There’s an interesting feature in today’s Independent on Sunday Review on the secret resurgence of Morris dancing!
You can read “Hey nonny no, no, no: Goths and pagans are reinventing morris dancing” by Cole Moreton here. Photographs are by Tom Pilston. The article also features the Long Men Morris who I photographed on May 1st – see my blog entry below.Â
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It seems that the PR company charged with promoting the new edition of the Rough Guide to England have been peddling the headline grabbing quote “The English are overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts.†It’s certainly been successful given the amount of news coverage it’s got in the past 48 hours.
Apparently the Rough Guide accuses the English of being quarrelsome, contradictory and “obsessed with toffs and C-list celebritiesâ€Â and labelling English people as “insular, self-important and irritating”. It goes on to say that political debate on issues such as immigration, Islamic terrorism and street crime is “served up with liberal dollops of celebrity chit-chat. Even the world’s most remote communities are on first-name terms with its princes, footballers and pop stars.”
However, the guide also pays the country some veiled compliments. For example, England is “a country of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilisation, like Radio 4, are jealously protectedâ€. They conclude that “Of the 200-plus destinations across the world that Rough Guides covers, there is none so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse, yet as insular, self-important and irritating, as England.â€
According to The Independent, the guide offers some less-than-complimentary opinions on some of the country’s towns and cities. It describes Blackpool, arguably one of Britain’s premiere seaside resorts, as “shamelessly brash”. Derby is “unexciting”, Plymouth is “bland” and, as for the English Riviera, Torquay, “St Tropez it ain’t” is The Rough Guide’s unforgiving verdict.
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Given current suspicion towards travel guide writers, I wonder if those involved in writing this edition actually visited England!
It’s certainly got some local people riled. Here are some comments in the Gloucestershire Echo. I’ll let you know if I agree as we’re off to Gloucestershire later this week.
I’ve just started reading H.V.Morton’s classic travel book In Search of England, an enduring account of Morton’s ramblings through the English countryside in the early days of the motorcar which was first published in 1927. Like Morton, we’ve begun our journey heading West from London.Â
This past week has seen us travelling through Berkshire and Wiltshire. We’re currently in the historic Roman town of Cirencester having just photographed the Swindon Kite Festival in Lydiard Park (somewhat spoiled by a distinct lack of wind!) and Cheltenham vs Eton at Cirencester Polo Club.
“It is afternoon. It has stopped raining, and the sun has come out; so has the entire country. Those lonely mansions set upon a hill, or lying snug in woods, which six days out of seven appear dead, prove to be inhabited by colonels, majors, Sir Alfred This and Lord That. It is a startling coming-to-life. The recently desolate roads are alive with limousines- luncheon baskets on top, the girls inside, and the major driving.”
This passage, where Morton visits a Point-to-Point hunt near Beaulieu, could easily be used to describe the scene I found today at Cirencester Polo Club. The match was held in the grounds of Lord and Lady Bathurst’s estate (which has been in the family since 1695 when it was purchased by Sir Benjamin Bathurst). I was given permission to attend and photograph the event by Major Nicholas Musgrave, Chairman of the polo club (and whose daughter, Arabella, was Prince William’s first girlfriend, whom he dated before university), on the proviso that I was “legit and had no intention of doing a hatchet jobâ€.
The polo was taken very seriously and the skill of the young riders was obvious even to a novice. It was slightly embarrassing having to park our motorhome next to an Aston Martin DB7 and we certainly hadn’t brought our Fortnum and Mason hamper, which seemed to be de rigor.
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Only a few hours earlier we had been in the grounds of Lydiard Park in Swindon. People were gathered there in much the same way as they congregated at the polo match: arriving in their cars with friends, bringing food and drink, wearing their preferred summer clothes. Sartorial codes differed however: in Swindon, the males were topless, tattooed and wearing shorts, in Cirencester, the favoured look was blue shirts and khaki slacks. One group played polo, the other played football; one group drank lager, the other praised the quality of the champagne. This is England’s class system at its most pointed, but it also demonstrates that whatever differences class and money might make, people still inhabit and utilise their immediate environments in much the same way. Our rituals, pastimes and mode of discourse are, in some senses, quite uniform as we respond to the call of a sunny day and the freedom of green, open spaces.
By the way, I wonder which mode of transport Morton would have opted for if he was making his journey around England today- Talbot Swift motorhome or Aston Martin DB7?
Arthur Aughey reviews Real England: The Battle Against the Bland by Paul Kingsnorth over on Open Democracy.
“The bulk of Paul Kingsnorth’s book is a cry for his beloved country, an England becoming ever more inauthentic (I suppose this is the correct term) because of the relentless pursuit of growth. As the ‘globalised, placeless world spreads’ and ‘the spreading plastic of the consumer machine’ grinds with homogenizing force, the people of England are being turned into ‘citizens of nowhere’.
His book tracks the struggles of those ‘fighting the cause of the real England’ – from the struggle to keep up the traditions of ‘real ale’ in the ‘traditional English pub’ (and not in the traditional English pub, which like traditional fish and chips, can often mean a corporate simulacrum) to the fight to maintain the amazing variety of English apples against the drab uniformity of Fuji and Golden Delicious, neither of which are indigenous to the country.”
Read the whole review here.
I’ve just read Jeremy Paxman’s book The English: A Portrait of a People.
I particularly liked his assessment that while the French Revolution invented the Citizen, the English creation is the Game. Under the heading ‘The Ideal Englishman’ Paxman writes-
“Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a game of soccer at Rugby School. Tennis was redeveloped by the Marylebone Cricket Club and the first of the world-famous Wimbledon tournaments was held in 1877. Englishmen set the standard distances for running, swimming and rowing competitions and developed the first modern horse-races. Contemporary hockey dates from the codification of rules by the Hockey Association in 1886, competitive swimming from the formation of the English Amateur Swimming Association in 1869, modern mountaineering can be dates from the 1854 attempt on the Wetterhorn by Sir Alfred Wills. The English invented goalposts, racing boats and stopwatches and were the first to breed modern racehorses. Even when they imported sports from abroad, like polo or skiing, the English laid down the rules. The first padded boxing glove was worn by the English prize-fighter Jack Broughton in the mid-eighteenth century, the Marquess of Queensbury codification of the rules of boxing followed over a century later. The list goes on.”
 
Well it looks like I’m in good company. One of my early influences and fellow British photographer, Tom Stoddart, is working on a series calledThis England which, in his own words, is “a photographic journey, to create images which show the full diversity of life here – the energy, the humour and the variety of faces and places that combine to make England what it is today. The images will be a mix of documentary-style photographs and simple portraits. They will be used in different ways: including a high quality book, a travelling exhibition, in magazines and on the worldwide web. ‘This England’ will be enlightening and informative for those who see the pictures – and I hope it will also give pleasure to the people who are kind enough to allow me to photograph them.”
I wish Tom well and look forward to passing him on the road this summer.
This Bank Holiday weekend saw us head West from Brighton taking in West Wittering Beach, the Wickerman Festival at the Beltain Ancient Farm, Lawnmower Racing in Billingshurst and the Midhurst Carnival at Cowdray Ruins.
Here are a couple of images from our first few days on the road.Â
Day 1 – Base camp at Scotts Farm campsite in East Wittering
Day 2 – Â The Wickerman ready to burn at Beltane Ancient Farm
Day 3 – And grown men lawnmower racing in Billingshurst
I’ve long been fascinated by the tradition of the road trip in photography, partly thanks to the work of some of my early photographic influences notably Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld and of course Stephen Shore. All have employed extended journeys as an avenue for exploring America’s cultural landscape. Interestingly, Shore is just about to publish a new book with Phaidon aptly titled Stephen Shore: A Road Trip Journal
Similarly many writers and artists have also made extensive journeys to produce work, from H.V. Morton’s In Search of England and JB Priestley’s English Journey to Daniel Defoe’s Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain and Patrick Keiller’s film Robinson in Space. In his diaries, J.M.W. Turner talks about extended summer trips around England, where he’d take time to visit his patrons and undertake new commissions. He worked in areas that attracted well-to-do summer tourists and their families, sketching scenes they might like to remember and admire again in watercolours.
Here’s an article from the New York Times in 2004 called Travels With Walker, Robert and Andy about the ”on the road” tradition in photography.
You can now listen to a podcast of my talk ‘rePresenting Russia’, which I delivered at the National Media Museum last week, online here. The talk was part of the Museum’s ‘Dramatic Reality: Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Today’ symposium day. You can hear all the talks and subscribe to the museum’s podcast here.
We’re off. A day later than planned, but when you’re also packing with a two-and-a-half year old in tow, things take a little longer. As with any new venture, we’re starting with a feeling of both elation and trepidation. But hey, if we can survive a year in Russia, then what’s a few months around England!
And somewhat surreally we’ve just been waved off by the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men who turned up to perform on the street outside our local pub, The Eclipse.
The Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men are an all-male side Cotswold and North West (clog) side based just to the north of Brighton. Named after the Chanctonbury Ring (a hill fort based ring of trees on top of the South Downs), they were formed in Shoreham in 1953 and elected to the Morris Ring in 1955.
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me on the blog to see how we get on this summer.
