Archive | February, 2012

Dresses from The Duchess.

29 Feb

I’ve just watched The Duchess again and thought I’d share some of the beautiful costumes worn by Kiera Knightley with you all – they are definitely on a par with the fabulous costumes worn by Kirsten Dunst and cronies in Marie Antoinette but have a decided ‘English’ mode to them, I think.

Georgiana’s wedding dress. In contrast to the opulent gowns worn by royal brides, the dress worn by Lady Georgiana was comparatively simple as was more usual for weddings in the eighteenth century. In contrast to the fuss surrounding Marie Antoinette’s nuptials, the wedding of Georgiana and the Duke of Devonshire took place in secret as the bride was already something of a celebrity and her parents feared that a more public ceremony would be besieged by onlookers!

Maternity gown worn by Georgiana. I find this gown particularly interesting as so few examples of eighteenth century maternity wear exist and so it must have presented a fascinating challenge to the costume designer, Michael O’Connor. This is a particularly opulent costume though, although in the manner of more modern pregnancy gear it accentuates rather than conceals.

Russet ‘Tuscan red’ silk gown worn by Georgiana when she gets a bit drunk and sets fire to her wig. ‘Will someone kindly put Her Grace’s hair out’ has got to be the best line in the entire film. Even if I have probably misremembered it terribly! Apparently three versions of this gown were made for the film as it involved a stunt.

Dusky blue ball gown, which I think was worn by Lady Bess.

This is my favourite dress though – I love that shade of almost teal blue.

Marie Antoinette’s wedding dress

29 Feb

‘It didn’t take us long to reach the royal chapel and there was a small awkward pause as my ladies came forward to tweak my full skirts and, clicking their tongues disapprovingly against their teeth, do their best to hide the wide expanse of lacing at my back, which revealed that my beautiful cloth of silver dress, made from measurements sent from Vienna several months earlier, was far too small for me.

‘Good luck,’ Madame de Mailly whispered when the ladies in waiting finally melted back again, their wide silk and brocade skirts rustling against the marble floor. ‘You look beautiful. Look straight ahead and ignore all the staring.’ She gave my hand a quick surreptitious squeeze. ‘You’ll be fine.’

I turned and smiled reassuringly at the Dauphin, who was standing mutely beside me, his pale eyes wide with terror while a pulse beat time in the vein at his temple. Now that I had overcome my own fears, I wished that there was some way that I could bring the colour back into his cheeks and stop him trembling. ‘It will be over soon,’ was the best that I could manage as he hesitantly took my hand and we stepped forward into the luminous white and gold light of the chapel.

Ever since I was a little girl I have dreamed of the perfect wedding, complete with a gorgeous dress, handsome prince and all of my family smiling fondly as they watched me sail gracefully up the long aisle towards the altar. Mama would proudly wipe tears of joy from her eyes and my brother Joseph, tall and handsome in blue watered silk would be waiting to give me away to my new husband, who’d watch me lovingly as I made my way up the aisle. Even though I knew that it was all impossible, that such a wedding could never happen, I’d still clung to that dream no matter what and in the end, the reality wasn’t all that bad in comparison.

True, my beautiful dress didn’t fit properly, my prince wasn’t exactly handsome and my family were all thousands of miles away but nothing could have prepared me for the breathtaking spectacle of the columned gilt and white marble chapel at Versailles in all its wedding day splendour. The bright spring sunlight shone through the tall windows, sending bright shards of coloured light floating over the assembled congregation while overhead there soared a beautiful painted ceiling which depicted scantily clad angels cavorting against a pure azure blue sky.’ — Secret Diary II, Melanie Clegg.

It’s weird to be back in the world of Marie Antoinette again. It’s also very strange to see just how much my writing has changed and improved in the last three years. On the other hand it’s nice to read back something that I wrote so long ago and actually find myself laughing out loud at some of the dialogue – not because it’s awful but because it is genuinely quite funny. I keep being told that writing in the first person is horrible for readers but I really do enjoy myself when I do it. Perhaps I should do it more often.

I’m writing about Marie Antoinette’s wedding again, which is a lot of fun. I especially like the fact that her immensely expensive cloth of silver and diamond spangled dress wouldn’t do up properly, which must have annoyed everyone no end although she herself was probably fairly sanguine about it as at the time she was a bit of a scruff and not quite the fashionista of popular imagining.

It’s a shame that Marie Antoinette’s wedding dress (along with pretty much all those clothes we hear so much about), an iconic piece of fashion history if ever there was one, no longer exists or at least not in its original form or in a public collection. I can only imagine the thrill of being able to see it in person. I remember writing about it in my undergraduate dissertation – about the fact that so little exists of that fabulous wardrobe that once took up so much space in the attics of Versailles and could be visited like works of art and yet it has still reached almost mythical status in our minds. Or something like that.

We are fortunate though in that some examples of eighteenth century royal wedding dresses do still survive to give an idea of how Marie Antoinette’s dress would probably have looked. Remember that it was Versailles that created the rules about court dress and behaviour so where they led, everyone else scrambled to follow.

Probably the most gorgeously romantic example is this lavish wedding gown worn by Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte Holstein-Gottorp when she married her cousin, the future King Charles XIII of Sweden on the 7th of July 1774, just over four years after Marie Antoinette’s wedding day at Versailles. Hedwig’s exquisite gown of silver tissue and lace, which accentuated her dainty 19″ waist, was made for her in Paris and so was guaranteed to be the height of fashion although the formal outfits worn at court had rules and etiquette that were quite removed from whatever was the mode at the time.

Another fine example is the dress worn by Sophia Magdalena of Denmark when she married the future King Gustav III of Sweden on the 4th of November 1766. The dress isn’t quite so ethereal and fairy princess like as that worn by her sister-in-law Hedwig but then she married in November so an altogether more sturdy and less diaphanous dress was probably determined upon. This dress was also made in Paris.

There’s also Sophia Magdalena’s coronation dress, which she wore on the 29th of May 1772 and was a heavy and gorgeous cloth of gold affair – when you get up close you realise that the dress fabric is patterned with gold crowns, which is rather fabulous.The fabric is so rich in fact that the gown itself is relatively simple in form and requires absolutely no embroidery or fuss other than the beautiful layered lace sleeves and tasselled fob at the hip. Well, I SAY ‘hip’ but…

We can only daydream now about how these wonderful dresses would have looked in the midst of marble and gilt chapels and glowing sumptuously in the soft light cast by thousands of candles. The actual act of wearing such a dress, however, is rather less dreamy, I’m sure as they are exceptionally weighty not to mention bulky. Still, one must suffer to be beautiful…

The Secret Diary of a Princess sequel announcement (finally!)

27 Feb

Just in case you missed the announcement that I slipped into one of my posts last week: I have started work on a sequel to The Secret Diary of a Princess and am hoping that it will be available to buy later this year.

It was always my intention to write a sequel at some point but I wanted to go off and write about the French Revolution first before I returned to the world of Maria Antonia and her family.

I also wanted to see how well the first book did and have concluded, three years on, that after pretty good sales (about nine hundred a month – cor blimey, which isn’t bad for a self published effort by a pleb like me), great reviews and a general clamouring for a sequel, I probably should just get on with things and write it.

I don’t think it will be a trilogy though – sorry! I’m not even sure when this follow up book will end but am pretty sure it will be pretty far short of the events of 1789, which I have covered exhaustively in Blood Sisters and Before the Storm. I can confirm that it will start exactly where the first book left off though…

On the plus side, it means that I’m going to be heading back to Paris sometime in the next few months to mooch around Versailles and buy books and stuff. I also have to do some research for Minette while I am there, which will be fun!

It’s weird to be back in the world of Antonia again, dusting off that immense mountain of books and thanking my lucky stars that I can read French. It’s going to be fun too though – I had a lot of fun while writing the first book and it seems from reviews that this really comes across.

At the moment, the plan is to release Secret Diary II (which has a working title of Antoinette 4 Louis but won’t actually be called this!) later this year and then Minette early the following year. Both books will almost certainly be available exclusively for Kindle, at least at first. I will also be updating Secret Diary at some point soon to reflect my increased prowess when it comes to editing manuscripts and also I’m hoping that both books will have beautiful new matching covers as well. I’d better get on with sorting that out, actually!

The Secret Diary of a Princess is a Young Adult book but at this point I don’t know if the follow up will be as well – I am aiming for it to be suitable for pretty much all ages but will confirm all of that when it is released!

Phew! Hope that makes at least some of you happy!

Ps. People have started asking about sequels to my other books – I don’t have anything planned right now as I think they ran their course but, in the manner of Jane Austen, I DO know what happened afterwards so if you desperately want to know what happened to a favourite character just ask!

Twenty signs that you are writing historical fiction…

26 Feb

No book review today as I’ve been slacking off a bit and working on my own books. Normal service will resume next week when I will have not one, but TWO reviews for you! Instead, here’s a list of twenty signs that you are writing historical fiction…

1. You gleefully claim trips to Paris and Rome on your tax return. And also London and Bath too. Oh wait, could I write a book set in Saint Petersburg or New York as well?

2. You start referring to skirts in the plural as in ‘skirts’ instead of a ‘skirt’, thus indicating that the skirt you are writing about is BIGGER than any old plain common garden skirt. Ho yes.

3. You have a framed photograph of Georgette Heyer somewhere in your house. It may even have candles and flowers around it and a burnt offering of a copy of Venetia. No wait, that would mean BURNING a copy of Venetia and that’s SACRILEGE so instead I will name one of my sons after two of her characters. And then presumably never tell him this fact…

4. When people say that the weather is 18C, you immediately think they mean the weather is reminiscent of that in the 18th century and get sympathetic palpitations.

5. Your Google history is full of terms like ‘Rupert Penry Jones Regency Jane Austen hot’, ‘Aidan Turner sexy pout Dante Gabriel Rossetti’ and ‘Tom Hardy Marie Antoinette wig cor I would’. This is all for RESEARCH PURPOSES.

6. You spend a lot of time wondering what ratafia, calf brain fritters and roast peacock tastes like. Too much time in fact. If you are a vegetarian like me you may even find yourself becoming excessively angsty about the vast amounts of roast flesh that your characters are clearly yearning to eat and wishing that they ate more salad in Georgian times. Meanwhile, your family are beginning to live in fear of your culinary experiments.

7. Every time someone insults you, you find yourself wishing that you could challenge them to a duel. You even know whom you would have as your seconds. You may even also have an outfit picked out.

8. Your iTunes account is littered with playlists called things like ‘Dead Victorian Girl’, ’18th Century Snogging Scene’ and, obscurely, ‘Guillotine time’.

9. You start to think that powdered hair is actually quite becoming and also get a bit heavy handed with blusher, which by now you are calling ‘rouge’.

10. You eye your husband with disapproval and wonder what he would look like in a nice white linen shirt, breeches and tall boots rather than a geeky T shirt, jeans and skater trainers combination. You may even badger him into growing his hair a bit and, oh why not, cultivating a bit of stubble. Oh and could you put a pirate hat on and ‘grin fiendishly, your strong white teeth gleaming against your tanned skin’ while you are at it? Thanks.

11. When writing about Victorian London, you may, in sympathy with your characters find yourself using rhyming slang and affecting a Cockney accent to the perturbation of all who know you. I have never done this. Obviously. *ahem*

12. You develop terrible and unseemly crushes on the Dead People that you are writing about such as, oh I don’t know, Charles II maybe? Just pulling that name out of thin air, of course. *ahem* We all know that Hilary Mantel has a serious thing for Thomas Cromwell. This crush leads you to search for loads of pictures of said person and get a bit critical of their mistresses. ‘I don’t know what he saw in that fat floozy Lucy Walters anyway…’

13. You convince yourself that you write all your best work while wearing a long flowing dress. Eventually this leads you onto re-enactment and cosplay sites where you debate for hours about buying replica Marie Antoinette style gowns or Victorian hats, convinced that your writing would become AMAZING if you wore one while sitting staring into space in front of your laptop.

14. You join re-enactment societies in the hope that they will help you experience what life was REALLY like in the period that you are writing about. All it really teaches you is that it’s not a good idea to get in the way of a pike block; cannon fire smells of rotten eggs; you don’t actually like folk music and falling down dead is a great way of sleeping off a hangover.

15. You find yourself envying chick lit writers and the way they can blithely just write away without having to stop every five seconds to check facts in the mountain of history books that wobble precariously around your laptop.

16. When you read a book set in the 20th or 21st centuries you get COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by the plot potential of having stuff like um telephones and wow, crikey, CARS rather than letters, pigeons, surly messengers, carriages and horses.

17. If you are traditionally published you may feel a pang of annoyance that you spent ages letting all of your readers know that your heroine is a creamy skinned, hazel eyed redhead only for the cover to cut her head off altogether.

18. You often think that life would be a lot easier for your heroines if they had access to Lush bath bombs, really good chocolate and Vogue magazine.

19. You try not to think about the fact that your characters probably really really REALLY smell but every so often the thought intrudes and you have to go and have a very long shower on their behalf. Also, while writing sex scenes you occasionally become distracted by the fact that your heroine has almost certainly never shaved her legs or armpits and are not quite sure what to do with this information – ‘he stroked her silky pelt’? BRAIN BLEACH.

20. If you are writing a book set during the Ripper murders of 1888 you may find yourself spending rather more time than you would wish hanging about the TRUE CRIME section of the book shop. You may even find yourself looking at books called things like ‘Hard Bastards’ and ‘More Hard Bastards: Harder And More Bastardy Than Ever’.

What would you add to the list? I haven’t touched on things like writing your own ancestors no matter how dull into your plots; having to put up with your husband looking over your shoulder and complaining that ‘You never let ME do that’ when you are writing sex scenes; finding yourself writing more death scenes in one book than Sean Bean has had in his entire career and the dawning realisation that all of your books fall under the category of ‘Posh Doom’…

Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, Princess of Eboli

25 Feb

I’ve just been reminded of one of the very first posts that I ever made on this blog, back in March 2009. Crikey! I thought I’d share it with you all again…

I remember seeing this portrait on the cover of a book when I was a teenager doing a rather hideous stint of work experience at the Colchester branch of Waterstone’s. I was instantly fascinated and, I will be honest, rather smitten with her. It seems like this is a common reaction to the subject – clearly there is something about an eye patch.

Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda was a fabulously wealthy Spanish aristocrat, born on 29 June 1540 and married at the age of twelve to Ruy Gómez de Silva, Prince of Eboli. She was a great favourite of King Philip II and considered to be one of the greatest beauties of the day, despite an accident during a sword fight with one of her father’s pageboys, which resulted in the loss of an eye. I think the eyepatch adds to her charm actually and gives her a rakish, mutinous look that is very attractive. Ana herself was rather keen on the eyepatch and had a selection that matched her outfits – hell, she probably had jewels and pearls set into them too.

Oh dear, girl crush.

Ana fell from favour after her husband’s death, ending up embroiled in a court scandal involving state secrets and dying in prison in 1592 aged fifty one.

She was a subject of a absolutely fantastic historical novel by Kate O’Brien, entitled That Lady, which was made into a film, starring Olivia de Havilland in 1955. The book is well worth a read if you can find a copy. I can’t comment on the film though.

There is also a 2008 Spanish film about Ana, starring Julia Ormond. Yes, that really is a monkey wearing a ruff…

Whitechapel 3 so far

24 Feb

Regular readers of this blog will already know with sinking hearts and rolling eyes that I am more than a bit of a Whitechapel fan girl. I adored the first series (based on the Ripper murders), was slightly less enthusiastic about the second (about the Krays) and am completely head over heels in love with the third (The Ratcliffe Highway Murders and Thames Torso Mystery have been featured so far along with nods to other well known historical crimes).

As I MAY have mentioned before, one of the main reasons for my passionate love is that my own family come from the Whitechapel area and, in fact, pride themselves on being proper Born In Earshot Of Bow Bells Knees Up Mother Brown Cockneys. Or something. I adore it. Whitechapel is probably my favourite place in all the world and I love that my own family history is so interwoven with the area – that my grandfather worked in the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane and with his brothers took part in the Cable Street Riot, while HIS grandfather was in H Division in 1888 and um his son in law CLAIMS to have been involved with a certain pair of quiffed twins but we don’t talk about that.

So, yes, the series makes me super happy because it puts an area that I love under the spotlight and also manages to do so with enormous panache and a certain dark glitz, humour and intelligence that is more reminiscent of Sherlock than The Bill.

I’ve very much adored the third season so far – they’ve upped the creepy supernatural undertones; added lots of sly little funny touches that MUST owe something to the show’s online fandom and also drawn on an impressive array of historical cases to form the basis of the plots. I don’t recall the first two series ever making me laugh but there has been at least one laugh at loud moment as well as one ‘clutch the pearls and hide behind the cushion’ incident in every episode so far, which is pretty good going.

Anyway, here is my list of the Top Five Whitechapel 3 Moments so far, which you can feel free to argue with or add to in the comments…

1. The Flat Of Doom – DS Miles helpfully sets DS Chandler up on a date with a pretty lab technician type and it all seems to be going very well if a bit Sherlock like until he sets foot in her messy tip of a flat. Cue much sinister music and a WILD EYED WITH SHEER TERROR Chandler stumbling out to the bathroom, his trusty Tiger Balm in hand only to be confronted by the sinister horror of her tights drying over the bath.

2. The Foot – It was obvious how this one was going to end. Precise, clean freak Chandler starts rooting around under a piece of corrugated iron for what looks like ‘something’ half buried in the soil. ‘DON’T DO IT!’ a nation cried. ‘YOU’RE LOOKING FOR BODY PARTS, MAN. THIS WON’T END WELL.’ But would he listen? No. He pulled out a severed foot and then rounded on a bemused Miles with a traumatised shriek of ‘I touched that foot. If I don’t wash my hands soon, I’m going to LOSE IT.’ I laughed until I cried.

3. The Pregnancy – This was kind of obvious too, but I loved how Chandler greeted the happy news by turning on his heel and walking into his office, leaving everyone else to celebrate the fact that Miles still seems to be having sex, which is a bit of a terrifying thought all things considered.

4. Kent The Perv – Whitechapel fic is RIFE with tender scenes involving Chandler and the rather sweet faced DC Kent although up to now the assumption that they have some sort of grand passion thing going on seemed to be unfounded. Up to now. The first episode starts with one of the team having his wedding reception in a pub and extorting Chandler to find someone to dance with. Chandler protests that he doesn’t have a partner only for Kent BANG ON CUE to lift his head from the table beside him with PERV scrawled across his forehead. Full marks.

5. The Bizarre Love Triangle – Which leads on to the increasingly pissed off and jealous Kent in the last two episodes when an attractive Laydee DS from some other branch (Greenwich?) temporarily chums up with the team and starts vying for Chandler’s attentions thus leading to sulky faced stand offs with an aggrieved Kent. It all ended well though so that’s okay but it did make me wonder what happens to a fandom when one of its most beloved shippings appears to be at least partially true?Does it implode on itself due to lack of imaginative conjecture or embrace the new development?


One thing though – are they EVER actually going to bring anyone to proper justice? They’ve had three suicides and two murders so far out of five results, which can’t be doing much for their paperwork and DS Chandler’s Tiger Balm habit.

Actually, two things – it’s been embarrassingly easy to guess the murderer so far due to the televisual tendency to hire well known actors to play villains. As soon as you spot a well known face in an apparent bit part, it’s pretty damn obvious that They Dunnit or are about to be spectacularly offed a la Drew Barrymore…

What did you think? What has been your high point so far?

Bad Writing Day

24 Feb

I had a bad day yesterday, which is why I didn’t post here or anywhere else really other than to be glum about Prime Suspect and complain about the weather. I don’t like having bad days so let’s work through this together. Don’t worry, it won’t end badly.

When I first started this blog almost three years ago, I decided that I was going to use it to talk about the research for my books and also chat a bit about the writing process. At some point I also seem to have made the decision that I was only going to tell you all about the good bits and none of the bad. This was wrong.

You see, over time, increasing amounts of people have become interested in self publishing their work and I think it is up to those of us who have already done so and with some modest success to give advice, help, encouragement and also an honest view of how such an interprise will most likely turn out. I have a duty, I suppose, therefore to disclose everything good AND bad that arises as a result of this whole writing shebang.

I hate sharing all the glum bits not just because I know there’s a whole bunch of people who LOVE it when things go wrong for me (I’m not being pious, I bloody LOVE it when things go wrong for them too) but also because it’s not in my nature to dwell on the unpleasant and annoying. However, I also feel a bit ridiculous only ever shouting about the good things because that’s a bit show offy, right?

Well, sort of. Actually, as well as it being really handy for prospective self publishers to know all the pitfalls of the potentially huge emotional investment that they are about to make, it’s also good for them to have a bit of hope that the miserable ‘You’ll only ever sell five copies and all of those will be bought BY YOUR MUM’ brigade are full of nonsense and probably have their own parlous agenda for keeping them in their place. I shouldn’t feel bad, then, for wanting to shout about excellent sales and really lovely reviews and so on because it’s all going into the collective pot of Good Feelings about self publishing and that’s just dandy.

Anyway, suffice to say that I had a Bad Writing Day yesterday and almost jacked the whole thing in for good because I had some rather negative feedback about my work and even though I immediately acted upon it, deleted loads of text, added loads of extra bits and generally tore my current piece of work apart, I still felt really upset and confused by the whole thing. Don’t worry – it’s pretty typical for authors to react with disproportionate amounts of angst to criticism so I don’t feel too ridiculous admitting to this and ultimately I have ended up with a FAR stronger work in progress and a better idea of how to take it forward too, so that’s okay.

It was rough though for a while.

However, I’m fortunate enough to have a cheerleading husband who hugged me a lot and calmed me down by reminding me that a. I sell a thousand books a month b. I get great reviews c. I have actual fans who want me to write more things and d. this blog is very nearly at a million hits so I’m not a rubbish writer at all, but someone who writes things that people apparently want to read about. Which altogether had the effect of making me feel rather worse and as if I’d somehow slighted all of the people who have bought and enjoyed my books or hit up my blog for a lunch time read by going off on a ‘I’M A TERRIBLE WRITER’ schlep.

So I won’t do that any more.

Once I’d calmed down, I decided that constructive action was needed so I did three things:

1. I made all the necessary changes to the Work In Progress and then contacted the amazing talented Del des Anges about properly editing it for me once it is finished, whereupon I will be publishing it myself, hopefully with another Lisa Falzon cover, although I need to ask her about that, obvs.

2. I put my first two books, The Secret Diary of a Princess and Blood Sisters on Scrivener and spent a lot of time getting them ready to be updated on Kindle and also released as special edition paperbacks in the next few months.

3. I noted that there have been more calls for a sequel to The Secret Diary of a Princess and made a new Scrivener page for another Young Adult book which has the working title: Marie Antoinette 4 Louis. Now that The Secret Diary is approaching 4,000 sales (in fact, it might have just tipped over), I think I should probably start paying attention to what my readers want! Anyway, the sequel will involve MORE letters from Amalia, MORE practical jokes and MORE Madame du Barry. So there.

All of which made me feel MUCH better.

Other things that made me feel better were:

1. Reading more of Palace Circle by Rebecca Dean, which I have wanted to read ever since it came out but miserably failed to do UNTIL NOW. It is everything that I hoped that it would be but reading it in the depths of my angst also made me feel more confused and also a bit huffy as there are vast swathes of Telling interspersed with Showing that is so subtle that I have no idea what just happened so I moved on to…

2. Watching two series of Prime Suspect, one after the other which was pretty satisfying if a bit gruesome at times. It’s not as good as Whitechapel though (NOTHING is as good as Whitechapel), which I will be blogging about later on as I feel that the current series deserves a little joyful paen all of its very own.

3. Drinking hot chocolate with les petits gars from these divinely cute Jamie Oliver mugs that were sent to me by Palmers. I have the Little Sweetheart mug (for Oscar) and Little Tiger one (for Felix) and adore them as they are just the right size for small people. I’m not a fan of hot drinks but I do like to lie around drinking hot chocolate and pretending that I am in fact Sarah Churchill in a ridiculous fontanges headdress or maybe Madame de Pompadour. NOTHING could be more cheering.

4. Booking Camping Plus for this year’s Camp Bestival so we don’t have to worry about camping on a slope and will have showers and our own carefully reserved plot on a flat to look forward to. We’re not very good at camping.

5. Writing a list of all the amazing things that are coming up on this blog: Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, Althorp, Camp Bestival, Emilie Autumn, another chance to be trolled mercilessly after I review a Stewart Lee gig, a mystery trip abroad, a book launch and also a couple of other very special things that are currently in the pipeline but I should hopefully be able to tell you about soon…

6. Pictures of Tom Hardy in Marie Antoinette.

7. Corgi puppies.

Not bad really for a post that started out as a bit of a complain! I feel like that there should be a moral to all of this really, so let’s just say that it’s okay to be upset about criticism so long as you use it to your own ends. Or something. Also puppies and Tom Hardy are awesome.

RIP Sophie Scholl 22nd February 1943

22 Feb

As someone who mostly blogs about women in history and art, I’m often asked which famous female figures from the past I find the most inspirational. It’s a tough question really as my answer can vary wildly depending on what sort of mood I’m in, the colour of my hair or just what sort of day I happen to be having. However, there are some constants and at the top of the list there is pretty much always Sophie Scholl.

I’ve tried to write this post so many times but always end up deleting it as I just don’t think that I can do Sophie and her associates in the White Rose group justice with mere words alone. However, on this day, the 69th anniversary of her execution by the Nazis on the 22nd of February 1943, I am going to take a moment to remember her here and recall her to the minds of everyone else who reads this.

Sophie Scholl was just twenty two years old when she was guillotined in the Stadelheim Prison in Munich and yet in the course of her short life she taught us all a lesson about having the courage to take action and show resistance in the face of an oppressive regime and having the resolution to stand up and try to make a difference despite having the odds stacked against you. As Sophie herself said at her trial: ‘Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.‘

Sophie was arrested with her brother, Hans, their friend Christoph Probst and other members of the White Rose movement after she was seen distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, suggesting a passive and intellectual resistance to Hitler at the University of Munich, even climbing to the top of the atrium and throwing them into the air.

‘I ask you, you as a Christian wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, whether you hesitate, whether you incline toward intrigue, calculation, or procrastination in the hope that someone else will raise his arm in your defence? Has God not given you the strength, the will to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler.‘ — text from the fourth White Rose pamphlet.

After the execution of the key members of the White Rose, their sixth and final pamphlet was smuggled out of Germany, copied by the Allies and then dropped in their millions by plane all over Germany where they would be read by and give hope to thousands of their fellow Germans, the forgotten silent majority who recognised the intrinsic vileness and evil of Hitler and the Nazis and were too afraid to stand up against it.

‘The German people are in ferment. Will we continue to entrust the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of German youth to the base ambitions of a Party clique? No, never! The day of reckoning has come – the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. In the name of German youth we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.‘ — text from the sixth White Rose pamphlet, the rest of which can be read here.

I’ve thought a lot about Sophie Scholl lately as my own country ferments in protest against a government who seem intent on increasing the divide between rich and poor and striking at the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. I think about her when I find myself muttering impotently on Twitter or rolling my eyes over dinner about how awful it all is and how frightened we all are about the future and I wonder, what would Sophie Scholl do?

‘How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?‘ — Sophie Scholl’s last words before her execution.

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