Month: November 2024

Happy St Edmund’s Day!

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‘Saint Who?’
‘Saint Edmund, the true patron saint of England!’
‘But isn’t St George…?’
‘Yes, I know, you’re getting confused with that foreign usurper, supposed slayer of a dragon, chosen by King Edward III (1312- 1377) to be England’s Patron Saint and protector of Life for those of the Christian faith. But, 500 years before that in the Kingdom of East Anglia…’

Young Edmund of Saxony was nominated by the dying King Offa of Anglia as the heir to his throne and was crowned King on Christmas Day 855. But it wasn’t a peaceful reign as the Anglo-Saxon Christian region was frequently attacked by invading pagans from Denmark, doing what Vikings do bringing mayhem to the region. Whilst King Edmund did his best to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict, the Danes weren’t interested and were intent on violence. In 869 in a final battle during which Edmund’s troops were defeated, he was captured and was told to renounce his Christian faith. Refusing to do so, he was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows, and still he resisted. The Danes brought an end to his stubbornness by decapitating him and throwing his head into the woods, believing that once a head is severed from a body that person can then not proceed to an afterlife.

Here the legends surrounding Edmund’s life and death begin. His followers, looking for his head, heard his voice calling ‘here, here’ and found it under the protection of a wolf. And so, his body parts were re-united and the miracles started as subsequent examination of his corpse found that his head had re-attached itself to his body with only a thin red-line as evidence of his decapitation. History is rather vague as to exactly what happened to his body although several miracles are associated with it leading to his canonisation as a Saint on its journey to London and even possibly to France. However, the preferred location for its final resting place was in the Abbey of Beodricsworthe in Suffolk, subsequently known as Bury St Edmunds. That is my very simplified retelling of the tale of St Edmund who was then recognised as the Patron Saint of England, his Saint’s Day being 20 November, the date of his death in the year 869. A much more detailed and academic account can be found in learned historian Francis Young’s book ‘Edmund. In Search of England’s Lost King’.

I agree with Young’s statement that ‘many people who do not see themselves as religious…identify strongly with regional and national patron saints’ especially ‘Edmund, the quintessentially English saint’. During my teenage years I lived close to and undertook my secondary (high school) education in Bury St Edmunds, so the town and the legend from whom it got its name was an important part of my life especially in 1969/70. My route to school involved a walk through the Abbey Gardens past the ruins of the old St Edmunds’ Benedictine Abbey founded in 1020 and one of the last to be destroyed during King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. However, what is left does today give a good impression of what this mighty edifice might have looked like originally.

A couple of months ago, my sister and I revisited the area and revived many memories of our life and schooling 50 years previously; I recreated that walk through the Abbey gateway and gardens down towards the River Lark which I had to cross to get up to my school.

Walking through it again also reminded me of a role I played during those years. In 1970, to mark the 1100th anniversary of King Edmund’s death on 20 November 969, and his martyrdom the following year, the town put on a Pageant, Edmund of Anglia. The highlight of this was a dramatization of Edmund’s coronation, resistance of the Danish invaders, capture, and execution. Using the Abbey Ruins as the backdrop, the production, written and directed by Olga Ironside-Wood, and drawing on local talent of actors, musicians, dancers, and an Alsatian dog (!) was a show by the people of East Anglia, about the people of East Anglia and for the people of East Anglia. Not quite so talented perhaps were those chosen to play the part of the Saxons and Vikings in the final battle of Bury. We teenage schoolboys from the King Edward VI Grammar School, the building of which overlooked the grounds of the Abbey, were the brave defenders. However, the Danish invaders were played by servicemen from the nearby United States Airforce base. We didn’t stand a chance as blood and gore was shed on the banks of the River Lark.

One evening the show was graced by the presence of the then current Prince of Denmark. At that time, I was participating in the Observer newspaper’s Young Reporter of the Year competition, with the pageant being my subject, and Ms Ironside-Wood had kindly arranged for me to speak to the Prince. When I asked him whether they had the story in Denmark, he replied “Yes, but our version is slightly different!” A diplomatic Dane indeed and his remarks were included in my report as I cut my teeth on my non-fiction writing activities.

The production was filmed and a 30-minute archive footage is still available to watch today, which can be viewed by clicking on the following link, opening the new tab and typing in ‘Edmund of Anglia 1970’

Work

Whilst the story of St Edmund is a mix of proven history, local myth and rumour the big question remains. Where is Edmund buried? Some believe he may, appropriately, have been buried in the former monastery’s cemetery under the site of the current tennis courts. But, unlike in the case of King Richard III in Leicester, excavation works have yet to take place find yet another of England’s lost Kings. https://wordpress.com/post/jeremyjlhill.com/1114

But should it come to pass that he is discovered and identified, it would give further weight to the campaign by the people of East Anglia to have him re-instated as England’s Patron Saint. So who would you go for? The Middle Eastern mercenary who saved a princess from the jaws of a dragon, which might be favoured by the romantics? Or, in the words of Francis Young ‘No saint in English history lends himself to secular re-invention more readily than Edmund, the King who died for his people’. Let all the English everywhere remember, your Patron Saint is St Edmund the Martyr; honour him on the 20th November. Your flag is not the Red Cross but the White Dragon, well known to Alfred the Great, Knut the Great and King Harold the Second.

I know who gets my vote.

And I shall probably mark my hero’s day while listening to the 2015 song ‘Barbarian’ by Suffolk rock band The Darkness in which he gets a mention:

https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=the+darkness+barbarian&type=E210GB739G0#id=1&vid=b217ec85635434841d1c9efd3b7294de&action=click

WARNING:-GRAPHIC AND VERY LOUD

HAPPY ST EDMUND’S DAY to you all!

From or To?

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Welland Park, Market Harborough, England
Shinjuku Park, Tokyo, Japan

Two weeks ago, I travelled back TO Tokyo from England where I had spent a very pleasant six months with family and friends whilst living in my home in Market Harborough, Leicestershire. One of the features of life in England that I have noticed on resuming permanent residence following many years of working and living overseas living is by how much society and local communities rely on volunteers both for services such as the community theatre and cinema, physical activities such as Park Run and the Ramblers, cultural activities such as music groups like choirs bands and choral groups, the Harborough Writers’ Hub of which I’m now a member, and of course the numerous charity shops which now dominate our High Streets.
In order to both contribute to as well as to get to know more about my new home town, last year I volunteered to help out at the Oxfam Bookshop which is well-stocked with second-hand (or ‘pre-loved’ as they’re now known) books, CDs, records and other items donated by members of the public for re-sale with proceeds going to support the work of Oxfam (a global organisation that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice). In fact today, 5 November, happens to be International Volunteer Managers Day when we recognise the work done by our Managers and Deputy Managers in the retail outlets.

Obviously part-time staff such as myself do not receive any recompense for services but, in true English tradition, are entitled to tea and biscuits during our breaks! The shop’s kitchen has accumulated a supply of mugs over the years, and it was by coincidence and very appropriate that I should be allocated the following mug promoting an old penguin book a copy of which I have since tracked down and read although it wasn’t the Penguin edition.

And as one of my Oxfam colleagues commented, it seemed as if it were the book that I was meant to write. However, it wasn’t written by a 21st century retired member of the British Embassy in Tokyo, but by a gentleman appointed in 1938, by the Japanese Embassy in London to work as an adviser to the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokyo as well as doing some English language lecturing in Tokyo Universities. But, one of my final freelance pre-Covid jobs was teaching diplomatic English to the staff of the Japanese Foreign Office, so some cross-over.

Many of John Morris’ first experiences of Japan and its society in 1938 namely bureaucracy; attitudes and resistance towards learning and speaking English; rules and regulations; restaurants and food, were like mine when I first worked in Japan 41 years later in 1979. Given the timing of his stay with Japan’s dramatic entry into the Second World War his departure from Tokyo for England in 1941 was much earlier than he had expected and sadly he never returned. So, I feel a great affinity for John Morris; I am privileged to be able to come back regularly TO Tokyo to continue my own experiences, and to write about them, including the links I’m able to discover between my two homes despite the distance between them.

My last full weekend was no exception with another pleasant evening at the Market Harborough cinema to see Kensuke’s Kingdom an animated film based on a children’s book by Michael Murpogo which tells the story of a boy called Michael, who, whilst on a family sailing trip around the world was swept overboard in a storm and ends up on a small island in the Pacific which is inhabited by Kensuke, an elderly Japanese, himself a survivor of a Japanese battleship sunk during the Pacific War. Despite their age differences and linguistic challenges they become good friends until Michael is eventually rescued and they bid each other a fond, and tearful ‘sayonara’. In English but with Kensuke’s few words of Japanese voiced by well-known actor Ken Watanabe.

The following day, Japan was once again on the programme when I attended, for the first time, a concert given by the Market Harborough Orchestra, another community project, established in 2012 and now under the enthusiastic and talented baton of conductor Stephen Bell. The first piece they played was the Japanese Suite by British composer Gustav Holst who wrote it in 1915 at the request of a Japanese dancer, Michio Ito, who whistled some traditional Japanese tunes to Holst as he wrote the piece – and she must have been as good a whistler as she was a dancer as they are recognisable to those familiar with Japanese tunes.

And so the time had arrived for me to bid a fond, and tearful sayonara to England’s Green and Pleasant Land to come back to the Land of the Rising Sun, marking departure FROM London via Paddington Station, and return TO Tokyo with traditional gastronomic delights which did not include, much to Paddington’s disappointment, any marmalade sandwiches.

Pie and Mash at the ‘Mad Bishop and Bear’, Paddington Station
That looks good
But I know what I like
‘Tadaima’, I have come back for vegetable ramen in Hatsudai, Tokyo