February recipe: Lamb and chick pea curry

Spices and root vegetables make this simple curry a warming winter meal. It can be made with lamb or venison, and the vegetables can be varied according to taste and availability. If using dried chick peas, remember to soak them in advance. The curry can be frozen, so you can make a double quantity and freeze half for an instant ready-meal later.

Serves 4

Lamb and chick pea curry

4 oz (approx 125 g) chick peas
8 oz (approx 250 g) lamb (or venison), cubed
1 onion
6 oz (approx 150 g) cooking apple
1 lb (approx 450 g) vegetables (swede*, parsnip, turnip, leek, celery)
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) ground cumin
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) ground ginger
2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoon) ground coriander
4 oz (approx 100 g) chopped tomatoes
2 oz (approx 50 g) sultanas or raisins
Approx. 0.5 pint (approx 250 ml) water or stock

Soak the chick peas overnight in cold water. Rinse the soaked chick peas, put in a saucepan with plenty of water, bring to the boil and simmer for 1 – 1.25 hours until cooked. Drain.

Cut the lamb or venison into pieces about 1.5 cm (approx 0.5”) cubed.

Peel and chop the onion. Peel, core and chop the cooking apple. Peel and chop the vegetables. Peel the garlic.

Fry the lamb or venison in cooking oil over a medium heat until browned.

Add the chopped onion, apple and other vegetables and fry gently for a few minutes until starting to colour. Stir in the crushed garlic.

Stir in the spices and mix well. Add the chopped tomatoes, cooked and drained chick peas and dried fruit. Pour in the water or stock, season with salt and black pepper, and bring to the boil.

Simmer over a low heat approx 1 – 1.25 hours until the meat and vegetables are cooked.

Serve with rice and mango chutney.

Can be frozen.

*Short for ‘swedish turnip’. This is the English name; in Scotland the vegetable is called ‘neep’ (as in the dish ‘neeps and tatties’), and in North America I think it is called ‘rutabaga’.

Old English personal names

Old English personal names look unfamiliar to modern eyes, because only a few examples remain in common use today, mostly in their Middle English spellings (for example, Edward, Edmund, Alfred, Edith). However, Old English personal names follow a fairly straightforward pattern.

Two-element names

Old English seems to have had a stock of words that were considered suitable for forming names, often words that had positive connotations such as happiness, riches, strength, courage, power, wisdom, security, nobility and so on. Perhaps the idea was to bring good fortune to the recipient, or perhaps it was just more appealing to call a baby something nice.

Old English personal names are commonly formed by combining two components from this stock of name-words.

• Some name elements were used only for the first part of a name, e.g. Aethel- (noble, royal), Ead- (happy, rich, fortunate)


• Some name elements were only used for the second part of a name, e.g. –weard (guardian, protector)


• Some name elements could be used in either position, e.g. ric (strong), swith (strong), wine (friend), wald (power), here (army), hild (battle), burh/burg (stronghold), raed (counsel, wisdom)

The second element was usually a word of masculine gender in men’s names and feminine gender in women’s names, but not always.

Single-element names

Single-element names are based on a single word, rather than a combination of two. Masculine names commonly end with –a, e.g. Penda, Adda, Imma. This can be confusing to speakers of modern English, as we are used to the Latin convention of –a denoting a feminine ending. This confusion is reinforced by later Latinised forms of Old English women’s names such as Hilda (from Old English Hild). In Old English a single-element name ending in –a is more likely to be a man’s name.

Some two-element names can be shortened to single-element names, e.g. names such as Cuthbert or Cuthwulf could be shortened to Cutha. Hild may be a shortened form of a two-element name (see below).

Single-element names tend to be less common in the written sources than two-element names. Two-element names may have been more popular among the upper classes, and to have become more common over time (although caution is in order, given the scarcity of early sources).

Family connections – alliteration

There were no surnames in Old English. People were identified by a single personal name. Family connections could be signalled by alliteration, i.e. by choosing names within a family that all began with the same letter. Several examples of this can be seen in royal genealogies:

• The seventh-century king of Mercia, Penda, had a father called Pubba or Pybba (Historia Brittonum ch. 60) and a son called Peada (Bede Book III ch. 21);


• The seventh-century Northumbrian prince Hereric had two daughters called Hild and Hereswith (Bede Book IV ch. 23);


• The genealogy of the West Saxon kings in the Anglian Collection lists a succession of eight kings with names beginning with C-, Cerdic, Creoda, Cynric, Caewlin, Cuthwine, Cuthwulf, Ceolwald, Cenred;


• In the ninth and tenth centuries, the West Saxon king Aethelwulf had sons called Aethelbald, Aethelbert, Aethelred and Alfred (later The Great); Aethelred had sons called Aethelwold and Aethelhem; Alfred had sons called Edward and Aethelweard and daughters called Aethelflaed, Aelfthryth and Aethelgifu; Aethelflaed had a daughter called Aelfwyn (Asser, Life of Alfred Part II; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 919 AD).

Family connections – common name element

Another way to indicate family connections was by using one of the elements of the father’s and/or mother’s name as an element in the child’s name. Where the shared name element was the first one, it would automatically produce alliteration as well. Again, several examples can be seen in royal genealogies:

• The seventh-century Northumbrian prince Hereric was married to a lady named Breguswith. They had two daughters called Hild and Hereswith (Bede Book IV ch. 23). Hereswith has a name combining the second element of her mother’s name (-swith) and the first element of her father’s name (Here-). It is quite possible that Hild was originally called Hildiswith (taking the second element of her mother’s name and a first element that alliterated with her father’s name), which was shortened to Hild for some reason;


• The seventh-century kings of Northumbria were (successively) the brothers Oswald and Oswy, who also had other brothers called Oswine, Oswudu, Oslac and Offa (Historia Brittonum ch. 57). Oswy had a daughter called Osthryth (Bede Book III ch. 11);


• The seventh-century king of East Anglia, Raedwald, had a son called Eorpwald (Bede Book II ch. 15), whose name contains the same second element as his father’s name (-wald);

Some name elements were extremely widespread over a long period of time. For example, Aethel- names appear in the royal family of Kent in the sixth century (Aethelbert, Aethelburh) (Bede Book II ch. 9), Northumbria in the seventh century (Aethelferth) (Bede Book I ch. 34), Mercia in the seventh century (Aethelred) (Bede Book III ch. 11), Wessex in the ninth and tenth centuries (see above), and East Anglia in the seventh century (Aethelwald, Aethelthryth) (Bede Book III ch. 22; Book IV ch. 19). It is perhaps not surprising that a name element meaning ‘noble, royal’ was so popular among families who claimed royal status.

Sometimes both alliteration and common name elements seem to be in use in the same family. For example, the seventh-century king of East Anglia, Raedwald, had one son called Eorpwald (Bede Book II ch. 15), who has the same second name-element as his father, and another son called Raegenhere (Bede Book II ch.12), whose name alliterates with that of his father. If we did not have Bede’s History to tell us that both Raegenhere and Eorpwald were the sons of Raedwald, there would be nothing in their names to connect them with each other. Whether the different name patterns reflected different family connections (for example, perhaps Raegenhere and Eorpwald were the children of two different marriages), family traditions (Raedwald had a brother called Eni; perhaps there was a tradition of having names in R- and E- in each generation), or just resulted from idiosyncrasy, is open to interpretation.

In Paths of Exile, I sometimes used alliteration and common name elements when choosing names for the fictional characters to signal family relationships (obviously, I retained the names of historical figures). For example, Eadwine’s name is recorded, and the name of his nephew Hereric is recorded, but Hereric’s parents are unknown. I chose the name Eadric for the fictional character of Hereric’s father, Eadwine’s elder brother in the novel, because the two name elements in Eadric link to the two known names (Ead- shared with Eadwine, and –ric shared with Hereric). I chose the name Heledd for Hereric’s mother, a fictional princess of the neighbouring Brittonic kingdom of Elmet, because it alliterated with Hereric’s name. Hereric’s name is thus imagined as alliterating with his mother’s name and sharing a second name-element with his father’s name. (It is, of course, entirely possible that Hereric was the son of a sister of Eadwine and a man called H-something or Here-something. I picked the first combination for storytelling reasons).


References
Anglian Collection, available online
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, available online
Asser, Life of Alfred, available online
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Historia Brittonum, available online

Hoar frost

Jack Frost displaying his artistic talents. Very cold weather with clear skies and no wind allows lovely feathery hoar frost crystals to grow on surfaces exposed to the air, such as plant stems.


Hoar frost on plant stems at the base of a hedge...


... and on an isolated plant at a field edge


Close-up of feathery ice crystals.

King of Kings, by Harry Sidebottom. Book review

Penguin, 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-03230-6. 469 pages.

Second in the Warrior of Rome series, King of Kings follows on from Fire in the East (reviewed here earlier). Emperor Valerian, the Imperial officials Macrianus the Lame and his two sons, and the Persian ruler Shapur are historical figures. Ballista, the central character, is based on a historical figure about whom little is known. Other major characters are fictional. King of Kings is set in 256–260 AD, in the Eastern Mediterranean and what is now Syria.

Marcus Clodius Ballista, originally a noble hostage from the northern tribe of the Angles and now a senior Roman army officer, was one of the few survivors of the siege of Arete (recounted in Fire in the East). Bringing disastrous news to the Imperial court at Antioch, Ballista falls foul of the sinister official Macrianus the Lame and his slimy son Quietus, as well as the arrogant patrician Acilius Glabrio who blames Ballista for his brother’s death at Arete. The Empire is beset with difficulties, many of which are blamed on the cult of Christianity, and in the east the powerful Persian king Shapur is threatening war. But the greatest threat comes from within Rome itself...

King of Kings picks up at the moment where Fire in the East left off, with Ballista and his companions fleeing for their lives from the sack of Arete. The opening sequence gives a good idea of what to expect; there is no shortage of military adventure and gruesome battle scenes in King of Kings, from pirate raids to full-scale campaigns against the Persians. Political intrigue plays a larger role in King of Kings than in the earlier novel, as Ballista has to deal with fanatical Christians in Ephesus and the back-stabbing (literally as well as metaphorically) machinations of the Imperial court. A few quiet periods between assignments, when Ballista is out of Imperial favour, provide glimpses of Ballista’s home life, with his intelligent and politically astute upper-class Roman wife Julia and their two adored children.

Ballista’s position as an outsider to Imperial Rome comes over strongly in King of Kings. As well as the impenetrable etiquette and protocol of the court itself, he also finds Roman domestic customs alien and sometimes disturbing. Many among the Imperial court look down on Ballista as a barbarian, and even Julia insults him as such during a marital row. The closest members of Ballista’s household are also foreigners – Calgacus, the old Caledonian slave from Ballista’s northern homeland; Demetrius, the intellectual Greek secretary with a weakness for the occult; and Maximus, or Muirtagh of the Long Road, the tough Irish ex-gladiator bodyguard. For all that Ballista holds a senior position within Roman society as a high-ranking military officer, he is not part of it. As an outsider, he (and therefore the reader) is well placed to observe the flaws in the Imperial system, with power concentrated in the person of the increasingly infirm Valerian – a sympathetic, if rather pathetic, figure – and consequently vulnerable to misuse by corrupt officials who manipulate the Emperor for their own ends. Indeed, the main villain is so obviously evil that he is almost a cartoon caricature, cackling over the hero’s powerlessness while explaining the next step in his nefarious plan, which is all very well in a Bond film but I found it a bit disappointing here. If the portrayal bears any resemblance to reality, no wonder Rome managed to get itself into the mess of the ‘Third-Century Crisis’.

As with Fire in the East, King of Kings doesn’t so much reach an end as take a brief pause for breath before Ballista’s adventures continue in the next instalment. I am finding the series faintly reminiscent of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels, partly because of Ballista’s position as an outsider, partly because of the frequent and dramatic battle scenes, and partly something about the style (it’s a toss-up at present whether the no-nonsense Irish bodyguard Maximus reminds me more of Russell Crowe in Gladiator or Sergeant Patrick Harper). On reaching the Historical Afterword at the back, it turns out that one of the Sharpe echoes was intentional.

The narrative is told in third person, mainly by Ballista but also by other characters as occasion dictates, so the reader sometimes knows things that Ballista doesn’t know. The style is mostly straightforward modern prose, liberally sprinkled with archaic terms (explained in a glossary at the back, although I found most of them could be worked out from context), and with a fair helping of modern four-letter words. I found the pace rather uneven, speeding along during the fight sequences and then seeming to drag during the episode of persecuting Christians in Ephesus. This may be intentional, as Ballista himself is much more at home with military command than with a civilian governor’s job. I wonder if the Ephesus episode was covered at such length because it has some wider significance, perhaps setting up for something in a later book?

The Historical Afterword at the back outlines some of the history underlying the novel, and a map at the front is useful for following Ballista’s journeys. A list of characters at the back may also be helpful for keeping track of who is who, although I never needed to refer to it.

Military adventure, gruesome battles and political intrigue as the third-century Roman Empire clashes with the mighty Persian Empire in the Near and Middle East.

Late- and post-Roman Binchester

I recently posted about the headquarters building in Late and/or post-Roman York, and by happy coincidence the current edition (February 2012) of Current Archaeology magazine has an interesting article on late and post-Roman Binchester. Post-Roman activity at Binchester was recognised in archaeological excavations in the 1970s and 1980s, and a new excavation programme has added new evidence.

Location

The Roman fort of Vinovia, modern name Binchester, is located slightly north of Bishop Auckland, where the main Roman road to the north, Dere Street, crosses the River Wear.

Map link: Binchester

So Binchester is north of the legionary base at York, and south of the frontier forts along Hadrian’s Wall.

Brief description

The first fort on the Vinovia site was a large fort built in timber in around AD 70-80, which would coincide roughly with Agricola’s campaign in Caledonia (roughly, what is now Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde). It was replaced by a smaller fort built in stone in the second century, and it is the remains of this smaller and later fort that are visible today.

The stone fort has the characteristic ‘playing card’ shape of a rectangle with rounded corners. Dere Street ran through the middle of the fort, and the praetorium (commanding officer’s house) has been identified in archaeological excavations. A large vicus (civilian settlement) developed outside the fort and has been identified east of the fort and along the line of Dere Street to the north-west and south-east.

The commanding officer’s house and baths suite

The baths suite attached to the commanding officer’s house was one of the first structures on the site to be discovered, when part of the hypocaust collapsed under the weight of a farm cart in the early nineteenth century. The commanding officer’s house and baths suite were excavated in the 1970s and 1980s. This excavation found that the house had undergone a startling change of use in the early fifth century; it went from being a palatial residence complete with expensive decorated wall plaster to industrial use. Furnaces were built in the west wing, and evidently used for ironworking since they were surrounded by iron slag. In the south wing, a flat platform with a drain along one side was built using stone recycled from demolished structures, and a large associated dump contained large amounts of cattle bones showing butchery marks, including cattle skulls with poleaxe holes in the forehead. The south wing of the commander’s house was presumably now being used an abattoir. Radiocarbon dates place this phase in the early fifth century.

The industrial use of the commander’s house clearly continued for some time, as another stone platform was later built on top of this abattoir deposit. Parts of Roman walls were incorporated into the later platform, and post-holes may have supported a timber structure, consistent with the original building having become partly or entirely ruinous by this time and being replaced by a timber structure. This second platform was associated with more animal bone, and fragments of worked antler, bone, jet and shale, implying a sizeable craft industry.

The dating of this phase of industrial use is uncertain. However, a burial in the debris from the collapse of the roof of the associated baths suite was radiocarbon dated to about AD 550. The burial was of an adult woman, and she had been buried with grave goods including a string of beads, a pottery bowl and a copper-alloy brooch in the shape of a reversed ‘S’ with birds’ heads for the terminals, a type normally assigned to the early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) period of the late fifth to early sixth century - so the stylistic date from the brooch is broadly consistent with the radiocarbon date. This indicates that the baths suite had gone out of use and collapsed at some time before the burial was made in approximately the middle of the sixth century. Radiocarbon dating of samples from other burials without grave goods on the fort site gave dates between AD 600 and AD 1000, suggesting an early medieval cemetery on the site.

Much of the stone used to build the early English church at nearby Escomb was re-used Roman stone. Escomb is only a mile or so south-west of Binchester (see map links), and Binchester Roman fort and/or its vicus may have been the source for much of the stone (Escomb Church official site). Escomb church was probably built in the late seventh century, suggesting that at least some of the buildings at Binchester were regarded by then as a convenient quarry.

It is interesting that burials were made at Binchester in the period after the church at Escomb was built. One might have expected that after the conversion to Christianity the people of the area would be buried in the churchyard at Escomb, which is not far away. Perhaps the Binchester fort site also had a church or chapel with an associated cemetery. Or perhaps the female burial in the remains of the bath suite was that of an important individual, whose grave then became the focus for a cemetery for a local or family group that continued in use as a traditional burial place in parallel with the church at Escomb.

Recent excavations

For information on the recent excavation programme, see the project website, and the excavation blog (updated regularly in season).

Excavation in the east corner of the fort identified a possible barrack or stable block, with patches of paved floor associated with pits lined with stones or clay. Some of the pits had associated gullies, and one was connected to a pit in the rampart of the fort that could have acted as a water storage reservoir. As with the commander’s house, the pits were associated with many fragments of animal bone.

Excavation in the vicus east of the fort identified a substantial building that may have been a bath-house. Like the barrack/stable block inside the fort, this building also contained large stone-lined pits (one was 6m, approximately 20 feet, across and occupied almost an entire room), together with fragments of animal bone, jet and shale.

The Binchester Blog says that a radiocarbon date from a pit in the fort had a 50% probability of being later than AD 400, whereas a sample from a pit in the vicus area had a 2% probability of being later than AD 400 (see Day 33, 2011).

Exactly what industrial activity the pits represent is not yet certain. However, the pits and the large volume of associated animal bone would be consistent with a substantial leather-producing industry. Tanning requires a lot of soaking of animal skins in water and various other chemicals to soften the hide, remove the hair and convert the skin into leather.

The pits in the vicus and barrack/stable block are currently interpreted as tanning or possibly flax-retting pits, suggesting a substantial industry busily processing large numbers of animals into leather goods and worked bone and/or antler objects. Industrial and craft activity on a substantial scale implies in turn either that there was a large population in the vicinity, or that the fort was supplying a wider area than its immediate region.

Interpretation

The radiocarbon date from the vicus sample, with only a 2% chance of being later than AD 400, fits easily with a substantial leather- and bone-processing industry serving a market well beyond its immediate area, for which the most obvious candidate is the Late Roman Army. It is easy to imagine that Binchester fort could have been converted to a production and supply base, taking in large numbers of animals on the hoof from a considerable area and processing them into dried meat, leather, glue, bone tools and so on to supply army units. If the building in the vicus was indeed a bath-house, it might be a convenient candidate for conversion to leather processing, since bath-houses by definition have water supplies and drains that can be adapted to industrial use for processes requiring large volumes of water.

If more radiocarbon dates confirm the initial result of a later date for the pits inside the fort, it may indicate that industrial activity continued after the end of formal Roman administration, but possibly moved to a location within the fort rather than in the vicus. If industrial activity did continue on a large scale into the post-Roman period, this is potentially interesting, as on first sight it may appear inconsistent with the mud-huts ‘Dark Age’ stereotype of post-Roman Britain. Perhaps it could indicate a powerful local ruler, controlling the livestock resources of a wide area and perhaps with a large (very large?) warband getting through a lot of beef and leather for their own use. Perhaps it could indicate that there was still a commercial economy of sorts, so that an industrial centre could obtain raw materials and sell finished products as part of a wider market. Perhaps it could indicate a regional or even province-wide government, able to operate on the same sort of scale as the previous Roman administration. The school of thought that sees Vortigern as a ruler over all or most of the former Roman province, able to oversee large-scale population movements from one end of the province to the other, would have no difficulty in accommodating centrally-organised large-scale supply chains. Depending on the exact dates, it might even fit with Ken Dark’s theory of a revival of the post of Dux Britanniarum in the late fifth / early sixth century, with authority spanning most or all of the ex-Roman military sites between York and Hadrian’s Wall (Dark 2002).

If Binchester fort was the seat of a local ruler, or the centre of a substantial industrial operation, one might perhaps have expected whoever was the boss there to move in to the commander’s luxury house as a symbol of status, rather than convert it to industrial use. Perhaps there was no boss as such, and the activity represents a sort of giant co-operative of semi-independent craftsmen and traders, or perhaps the local boss was a relatively low-status overseer for an external owner, not considered important enough to be assigned a luxury residence. Or perhaps a new residence for the boss was built elsewhere in the fort and has not yet been identified, like the ‘chieftain’s hall’ built on the site of the granary at Birdoswald.

One thing that strikes me about the post-Roman activity at Binchester, Wroxeter, Birdoswald and in the principia at York is the apparent ease with which formerly impressive high-status buildings were converted to humdrum industrial uses or demolished. The baths basilica at Wroxeter became a builders’ yard and bakery, the principia at York acquired non-ferrous metalworking hearths and a lot of animal bone in the cross-hall, a barrack-building at Birdoswald had re-used an inscribed stone from the commander’s house, and at Binchester the commander’s house was turned into an iron-working site and an abattoir. Looking at Roman remains from a twenty-first-century viewpoint, it seems slightly surprising that such impressive structures were apparently not preserved as symbols of past glory. Perhaps this reflects a straightforward pragmatism on the part of late- and post-Roman decision-makers, who looked at the structures they inherited with an unsentimental eye and put them to whatever use seemed most practical and/or profitable in current circumstances. I wonder if it could also reflect a conscious rejection of aspects of Roman Imperial identity and hierarchy, perhaps as a symbol of a break with the past and the establishment of a new social order. It reminds me a little of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, an episode when a change in political power structures resulted in many formerly important high-status buildings (abbeys, priories, associated churches) being demolished and the materials sold off, leaving evocative ruins for later ages to marvel at and mourn.




References
Binchester Blog
Binchester excavation project site
Dark K. Britain and the end of the Roman empire. Tempus, 2002. ISBN 0-7524-2532-3.
Escomb Church official site

Map links
York
Binchester
Escomb Scroll north-east from Escomb using the arrows on the map to see Escomb church and Vinovia/Binchester Roman Fort on the same screen.

January recipe: Sticky toffee pudding

Sticky toffee pudding is rich, sweet and filling, very satisfying to eat on a cold winter day. There are many variations on the basic theme of a baked date sponge covered in a toffee or fudge sauce. My recipe uses black treacle*, which gives a dark colour to the sponge and sauce, and a slight bitterness to take the edge off the sweetness. You can keep the baked sponge for several days in an airtight tin, and then you only have to cut a slice and make the sauce for an instant pudding.

Sticky toffee pudding

Sponge (cuts into 10-12 slices)
4 oz (approx 100 g) dried dates, chopped
0.5 pint (approx 280 ml) water
2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoons) black treacle
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 oz (approx 50 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) dark brown soft sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) vanilla essence
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) baking powder
8 oz (approx 250 g) plain flour

Sauce (serves 6)
1 oz (approx 25 g) butter
3 oz (approx 75 g) dark brown soft sugar
0.25 pint (approx 140 ml) single cream
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) black treacle

To make the sponge:
Grease and line a loaf tin.

Put the dates, water and treacle into a saucepan, and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Beat in the egg and vanilla essence.

Add the flour and baking powder, and mix well.

Sprinkle the bicarbonate of soda onto the date and treacle mixture, then stir into the cake mixture and mix well. It should form a thick batter.

Pour the batter into the greased and lined loaf tin and level the top.

Bake in a moderate oven, about 170 - 180 C, for about an hour, until the top is crisp and golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack. Cut into slices, and serve with toffee sauce (see below).

To make the toffee sauce:
Put the butter, sugar and cream into a small saucepan. Heat gently until the butter melts, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the treacle.

Pour over slices of the baked sponge (see above). Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream if liked.


The baked sponge will keep in an airtight tin for several days, and can be frozen. The sauce will keep for a couple of days in the fridge.

*Similar to molasses.

Thorn, by Michael Dean. Book review

Bluemoose Books 2011. ISBN 978-0-9566876-4-7. 252 pages.

Set in Amsterdam in 1656, Thorn centres on the (fictional) friendship between the philosopher Spinoza and the painter Rembrandt. All the major characters are historical figures, although in many cases their personalities as portrayed in the novel are imaginary.

Benedict, or Baruch, Spinoza is twenty-four, a Jew of Portuguese descent living in Amsterdam, where the Jews are accepted because of their trading skills. In theory, Spinoza is the majority shareholder in his deceased father’s trading company, but his passion is for philosophy (and for his nubile Latin teacher, Clara Maria van den Enden). A chance meeting introduces him to the great painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and despite their disparate backgrounds the two men strike up an unlikely friendship. Each is a giant in his own field, Rembrandt already acknowledged as a genius, Spinoza just at the start of his career. Each places the demands of his calling higher than any other consideration – including the need to fit in with the rest of the world. Their refusal to compromise brings them into conflict with just about everybody who matters in mid-seventeenth-century Amsterdam – the Jews, the Calvinists and the city authorities.

Thorn is a witty, intelligent black comedy, funny and sharp by turns. It is narrated throughout in first-person by Spinoza, in a racy and humorous style that makes it seem as though he is talking directly to the reader. I could almost hear his voice. The name Spinoza means ‘thorn’ (hence the book title), and it suits the character down to the ground. Witty, sarcastic and intellectually brilliant, Spinoza is also utterly clueless on a social level. He is sufficiently self-aware to recognise this in himself – he says to his sister, “The universe is so much simpler to me than any person in it” – but he can’t seem to stop himself causing trouble and even pain for other people. He never means to hurt anyone, but his breathtaking insensitivity made me both laugh and cringe. Watching Spinoza clomp his way through delicate situations – a tricky business negotiation, family relationships, courtship and a proposal of marriage – blissfully oblivious to the trail of disaster in his wake, is both funny and poignant. Spinoza as created here is an engaging character, but cannot have been easy to live with!

The other characters are also vividly drawn. Rembrandt is the character we see most of, after Spinoza (who naturally dominates the novel). Rough, honest and warm-hearted, Rembrandt places his art above all other considerations and, like Spinoza, is impatient with those who don’t share his opinions. The secondary characters are a colourful collection of eccentrics. Seen entirely through Spinoza’s eyes, their human foibles are magnified – demanding relatives, arrogant physicians, pompous burghers, thuggish businessmen. Rembrandt’s kind mistress Hendrickje and competent son Titus are the most sensible and well-balanced people in the book; just as well for Rembrandt and Spinoza, for whom things would have been much harder without their support.

In their different ways, both Rembrandt and Spinoza reject the hypocrisy and religious intolerance of contemporary society (though, to be fair, both of them can exhibit a fair degree of intolerance themselves to people they disagree with). Spinoza pursues his philosophy even though it marks him as a heretic and threatens his brother’s business. Rembrandt refuses to paint flattering portraits of self-important burghers. Both men stick to their honesty and integrity even though this earns them powerful enemies, who can – and do – make their lives very difficult indeed. Yet both are also flawed characters who bring many of their difficulties on themselves, Rembrandt through his financial recklessness, Spinoza through his social ineptitude and capacity to alienate people.

As well as its characterisation and humour, Thorn also has a lot of convincing background detail about life in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, from the political situation of the Jews to details of domestic life to a memorable description of a public dissection. I’m not familiar with the period, so almost all of this was new to me; hence I can’t comment on the accuracy, but I can say that it felt authentic.

A helpful Author’s Note at the end outlines the underlying history and the fictional interpolations that make up the story, and provides a list of further reading for those who would like to explore the period in more detail.

Witty, intelligent black comedy exploring religious and social intolerance, centred on the (fictional) friendship between Rembrandt and Spinoza in Amsterdam at the height of the Dutch Golden Age.