The Devil's Whore....Our Friends in the Civil War

I am going to jump in to the debate on whether the current Channel 4 English Civil War drama, The Devil's Whore is any good. It seems to be picking up some award nominations, but that doesn't mean a lot.

The series is the work of Peter Flannery, who brought us the landmark drama Our Friends in the North . This followed the fortunes of four friends from Newcastle-on-Tyne between 1964 and 1995, so had a much longer span than Devil's Whore, with the characters' lives changing in reaction to the events around them.

In an interview on the current show's website he compares the two dramas: "There's a sense of friends bonding near the beginning of this, and then you watch how their lives play out through a time of political upheaval. So there's a great similarity. For a long time we called it Our Friends in the Civil War". Flannery hopes that Andrea Riseborough will win a BAFTA as Gina McKee did for "Our Friends". We'll see.

After the first three episodes I am still watching. This is in the face of one or two flaws that various reviewers have already spotted:

Many Civil War characters do not get a look-in. "Where are John Pym, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Denzil Holles and Edward Hyde?", asks Ronan Bennett in his review. And those characters that do feature are not properly introduced in terms of background and motivation; - oh look, there's Cromwell.

- The New Model Army seems to have shrunk to about 20 men and a couple of cannon. The Cape Town branch of the Sealed Knot must be short on members. So the battle scenes suffer from what Wacht Am Tyne calls "The Sharpe Effect".

- Some of the scenes look too much like South Africa, because they are. I didn't know the Drakensberg had moved to Ireland.

- The CGI devil looks like he has wandered in from another set

- In spite of the presence of a dedicated sex scene coordinator, Ted Vallance says in his New Statesman review that "This a series caught in two-minds as to whether to be a faithful, serious historical drama or merely an entertainment for those who get off on men wearing hose and doublets"

- It all seems rushed, and squeezed into too few episodes. The Civil War is too important (and long) to rush through in 4 episodes - compare Band of Brothers, which took us through the Normandy campaign almost as if in real time, so you feel involved. Michael Fassbender (Thomas Rainsborough) was in BoB by the way. I think Chronologi Cogitationes may be thinking on similar lines in suggesting that if we had followed one or two characters through the events it might work better, " but then they threw in Cromwell, Lilburne and Rainsboroughe" .

And Yet..
The committed acting keeps you watching, especially John Simm as the mercenary Sexby. He is as good in this as in Life on Mars. All the main players are good, and the small-group scenes have a lot of chemistry and are shot in authentic-looking interiors.

I also like the brooding and lawless atmosphere. Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone might seem unlikely influences, but in a background piece in Broadcast Now, director Mark Munden says: "I wanted to bring in elements of the modern revisionist western. In terms of its landscape, the piece was very much about isolated areas of civilisation, such as Oxford and London, within a wild lawless country. Sexby is like a mercenary gunslinger, [Leone's] 'man with no name'.

In the end, I agree with Julie Myerson on The Newsnight Review panel : Our Friends in the North was iconic; but The Devil's Whore ain't. In four episodes, it never could be, but if it gets people wanting to know more about this turbulent period it will have done some good.

more on The Devil's Whore:
Lady Byron at Factual Imagining has some useful links .
Another good review at The Story and the Truth .

Recent YouTube uploads

Some recent YouTube uploads with Early Modern focus:

Anna Keay, assistant curator at the Tower of London, discusses the arrival of Elizabeth I at the Tower in 1554, suspected of treason against Mary.

Also uploaded (in 4 parts) is is David Starkey on Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War, from his history of the British monarchy

Ghosts of the English Civil War relates spooky encounters on the site of the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644.

Dylan Winter tells the story of "possibly our greatest naval humiliation": the Dutch raid on the Medway in 1667.

Please Welcome on Stage: Lewis Garland and the Kett Rebellion

Hearing a Tenpole Tudor track the other day, I did a bit of digging around for other bands with Early Modern connections:

Kicking off, Lewis Garland and the Kett Rebellion, playing rather decent acoustic folk. Band is based in Coventry, although Lewis Garland, like Robert Kett himself who gave his name to an East Anglian uprising in 1549, hails from Norfolk. A racy woodcut decorates their Myspace site.

In 1558, nine years after Kett was hanged over the walls of Norwich Castle, Elizabeth I took the throne of England. Her finest hour occurred another thirty years later with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Indie band The Spanish Armada represent the USA here, and hail from Somerville, Massachusetts. One of the band members goes under the name of "L. Tiburon Pacifico", which must count for something. Not sure about the music, though....

Back to Blighty, Brighton-based folk/punk/rock band The Levellers are slightly more noisy, with a reputation for exciting fiddle-driven live sets including at Glastonbury . They share their name with the group of political radicals known as the Levellers during the English Civil War period. They asked questions such as "why should soldiers fight for Parliament when they are not allowed to vote for it?".

Oliver Cromwell approved of some of the Levellers' policies (eg abolition of the House of Lords), but his relationship with the movement was uneasy. In May 1649, Cromwell executed three soldiers in Burford who belonged to the Levellers, and this event is to be commemorated this year on Levellers Day.

Staying with the English Civil War theme, the Yorkshire band New Model Army name themselves after the full-time professional army set up Parliament to address the problems, found in the early part of the Civil War, of using part-time militias (they were reluctant to stray far from their home area) .

We could also include Shakespeare's Sister, but we absolutely have to mention Rick "Concept Album" Wakeman for his milestone Six Wives of Henry VIII. YouTube comes up trumps again: (how he gets away with a police siren I don't really know...) . If you are under 45 you might want to skip the video as you might not understand what is going on...

Bloody Events

This week is the anniversary of several Early Modern events that have something in common...blood

November 13th 1553 saw the trial for high treason of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Dudley, although they were not executed until February the next year. Poor Jane's sentence called for her to "be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases"'[source:Wiki]. Queen "Bloody" Mary chose beheading, which was nice of her.

November 13th is also the anniversay of the Battle of Turnham Green, 1642, an early stand-off in the English Civil War, in which the Royalists, having sacked the posh new waterside flats around Brentford, attempted to seize control of one of London's most important bus garages, but were rebuffed. The English Civil Wars site tells the story.

Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 14th November 1666 gives an account of an early experiment in blood transfusion. [Press the "Back" button now if you are fond of little doggies]. Eric at the Project History blog relates the grisly facts.

Scots sell Charles I to English Parliament for 40 pounds, 30th January 1647

Scots sell Charles I to English Parliament for 40 pounds, 30th January 1647.

Charles I had entrusted himself to the The Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark after escaping from the siege of Oxford in April 1646. He was kept under guard at Southwell while the Scots decided what to do with him. Eventually Charles was delivered to the Parliamentary forces later in 1647; it was a further two years before his eventual execution in January 1649.

Some important medieval ransoms (with Wikipedia links for more details):

The most famous monarch held for a King's Ransom was of course Richard I (the Lionheart), held to ransom 1192-1194 held by Henry of the Holy Roman Empire. His mother Eleanor of Aquitaine worked to raise the 150,000 marks demanded (around 100,000 pounds, maybe two to five times the annual Crown income at the time, depending on which account you read), by heavy taxes on the church and people. These taxes could be up to a quarter value of property owned, but it was worth it to get rid of nasty King John.

Bertrand du Guesclin, brilliant 14th century French soldier during the Hundred Years War, was captured by the English at Auray in 1364. Charles V of France paid his ransom, but he was captured again whilst commanding French mercenaries against Peter the Cruel of Castille (who had enlisted the help of Edward the Black Prince of England). Du Guesclin had the last laugh against the English as in subsequent campaigns he re-captured sizeable chunks of French territory for the home side. He died on a campaign in the south in 1380.

A little later on, James I of Scotland, held to ransom 1406-1424 by Henrys IV and V of England, was treated as a royal guest. James married the Earl of Somerset's daughter before his return to Scotland, where he reigned until 1437; although he pushed through many good reforms in Scotland , he made enemies and unfortunately James was assassinated aged 43.

Reader suggestions on further historical ransoms welcome...