Past Force: November 2023

IN THIS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023

EDITOR'S THOUGHTS Watch out for Pseudo-History.

Pseudo-History is false history. It’s unresearched, it’s unreliable, and in any trawl through time you come across a lot of it. Some of it, like the Richard III Society, has been legitimised and can be encountered on every documentary going when, much like Nigel Farage on Question Time, they have no excuse for being there.

For the public it can be hard to distinguish between genuine history and fake history.

‘Celebrity’ written history books are one giveaway. If Justin Bieber wrote a history of 19th Century Radicalism, for example, you should be wary of that book. David Mitchell’s recent Unruly (a history of Medieval monarchy) gives me pause for thought, but it does look intriguing and Mitchell at least has a history qualification. Another clue is if the book is making claims to be “the untold story” or claims to have “startling new revelations.” Books about King Arthur, JFK, the historical context of the Bible, and Jack The Ripper, are the most common forms of pseudo-history.

Reading articles for the news pages, I come across a lot of this pseudo-history.

Clickbait headlines about the Queen’s deadly secret, or “What Neville Chamberlain Kept Down His Trousers Will Genuinely Shock You”, type of things. There seems to be a lot of it about at the moment, which is why this month’ the news page is so cynical. Who am I kidding? This whole issue is Cynical. I also get cynical about Doctor Who and about the Art market. One of those is deserved.

It’s not all cynicism and sarcasm though.

The Richard Dadd article on page 14 is one of those astonishing (and gruesome) stories from history that needs to be better known.

Our Conspiracy also continues on page 12, with Marco having some disturbing thoughts in the middle of the night. So in other words, when this issue isn’t cynical, it’s disturbing.

Enjoy!

Blog/back issues: pastforce.wordpress.com Youtube Series: Youtube.com/@thepastforce Instagram: pastforce Support us: ko-fi.com/pastforce

3

4

PAST FORCE

NEWS WHEN A TREE FALLS...

WHAT THE ICE MAN LOOKED LIKE

“Tragedy, as a beloved Northumberland celebrity is murdered in her prime. Famously starring alongside Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves, in that scene where they travel to Nottingham by way of Hadrian’s Wall, the Sycamore Gap Tree was adored and admired by many. She will be sorely missed.”

So went the gist of most articles reporting the felling, which took place in the early hours of the 28th September. Reading through the reports, you’d think that a national treasure like, say, Judi Dench, had been brutally murdered. I wish to say that I find the crime horrendous, but this outpouring of grief for a tree is something that only the English could be capable of. If it had been Judi Dench there would be significantly less outpouring.

Yet, it says something about how attached we are to the status quo, to the world as it is. To every rock and tree and creature being in their recognisable place. Eventually the tree would have died, and we would have lost it, and the now empty space of Sycamore Gap was an inevitability.

History is all about change, decay, loss. Nothing lasts forever.

Also, yet, the felling of the tree says something else. That some people are absolute d*****ads. Always have been. This is an illogical act, an irrational act, and until the criminal investigation concludes we’ll not know what the perpetrators reasoning was.

According to DNA analysis, Otzi the Iceman (discovered in the Alps in 1992) had dark skin, dark eyes and a receeding hairline. The opposite of when his genome was sequenced in 2012 when he was light skinned, light eyed and hairy. The analysis also revealed that his ancestors came from Anatolia, modern day Turkey. The excuse that’s being touted for the difference is that the 2012 DNA sample was contaminated, and that gene sequencing has improved in the last ten years. Look out for another article in ten years time revealing Otzi had green eyes, blonde hair and looked like Bjorn Ulvaeus.

A HA'PENNY MORE People confused by Tesco Tik-Tok video of the 1970s?

Doesn’t surprise me. An account called All Things Historical Clips recently posted a video of the price of groceries in Tesco's Ilford store in 1977. According to news website My London commenters were highly confused by the notion that half a pence was a thing.

This is something I wouldn’t normally report, but as a historian it made my eyes roll. Rather than going: “Oh… That must have been a thing. Wonder what happened to it?” they’re exposing their lack of thinking skills. It’s such lack of thinking skills that makes my job harder than it needs to be. Develop thinking skills! If you must know, the answer to what happened to it is Margaret Thatcher. The answer is ALWAYS Margaret Thatcher.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

BEHIND THE SCENES With our third magazine issue now complete and a new Instagram page up, how is Past Force doing?

Extraordinarily well it seems. People are genuinely interested in this thing of mine. There is a poster right opposite my office door and I’ve heard people stop and discuss it on a couple of occasions. I keep forgetting to take the zine editions out with me, but there’s been enough going round. If I haven’t been a dunce you might have been (un)lucky enough to find one of these in London.

This goes against the whole reason why, earlier in the year, we were denied business funding.

Apparently a cynical, part-comedic, history enterprise isn’t profitable (Though it obviously is).

Alright, so I won’t do this for money, yeah?

Our last two YouTube episodes at time of writing are (after only a couple of weeks) 2nd and 4th most popular on the current channel (12 and 17 overall- Out of 45, total), and they continue to grow. These are the unplanned 'Slate Of You' travelogue around Llanberis, and the long awaited Jack The Ripper episode. On the opposite side of the spectrum, YT is actively suppressing our appeasement episode because it mentions Hitler.

It has… One… View.

By the time you read this, Call Me By Your Real Name will have at least been released, and maybe one more. Hopefully the topic will be an interesting one. I’d be a fool not to film something whilst I’m in London, so look out for that as well.

Going by what I’m currently reading, it might be on that erstwhile wobble bottom Doctor Samuel Johnson. Although, there is another episode I could do whilst there.

What comes next? Call Me By Your Real Name- Should be done by the time you read this.

Perhaps we’ll release our first Christmas episode?

The important thing is, going into next year, we have to build on the new foundations that have been laid this year.

I’ve had some fun filming the sketches over the last few episodes- The Spartacus inspired one in Jack The Ripper went through a number of more complex iterations before settling on the final version. There were going to be three or four more Jack The Rippers and a dead body at one stage.

One that I almost forgot to include was the Murder She Wrote introduction, which was more complex than it needed to be. Some of the clips in there are from our unfinished 1066 episode- The episode requires a complete remount, but at some point I will upload the clips as out takes on the Instagram. The Murder She Wrote thing is already on there, as is a cut down version of Ares and Alectryon. It feels like a no-brainer to take the sketches out of context and just put them up somewhere. I tried last year with ‘Past Force Pieces’ but these didn’t suit YouTube and they just looked silly. Instagram reels are better.

Sketches always come second. The topic comes first, then the sketch is built around that. It is a bad idea to build an episode around a sketch, or to cover a topic solely for the excuse of doing a sketch. Any episode that does so is likely to be bad.

But that doesn’t mean the sketches aren’t important.

They’re integral. They stop the series being yet another boring fifteen minute drone vlog, of which there are too many. They break up the monotony.

They take Past Force where few others dare to go.

Some may not like it, which is why I try to balance the comic and the serious. Yes, you can’t please everyone (There have been more unwanted comments on my appearance in Portmeirion!), nor should I be pleasing everyone, but you can at least make sure there’s something which can make people at least smile.

5

PAST FORCE

6

A PROPER BANGOR OF A CATHEDRAL Bangor Cathedral is a place of solitude and contemplation. However, the present cathedral, restored by famed architect George Gilbert Scott between 1869 and 1880, could never be called the grandest building in the world. Before he restored it, Scott was dismissive, saying that there was: “No cathedral in the UK to equal it in meanness.” It is small, yes, but it is an important place.

Historically, the fence surrounding the cathedral, the bangor, gave it’s name to the city and from there, also, the half dozen or so other Bangors around the world. It is alleged that here, in the belfry, Bishop Einion (or Anian), known as ‘Sais’ (or Saxon), betrayed Llewellyn Ap Gruffydd to the forces of Edward I and ended the independence of Gwynedd in 1282. That he also betrayed his brother Daffydd is not surprising, especially when we consider that he was of English birth.

On the south wall of the Lady Chapel is a stone archway and a tomb.

It is often attributed as the tomb of Owain Gwynedd, who ruled Gwynedd between 1137 and 1170, but other names have been suggested. M.L Clarke suggested it was the tomb of Einion, whilst Richard John King suggested Tudor ap Gronw ap Tudor- Though the latter actually appears to have been buried in the now destroyed (by his own descendent no less) friary of Llanfaes, Anglesey.

Other princes were buried here, notably Owain’s brother Caradoc, and Gruffydd ap Cynan. One story goes that Bishop Thomas Skevington (who built the tower at the west end in 1532) had his heart buried in a lead box at the altar. You would be hard pressed to find notice of any of these burials in today’s cathedral,

however.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

I was intrigued by the animal motifs throughout the cathedral. Some of the woodwork was carved by Robert Thompson, the ‘mouseman’, who left a wooden mouse on everything he did.

There are supposed to be five of them around the cathedral.

7

On the floor of the Lady Chapel and the choir you’ll find re-prints of medieval tiles (sketches opposite).

Originally these would have been ‘line impressed’ tiles, which were made with a carved stamp and were easy to reproduce en-mass. The designs are simple but aesthetically pleasing.

My favourite has to be the hare with the bow and arrow. Not only because, come on, he’s an archer, but because of what he represents. Sometimes (particularly in the classical period) the hare represents promiscuity, licentiousness, even homosexuality. By this symbolism I am decorating my bathroom floor with these tiles, but I don’t think these are supposed to be gay archer hares. In Christianity it is again a symbol of fertility, but also of the resurrection and of rebirth. The hare was also a sacred pagan symbol, so it may be one of the many pre-Christian hangovers found in the medieval church.

The two headed eagle might be more familiar as the symbol of the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires, but here it could be a reference to Welsh mythology, where two eagles symbolise peace and power.

Most curious of all, is a singular bird carved on the end of the chapter stall just before the rood screen (right, facing the altar). Almost dragon like, it is unmistakable, with the piece of seaweed it feeds to the two chicks flapping at its talons. That’s a Liver Bird!

What is the city symbol of Liverpool doing this far into Wales? It may be homage to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who frequented the area and came from Liverpool, or it may be that (as Gilbert Scott often liked to do) the image was nabbed as a nice fit.

Significance be damned.

PAST FORCE

8

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

TOTALLY DEVOTED TO WHO

Doctor Who is one of the most recognisable television shows in the world. Running sixty years, with the series covering eight hundred and seventy episodes of television, as well as almost as many fiction books and audio dramas, the material available for analysis is staggering. It should therefore be unsurprising that there have been hundreds of academic, non academic, and fan produced essays and opinion pieces examining almost every aspect of the series.

One portion of the series which has been little touched upon, and which you likely won’t hear about during the sixtieth anniversary, is how much devotion to the series there has traditionally been behind the scenes, and how much care and attention went into creating the programme. Despite the ‘classic series’ (1963-1989) developing a reputation for cardboard sets and monsters made of bubble wrap, a reputation which still persists to some degree, there was a consistent attempt by the series various production teams to maintain a quality which was higher than necessary. Even if these attempts were not always successful, there were a number of notable instances where the producers ambitions were too high1, and whilst time has diminished the effect of some of the more successful attempts, there are still instances where this devotion is apparent. It is especially so in the way in which the series made use of setting and location.

On the following page, I will examine two serials The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (1964) and The Web Of Fear (1968), to show how location was used to build up drama and tension, and to create a sense of fear and foreboding. In doing so, I will highlight how the above mentioned devotion is made clear.

9

PAST FORCE "They dare to tamper with the forces of creation?"

"Yes! They dare. And we have got to dare to stop them" The first episode of The Dalek Invasion Of Earth ends with a shot of a Dalek emerging from the waters of the River Thames. An astonishing cliffhanger, and a technical feat which would still, today, be difficult to pull off without the aid of CGI. The third episode equals this, depicting a deserted London occupied

by Daleks. The scene brings home to the audience the fear of the Daleks. In a montage which foreshadows the opening of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later by some forty years, the characters of Barbara, Jenny and Dortmun attempt to cross a deserted London in order to reach transport and escape the city. By showing the city as deserted, and the Daleks patrolling iconic landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square, the story was able to present the Daleks as proper threat, enabling the audience to imagine, for the first time, that they might be lurking around the next street corner.

Being popular tourist destinations, it would have been difficult to achieve the effect of isolation and desertion which the story demanded on the series small budget. Again foreshadowing the way in which 28 Days Later would accomplish the same feat, the scenes were shot at five thirty on a Sunday morning when there would have been few people around.

That this is still an effective and arresting scene today shows how the high ambitions of the production team could, and often did, pay off.

10

The Web Of Fear used the idea of a deserted London in an entirely different, but equally effective way. Set mostly on the London Underground, the effect of a deserted city and the terror and claustrophobia of a deserted metro system was able to be recreated through the use of studio sets. It would never have been possible to shoot on the busy, working, underground network, but unlike other set based locations such as palaces and space stations in stories such as The Curse Of Peladon and The Ark In Space, which were clearly created in a studio, the setting was ideal. The dark, cramped underground tunnels lent themselves easily to recreation, being relatively simple in terms of design and easy to re-use and re-adapt as different parts of the network throughout the serial.

So effective was this recreation, in fact, that London Transport believed the BBC had been shooting on the underground without permission.

In terms of their quality and use of setting, these two serials can be considered to be on a parr with British movies of the same period. They are, in some ways, more cinematic in quality than certain contemporary films. Many of the Hammer Horror films (The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) for example, appear stagey by comparison. Certainly, there is little difference in quality between The Dalek Invasion Of Earth and a film such as Whistle Down The Wind (1961) Given that these were made for viewing on a small, black and white screen, and for what was expected to be only a single broadcast (or two, at the most), there was arguably little need for the production teams to create something of such high quality. That they did regardless, stands as a testament to how much devotion to the series there was.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 THE DOCTOR'S GREATEST HITS 1st (William Hartnell) 1963-1966 At the very start, the first episode, and a question“Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? To be exiles?”

And then he showed us…

2nd (Patrick Troughton) 1966-1969 Hear me out with this one because it’s weird… The Abominable Snowmen… Or more strictly speaking, the Yeti cave. In reality, a cleft in a rock shot from an angle which made it look like a cave. And it was 100ft above the level of the road.

3rd (Jon Pertwee) 1970-1974 The whole of Inferno? Am I allowed an entire story?

There’s so much I love about Pertwee’s era, but this story is my favourite in all of the classic series. So I’m going with all of it. Or failing that, the moment that sucked me into this well- When the third Doctor fell out of the TARDIS at the start of Spearhead From Space.

4th (Tom Baker) 1974-1981 What else was this one going to be? Genesis Of The Daleks and a scene which I’ve seen argued marks the point where the series comes of age. Having wired the Dalek incubator to blow and wipe the Daleks from history, the Doctor pauses, two wires held in the air, and he asks: “Do I have the right?”

It’s powerful. It’s deep. It proves Tom Baker was one of the best actors to ever play the Doctor.

5th (Peter Davison) 1981-1984 Crashing spaceship, dying Doctor, anger, rage, a man with a gun… The climax to the penultimate episode of The Caves Of Androzani has everything you want from a cliffhanger. From a normally quiet and placid Doctor we get something extreme and unexpected. It hits all the right notes.

6th (Colin Baker) 1984-1986 Am I cheating here? No… Because this might be the greatest moment in Doctor Who history. In the audio story The Apocalypse Element, (which is on Spotify) them pesky Daleks have infiltrated a Gallifreyan high security facility. The guard laughs at them. “Ha ha! You’ll never get in. It requires a retinal scan!” In the ensuing silence, you can hear the contempt and anger of the Daleks. Then comes the punchline: “Gouge his eyes out!”

7th (Sylvester McCoy) 1987-1996 Another quote- “There are worlds out there where the sky is burning. Where the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger.

Somewhere there’s injustice. And somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on Ace… We’ve got work to do!”

(Survival)

8th (Paul McGann) 1996 “It was a request they should never have granted…”

Cue the greatest ever iteration of the theme music.

That bridge… Oooof!

9th (Christopher Ecclestone) 2005 So short a life, but it was fantastic. Let’s not say we weren’t worried that the revival series was going to be trash… But then he took hold of our hands… And we ran for our lives.

(Rose) 10th (David Tennant) 2005-2010 From The Waters Of Mars- The Time Lord Victorious. A glimpse of the Doctor turning bad.

It scary. It very scary. It still very scary.

11th (Matt Smith) 2010-2013 It’s a shame 11’s end was so clunky and the loose ends were tied up so unsatisfactorily. The answers were obvious and the mystery box storytelling was annoying. But I can’t say it wasn’t fun for most of the run. Standout moment: When he got shot and died… Until it was all revealed to be a POS. 12th (Peter Capaldi) 2013-2017 There were so many low points to 12's time (for me).

But the Doctor working in a university during the tenth series was a real return to form, and this series took some interesting twists and turns. Serves as proof that no matter how low things get, the Doctor will rise again. Speaking of...

13th (Jodie Whittaker) 2017-2022 The most difficult, and not Whittaker’s fault, because her stories were so ham-fisted and badly written. So let’s go with the beginning. When the TARDIS blew up and she fell to earth. It was all downhill from there. Actually, I liked the historical episodes. They were one of the few things this era did well.

11

PAST FORCE

12

OUR CONSPIRACY THE REMAINS OF OUR SIN MARCO AND ISAAC HAVE REUNITED IN CHARLESTOWN, BOSTON, AFTER SIX MONTHS APART. BUT AS THEY SLEEP, DANGER LISTENS...

It’s a b**ch trying to sleep in a strange bed. Was weird feeling Isaac’s arms around me again (I was always their little spoon), but this was also a strange apartment, a new place, and I had this annoying worry that I was going to be attacked.

Like by a fox or something. Prehistoric throwback I guess. From when lock-picking foxes were a proper threat.

So… Three in the morning. Wide awake. Head hit the pillow two hours back. Not a jot of tiredness.

Should have been snoring my head off considering the evening.

“When they were alive, did those people at Pompeii have nights like this?”

Bats**t thought to have, but so are most things that go through my head at three in the morning.

Supposed it must have been the same.

Humans don’t change- Things do. Dresses and stuff like that. People don’t.

I’d seen Pompeii not long ago. When I was in Italy. Seen the uncomforting frozen casts of the people who’d perished when Vesuvius blew.

Locked forever in the moment of death. Engulfed by the hot ash and the pyroclastic flows. I was sure I’d seen one of a couple in bed. Spooning. Arms entwined as Vulcan’s darkness descended. They looked like they were sleeping and didn’t even know what happened. Man and woman? Two men? The hairless, only vague human shapes made it hard to tell.

I’d be happy now if some volcano blew up Boston. Took out Massachusetts and buried us all under a death duvet. Not for any masochistic purpose, but because then nobody, not my family or the FBI or the CIA or Agents Lambert and Butler of Thames House, London, could rip us apart. We’d be cemented together forever. An example to children two thousand years from now.- “Look

Timmy. These men were just like you!”

“But I thought it was a-legal in them days.”

“Not illegal Timmy. Frowned on by some people though.”- By some people, I mean people who need to get a life and stop worrying about who others lip wrestle with.

Would they see the smile on my face? The contentment on Isaac’s lips? The way they held onto me as if they never wanted to let me go, as if the pyroclastic flow had already cemented us together?

Would they know we were happy?

Impossible to say, but I’ve hung around with enough history types to know they’d get us totally wrong, and probably on purpose.

“Ahhh yes. This is two brothers who were holding onto each other because they were afraid of the eruption.”

Alright, Will and I would have done that when we were younger, but these days I’d be scooted out to under the desk, by myself, whilst he cwtched with Hailey. At least here I had Isaac for company in my volcanic tomb, and it wouldn’t be under some antique thing with fifteen secret drawers and a map leading to the sunken treasure of Cantre’r Gwaelodd.

Would I have known Isaac if they were one of the Pompeii figures? Walking the ghostly ruins of that ghostly echo from the ancient world, would I have known them if I saw their tragic, cemented remains?

I had a disturbing vision of myself in two thousand years, returning to this room. Ruined. Roof open to the ancient Boston sky. A cast of a hairless, featureless Isaac, alone, reaching out for someone.

You could almost see the tears running down their cheeks. They were begging someone to come back.

To stop. To help them. Not to go off and die alone.

Someone… Me. Those figures were horrible enough, but seeing Isaac like that, imagining Isaac like that, left me distraught. I was shaken by my own imagination. I started shivering enough to wake them.

“You alright dumbass?”

“Nightmare. Running away whilst Vesuvius erupted and finding your body two thousand years later.”

Isaac locked their arms tighter around my torso.

“You’re not getting away from me dumbass. If Vesuvius erupts tonight we’re going under together.”

I rolled over, still in their grip, and kissed their

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

cheek. They had their eyes closed. I had no intention of letting them get away either.

Then I actually fell asleep. * Dawn breaking, we were both snapped awake.

Ungodly clatter from the neighbouring apartment.

Followed by: “Shut the f**k up a*****e or they’ll hear you.”

Burglars? I thought of going out into the hall, ringing the doorbell. Putting on my politest British accent.

“Excuse me my good chap. I heard a kerfuffle and came to see if everything was tickety boo!”

Maybe in their confusion I would cheese however many of them there were.

“Use the fire escape dumbass,” Isaac mumbled into their pillow. A smile on their lips. They knew what I was thinking. Knew I couldn’t resist a good scrap with the bad guys.

Don’t know what I was expecting. A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? Alright, no. Two muscled goombahs carrying out a priceless ming vase, maybe. I wasn’t expecting to see two baggy suited, haggard men in headphones hunched over a reel to reel tape recorder. A third cleaning up broken crockery from the floor.

FBI? Course. Could tell that by the absolute state of them. You can tell the difference between FBI and CIA by the way they dress themselves. FBI look like hard pressed bankers. Run down.

Drained. CIA look more sophisticated.

Management types. Thank f**k it wasn’t the CIA… But the FBI could still feed back word to Lambert and Butler of Thames House, London. Only took a phone call. They were just as dangerous.

The other side of the window was a scene from five hundred Cold War movies. I should have expected it. Paid more attention to what was going on. I’d done a routine scan of Isaac’s apartment for bugs. Should have done more.They could probably, in the interrim, have bored through the dividing wall and shoved a microphone through.

S**t. B****r.

But was it ME they were after? Could it not be Isaac? Didn’t matter. Either one of us would have been for the same purpose. We were both protecting the same secret. The same conspiracy.

And we were all playing the same game. The oldest game. The game of spies.

Vesuvius go boom boom!

13

PAST FORCE

14

DADD THE DEADLY “Go and tell the great god Osiris that I have done the deed, which is to set him free…” Osiris, as all of us who grew up watching The Mummy will know, was the Ancient Egyptian god of the dead. The scene in which the above words were screamed skywards could easily come have from the start of another horror movie. Somebody SHOULD make a movie out of this.

FADE IN: It is evening in the countryside outside Gravesend, Kent. Two men are strolling through the bracken. One is the artist Richard Dadd, recently returned from a trip to the Eastern Mediterranean with Sir Thomas Phillips (the AntiChartist Mayor of Newport who played a key role in the Newport Rising of 1839). The other is his father, Robert. Dadd’s dad. Daddy Dadd, if you will.

As the two men walk, without warning, Dadd strikes his dad in the face. Then with a knife he brutally slashes his throat and stabs him in the chest. Finally, as Daddy Dadd lies dying in the grass, Dadd the younger lifts his hands and shouts: “Go and tell the great God Osiris that I have done the deed, which is to set him free.”

Dadd the younger fled to France and was initially believed to be a victim himself, until the police found incriminating sketches in his lodgings of his father and friends with their throats cut. His intended destination was Vienna and the assassination of Emperor Ferdinand I. He didn’t get there owing to a spontaneous desire to kill the man sitting next to him in the carriage. He failed in that attempt.

With only a cursory hearing, Dadd was incarcerated in Bethlem hospital, London where he painted his most famous painting, The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, and was transferred to Broadmoor in 1864, where he would have been one of the first male inmates.

Dadd claimed that he was the flesh and blood son of Osiris and that voices were urging him to kill the devils around him, which included his real father, who in his mind had been replaced by a demon imposter. This mental illness (I am not qualified to give a diagnosis) had begun in Egypt, where he had begun to believe that he was in communication with Osiris, and was argued by Eugene Woillez, a French doctor who examined Dadd after his arrest, to have been induced by a combination of overwork and heatstroke. Lacking effective treatment, Dadd’s condition had only

worsened during the return trip across the continent, where he had seriously considered killing the Pope until the presence of the Swiss Guard made him think again. The culmination was our opening scene in the Kent countryside.

FADE OUT.

TOP: Richard Dadd.

BOTTOM: Life In Broadmoor Asylum RIGHT: Siegfried Sassoon FAR RIGHT: Paintings by Dadd

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 POST CREDITS SCENE: As an artist Dadd is obscure, today. That he isn’t less obscure is thanks to the poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Disparate figures from history intertwine and connect in strange ways sometimes, and Sassoon had inherited The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke from his mother-in-law, Katharine Morrison, who had died in 1949. She in turn had acquired it from her father, Alfred, a wealthy collector, who had received the painting from George Henry Haydon, head steward of Bethlem hospital. Sassoon’s own interest in the painting was piqued by not only his time in a hospital for Shell-Shocked soldiers during the First World War, but by a chance association with three of Dadd’s Great-Nephews, whom he had befriended in the trenches. Given that Sassoon did not marry until 1933, and did not meet wife Hester until that same year, it is a remarkable coincidence that he knew both relations of Dadd and married into the family which owned what is considered his masterpiece.

Sassoon donated the painting to the Tate Gallery, London, in 1963, which began a partial re-appraisal of Dadd’s life and art.

15

PAST FORCE

16

ART THOU A VILLAIN? Fake Or Fortune (which returned for its eleventh series in September) is one of the most irritating AND enjoyable programmes on television. I say irritating because after Fiona Bruce and her arty pal Philip Mould have spent months proving beyond all reasonable doubt that a painting or a sculpture is by Monet or Rembrandt, in one episode even finding a photograph of the artist painting the damned thing, two or three “experts” will look at the piece of art and based on their opinion alone it will be labelled as genuine or fake.

The big bogeymen of the series are the Wildenstein Institute, a mafia-like organisation based in Paris who control the catalogues of many famous French impressionists and other artists, and who would routinely reject any painting if authenticating it didn’t serve their personal interests. Whatever their personal interests may have been (jealousy, rivalry, money…).

This form of authentication is a-scientific and suspect, especially as far as organisations such as Wildenstein are concerned. It raises a question of trust with regards to every painting in the world.

Is that really a real Rembrandt? How can we be sure? The Rembrandt expert says it is, but how do we know if he didn’t get it wrong? What are they basing their opinion on? How do I know he doesn’t have a personal stake in this being a real Rembrandt? Who’s paying for his cruise?

Because art is traded for obscene amounts of money, it is sometimes more financially beneficial for a fake painting to be labelled as genuine and vice versa.

Whereas in history it is imperative for our documents and sources to be genuine and authenticated to the n-th degree (if not it risks undermining our entire field), in the art world the only value of authentication is financial gain. Profit. Whereas historical documents are regarded as civic and public property, not for sale at any price, art is a commodity to be bought and sold, to be passed between owners.

Worth is not dependent on quality, but on the name behind it. Any sketch by Francis Bacon can be worth millions. A sketch of Pamela Bronte by Not Yet Doctor James Morfa Churchill, haphazardly blu-tacked to the wall of Bangor University, you could therefore argue on loan to a prestigious art collection, is worth less than the cost of the pencils which sketched it.

Which brings me back to the Wildensteins and their organisation. At the time of writing head of the family Guy Wildenstein is on trial in France for tax evasion. In 2011, a police raid on the institute vault unveiled thirty artworks (including works by Degas and Delacroix) which had been reported as stolen.

They have billions of dollars worth of art stashed away in other locations, unseen for decades, accruing value.

Some of it has been speculated to be artwork that was stolen by the Nazis in the 1940s.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

With shady organisations like the Wildensteins having been in operation for over a century, it seems unlikely that the corruption inherent in the art world will be cleansed in our lifetimes. That corruption goes deep. The trade in high-value art is limited to a small clique of the wealthy elite who have little or no interest in displaying their art and often keep it locked away in vaults and basements.

Whereas you or I might buy a painting because we like it, because we want something silly to hang in the dining room (Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son to use a silly example), they will buy a painting because of its value or because of its future value.

Art becomes a game of speculation, of gambling.

It’s no longer about the art. If it was, Pamela Bronte (far left) might net me a nice meal at a restaurant.

Artists are not rich people. Historically, they were amongst the poorest. Van Gough. All I have to say is Van Gough because we all know the story.

Yet their work is exploited by a lucrative and profit driven few, of which they and their descendents never see a penny. The authentication of works is suspect and a-scientific, serving only the interest of the few.

At the risk of sounding Marxist, I want to finish by asking what the moral and ethical implications of such an exploitation is. Should anybody be profiting from the painstaking work of somebody who has been deceased for two hundred years? Should we not, now, be treating these works as historical artefacts rather than commodities to be bought and sold? Yes, they may once have been commodities, when they were initially painted, but instead of learning from them, studying them in order to debate and analyse the past, a select few which have been deemed worthy are traded for extortionate amounts whilst the rest languish in obscurity.

17

PAST FORCE

18

WHAT REMAINS The forest up the slopes beside the old Vivian Quarry (Llanberis) is tangled and wild, but the quarry buildings are still here, as are the rough worn and sometimes barely visible steps up the decimated mountainside. Where once was bare and barren, a smoky, industrial Mordor, now the earth has reclaimed what man left behind when the slate quarry closed down in 1960. It was worked for only ninety years, and in two thirds of that time the wild and the woods have closed in. The buildings have crumbled and now resemble skeletons, shadows lurking amongst the trees.

The only sign that humankind ever passes this way any more is a partly worn path through the bracken and the occasional fence warning of a precipitous drop.

Over a gash in the mountainside, where a blue lake lurks two hundred feet below, the fence has been broken. Torn asunder by I don’t know who or what. I dare not go far, but I see the path ends over a precipitous drop. An aerial photograph shows there’s no water below,just a hard, stoney boneyard for those who chance this forbidden path. Shuddering, I turn away and continue to climb the mountain.

Vivian feels haunted. It feels dark and foreboding. This is not the countryside hike of a joyous and carefree stroll. This is wilderness.

This is apocalypse wilderness. With nobody to disturb me I am given glimpses of life after man.

After an asteroid wipes us all out. It isn’t hard to imagine myself cold and alone bunking down with a sleeping bag in one of the old huts. I had the same thoughts last time I came out this way, when I explored the rest of the Dinorwig workings.

It is a place of decay. Here lie the bones of an industrial age which shall not return.

There’s little written about what happened to the barren wastes of Mordor after Sauron was defeated, just that the more fertile lands around Lake Nurnen were given to the freed slaves of Sauron. There is nothing else to say of the fate of that hellish, fiery wasteland which was heavily influenced by the industrial Midlands, a far flatter but equally damaged landscape to this.

Perhaps that was because Tolkien never lived to see what happened. He died in September 1973 and did not live long enough to see the mines, workings and the quarries returned to the nature of which he was such a champion. Perhaps then, we can say that this is Mordor sixty years after Sauron. A rugged, wild place of tangled trees and shadows from the days of old.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023

GALLERY Speaking of Mordor... Yes, I jest, but Rhyl today is not a happy place. The British Seaside town was sustained by industry, by the working class holiday makers who flocked in their thousands to Blackpool, Scarbrough, and of course Rhyl.

Yet it wasn't the death of industry which did for the likes of Rhyl. It was fashion. It was cheap flights to Benidorm. Spain and sunny weather were just better. So places like Rhyl went into an inexorable and if you ask me irrecoverable decline.

This issue's gallery images are two postcards from the last days of the seaside town's popularity.

There are no dates on the back, but going by the fashions and the cars I would hazard a guess at the late sixties or early seventies. The Floral Hall (right) was opened in 1959, so the postcards must post-date this. Having found the same postcard on eBay, I can say that it is from no later than 1986.

The entire area (shown in the below postcard) was redeveloped in the 1990s. The Floral Hall (at the back) became an open air ampitheatre, and the yellow building was demolished to make way for an aquarium.

The only remianing feature is the clock tower, but even this is not in the same place. Erected in 1948, it now stands in the centre of the roundabout.

In these postcards Rhyl looks bright, colourful. Plants and flowers everywhere. (If you're reading the zine edition, you'll just have to take my word on the colour!) Today's Rhyl is bland by comparison.

No wonder nobody wants to be beside the seaside any more!

19

SOURCES & FURTHER READING A BANGOR OF A CATHEDRAL Leaflet- “Welcome To Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral In Bangor” M.L Clarke, Bangor Cathedral (1969) Richard John King, A Handbook To The Cathedrals Of Wales (1873) RICHARD DADD The Public Domain Review- Nicholas Tromans, March 14th 2012- ‘Richard Dadd’s Master Stroke’ Broadmoor: My Journey Into Hell – Charles Bronson w./ Lorraine Etherington (London, 2016) TOTALLY DEVOTED TO WHO D. Watling- Daddy's Girl- (London, 2010) Tribe/Goss, A History Of The Universe in 100 Objects (London, 2012) The Dalek Invasion Of Earth- BBC- 1964 The Web Of Fear- BBC- 1968 ART THOU A VILLAIN Fake Or Fortune- BBC- 2023 Rachel Corbett- Art Net- ‘French Prosecutors Ask A Paris Court To Send Art Tycoon Guy Wildenstein To Prison And Pay Hundreds Of Millions In Fines.’ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/prosecutorsseek-fines-jail-time-guy-wildenstein-2372145

PICTURES COVER: Richard Dadd- Sketch Of An Idea For Crazy Jane- 1855 INSET: Hugh Williams Owain Gwynedd- 1909 EDITOR'S THOUGHTS: Close Up Of A Painting- MNM Zameer (Pexels) Old Open Book- Sklar Kang (Pexels) Peterloo Massacre- Richard Carlile, 1819?

NEWS: Margaret Thatcher In Moscow- 1987- Unknown Photographer Neville Chamberlain Caricature- Wooding- 1940 OUR CONSPIRACY: Nikita Korchagin-Close Up Shot Of Audio Reels (Pexels) DADD THE DEADLY: Siegfried Sasson by George Charles Beresford- 1915 Sketch of Broadmoor- Illustrated London News Dadd In Broadmoor- Photograph Richardd Dadd- The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke- 1864 Richard Dadd- Portrait Of A Young Man- 1853 ART THOU A VILLAIN? Goya- Saturn Devouring His Son- 1823 Edward Hopper- Nighthawks- 1942 Rembrandt- The Night Watch- 1642