This is one of those questions that gets asked at interviews1. I’m not quite sure what the correct corporate answer is. I know there are several wrong answers: “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies”; “In your chair”; “In a job where I’m not asked stupid bloody questions”. Any of these answers would result in the swift termination of the interview.
The AI wouldn’t let me generate an image with the prompt “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies” so I had to substitute “dead enemies” with “dolls”. Which is worse.
Luckily I’ve never been asked that. There’s two things to say about this question for me: first of all in 10 years time I’ll be getting close to the age when I can collect a state pension in the UK. So as long as I’m still healthy and compos mentis2, I’ll be fine with that.
Secondly, today I started a new job. It’s part-time, at the local sixth form college, and they weren’t damn fool enough to ask where I saw myself in ten years time.
Whether I’ll still be doing this in 10 years time I don’t know, I’ve only done one day. It depends really on how well the Heath Way Prints business – or any of the other business ideas I have – go.
Along with “Why do you want to work at (this place)? When I interviewed as night-shift staff at a local supermarket, I came up with some spectacular bullshit. The real answer – I need the money – wouldn’t have worked. ↩︎
There are a lot of books I’ve read several times. I’m pretty sure I’ve read most of Terry Pratchett’s books at least three times (exceptions), all the Flashman books a couple of time, too. Another author I am very fond of, who isn’t Pratchett, is Iain M. Banks (1954 – 2013).
The ‘M’ (For Menzies1) is important. Mr Banks wrote literary fiction as Iain Banks and added the M for science fiction.
The Culture
Most of his SF books are part of The Culture series. The Culture is a post-scarcity civilisation spanning many star systems in the Milky Way. Its living inhabitants are mainly humanoid (Earth features in one short story) and are effectively immortal. Minds, hyper-intelligent artificial intelligences, oversee the civilisation.
A common problem for the people of The Culture is boredom. Many people have drug glands implanted to provide sexual stimulation, speed up neural processes, improve memory, enhance concentration or help you wake up after a night of overindulgence. You can change gender as often as you wish. You can acquire a new body2 in any form. You can indulge in any fantasy with a virtual reality that indistinguishable from reality. How tedious. One way to avoid boredom is to play board games.
Player of Games (1988)
In Player of Games, the main character, Gurgeh, is one of the elite games players of The Culture. A rogue drone, acting for the Minds, blackmails him into accepting a mission for which he is uniquely qualified: to win a game called Azad.
This is no ordinary game, though. The Empire of Azad is built around the game. The champion becomes Emperor, your performance in the championships determines your career progression. The game is the empire, the empire is the game. The boards fill huge rooms, semi-sentient game pieces add unpredictability to the game and competitors spice up play with side bets that range from loss of money to radical surgery for the loser.
This isn’t quite how I imagined the boards in the game of Azad, but this is the sort of scale of one of the boards. Picture by Sam Fontaine.
Gurgeh spends the months it takes to reach Azad learning the game. He arrives in good time to join the tournament and is shocked to find a society with rigid gender ideas (albeit there are three genders) and a strict caste system. This goes counter to the free-wheeling, (almost) anything goes anarchy that Gurgeh knows. But if anyone knows how important rules are in a game, it’s Gurgeh.
How he copes with a society he can’t understand without understanding the game that underpins the society is the core of the book.
Why do I come back to it?
This and the next in the series, Use of Weapons show Banks expanding The Culture into the bedrock of the following series. He wrote nine novels and one short story collection about The Culture.
I love the inventiveness of the society that Banks created. The Culture is a paradise, and for most of the trillions of people who live in it their only concern is what party to go to and who they next have sex with. For some, this is not enough. The game players all feel the need to reduce the tech level of their lives. Having real, visceral objects to play with against an opponent who is your intellectual equal is an ideal that replaces the virtual that is freely available. We see this now, where people want lower-tech phones, seek early gaming consoles and, indeed, play board games.
I saw a criticism of The Player of Games that held the position that Banks, writing in 1988, couldn’t have predicted the rise of computer games where you can play against people in different countries. I’d say Banks was spot-on. People surrounded by tech want to be able to switch off, to play chess, to carve things from wood, to learn a musical instrument3.
So the well-realised society that is explored is a pull. But the character of Gurgeh, his journey, and the mystery of the game and civilisation of Azad get expanded upon in every reading. That’s what brings me back to this, of all the Culture books.
In Excession one character does both. They become female to have a baby and end the book with the body of an alien species. The Hydrogen Sonanta, the last Culture book, features a 10,000 year old man who once spent five years as a whale. ↩︎
There’s an aspect of this in The Hydrogen Sonata. The protagonist has spent years learning how to play a particular musical instrument. She even had major surgery to enable her to play properly. An AI controlled robot could play it perfectly. But that wasn’t the point. ↩︎
I started this video over a month ago, an Easter themed ‘ball into blocks’ thing then got on the idea of adding little chicks on Thursday. Two days later, it’s done!
I made all the blocks and the things that fall on them well in advance, but I felt there was something missing. The element of fun, maybe some funny little chicks. I made the chicks following a short tutorial by Grant Abbitt.
Stills from the four episodes. Top left: all the chicks. Top right: Hundreds and thousands and a giddy chick. Bottom left: mini eggs and one chick. Bottom right: A huge egg and a very happy chick.
I made four animations for this, all based around the same set of chocolate coloured blocks. The first was just the chicks. Then some hundreds and thousands (1500 of them) and an over-excited chick. Some mini eggs next, and a chick bouncing away offscreen. Finally, a massive egg and the final chick really enjoyed himself.
Sounds
For the sounds I use a mix of previously downloaded noises (mainly the blocks tumbling), one I downloaded for this (the squeaks and ‘wee!’ noises) and stuff I recorded myself.
I downloaded Audacity a few weeks ago, I have decided that I can get better voiceovers if I (or Mrs S) do the talking. The AI voices are good, but the intonation, pronunciation and tone aren’t controllable.
With Audacity I can remove background noise1. Some fiddling with the EQ is likely to be necessary for voiceovers, but for this project I could use Audacity to change the pitch of the recording. That’s why a couple of the voiceovers sound a bit mechanical – it’s a side effect of dropping the pitch two to three tones.
Mainly the hum of my laptop, but also the freezer that’s next to the desk. The office is a converted garage and the chest freezer has to go somewhere. ↩︎
A boiled fruit loaf, perfect with tea or to fill up the corners1 after dinner.
Eat the cake, buy the apron!
Ingredients
225 g self-raising flour
175 g soft brown sugar
500 g mixed dried fruit and peel
125 g unsalted buter
225 ml tea (or water)
2 teaspoons mixed spice
½ teaspoon bicarb
2 eggs (beaten)
Method
Line a loaf tin with parchment paper
Melt the butter and the sugar with the tea2 in a large saucepan. Add the dried fruit and peel, then boil gently3 for about ten minutes to let the fruit rehydrate.
Fruit, sugar, butter and tea boiling gently. This rehydrates the fruit and lets it absorb the flavour of the tea.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Preheat the oven: 140 °C (fan), gas mark 3.
Tip the flour, mixed spice and bicarb into a bowl. Add a pinch of salt and the cooled fruit mixture. Stir well.
Flour, bicarbonate of soda, mixed spice and a little salt.
Add the eggs and mix in.
Finished batter and the prepared loaf tin. I used premade loaf tin liners because cutting and folding parchment to fit is a right faff.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for about 50 minutes. It’s done when a skewer comes out clean.
It’s had 30 minutes, needs longer.
Leave in the tin for ten minutes to cool a bit before turning it out to cool properly on a baking rack.
Serve sliced by itself, spread with butter, or with some strong cheese.
Finished fruit cake.
Have it on an apron!
This might be unusual, but you can also have the recipe on a apron, from the Heath Way Prints shop.
Fruit cake recipe on an apron. Can you spot the spelling mistake? I didn’t!
I did the design work in Canva. The cartoon of the cake is the photo above rendered by AI. I don’t normally use AI for design work, but this saved some time and it’s my original photo so no copyright issues.
You can also get the recipe on a t-shirt or art prints, if you like! Just click on the buttons to go to the shop.
Nutritional advice
Serving size: Slice
Servings: 8
Amount per serving
Calories
520
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 15.7g
20%
Saturated Fat 8.9g
44%
Cholesterol 127mg
42%
Sodium 223mg
10%
Total Carbohydrate 92.6g
34%
Dietary Fiber 3.1g
11%
Total Sugars 58.5g
Protein 8.1g
Vitamin D 18mcg
88%
Calcium 155mg
12%
Iron 3mg
17%
Potassium 593mg
13%
From The Lord of the Rings after the main feast for Bilbo’s 111st birthday party, guests were “at that delightful stage which they called ‘filling up the corners’. They were sipping their favourite drinks and nibbling at their favourite dainties.” ↩︎
Choose whatever tea you like. I used PG Tips since that is what we drink. Earl Grey would add its own particular flavour to the cake. If you’re daring, go for something smoky like lapsang souchong or perhaps a green tea for variety. ↩︎
Hence the description of the recipe as a ‘boiled fruit cake’. You don’t boil the cake. Only an idiot would think that. ↩︎
I’ve written about Taskmaster before. It’s my favourite programme at the moment, the last two series (19 and 20) rank among the best. It’s got astonishing longevity; Alex Horne has hit upon a winning formula and he carefully selects groups of comedians who make a concerted effort to make the whole thing as much fun as possible.
Back in the distant past of Series 6 (broadcast in 2018), the final task of the series asked the contestants:
Tell the Taskmaster you love him in the most meaningful way.
As is typical, the contestants found wildly different ways to do complete the task. Tim Vine dressed as Greg’s mum and told Greg that he is her favourite child. Russell Howard didn’t have sex with Greg’s mum. Alice Levine got a toy aeroplane to fly a meaningful message for Greg. Asim Choudhry performed a rap declaring that he wanted to have Greg’s babies.
Three of the five attempt at the ‘show your love’ task. Alice sent a heavily caveated declaration of love, Asim said he wanted to have Greg’s babies and Tim dressed as Greg’s mum. Not shown: Russell not having sex with Mrs Davies (not very interesting) and Lisa’s go, because that’s what this section is going on to talk about.
Lisa Tarbuck, the series champion, hit the ball out of the park with her demonstration. She asked for a large cake topped with confectioner’s custard. Then she said to Alex:
Take yourself somewhere private and put your bare arse into it.
And so it was that Alex took himself to the shed, pulled down his pants and, with carefully positioned cameras recording the event, sat bare-arsed on a cake.
His expression of horror/ delight has stayed with me for years. He had an experience unlike anything he had known before and changed him. “He was a different man1,” Lisa declared.
Alex Horne’s life changes forever. He now knows what love is and also managed to absorb a profiterole. Don’t ask how.
An equal part of the joy of this was Lisa’s reaction. She ran away, giggling when Alex came out of the shed, dripping cake from under a strategically placed towel.
Andy Warhol’s Shot Marilyns
With such an image in my head, I had to do something with it. One iconic image deserves another, and there are few more iconic faces than that of Marilyn Monroe.
Andy Warhol certainly thought so. The silkscreen collection Shot Marilyns is one of his best-known works. This isn’t the name he gave the works – he called them Marilyns and made five in total. Each had a different background colour and slightly different colouring to the face. The “Shot” addition came about when the performance artist Dorothy Podber fired a single shot through a stack of four of the paintings. Her actions – a piece of performance art that Warhol did not appreciate – earned her a lifetime ban from The Factory.
Four of the five Marilyn paintings that Andy Warhol made in 1964.
Whether you’re a fan of pop art and the world of Andy Warhol, the colourful images of one of the greatest film starts of the 1950s, you can’t deny the paintings are memorable.
I tribute to this, I found a way to make images in a similar manner to the Marilyns. Using this method, I made my own set of images of Little Alex Horne’s face.
A triptych of Little Alex Horne – “Shocked Alex” – as he experiences love for the first time.
I quite like the triptych as it is. For the final design that uses the ‘four images’ presentation that is often used for these paintings, I wanted some words to go with the image.
Monty Python’s very rude song
In one of my first blog posts2 I talked about what makes me laugh. Monty Python is firmly in that camp, especially when they get silly.
The title of this section is a bit misleading. Python did a number of rude songs – the Not Noël Coward song from Meaning of Life springs to mind – but Sit on my Face is probably the rudest of all.
If you’re easily offended, don’t go looking for it.
However, the sentiment from the Python’s song and the sentiment from Lisa Tarbuck’s demonstration of love can find middle ground. A middle ground that, with a little tweaking, can enhance the four images of shocked Alex.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I had a range of jobs I wanted to do when I was little. I saw my first combine harvester (or “combast harvinger” as I called it) at the age of three I wanted to drive one of them.
When I went to school we were often asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. Now, I’ve never really known what I want to do, should I ever grow up. It changed every time, and I kind of fell into science. I envy Mrs S, who always knew she wanted to act. However, when I was five I said I wanted to be a window cleaner.
Why I said this, I don’t know. We didn’t have a window cleaner at home, my parents cleaned our windows themselves. Someone may have cleaned the school windows, but I never saw them, despite our house backing into the school grounds. It may have been a telly programme such as Nationwide or Blue Peter that showed window cleaners cleaning tall buildings that lodged the idea in my head. Or perhaps George Formby influenced my decision.
George Formby (Jr)
When I think about window cleaning now, the famous song by George Formby1 comes to mind and won’t leave.
Released in 1936, the song was banned by the BBC. The lyrics were a bit risqué for the time:
The blushing bride she looks divine,
The bridegroom he is doing fine
I’d rather have his job than mine
When I’m cleaning windows.
Lord Reith, the controller of the BBC, expressed his disgust and contempt2:
If the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation’s airwaves
John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC. He insisted that the BBC should give equal consideration to all viewpoints. But they should also not broadcast what he saw as filth.
The royal family disagreed and King George VI requested that he play the song for them at a royal command performance.
Formby didn’t care what Lord Reith said. His star was on the rise and he became the highest paid British entertainer with a six-film £500,000 contract with Columbia Pictures.
Segregation and World War II
Formby died in 1961, aged 56. In the alternative 1985 of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, he’s the President of a republican England. At a book signing in 2004 I asked him why he chose Formby to be the president. The answer was remarkable.
During the Second World war, the Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA) paid Formby £10 a week to provide entertainment and morale-boosting content. This he did, making films and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. He performed in Normandy after the D-Day landings, giving impromptu concerts in barns and on the back of farm carts. His 1940 film Let George Do It! got great reviews on its release in America as To Hell with Hitler.
When the USA joined the war, Formby received a commission to perform for the American troops stationed in Britain. He refused initially, standing firm against performing in front of a segregated audience. Fforde explained that Formby saw segregation as a class issue. As a result of this stand, the US commanders ensured that his concerts were to to non-segregated US troops. In addition to his Normandy performances, he did nine concerts to the 6th Airborne Division standing beside a sand-bag wall to an audience in fox holes.
All this put a new perspective on a man I’d only ever seen as a turnip-faced ukulele strummer who sang silly songs. His position as a fictional President of England was clearly justified.
Goes to show, you can’t judge by appearances.
His father was also billed as George Formby. In Warrington cemetery there is a huge monument to George Formby. As an afterthought there is the inscription “Also George Formby OBE, son of the above”. ↩︎
The BBC has a great tradition of blocking songs that now seem innocuous. I Am the Walrus by The Beatles got banned because it contained the word ‘knickers’. ↩︎
The stock exchange scene at the end of ‘Trading Places’ confused me for many years. I learned, many years later, just what was going on and how stock trades aren’t linear in the same way shopping is.
The set up
Trading Places is a 1983 comedy film starring Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis. These younger actors get first class support from Denholm Elliot, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy.
Ackroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III, managing director of Duke & Duke Commodity Brokers. The Duke brothers (Ameche and Bellamy) are capricious millionaires who only care about money.
Mother said you were greedy
She meant it as a compliment
Street hustler Billy-Ray Valentine (Murphy) enters the scene and is arrested after a misunderstanding between him and Winthorpe. The Duke brothers decide to run an experiment, to investigate nature versus nurture. They bet on this for “the usual amount”.
They ruin Winthorpe by planting drugs on him. After his arrest he loses his job, his house, his fiancée and has his assets frozen and credit cards cut up. Ophelia (Curtis), a prostitute released from the police station at the same time, lets him stay with her while he gets his life in order.
Ophelia and Louis meet outside the police station.
The Dukes give Valentine a job (Winthorpe’s job) and a house (Winthorpe’s house) with a butler, Coleman (Winthorpe’s butler, played by Denholm Elliot).
At a Christmas party at Duke & Duke, Winthorpe – dressed as Santa Claus – tries to frame Valentine for drug use. This fails. Security eject Winthorpe, but not before he manages to steal a side of salmon to hide in the beard.
Winthorpe has reached rock bottom. Trying to eat a side of salmon through his fake beard on a bus.
In the toilets, Valentine overhears the Dukes discuss their bet. They declare the nature v nurture debate settled and the bet is paid. All $1 of it.
Winthorpe has hit rock-bottom. His suicide bid fails when the gun he traded his watch1 for fails to fire. He takes an overdose of the drugs he used to frame Valentine and passes out in Ophelia’s bath. When he recovers, he finds himself back in his own home, reunited with his butler and less than pleased to see Valentine. Valentine explains how the Dukes did this to them for a $1 bet. The pair seek revenge.
Revenge is ours!
Since the only thing the Dukes care about is money, they decide to ruin them. They give the Dukes false information that the orange harvest will be poor, which leads them to decide to corner the market in frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ).
The final scene is where the confusion lies. Trading floors in the early 80’s were high-tension environments. We see traders asking about each other’s stomach ulcers and hypertension before going into the bear pit that is the high-stakes world of trading frozen concentrated orange juice.
The high-stakes world of frozen concentrated orange juice trading.
The Dukes, confident that the price of FCOJ will rocket because of the bad harvest, start buying FCOJ futures. This creates a speculative bubble and drives up prices. Winthorpe then announces that he will sell 30 April futures, each of 15,000 lbs, at $1.42 a pound. They are mobbed, selling to everyone. The price drops and the Dukes watch in horror as they face ruin.
The Duke brothers realise something is amiss.
After an hour of frantic activity the true crop report is broadcast. This forecasts a normal harvest. The price of FCOJ plummets and panic ensues. When the price hits 46c, Winthorpe starts buying from everyone except the Duke’s broker. The final price is 29c a pound.
At the margin call, when all trades have to be settled, Winthorpe and Valentine see the Dukes. They also had a bet; Valentine bet Winthorpe that they could ruin the Dukes. Winthorpe pays up.
Winthorpe pays up on the bet he had with Valentine.
Exchange officials confront The Duke brothers. They must pay $394 million (over $1 billion today) to cover their trading losses. This exceeds their assets, and the brothers are bankrupt. Even at the end while one of the Duke brothers collapses with a heart attack, money is first and foremost.
Official: Mortimer, your brother is not well. We better call an ambulance.
Mortimer: Fuck him2! Now listen to me! I want trading reopened now!
The film ends with Winthorpe, Valentine, Ophelia and Coleman on a beach, trying to decide whether to have lobster or cracked crab for lunch.
What I don’t understand…
How trading works is at the centre of this scene. In the world of brokerage buying and selling aren’t necessarily linear. You can sell things you haven’t yet bought. If you think the price will fall, you sell as many of a thing as possible with a promise to supply at an agreed time. Then you have to buy the thing and if the price has dropped, you get profit.
The Dukes think that a poor harvest will mean frozen juice will be in demand. So they think that the price of FCOJ will be high in April. They tell their dealer to keep buying, no matter what.
Winthorpe sells 30 contracts, each containing 15,000 lbs of juice for $1.49 a pound – that’s $639,000. This is a promise to sell that juice in April at that price. How much he eventually pays for the juice is not the buyer’s problem. A poor harvest would indicate that this could be a good price. No wonder they get mobbed.
The real crop forecast is released after an hour’s trading. Winter storms have not affected the harvest, so the value of the frozen juice plummets. Panic ensues, the FCOJ price tanks until it reaches 29c a pound. Winthorpe and Valentine start buying the juice that they will sell in April at a much reduced price. Nobody will want frozen juice in April when there is plenty of fresh juice.
Had Winthorpe and Valentine only done that first trade they would have made $508,500 by buying at 29c and selling at $1.42. but they did many more trades than that – it’s never clear how many, but it’s a lot.
On the other hand, the Dukes are in the hole for $394 million. They bought a huge amount of stock at the high price and couldn’t sell it before the end of trading. They need to pay for the juice they bought at $1.42 a pound.
If only the Dukes weren’t so greedy. But then, if they weren’t there wouldn’t have been a moral for this story.
A Rochefoucauld, the thinnest waterproof watch in the world. Retails for $6955. Bo Diddley gave him $50 for it. ↩︎
Don Ameche apologised to the crew for swearing. ↩︎
I’ve only been in my current job for a year. My previous job, science research, changed considerably over the thirty-plus years I did it.
Back in the old days
Science and research relied on manual methods when I started in science, doing my undergraduate degree at Loughborough from 1989 to 1993. In the university library there was a mix of card indexes and a new computer system.
The Pilkington Library, Loughborough University. The unusual inverted pyramid design is not an accident, we were told. I’m not so sure.
Finding the book you wanted meant being familiar with the library layout and knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system. I spent a lot of time in the 540s (Chemistry) and later, in particular, 541.35 (photochemistry) for my final year project.
What neither the card index nor the computer index could help you with was looking for a journal article. If you knew the details of the article, from another article, for example, then it was easy enough. Locate the journal in the library and hope that the volume you want is available. Otherwise it was the dreaded Inter-library loan (ILL), which cost money and took weeks.
If you didn’t know the particulars of the article you wanted, only that it was written in the mid-1970s by PF Morgan in one of the American Academy of Sciences journals, you were pretty stuffed.
Web of Science
With the advent in the 1990s of the Web of Science in the 1990s, you could search for a term. This meant that you could search for Morgan, PF and add search terms ‘silicone dioxide’ and the year range 1972 to 1978. And bingo! You found that article you were looking for five years ago and can no longer remember why you wanted it. Mainly because you were investigating photochemistry in 1992, but in 1997 you are working in a geology lab.
All this seems pretty lame by today’s standards when we are all search-engine savvy. But it was a revelation at the time and exactly what computers are for.
This means you can find a reference in a journal you don’t have in the library. And furthermore, now you can download the journal article often for a hefty fee. Last I looked the top fee was $60 for access to a single article. This does not encourage the flow of knowledge.
The flip side of easier research is that expectations are higher. When I had my PhD viva (in 2002), the external examiner was keen to point out that I’d missed what he considered a vital paper on the subject. He had published it in 1978, and I could only apologise and accept his comment that I shouldn’t have relied on computer searches. I checked afterwards. The article hadn’t been cited since 1985. No wonder I missed it.
Today, there really would be no excuse for missing even a very old article. The web of science is everywhere. However, I don’t know whether non-English articles get pulled into the web of science.
Statistics and computers
One other thing that is now much easier with the use of computers is statistics. In 2019 I completed a Masters in Quality by Design. This technique for improving the quality of manufactured goods relies heavily on a variety of statistical methods. To say this would be difficult, tedious and prone to error without fast computers would be an understatement.
A new reading of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles has cast doubt on one of the most cherished stories from English history. We learned that, in 1066, King Harold marched 200 miles after the Battle of Stamford Bridge to face William of Normandy1, the leader of the invasion force, and was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Hastings. But this may not be the case.
Anglo-Saxon England
The battle of Hastings, fought on the 14th October 1066, was a turning point in English history. The previous Anglo-Saxon monarchy, which had reigned since about 450, was ousted in the Norman Conquest. Replacing the monarch wouldn’t normally have been all that interesting, but the successful conquest had further, lasting repercussions in the monarchy, society, and language.
Why did William invade?
The penultimate Anglo-Saxon king was Edward the Confessor. He died childless, which wasn’t necessarily the crisis that might be expected. The Saxon kings were largely elected, albeit from an upper ruling class, and primogeniture wasn’t established. Harold Godwinson was the second son of Godwin of Wessex. He was also the brother-in-law of Edward and had been named successor. However, William of Normandy also had a claim to the throne. He was the first cousin once removed of Edward and therefore eligible to be king. He also had a witnessed oath made by Harold in 1064 that Harold would support William’s claim to the English throne.
From the Bayeux Tapestry. Harold swears on two altars to support William’s claim to the English throne. the Latin reads ‘Harold sacramentum fecit VVilllelmo Duci’: Harold made an oath to Duke William.
When Harold accepted the throne on Edward’s death in January 1066, trouble was inevitable.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge
William wasn’t the only nobleman with a claim to the English throne. Harald III of Norway’s had a less straighforward claim to the English throne2 . However, Tostig, Harold’s younger brother, encouraged him to invade and take England by right of conquest.
Harald arrived in early September 1066 with about 300 ships and reinforcements from Orkney and Shetland, then under Norse rule. King Harold, based in London and anticipating an invasion by William of Normandy, brought his army north to meet the Norse invaders. The Battle of Stamford Bridge took place on the 25th September and resulted in a decisive English victory. Although the number of casualties remains unclear, the defeated Norsemen needed just 24 ships to return to Orkney. They went without Harald and Tostig, both of whom died in the battle.
13th century depiction of the Battle of Stamford Bridge from The Life of King Edward the Confessor (Matthew Paris).
Meanwhile, in Normandy…
William had been planning to invade England all year. Building an invasion force from scratch in under 9 months, he was ready to invade by mid August. What kept him back was a mix of bad weather and fear of the Saxon navy. He finally landed on the 28th September, rapidly established a beachhead and set about building a wooden fort from which to raid the area.
News of the invasion reached Harold, 200 miles away. The Battle of Hastings took place on the 14th of October. Less than three weeks after victory at Stamford Bridge, King Harold was dead, his army defeated and the Saxon rule of England was over.
Summary of the events of Autumn 1066
What’s new?
The story as told to us in school is that Harold reached Stamford Bridge by forced march from London. He won the battle, then force marched back south to meet William at Hastings. Four hundred miles and two battles in the space of a month would have left any army exhausted. No wonder the Saxons lost.
However, a recent re-evaluation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles by Prof Tom Licence of the University of East Anglia casts doubt on this story. The ‘forced march’ story stems from a misreading of the Chronicles. According to the Chronicles, the fleet ‘came home’ after blockade duties in the English Channel. This suggested to Victorian historians that Harold disbanded the Saxon navy in the Summer of 1066. Sending the ships to their home ports around the country and freed the militia to bring in the harvest. A lack of ships meant that there was no alternative for Harold but to march to Yorkshire, fight, then march back.
Licence suggests that this is not the case. His interpretation is that the navy relocated to their home port of London; it’s not only the Chronicles that suggest this, but other contemporary sources say that there was an active navy at the time.
So rather than marching 200 miles, Harold took the more sensible option of loading his men on ships and sailing up the coast. After Stamford Bridge, he would have sailed back, possibly with some Norwegian-build ships as booty, and marched on Hastings from London.
King Harold the general
This version of events casts Harold in a different light. Harold’s loss at Hastings may not have been mainly the result of exhaustion. The battle was hard-fought. The invaders had cavalry while the English were mostly infantry, but the numbers were about even3. Harold had stationed his men behind a shield wall at the top of Senlac Hill, making it difficult to attack on horseback.
According to the history it a feigned retreat by the Normans decided the battle. Poor discipline among the Saxons led to them chasing after the cavalry, breaking the shield wall and making a successful cavalry charge possible. Harold died late in the battle, likely killed by a cavalryman though the ‘arrow in the eye’ story has its adherents. William the Conqueror4, as he is known, was crowned king on 25th December 1066.
Probably the most famous section of embroidery in the world. This depicts the death of King Harold (Harold Rex interfectus est – King Harold is dead). What’s never been clear is whether Harold is the man with the arrow in his eye or the man falling under the horse. Some have suggested he’s both, but the two men are wearing different socks.
And so the Saxon rule was over and the Norman monarchy began. We are still living with the consequences. King Charles III claims the throne as a descendant of William. Our language changed, to become a weird hybrid of a Germanic language with mostly French vocabulary and Celtic grammar.
What might have been
It’s interesting to speculate on what might have happened if Harald’s invasion had been delayed by a month. William invades in late September, Harold meets them with a fresh army before they have established a beachhead and defeats them. Then he has to ship his army up to Yorkshire to fight an established invasion force of Vikings and disaffected locals and loses. Norway and England form a united kingdom and retain Saxon rule until… when? Who knows.
Spoiler: He is known to history as William the Conqueror. ↩︎
There was an agreement reached in 1038 between Magnus, the previous King of Norway, and Harthacnut, the king of Denmark and England, that the other would inherit their lands on their death. Harthacnut’s death led to a split in the monarchy with Magnus taking over as King of Denamrk and Edward as King of England. When Magnus died in 1047 Harald took over the claim, which included one of many promises made by Edward that they would be named his successor. At least three such promises were made by Edward. ↩︎
Some Norman sources later claimed up to a million English soldiers fought at Hastings against 10,000 Normans. Which is impressive, given the population of England was less than 1.5 million at the time. ↩︎
Previously known as William the Bastard. Though not to his face. ↩︎
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
I know someone who never re-watches films or re-reads books because they know what’s going to happen. I told them they were missing out, because good writing rewards a re-watch. Subtleties, callbacks, brick jokes, references you missed first time because you were following the plot. Also, things you didn’t understand because you were twelve the first time you read Lord of the Rings (for example) and at fifty you have a much better sense of the world, how plot works, and you realise Sam is the real hero after all.
Some candidates
There’s few things I’ve seen as many as five times. They’d need to be quite old because, despite what I just said, I do think rewatching too frequently is not rewarding. And I think to qualify I’d need to have watched the whole thing.
This latter disqualifies Red Dwarf. I’m sure I’ve watched most of the first five series many times, especially when I was a student back in the early 90s. But from series 6 onwards there was a drop-off in quality and laughs. I watched 7 (I laughed once), some of 8 and haven’t seen much of any of the latter series.
I watch Taskmaster regularly, (and blog about it, and make t-shirts too) but I’ve not seen any of the episodes more than three times. There are nearly 200 of them, and they keep making new ones.
Spaced (1999-2001)
The TV series I’ve probably seen five times is Spaced, a sitcom centring around two 20-somethings, Daisy and Tim, who share a flat in a house alongside Marsha, their permanently sozzled landlady, and the artist Brian. We follow them as they learn to share a flat, cope with each other’s friends and fail to get their act together. This was two series, first shown in the early 00’s. Starring Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg, who co-wrote the series with direction from Edgar Wright, saw the series as a reaction to the perfect ‘friends’ sitcoms that were prevalent at the time. A somewhat surreal series, the episode are dense and full of visual and verbal jokes, cultural references and call-backs.
The main cast are supported by some surprising one-off guest actors. The third episode Art features David Walliams as the conceptual artist Vulva1, a former artistic partner of Brian. This was the highlight of Walliam’s career.
David Walliams as Vulva, the conceptual artist whose latest production ‘Come’ features in the third episode of Spaced.
We also get two-offs of Bill Bailey as Tim’s boss Bilbo Bagshot and Peter Serafinowicz as Tim’s love rival Dwayne, plus John Simm as a brief love interest of Daisy’s in the Matrix-inspired first episode of the second series. Reece Shearsmith gives a memorably unhinged performance as a Robot Wars rival, providing the only link between Spaced and Taskmaster.
Clue (1985)
This is the only film I’m sure I’ve seen at least five times. I’d have thought Star Wars (1977), since I saw it twice when it came out, but I’m sure I’ve only watched it through twice since then.
I may have seen Kind Hearts and Coronets many times, but I can’t be sure how many. This is a joyous film about the gentle art of murder, and I highly recommend it. Likewise, I may have hit the watch-count on Galaxy Quest and everyone’s favourite Christmas film, Die Hard.
So, Clue. Based on the board game Cluedo2, I first watched it in the 80s on telly. It’s a film with three endings, which I thing is unique. My memory from the first watch is that my dad loved it, especially ‘Ending C’, famous for the ‘Flames on the side of my head’ speech, and for the final line delivered by Michael McKean3, which absolutely tickled my dad.
Watching again a few years later, the cast and the ensemble performance grabbed my attention. Yes, that’s Tim Curry4. And Christopher Lloyd. We also have Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlett (she was a late replacement for Carrie Fisher), Eileen Brennan giving a masterclass in how to waffle onscreen5 and a very brief appearance by Jane Wiedlin, who later featured as Miss Of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Watch count is at least five, going up to six at the weekend. Youngest child doesn’t know who Tim Curry is, and this is the most family-friendly film we have of his.
Now all we need to do is find a way of connecting the DVD player to the new telly…
