#Sir Walter Pole

[j-august]

And being a man - and a clever one - and forty-two years old, he naturally had a great deal of information and a great many opinions on almost every subject you care to mention, which he was eager to communicate to a lovely woman of nineteen - all of which, he thought, she could not fail but to find quite enthralling.

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

#quote #quotation #Susanna Clarke #Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell #Sir Walter Pole #Emma Pole #man #clever #information #opinions #enthralling

[fiction-quotes]

Strange seemed to have reverted to his old bachelor habits. Tables and chairs were fast disappearing under piles of papers. Half-finished chapters of his book were to be found in every part of the house and in the drawing-room he had even taken to making notes upon the wallpaper.

Sir Walter started to remove a pile of books from a chair.

“No, no!” cried Strange. “Do not move those! They are in a very particular order.”

“But where shall I sit?” asked Sir Walter in some perplexity.

Strange made a small sound of exasperation as if this were a most unreasonable request. Nevertheless he moved the books and only once became distracted in the process and fell to reading one of them. As soon as he had read through the passage twice and made a note of it upon the wallpaper he was able to attend to his guests again.

 —   Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

#book quotes #fantasy fiction #historical fiction #alternate history #susanna clarke #jonathan strange & mr norrell #jonathan strange #sir walter pole #books #reading #academia #study #research #bibliophile #distraction

[carlandrea]

Like the way Emma Wintertowne was married to Sir Walter Pole for the sake of his career and then she was traded to the gentleman with the thistle-down hair for Norell's career. How her mother did nothing about her illness the same way her husband did nothing about her enchantment. How her entire life she's been suffocated by people who say they love her. I am going to scream.

Of course she doesn't believe that Jonathan is going to save her and Arabella. The gentleman with the thistle-down hair is as much her husband as Walter Pole is. Half her life belongs to one man and the other half to the other.

No wonder she's furious

#jonathan strange and mr norrell #jsamn

[dwimmer-crafty]

Let your raven flags fly, folks! Tis the season of bisexual icon John Uskglass.

Wander a frozen moor in a black gown!

Bury your heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache!

Spend your nights dancing in the ruins of a fairy court, and your days ignoring Sir Walter Pole!

Imagine the bleakest of November landscapes, but make it camp!

#jonathan strange and mr norrell #john uskglass #susanna clarke #jonathan strange & mr norrell #js&mn #starecrossed lovers #the raven king

[scotianostra]

April 14th 1736 saw the Porteous Riots in Edinburgh take place.

The riots that erupted were over the execution of a smuggler called Andrew Wilson. Andrew was one of three who were charged with smuggling and attempting to rob Collector of Excise, James Stark at the Pittenween Inn, Fife

One of the men, William Hall, turned Kings evidence and was exiled from Scotland, which left Wilson and his friend George Robertson, facing the hangman’s noose.

The pair had been locked up in the Tolbooth on the High Street and an attempt at escape had been thwarted after the rather portly Wilson got stuck in a window after managed to saw through some bars.

A few days before sentence was to be carried out, the men were taken to the Kirk to make their peace with the lord and repent for their sins, it was here Wilson caused a distraction and Robertson made off, according to tradition he made it to Holland and ran a Tavern the rest of his days.

There was a feeling of sympathy for Wilson, not just because he was the only one left to face the music, but the populace of Edinburgh, and Scotland as a whole were still smarting at the higher taxes imposed through excise after the act of union, on the day of his hanging a large crowd had gathered and they were a bit unruly to say the least but the execution took place without incident, but the peace didn’t last long. Just as Wilson’s body was being cut down from the gallows, a section of the crowd began pelting the executioner with stones. Rumours had been rife that Wilson had been tortured while incarcerated and what had been a relatively calm sea of spectators quickly transformed into an angry mob.

The city guard fired into the crowd, killing a few and wounding a considerable number of persons. John Porteous, captain of the city guard, who was accused of both shooting and giving the order to fire, was brought to trial in July and sentenced to death.

Events in Scotland alarmed the government in London, and Sir Robert Walpole attempted to influence events by asking his representative in Edinburgh to become involved ordering The Captain be pardoned. He had miscalculated, underestimated the depth of feeling in Scotland.

On the eve of Porteous’ proposed execution, a 4,000 ­strong mob took to the streets of Edinburgh. A total lock­down was ordered by the City Guard and all gates, including the Netherbow Port were closed – shutting out many troops stationed outside of the town. The enraged mob made their way to the Tolbooth Prison where Porteous was being held and set the jail door alight. Porteous attempted to flee but was eventually grabbed by force and dragged up the Lawnmarket, then down along the West Bow towards the Grassmarket where Andrew Wilson had met his end. Porteous was strung up on a dyer’s pole and brutally lynched until he ceased to move. The government would later declare a reward of £200 for any information of those responsible for Captain Porteous’ murder, but none of those guilty would ever be found. Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel The Heart of Midlothian written in 1818 would later recall the events in great detail.

On the Grassmarket just past Armstrong’s Vintage shop you will see the plaque commemorating Porteous, and to your right heading east you can enter Greyfriars Kirkyard and visit his grave, as seen in pics two and three.

#scotland #scottish #edinburgh #history #grassmarket #riot

[fluentisonus]

thinking about how we're told that stephen black was the only one with the keys to sir walter's pistols & how baffled everyone is at how lady pole could have gotten them to kill norrell with. thinking about it very much. also god I wish we got to see the whole set up to this from their end & more of their relationship

#<- like I don't think he'd ever personally want to take revenge on norrell himself but. i Do think would have helped her to be able to #do it herself if she really asked & was set on it #<- i can't remember if there's anything that elaborates on this beyond the rlly ambiguous bit we have norrell say to childermass? #but like. I think so. i think that's what happened #<- still chewing it over #thoughts #jonathan strange and mr norrell

[thinkanamelater]

I'm sorry i transed all of their genders

#jonathan strange and mr norrell #poll

[waitingforwinterwinds]

ASOS; Steel and Snow: 01 JAIME I (pages 18-32)

Brienne and Jaime, accompanied by Ser Cleos, begin the long journey to King's Landing under Catelyn's orders.

-

An east wind blew through his tangled hair, as soft and fragrant as Cersei's fingers.

I feel like this tells us so much about Jaime, but also nothing we didn't already know. The boy is besotted.

...Jaime... stop calling Brienne 'the wench'... and also stop talking like that kind of asshole just to try and regain some of your perceived power in the situation, you're not in charge, you're just being an asshat.

"Lady Brienne?" She looked so uncomfortable that Jaime sensed a weakness. "Or would Ser Brienne be more to your taste?" He laughed.

I mean that depends on whether you consider Ser to be a man's title or a knight's title. irl the female equivalent of Sir/Ser is Dame. Dame Brienne of Tarth.

But also if he doesn't stop heckling, I'm going to bust out the steel chair and bop him.

"Let Robert do as he pleases. I'll go to war with him if I must. The War for Cersei's Cunt, the singers will call it."

'Cunt' = 🥛

Oop, Jaime confirms he did not try to have Bran killed, and doubts Cersei was the culprit either, the suspects narrow!

We know who did it. But Jaime doesn't. I like that GRRM doesn't magical-hive-mind information, with as many characters as he has, it can be so hard to keep track of who knows what, and what the audience should know at any given point in time... actually, since I know from watching the show, I remember Tyrion had some very strong suspicions on who the culprit was, but I can't remember if he's wheedled a confession yet. That is the down side to only reading a chapter a day, by the time a play pans out, I've forgotten it was in the works, or the inverse, I remember that someone set a trap and forget it was already sprung XD

... okay, I'll admit it, Jaime's idea to give himself the Walter White aesthetic was a good one. Easy disguise with no magically appearing prosthetics, flips the traits he's known for and lets them stay lowkey on the journey.

A few one-room shacks came and went, perched on tall poles that made them look like cranes. Of the folk who lived there they saw no sign. Birds flew over head, or cried out from the trees along the shore, and Jaime glimpsed silvery fish knifing through the water. Tully trout, that's a bad omen, he thought, until he saw worse-one of the floating logs they passed turned out to be a dead man, bloodless and swollen. His cloak was tangled in the root of a fallen tree, its color unmistakably Lannister crimson. He wondered if the corpse had been someone he knew.

oooh, packed a bit into that paragraph. some lowkey world-building, a reminder that Shit Has Gone Down in the area, and a brief flash of humanising for Jaime. The wondering if he's known the dead feels like the first bit of sympathetic thought I've seen from him so far that's not self-or-cersei-centered. Oh, it's not exactly empathetic, like he doesn't sound like he's mourning this poor fallen John Doe, but it matters that he cared enough to wonder, implies connection to the Lannister men besides all being team Lannister. Jaime doesn't just know them, he knows some of them.

They sailed past villages but no villagers. An empty net, slashed and torn and hanging from some trees, was the only sign of fisherfolk. A young girl watering her horse rode off as soon as she glimpsed their sail. Later they passed a dozen peasants digging in a field beneath the shell of a burnt towerhouse. The men gazed at them with dull eyes, and went back to their labors once they decided the skiff was no threat.

You know what would have been hilariously ironic, but in the most frustrating way possible?

If that young girl with the horse had been Arya. If they had been so close to recovering Arya in that moment, but she noped out, there-by saving herself from the Red Wedding. (Assuming her recovery at this point doesn't change things like getting Rob caught up on the fact Roose Bolton is absolute (competent) garbage.)

Below, Jaime made out the smouldering remains of a large building, and a live oak full of dead women.

Hanging tree.

*suddenly, a volcano erupted directly under Roose Bolton and his forces, with more wrath and speed than expected, as if an angry god was responsible, the molten stone spewed forth and swarmed over those responsible for the atrocities, burning them to a crisp.*

Actually, fun fact, because lava and magma are liquid stone, the density means that human bodies would float, or, well, bob. The Golem scene from the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy should be reversed, the Ring sinking and Golem bobbing back to the surface and slowly burning until his buoyancy is low enough for him to sink through the superheated sludge. I mean he'd likely be dead pretty quick from breathing superheated air before the meat really got cooking, so he would suffer for long, and that's assuming he survives the fall. People die from that height falling onto unbroken water and stone. guy totally should have died.

... sorry. too morbid?

Brienne moved the tiller and the skiff sheared left, sail rippling. Jaime watched her eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought, and calm. He knew how to read a man's eyes. He knew what fear looked like. She is determined, not desperate.

yay Brienne! Go! Go! Go! (and good job finally making some good observations Jaime... and he's already back to 'wench.')

... oh, but he's covering for Brienne's lack of cover by pulling aggro! Nice, TeamWork!

I mean, let's not start the bromancing just yet, at this point he's doing it because Brienne and her plan are his best chance at getting back to Cersei.

!!!! Brienne casts Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies! (well, not the TPK version, but she drop a rock "the size of a cow"! I love her so much!

Ser Cleos turned the skiff towards her. Thankfully, Jaime still had his oar. One good swing when she comes paddling up and I'll be free of her. Instead, he found himself stretching the oar out over the water. Brienne grabbed hold, and Jaime pulled her in.

See, it's moments like this that give me such confliction with Jaime, it makes me want to say "because at heart he is a good man, who, though he struggles with it, wants to do the right thing, to be the Good guy."

And then I remember he threw an eight year old child out a window to his presumed death with zero hesitation, and I think "well clearly not, actually."

Ahhh, our first Jaime chapter, it's a little jarring to see inside his head, how he cares so little for people in general, like, his whole world is Cersei (and maybe Tyrion and their dad?) and everyone else doesn't seem to register much, but at the same time, there is some level of care, Jaime does show a goodness despite his attempted child-murder and treasoncest. Whether his care is long buried for tragic backstory reasons, or whether it's something that's never really had a chance or reason to grow... I guess we'll see.

More importantly: Jaime&Brienne BROadtrip: Commence!

We'll see how it goes in comparison to the show.

#a storm of swords #steel and snow #a song of ice and fire #jaime lannister #a chapter a day reading #asos #asoiaf

[macgyvertape]

Thrilled to get drunk and do a rewatch of JSMN a few years and more film club meetings later. I’m noticing a lot more about the directing like how in ep1 they stage Mr Drawlight with Mr Lascelles behind him just to get their eyelines level, and to I play bits about who is leading the conversation. The way the Norrell is sitting back in his chair when discussing raising the dead, but when he leans forward and commits it puts him center frame.

The way in ep2 when Stephen first meets The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair there’s a really heavy color grading and the camera is constantly moving a bit to make the whole scene feel unreal and uneasy.

In ep3, the tension build up to Jeremy dying by cannon, how it keeps cutting between the cannon/cannonball and Jeremy's face to really emphasize him right before he dies. They even put in a slow-mo shot of the cannonball.

The very opening of ep7 and a few other times where they do a tight focus behind a character's back following them as they walk and everyone else is out of focus. Heck of an establishing shot.

Actually why does Norrell wear a wig but Strange and Sir Walter Pole does not? Is it a generational stylings gap? Does it tie into Norrell's deep insecurities and need to be taken seriously and respectable?

#jsmn #cw alcohol #I love being able to take a step back #and go wow the camera work is good #jonathan strange and mr norrell

[j-august]

Being a politician, he was never dissuaded from giving any body his opinion by the mere fact that they were not inclined to hear it.

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

#quote #quotation #Susanna Clarke #Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell #politician #opinion #inclination #Sir Walter Pole

[owl-by-night]

📓 <3

Thank you for the ask - you get one of the AUs I’ve had in my head for a very long time because it’s probably the weirdest thing I’ve come up with. Let me try to convince you! Every autumn as the days get shorter, Strictly Come Dancing appears on TV and I get nostalgic for the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel Strictly Come Dancing AU that I am never going to write for a million reasons, the first of which is that I don’t even know why I like it so much. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

But what if Strictly isn’t just Strictly? What if it’s being run by an enigmatic gentleman with a penchant for velvet jackets, making bargains and hair like… thistledown? What if the ballroom where you sign up to dance all day and all night is this AU’s Lost Hope? Where you can never leave because of your contract with the Gentleman? And who knows what bargains he struck to get you to agree….

The gentleman wants his favourite pro dancer Stephen to win at any cost and he means ANY. 

Sir Walter Pole wants a good PR hit before the next election so signs up his young and beautiful wife to aid his popularity (He couldn’t take part himself of course, because he might not do well and can’t risk looking foolish. He can, however, show up to support his wife). So the Gentleman makes a bargain, pairs Emma with Stephen and he’ll do anything to get them to the final so they can dance for him forever.  And if there was a tragic accident to Emma’s finger during early rehearsals well that’s just a chance for sympathetic reporting in the popular press. 

Thistles can’t always plan for everything though - Arabella Strange is an unexpected star with a husband who does the best supportive videos and is arranging a social media campaign by accident because he just loves his wife so much and wants to tell everyone how proud of her he is. 

John Childermass was supposed to be a joke act who left before Halloween but despite looking out of place in every costume the man can dance (sort of, when Hannah takes him in hand) and his blunt Yorkshire take on things has a definite fan following. His salsa goes viral. His rumba causes riots.

Flora Greysteel is popular with the younger generation and doing too well for Thistles to be comfortable. She might once have run off to have an affair with a poet but when ‘someone’ leaks it to the press she turns out to have a formidable protector in her father and her new friends the Stranges. 

John Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot were a pair of nobodies that should both have gone out in the early weeks but Segundus just keeps coming back. Nobody can doubt his persistence or his commitment to the training. Dancing is my life, he says, and he can’t think what he’d do if it was taken from him. That earnest comment earned him a solid block of devoted viewers. It also gained him devotion of another kind. Under the cover of the general Strictly mayhem, Childermass has been making tentative overtures to ‘John S’ as he battles with recurrent dizzy spells - is it just the Viennese waltz or is it the magic of Strictly? Childermass is always there to look after him if he needs it. 

While the stakes were low to start with as the no hopers were voted off, as the final looms The Gentleman has to make a choice about who he really wants to win now and what he’ll do to get it. If that means releasing some photos to the press suggesting that the Stranges are really rather fond of Bell’s dance partner Colley Grant, well he has the footage waiting and if some people need to encounter some strategic accidents so be it. By the end of November the Gentleman is using any kind of tactic to make sure the public vote the right way - social media influence and press scandals and dubious judge’s marking (one could almost swear that Craig has been bewitched). So the series runs with even more than the usual strictly scandals - Maria Bullworth’s husband cites her dance partner Art Wellesley in divorce proceedings but was it really him or was it fellow contestant Henry Lascelles? Art has a reputation for flings but backstage rumour says he’s far more interested in Flora’s partner Will and there are uglier rumours about Henry and who really caused Chris Drawlight to be injured by falling props in movie week (conveniently removing him from the show before any nasty rumours about his business dealings could break).

But it’s Strictly and the voting public is as fickle as ever. As scandals break, the tabloids go wild, and the stars get closer to the glitter ball, the stresses and stains begin to take their toll and the press start to ask ‘how is lady Pole?’  

“Unless you’ve done it before”, she says in an interview, “nobody can really understand what it’s like to be part of the magic of ballroom and when you’re on Strictly it feels like you’ve been dancing forever. And ever. And ever.”

#Fic #jsamn #fic I’m not writing

[nicklloydnow]

“Susan “the Explainer” Sontag might have seen through the Game of Thrones phenomenon — now extended into HBO’s prequel series House of the Dragon — and pronounced it “Ignorance as Metaphor.” Each show epitomizes the violence, profanity, and sex formula that HBO uses to sell its ancient-mythology programming.

HBO romanticizes the administrative state for the Millennium audience just as Sontag claimed that Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will romanticized Nazism — but without the “talent” and “art” that Sontag granted Riefenstahl. Each show is a costume-pageant version of the same decadent urban dramas that HBO peddled in The Wire and The Sopranos — guilty-pleasure nightmares of depravity favored by liberal media.

These ersatz history tales do not inform our present condition but exacerbate it. (Dragon’s presentiment of American civil war is intentionally cast for politically correct diversity.) Premiering Sunday nights, the episodes offer new immoral Sunday School lessons about the post-Christian world, teaching viewers to enjoy ruthlessness.

No doubt Sontag would have recognized that the series’ Anglophile novelty (despite rampant contempt for Western patriarchy) also plays into the inferiority complex that still oppresses Americans. Going back to medieval times (past Beowulf yet with a nod to Marsellus in Pulp Fiction), both Game and Dragon exploit the roots of epic warfare popularized in Peter Jackson’s dreadful Lord of the Rings trilogy — but based on George R. R. Martin’s bowdlerization of J. R. R. Tolkien. Now, Tolkien’s religious allegory is cheapened into secularism, meant to appease today’s politically confused consumers, thus fitting the metaphor of fascist art that Sontag expounded upon in her 1975 thesis Fascinating Fascism.

(…)

Jared Hess had definitively parodied this in Jemaine Clement’s hilarious lecture scene of Gentleman Broncos, unpacking florid, over-enunciated, quasi-sci-fi cult literature. But Dragon’s killings and birthing horrors celebrate cruelty without examining it the way Shakespeare, the Bible, or Sir Walter Scott did. So when media shills endow Dragon with wild significance, it perpetuates that unequal exchange of wills that Sontag warned would result from the production and dissemination of fascist art.

Fans of Dragon and Game, in thrall to monsters and monstrous behavior, don’t recognize how this demoralizing tendency appeals to the adolescent mindset — proving the dichotomy of power-worshipping media elites and the great unwashed binge-watchers that Sontag anticipated. This crisis prevents perfidious politicians, and authors of social disasters such as the televised J6 show trials, from ever being held accountable.

(…)

It’s unsurprising when reviewers praise Dragon because it “puts its female characters front and center like never before.” The show symbolizes the political fantasies that the leftist media forces upon the public.

(…)

All that prurience, violence, and political overreaching that HBO sells in the power struggles and sex wars of Dragon and Game fulfill what Sontag exposed as the essential appeal of fascist art, resembling “an anthology of pro-Nazi sentiments” (remember, Biden forbade the media to say “Antifa sentiments” when he asserted that “Antifa doesn’t exist”).

The tent-pole, multiverse excitement surrounding Game, Dragon, and the J6 proceedings is akin to “the vertigo before power,” a term Sontag used to describe irrational mass enthusiasm. It’s a good phrase for the illogical self-punishment of post-Obama, not-Hillary, anti-Trump America taking delight in HBO’s elaborate debauchery. Game and Dragon show us that “fascist aesthetics endorse two seemingly opposite states: egomania and servitude.””

“It's an object lesson in how not to do diversity casting, which has to be done right. If not, it's just as insulting as no diversity at all—perhaps more so. Forced and haphazard casting that changes character nuances and motivations as well as entire plot lines beyond recognition undermines both actor and viewer.

Doing diversity casting right means using it to enhance a work of fiction, rather than weaken its entire premise. Failing to do this right reduces Black actors to their skin color, rather than allowing them to inhabit a character that makes sense in its entirety.

But all too often, Black actors are cast in established franchises in a lazy way that tokenizes them for their race with no respect or credence paid to the subtext and historical and symbolic dimensions of the story.

(…)

But the truth is the exact opposite: When you're undermining a piece of history by casting a Black actor, you're making their race an inaccessible part of their character and their acting. After all, how free can a Black actor be when they are slotted into a role that was not intended for them? How much of the historical weight of a story is impacted by this "race-conscious" approach to storytelling, which ends up obfuscating the connotations and impact of race and power?

It's unnecessary at best. There exists a host of available stories that showcase Black lives through history and mythology, from Shakespeare's Othello to the story of England's first Black aristocrat, Dido Elizabeth Bell, to the slave rebellion leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. And yet, instead of creating great TV around these incredible stories, we get a lazy and desperate push to haphazardly insert people of color into traditionally European roles while dismissing those who take issue with these diversity casting choices as racist.

Haphazard diversity casting ends up objectifying Black actors, exposing them to needless backlash and hostility from confused and frustrated fans and disconnecting their race from their acting and characters.

But the clumsiness of bad diversity casting also exposes something dark about the audiences for these prestige TV dramas. In the cast of House of the Dragon, the message is clear: Your average woke, Hollywood liberal can still root for a ruling class portrayed as malignant despots, so long as they aren't all white.

It's a key feature of pop-wokeness: making it seem counter-cultural to side with the elite. Shonda Rhimes' hit Netflix show Bridgerton is another famous and recent example that features a diverse, rainbow cast of fawning aristocrats, despite being set in the Georgian period, the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These desperate attempts to foster diversity blur the lines between aspirational fantasy and historical anachronism, which makes it hard to decipher how much of the impact of a story is lost when modern preoccupations with diversity and inclusion collide with unpleasant historical, mythological and symbolic truths.

Diversity casting in deeply hierarchical narratives reveals how comfortable we are with hierarchy, aristocracy, and even incestuous Aryan-like racists—so long as it's white servants waiting on Black queens and nobles, and so long as the eugenicist Aryans aren't all white.

It's a shame that showrunners aren't challenging these classist assumptions but catering to them with their own racialized decisions, which undermine Black actors and acting as well as viewers. And it's especially dispiriting because diversity that makes sense is not hard to find and can add incredible texture and richness to a story.

(…)

The challenges with diversity casting reflect the systemic problems and glaring lack of ambition and imagination in Hollywood. It's much easier for the highly-profit driven industry to slot token Black actors into already existing franchises that are guaranteed success, and much harder to take risks and tell new stories that feature prominent Black characters and myths and that showcase the full scope of the imagination and talent of people of color.

It is possible and important to do diversity properly. But it's also fine sometimes not to do it at all, especially when the occasion does not call for diversity casting and when the choice to do so impacts the subtext and symbolic dimension of a narrative.

Diversity casting out of some warped sense of moral obligation diminishes the impact of a project and also diminishes the dignity of the actors who are being slotted into shoes that were not tailored for them.”

“Turkey is not the word. No turkey, however bloated and stupid, could ever be big enough to convey the mesmerising awfulness of Amazon's billion dollar Tolkien epic.

(…)

Let's start with the budget: a billion dollars. Let that sink in. One thousand million bucks, about £860,000,000, such a colossal investment even for Amazon that industry rumour says the brand is gambling its entire future as a film production company.

(…)

Popular culture invents blether like this to replace real religion. It's scientology for the superhero movie era.”

#house of the dragon #game of thrones #hbo #the wire #the sopranos #susan sontag #armond white #fascism #fascist art #leni riefenstahl #triumph of the will #zack snyder

[blogger360ncislarules]

A few more returns and more than two dozen (!) new bits of casting have been announced for the second/final season of Wolf Hall.

https://tvline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/harriet-walker.jpg

This Monday morning, it was announced that Thomas Brodie-Sangster also will return, reprising his role as Rafe Sadler. Other returns include Joss Porter as Richard Cromwell, James Larkin as Master Treasurer Fitzwilliam, Richard Dillane as the Duke of Suffolk, Will Keen as Archbishop Cranmer and Hannah Steele as Mary Shelton.

The slew of new castings, meanwhile, are led by Harriet Walter (Killing Eve, Succession) and Timothy Spall (Mr Turner), who will respectively play Lady Margaret Pole and the Duke of Norfolk.

You also have Corentin Fila (Mortel) as Christophe, Tom Mothersdale (Culprits) as Richard Riche, Karim Kadjar as Eustache Chapuys, Lucy Russell (A Spy Among Friends) as Lady Anne Shelton, Will Tudor (Industry) as Edward Seymour, Viola Prettejohn (The Nevers) as Mary Fitzroy, Thomas Arnold (A Spy Among Friends) as Hans Holbein, Jordan Kouamé (Malpractice) as Martin The Gaoler and Agnes O’Casey (Dangerous Liaisons) as Lady Margaret Douglas.

Other new castings include Cecilia Appiah (Hijack) as Nan Seymour, Ellie de Lange (Arcadia) as Jenneke, Hubert Burton (ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde) as Thomas Howard the Lesser, Pip Carter (Industry) as Sir Geoffrey Pole, Josef Altin (Game of Thrones) as Thomas Avery, Sarah Priddy as Lady Margery Seymour and Hannah Khalique-Brown (The Undeclared War) as Dorothea.

And last but presumably not least, there’s Amir El-Masry (Industry) as Thomas Wyatt, German Segal (The Undeclared War) as Olisleger, Summer Richards as Catherine Howard and Dana Herfurth (Love Addicts) as Anne of Cleves.

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light is currently filming in England and Wales.

#wolf hall #pbs

[scotianostra]

Hated Edinburgh "policeman" Captain John Porteous was lynched on September 7th 1736.

September 7th was the date of Porteous’s own scheduled hanging, for triggering a mob scene at a previous execution I have already covered on 14th April.

In Edinburgh there are three companies of men, of twenty-five each, who are employed to keep the peace, and take up all offenders, whom they keep in custody till examined by a magistrate. An officer is appointed to each of these companies, whom they style captain, with annual salary and a suit of scarlet uniform, which in that part of the world is reckoned very honourable.

Captain of the detachments was John Porteous, commanded the guard detail at that hanging, reacted insanely when;

...some unlucky boys threw a stone or two at the hangman, which is very common, on which the brutal Porteous (who it seems had ordered his party to load their guns with ball) let drive first himself amongst the inocent mob and commanded his men to folow his example which quickly cleansed the street but left three men, a boy and a woman dead upon the spot, besides several others wounded, some of whom are dead since. After this first fire he took it in his head when half up the Bow to order annother voly & kill’d a taylor in a window three storys high, a young gentleman & a son of Mr Matheson the minister’s and several more were dangerously wounded and all this from no more provocation than what I told you before, the throwing of a stone or two that hurt no body.

Nowadays Porteous might cite officer safety and be back on the job in a week’s time. Edinburghers in 1736 gave their law enforcement a bit less latitude, and the city magistrates were obliged to box Porteous up in the Tolbooth lest a baying mob “would have torn him, Council and Guard all in pices.”

And so, Porteous was arrested the same afternoon and charged with murder. He was tried at the High Court of Justiciary on 5th July 1736, where a majority of witnesses testified that Porteous had personally fired into the crowd on that say in April, although sixteen others said they had not seen him do so.

The charge being delivered to the jury, they retired for a considerable time, when they brought him in guilty, and he received sentence of death.

Porteous was incarcerated in the notorious Tolbooth Prison, but on the day of his scheduled execution news arrived that he was pardoned by Queen Caroline  by the advice of her council, needless to say this didn’t go down well with the good citizens of Edinburgh, and  between nine and ten in the evening, a large body of men seized the arms belonging to the guard; they then patrolled the streets, crying out, 'All those who dare avenge innocent blood, let them come here.' They then shut the city gates and placed guards at each.

Making their way across the Grassmarket to the Cowgate and up to the High Street, the growing mob converged on the Tolbooth, where they were eventually able to overpower the guards. Porteous was dragged from his cell up the Lawnmarket to the West Bow and down to the Grassmarket, where he was hoisted on pole, using a rope taken from a local draper's shop.  

After a short while he was dragged down and stripped of his nightgown and shirt, which was then wrapped around his head before he was hauled up again. However, the mob had not tied his hands and, as he struggled free, they broke his arm and shoulder, while another attempted to set light to his naked foot. He was taken down a further time and cruelly beaten before being hung up again, and died a short while later, just before midnight.

Captain John Porteous was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, the following day, in an unmarked grave, but a stone was later added.

The events surrounding the Porteous Riots form part of the early chapters of the novel The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott , where they are depicted in graphic detail of the day.

#Scotland #scottish #Edinburgh #execution #riots #history #Old Town #murder

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Derbyshire Lawlessness

On the 1st January 1434 90 men under Thomas Foljambe attacked their rivals, the Longfords in Chesterfield. Parish Church.

Henry Longford + William Bradshaw were killed & Sir Henry Pierrepont was maimed as detailed in an oyer and terminer commission of March 1434 issued to the duke of Bedford, Humphrey Stafford duke of Buckingham, William de la Pole Earl of Suffolk and two judges

The parish churches were frequently the scene of open conflict in the 15th century where the pulpit could be used to whip up support!

In 1434 alone there were 200 juries assembled to try to deal with the Foljambe-Pierrepont / Longford dispute. Pierrepont is known to have sat on at least one and others were definitely pro Foljambe.

The original source of the quarrel is largely obscure but may have been an attempt by one Richard Brown g Replan to get Thomas Foljambe acquitted g felony by 'trickery' and it appears that Foljambe had the key support of the Vernons. It also became apparent that Foljambe had prevented Pierrepont from collecting profits from Chesterfield Fair which was licensed to him by Joan Holland, Countess of Kent. Foljambe was also accused of illegally issuing 21 liveries - the most ever recorded in a session - highlighting the wider political sympathies as his co-accused included Sir Ralph Cromwell, Henry, Lord Grey & Joan Beauchamp, Lady Bergavenny.

The largest skirmish reported was in 1454 when 1,000 men attacked Walter Blount at Elvaston including Longfords and Vernons, now apparently working together!

Such large numbers of gentry were involved that it was almost impossible to recruit a jury at all. Richard, duke g York, John, Earl of Shrewsbury and 2 judges eventually heard the case at Derby in July 1454 and continued in September 1454 and at Chesterfield in March 145S, still without enough jurors to try the key figures.

Despite the undoubted truth of Blount's case, the family were almost completely isolated and Vernon and Longford refused to attend the sessions. It is probably that greater forces were at work: Humphrey Stafford duke of Buckingham may well have encouraged the attack on Blount who was a retainer of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, Buckingham and Warwick being rivals in Warwickshire and although Buckingham had supported York's protectorate, he was a staunch supporter of Henry VI and Somerset.

Buckingham retained Vernon after the first session and Vernon responded by bringing men from across the Peak to join the fray. Buckingham was clearly lining up against Warwick's man, showing that it was not only in the north that local rivalries and national politics were intertwined.

The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century

Susan M. Wright

Derbyshire Record Society Volume VIII, 1983

Image: Garter stall plate of Walter Blount, 1st Baron Mountjoy (c.1416-1474), KG. St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Image published in: Hope, W. H. St. John, The Stall Plates of the Knights of the Order of the Garter 1348 – 1485