LAWRENCE FREIESLEBEN gives a salutary reminder of modern nuclear brinkmanship
The atmosphere might appear closer to post-World War 2, but The War Game[i] is more relevant in 2026 than ever. This searingly brilliant film takes only 45 minutes to say everything everyone should know or bear to imagine about the consequences as well as the insane overkill and economic waste of nuclear weaponry. It should be compulsory viewing in all schools, colleges and universities. Politicians, despots (Trump, Putin etcetera) and grasping billionaires[ii] (why does humanity permit them to retain their spoils?[iii]) should be forced to watch it. It’s only by sheer luck that nuclear war has not occurred . . . The details of The War Game may have dated, yet the statistics now, will only be worse. What was said in 1965 remains essentially unchanged.
At 00:43:46: “On almost the entire subject of thermo-nuclear weapons, on the problems of their possession and the effects of their use, there is now practically a total silence in the press, in official publications and on television. There is hope in any unresolved and unpredictable situation. But is there a real hope to be found in this silence? The world’s stockpile of thermo-nuclear weapons has doubled in the last five years and now is the equivalent of almost 20 tons of high explosive to every man, woman and child on the planet.”
Leaflets distributed[iv] in The War Game – were echoed by the woeful Protect & Survive pamphlets notoriously published in 1980[v]
Although the nuclear overkill has decreased from its Cold War peak, considering that the global population has increased from 3.3 billion in 1965 to about 8.3 billion now, the figure remains absurdly high, with the world’s arsenal containing enough destructive power to destroy human civilization many times over[vi]. Detonating approximately 400 atomic bombs would wipe out humanity[vii], and yet there are estimated to be 9,604. Enough to eradicate humanity 24 times over.
LAWRENCE FREIESLEBEN, Film & Television Editor of The Brazen Head, has beenan artist and writer as long as he can remember – cycling away at weekends from the council estate where he grew up, to paint the countryside as an escape from the restrictive tedium of the school week. Leaving home at 16, he has lived in 17 different areas of the UK – from Devonshire to Northumberland – painting and writing, always vigilantly questioning the interior light of landscape, cityscape and wider atmosphere. Living virtually off-grid with his large family, both remote locations and urban visits have formed the backscene to a passion for film which has intertwined with art and writing throughout his career. Films remain a key creative focus since childhood, resulting in encyclopaedic folders and clippings as well as a constant stream of home-made film festivals. He currently lives in a dilapidated Lancashire seaside town
St David’s Cathedral. Image: Alan Thomas, Wikimedia Commons
STUART MILLSON enjoys the sounds of the classical continuum
In Director, Ken Russell’s famous 1962 Monitor film about the life of Edward Elgar and narrated so memorably by Huw Wheldon (a patrician voice clinging on in what was a changing era), the point was made that the English composer’s life encompassed three facets: “the romantic, the drum-beating patriot, and religious visionary”.
Certainly, the religious element – Elgar was a Roman Catholic – is hugely significant in his work, as his most famous oratorio, the Cardinal Newman setting, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), testifies. Six years later, now knighted and perhaps the nation’s most famous and recognised composer, Sir Edward turned again to religious themes, but this time a piece about the earliest days of the Christian church, with a libretto selected and woven together by his own hand from both the Old and New Testaments. Whereas The Dream of Gerontius began with a hushed orchestral introduction – as if the mist of incense is beginning to clear in the shadows of a Worcestershire rural Catholic Church – The Kingdom opens with a “rushing wind”, a tremendous, revelatory symphonic call-to-arms, before subsiding into one of Elgar’s most moving passages, almost out-Nimrodding Nimrod: surveying the lands of the Bible, the morning of Pentecost, Solomon’s Porch – all seen through the hazy summer skies of the Malvern Hills.
Revelatory, too, is the May 1957 recording of the piece, set down for posterity by the SOMM label – and, thanks to Elgar expert and sound-technician, Lani Spahr, presented in astonishingly-detailed, audio-restoration glory. I do not use the latter term lightly: for here we have the pre-eminent Elgar conductor of his age, perhaps of all time, Sir Adrian Boult at the Royal Festival Hall, at the helm of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with the voices of (in those halcyon days of regional and London choruses) the much-acclaimed Croydon Philharmonic Society. The soloists, too, are names that dominated the concert stages and recording studios of the 1950s to early 1970s: Heather Harper, Helen Watts, William Herbert and Gordon Clinton. But aside from the Elgar and Boult interest, another important element exists with this recording, and that is the capturing of a sound-of-voice, tone-of-voice and diction which, over the last 60-odd years, has almost been lost. The best way in which I can describe the sensation is by comparing the voice, of say, Kenneth More or indeed, Huw Wheldon, to an actor or announcer of today. SOMM’s new CD is a vital piece of social history, too.
The fill-up work on this two-CD set, the Enigma Variations, is another remarkable archive performance: Sir Adrian Boult again, but this time abroad – in Holland, in that year of peril, 1940. Conducting Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra (now, Royal Concertgebouw) we are reminded of a time when Elgar was played more frequently in continental Europe than he is now. Needless to say, the Dutch orchestra is on fine form as one of the greatest ensembles of its time – an excellence continued, post-war by Van Beinum and Haitink, and which, of course, lives on in our own time under new generations of musicians. But when Boult stood before those players, just months before Holland was overrun by Nazi Germany, the combination of music, emotion, world events all seemed to make a potent brew. We are so fortunate to be able to dip into the Europe of 86 years ago and to hear – and imagine – what must have been in people’s hearts. Another truly superb addition to SOMM’s (and the world’s) music library.
The anguish of totalitarianism, this time of the Soviet era, is brought into focus by another of SOMM’s productions, the Symphonic Diptych, Anna, Op. 171 by David Matthews (b. 1943). Anna – an opera, with libretto by the philosopher and writer, the late Sir Roger Scruton, tells an anguished story of Peter and Anna, whose father (during the years of the Iron Curtain) was imprisoned for assisting anti-Communist dissidents. Anna meets a young man, Miro, with whom she falls in love, but it is later revealed that his own past, spent cooperating with the authorities, was responsible for their father’s death. The tragedy unfolds, but the composer brings us not operatic extracts or the full drama, but instead, a symphonic compression of this modern saga – an intensive, half-an-hour ‘symphony’ in its own right, Mahlerian in its emotions, but more pared down, more intimate, more of a philosophical conversation between the music and the listener.
Performed by the Ulster Orchestra under Jac Van Steen and recorded two years ago in Belfast, this is the brightest of modern recordings, showing the rich tone of the Northern Ireland players, especially the pinpoint, sharp yet subtle brass and woodwind instruments, captured with both balance, forthrightness and radiance by SOMM’s director, Siva Oke, and Recording Engineer Richard Campbell – with mixing and mastering by Alastair McMillan. The team at the recording console also bring us a change of mood and tempo, in the form of the David Matthews Flute Concerto, given a mesmerising, air-borne, joyful and fabulously detailed rendition by soloist, Emma Halnan – acclaimed several years ago at the English Music Festival for her performance of Malcolm Arnold’s Flute Sonata.
Another contemporary composer, Nimrod Borenstein (b. 1969), is currently bringing his exacting, intense, but fluid and compelling conducting style to the English Chamber Orchestra, in a new Mandolin Concerto performed by Alon Sariel. Borenstein rejects the leaden, de-Natured, tortured landscape of much old-hat, self-consciously anti-tonal ‘music’. In conversation, the conductor-composer talks in a torrent of intellectual passion about Mendelssohn and Mozart, so it is easy to see the inspiration behind his own exciting, classically based, thoroughly tuneful compositions. SOMM’s discography embraces not just the old masters, but a genre of contemporary music that has something to say and which belongs to the continuum.
Finally, live music, courtesy of the enterprising, classical-opera and folk-filled Fishguard Festival of Music in West Wales, in their grand opening concert at St. David’s Cathedral on the south-western tip of Cambria. In a countryside alive not just with Festival fever, but wrapped up in preparations and bunting for August’s Eisteddfod, it seemed completely right that the opening works celebrated folk tradition – in this case, the movements, Sarka, and From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields by Bedrich Smetana. Czech conductor, Tomas Hanus, drew both intense and delicate playing from the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera – the players clearly enjoying the experience of performing as a symphony orchestra ‘on stage’, rather than an ensemble half-hidden beneath flooring occupied by singers and scenery. Sarka is an alarming tale of a deadly female warrior army of legend, in which the orchestral pace is sometimes strident and alarming, yet in the contrasting woods and fields of Bohemia, Smetana invites us to wander dreamily in meadows (which some two decades later, Mahler would consecrate to Pan).
A more spectral rural atmosphere, this time in England, was evoked in George Butterworth’s Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, sung by the prize-winning young baritone, Steffan Lloyd Owen – whose voice took me back to concerts and recitals by the famous Cornish baritone, Benjamin Luxon, an artist prominent in the 1970s and 1980s who recorded the cycle, but with piano accompaniment. In the St. David’s performance, perhaps a slightly slower tempo might have been in order, as occasionally (such as in the song, Look Not in My Eyes) I found the clarity of the words a little indistinct. But nevertheless, the interpretation unearthed all the treasures of Butterworth’s and A.E. Housman’s native soil – romance, lost love, the passing of youth, the sacrifice of a generation (the composer was killed on the Western Front in 1916), the memory of the town fair, good chaps and friends, the cherry tree, and the ploughed field.
A delightful interval was spent in the grounds of the cathedral, watching jackdaws find their nests and nooks in the great building’s tower, and listening to the mid-evening swifts, scything and “scree-screeing” through the drowsy, warm air. The interval bell summoned the capacity audience back to the final work, the Symphony No. 4 by Brahms, written in the Austrian countryside of Styria in 1884-85 (1885 being the year Butterworth was born). Brahms’s Fourth is often considered, especially in its opening and final movements, a tragic, autumnal, even wintry work, casting a spell of solitude and introspection. Yet all such thoughts are banished in the headlong, joyful rush of the Allegro giocoso third movement – the WNO musicians filling the cathedral with a head-spinning, summer energy. After the applause had died down, the orchestra paid its own tribute to Tomas Hanus, now leaving the company for pastures new. A moving encore from Songs my Mother Taught Me by Dvorak seemed the perfect end to this well-thought-out programme of heavy high summer.
Arthur Rackham illustration from his Allies Fairy Book
Fairies: A History
Francis Young, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2026, 340pps.
LIAM GUILAR admires a fair-minded and well-informed treatment of an often-scorned subject
Towards the end of the 12th Century, an English writer called Laȝamon added a story to the French poem he was translating. He wrote that at king Arthur’s birth, the baby was visited by magical beings who took charge of him with strong magic and gave him gifts[i].
The magical beings are called aluen. I had always assumed these were elves, but the word has also been translated as fairies. The Middle English Compendium cites this quotation and offers: “Fairies or Elves of either sex” as a translation. Take your pick. But what did Laȝamon visualise when he wrote the word? Could he distinguish between an elf and a fairy? And if he did, what were they? A study of elves in his poem concludes, somewhat unhelpfully, that the term is “prone to shapeshifting. It can connote disease causing organisms, witches, nymphs, sea monsters fairy mistresses, nightmares.”[ii]
In search of answers, I have been reading scholarly works on fairy belief and Francis Young’s A History of Fairies is the most thorough treatment of the subject I’ve found. Ranging widely over time and geography he puts together a comprehensive and readable history of the idea of fairies. He does this even though his introduction explains why it is impossible to write a history of Fairies in the way someone could write a history of ‘The French’ or carpentry.
The problem is that defining the subject is not straightforward. Although some kind of fairy belief has been a characteristic of British and many other cultures throughout history, today the words fairy and elf point in the wrong directions – to cute little winged creatures with a wand (thank you 19th century and Disney) or beautiful folk with pointy ears (thank you Professor Tolkien and Peter Jackson.).
Throughout history people encountered supernatural beings, but discovering which beings they encountered is problematic. In the past the names used to describe ‘fairies’ were often deliberately vague or euphemistic to avoid either naming or offending the ‘good people’ who were often everything but good. Though there are stories of encounters from the Middle Ages onwards, they were usually recorded by educated men using Latin terms which may or may not reflect the words used by their vernacular speaking informants. To compound the problem, the supernatural beings in these encounters didn’t introduce themselves as fairies or elves, or boggarts, nor are they usually identified using such names[iii].
Young’s solution is to define fairy as: “A frequently invisible population of uncanny, non-human (yet human like) living beings, reported by folklore who share our world,”[iv] Having done so he demonstrates how to write a history of a subject that can’t be clearly defined based on evidence that is unreliable for so many reasons.
He traces the possible origins of fairies to the animism of prehistory, and later what he calls the godlings of non-Christian belief. For most of Europe’s Christian history the fairies have been the unsanctioned supernatural, sitting aslant a theology that was more comfortable with angels and demons, ghosts, God and the Devil.
As the narrative moves towards the present, it moves on to firmer ground. There is more evidence, and the bias and error are perhaps easier to see. Folklore became a respectable subject by the 19th century and educated people started to take an interest in the beliefs and practices of ‘The Folk.’ Ironically, some of them didn’t just record fairy belief but (perhaps inadvertently) invented some and repackaged others.
Stepping neatly through the problems of evidence and contending arguments. Young is even handed in summarising various points of view, while tentatively offering his own. At times this even handedness makes the book feel like a symposium where everyone is on their best behaviour.
Given the limitations of the evidence there’s an unavoidable familiarity to much of the material. However, a history of fairies that didn’t mention Elidyr or the Cottingley fairies, or Bridget Cleary, would be deficient. Young’s emphasis on each is his own. Summarising the story of the Cottingley photographs, he explores their consequences for subsequent fairy belief. The death of Bridget Cleary comes in the context of how belief can be denigrated as superstition and used for political ends.
It’s a history where there are few certainties. There are crucial problems that never will be solved. The contemporary relationship between the fairies of medieval literature and the fairies of popular belief is impossible to untangle. Why the church and civil authorities moved from a long-standing dismissive attitude towards popular ‘non-sanctioned’ supernatural beliefs to what Young aptly calls a lethal credulity will never be known.
At times this uncertainty and the lack of definition threaten to subvert the attempt to discuss the subject. Across time and geography, the accounts are so various, the practices so widespread, so similar yet different that it must be difficult to know what can be excluded from the discussion.
What is missing, inevitably, are the fairies themselves. As Young acknowledges, a history of fairies must be a history of the opinions of educated, literate people, then and now, about other people’s beliefs (p.24). I still don’t know what Laȝamon thought aluen were, but the book is a reminder of how ‘vast and various’ the human imagination is, and how unpredictable people can be. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of that most rational of detectives, was a believer in the Cottingley photographs. Hugh Dowding, who led RAF Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain, was a firm believer in fairies, belonged to the Fairy Investigation Society, and feared the next war would be between fairies and humans.
A History of Fairies stands out amongst the ones I’ve read for several reasons. The book ranges widely over its subject in time and geography. While he focusses on Europe, Young acknowledges that a belief in fairylike creatures spreads much further. While acknowledging the role of Ireland in fairy lore, the geographic range of Young’s examples prevents him from falling into the trap of suggesting fairies are ‘Celtic’ or that all elves come from Iceland.
While adopting a neutral stance as to their existence, he insists that “Fairies are part of the rich history of human experience and I do not see why belief in them or claims of encounters with them are any less worthy of respect than say, religious beliefs or reports of religious experiences” (p.2). Coupled with this is his refusal to fall into the modern trap of ‘explaining’ fairy belief. Modern writers who reach for an explanation which appeals to them as rational can sound like adults in a primary school playground and their explanations usually raise more questions than they answer[v].
Because he takes his subject seriously, Young can suggest that more is at stake in a history of fairy belief than the question of when fairies were first portrayed as being tiny, cute creatures with wings: “Belief in non-human populations of supernatural beings existed all over Europe, and not just in those countries where it was endlessly discussed and self-consciously revived by romantically inclined intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth century” (p.205).
If this belief in a human-like, non-human social being was so widespread, for so long, does it reveal something about the ways humans made sense of the world and their place in it? What does the disappearance of this belief as a widely held assumption suggest about modern consciousness? The book raises these questions while admitting their answers are beyond its scope.
Fairies: a History also has a significance beyond its subject matter. It is an effective demonstration of how difficult it is to understand or discover what people believed in the past. I started with Laȝamon and his story about aluen. He was a parish priest, for part of his life at a small church in Worcestershire. He and his parishioners would have identified themselves as Christian without hesitation. However, we know nothing about what ‘being Christian’ meant to them, what they knew of Christian doctrine or how much they understood it, or how it shaped their behaviour or their imaginative, emotional and intellectual lives. We sometimes know what an elite group of highly educated men thought everyone else should believe. We know what some snarky high-ranking ecclesiastics thought of ‘parish priests’ in general, but of their faith we know as much as we do about their interactions with the local aluen.
Fairies: A History is an eloquent reminder that confident assertions about the beliefs of the mass of any population in the past are about as trustworthy as those famous photographs taking in a garden in Cottingley.
[i] ‘Sone swa he com an eorðe; aluen hine iuengen/ heo bigolen þat child; mid galdere swiðe stronge.’
[ii] Cyril Edwards, ‘Layamon’s Elves’ in Laȝamon: Context, Language, and Interpretation, Edited by Rosemond Allen, Lucy Perry and Jane Roberts. P.95
[iii] A point made by both Jeremy Harte in Fairy Encounters in Medieval England and Richard Sowerby in Natural and Supernatural in Early Medieval England
[iv] This is similar to Alaric Hall’s suggestion in Elves in Anglo-Saxon England that the early Old English evidence suggest Elves were ‘Corporeal anthropomorphic beings mirroring the human in groups which believed in them.’ p.68. Such definitions give historians room to manoeuvre even if they aren’t very helpful for the reader
[v] See for example Matthias Egeler’s ‘Explanation’ of some of the practices associated with fairy abduction in Elves and Fairies: A short history of the Otherworld, p.61
LIAM GUILAR is Poetry Editor of The Brazen Head, and the author of several poetry collections, including the series A Man of Heart, Presentment of Englishry and The Fabled Third (Shearsman), set in post-Roman Britain. His most recent publication is a translation of the Mabinogion folk-tale How Culhwch Won Olwen (Shearsman, 2026)
What follows is an extract from J. Simon Harris’s new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. You can read an interview with Josh about his translation in this issue
Excerpt from Fitt IV (lines 1998-2090)
NOW the New Year draws nigh, and the night passes,
and the day drives into the dark, as the Lord commands.
But the wild weather of the world awakened outside:
clouds had cast the cold keenly down to the earth,
with enough of the nip of the north to sting the naked skin;
the snow fell sullen and bitter, biting the beasts of the wild;
the whistling wind whipped down from on high
and filled every valley with vast snowdrifts.
The knight was listening close as he lay in his bed—
though his lids are closed, he sleeps little.
By each cock that crowed, he knew the hour.
Suddenly he sat up, before the day had dawned,
for the light of a lamp still gleamed in his chamber.
He called to his chamberlain, who quickly answered,
and he bid him to bring him his byrnie and saddle his steed.
The servant bustles about and brings him his outfit,
and he gets Sir Gawain geared up in splendid style.
First he clad him in his clothes to keep out the cold,
and then his equipment, which was carefully kept—
his paunce and his breastplate brightly polished,
the rings of his rich chainmail rocked of rust—
and all was as fresh as it was at first, and his gratitude was
quite keen.
He’d donned each sparkling piece,
wiped to a shimmering sheen;
the most gallant from here to Greece,
he bade him bring his steed.
As he threw the finest threads on himself—
his surcoat with the sign of shining achievements
emblazoned on velvet, and virtuous stones
embedded all over the borders, and embroidered seams,
and a lining of fair fur from the finest pelts—
yet he did not leave the lace, the lady’s gift:
that Gawain did not forget, for his own good.
When he’d belted his blade on his bulging haunches,
he twined his true-love token twice about himself,
sweetly swaddled around his waist, that knight.
The girdle of green silk well suited that gallant hero,
such a rich display upon that royal red cloth.
But the warrior wasn’t wearing the girdle for its wealth,
nor for the pride of its pendants, polished though they were,
and though the glittering gold glinted upon the ends—
but rather to save himself, when it comes time to suffer,
to abide, without debate, the baleful blow of sword
or knife.
The bold knight, fully clad,
comes swaggering outside,
and thanks the noble lads
profusely with delight.
Then Gringolet was geared up, that great big horse;
and having stayed in the stable, safe and sound,
that proud horse pined for the spur to gallop.
The man approaches his mount and inspects his face,
and he solemnly said, and swore by his oath,
“There are men in this castle with a mind for character!
May the prince who supports these people rejoice!
May the lovely lady be loved in the fullness of life!
When they cherish a guest out of goodness and charity,
when they hold honor in their hand, may the good Lord
of heaven on high reward them, as well as all of you!
And if I lead my life on earth for long enough,
I’ll compensate you somehow, if I can.”
Then he steps into the stirrup and saddles up.
His servant hands him his shield, which he slings on his shoulder.
He spurs Gringolet with his gilded heels,
and he starts over the stones, standing no longer
to prance.
His man was next to ride,
bearing his spear and lance.
“I trust this castle to Christ—
may He give it fair chance.”
The bridge was drawn down, and the broad gates
unbarred and borne open on both sides.
He blessed himself quickly, and crossed the boards.
He praises the porter, who knelt before the prince
and gave him God and good day, that Gawain be saved.
And he went on his way with his one man
who would teach him the path to that perilous place
where he’s meant to receive the mournful stroke.
They passed by peaks where the boughs are bare;
they climbed by cliffs where the cold clings.
The heavens were high, but ugly and ominous.
Mist moistened the moors and melted on mountains;
each hill had a hat, a huge mantle of mist.
Brooks bubbled and broke on the banks about them,
cascading through cracks and crevices, shimmering down.
The way through the wood was wild and devious,
until it was soon time that the sun rises in that season
DEREK TURNER is the editor of The Brazen Head, as well as a novelist (A Modern Journey, Displacement, and Sea Changes) and widely-published reviewer. His first non-fiction book, Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire, was published June 2022. Some of his writing may be found at www.derek-turner.com He is also on X – @derekturner1964
JOSH SIMON HARRIS has recently completed a translation of the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Brazen Head poetry editor LIAM GUILAR asked him about it.
Tell us a little about your language background and your day job. What brings a scientist to translation? Which other texts have you translated, are translating?
I’ve always been interested in language and poetry; I wrote my first poems in third grade (I would have been about eight or nine years old), inspired by the great poets of my childhood like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. At the same time, I was always good at math as a kid, and when I took my first Physics classes in high school, I was blown away at how precisely the natural world can be described by mathematical models. In college, I kept up both interests; I was a double major in English and Materials Science and Engineering. It was there that I first fell into translation. I had taken a bit of Spanish, and I really liked Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Puedo escribir” (Poem 20 in his collection, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair). I had heard it in Spanish without fully understanding all the words, and I was struck by how much better it sounded in Spanish than in translation. I wrote my own translation of it (which likewise doesn’t hold a candle to the Spanish original), and eventually translated the whole collection over the course of a summer (I wasn’t able to publish it until a few years later when it entered the public domain, and even now, it is only available in the United States due to copyright).
At some point in college, I also took a World Literature class where we read Homer and Dante, among other authors. I’ve had a fascination with Greek and Roman mythology ever since I was a kid (I used to love this book, D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which is more or less Ovid for children; I’ve been reading it again with my son recently), so of course Homer and Dante pulled me right into the deep end. We talked in class about terza rima, the rhyme scheme of Dante’s Commedia, but the translation we were using didn’t rhyme at all. I thought it would be fun to write a translation in the original rhyme scheme, and my professor agreed to let me try my hand at the first canto instead of writing a final essay. I ended up translating the first five cantos. I didn’t know any Italian at the time, but I knew a little Spanish; and with a combination of online resources like Wiktionary and existing translations, I was able to pick it up readily enough. From there, I just got sucked in.
I had no idea what I was getting into, of course. To translate Dante, I essentially had to become an amateur Dante scholar. While translating, I read countless commentaries, essays, biographies, and translations of Dante’s other works and primary sources. It took me about ten years to finish the Inferno. During that time, I graduated college, wrote a novel based on the Greek tragedy Philoctetes (which probably about a dozen people have read), went to grad school for Computational Materials Science, met my ex-wife, had a kid, got married, got my PhD and got accepted for a postdoc position. Dante shadowed me through all these major milestones of my life; as Virgil guided Dante through the Inferno, so Dante guided me in my journey to become a better poet, translator and human being.
I can’t even explain how it felt when I finished the Inferno. It was like a breath of fresh air that is still somehow suffocating—relief and regret at the same time. I was about halfway through translating Dante’s Vita Nuova, a shorter, earlier work of prose and lyric poetry; but I had to get away from Dante for a while. I started translating Homer because I wanted to try writing in the epic hexameter (and became convinced that I could after reading Longfellow’s Evangeline). But the problem with the Iliad is that it is very, very long, and I also wanted a project that I could finish on a reasonable timeline. That, plus an interest in alliterative verse, is what led me to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and here we are. Along the way, I have also translated a lot of shorter poems from various languages and poets (Sappho, Bertran de Born, an anonymous Old English poet). I even translated a Norwegian short story for a contest (I didn’t win, but the translation that won was better than mine anyway). Now that I’m done with Gawain, I’ll get back to translating the Iliad, and I will eventually make my way back to Dante. I’m also working on a second novel, which is a science fiction story with inspiration from biblical mythology (sounds a bit like Dune when I put it that way, but it’s not).
Today, I’m still a scientist for my day job; I work at a small pharmaceutical company using AI and machine learning for drug discovery and toxicology (essentially making models to predict whether a molecule might be toxic or might have therapeutic effects). I remain intensely interested in science and mathematics, and for now it pays the bills better than poetry. But creative writing and science are both deeply ingrained in my soul. I’ll always do both.
Why alliterative verse? And while we’re here were you ever tempted to translate Sir Gawain or Saint Erkenwald into another, perhaps more modern verse form?
Verse form is one of my favorite things about poetry. Even in free verse, form is what distinguishes poetry from prose. Part of the fun of translation, for me, is the challenge of translating a poem into a new language while keeping the verse form intact. With Dante, it was terza rima; with Homer, it’s dactylic hexameter; and with Gawain, it’s alliterative verse (and the “bob and wheel” at the end of each stanza, of course). I became interested in alliterative verse purely for this reason. I translated a short Old English alliterative poem, “The Wanderer,” and I really enjoyed it; alliteration requires a different kind of mindset from meter and rhyme. After writing a lot of alliterative verse, I also noticed how prevalent alliteration is in our language and in a lot of my favorite books (Tolkien is a great example).
I haven’t really been tempted to translate Gawain or Erkenwald into another verse form, but I think it’s a really interesting idea. This is essentially what Pope did with Homer (he translated Homer into heroic couplets). Likewise, Dante translated the Lord’s Prayer into Italian in terza rima in order to fit it into the Comedy. There are a couple of Sappho poems that I’ve translated into a different form than the original, essentially because there is no good English equivalent of their original meter; it is kind of fun to try to fit a poem into a new box in that way. So I think it’s worth considering.
Why Sir Gawain? From your Introduction it seems you hadn’t read the poem before you started translating it? Is that correct? And how did you feel about the poem when you’d finished? Impressed? Disappointed?
That’s right. I had heard of Sir Gawain, and I knew other people who had read it, but I had never read it myself before I started translating it. As I mentioned, I had already done an alliterative verse translation of “The Wanderer,” and I really wanted to try a longer alliterative poem. The obvious choice in Old English would be Beowulf, but I was never a big fan of Beowulf, so I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of devoting a chunk of my life to it. Besides, Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf is pretty much as good as it is ever going to get, in my opinion (I really love the poetry in his version, even though I find the narrative kind of dull). So Old English was out. What about Middle English? I did a bit of research into alliterative poetry, and the general consensus seemed to be that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was the best alliterative poem in Middle English. I didn’t read the poem first, I just took a leap of faith and started translating. I was kind of looking for something quick and easy after working with Dante and Homer, and I thought a Middle English Arthurian romance would be sort of a light and fun adventure. I wasn’t expecting great depth and complexity—man, was I surprised. The poem was way, way more impressive than I thought it would be; it exceeded my expectations in almost every way. The Gawain poet is deeply concerned with form and symmetry, and it comes across in each line, each stanza, the structure of the poem as a whole, and the structure of the narrative. On top of that, his characters (particularly Gawain and the lady of the castle, whom he meets) have rich inner minds in a way that is unusual for old Arthurian tales; the poet explores emotion and psychology in surprisingly modern ways. So I think it’s fair to say I was impressed.
How do you translate? What’s your process? Is translating Gawain different from how you might approach Homer?
My translation process has evolved over time, and it is definitely different depending on the text. With Dante and Homer, I first translate the original text word by word into a kind of pidgin language with English words but the original syntax; the pidgin language reads like a kind of code, with symbols indicating certain things to me about the original language. To do this, I use a combination of online dictionaries (Wiktionary is a good general resource with etymologies, etc.; and there are specific dictionaries for Ancient Greek and Middle English), plus other resources if there is a unique word or context that is unclear or perplexing. With Dante, I’m also reading Singleton’s commentary while writing the pidgin translation, keeping notes on anything relevant (e.g. if Dante’s word choice alludes to something famous, I want my word choice to do the same). With Homer, I’m checking for repetition, because I want to make sure that if Homer repeats a phrase verbatim, I do the same (repetition is very important in Homer, since it derives from semi-improvised oral poetry). After completing the pidgin-language version, I go through and write my translation in verse (still referring to the original text as well as the pidgin text, and often consulting other translations and commentaries).
With Gawain, because the original language is Middle English, I don’t bother with writing the pidgin text first. When you get the hang of it, you can more or less read big chunks of the Middle English text without a dictionary; I still look up most of the words, since the meaning of several words has changed over the centuries, but it is easier for me to scan through than Italian or Ancient Greek. As I write, I also consult other translations and commentaries to make sure I’m getting the correct meaning (and not missing any subtext or anything). So the common thread of my translation process is that I am essentially close-reading the text as I write, looking up each word individually while considering the passage as a whole.
Were there parts of the story that gave you problems, were more difficult to translate, made you wish you could do a little editing?
Oh, there were many. Sometimes, especially with Middle English (where the words can often be quite close to Modern English), you find yourself just rolling along without any problems. But when you bump into a challenging passage, you might be stuck for a day or longer trying to find a solution. It’s hard for me to think of specific examples after the fact, though. I ended up happy with most of the alliterative lines, because there is a lot of freedom to render them in different ways. If there are some rough edges on the translation, they would probably be in the “bob and wheel” sections, the five lines of rhyming verse at the end of each stanza. Those lines can be very difficult to translate, given the short lines combined with the tight rhyme scheme. As always, translation is a compromise between several conflicting ideals.
Were there any parts of the original that I wished were different? Of course. While the poem is surprisingly modern, the medieval sensibilities of its author often show up in unexpected ways. But it’s not my job as a translator to edit the original, it is my job to bring it into Modern English. So I stayed as faithful as I could to the original text.
Gordon and Tolkien in their introduction to their edition of the poem thought the story was almost perfect but the three hunting episodes were excessive. What do you think of them?
On my first reading, I might have agreed that the three hunting scenes were excessive—after all, the same sequence of five scenes is essentially repeated three times in a row: the lord goes hunting, the lady tries to seduce Gawain, the lord’s men carve up their quarry, Gawain and the lord exchange spoils, and finally, Gawain and the lord renew the terms of their game. But when I was working on the notes, I realized that this repetition of five scenes mimics the shape of the pentagram (a five-pointed star): to draw a pentagram, you draw a sequence of five overlapping lines, and the fifth line brings you back to the start. The pentagram is thematically important to the narrative—it is represented on Gawain’s coat of arms, and the poet links it explicitly to Gawain’s virtues (he calls it a “token of truth”). The poet very cleverly mirrors the structure of the pentagram in the structure of his verse. But the thrice-repeated sequence of scenes is not exactly the same each time; there is a progression in which Gawain’s virtue slowly breaks down, and at the end of it the structure of the pentagram is broken too. I talk about this in more detail in the notes, of course.
What is your take on the ending? Gawain is mortified and thinks he’s failed. The people at Arthur’s court reject this and insist on wearing what he thinks is a badge of shame as a badge in his honour. What do you think?
I love the ending. I think it is an uplifting reminder of the importance of being part of a supportive community. In the first half of the poem, Gawain does not grow as a character—he is presented as a knight already at the peak of perfection (in terms of chivalric virtue, anyway). He readily trades his own life for his king’s, he bravely goes on a quest that will almost certainly end in peril for him, and he defeats ogres and dragons along the way as if they were a mere inconvenience. But nobody is perfect. The poet puts Gawain in a situation where even his chivalric virtues cannot sustain him, and Gawain fails. It is a small failure, really, but he takes it hard. When he comes home, he confesses everything to Arthur and his courtiers; but instead of shaming him, they completely turn it on its head. His imperfection is not shameful, it is only human; his shame is excused by the mere fact that he is ashamed, that he continues to strive to be virtuous. Perfection may be the ideal of knighthood, but no knight is perfect in practice.
How would you sell your translation to a possible buyer? What will they get from your translation they can’t get from any of the existing ones?
Probably the biggest thing that distinguishes my translation from others is that I adhere to the original form of the poem using natural-sounding language (not using awkward diction, syntax inversions, etc.), while still staying true to the meaning of the text. The verse form of the Middle English original is really interesting: each stanza consists of (on average) twenty lines of alliterative verse, capped off by a short five-line rhyming section. Other translators have certainly carried this verse form into Modern English; but often they sacrifice clarity, or a good word choice, or (worse) the mood of the poem in order to pull it off (I certainly don’t want to judge too harshly; there are a number of good translations already out there). Not that I never make any sacrifices; translation is all about making choices to balance the meaning, form, and emotion of the original text. But I like to think that my translation strikes a pretty good balance.
Additionally, I have included lots of goodies besides the poem itself. Instead of line-by-line notes (which are common enough in translations of classic poetry), I opted to write commentary in the form of a conversational essay in which I’m walking through the poem along with the reader. I analyze the text of course, but also provide some historical background, discussion of the poetics, etc., in relevant places as I go along; I think readers who enjoy the poem will find the commentary interesting and worthwhile. I also have a bibliography intended more for readers and enthusiasts than scholars; a pronunciation glossary with names, places, and medieval titles, arms and armor; King Arthur’s family tree; a timeline of the narrative; a historical timeline of events relevant to the poem; and several hand-drawn images (a map of Gawain’s journey through England and Wales, a drawing showing the armor of a medieval knight, and more). Finally, I’ve capped off the book with an original poem which has a rather interesting verse structure (it’s complicated, but it is based on the shape of the pentagram, which is central to the themes of the narrative). There’s also a link in the back of the book to a project I’m working on, which is a “choose your own adventure”-style version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (I’m putting it online as I write it; it is not nearly complete yet).
Your book has an extensive section of commentary and notes. What do you think a reader will learn from them that is new?
Most works of classic literature have editions with notes or commentary, but I’ve found that the commentary is sometimes rather dry and uninteresting to anyone but scholars (this is certainly not always the case, but it is common enough). I wanted to keep my own commentary engaging throughout. When I’m out driving or doing chores, I like to listen to podcasts that walk through narrative poems, films and video games while providing commentary and analysis along the way. Inspired by that format, I wrote my notes in something of a conversational style; I basically walk through the narrative discussing everything I find interesting along the way. I consulted the notes of several different Gawain translations as well as online resources to ensure I didn’t miss anything important. My commentary is designed so that it can be read on its own after reading the poem, without flipping back and forth to see what lines I’m referring to. In this way, I get to do a close reading of the poem with the reader. I’m not familiar enough with the full body of Gawain scholarship to know how novel my commentary really is, but it isn’t meant to be a work of rigorous scholarship anyway. I can say with confidence that there’s a lot that you won’t find in the notes of other translations. Above all, I think (I hope) readers will find it interesting and thought-provoking.
The poet is anonymous but generally regarded as one of the great poets of Middle English. You’ve spent a long time in his company. Do you have a sense of ‘The Gawain Poet’?
The Gawain poet lived in the late fourteenth century in the northwest part of the English Midlands (scholars deduce this from his dialect). He has a strong voice and occasionally inserts himself into the narrative, providing a little clarification or observation in first person. He’s obviously intelligent and well-read, and he seems to have a good deal of familiarity with matters of both church and court. On the one hand, he is learned in Latin, theology, and ecclesiastical rites, suggesting an education in the Church; on the other, he displays an intimate knowledge of chivalry and courtly affairs, suggesting some role in the English court. And yet, he doesn’t seem like a man tied too tightly to the cloth or the crown; he doesn’t shy away from low language and bawdy humor, and he seems unusually attuned to the inner minds and outward concerns of people from many different backgrounds. As a historical person, he is an enigmatic figure; and yet, his personality often shines through in his writing. He is passionate, curious, fair-minded, empathetic, intelligent, and a deep thinker in all sorts of subject areas. He’s funny when he wants to be, and somber when he needs to be. Overall, he’s just a fantastic writer. So yes, I feel like I do have a sense of who the Gawain poet is—even if, paradoxically, we may never know his true identity.
I just want to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss my translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I spent a lot of time working on this in solitude, so it’s wonderful to finally share it with other people. Thank you!
Publication information
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Anonymous, J. Simon Harris (translation and commentary)
LIAM GUILAR is Poetry Editor of The Brazen Head, and the author of several poetry collections, including the series A Man of Heart, Presentment of Englishry and The Fabled Third (Shearsman), set in post-Roman Britain. His most recent publication is a translation of the Mabinogion folk-tale How Culhwch Won Olwen (Shearsman, 2026)
1863 book fore-edge painting of Pope’s Villa at Twickenham
The Twitnam Summer: Friendship, Satire and the Writing of Gulliver’s Travels
Hester Grant, London: William Collins, 2026, hb., 336pps., £25
DEREK TURNER reads about an extraordinarily productive summer
Early in the eighteenth century, the Middlesex village of Twickenham began to be noticed by Londoners wearying of the metropolis, drawn by the attractiveness of its Thames-side setting. One admirer was Alexander Pope, a poet of waspish reputation and socially problematic Catholic background, who in 1720 built a riverside villa in the latest Palladian style on a five-acre plot set between a malthouse and a tanner’s yard.
Pope was widely considered England’s preeminent poet, thanks to works like Essay on Criticism (1711), from which we get the phrases “A little learning is a dang’rous thing” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. He had also written The Rape of the Lock (1712), a mock-epic about the cutting of a hank of hair belonging to a society beauty, and Windsor Forest (1712/3), a lyrical example of loco-descriptive poetry. He had translated the Iliad, and knew Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and William Wycherley.
He was friends, too, with Jonathan Swift and John Gay – and between May and August 1726 played host to both at his house in what was then commonly called ‘Twitnam’, at a pivotal time in all three men’s creative lives. The works associated with that season have ever since been regarded as among the brightest ornaments of English letters.
Pope had known Swift since Windsor Forest, which as well as evoking that history-haunted tract, was also a commentary on contemporary politics. Pope’s poem was adopted by the Tories as useful agitprop, and the poet annexed by Swift, twenty-one years older, the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and a highly effective veteran of political pamphleteering at an especially turbulent time. Dichotomies and discontents left over from the Civil Wars had found new expressions in vitriolic battles between Whigs – mostly Dissenters, anti-Stuart, and allied to mercantilism and finance – and Tories – mostly Anglicans, pro-Stuart, and associated with the landed gentry – with all the writers of the age enthusiastically taking sides.
Swift was famous for Tale of a Tub (1704), a satire on denominational disagreements between Christians, and the clash of old and new learning, and the Bickerstaff Papers (1708-9), a still funny extended lampoon of the Whig astrologer-propagandist John Partridge. After the Whigs took power in 1715, and began purging Tories at all levels, Swift’s writings waxed increasingly incandescent, sometimes forcing changes in government policy, infuriating Prime Minister Robert Walpole.
Walpole’s period of political dominance, between 1721 and 1742 – nicknamed the ‘Robinocracy’ – was notorious for its corruption and partisanship, and the generally unwanted extension of state power through patronage and preferment. Swift took courageous stances against such practices, frequently risking his liberty, and became a folk hero in Ireland, his writings uniquely able to unite Catholics and Presbyterians against exploitative London policies. Swift was held in such awe in Ireland that on one occasion he was able to disperse a crowd which had assembled to watch an eclipse by telling them it had been put off on his orders. Ironically, Swift saw himself as English, and didn’t much approve of the Irish, but any reservations about his adopted country were outweighed by his desire for social stability, and moral outrage at abuses by the rich and powerful.
Swift brought to Twickenham the militantly ironic manuscript which would make him immortal – Travels into several remote Nations of the World. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. Gulliver’s Travels is one of the great books of the eighteenth, or any, century – a masterpiece of surreal invention and sustained invective which gave the language ‘Lilliputian’ and ‘Yahoo’, and held up the perfect Houyhnhnms to shame humans into better behaviour. Its exposure of cant, folly, gullibility and human weakness is still resonant; Gulliver is, wrote Morris Golden in his 1972 study The Self Observed, “more painfully ourselves than any other creation of his century.” Swift made his last tweaks during his time at Twickenham, and on the 8th of August packed it off to the printer, and posterity.
Almost as sensational in their day, if perhaps less read now, were Pope’s Dunciad (1728) and Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (first staged in 1728), both influenced by Gulliver and prodded into being by Gulliver’s author. Swift reputedly snatched a first sketch of the Dunciad out of the fire into which Pope had cast it. Years before, he had given Gay an idea for a “Newgate pastoral, among the whores and thieves”, and now made Gay bring it forward.
Pope penned the Dunciad to poke fun at bad or sycophantic writers, some of whom had recklessly assailed him in print, ironically giving them a more lasting fame than they would ever have attained otherwise. The poem’s portentous closing lines are still cited – “Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d; / Light dies before thy uncreating word: / Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; / And Universal Darkness buries All” – but no stylistic fineness can conceal the essential redundancy of his squibs against such ignes minores as his former publisher Barnaby Lintot, and the malignant Irish cleric-poetaster Jonathan Smedley. The only target who could be called well known is the dramatist Colley Cibber, who in 1730 became one of the least distinguished versifiers ever to occupy the post of Poet Laureate. The Dunciad nevertheless contributed greatly to contemporary Whig discomfiture, and Pope’s then and future fame.
Gay had written unusually empathetic poetic conjurations of rural life, and finally following up on Swift’s old idea, completed his musical play TheBeggar’s Opera, which introduced the characters of Polly Peachum and her highwayman beau Captain Macheath to enthralled London playgoers. Gay supposedly made £800 from the play, leading to a joke that it had made Gay rich, and Rich (the surname of the producer) gay. The strength of the satire is evident from the outset, the first song sung by Polly’s father, a receiver of stolen goods and underworld informer, which runs in part “The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat, / The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine: / And the Statesman, because he’s so great, / Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.” Delighted-scandalised audiences saw shades of Walpole in Mr Peachum, Macheath and a gang-member, “Bob Booty”.
Gay’s spin-off, Polly, was accordingly banned by the Lord Chamberlain, which naturally excited frenetic interest. The Duchess of Marlborough paid £100 for a copy, and the Duchess of Queensberry was banished from court for soliciting money for Gay within the precincts of the Palace. The Opera had become a powerful weapon in the Tories’ intellectual armoury. It is ironic to recall that Gay’s most famous modern emulator was the Marxist playwright, Berthold Brecht.
The conversations of that summer must have been as sparkling as the Thames, and they were occasionally joined by guests like William Congreve, the politician-philosopher Henry St. John (1st Viscount Bolingbroke), and the polymathic physician Dr John Arbuthnot, who invented the bluff English archetype, ‘John Bull’. As well as agreeing in morals and tastes, the three were also united in bachelorhood. Gay’s innate indolence appears to have extended to his relations with the opposite sex. Swift was platonically devoted to two women – Esther Vanhomrigh (“Vanessa”) and Esther Johnson (“Stella”) – whose correspondence with him reveals the literary lion’s private humanity and humour. The unluckily diminutive and deformed Pope – he was 1.3 metres tall, and suffered from Pott’s disease, which twisted his spine and gave bladder and bowel problems, joint pains, headaches and eye inflammation – seems to have been celibate much against his will.
Hester Grant conjures this dazzling company deftly, memorably conveying the flavour and likely routines of that sunlit season, as the trio conversed, read or wrote, wandered in the celebrated gardens, or sat in the shell- and mirror-encrusted grotto called the Nymphæum in search of shade and classical inspiration. She also offers excellently observed wider vistas of these extraordinary artists in full, the politics and literature of their period, and a capital city full of corruption and disquiet, but also abounding creativity and vitality, where wits traded brilliant insults and speculative builders raised elegant edifices above stinking streets.
That London is lost, and Pope’s villa has gone, with just the Nymphæum to mark where once a great poet walked with great friends, and all imagined a world less unclean. Three hundred years on from that remarkable meeting of minds, this is a poignant portrait of an England that once was, or maybe could have been – and a satisfying reminder of the power and possibilities of literature.
This review first appeared in Engelsberg Ideas, and is reproduced with permission
DEREK TURNER is the editor of The Brazen Head, as well as a novelist (A Modern Journey, Displacement, and Sea Changes) and widely-published reviewer. His first non-fiction book, Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire, was published June 2022. Some of his writing may be found at www.derek-turner.com He is also on X – @derekturner1964
Many years ago, when I was a bit younger[i] than the boy, Willie, who trespasses in the marshy woods at 00:17:14[ii] in X the Unknown (1956) and at 00:18:45 meets the (unseen to us) monster (that’s what comes of playing outside when you should be in bed!), the old Welsh Headmaster (who doubled as maths teacher at the local council school), accused me (again) of being “BORN AWK-ARD”. Whether I was questioning the relevance of maths beyond basic shopping calculations, deliberately misunderstanding some unappealing formula or persisting with wanting to know why X meant whatever, his strong adherence to Chapel teachings, cautions of hellfire and damnation and his hieratic manner of speech, undoubtedly magnified his allegation. At some level, I knew he was right. But whether awkwardness arises from nature or nurture . . . remains, like X, not quite knowable.
Perhaps because the older guard of teachers at Elmhurst Junior had pre-war roots and elements of a military attitude residual in the base of their skulls, it is easy to connect the Geiger-counter training that opens X the Unknown (its army personnel divided into bigwigs and disposable rabble – or officers and ranks, if you prefer) with the partly black and white school world of the late 1960s. But this world was definitely in transition, and it seems obvious now that the aging headmaster’s awareness of the upcoming generation of teachers (relatively approachable[iii] and dyed by more colourful, Education Through Art[iv] attitudes) pushed him to an obdurateness as long-standing as I now like to believe my awkwardness was whimsical. His frequent, rising claim in school assemblies that God could see us everywhere, might have amused the younger staff, but it angered me. To see this supposed creator as a voyeur or master spy (or in today’s terms, a kind of disembodied CCTV system) was not encouraging. In combination with my natural “awk-ardness”, the Headmaster’s ire (no doubt also triggered by his distrust of late 60s values) only made me come to view his God (or any god) as a kind of Orwellian Big Brother. By extension, as time went on and other would-be authority figures (clothed in seemingly harmless, wishy-washy cardigans or behind pipes[v] or toothy grins[vi]), took to the stage, I came to view not just politicians but the majority of science and technology, in fact, the entire “white heat of this scientific revolution”[vii] as (predominantly, but not exclusively) part of the paternalistic control system driving society (with plenty of heat but not much light) largely in the wrong direction.
00:25:23 – the devastation of several MeccanoTM sets . . .
Sure enough, in X the Unknown, poor Willie dies of radiation burns, and soon afterwards, his grieving father makes the clear and generally valid distinction (00:31:20): “You’re a Scientist not a Doctor. You don’t care for the sick, you meddle with things that kill . . . letting off bombs you can’t control. You’re not safe! You’re a murderer!” After being subjected to this understandable rant, Dr Adam Royston, (Dean Jagger) walking dejectedly away down a corridor, at 00:31:20 reflects lamely to Inspector McGill (Leo McKern) : “we all try to create not destroy”.
In X the Unknown, Jagger’s character seems a friendly, mild figure, absent-minded in the way professors are often stereotypically humanised. Unfortunately, in reality, whenever science discovers something that can be exploited for war or profit, scientists tend to get pushed aside, their work misrepresented, twisted or ransacked. Alternatively, as the common trope of fiction would have it, they become ambitious or power-crazed.
By contrast, in X the Unknown, Dean Jagger’s Dr Adam Royston, is very sympathetic and shows no sign of megalomania. Since Jagger was also considered amenable in person, it came as a surprise to discover that he held virulently McCarthyite, anti-communist opinions and became adamant that Losey[viii], (who under his blacklist alias of Joseph Walton had begun the pre-production and initial shooting), should be replaced. To cover the later, highly acclaimed[ix], director’s departure, poor health was blamed[x]. He was replaced by a reluctant Leslie Norman[xi].
Post-war idealism may have camouflaged the hubristic dead-end of nuclear power in optimistic science-fiction shapes and colours[xii], offering naïve or deceitful sentiments[xiii] and never-to-be-achieved economic benefits[xiv], yet underlyingly, all the monsters remain, boiling away deep underground – as turns out to be literally the case depicted in X the Unknown. In an internet post about the film from October 2023[xv], Colin McGuigan notes: “While I wouldn’t quite categorize it as an early Eco-thriller, it does raise questions about our symbiotic relationship with the planet itself.”
Considered “vulgar and shocking”[xvi] on its release in 1956, I didn’t remember X the Unknown as a exceptional film, but it was a memorable one, one which tapped into an almost universal distrust of rampant science and technology: science as a kind of witchcraft or Pandora’s Box; science which cannot control the forces it releases. Sadly, applied to nuclear power and weapons, and now more insidiously in the fields of mobile devices, the internet and A.I., this theme of toys or tools out of control, is obviously becoming the massive writing on the wall for all of us. Writing which it seems society is too unimaginative to notice or consider and too exhausted to heed.
In the other ‘X’ film I well-remember, Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X Ray Eyes, (1963), Doctor Xavier (Ray Milland – whose salary justifiably consumed much of the budget) is irritated that the human eye can see only 10% of the light spectrum[xvii]. Determined to force more from the retina or brain, before long, a lab monkey is sacrificed – Xavier’s miracle compound dripped into the poor creature’s eyes. What does he really want to see? Next, Xavier is, more fairly, experimenting on himself . . . but why not stick to one eye? – then perhaps he might have had the ‘best’ of both worlds?
Extremely effective as both an attack on (un)scientific meddling and a parable about hubris[xviii], in prismatic Spectorama[xix], X: The Man with the X Ray Eyes, fractionally anticipated psychedelia and the wider use of LSD. While some of its attitudes have dated, it begins with serious (if absurd) intent, before inevitably lapsing into mild exploitation and action, but returns to a once-shocking denouement in a desert preacher’s tent. Here, rather than staggering up to confess his sins, Xavier says: “I’ve come to tell you what I see. There are great darknesses. Farther than time itself. And beyond the darkness . . . a light that glows, changes . . . and in the centre of the universe . . . the eye that sees us all.” So, after reminding us perhaps of that voyeur God, in an emotionally ecstatic U.S. version of my old Welsh headmaster, the preacher paraphrases Matthew 5:29: “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Dr Xavier does just that, the image freezing on his black empty sockets[xx].
In contrast to Zabriskie Point (1970)[xxi] as there may be less to say about these two relatively conventional films, am I persisting out of “awk-ardness”? A friend joked that my fervour for digression will eventually lead me to write something less than a page long accompanied by a encylopedia of references and notes . . . which is an interesting challenge. But escalating attention (obsession?) detail (pedantry?) and subtlety (obscurity or whimsicality?) through notes, forking or parallel pathways, is hardly new. Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) is an indelible monument to a fascinating and complex addiction . . . while in the not-quite-opposite Beckettian[xxii] world of saying a lot about very little, arises perhaps, Don DeLillo’s novella, Point Omega, (2010) in which a character at the beginning and end is obsessed by Douglas Gordon’s real art installation entitled 24 Hour Psycho[xxiii]. Showing at the Museum of Modern art in New York during the summer of 2006, Hitchcock’s notorious film was slowed down to play once every 24hours. Appropriation or homage? Valid conceptual generator of attention, or gimmick?
Even if the supposedly Scottish wasteland[xxiv] adjoining the Atomic Energy Establishment of Lochmouth or the gaping fissure of X The Unknown, would make excellent settings for Waiting for Godot, it seems unlikely that the 1956 film could be mistaken for anything either as potentially complex or inspiring as Moby Dick or as potentially gimmicky as 24 Hour Psycho. But wait! Maybe it could help humanity on an altogether different level? Think of the synopsis! An older lifeforce bursts from the centre of the Earth in the form of a growing, glowing radioactive porridge, to eat particularly anything radioactive. Come back heartless lava – all is forgiven! – save those living on the earth’s crust from their nuclear dead-end nightmare . . . revive our naïve post-war scientist-hero fantasies worthy of cutaways, children’s cereal-boxes and sci-fi annuals . . .
The imaginary Atomic Energy Establishment of Lochmouth at 00:07:20
Close imaginative or speculative observation, observation straining or stretching consciousnessness or attention in the manner of ‘slow cinema’[xxv] (or such as could be stimulated by, for example, the process of watching Psycho slowed to run once every 24 hours), perhaps replicates in essence the hopeful idea behind the opening stanza of Blake’s Auguries of Innoncence[xxvi]: “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour.”
Blake’s lines may seem purely hypothetical to those who live within the claustrophobic confines of our technocracked, supposedly rational society, or within the accepted codes or fantasies of ‘progress’. But to anyone open to the fuller world – anyone who doesn’t have Doctor Xavier’s expectant demands – such transcendent escalation often occurs quite naturally. Even the artist Graham Sutherland’s less exacting echoes of Blake, seeing landscapes in miniature on a Pembrokeshire beach, can have an almost visionary effect on those not used to regularly thinking in such a way.
Going back to the idea of artists falling from art’s vital tightrope into formula and gimmick, more than a few ‘successful’ artists have founded lucrative careers upon stunts and repetition – I won’t name names – but this complacence, despite a concomitant facility which inevitably grows over the years, is not worthy of respect once detached from some wider or deeper quest. Although it may be unfashionable to say that art, music, writing, film and so on should be about enlightenment, I will say it anyway.
X the Unknown is an effective black and white entertainment, but apart from considering fears of the time, does it have any aspects of enlightenment about it? Unease even dread, fills many of its frames. Elemental mystery evoked in ways which we may be used to but remain unsettling: the misty woods and fear through a child’s eyes. Hammer’s usual paranoid music, insidious, unearthly, is likewise always potent. It scratches at the nuclear trick in a way that is wholly justified, since the essence of nuclear research was always about destruction. The idea of free power (ha ha) only stemmed from the loop of annihilation it still freely offers.
Windscale in 1956, the year X the Unknown was released and a year before the disastrous fire[xxvii]
Lochmouth may be imaginary but Windscale unfortunately was not, and the fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in UK history. On the International Nuclear Event Scale, it remains one of the worst in the world, in severity ranked at level 5 out of 7. That is when the whole nuclear fantasy should have been terminated.
Despite undercurrents of dissent, X the Unknown probably had little choice but to show the scientists, ultimately, as heroes, leaving the military personel, managers and ministry men to smoulder the torch of that beloved film type, the stock idiot. One officer, comments at 00:48:08, that the “trouble with some of these scientific types is that they can’t see the easy way out of anything. It’s got to be complicated if it’s going to work.” The classic military way of course, is to blast and raze the fissure with high explosves and flame-thowers and then concrete it all up! Leslie Banks as Colonel Holland in Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room (1949) might have been a blimpish caricature intended partly humorously, but underlyingly he was both shrewd and honest.
Predictably, Spider (Anthony Newley), Haggis (Ian MacNaughton) and Private Lansing (Marty Hopkirk of the white suit/Kenneth Cope) all become victims to the as yet unseen monster from the centre of the earth. By his petulant comments and irritation at being bypassed as boss of his “nuclear pile”, manager John Elliott (Edward Chapman) seems, at 00:42:50, to be the next victim in line . . . but miraculously survives, shortly to become the recurring martinet, Mr Grimsdale or equivalent, in five Norman Wisdom comedies[xxviii].
Learning of the approach of the radioactive sludge intent on scoffing the energy source at the dubious establishment, the cast and crew are all frantic to get the cobalt pile, a great big block, presumably radioactive, loaded onto an open flatbed truck. No precautions taken. Radioactivity is fine. Just keep a little distance and brush your hands off. Meanwhile for some baffling reason all the village flock are herded into the church by their vicar – as if the monotonous mass which can melt through solid blocks of lead is going to be put off by a couple of oaken doors or the animosity of a voyeur God who sees eveything. Naturally, a small girl child is left outside and soon runs chuckling and friendly towards the sparkling bread dough pouring over the churchyard wall. Rescued in the nick of time by the vicar, she seems unharmed despite her proximity.
Soon though, the expanding dough is heading towards the “experimental nuclear station”. Darn things are all over the place – even now. Costly misdirections still cooking 70 years later – I chanced upon one back in June just north east of Preston[xxix]. This blot on the landscape one has been “making nuclear fuels since the mid-1940s. The site is notable for being the first nuclear plant in the world to produce Magnox fuel for a commercial power station”.[xxx]
Springfields nuclear fuel production installation, Salwick, Preston, 26th June 2026
The final section of X the Unknown, involes lots of moving about of vehicles and unspecified equipment to recreate Dr. Royston’s unpredictable MeccanoTM experiment. As with the recent epic blockbuster Project Hail Mary (2026), the need for urgency vaults every hurdle, and Wallace and Gromit save the day. Or have they? “You should be proud. It has worked” X says to Y, before another unexpected explosion follows. Royston/Jagger looks baffled and the camera backtracks, implying space for a sequel.
In the excellent 2003 commentary recorded by Marcus Hearn and Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011), Sangster says that the anti-nuclear aspects were accidental, or rather that they were exploiting a common fear of the time. Meanwhile, at the BBFC or censorship office, John Trevelyan was reportedly concerned about X the Unknown’s “dangerous cocktail of sex and horror”. The tryst between radiographer and nurse in the Radiation Room could be seen as an example of this – their potential lust swiftly curtailed by the unsentimental monster at 00:34:00. I’m not sure why the victims of the monster don’t simply run away, like Willie does at the beginning, not that it did him any good. It might be difficult in confined spaces such as the Radiation Room, but some of the soldiers seem inordinately stupid, repeatedly firing their guns into what must have appeared to them as a kind of lava. Primary producer for Hammer, Anthony Hines, told the censorship board that the monster wouldn’t look as nasty as the script described, since they were intending to represent it with “chocolate mousse”.
One censor complained that X the Unknown was “scientific hokum and sadism in equal parts; a wretched exploitation of the X certificate”. The script was also described as “the work of an insane but precocious schoolboy!” which writer, Jimmy Sangster, on the commentary, doesn’t seem to mind at all for what he calls his “B and a half movie”. The fairly low budget is illustrated when Dr Royston visits a local church to question Willie’s schoolfriend about what they were doing on the night Willie received his radiation burns. To set the scene, the establishing shot used (below) was taken from Whisky Galore! (1949)[xxxi].
“X the Unknown” wrote Monthly Film Bulletin: “intriguingly suggests a new addition to the science fiction repertoire of Things, but after a series of prolonged climaxes, with its potential victims staring directly into the camera and shaking with fright, the ‘Unknown’ finally emerges as a type of rolling rubber mattress, disappointingly unhorrific in content and appearance.”
* * * * * * *
Perhaps it is only fitting in the days of obvious climate change, of psychopathic omnicidal world leaders, of narcissistic megalomaniac billionaires, of futile weathercasting and forlornly relativist cultural opinion, that the idea of a canon of film has more than somewhat self-destructed. For a decade or two, I maintained a constantly shifting top 100 of films, films largely chosen for their searching depth and quality but also allowing, overall, for enjoyment and entertainment as well as hopeful and inspirational[xxxii] elements. This was a kind of desert island list, indebted therefore to Roy Plomley’s[xxxiii] radio program[xxxiv], imagining 100 films that would stand being watched and watched again if you were shipwrecked but somehow had a projector and 100 films – or a massive TV, DVD player and 100 DVDs (the whole concept would be seriously diminished if the delivery system were smaller). Although I would probably stand by at least half of the films which made it into the more stable top ten[xxxv] of this 100, I began to abandon the overall idea when I realised that I had over 200 films in my top 100.
List-making remains a societal disease; can it have fundamental positives? Despite its prolific passion for lists, the film magazine, Sight and Sound, remains great, thanks perhaps to Mike Williams – an editor with principles. In a world steeply dumbing down, are lists a commercial necessity? One recent specimen: “21st-Century Sci-Fi Cinema,”[xxxvi] chose a film from each year since 2000. Across the page from 2001’s exceptional Donnie Darko (2001), was Sam Wrigley’s choice (presumably, Sam was born “awk-ard”) I.K.U. (2000) a film I struggled to track down and which proved to be of almost no value whatever (though it’s not much worse than Titane, 2021, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes). Apex of all these short-attention span lists is the once-a-decade “Sight and Sound Greatest Films of all Time”[xxxvii]. Yes, the title is ludicrous. It reminds me of playing a very loose version of cricket with my children around the turn of the Millenium in rural, middle-of-nowhere, North Devon. Increasing in absurdity, The Supreme Universe Cricket Cup, eventually involved 124 invented teams. Some of these merely named the team: e.g. Flash [Gordon] and the Showoffs – a particularly reckless mob who in swashbuckling style tried to turn every ball into a 6 over the house or trees. Other teams were serious and well-characterised. My son’s Star Wars squad, featured carefully inscribed players, all of whom played or failed to play as Star Wars fans (him) might expect (although Yoda was not the best, being too calm and inclined to sitting). I can’t remember how often Darth Vader got into an argument with Han Solo, or whether team loyalty superseded Good and Evil . . . or rather Light and Dark? Perhaps Darth eventually formed a breakaway team to challenge the light side of the Force? I’m not even sure which teams made it to the final – though I have an entire scoresheet somewhere. Possibly, it was Star Wars versus The Artist, Writers and Characters (featuring all-rounders Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Herman Melville, Emma Peel and Wolf Solent with Cecil Collins and Orson Welles bowling off breaks – not difficult in a lumpy garden) . . .
For all their atmosphere and entertainment value, neither X the Unknown, nor X: The Man with the X Ray Eyes, would have made my top 100, though they are no better or worse than Sight and Sound’s current “Greatest Film of All Time” Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. (1975). Largely a depressing tableau of interiors – Jeanne Dielman’s unmoving camera provides mesmerizing but tedious focus, observing like a coldly voyeuristic god! A cross between slow cinema’s occasionally valid lean towards transcendence and a kitchen sink (or living-room settee) realism of dreary daily routines, obsessively, neurotically, carried out . . . ultimately, this is a film about futility. For Jeanne Dielman, everything has a place. Dispiriting rather than inspiring, it is intensely claustrophobic. By the long overdue end, you feel like killing yourself. A suddenly fashionable or unfairly despised token of a film, it seems plucked arbitrarily from Chantal Akerman’s valuable oeuvre. It is not her best work and as Andreas Babiolakis points out in his useful filmography[xxxviii], winning the poll did it no favours. Try, Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (1994) or Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974). Or take a look instead at the superior Riddles of the Sphinx[xxxix] written and directed by Laura Mulvey and Peter Woollen.
Jeanne Dielman’s air of joylessness is crushing. “My youth was but a gloomy storm” reads out Jeanne’s 25-year-old son, quoting Baudelaire – and even this brief line conveys a sudden wild cloudscape to dismiss the robotic routine Jeanne Dielman presents. What a relief when the camera or the characters go outside!
The only brief joy for Jeanne appears to be remembering the end of the war . . . and the son never rebels against her rules or routine. At 01:05:16 we are briefly outdoors again: any light, any air, is like an oasis in the desert! Naturally, the period atmosphere is now worth looking at, with an un-poshed-up Brussels, the sometimes slightly misty yet translucent winter streets, the proper cars . . . instead of existing as a film, Jeanne Dielman might work well as a chain of still images of dated rooms, streets and stores.
Jeanne shops, cleans and rearranges to a pattern . . . yet does manage, once in a while to smile: in the wool shop (01:29:56), in a café at Giselle (01:30:47) which she misses on her next visit – clearly discomforted by having to sit in a different seat (03:01:46). By this point however, she is starting to visibly crack, albeit in a more measured way than Carol Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve) in Repulsion (1965).
Somehow, even the perfunctory prostitution Jeanne practices, seems part of a general process – which of course may be one of the film’s points: the way we prostitute ourselves to futile modes of life. The way we try to evade alarms and surprises. That respectability is a farce . . .
Occasionally, even the less illuminated sections of Andrei Tarkovsky, can suffer from a form of Jeanne Dielman disease – a drawn-out atmosphere that (charitably) aims to alienate or mind-numb us via demoralising thought into a search for positivity or meaning. Desperate for import, eventually we grow weary, fall into a different zone, or manufacture meaning for ourselves. Which is fine under different circumstances, but Jeanne Dielman can make you long for a mindless Euro-spy thriller[xl] or a Morecambe and Wise feature film such as: The Intelligence Men (1965) or That Riviera Touch (1966)! Jeanne’s mind-suicide of repression can’t last; her life of quiet desperation begins to crumble towards the 3-hour mark as she starts to fumble and drop things . . .
Her suffocation under the final man (above) resembles how you feel all the way through the film – and it ends in a strike for freedom which fails . . . But perhaps I am forcing my own desire for Jeanne to E S C A P E upon the film? “Jeanne Dielman’s defences had snapped and I wanted to demonstrate that with the strongest sign of her oppression: prostitution… Jeanne Dielman kills to regain her order” Akerman herself said[xli]. Perhaps Jeanne’s repressive order is as close as she can get to the concept of freedom – which may only be a concept anyway, however we interpret or attempt to live or avoid it?
Even if Jeanne Dielman doesn’t justify this much attention as a film (rather than as “the first masterpiece in the feminine in the history of the cinema”[xlii]) Chantal Akerman was undoubtably a worthwhile artist and the film must work on other levels to be so highly rated. Perhaps viewers identify with it as a kind of psychological case history? Is it unfair to know or remember that aspects of Jeanne’s behaviour were based upon Akerman’s mother’s daily routines and that her mother was an Auschwitz survivor? This cannot help but affect both viewer and critic, making Jeanne a martyr by association. A more concise and intense film to which Jeanne Dielman could be very loosely related is Dušan Makavejev’s Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Ljubavni Slucaj ili Tragedija Sluzbenice P.T.T.) of 1967. But Eva Ras (as Izabela, telefonistkinja or switchboard operator) seems very much alive although dead, while Delphine Seyrig (as Jeanne) is obliged to play dead whilst alive . . .
In the end, however, my intolerance towards Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, could be partly physiological. Owing to the tunnels and ventilation shafts the workers have to crawl through in Under Night Streets (1958)[xliii], one of my previously favourite BTF films has become difficult to tolerate. It triggers my claustrophobia. Jeanne Dielman is similarly stifling. Watching it is like being buried alive . . .
I only have to pass under the shadow of a tree in some inconsequential suburb to feel a sudden desire to watch and ponder Vertigo[xliv] again. Yet Vertigo’s overall enigma surpasses its individual scenes and my memory (or mis-memory) of the profoundest passages can be so essential and heightened, that sometimes the actual filmitself can be a distraction. Many films have this effect, but Jeanne Dielman does not. In fact, you would have to pay me to watch Jeanne Dielman for a fourth time. Rather than being hauntingly tragic, what Jeanne Dielman perhaps does best, is reflect the increasingly robotised captivity of society – a society far more closely circumscribed by technology now than it was in 1975. Forget rampant lava or psychedelic eye drops, it’s the tools that have taken over. The tools and their android oligarchy of selfish owners. These are the real monsters.
[i] At 13 or 14, the actor, Michael Brooke (1942-2014) was older than he looked in the film
[ii] All the timings from X The Unknown come from my 2005 Hammer DVD
[iii] Though one teacher did lift me up by my ears (not off the ground, and I probably deserved it) while another used to make wrongdoers do handstands against a wall all through playtimes
[ix] Particularly after the release of The Servant in 1963
[x]bfi.org.uk/features/why-i-love-x-unknown by Vic Pratt: “American star Dean Jagger was signed up to star, and blacklisted Joseph Losey – who would go on to shoot The Damned (1961), another seriously spooky sci-fi film – was enlisted to direct, but there was further trouble ahead. Losey left the production somewhat abruptly – supposedly with pneumonia, but, according to [Jimmy] Sangster, removed from the project owing to star Dean Jagger’s reluctance to work with a ‘red’ director.”
[xi]imdb.com/title/tt0049967/trivia/: “It has also been reported that Losey simply didn’t want to make the film and left the project, to be replaced by Norman, who also didn’t want to make the movie.”
[xii] A false picture that still clings on 70 years later – another corpse inadequately staked!
[xiii] See Atomic Achievement (1956) youtube.com/watch?v=ToVsb_AhrlMObserving the scientists and minions featured is like watching toddlers play with broken glass:
[xiv] Sheer awkwardness or pigheadedness continues to throw good money after bad despite there being no safe solution to the disposal of waste which remains dangerously hot and highly radioactive for thousands of years.
[xvi] Marcus Hearn’s words in an absorbing 2003 commentary to the film with Jimmy Sangster, the writer and production manager.
[xvii] For what it’s worth, this figure has since been scientifically reduced to less than 1%.
[xviii] It was a vivid memory of the end of X: The Man with the X Ray Eyes, that etched the biblical (mis)quote from Matthew 5:29 into my head: “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” internationaltimes.it/first-principles/
[xix] The Spectorama technique was employed by Cinematographer Floyd Crosby to suggest what Dr. Xavier sees as his vision expands the normal human spectrum.
[xx] In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King, noted rumours which claimed “the ending originally went further, with Milland crying out “I can still see” after gouging out his eyes. Corman has denied the existence of that ending but expressed enjoyment with the idea, saying “Now it’s interesting. Stephen King saw the picture and wrote a different ending, and I thought, ‘His ending is better than mine.'” See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X:_The_Man_with_the_X-ray_Eyes
[xxiv] This recurring location was actually filmed (as were other film and TV productions including episodes of Doctor Who) at Gerrards Cross Sand and Gravel Pits in Bucks which looks, in pictures, though not in the film, to be very similar to the Leighton Buzzard Sand Quarries which so inspired me from the 1970s: brazen-head.org/?s=zabriskie+point As the film was made in the winter, filming day for night was not considered possible since it requires bright sunlight, necessitating working at night in very cold January and February temperatures.
[xxviii]www.imdb.com/name/nm0152361/?ref_=tt_cst_t_2 Chapman also remains indelible as a church deacon in Powell and Pressburger’s Gone To Earth (1950), when at 00:31:46, after the vicar has said Grace: he declares: “I have not received tartlets… I am not thankful!”
[xxxi] As Peter Faizey noted here: www.reelstreets.com/films/x-the-unknown/ the church, Our Lady Star of the Sea, is on the Isle of Barra, Castlebay, Scotland. The other church used is St Michael’s Church, Bray, which apparently also appears in Paranoiac (1963), Four-Sided Triangle (1953) and There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970).
[xxxii] Even the darkest (and best) film noir: Out of the Past, 1947, (my number 4 film since the late 1980s) has fleeting lights of hope.
[xxxv] Although I would “stand by” these films, there would probably be a hundred others I’d now wish to cram into the top ten, since much of the list predated my wider experience of European and world cinema – particularly of Italian and Japanese films. The Japanese New Wave (Nuberu bagu) is every bit as vital as the better-known French Nouvelle Vague
1) A Canterbury Tale (1944)
2) Solaris (1972)
3) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
4) Out of the Past (U.K. title: Build My Gallows High (1947)
[xliv] Vertigo preceded Jeanne Dielman… as number one in the Greatest Films of all Time list. Naturally, the critical/appreciative paths around it are thoroughly trodden.
LAWRENCE FREIESLEBEN, Film & Television Editor of The Brazen Head, has beenan artist and writer as long as he can remember – cycling away at weekends from the council estate where he grew up, to paint the countryside as an escape from the restrictive tedium of the school week. Leaving home at 16, he has lived in 17 different areas of the UK – from Devonshire to Northumberland – painting and writing, always vigilantly questioning the interior light of landscape, cityscape and wider atmosphere. Living virtually off-grid with his large family, both remote locations and urban visits have formed the backscene to a passion for film which has intertwined with art and writing throughout his career. Films remain a key creative focus since childhood, resulting in encyclopaedic folders and clippings as well as a constant stream of home-made film festivals. He currently lives in a dilapidated Lancashire seaside town
GARY BILLS was born at Wordsley, near Stourbridge, UK. He gained his MA in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University, with a distinction. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, and he has three full collections to his name. His work has been translated into German, Romanian and Italian.
Black Sea
Those dead ships in abysmal sleep
where time and shipworm cannot bite
and even snows of flesh and slime
which elsewhere ghost it down from light
can never reach this other deep
where oil-less lamps on Punic prows
are waiting for the taper’s touch,
though all the crews are sift by now
or swimming in the eyeless mind.
But when Man’s dreams are kindled bright
the fish is startled in its flight,
to glimpse the ports he left behind.
Moments at an English Church
Time preserves its monuments of quiet –
the marble baby, wailing from her crib
in perfect silence – rumpling up her face
And pudgy cherubs flutter round a name
with virgin crants for James, who died a teen,
white ribbons for his purity and grace.
A bishop waves his devils’ book and frowns –
(his bald head’s like a marble on a ruff…)
but after all, this was his solemn place.
Outside the seeds are spinning from the limes –
past saints who float in frames of staining glass,
GARY BILLS was born at Wordsley, near Stourbridge, UK. He gained his MA in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University, with a distinction. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, and he has three full collections to his name. His work has been translated into German, Romanian and Italian.
NICHOLAS BOOTH offers the second exclusive extract from X Trapnel’s legendary short story collection, Bin Ends
I never thought I’d see Maltbeam again. Assumed he was dead. We’d been pals round the pubs very early in the war then he said he was being posted overseas and I’d more or less forgotten about him, as one forgot many people encountered and mislaid in those days. “We’ll meet up after this lot’s over” was a common motto. Often enough it came off.
It was easiest to track down people like me who stuck to a beat of watering holes around the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street. North Soho, all that. So it was that Maltbeam found me again, in the public bar of the Lion and in a good mood. I’d had a double come up at Taunton the day before: Notoriety and Boveridge.
Maltbeam said he’d had a devil of a time of it fighting for king and country. That caused me to reflect that my great struggles in history’s largest conflict, apart from dodging bombs and doodlebugs, was finding coins for the gas fire and trying to get poems published in Penguin New Writing.
Maltbeam seemed to have put quite a bit of chub on. I mentioned this as food was hardly plentiful that first winter after the war. “Oh, I had a good landlady in Dover,” he said. He didn’t say what he was doing in Dover. I didn’t pry into his war service but after a few drinks he came out with a catalogue of close-run-things with death: North Africa, Italy, Germany, the whole show as he put it. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “It was hell.” He certainly seemed lucky to make it back.
“When I killed a Jerry,” he said, “believe me I thought, one up for us. I know a bloke who got a little crooked cross tattooed on his back for every Nazzy he did in. I can’t believe I came back. Never thought I’d see London again I can tell you. Anyway, I’ve found a bed-sitting room now and I need a job – I’ve got enough for beer and fags till Sunday. Hero’s welcome, what.”
Behind the bar the landlord, Teddy, was shuffling about in carpet slippers and an ancient cardigan, feeding his caged parrot, Tosh. Teddy’s green cardigan was complementary to his crimson grogblossom, making both a bit richer. He congratulated me on the double. I wished he had not. In fact knowing old Teddy he may have done it on purpose. I knew what was coming.
“Lend us two quid will you, chum?” Maltbeam said. “I’ll pay you back next week.”
Of course, this was a bit much. Teddy winked at me.
As Maltbeam made his request Tosh sidled rapidly along his perch, inclined his head and stared at Maltbeam. “You fat ___,” said the parrot tartly. Maltbeam laughed – we all did. “He’s on the scrounge,” shrieked Tosh.
“You want to watch that bird, Teddy,” said Maltbeam. “He could get you into trouble. What if he says a word like that to some old girl who’s well-to-do?”
“Don’t get that sort of customer in here,” said Teddy. “He only talks to people he takes a dislike to.”
I lent Maltbeam the two quid, and he bored on again about his war. Now and again he’d look across at Tosh, who stared right back at him.
*
Of course Maltbeam didn’t pay me back the following week. About a month later on a Sunday evening at the Lion I was still nursing a rotten hangover from the morning. The place was deserted except for two young BBC types along the bar from me. One was tall in an old brown suit and had a toothbrush moustache, and the other a dumpy type in tweeds with rosy cheeks from beer. I knew them both as regulars at the Lion, which in those days attracted a thirsty clientele from the national broadcaster. I was content to stay out of their talk, which was usually on an arcane political or cultural theme.
“Well, we’re a socialist country now,” Clive, the dumpy one, said. “You’ve got to admit that.” He was misty-eyed at this. “They didn’t achieve that in Spain.”
Rollo, the tall one, sipped his beer. “Quite,” he said. “But Lewis is of the opinion that it could all go horribly wrong.”
“Who’s Lewis?”
“My pal, the professor.”
“Yes but he’s a professor of corners or something, isn’t he?”
“Rectangles, I think. Something like that. I wanted him to give a talk on the Third Programme about it but when I saw his script it was quite impossible. Completely impenetrable. If I couldn’t understand a word of it what chance did listeners have? It went on about things such as continuous function and topological space. I thought, I’ll get TS Eliot instead because it made his stuff look like the Beano.”
“The intolerable shirt of flame, eh,” I quoted, butting into their conversation. Well, you would butt rudely into the conversation of someone called Rollo, wouldn’t you.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Rollo.
“I’ve always hoped to find an intolerable shirt of flame in a 15½ inch neck in the summer sales,” I said. Clive snorted but stopped when he saw Rollo was not amused.
“Lewis takes a strong line,” said Rollo to Clive. “A very strong line. He thinks the people should rise now. Storm the citadels of power. We’re still up to our necks in filthy capitalism.” Rollo gave a disagreeable glance at me as he said that. “Up to our necks in it. I’d arm the people.”
I had a vile headache born of mixed drinks consumed injudiciously at lunchtime. I took a long draught of bitter and hoped it would help. That’s when the Lion’s old mock-medieval door creaked open and Maltbeam appeared in his British Warm, for it was a cold night. His big red face cracked a grin as he moved down the bar.
It was deliciously warm for once as Teddy had grudgingly banked the fire up. Maltbeam caught the end of another speech by Rollo about violent revolution and looked askance. “We’ve just had a dose of violence, chum,” he said loudly. “Six years of it. Of course – you may not have seen much of it.” This was ignored.
“Thank God for heat,” said Maltbeam. “My gas fire’s broken.”
Rollo and Clive were onto whether they could execute someone. “If the cause is right and just then you must,” said Rollo. He drank some more beer. “It’s your duty.”
“But supposing it’s the King, or some other royal person,” said Clive.
“Shoot the King?” said Rollo wonderingly.
“Oi,” said Teddy as he placed a pint in front of Maltbeam. “That’s enough of that. Just you behave yourselves. We won’t have talk like that in here.”
As Teddy went to the till Tosh, who had noted the arrival of Maltbeam, scraped along his perch. He looked rather seedy. He turned his head and peered at Maltbeam out of a sinister eye. “You’re a ____,” said the parrot. His high-pitched rasping voice was horrible and comic, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The worst of all words hung in the air. It was ironic given Teddy’s warning to the BBC pair. They laughed, no doubt seeing Tosh’s remark as a sort of vengeance for what Maltbeam had said.
Maltbeam raised his eyebrows, then his pint and said cheerio.
We started talking about money, women and prospects. I noticed that Tosh was moving his head from side to side but his attention remained fixed on Maltbeam.
“D’you know,” said Maltbeam. “I wonder what it was all for, the war I mean. I risked life and limb time and time again and when I got home I found my wife was shacked up with an Italian PoW, my old job had vanished and now I’m in a pub listening to bolshies talking about killing the King.”
Before I could offer any remarks Tosh said: “I’ve told you once, you’re a fat ____. Kindly leave my pub.”
Teddy, perched on a high stool, chuckled round his pipe. Maltbeam was discomfited. “You think that’s funny, do you?” he asked Teddy.
“I didn’t say it, did I?” said Teddy, his low voice muffled by his moustache and lack of teeth.
“He’s merely laughing at the surrealism of the moment,” ventured Rollo.
Maltbeam did not even turn round to remonstrate. He just said: “You keep out of this, Mary.”
Then to me: “Do you know what, chum, I’m going to have a scotch. It seems like the whole bloody world is against me.”
So Maltbeam did; and another, and another. As we talked and drank he looked at the birdcage warily. Tosh stared back at him. Clearly Maltbeam had money but I did not think it politic to raise the two quid owed.
With all five of us smoking, the bar was wreathed in a fine grey mist. My headache had eased right off. Rollo and Clive were now tipsy and talking about some variety programme on the wireless. Thanks to the ale and scotch Maltbeam, who never had much of a head for drink, was boozed up. Inevitably we’d got on to his war days. Restless energy flowed through him. Now he was on his feet acting out the storming of a machine gun nest. “…I came over the top and went in for the kill with the bayonet,” he said. He mimed holding a Lee-Enfield at just that angle. “I pulled back the gun for the final irremediable plunge…”At this point Tosh’s querulous voice cut across Maltbeam: “Oh for Christ’s sake shut up, you boring ____” the parrot said.
Maltbeam looked round. His wet blue eyes glittered madly. “One more word, one more word and I’ll do that bloody bird,” Maltbeam snarled. “So help me, I’ll do that bloody bird.”
“I told you to shut up,” said Tosh. “You’ve had too much for one night. So shut up.”
“You shut up,” said Maltbeam.
“You’re a big fat ____, why don’t you just ____ off out of it,” said Tosh. This last bit of cheek seemed to almost stupefy Maltbeam with shock. He was of choleric colouring by nature but now he reddened deeply as his surprise added to his rage. “Take that bird out of this bar, landlord, or else I’ll do it,” he yelled at Teddy.
“Can’t do that,” said Teddy in an amused voice; “can’t take Tosh out of the bar. He likes it in here. If I put him out the back he starts singing Nearer My God to Thee. It gives me the willies. It’s only a bird, mate.”
“Look,” said Maltbeam to me in a rather rattled voice, “why don’t we go round the Tartan? You fancy the landlady and – ”
“Ain’t you got a home to go to?” said Tosh. “Where’s yer missus?”
At this, Rollo and Clive squealed with amusement. By God Maltbeam looked mad. He reached into his greatcoat and produced a revolver.
“Win that throwing coconuts?” Teddy said.
“It fires a stick of Brighton rock,” said Rollo with mock authority.
Maltbeam swore horribly. “One more word out of anyone, especially that parrot, and things’ll get very lively.”
“Shut up, you _____,” said Tosh. “I won’t tell you again.”
Rollo and Clive laughed. Before anyone could say a word Maltbeam raised his arm, took aim at the cage and fired.
There was a split second of great confusion: a big crack, a spark and a puff of smoke in the tobacco fug, then another. For a moment I could see nothing. All I could hear was the shrieks of Rollo and Clive. Maltbeam pointed the gun at them and said: “Want some?”
Rollo had the sort of unfortunate accident more associated with children than adults. Clive had his hands up as if in a Western.
“You ____”, said Tosh. “Call the police, Ted!” I suppose it was a phrase he’d heard Teddy’s missus use.
Maltbeam aimed the revolver at the parrot. I knocked it out of his hand then grabbed it from the floor. Maltbeam went to take it off me but I pushed him away. As I did I expected to hear Teddy deliver a volley of remonstrance but all I could hear was his wife shouting down the stairs asking what was going on. “Look at Teddy,” shouted Clive. Teddy lay on the floor behind the bar. My headache was back with a vengeance.
*
Teddy was quite dead. One of the bullets had bounced off something and hit him. The other one went through a mirror behind the bar. Seven years’
bad luck, I’d said. Maltbeam looked a bit green. Much of the above had to be given out by me from the witness box at the Old Bailey.
Maltbeam had dashed out of the pub and spent a day or two on the run before being found staring into the middle distance on a bench in Regent’s Park.
He was not an especially contrite defendant. It came out that he’d tried to strangle his landlady in Dover but she had not reported it until after Teddy’s shooting made headlines.
Along with his threat to shoot the two BBC men, who also gave evidence, there were a good deal of other unsavoury incidents to be taken into consideration. Maltbeam was a rogue, a thief, a strangler manqué as well as a lethal looser-off of revolvers in public houses, the court was told. The prosecution introduced the idea that he might have drunkenly been out to settle Teddy’s hash rather than Tosh’s. They’d dredged up some row he’d had with the landlord long ago. There was, they said, no getting away from the fact that Teddy’s death had been caused by reckless shooting with a Webley bought on the black market.
Somehow they stood up a murder charge. Another aggravating element for Maltbeam was that the incident at the Lion occurred not long after an armed robbery that resulted in the killing of an innocent bystander had made headlines. A hard mood had emerged in the judiciary. The upshot was that once the guilty verdict was in, the judge put the black cap on, and an expected reprieve did not come.
*
I visited Maltbeam while he was in the condemned cell. It was a day of dreary fog when I took the tube to Caledonian Road and thence to Pentonville. Two warders brought him to the visiting room. He looked a bit slimmer and less choleric.
I did not have the first idea what to say. It seemed a most awful moment. Maltbeam had been looking down at a packet of fags I’d brought him. Now he looked up. His mad blue eyes had turned a little bit grey. I had feared he would burst into tears but not a bit of it. Maltbeam launched into a diatribe.
“I dare say you have seen in the papers that the home secretary has dismissed my appeal. You’d think he’d have a sense of humour. As the Daily Sketch had it, I set out to murder a parrot and ended up killing a man. Mind you, the home secretary’s a Unitarian, isn’t he?” He was lisping, and explained he’d broken his false teeth. “Obviously, given my predicament I’ve been boning up on religion: you want half an idea of what you might be getting into on the other side. These nonconformist types see God and heaven like one of their endless bloody squabbles about county councils. I mean, doesn’t my war record count, I ask myself? I blame Attlee and co. It’s like having the country run by a pipsqueak from Mac Fisheries. I might write him a letter now I think about it. Give him a piece of my mind.” He lit a fag and went on in the sort of aggrieved tone that housewives use when complaining about the price of everything in the shops. “I was clearly aiming for the bird. Can I help it if the bullet bounces off and into Teddy? I feel bad about Teddy, but for heaven’s sake it was an accident.” He went on in this way for quite a while. When the time was up and he stood to be led away by the warders he said: “Well, see you on the other side, old boy – with any luck.” Then as he walked away he turned and said: “Sorry I didn’t pay you back that two quid.”
One morning a few days later a dinner-suited voice on the wireless announced Maltbeam had been hanged.
*
One evening not long afterwards I turned in at the Lion late on. The barmaid was a girl I’d once had a fling with. Like everything after the war she looked a bit older and in need of a clean. Tosh was in his cage – he’d become something of a celebrity: a few local bohemians had formed a sort of fan club. The broken mirror was still in situ and was also a cult object. Rollo and Clive were dining out on the story.
I bought a half and took my usual place. The barmaid chucked an evening paper on the bar. “They’ve given your pal a write-up in there,” she said.
So had they. The headline was “Rage of landlord killer” or something like it. The piece concentrated on trying to spice up his wife’s affair with the PoW but it also mentioned his war career. Ronald Maltbeam, it said, was a fantasist as well as a killer.
He had spent the entirety of his war service as a cook in the Army Catering Corps at a camp in North Wales. They’d even found a few colleagues for quotes. “Old Ronnie was a dab-hand at Brown Stew No1,” said one of them. “He was so good at it we nicknamed him Brown Stew. No word of a lie, I never thought old Brown Stew would turn out to do something like that.”
I folded the paper over and dropped it back on the bar. It had not occurred to me to wonder why the defence had not made anything of his heroic war service. It had not occurred to me to ask about decorations.
I heard a little scraping noise: it was Tosh sidling to the end of his perch. His newfound celebrity had not made him any less scruffy. He turned his head and fixed me with a rather diabolical eye. He stared at me for a while. I declined to meet his gaze.
Tosh began to sing in an awful falsetto.
“Or if, on joyful wing cleaving the sky, Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I fly, Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to thee.”
I was very thirsty but left my half untouched and started walking towards the door.
“Lend us two quid will you, chum,” I heard Tosh say as I walked out. “We’re closing. Get out. Time gentlemen, please. Drink up.” The parrot’s voice got louder. “You’ve had your time. Ain’t you got homes to go to?”
As I came out of the Lion Rollo was hurrying in. I had not seen him since the trial. As he passed me he said: “Your pal got an intolerable shirt of flame, eh.”
“Right neck size an’ all,” I shot back, but Rollo was through the Lion’s mouth.
David Dumouriez, Liverpool: erbacce-press, 90pps., £10
VADIM KAGAN finds a poet who is better than he pretends to be
The third poem in David Dumouriez’s collection is titled ‘POETRY IS WANK.’ It’s printed in capitals, runs two pages, and closes on the line “POETRY WILL NEVER NOT BE WANK.” Provocation or confession, it sets the terms for the book: eighty-odd pages from a poet who refuses, on the surface, to take poetry seriously, and who is, all the same, very good at it.
Talking to Skeletons ranges from English childhood to Istanbul, and the mixture is as eclectic as that suggests. There are elegies and satires, love poems, a walking tour of a childhood town, political rants, an ode to Cary Grant’s suit in North by Northwest, and a two-line poem about a curry. The voice is colloquial (sometimes too much so), sardonic, and almost religiously allergic to pretension. Rather than the elevated register, Dumouriez reaches for the pub, the bus stop, the snooker club. He is suspicious of anyone who takes themselves too seriously — himself included.
For me the collection’s finest moment is ‘51° 30′ N, 0° 25′ E,’ a long walking tour of a small English town that slowly turns into an elegy for a vanished self. Dumouriez takes us past polling stations, dog walks, rusted goalposts, a toyshop run by a Polish man, a church where he and a friend once tried to summon a thunderbolt by swearing at the threshold. The imagery is specific and unhurried: “Another postbox. Focal point back then. / Not sure now.” The accumulation of observed detail makes the place feel at once ordinary and irreplaceable. Memory, class and mortality converge without any of them being announced. And somehow the combination works.
‘Reading Kipling by Candlelight’ is one of the more personal poems in the book, and the one I found easiest to climb inside. Set during the 1999 Istanbul earthquake, it follows the speaker through a night of confusion. He mistakes the tremor for a burglar, goes back to sleep while the parks fill with frightened residents, and only in the morning grasps the scale of what he slept through. It’s funny and quietly unsettling at once. Dumouriez has an instinct for the exact detail that lifts an anecdote into something more: “Myself and one old woman, two floors up, / remained at home. My flaws you’ll find described. / As for her, perhaps she’d given up on life.” That last line does something the earlier stanzas don’t prepare you for. Death has entered what had been, up to that point, largely a comic story. And then life shrugs and moves on.
Talking to Skeletons is at its strongest when the humor and the grief run in parallel. ‘An Anglican Event’ opens with “My mother lies before us in a box, / to put it blunt,” and proceeds to take a funeral apart with deadpan precision: the vicar who “styles himself as ‘Father Tim,’” the embarrassed congregants working through hymns they haven’t sung since school, the curtain that makes it real. ‘Ex of England’ pulls off something similar with a grandfather’s hoarded possessions and an unidentified Victorian portrait heading for a bonfire. The joke in these poems does not push the grief aside; it comes out of the same material.
Dumouriez is most interesting when he runs into something that resists him: a death, a memory, a place, the stubborn survival of affection. When the sardonic voice has something to push against, the friction produces complexity. He is less interesting when he already knows what he thinks before the poem starts.
The smaller provocations don’t all land. The opening of ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43 (revised)’ – “How can I fuck thee? Let me count the ways” – is genuinely funny and technically competent parody. But some of the shorter satirical pieces (‘Addendum,’ ‘Laid Back, Laid Under,’ ‘The Poetry is in the Potty’) read more like social-media wit than poems. Set beside ‘51° 30′ N, 0° 25′ E’ and ‘Reading Kipling,’ they sound a dissonant note. Dumouriez knows the difference between a poem and a punchline. He just prints the punchline anyway from time to time.
The unevenness points to a larger issue. Across the eighty-odd pages, subjects and attitudes recur – death, aging, literary pretension, cultural irritation – and a handful of the lighter pieces work against the stronger ones nearby rather than for them. A shorter book might have been a stronger one. That said, the excess is clearly a part of how Dumouriez writes, forever spotting something else that seems to want a joke or an elegy.
I come to the book as a poet who works mainly in formal verse and in two languages – about as far from Dumouriez’s aesthetic as one can reasonably get. What I hadn’t expected was how little the distance ended up mattering. Talking to Skeletons isn’t really asking to be identified with; it’s asking for a reader willing to be amused, provoked, and every so often caught off guard – the anecdote that opens onto mortality, the joke that turns without warning into grief.
Which is also, I think, why the opening declaration eventually defeats itself. For all the mockery of poetry and poets and gatekeepers (and his own reasons for writing), Dumouriez’s best poems rely on the one thing “POETRY IS WANK” pretends to distrust: the idea that arranging words carefully might preserve something that would otherwise vanish. That a poet who opens with “POETRY IS WANK” also writes “51° 30′ N, 0° 25′ E” is, in the end, the strongest argument against his own thesis.
VADIM KAGAN writes poetry and prose in English and Russian. His work ranges from metered verse rooted in Russian and English traditions to contemporary free verse inspired by current events. His poems have been published in The Lyric, Founders Favorites, The Road Not Taken and the Ink Blots collections, and his poem ‘How Often’ was featured in the Maryland Bard Review 2025. He lives in Bethesda, MD, where he runs an AI company
