The Feathered Serpent, Series 2

I had no memory of a second series of The Feathered Serpent even existing, despite loving the first season - I think I was probably in the middle of exams when it was on TV in 1978.  When I sent off for the DVD, though, both seasons were included and I finally got to see the end of the story.

At the end of the first season, the baddies are killed and the Princess seems to be about to marry the Toltec Prince Heumac, but it turns out that they have further problems to solve before they can get to the happy ending....

Nasca the Evil High Priest was far too good a character to kill off (played by Patrick Troughton with great relish), so he immediately gets resurrected, with the help of new baddy Xipec, Governor of the Gold Province.  He was far more fun than Nasca's accomplice in the first season (the rather boring Jaguar General) - silver-tongued, elegant, tall, with long black hair and lots of gold eye paint, and dressed in dark green and gold, a bit like a 1970s version of Loki.  He's also quite happy to torture young Tozo, Prince Heumac's servant, who does a very good job of showing how much he's suffering when he's tied up on the terrace baking in the hot sun.

Here he is with the mad witch Keelag who brings Nasca back to life - a good meaty female role, but not one that passes the Beschdel Test - she and Empress Chimalma never meet, and the only other female "speaking part" is a city woman who has been driven mad by poisoned water, who only screams.

Xipec was played by Granville Saxton, who has appeared more recently as a Death Eater in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and one of the Patricians in The Eagle (the film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's book Eagle of the Ninth).

I don't think I learned much about Aztec/Toltec civilisation from the series, but it was great fun to watch, and I don't think there's ever been anything else quite like it on British children's TV.

Fan Fiction, Fictional Archaeologists, and Libraries

 I love writing fan fiction.  The research for a story can lead me down the most interesting rabbit holes.

In this case, I read a Good Omens fan fic on AO3 called It's Not the Years, It's the Milage, by MovesLikeBucky.  The plot is basically the first Indiana Jones film, but with Aziraphale as Indy and Crowley as Marion, and I enjoyed it enormously.

But before Indiana Jones, there was Pimpernel Smith.

Leslie Howard played the first adventurous archaeologist - Professor Smith, who was in charge of a student dig in Germany just before the Second World War.  When he wasn't directing the students, he was smuggling intellectuals out of Germany before they were arrested by the Nazis.  The film was made in 1941, in black and white, and has a moment of terrible sexism where Professor Smith insults the women archaeology students to make them walk out of the lecture hall, so he can invite only the young men on the student dig with him.  Apart from that, though, it is wonderful fun, with the Nazis puzzled by the tune used to signal to the escaping intellectuals, and a very funny conversation about Shakespeare at an Embassy party.

It occurred to me that Aziraphale would work far better as vague academic Professor Smith than as action hero Indiana Jones - but I didn't want to do a straight swap of the characters.  Aziraphale could go undercover in Germany as an antiquarian bookseller much more easily.

And this is where the research comes in.  I work in a secondhand and antiquarian bookshop, and I had recently been cataloguing some books about Germany.  I noticed that many of them were published in Leipzig.  So Aziraphale could have a bookselling contact in Leipzig he could write to.  I discovered that Leipzig was, indeed, a centre for book publishing - and that there had been a terrible air raid in 1943 which destroyed the booksellers' quarter (the Graphisches Viertel), including the oldest music publishing house in the world, along with an estimated 50 million books.  The German National Library was badly hit.  1,800 people also died in the RAF raid.

That happened after the period I wanted to set my story, though.

I wanted Aziraphale to buy a collection of occult books, possibly from a castle somewhere.  Thuringia sounded like an interesting location, not too far from Leipzig, so I started to look at local castles - and hit solid gold!

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library is still housed in the Green Castle in Weimar.  In the 1930s it was known as the Ducal Library, and it had been a library since Duke Wilhelm Ernst started it in 1691.  Duchess Anna Amalia moved it to its present location in 1761.  It houses important collections of Shakespeare and Goethe, and a 16th century bible connected to Martin Luther.

Aziraphale would be in Paradise!

Even better, it looks like this:

It even has a book tower that reminded me of Aziraphale's shop:

There was a serious fire there in 2004, but it has been wonderfully restored, as the pictures show.

And now I want to visit Weimar....

Happy New Year

 

On Discworld, this year has been declared the Year of the Beleaguered Badger - but I could only find a picture in Spanish.

Happy New Year!

Farewell, Edward of Wickham

 Most people will think of Jeremy Bulloch in his role as Boba Fett, but I remember him best as the leader of the village of Wickham and ally of the outlaws in Robin of Sherwood.

He's just died, aged75.

His son Robbie played Edward's son Matthew of Wickham.

He also appeared in Doctor Who - in the Time Warriors (the story that introduced Sarah Jane Smith) and, even earlier, in The Space Museum with the First Doctor. 

They Seek Him Here....

 They seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere....

I'd been aware of the existence of the 1950s TV series of The Scarlet Pimpernel for some time, but I'd never got round to watching it before.

Well, I've now seen the first episode, and it is a delight!

I'd been a bit worried it would be very mannered and stage-y, but the cramped sets actually make the sword fighting more believable, and the acting is first rate all round.  

Marius Goring makes an excellent Pimpernel, and it was a bonus to discover that Robert Shaw is playing his friend and lieutenant Sir Anthony in the first episode.  He was great fun in The Buccaneers as a pirate captain trying to live a more honest life.  Even better, the Prince of Wales is played by my favourite Friar Tuck, Alexander Gauge!

Patrick Troughton turns up in the second episode, as another of the Scarlet Pimpernel's friends, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.

At the end of the first episode, Sir Percy kisses the girl he's rescued.  Since he worshipped the ground his wife Marguerite walked on in the books, I don't think he would have done that if she'd been around for the TV series, so I can only conclude that Sir Percy is single for the moment.

Darth Vader is Dead

 RIP Dave Prowse, Sith Lord and Green Cross Man.

Here he is rehearsing the light saber battle with Obi Wan Kenobi (and I think it's delightful that Alec Guinness is wearing slippers here!):

Destruction at Stonehenge

 I'm disappointed in the headlines from the Observer today:

"Druids face defeat as bulldozers get set for Stonehenge bypass: Ancient artefacts will be lost when tunnel for A303 is built near site, campaigners claim."

First of all, it isn't just druids who have been opposing the proposed tunnel for the A303.  It's archaeologists.  Professor Mike Parker Pearson is a member of Highways England's independent A303 scientific committee, and he has been vocal with his opposition to the scheme on archaeological grounds for years.  He's an expert on the landscape surrounding Stonehenge, where he's been working for many years, and the new bypass will cut a swathe of destruction through that landscape.  He likens the destruction to burning ancient manuscripts - once gone, all the information that could have been gleaned from the area destroyed by the road building is gone forever.

In June this year, a giant Neolithic structure was discovered nearly 2 miles from Stonehenge, close to Amesbury.  It was previously unknown, and consists of a series of huge shafts, each more than 5m deep and 20m across.  They had previously been dismissed as natural features or dew ponds.  The circle of shafts is centred on Durrington Walls, one of England's largest henge monuments - and all of this is part of the same prehistoric landscape that includes Stonehenge.  They are not individual sites - they are part of a greater whole.

Another opponent of the tunnel scheme is the Chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, Andy Rhind-Tutt.  

The Unesco World Heritage Committee, which designated Stonehenge (and the surrounding area) a World Heritage Site, also oppose the scheme.  They are concerned that the road scheme will impact adversely on the Stonehenge landscape because the tunnel is too short.

And it's not just "ancient artefacts" which will be lost - it's all the evidence of archaeology along the length of the new dual carriageway.  Professor Pearson says that the rescue archaeology (which has to take place in advance of new construction) will only be expected to retrieve 4% of the artefacts present.  He estimates half a million artefacts will be machined off without being recorded.

Disappointingly, one of the supporters of the tunnel scheme is Anna Eavis of English Heritage, who makes the point that the present road is "noisy and smelly and looks awful".  This is probably true, but the tunnel scheme is not necessarily the best way of tackling that problem.  She also claims that any archaeology which will not be preserved in situ will be recorded - which is emphatically not what Professor Pearson claims.

In the next week, the tunnel scheme may finally get approval from Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.  It may help road congestion, when it's finally finished in five or more years time, but it will harm an important part of English archaeology, and World Heritage, forever.