Brother Cadfael Mysteries: The Holy Thief, The Pilgrim of Hate

It’s probably hard for even the most devout modern American or British Catholic to comprehend the importance that medieval worshipers placed on saints’ relics – let alone for an unregenerate Protestant such as me. But Ellis Peters’ first Brother Cadfael novel, A Morbid Taste for Bones, centered on the acquisition of the bones of St. Winifred for the abbey of Shrewsbury. In The Holy Thief (1998) , the first of two Brother Cadfael episodes I watched recently, St. Winifred’s bones are again at issue. Another abbey has been burned down in the civil war between the forces of Stephen and Matilda, and its abbot has come to Shrewsbury with a novice who has had a vision – a vision that seems to require Shrewsbury to give up its most prized possession to aid in the rebuilding of the other abbey. Shrewsbury doesn’t want to let St. Winifred go, but its abbot is a truly holy man who tries to believe the best of others. But there are some monks who will stop at nothing to keep or gain possession of St. Winifred’s relics. When a death and a kidnapping occur, Cadfael must sort out truth from falsehood.

In The Pilgrim of Hate (also 1998), Cadfael encounters a young man who is on a barefoot pilgrimage to Wales, shepherded by his judgmental brother. Cadfael is himself Welsh, and invites the young pilgrim to the abbey so that he can treat his bleeding feet. The abbey is full of pilgrims come to receive blessings from St. Winifred’s relics, and when the body of an old man is found stuffed in a bag among the pilgrims’ luggage, Cadfael must investigate. He discovers that the young pilgrim’s brother, who is preaching a harsh doctrine of sin and repentance through mortification of the flesh, is not all he seems to be.

Both these stories had in common not only the relics but the concept of doing penance by punishing one’s body. The novice in The Holy Thief, it is suggested in one scene, receives altogether too much flogging from his covetous abbot, and in one of the tales Cadfael’s own apprentice is shown flagellating himself because he has confessed some slight wrongdoing. Cadfael doesn’t seem to think much of such activity, not surprising for a healer. I can’t recall whether the books made so much of this theme, but I’ll be looking for it in other episodes I watch.

A History of Britain, Discs 4 and 5

Now I’ve finished watching Simon Schama’s BBC series, A History of Britain. The episodes on Disc 4 cover the years from William and Mary to the Regency, George IV and William IV. (The latter get short shrift.) In the earlier part of the century, the Jacobite rebellion which attempted to install Bonnie Prince Charlie as King in lieu of the Hanoverian George I is shown, with the conclusion that its failure may actually have ended up improving the lot of the Scots. The American and French Revolutions, and how Britain dealt with the former and avoided a replay of the latter figure largely in the history of the later part of the 18th century. Schama discusses William Wordsworth’s journey from radical to Romantic at some length, and of course, also deals with the Napoleonic Wars.

The final disc contains three episodes which take Schama’s history from Victoria through Winston Churchill. As in the preceding episodes, we see Schama’s belief that an excessive emphasis on trade and business compromised British ideals of liberty, particularly during the glory days of Empire. Heartrending photographs of Indians who starved to death as Victoria was being made Empress of India illustrate his point all too well. Oddly, he seems to skim over both the Boer War and World War I with very little discussion.

In some ways I felt that the final episode, The Two Winstons, was the best of all. One of the strengths of Schama’s work is its interdisciplinary focus, and in The Two Winstons he allows himself to emphasize that focus. The first Winston is, of course, Winston Churchill; the second is Winston Smith, the hero of George Orwell’s 1984, and by extension, Orwell (Eric Blair) himself. Comparing Churchill’s life and that of Blair/Orwell gives Schama an opportunity to tell the history of Britain in the first half of the 20th century in a fresh new way. (Churchill’s participation as first a cabinet member and then an officer in the trenches of France is pretty much the only mention of WWI). I also learned something that I don’t think I’d heard before – that when Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, the members of the Cabinet were very close to trying to negotiate some kind of peace with Hitler – a terrifying thought. As usual with television histories of this type, my appetite for reading a bit more history has been whetted; I own at least the first volume of Schama’s companion history and will probably be dipping into it before long.

A History of Britain (Disc 3)

Ever since childhood days in Connecticut, watching New York channels 11 (I think – it was sponsored by the school system or education department) and 13 (WNET, PBS before there was PBS), I’ve had a nagging fondness for “educational television.” So from time to time I sample some on DVD. I like a varied diet of film, so it’s quite a while since I watched Discs 1 and 2 of Simon Schama’s series. Disc 3 includes The Body of the Queen, the last episode of season 1, plus The British Wars and Revolutions, the first two in season 2.

A History of Britain (2000 and after) is a good, and reasonably entertaining, introduction to British history, mingling Schama’s visits to famous places with reenactments and artifacts from the period to keep the viewer interested. Occasionally the reenactments were so realistic that I had to close my eyes. And then there were the times that my eyes closed on their own. To be fair, that was partly physiological and partly because, having taken an excellent course on Tudor and Stuart history, there was little new information for me in these particular episodes, which span the period from Elizabeth I to William and Mary. I do enjoy seeing the places where things happened. And the music that accompanies the series is lovely and haunting. I’ll be watching the rest of the episodes some time in the not-too-distant future.

Watching Instantly: Neverwhere (1996)

I've been enjoying Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature. (I'd enjoy it even more if I had a bigger monitor or had the computer hooked up to the television, but that's money I don't want to spend.) Recently they notified me that Neverwhere (1996), which was in my queue, was now available to watch instantly. When I found that each episode was under half an hour, I started watching them daily. It seems very seldom that one finds a half-hour dramatic program these days.
(Something about commercials, I guess, but Neverwhere came from the BBC.)

Co-creator Neil Gaiman knows his mythology, folklore and history, and mixes them expertly in this all-too-short miniseries. Neverwhere, like many of the best fantasies and indeed thrillers of any genre, takes an ordinary person and drops him into the middle of a dangerous situation, where he must quickly learn the rules or be annihilated. In this case, Richard Mayhew (Gary Bakewell) stumbles on an injured young woman on a London street. When she refuses medical help, he takes her to his flat and is thereby drawn into the drama of London Below -- a sort of parallel London where time and space are utterly changed, rival baronies and fiefdoms make life very dangerous, people have special powers, and the names of London places like Earl's Court and Blackfriars are interpreted literally. Richard and The Lady Door (Laura Fraser) must stay alive and avenge the deaths of her family while pursued by the horrifying Mr. Croup and Mr. Vanderbar. Can they trust the Marquis of Carabas, the Angel Islington, the bodyguard Hunter? Only time and experience will tell.

The episodes are visually beautiful, with some scenes and backgrounds reminding me of the collages in Somerset Studio. Special effects are very good also and the performances of all the actors are excellent. I especially liked seeing Trevor Peacock (the "No, no, no, no, no, yes" guy from Vicar of Dibley) as an aged Papageno-like character who plays a small but important part.

The ending leaves a possibility of a sequel, but one has never been made, alas. Still, I would recommend this six-part series to anyone who enjoys Gaiman's brand of fantasy.

The American Experience: The Great Fever

I like the PBS series, The American Experience. My only real problems with it are that I can't remember what night it's on, and that I still haven't adjusted to the Eastern Time Zone, so everything on TV seems as if it's on much too late. Fortunately for me, the PBS website carries information on the series (and some episodes can be watched online) and Netflix has it available for rental. So when I found a reference to an episode called The Great Fever while doing some genealogy research, I was able to have it at home to watch within a couple of days. (I will be blogging about the genealogy on a new blog, coming soon!)

The Great Fever was yellow fever, and the film is a documentary about how Walter Reed, Jesse Lazear, and others proved that the fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, enabling effective prevention measures to be undertaken and saving thousands of lives. This happened during the aftermath of the Caribbean phase of the Spanish-American War, during which U.S. forces took Cuba and Puerto Rico with a minimum of combat deaths but a huge number of deaths from disease -- typhoid, malaria and yellow fever.

The film, like most in the series, uses a variety of techniques. The talking heads and period photographs, paintings and documents with which we're familiar from Ken Burns's work are there, but added to them are re-enactments which make the hour-long film move faster. This was very effective in The Great Fever, juxtaposing a contemporary photo of one of the doctors with film of an actor applying a disease-bearing mosquito to his own arm with the help of a test-tube. In addition, the series uses very early motion pictures taken during the war (the first in which motion pictures played a role in keeping records of the war). I learned some useful background material from this film and it was a good way to spend an hour. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in epidemiology or the Spanish-American War, and especially also to genealogists who may find a Spanish-American War veteran or yellow fever victim in their ancestry.

Midsomer Murders: Blood Will Out

Tonight's film was just a television episode, one of many in a still-continuing series, Midsomer Murders, based on characters created by Caroline Graham. She initially wrote 5 books about Inspector Barnaby, at which time the television series began; since then only two more books have been published, but of course there have been many more television episodes. Blood Will Out was the final episode in the second season.

Interestingly for me, since I'd just watched Into the West a few days ago, was that the plot seemed to center around the arrival of a band of Travellers into one of the villages for which Inspector Barnaby is responsible. The villagers have varying reactions to the Travellers, but many of them believe (not necessarily wrongly) that thefts will increase. Of course there is a murder and a large number of red herrings before it is solved. In discussing murder mysteries I try not to include spoilers, so I won't say much more about that.

The continuing characters are engaging, with Inspector Barnaby's wife and daughter figuring fairly largely in each episode. In this one they have enlisted the help of his Sergeant, Gavin Troy, to keep him on a diet (it sounds like that Detox Diet that some people I know have been on recently). They, as well as Troy, provide some comic relief. In the books, Sgt. Troy is not quite as nice a character as he is in the television show, although in both cases he respects and admires Barnaby.

The scenery in Midsomer Murders is always so beautiful that it's hardly credible -- lovely villages, stately homes, ancient churches, sweeping meadows and lush woodlands. That's just one of the aspects that makes an episode from this series a nice break from more serious films.