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May 17 2012
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Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Teilifís (Television)

Jeremy Brett – The Quintessential Sherlock Holmes

I’ve always been a bit of a Sherlock Homes fan (or the much more impressive Irish form, Searbhlach de Hoilm!), especially since he was born of the imagination and pen of an Irish-Scots writer, one Artúr Iognáid Conán Ó Dúill or Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Doyle’s relationship with his ancestral homeland was problematic, to say the least, and there is a strong argument that he tapped into the anti-Irish prejudices of his day for the Sherlock Home’s stories, most tellingly in the Irish surnames he choose for Holmes’ two chief protagonists: Moran and Moriarty. He himself veered in his politics over the span of a lifetime from un-apologetic British Imperialist and Unionist to possessing somewhat more nuanced and socially liberal views of the world and Ireland in particular (by 1911 Doyle was convinced of the need for Home Rule or limited autonomy for Ireland within the so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, though that is as far as he could bring himself to go).

Arthur Conan Doyle’s interests in Irish revolutionary movements and the covert (and at times not so covert) war between them and the British colonial state in Ireland clearly influenced his writing. The Fenians in particular, both the Irish and Irish-American arms of the movement, were a major concern to him and at times he allowed himself caught up in the hysteria of the late Victorian age and its obsession with “Irish secret societies” (the surnames of Moran and Moriarty were identified in the British press with alleged Fenian officers operating in Britain in the late 1800s). In some ways the “Irish question” became central to the Sherlock Holmes canon, always implied though rarely stated.

Scholar Catherine Wynne details the Irish influences in the works of Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes’ tales in particular with her short study Mollies, Fenians, and Arthur Conan Doyle, which I highly recommend for any enquiring Sherlockian – or indeed anyone interested in how British society and culture viewed (and feared) the Irish people in the late 19th century. You can also read a full account of all this in her excellent book The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism and the Gothic, especially the section Imperial War and Colonial Sedition (preview via Google Books).

All this has helped me in my own writing (with a nod to Kim Newman), in particular my subversion of the Sherlock Holmes tales by turning them on their head and writing them from the point of view of Professor Moriarty, or rather Séamas Ó Muircheartaigh, 19th century Irish famine-child and exile turned revolutionary (and the efforts of his arch-nemesis to thwart him: the conflicted British Imperial agent Sherlock Holmes, and his baleful older brother Mycroft). Whether those tales of mine will ever see the light of day is of course another matter ;-)

But for now, a slight twist, as I turn to the Guardian and an excellent article on the late great Jeremy Brett, the British actor who for many of us was Sherlock Holmes. A true thespian (and a genuinely courageous person who overcame many personal problems and tragedies in his life until his untimely death), he defined what Holmes should look like, sound like and act like for a whole generation of television viewers (and still does). From the retrospective by Natalie Haynes:

“You can keep Basil Rathbone, fond as I am of him. You can keep Robert Downey, Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Cushing. You can even keep Michael Caine in Without A Clue (my secret favourite portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the big screen). You know why you can keep them? Because, in exchange, I get Jeremy Brett, the Sherlock for the connoisseurs.

Jeremy Brett is the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood, and perhaps (as with the Doctor or James Bond) we simply attach ourselves to the first one we see. But I don’t think so. In the ITV series which began in 1984, and ran until a year before Brett’s early death in 1995, Sherlock Holmes was as close to his literary roots as he has ever been on screen.

Brett understood completely how mercurial Holmes could be. And he could play every variant of him: loyal friend, relentless pursuer, bored logician, avenging angel and mischievous impersonator. Brett’s performance is an astonishing exercise in dynamics: he murmurs advice, whispers hints, bellows irritation, barks laughter. He is also the master of the subtextual glance. When the King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia, series 1, episode 1) wishes Irene Adler was his social equal, Brett turns to him with every facial sinew screaming contempt, for just a fraction of a second. Then he agrees, with such seeming politeness that the king is impervious to his real meaning, that Adler was indeed on a very different level. No wonder Adler leaves the country, declaring him too formidable an opponent, even though she knows she has beaten him in this encounter.

Even if Brett had not been so ill when filming the series, his Holmes is intrinsically fragile: he really looks like he forgets to eat for days on end, and that he carries the lead weight of ennui between cases.

In re-watching The Red-Headed League last week, I also detected a disdain for poshness that verges on the revolutionary. He describes John Clay (Tim McInnerny) thus: “His grandfather was a royal duke and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. So, Watson, bring the gun.” And because he is Jeremy Brett, he slightly rolls the r of “bring”, just so we know Holmes knows that he is funny.”

This weekend I will be indulging my Brettian-Holmes passion by watching the British television drama The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes back-to-back (thanks to a lovely DVD collection grabbed – quite literally – for a ridiculously cheap 10 euros), but here, for the rest of you, is a mere taster:

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May 16 2012
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Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History)

History And Counter-History In Ireland – Confronting The Apologist Historians

Just a quick post to highlight Protestant Cork 1911-1926, one of the best resources I’ve seen so far on the issue of the alleged decline in the numbers of Protestants living in the region of Cork City and County in the closing years and aftermath of the Irish Revolution. The reason this issue is so important is because of the claims made in relation to it by apologist historians and journalists on behalf of British rule in Ireland (the misnamed “revisionists”). This site is no simple Irish Nationalist or Republican one but follows a neutral line between both sides in order to maintain objectivity and scholarly standing. Meticulously researched, analytical, and with a host of primary sources both old and new, it is essential reading for anyone interested in this artificially contentious subject.

“It has been claimed that the Irish War of Independence from Britain in Cork turned into an ethnic pogrom driven by fear of mostly Protestant outsiders.

This site shows that the story is far more complex and nuanced that this simplistic view.

The Population declined by 14470 in 15 years, but 10,714 non-Irish-born Protestants lived in Cork in 1911.

Most were military, or government. Has this story been told properly?”

The conclusion is fair and balanced – even to a Republican:

“This article aims to correct our understanding of the issue through using new resources online to improve older research. As much written about this topic has either been incompletely researched, unverifiable, or supposition dressed up as fact, it is difficult to winnow out the fact from the fiction. It has often been necessary to return to the original source to examine its accuracy. To their credit those who have followed standard academic referencing to a verifiable source allowed this process to happen; the unverifiable sources should not be treated as being anything other than hearsay.

The War of Independence was driven by nationalism, and as 1921 continued it descended into the mire of a bloody war of reprisals. While this may revolt some people, and others may question the need for it, the people involved at the time had no idea if they were going to win or lose. If they had known the outcome they may have stayed their hand. Equally, if they had not pursued the savage course they took would the British have offered a truce? Was the impetus for truce the fact that the Ulster Unionists had secured partition? These are the questions that need answering.

The Dunmanway killings are different in that they occurred after independence. The Irish State failed to protect its citizens. No evidence has been produced to suggest that the IRA garrison attempted to leave the barracks and take control of the town, and at the very least this was a dereliction of duty. All we do know for certain is that 16 Protestants, and one Catholic, were shot or disappeared in West Cork over a three day period. Others of both main faiths were shot at or targeted for shooting. We know who shot four of them in Macroom, and we can suspect who may have shot the others. However, there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with the killings. The murders were denounced by both sides of Sinn Féin, and vulnerable citizens were protected by the local Anti-Treaty IRA. Civilians and military were warned they would be shot if they didn’t hand in all guns to the local IRA commanders throughout the area. The killings resulted in the emigration of a small number of native Church of Ireland and other Protestant members from the county, but the contemporary Protestant sources stubbornly refuse to suggest a sectarian pogrom: Bolshevik certainly, agrarian definitely, nationalist undoubtedly but sectarian exceptionally.

There is no justification for the actual Dunmanway killings. Even if each and every one of the men shot were informers they had been granted amnesty by the Truce. If they had breached the Truce then they should have been brought before a court of law and tried. Whatever the reason for their killings, if the IRA were involved then it was a betrayal of their oath to the Republic. However to use this event to argue that there was a sustained campaign against Protestants because of their religion is not supported by any of the evidence from the time: Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter.

It is important neither to understate nor overstate what happened in the revolutionary period. This was a savage period in Irish history. A vicious war, using methods which eschewed the norms of war up to that point, was fought to a draw in July 1921. This was followed by an even more savage Civil War which led to a complete breakdown of law. Those with property, and known Treaty supporters were most at risk, and ex-Unionists fell into both these categories. The new Irish state did its best to protect all of its citizens, and yet there were appalling atrocities committed. The evidence does not support the theory that Protestants were targeted because of their religion. Historians are entitled to speculate, but in this case has the speculation run away with the story? Is it time to stop this pointless debate, and write true history?”

Some more analysis below.

Niall Meehan:

Irish Political Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, February 2012,  ‘The Further One Gets From Belfast’, a second reply to Jeff Dudgeon

Irish Political Review, Vol. 26 No 11, November 2011,  Reply to Jeffrey Dudgeon on Peter Hart

History Ireland, November-December 2011, Vol. 19 No 6 History Ireland letter on second edition of Gerard Murphy’s The Year of Disappearances

Spinwatch 24 May 2011, Distorting Irish History Two, the road from Dunmanway: Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork

FINAL 16 NOV 2010 1 An ‘amazing coincidence’ that ‘could mean anything’: Gerard Murphy’s The Year of Disappearances

Spinwatch November 2010, Distorting Irish History, the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography

Irish Times Monday, October 12, 2009, Sectarian gloss on State’s early years is flawed

Dublin Review of Books, Issue Number 11 – Autumn 2009, Frank Gallagher and land agitation – A response to Tom Wall’s ‘Getting Them Out, Southern Loyalists in the War of Independence’ (drb, Issue 9 Spring 2009)

History Ireland, Vol 17 No 4 July August 2009, A response on use (and non-use) of sources to Professor David Fitzpatrick (TCD)

Irish Political Review, Vol 23, No3, March 2008, After the War of Independence, some further questions about West Cork, April 27-29 1922

Counterpunch, November 11/12, 2006, “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” Sends Revisionists Yapping at History’s Heels

Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc:
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Mar 12 2012
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Stair (History)

Alice Milligan – An Fíorghael

A national newspaper in Ireland carrying an article praising an Irish Republican and Revolutionary hero? Or in this case, a heroine. Whatever next?

But then again – what a heroine!

Professor Declan Kiberd reviews the biography “Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival” by Catherine Morris in the Irish Times, a study of the only woman to my knowledge to have been sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB):

“‘[Alice Milligan] …believed that the greatest sin a people could commit was to bring the work of the dead to nothing. Her lifelong project, in novels, poems, plays, journalism and tableaux, was to liberate the still-unused energies buried in the Irish past and to demonstrate their rich potential for her generation.

Hence, for her, the importance of “the memory of the dead” kept forever green in song, story, gardens of remembrance and that ultimate repository of all that is recalled by the underlings of history, “tradition” (or the passing down of felt experience in oral lore).

The fate of her writings after her death, in 1953, is an even bleaker illustration of the ways in which authors can join the ranks of the disappeared. Although artists as distinguished as Brian Friel and Benedict Kiely and politicians from Eamon de Valera to Seán MacBride have celebrated her writing, most of it was journalism and is no longer of easy access.

…Yet Catherine Morris has challenged this neglect, sifting through hundreds of archives to narrate the astonishing life of a gifted woman who was arguably one of the greatest of all inventors of modern Ireland.

Milligan came from a family of Methodist unionists, advanced enough to encourage her education, her study of Irish and her involvement in field naturalists’ clubs. (It was through an intense study of the national landscape that many Protestants of her generation impatriated themselves to the point at which they wished also to study Irish history.) She remained on good terms with her siblings, even though Morris, whom I advised on this project, inclines to the opinion that she was recruited eventually into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. (In 1919 she told Sinéad de Valera she had been “sworn in”.)

… the experience of Irish-language classes in Dublin soon converted her into a republican. With her Catholic friend Anna Johnston, she edited a paper, the Shan Van Vocht, that had a truly global distribution and that gave an early publishing opportunity to many soon-to-be-famous Irish revivalists.

Morris reminds us that it was in ordinary journals, pamphlets and newspapers – rather than in more expensive arts-and-crafts volumes of high modernism – that the agenda of the Irish revival was carried forward.

…Looking back in 1926 George Russell found something momentous as well as mysterious about it all: “Thirty years ago there did not seem a people in Europe less visited by the creative fire. Then a girl of genius, Miss Milligan, began to have premonitions . . .”

Milligan was a genuine republican, self-reliant and keen to promote self-reliance in others. …Yet when members of her own family suffered prolonged illness in the later decades of her life, she selflessly returned north to nurse them. This entailed living as a kind of “internee” (her word) in a state whose very existence embarrassed and disappointed her, but she provided care and comfort with the same love, practicality and imagination that characterised everything she did. She was one of those rare souls who can embrace radical politics without ever lapsing into fanaticism or intolerance.”

Catherine Morris’ new book is available from the Four Court Press and in the video below she gives a tour of the National Library of Ireland exhibition, “Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival”. For more on Alice Milligan see this article from the National Women’s Council of Ireland, and this excellent review on the history-site, The Irish Story.

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Oct 02 2011
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Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Polaitíocht (Politics)

The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament

Irish journalist Jason Walsh reviews new book The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament by veteran Republican Tommy McKearney over at Spiked Online. Well worth reading, both the review and book. I’ll post my own review soon.

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Aug 15 2011
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Polaitíocht (Politics)

Forget David Starkey – Lets Talk About The Daily Mail And ‘Monkey Language’

As Britain England deals with the outcry over professor David Starkey’s controversial comments on the days of civil unrest that recently blighted several English cities, with some condemning and some supporting the well-known historian, an equally controversial, and arguably more unambiguously racist, article has appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper. In reviewing a newly published book by the journalist Jasper Rees, columnist Roger Lewis sinks to new lows in the anti-Welsh bigotry that has become the hallmark of the British media establishment:

‘Not many people in full possession of their faculties would find it appealing or necessary to try to turn themselves into a ‘real Welshman’. Nevertheless, this has been the ambition of Old Harrovian Jasper Rees in his new book Bred Of Heaven.

Perhaps a future project will see Rees don the burka and infiltrate Helmand to search for his inner  opium cultivator.’

Lovely. Two insults for the price of one there: querying why on earth anyone would want to trace their Welsh heritage and equating doing so with a region the author obviously regards as being blighted by poverty, backwardness (burka-wearing) and drugs. Why discriminate against just one group of people when you could include, others?

‘Nevertheless, in his quest to call himself a Celt, our author does the maddest thing of all — he actually learns Welsh, by attending evening classes (in London/Llundain) and going on courses.

I abhor the appalling and moribund monkey language myself, which hasn’t had a new noun since the Middle Ages — hence pwdin is pudding, snwcer is snooker, tacsi is taxi and bocsio is boxing.

As Kingsley Amis, who lived in Swansea for many years, once said, can it be true that there are Welshmen who are genuinely puzzled by the letter x? Incidentally, pys is not what you’d think. It’s peas.’

Monkey language? Did he just use that term? Yes, I’m afraid he did. I wonder what the reaction would be if David Starkey had described the gang language of London as ‘monkey language’? Or used it to describe the Jamaican-derived patois of some English urban communities?

As to the rest of Lewis’ inaccurate inanities, Adam Jones deal’s with them in this excerpt from his blog:

‘What he begins his attack with is something we as Welsh people have witnessed all to often, the ignorance of a monolingual trying to dumb down our language for borrowing words from other languages, as if to deem our language ‘moribund’ or ‘inferior’. Now if he wan’t to make that point let’s evaluate it, he states the language hasn’t had a new noun since the middle ages yet then goes on to describe evident borrowings that are evidently new and that are nouns?

Make your mind up Roger, are they new nouns or are they just borrowings? If so the case would you also explain to me the English for ‘Tomato’ ‘Coffee’ ‘Cul de sac’ ‘fait accompli’ ‘Orange’ ‘Orangutan’? Those middle ages in which you speak are when your pure English tongue changed so drastically it could be described part romance. Let’s take out every English word ending in ant/ent – Important, Apartment, Ailment, Ointment, Compliment, Distant. Let’s also remove all words ending in ance – Romance, Dance, Distance, Compliance, and Reliance. Need I elaborate further?

You see Roger 40% of  your lexicon is simple French, all words ending in ant/ent/ ance, able/ible/ que are all that of French origin, Im afraid your language has borrowed and continues to borrow more than any other which aids to part of it’s success a living language adapts and develops. I’m glad therefore that you’ve highlighted the many borrowings of Welsh to support this assumption and thus proclaiming Welsh a living flourishing language on your own behalf.’

Excellent stuff and it is well worth reading it all. The arguments of Roger Lewis are often employed by the same Anglophone bigots that live here in Ireland, cluttering up our news media, forums and social media with their anachronistic and racist ramblings. At least we can now see where they derive their ideas and beliefs from, none other than the right-wing, conservative and nationalistic British press. I wonder has Roger Lewis met Kevin Myers?

Meanwhile back with the Daily Mail there is even more bile, this time bordering on the slightly surreal:

‘But the trouble with the Welsh language is that it isn’t a quaint custom revived or the relic of cultural niceties — it is foisted on people for political reasons.

Though I was born in Caerphilly and have, as it happens, not a drop of non-Welsh haemoglobin in my veins, I detest the way Wales has been turned into a foreign country, with a Welsh language radio station, television channel, and dual-language road signs.’

The Welsh language in Wales is a foreign language? Welsh-speaking children in Wales are foreign children? Seriously? This reads like an article written by the Anglo hacks at the Irish Independent or Herald, but substituting the words Welsh language for Irish language. It is incredible to see how the media establishment in Ireland takes its anti-Irish bigotry from the same discriminatory attitudes of the media establishment in Britain. Do they even see this? Actually, do they even care?

As fellow Celts it is sad to witness how native speakers in both nations are treated by some as second-class citizens with second-class rights in their own native countries. Those who have a native Irish or Welsh identity, whether born to it or taking it as their own in later life, have every right to express it, free of fear, hate or intolerance.

Forget David Starkey. The real bigots in Britain are the those who daily promote discrimination against the Welsh, Scottish and Cornish speaking communities, the many hundreds of thousands whose native or adopted language is not English but who are forced to speak that language or face a torrent of racist abuse.

That is something I know only all too well, even here in the supposedly free and independent Ireland.

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Jun 13 2011
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Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Stair (History)

Irish In America

Anti-Irish (or more specifically anti-Irish Catholic) bigotry is a current which runs deep in American history, from the late 17th to mid-20th centuries (and arguably still survives in some right wing, Protestant fundamentalist quarters today). It is one of Protestant England’s and Britain’s many cultural legacies to the United States, a legacy of Old World enmities transported to the New World that has at times either matched or clashed with the Republic’s many rival visions of itself.

Indeed, in some respects the founders of the United States of America were the creators of an idealised England of the West; White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant: a new New England. Hardly surprising then that the Irish were as alien and as threatening to some in this reborn Jerusalem as they were to its cultural antecedents.

I examined this in my review of ‘The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies’ by award-winning historian Alan Taylor, and it is touched upon again in David Goldfield’s ‘America Aflame: How The Civil War Created A Nation’, reviewed here on the Salon.

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Jun 03 2011
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An Ghaeilge (Irish Language), Fantaisíocht (Fantasy), Ficsean Eolaíochta (Science-Fiction), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Uafás (Horror)

It’s Sci-Fi – Irish Sci-Fi!

I’ve written several articles about the long tradition of Irish language authors working in the Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres and will post them here soon. In the meantime here is some interesting essays which touch on the subject from the Celtic Cultural Studies journal. Interesting question: when does Mythology and Folklore cross over into literary genre? Does Irish Mythology qualify as Fantasy?

More of this from me anon but in the meantime we have:

Garland Kimmer, “‘For We Have New Worlds Here’: Ireland, Myth, and Alternative Heroism in Fantasy Fiction”

Kate Hennessey, “Star-Crossed Lovers or Gun-Toting Gangsters?: Paul Mercier’s Adaptation of The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne”

Philip O’Leary, “Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Irish Language”

C.W. Sullivan III, “Conscientious Use: Welsh Celtic Myth and Legend in Fantastic Fiction”

I have a lengthy appreciation of the wonderful British-born Irish language writer Cathal Ó Sándair - whose prodigious body of quality works would shame most other writers, in any language – that I will post here as well.

Meanwhile here is a link to the blog of Irish Sci-Fi author Peadar Ó Guilín, whose new children’s book The Deserter (image at the top) is receiving a lot of positive press at the moment.

And if you like your Science-Fiction or Fantasy with a hefty dose of Irish and Celtic inspiration try these gems:

Julian May’s Saga of the Exiles

Jack Vance’s The Lyonesse Trilogy

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May 30 2011
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Cogaíocht (Warfare), Léirmheasanna (Reviews), Leabhair (Books), Stair (History)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies

 

An edited version of my review of historian Alan Taylor’s ‘The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies’, an excellent account of the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, is featuring now on the Wild Geese website.

Apologies for the photo!

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May 25 2011
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Léirmheasanna (Reviews)

Barbarella… The ’60s Meet Sci-Fi – And Jane Fonda!

Jane Fonda stripping in Zero-G? Reviewing ‘Barbarella’ on Prog464.com!

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