Our third day in London had a royal theme. It began at the Horse Guards, historic home of the British Army command, where we posed with the mounted guards and admired the beauty of the striking dark Irish Cobs. Tucked inside the Horse Guards, right off the Parade, is the Household Cavalry Museum, which I highly recommend; we went the moment it opened and there was a friendly soldier inside all decked out in his handsome uniform, who was free to answer questions until the Changing of the Guard. The Household Cavalry consists of the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals, who have maintained the tradition of protecting the monarch since 1661 and also see active service abroad. The museum presents information about their history, training, and honours, as well as offering a glimpse inside the stables, where you can see the tall horses and soldiers preparing for duty. Watching the Changing of the Guard there at 11.00 was said to be a more enjoyable experience than going up to Buckingham Palace and craning over people’s heads. One could get closer to the action, certainly, and take great pictures!

After the Changing on the Parade, which takes about 30 minutes, I went back into the museum to check out the historical displays; they had one dedicated to Waterloo, of course, and inside was the Earl of Uxbridge’s fake leg, as well as a tail from a horse who saw action that day, a saddle, and many swords, including a dress sword of Wellington’s. But Paget’s leg was definitely the highlight! One could also try on some sample gear, such as the helmet, cuirass, and gloves for a photo next to a fake horse, which afforded many laughs for my mother and me.

Me outside the Old Admiralty.

After the Horse Guards, we wandered around the parks a bit before going to Royalty HQ, Buckingham Palace. We had tickets for the “Royal Day Out” which gives one access to the Queen’s Gallery, the Royal Mews, and the Palace. The main exhibit at the Queen’s Gallery was a collection of Dutch landscapes; as they all look the same to me and I have very little appreciation for fine paintings other than those of famous people, I did not so much as take a peek inside before going to a smaller exhibit on pieces of art in the Royal Collection from the Regency, in honour of the 200th Anniversary. This was more like it; there were snuff boxes belonging to Prinny, old books, decorative fans, portraits of George III’s family, and exquisite pieces of furniture that once graced the rooms of Prinny’s palace, Carlton House. If I could bring back a building (besides Wellington’s childhood home, Dangan Castle), it would be that grand residence, a testament to Regency taste and splendour.

The fabulous 1762 Gold State Coach. Gaudy, but old enough to get away with it.

The Royal Mews features the collection of state coaches (and one car) used for royal events and transportation. The highlight is of course the brilliant coach above, but inside the John Nash’s tasteful stables is also the carriage used in the recent wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. We did get to see a couple horses who clearly have a pretty sweet life — did you know the Queen names each and every one herself? She also talent-scouts, apparently offering horses that strike her fancy a position when she comes across them.

If you tilt the camera up enough, you miss all the unsightly white tents and tourists, and can imagine the place in all its historic grandeur.

Without a doubt, Buckingham Palace is the most extraordinarily grand place I have ever been. Words do not do it justice; as a Monarchist, Anglophile, and history major, the place was an absolute dream. Every room was as beautiful as the next and if I was not so intent on channelling a stiff upper lip, I might have shed a tear or two. Because I am a sap for things like this. It is almost just as well that photos are not allowed inside, because no single shot could capture a room in all its glory; it is an experience, even shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists. My favourite room was the immense ballroom; oh to be a royal or someone important and be able to dance there! The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress was on display there when I visited. The Palace was definitely one of the top three highlights of the trip for me, besides Apsley House and The Lion King (yes, I am a 90′s Disney child still).

With our backs and feet screaming in protest, we did not end there, but walked to the emporium of London’s fine shopping, Harrod’s. The place was unbearably crowded and the only thing that interested me was the food hall, but I am glad to have checked it off the list. After that, we finally kicked up our heels on the Tube and went back to Covent Garden, royally-tired.

Good news! After two years of waiting, the soundtrack to the 2009 ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley is finally available for purchase on iTunes! It is gorgeous stuff, with its enchanting yet dangerous strings, and so perfect for paper writing.

Also, remember all that speculation about a new Hollywood adaptation of WH? Well, it’s official and ready for release in the UK on 11 November this year. Sorry friends in America, no word on when it will be crossing the pond. Here’s the trailer though, to give you a taste; it looks like it might outdo the last version in rawness and grittiness — I do pray, though, that the shack at the end is not Wuthering Heights.

My darling mother and I stayed at a hotel in Covent Garden called One Aldwych; of their wonderful service, perfect location, and overall niceness I cannot say enough. My mother travels weekly for business and seen her fair share of fine hotels, and she said unconditionally that her stay here was unparalleled, a verdict with which I readily agree.

The view from our hotel room!

This was my first international flight and I must say I am not eager to repeat the experience. I did not even have the pleasure of sitting next to a charming Scot man like my mother up in first class. Such is life. We arrived at Gatwick around 7.30 am and began lugging everything through the airport trying to find the train. My most notorious piece of luggage, a massive black trunk which has become known as “The Coffin,” was proving especially difficult for me to manage. Finding myself at the top of a long flight of stairs to the train tracks with no lift in sight and fully ready to stomp my feet like a child in frustration, along comes a perfect English gentleman. “Need a hand, love?”

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

While I am ready to grovel at his feet and begin an effusive oh-my-goodness-thank-you-thank-you! blubbering, without another word he heaves up The Coffin and carries it down the many stairs for me, only putting it down after I repeatedly entreat him to do so before he breaks his back. It didn’t matter that I was sleep-deprived, starving, and in need of a shower: I was just called “love.”

Upon reaching Victoria Station, I was accosted by more British charm; Mama hands the cab driver her credit card, and he says “Lovely, cheers.” It’s the little things, you know? Really, they should not have been allowed to be so endearingly British within the first hour of my arrival on their island, because now I will do anything for them if they just say “Please, love.”

The first place we visited was the Palace of Westminster, a.k.a. the Houses of Parliament. It was imperative we went on our first day, Saturdays being the only day that non-UK visitors are allowed inside. I had purchased our tickets in advance, and though we missed our original 9.30 tour time, the officials were gracious about letting us in for a tour anyway, and I am glad they did. What an impressive building! Even if it isn’t terribly old by British standards, it’s gorgeous inside; naturally, the two massive friezes facing each other in the Lords’ common room of the meeting of Wellington and Blücher at La Belle Alliance after Waterloo and the Wounding of Nelson at Trafalgar especially appealed to me. The tour is quite long (75 minutes) without many opportunities to sit, but for inside information, clarity, and thoroughness it cannot be beat. I highly recommend it.

The remainder of our first day was spent convalescing. My first meal in England, my first meal in almost 24 hours in fact, was hearty Irish stew somewhere around Trafalgar Square, which I wolfed down. We hit the sack around 7 pm and woke 12 hours later, which I considered a success in terms of conquering jet lag. The second day was definitely my favourite of our days spent in London, and they were all amazing days; Sunday, however, I visited the home of my hero.

Welcome to No. 1, London.

Oh, Apsley House, I could have spent days inside your historic walls — if only they could talk! The portraits, the swords, the busts, the trophies, the furniture that once coddled the bum of a man I admire above all others: I dearly wanted to ask one of the roaming guards for his job. I do have one complaint: the gift shop was sorely short of Wellington memorabilia. I was prepared to open my purse as far as it would go for anything sporting the Duke’s face, name, house, etc. But there was surprisingly little of it to be had. Come on, English Heritage, were I in charge, this would be remedied pronto. I am hoping to return in the next few weeks to attend some lectures; perhaps they will have acquired more goodies for this fan girl’s heart.

After 3 hours, my darling mother declaring she was bored to tears — blasphemy! — we moved on to Westminster Abbey for Evensong, another unmissable experience. I had never attended an Anglican service before, and this was beautiful. For the hour or so that it lasted, I couldn’t keep my eyes from wandering upwards, which I suppose is very much the point. Actually, when I did scan the floor, I noticed that my chair was resting on a large plague marking the burial place of William Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister during Victoria’s reign. No big deal. I am just resting my feet on the grave of one of the most prominent Victorian minsters. That’s the sort of thing I love about this country: history shoved into every little nook and cranny; it’s inescapable to the point that they are quite comfortable placing plastic chairs all over it.

Did you know that the Duke is the only historical figure, royal or common, to have three outdoor statues dedicated to him in London? This one stands guard over Apsley House.

Anyway, Evensong in England’s most famous cathedral, where every monarch since William the Conquerer has been crowned, was awe-inspiring. If you visit the Abbey for a service, it’s obviously free, but you can’t wander around or shuffle about on your way out. It’s very streamlined, though we did catch a glimpse of St. Edward’s Chair ensconced behind glass as we left. We then walked from Westminster to that fashionable “parallelogram between Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street and Hyde Park” which, according to one 1803 observer, “encloses more intelligence and human ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world has ever collected in such a space before”: Mayfair.

I did not spend nearly as much time in this “fashionable parallelogram” as I would have liked, for a couple reasons; firstly, our hotel was not exactly nearby, being situated rather in the middle between Mayfair and the City, which though perfect for our tourist purposes, meant we usually were not meandering around in that area. Secondly, besides Tea at Brown’s that called us there on Sunday, nothing else on our itinerary took us there. Thirdly, after witnessing her disinterest in Parliament and boredom at Apsley House, I quickly crossed off “Regency Walk through Mayfair with Mother” from our list of things to do. Her reluctant viewing of Vanity Fair and reading of Pride & Prejudice would be all the education she was going to get on my favourite era. We did walk through St James’s Square on our way to tea, that little space that has seen so much history, from the arrival of Wellington’s ADC alerting the Prince Regent to the news of Waterloo, to Princess Caroline’s daily walk from her house there to Parliament to defend her (scandalous) conduct during “The Queen’s Trial,” to Eisenhower’s planning of the invasion of Normandy. It was gorgeous, and, judging by the Bentleys, Rolls Royces, BMWs, and Ferraris parked along the sidewalks, still as full of money now as it was in 1811. I hope to return to Mayfair at some point during this trip to do some exploring and daydreaming about days of carriages and cravats gone by.

Another first this day was Afternoon Tea; I had enjoyed the event twice before in my childhood, once in New York and once in Chicago, at ritzy hotels that I can no longer remember, but this would be my first genuine British tea experience. Brown’s Hotel was founded in 1837 by Lord Byron’s valet and quickly became one of the prime hotels in London, especially for Americans. Teddy Roosevelt was stayed here before getting married at St George’s Church in Hanover Square, and his relations Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt honeymooned here. My mother had wanted “top notch tea” so I

Inside was a treasure trove of Wellingtonia and their fish & chips were excellent.

followed orders and booked us here, after reading good reviews and confirming that the prices were indeed steep. Brown’s did not disappoint. We were served a variety of finger sandwiches, each one better than the next, scones and clotted cream (my favourite English food, I’ve decided), little pastries and cake; oh, and tea of course. I ordered Brown’s Afternoon Blend, and discovered, having been certain I would never find a tea I liked, that I’d simply been doing it all wrong. With enough milk and sugar, that cup of tea was divine. It was a most pleasant atmosphere and Mama asked enough history questions to keep me rambling for nearly two hours about everything from 1066, to Irish colonisation, to George III and America, to the lax sexual mores of the Georgians. We covered a lot of ground.

After moseying about Leicester Square and Piccadilly on our way back to Covent Garden, we stopped in at the pub across from our hotel. I think it highly appropriate that I bought my first drink at “The Wellington”… and promptly handed it to my mother!

The Princess was apparently eager to get involved in the film about her great-great-great-great-grandmother, and in an article by the Daily Mail she says her favorite part was, understandably, getting into costume, which you can see more fully in photos here.

Above is the Union Flag of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as we know it today. It was adopted 1 January 1801 following the Act of Union 1800, upon which the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland became formally merged. Ireland had been a sort of backwater colony of England’s for ages, famous for its absentee landlords who owned vast swaths of land in Ireland but spent the revenues from rents and agriculture in England, draining money from the island and keeping infrastructure to the bare minimum — with disastrous results in the famine of the 1840s. The Act of Union was part of a fearful reaction to the American and French Revolutions by the English, who worried the largely Roman Catholic population would ally itself (and/or force the exclusively Anglican Irish Parliament to do the same) to France and welcome invasion, from which point the French could conveniently launch an attack upon Great Britain. Today, St. Patrick’s Cross by itself is associated with Northern Ireland, as asking the whole of Ireland to agree on a flag for the entire island would be futile indeed.

Before the 1800 union, Great Britain’s flag looked like this:

This flag, the Union Flag of Great Britain, lacks the St. Patrick’s Cross of Ireland, and was official between 1606 and 1801, following the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and Ireland in 1603. This was merely an imperial union made when James VI of Scotland became James I of England, striking the dynastic jackpot by being the only available descendant of Henry VII free to take the English throne after Elizabeth I’s death (the official union of the two parliaments came a century later under Queen Anne in the Acts of Union 1707). In a royal decree, James called for a new flag to represent this union, incorporating the St. George’s Cross of England with the St. Andrew’s Cross of Scotland.

Keep your eyes peeled for British flags in movies and see if the filmmakers did their homework or goofed up. That paragon of accuracy, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, for instance, features the modern Union Jack throughout, when they should be flying the 1606 flag; the Stuart-era film Restoration is positively bipolar when it comes to its attention to historical details, but in one of its finer moments, it accurately displays a miniature 1606 flag in a mere passing shot.

In the 2009 film Bright Star, we find the poet John Keats sharing a house with not only with the Brawne family, but also a Scottish writer named Mr. Brown, played by Paul Schneider. Who was this Mr. Brown? The question had been bothering me ever since I saw the movie, so I decided to get some answers.

Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) was actually behind the building of Wentworth Place in Hampstead, the house he shared with Keats and Fanny, now known as Keats House. After spending four years nearly bankrupt following the unwise investment of some £20,000 in capital earned through business deals in Russia with his brother John, Brown received a nice sum of £3000 upon the death of another brother, James, whose company Brown had been serving as the London representative. This sum, along with an estate in Lambeth that provided regular income, allowed Brown to abandon his merchant life and live rather comfortably, devoting himself to writing; his comic opera, Narenskey, or, The Road to Yaroslaf, was actually performed on Drury Lane in 1814, earning him more money. He partnered with an old school friend, Charles Wentworth Dilke, to build a Wentworth Place; Dilke and his family occupied the larger, western side of the house, though I have not been able to find when precisely they moved out and the Brawnes moved in; in the film, Mr & Mrs Dilke, played by Gerard Monaco and Claudie Blakley, are present and living the house for some time before Fanny announces excitedly to Keats that “The Dilkes are moving to Westminster and we get six months half rent!” In the movie, much is made about the Fanny’s fairy princess on the wall in Keats’ room, which she says she drew there while her family was renting out Brown’s side during his tour with Keats to Scotland.

John Keats joined Brown on the eastern side in 1818, after the death of his brother Tom, which is seen in the film. Keats had been living in Hampstead for some time (as had Fanny), and once they were introduced to each other, he and Brown apparently became close friends, Brown helping to support the orphaned young writer; during the 17 months they lived together, Brown and Keats completed a walking tour of the north and worked together on a play titled Otho the Great — perhaps this is what the two are working on in the film, when Keats complains “All we do is lie about the room all day, begging for inspiration.” Brown likely encouraged Keats, whose genius he probably recognized, since he took the trouble to transcribe many of Keats’s poems and published the manuscripts Keats left after his death, even when facing legal action not to do so.

Though Keats claimed Brown was “always one’s friend in a disaster” (qtd. in Brown), they did have one major quarrel over Fanny, whom Brown thought to be ’”superficial and vain’ and ‘flirtatious’ with ‘every man she met’” (qtd. in Bennett), while Brown was described as “a convivial, corpulent, bearded, balding gentleman of property and leisure, an epicure, and something of a ladies’ man” (qtd. in White). Perhaps Fanny’s biting tongue attracted Brown, who probably couldn’t resist a good challenge, yet who was ultimately frustrated by her uninterest; or, more likely, Brown misread Fanny and wanted to protect his friend from becoming seriously entangled. This emotionally-charged triangle is evident from the start in the film, but explodes when Brown sends a supposedly jesting valentine “to amuse Fanny, who makes a religion of flirting. [...] It’s a game. It’s a game to her. She collects suitors…” Keats does not find this funny, nor does Fanny appreciate how Brown has pained Keats, who is acutely aware of his straightened circumstances and unsuitability as a husband.

Charles Brown did have a son by his Irish housekeeper Abigail Donhaugh in 1820, but it whether they were officially married is not certain; their child, Charles “Carlino” Brown certainly claimed they were, but he became a politician in New Zealand we know how well a politician can whitewash a dubious past. The relationship was predictably not a success, and by 1822 the couple was separated permanently.

During Keats’s first bouts of ill health, Brown assiduously cared for him and managed his debts, though come summer of 1820, Brown let his house and went to Scotland as was his annual custom, and set up Keats in Kentish Town. One biographer claims, “It seems clear that Brown underestimated the seriousness of Keats’s illness, thinking it imaginary in nature and exacerbated by hostile reviews, a view which Keats’s own doctors encouraged” (ODNB). Brown was away when Keats left with Joseph Severn for Italy, where on 23 February 1821 he died of tuberculosis, or “Snuffed out by an article,” as Byron claimed.

After Keats’s death, Brown sold his half of Wentworth Place and moved to Italy with his son, where he socialized with many Romantic writers who were disenchanted with England. There, he secured a headstone for Keats’s grave in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, complying with Keats request that his name not be on the stone, but engraved only with “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water,” a melancholy tribute to himself Keats wrote in light of harsh criticisms of his work; Brown and Severn, naturally, did not appreciate the press’s treatment of their friend and added

This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone

Brown continued to be involved with Keats’s memory long after the poet’s death, graciously supplying biographers with information, writing a biography of Keats himself in 1837, and (not so graciously) blackening the name of George Keats, whom Brown believed had shortchanged his poor brother. He continued to write and published a book on Shakespeare’s sonnets before moving in 1841 to New Zealand, where his business and personal endeavors fared poorly. He died of a stroke a year later and was buried in an unmarked grave according to his wishes; in 1921, a hundred years after his young friend’s death, Brown’s grave was moved and simply marked with “Charles Armitage Brown. The Friend of Keats.”

A biographer of Joseph Severn writing in 1892 had this to say about Charles Armitage Brown:

[....] he was at once a shrewd man of the wold and an impulsive enthusiast, loyal and unselfish in his affections, bitter and often unreasonable in his dislikes, at all times ready to resent an affront, real or imaginary, or to smoke the pipe of peace whether as forgiver or as the forgiven. But with all his hot head and warm heart he was an excellent counsellor for others [....]. Everyone who knew him delighted in his company (Sharp vii; ix).

I think this description bears out well in Bright Star. Paul Schneider’s Charles Brown enlivens every scene in which he appears, if he and Fanny are always at loggerheads, both perhaps irritating each other’s pride. He clearly cares for his young friend and if he comes across as meddlesome, I think it a consequence of his devotion to Keats’s well-being. My heart always aches when Schneider loses it in front of Fanny and admits “I failed him! I failed him! I did not know until now how tightly he’d wound himself around my heart.” For a man of good sense, the knowledge that he had attributed a fatal illness in a close friend to sensibility — that for all his support he had ultimately failed Keats by not being there when it mattered most — must have been painful. It was perhaps not in his nature to show it, but that does not make the anguish any less real. That he was a complex individual cannot be doubted.

————–

Sources:

Bennett, Andrew. “Brawne , Frances [Fanny] (1800–1865).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP. 21 Aug 2011 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy-remote.galib.uga.edu/view/article/47474>.

“History of the House.” Keats House. City of London Corporation. 21 Aug 2011 <http://www.keatshouse.cityoflondon.gov.uk/229/History-of-the-house.html>.

Sharp, William. Preface. The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn. By Sharp. London, 1892. Web. Google Books. 21 Aug 2011.

White, R. S.. “Brown, Charles Armitage (1787–1842).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Onlin. ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP. 21 Aug 2011 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy-remote.galib.uga.edu/view/article/3600>.

In the 2008 biopic The Duchess, however, “Georgiana” receives a different pronunciation altogether, just as lovely as the ones in P & P: “George-aina.” This was not mere director’s preference, but historical fact. During her childhood, her name would have been pronounced like Georgiana Darcy’s; the alteration owes itself to the social sphere into which Georgiana Spencer married when she became the Duchess of Devonshire. According to her foremost biographer, Amanda Foreman, when Georgiana became part of the Cavendish Family, she found herself immersed in a controlling and politically dominant family who considered their personal and often bizarre manner of doing things to be a mark of exclusivity; they behaved a certain way, bribed a certain way, voted a certain way, and spoke a certain way. This latter quirk resulted in the “Cavendish drawl” which pronounced Georgiana’s name as “George-aina,” and Georgiana, concerned to fit into her new family, affected her speech in the same manner and became “George-ayna” to herself and all who knew her. Cavendish influence in the Whig Party meant that many of those who sought to ingratiate themselves with the party adopted the drawl as well, and William Lamb, later Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s beloved Prime Minister, was no different. Christopher Hibbert notes in a biography of the Queen that Melbourne’s anecdotes and Whiggish ways fascinated her and she was sure he must have been a true Whig because he pronounced “Rome as ‘room’ and gold as ‘goold’” (64) — this “oo” was endemic in Whig speech, and caricaturists often denoted Whigs by having them address each other with “Good Day to oo!”

Perhaps to avoid confusion, everyone in The Duchess pronounces Georgiana’s name the Cavendish way from the outset, even her mother (who would not have affected the drawl) and her footman.

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Sources:

Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire. New York: Random House, 1998.

Hibbert, Christopher. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000. Web. Google Books. 21 Aug 2011.

Here’s an article by a classics-loving bibliophile about the Book-versus-Nook dilemma and how some libraries are going digital. On this particular issue, I will never be swayed and will insist on toting around hefty books till the day I die, but I identified with one quote:

My husband doesn’t understand my fascination with writers like Wharton and Jane Austen, who wrote with great insight and wit about English gentility in the early 1800s. When we’re picking DVDs to rent, his plaintive request is always, “Please, nothing with carriages.”

Sounds just like my darling mother!

Wondering whatever happened to that much-anticipated Pride & Prejudice & Zombies adaptation? Me too. Apparently, they are having difficulty finding a female lead. Are these actresses really that boring? Or just brain dead?? (I suppose the pun was intended.) One would think there would be a line going out the casting director’s office for the part of Jane-Austen-heroine-cum-zombie-killer; is it not the job of every major actress to do a horror film at least once, usually with lamentable results? Why not substitute that with a horror-parody that comes with lovely locations and empire gowns? Looks like it will be at least 2012 before we see zombie hordes roaming through Netherfield.

**Update 8/24/11**

Without mentioning the casting issues, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies director, Australian Craig Gillespie, says both the script and tone of the film will be “‘incredibly true’ to Austen,” with the exception of zombies attacking carriages and Elizabeth Bennet delivering roundhouse kicks.

**Spoilers Below**

And there is very little else to say. The score and scenery are beautiful, but the story is a little bland and the ending unfulfilling. There are no villains to loathe and no one important dies; these are not standards by which to objectively judge a movie’s quality of course, but it lacks an emotional grip — the traumatic-death-of-a-parent theme is pushed too hard from the beginning, and relies mostly on fanciful dream sequences; the scene where Marcus turns in a rage upon his uncle and expresses his frustration at both his present uselessness and his belief in the unfair treatment of his father’s memory is particularly moving, however, but it is the only really remarkable emotional moment. The Eagle depicts the hardships at “the end of the known world” very well, both the untenable situation facing the Romans (who, for the most part, were portrayed as luckless average Joes who had the misfortune to be posted in the backwater of the Empire, which I think is accurate) and the consequences of Roman incursion for the native Britons. All in all, it is entertaining enough for a 2-hour film, but not one that screams for a second viewing.

Interestingly, The Eagle lacks two main things common to period dramas set in the British Isles, the first and most noticeable being British accents. In the beginning, I thought Channing Tatum was simply doing a poor job with his, but then Americans started popping up all over the place and I realized the director, or who whoever is in charge of such things, simply decided not to bother at all with the practice of making historical figures sound important and intelligent by giving them British accents; though they should probably sound more Italian than anything else, this is Britain after all and I see no reason not to have them sound cultured, unless there was no room in the budget for an accent coach. Actually, the whole movie skimps in the speech department and covers over plot holes by giving the native Britons a universal tongue in Gaelic. Nevermind the absurdity of one language being common from Caledonia to Cornwall, Gaelic is a Celtic language of Irish extraction that is part of the Q-Celtic branch, or Goidelic branch, of the 6 Celtic languages, as opposed to the P-Celtic, or Brythonic branch. The Goidelic branch became Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man), while the Brythonic branch developed into Welsh, Breton, and Cornish and was part of the first wave of Celts before the Romans. In Roman Britain, the Goidelic (Gaelic) branch was still on the peripheries in the north, while Pictish language (related to Brythonic) dominated in present-day Scotland and Brythonic dominated in present-day England and Wales. The Painted Seal People, if so far north as the movie implies, would have known about as much of the Brigantian language as Latin.

The second missing piece is a romantic subplot; the movie was nearly over before Marcus (Tatum) so much as ogled a woman, only to be knocked upside the head a moment later for daring to do so. No, this is a bromance through and through, without a single female speaking part that I can recall. A sausage fest in the damp British climate leaves little room for shirt-removal, but nevertheless the filmmakers contrived at least something for the ladies in the audience by introducing Jamie Bell’s character half-naked and attractively dirty. Channing Tatum does absolutely nothing for me, so this was especially welcome.

When two unlikely friends actually succeed in capturing the flag against far greater numbers and in far more hostile territory than a field on a college campus, it begs the question, did this actually happen? The film is actually based on a 1954 novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe titled The Eagle of the Ninth, though the opening credits make no mention of this. The Ninth Legion (Legio Nona Hispania) did disappear from archaeological and literary record in the first decades of the 2nd century, and by 170 it was no longer listed as part of the Roman army. The Ninth’s last known position was York but whether it was completely annihilated by the savage Britons in Scotland is debatable; survivors from the Ninth Legion have been found in records, which perhaps the movie tries to account for with the deserters (led by Mark Strong’s character) Marcus and Esca find living new lives as members of tribes in the wilderness. Whether it was seriously decimated in some god-forsaken glen in northern Britain, suffered from gradual desertion, or was disbanded and incorporated into other legions, the Ninth remains somewhat of a mystery and food for fiction (2010 saw another film about the supposed massacre of the Ninth, Centurion, starring Michael Fassbender and Dominic West; I watched the first 10 minutes, only to be sickened by the surfeit of phony gore). Marcus Flavius Aquila and Esca, however, are products of Ms. Sutcliffe’s imagination.

In keeping with his popular theme of Edwardian class boundaries (see also: Gosford Park), the Downton creator penned this version of the story for the 100th anniversary of the famous liner’s sinking, to be aired next April on ITV and ABC.

ITV promised that viewers will be “taken on a heart-wrenching journey through Titanic’s last hours, as the drama reveals which of the characters they have come to know so well will survive … and who does not”.

“Interweaving multi-arc action, mystery and romantic plotlines and featuring fictional and historical characters, Titanic will focus on different characters ranging from steerage passengers to upper class guests,” the broadcaster said. (The Guardian)

On the one hand, a new historical miniseries is always exciting, and there are no shortages of untold stories from the Titanic; on the other hand, I think they’ve chosen the wrong one to dramatize here. I think a film chronicling the ship’s creation and birth would be more fitting on the anniversary of her death, paradoxical though it may seem. The tragedy that unfolded in the icy waters of the North Atlantic is well-known, but what has never received big screen attention is the tragedy that occurred before the ship ever steamed away from Southampton, before she even left her berth in Belfast, and that is the tragedy of the drawing room. What doomed the Titanic was not a rogue iceberg, but the bravado of her designers and owners who dared to use the word “unsinkable.” Her sinking has been done already — with a much larger budget than ITV’s by the way — and it was a cinematic wonder; one can try to market this series as a retelling, or even a new telling of events, but either way, once you put that ship on a promo poster, you have to sink it. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn. Put cameras in the cigar rooms of major White Star Line figures or in the company’s offices as people pour over blueprints and you will have a drama that is both unprecedented and intriguing.

One commenter on the Guardian post above makes a valid point regarding the studio in Hungary:

Hmm, filming Titanic in a landlocked country? Sounds like CGI will predominate over live action!

That portends well.