British Museum where they were examined by one of the curators in the Department Of Coins and Medals. They date back to some time between 1185 and 1236 (during the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John and Henry III).
Eleven of the coins are pennies and five are cut halfpennies. At this time coins were cut into halves and quarters to form smaller denominations. Any groups of two or more coins made from precious metals are covered under the Treasure Act 1996 and so this collection has been reported to the coroner as potential Treasure.
If you have something for Naomi to identify but can't make it in on the right day you can drop items into the museum any time during opening hours and she will examine them and leave them for you to collect.
She can help with any archaeological artefacts, for example worked flints, pottery, coins and metalwork. This is a free service and donations are welcome.
Salisbury to celebrate 750th anniversary in 2008
It's 750 years since an arrow marked the spot
By Barry Leighton
3 November 2007
Western Daily Press
According to legend, Salisbury Cathedral was built on the spot where an arrow fired from the old fortress of Old Sarum landed in a marshy field.
Clergy, city leaders, architects and advisers ran to the spot and 13th century Bishop Poore pronounced: "We'll build it here".
If true, it must have been an incredible, wind-assisted shot, as the teeming city of Old Sarum, which had outgrown its Iron Age site, was nearly two miles away.
Now Salisbury, which grew around its magnificent cathedral, is set to celebrate the 750th anniversary of when the building was begun. At 404ft, the awesome church boasts Britain's tallest spire and is lauded as "the finest 13th Century Gothic cathedral in Britain". It also owns the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta and contains Europe's oldest working clock.
Yesterday cathedral chiefs promised "a rich tapestry of events and activities" to mark the historic dedication of the cathedral in 1285, and what, in effect, was the founding of Salisbury - or New Sarum as it was known at the time.
The Very Rev June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury, said a huge amount of work had gone into planning a string of activities to celebrate the most important date in both the cathedral and the city's history.
She said: "2008 will be a very special year for the cathedral.... We hope that people who perhaps do not normally visit the cathedral and the Close will find new reasons to travel to the city - not only from within the UK, but quite literally from across the world."
The programme includes an open day, medieval fair and a flower festival, along with a variety of musical and artist events. The Open Day on April 26 marks the beginning of the main period for the anniversary celebrations and will enable people to explore behind the scenes.
The dean added: "Visitors will discover more about the history of this iconic building and the people who live, work and worship here."
The work of the masons and glaziers will be on display, plus the chance to visit areas not normally open to the public including the Choir Song Room, Library and the Vestry.
For further information on events, ticket prices, opening times visit www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/750.php or call 01722 555 120.
By Barry Leighton
3 November 2007
Western Daily Press
According to legend, Salisbury Cathedral was built on the spot where an arrow fired from the old fortress of Old Sarum landed in a marshy field.
Clergy, city leaders, architects and advisers ran to the spot and 13th century Bishop Poore pronounced: "We'll build it here".
If true, it must have been an incredible, wind-assisted shot, as the teeming city of Old Sarum, which had outgrown its Iron Age site, was nearly two miles away.
Now Salisbury, which grew around its magnificent cathedral, is set to celebrate the 750th anniversary of when the building was begun. At 404ft, the awesome church boasts Britain's tallest spire and is lauded as "the finest 13th Century Gothic cathedral in Britain". It also owns the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta and contains Europe's oldest working clock.
Yesterday cathedral chiefs promised "a rich tapestry of events and activities" to mark the historic dedication of the cathedral in 1285, and what, in effect, was the founding of Salisbury - or New Sarum as it was known at the time.
The Very Rev June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury, said a huge amount of work had gone into planning a string of activities to celebrate the most important date in both the cathedral and the city's history.
She said: "2008 will be a very special year for the cathedral.... We hope that people who perhaps do not normally visit the cathedral and the Close will find new reasons to travel to the city - not only from within the UK, but quite literally from across the world."
The programme includes an open day, medieval fair and a flower festival, along with a variety of musical and artist events. The Open Day on April 26 marks the beginning of the main period for the anniversary celebrations and will enable people to explore behind the scenes.
The dean added: "Visitors will discover more about the history of this iconic building and the people who live, work and worship here."
The work of the masons and glaziers will be on display, plus the chance to visit areas not normally open to the public including the Choir Song Room, Library and the Vestry.
For further information on events, ticket prices, opening times visit www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/750.php or call 01722 555 120.
Beowulf - film to be in theatres on November 16
'Beowulf' and 3-D
Sperling, Nicole
9 November 2007
Entertainment Weekly
A wave of risky 3-D epics begins with Ray Winstone as a warrior and Angelina Jolie as the sexiest swamp thing ever.
RELEASE DATE November 16
One evening last July, screenwriter Roger Avary walked out of a Comic-Con screening of footage from his latest movie and found himself unable to slip back into reality. The world of the film, rendered in eye-popping 3-D, had seemed so all-encompassing that, getting into his car to drive home, he had trouble shaking it off. "I probably shouldn't have been behind the wheel," he says. "I felt like I was coming off of an acid trip."
What was the film that had so messed with the head of the Pulp Fiction co-writer? Some mind-bending sci-fi flick? Actually, it was an adaptation of a 3,183-line Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse poem supposedly written by Christian monks over 1,000 years ago--a literary work so notoriously impenetrable that Woody Allen advised Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, "Don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf." A touchstone for fantasy writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf is the story of a Scandinavian warrior who saves King Hrothgar's people from a marauding monster named Grendel. Now it's been transformed into a 21st-century popcorn extravaganza with all the high-tech fixings. The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, utilizes motion-capture technology to transform live action into digital animation, a technique pioneered by director Peter Jackson with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and further developed by Zemeckis in The Polar Express. Throw in Angelina Jolie as Grendel's fierce, slitheringly sexy mother--and as much blood and gore as a PG-13 rating can bear--and it's clear this is not your father's Beowulf. Or your great-great-great-great-grandfather's, either. "Watching this thing is like walking around in a graphic novel," says Beowulf co-writer Neil Gaiman, who, as a preeminent graphic novelist (The Sandman), should know.
Following on the heels of the $211 million sleeper 300, Beowulf seems poised for success with a similar blend of ancient setting and effects wizardry. (It will be released simultaneously in 2-D and 3-D.) But whereas 300 used live actors, complete with rippling abs, Beowulf features no flesh-and-blood stars at all--just digital replicas, which in Polar Express were criticized for appearing a bit dead-eyed. (Judging from footage EW has seen, vast improvements have been made.) With a budget of $150 million--more than double that of 300--the film is a hefty risk for Paramount and financier Steve Bing. It must appeal to more than just 13-year-old comic-book fans in order to succeed at the box office. "For a young audience, this is the world they live in," says Paramount's president of marketing and worldwide distribution Rob Moore. "The challenge is getting the older audience."
Screenwriter Avary first encountered Beowulf in a high school English class--and not coincidentally, he says, "I got a C that year." Around the time of Pulp Fiction, he partnered with Gaiman to begin hammering out a screenplay of Beowulf, which he initially planned to direct himself with a modest $20 million budget. In late 2004, following the success of Polar Express, Zemeckis jumped on board the project. A noted control freak who, during the making of Contact, digitally tweaked Jodie Foster's eyebrow in one scene, Zemeckis saw unlimited possibilities for his new box of motion-capture tools. (The director is not speaking to the press for Beowulf.) "Bob said, 'There's nothing you can write that I can't film,'" says Gaiman. "Suddenly, I'm writing a battle where Beowulf is fighting a dragon under the sea--all the kind of cool stuff we couldn't have done before."
What's more, it could all be done on a soundstage in Culver City. No need to scout picturesque Norwegian villages or hire extras for battle scenes--the whole thing could be digitally fabricated. Zemeckis' technology could transform Crispin Glover into a raging monster and paunchy British actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast), who plays Beowulf, into a hunky hero. For the actors, who also include Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, this meant acting in wetsuits while plastered from head to toe with digital sensors. Winstone insists the technology wasn't cumbersome: "After the first day you get used to it, and it kind of makes you more aware of your muscles. It was a way of working I would love to try again."
Seeking to stir up fanboy enthusiasm, Paramount screened that exclusive Beowulf footage at Comic-Con, but even the niche audience's allegiance isn't a sure thing. To hedge its bet, Beowulf will have the biggest 3-D rollout of any movie in history, bowing on just under 1,000 digital 3-D screens and in 90 IMAX theaters. The hope is that the high-tech format will pay off the way it has for films like Polar Express, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons, all of which performed strongly in 3-D.
With A-list directors like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson developing 3-D projects of their own, all of Hollywood will be watching Beowulf as a test case. "This is the next frontier," says DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg, a lead evangelist of 3-D. "In the future, I think 50 to 70 percent of the moviegoing experience will be in 3-D." For his part, Avary thinks this cinematic marriage of advanced technology and ancient poetry makes sense. "Beowulf has been transformed over the years, depending on who's telling it," he says. "We don't have fire pits to tell our stories around. We're doing it in the theaters." Now he just hopes that millions of other people will leave those theaters, as he did, in a kind of daze, wondering if it's safe to drive home.
Sperling, Nicole
9 November 2007
Entertainment Weekly
A wave of risky 3-D epics begins with Ray Winstone as a warrior and Angelina Jolie as the sexiest swamp thing ever.
RELEASE DATE November 16
One evening last July, screenwriter Roger Avary walked out of a Comic-Con screening of footage from his latest movie and found himself unable to slip back into reality. The world of the film, rendered in eye-popping 3-D, had seemed so all-encompassing that, getting into his car to drive home, he had trouble shaking it off. "I probably shouldn't have been behind the wheel," he says. "I felt like I was coming off of an acid trip."
What was the film that had so messed with the head of the Pulp Fiction co-writer? Some mind-bending sci-fi flick? Actually, it was an adaptation of a 3,183-line Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse poem supposedly written by Christian monks over 1,000 years ago--a literary work so notoriously impenetrable that Woody Allen advised Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, "Don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf." A touchstone for fantasy writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf is the story of a Scandinavian warrior who saves King Hrothgar's people from a marauding monster named Grendel. Now it's been transformed into a 21st-century popcorn extravaganza with all the high-tech fixings. The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, utilizes motion-capture technology to transform live action into digital animation, a technique pioneered by director Peter Jackson with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and further developed by Zemeckis in The Polar Express. Throw in Angelina Jolie as Grendel's fierce, slitheringly sexy mother--and as much blood and gore as a PG-13 rating can bear--and it's clear this is not your father's Beowulf. Or your great-great-great-great-grandfather's, either. "Watching this thing is like walking around in a graphic novel," says Beowulf co-writer Neil Gaiman, who, as a preeminent graphic novelist (The Sandman), should know.
Following on the heels of the $211 million sleeper 300, Beowulf seems poised for success with a similar blend of ancient setting and effects wizardry. (It will be released simultaneously in 2-D and 3-D.) But whereas 300 used live actors, complete with rippling abs, Beowulf features no flesh-and-blood stars at all--just digital replicas, which in Polar Express were criticized for appearing a bit dead-eyed. (Judging from footage EW has seen, vast improvements have been made.) With a budget of $150 million--more than double that of 300--the film is a hefty risk for Paramount and financier Steve Bing. It must appeal to more than just 13-year-old comic-book fans in order to succeed at the box office. "For a young audience, this is the world they live in," says Paramount's president of marketing and worldwide distribution Rob Moore. "The challenge is getting the older audience."
Screenwriter Avary first encountered Beowulf in a high school English class--and not coincidentally, he says, "I got a C that year." Around the time of Pulp Fiction, he partnered with Gaiman to begin hammering out a screenplay of Beowulf, which he initially planned to direct himself with a modest $20 million budget. In late 2004, following the success of Polar Express, Zemeckis jumped on board the project. A noted control freak who, during the making of Contact, digitally tweaked Jodie Foster's eyebrow in one scene, Zemeckis saw unlimited possibilities for his new box of motion-capture tools. (The director is not speaking to the press for Beowulf.) "Bob said, 'There's nothing you can write that I can't film,'" says Gaiman. "Suddenly, I'm writing a battle where Beowulf is fighting a dragon under the sea--all the kind of cool stuff we couldn't have done before."
What's more, it could all be done on a soundstage in Culver City. No need to scout picturesque Norwegian villages or hire extras for battle scenes--the whole thing could be digitally fabricated. Zemeckis' technology could transform Crispin Glover into a raging monster and paunchy British actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast), who plays Beowulf, into a hunky hero. For the actors, who also include Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, this meant acting in wetsuits while plastered from head to toe with digital sensors. Winstone insists the technology wasn't cumbersome: "After the first day you get used to it, and it kind of makes you more aware of your muscles. It was a way of working I would love to try again."
Seeking to stir up fanboy enthusiasm, Paramount screened that exclusive Beowulf footage at Comic-Con, but even the niche audience's allegiance isn't a sure thing. To hedge its bet, Beowulf will have the biggest 3-D rollout of any movie in history, bowing on just under 1,000 digital 3-D screens and in 90 IMAX theaters. The hope is that the high-tech format will pay off the way it has for films like Polar Express, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons, all of which performed strongly in 3-D.
With A-list directors like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson developing 3-D projects of their own, all of Hollywood will be watching Beowulf as a test case. "This is the next frontier," says DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg, a lead evangelist of 3-D. "In the future, I think 50 to 70 percent of the moviegoing experience will be in 3-D." For his part, Avary thinks this cinematic marriage of advanced technology and ancient poetry makes sense. "Beowulf has been transformed over the years, depending on who's telling it," he says. "We don't have fire pits to tell our stories around. We're doing it in the theaters." Now he just hopes that millions of other people will leave those theaters, as he did, in a kind of daze, wondering if it's safe to drive home.
The Mongols were tolerant
Those Easy-Going Mongols: What makes an empire? A new theory argues it's all about tolerance.
By Steve Weinberg
29 October 2007
Legal Times
From her faculty perch at Yale Law School, Amy Chua studies international business transactions and globalization. Those studies got her thinking about the extraordinary place of the United States in the world order. The result of that thinking is a controversial book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall.
Everything about the book is controversial: Chua's concept of the "hyperpower," her choices of hyperpowers past and present, her theory about how hyperpowers develop, and her reasoning about why hyperpowers eventually lose their hegemony.
A hyperpower is, in Chua's thinking, "world dominant," which she defines as "at the forefront of the world's technological, military and economic development." For several decades, the United States has qualified in Chua's mind as world-dominant, with no other nation a close second. The tension rides on her ruminations about whether the United States is slipping from its hyperpower status, and what it will mean—to its citizenry and the rest of the world population—if the slippage becomes precipitous.
Surveying thousands of years of world history, Chua identifies these as probably the only valid hyperpowers before the contemporary United States: the Persian Empire from Cyrus to Alexander; Rome's high empire, the Tan Dynasty of China, the Mongol Empire, the Dutch world empire, and the British Empire. Exclusions certain to initiate debate include medieval Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Aztecs, France under Louis XIV, the Hapsburg empire, and Nazi Germany.
What brings about a hyperpower? Chua argues that it is heavily dependent—believe it or not—on tolerance. "To pull away from its rivals on a global scale, a society must . . . motivate the world's best and brightest, regardless of ethnicity, religion or background."
But wait: The Mongols were tolerant? In fact, Chua's own words seem to contradict the theory. Didn't Genghis Khan's "ravaging hordes raze entire villages, then use the corpses as moat fill"? What about Persia's King Darius, who "sliced off the ears and noses of his enemies before impaling them"? As for the British Empire, according to scholars of post-colonial history, it "was built on the racism and condescension of the White Man's Burden."
Nevertheless, Chua insists that her hyperpowers exuded tolerance. "I'm not talking about tolerance in the modern, human-rights sense. By tolerance, I don't mean political or cultural equality. Rather, as I will use the term, tolerance simply means letting very different kinds of people live, work and prosper in your society—even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons."
The United States never could have risen to hyperpower status before the Civil War because of slavery, or even during the Reconstruction era immediately following the Civil War. Eventually, however, the United States permitted enough tolerance to qualify, according to Chua.
Does Chua provide a useful paradigm for viewing world power throughout the ages? My answer is a qualified no. Here are some of the reasons why:
• Chua's research into ancient hyperpowers is impressive up to a point. But her evidence about the levels of tolerance in each society seems sketchy. I am unconvinced that the wielders of power in the Mongol Empire, to name one example, opened the doors to a wide range of influences.
• Chua's inclusions and exclusions are questionable. To her credit, she expresses tentativeness more than once. But, for example, deciding to include the Dutch empire as a hyperpower feels like a stretch. She makes a rather strong case for tolerance within the Dutch empire—a necessary but not sufficient condition for hyperpower status—but her case for extensive world influence seems inflated.
• Chua's discussion of alleged U.S. hegemony is scattered. "The United States today offers a cultural package—supermodels and Starbucks, Disney and double cheeseburgers, Coca-Cola and SUVs—that holds infuriating allure for millions, if not billions, around the world," Chua says. That cultural package, combined with military power, might allow the United States to hang on to hyperpower status, she comments, or the combination might be the beginning of the end.
Chua cautions, "The United States faces billions of people around the world, most of them poor, who want to be like Americans but don't want to be under America's thumb; who want to dress and live like Americans but are denied visas by the U.S. embassy; who are told over and over that America stands for freedom but see only the American pursuit of self-interest."
In a fascinating passage that nonetheless strikes me as partially undermining Chua's paradigm, she notes, "Ironically, it may be that America can remain a hyperpower only if it stops trying to be one."
By Steve Weinberg
29 October 2007
Legal Times
From her faculty perch at Yale Law School, Amy Chua studies international business transactions and globalization. Those studies got her thinking about the extraordinary place of the United States in the world order. The result of that thinking is a controversial book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall.
Everything about the book is controversial: Chua's concept of the "hyperpower," her choices of hyperpowers past and present, her theory about how hyperpowers develop, and her reasoning about why hyperpowers eventually lose their hegemony.
A hyperpower is, in Chua's thinking, "world dominant," which she defines as "at the forefront of the world's technological, military and economic development." For several decades, the United States has qualified in Chua's mind as world-dominant, with no other nation a close second. The tension rides on her ruminations about whether the United States is slipping from its hyperpower status, and what it will mean—to its citizenry and the rest of the world population—if the slippage becomes precipitous.
Surveying thousands of years of world history, Chua identifies these as probably the only valid hyperpowers before the contemporary United States: the Persian Empire from Cyrus to Alexander; Rome's high empire, the Tan Dynasty of China, the Mongol Empire, the Dutch world empire, and the British Empire. Exclusions certain to initiate debate include medieval Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Aztecs, France under Louis XIV, the Hapsburg empire, and Nazi Germany.
What brings about a hyperpower? Chua argues that it is heavily dependent—believe it or not—on tolerance. "To pull away from its rivals on a global scale, a society must . . . motivate the world's best and brightest, regardless of ethnicity, religion or background."
But wait: The Mongols were tolerant? In fact, Chua's own words seem to contradict the theory. Didn't Genghis Khan's "ravaging hordes raze entire villages, then use the corpses as moat fill"? What about Persia's King Darius, who "sliced off the ears and noses of his enemies before impaling them"? As for the British Empire, according to scholars of post-colonial history, it "was built on the racism and condescension of the White Man's Burden."
Nevertheless, Chua insists that her hyperpowers exuded tolerance. "I'm not talking about tolerance in the modern, human-rights sense. By tolerance, I don't mean political or cultural equality. Rather, as I will use the term, tolerance simply means letting very different kinds of people live, work and prosper in your society—even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons."
The United States never could have risen to hyperpower status before the Civil War because of slavery, or even during the Reconstruction era immediately following the Civil War. Eventually, however, the United States permitted enough tolerance to qualify, according to Chua.
Does Chua provide a useful paradigm for viewing world power throughout the ages? My answer is a qualified no. Here are some of the reasons why:
• Chua's research into ancient hyperpowers is impressive up to a point. But her evidence about the levels of tolerance in each society seems sketchy. I am unconvinced that the wielders of power in the Mongol Empire, to name one example, opened the doors to a wide range of influences.
• Chua's inclusions and exclusions are questionable. To her credit, she expresses tentativeness more than once. But, for example, deciding to include the Dutch empire as a hyperpower feels like a stretch. She makes a rather strong case for tolerance within the Dutch empire—a necessary but not sufficient condition for hyperpower status—but her case for extensive world influence seems inflated.
• Chua's discussion of alleged U.S. hegemony is scattered. "The United States today offers a cultural package—supermodels and Starbucks, Disney and double cheeseburgers, Coca-Cola and SUVs—that holds infuriating allure for millions, if not billions, around the world," Chua says. That cultural package, combined with military power, might allow the United States to hang on to hyperpower status, she comments, or the combination might be the beginning of the end.
Chua cautions, "The United States faces billions of people around the world, most of them poor, who want to be like Americans but don't want to be under America's thumb; who want to dress and live like Americans but are denied visas by the U.S. embassy; who are told over and over that America stands for freedom but see only the American pursuit of self-interest."
In a fascinating passage that nonetheless strikes me as partially undermining Chua's paradigm, she notes, "Ironically, it may be that America can remain a hyperpower only if it stops trying to be one."
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