Glynn Young

Dancing King Stories: Southwark, the Human-Scale Cathedral

April 2, 2018 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

When you visit London, especially for the first time or two, two great churches are on the must-see list – St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. And with good reason. Both churches are known for their soaring architecture, structural beauty, and the fact they are filled with English and British history. Right down Victoria Street form Westminster Abbey is another monumental church – the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. London is a big city with big cathedral churches.

Southwark Cathedral is another church, smaller than its more famous London relatives. But of all the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen in London and England, it may be my favorite. Size has something to do with it – it’s smaller, more human-scale, still impressive, but the human eye can take it in without being completely overwhelmed.

It’s not as well known for tourists. It’s partially location – on the South Bank near London Bridge tube and train station, it’s about a half-mile walk to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern art museum. It’s only about two blocks from the London Bridge Experience, whose replicated blood and gore I’ve so far managed to miss. The cathedral is also adjacent (about as adjacent as you can get) to the Borough Market, full of produce, stands, food shops, and restaurants and also the site of a terrorist attack in June of 2017 (not to be confused with the Westminster Bridge attack in March of 2017).

Southwark’s official name is “the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Saviour and St. Mary Overie,” the “overie” meaning “over the river.” A church has existed on the site since the 7^th century; archaeologists have identified the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon church there. It’s believed to have first been connected to a community of nuns, and later a community of priests. The first written reference to it is in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror’s detailed assessment of land and resources.

In 1106, the church was reestablished as a priory and followed the Rule of St. Augustine. It was then that the church was dedicated to St. Mary Over the River. A hospital was established as well, and it would eventually grow and be transferred to what is now St. Thomas Hospital near Westminster Bridge and across the Thames from Parliament. (Incorporated into St. Thomas Hospital was the old Guys Hospital near Southwark Cathedral, where the poet John Keats studied to be a doctor.)

Southwark was the staging area for pilgrimages to Canterbury, and it was in this area that Geoffrey Chaucer launched the pilgrimage made famous in The Canterbury Tales.

The order at Southwark was dissolved along with orders across England by Henry VIII in 1539, part of the English Reformation and likely inspired by Henry’s desire to get his hands on the churches’ and orders’ prodigious wealth. The building was rented to the congregation and called St. Saviour’s; in 1611, the congregation purchased the church from James I. One of the notables buried in the church is William Shakespeare’s younger brother Edmond (1607).

The church officially became “Southwark Cathedral” in 1905. Today, the Diocese of Southwark encompasses a rather large area (and includes Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury). It covers 2.5 million people and more than 300 church parishes.

Southwark Cathedral nave — This would be Michael Kent-Hughes’ view as he speaks from the pulpit

In Dancing King, Southwark Cathedral is the place where Michael Kent-Hughes begins his series of sermons at London churches, two days before Christmas Eve. The photograph here of the nave is the view Michael would have as he’s speaking to a packed church. And it is here, the next night, where almost 1,200 people will show up for a Bible study, filling the church past overflowing, beginning what will become a religious revival in the Church of England. But it will be a revival matched by intense opposition from the senior church hierarchy.

If you visit the cathedral (and it’s well worth a visit), the entry fee is a pound (a bargain compared to the big churches). You pay your fee in the gift shop, where in return you’re given a cathedral guide. You also usually warned to make sure your guide is visible when you enter the church; one of the church wardens will politely ask to see it or send you to the shop to buy one if you don’t have it. The fee doesn’t apply during church services.

Top photograph: a view of Southwark Cathedral, with one of London’s tallest office buildings, known as “The Shard,” in the background.

The Writer at Rest

March 30, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’ve invented a word: “misculturalized.” It describes being born, raised and living in one culture when you’re probably better adapted to another culture. And the culture I should have been raised in? The one that celebrates naps. Spain. Mexico. Argentina.

How could I have been born in United States, the country that hates – hates – naps? Think of everything we miss when we succumb to temptation and take a nap: getting work done; staying busy, looking like we’re staying busy; and rest.

Rest.

While I love naps, I have a hard time with the word rest. And rest from writing? Can’t happen. It’s too much of who I am. At least that’s the excuse I make. To myself.

And yet.

We’ve had several beach vacations – Gulf Shores and nearby Orange Beach, once at Virginia Beach. And Honolulu. Some with kids, some without, and once empty nest. On the empty nest beach vacation, I’d wake early each morning, walk down to the beach, rent my umbrella and chair, and sit, reading. To be honest, it was a project – the second time I had read the unabridged version of Don Quixote. And I was doing it because my high school English teacher who taught our class the novel said you should read it three times in your life – when you’re young, when you’re middle-aged, and when you’re old.

Sitting there on the beach each morning, listening to the sounds of the waves and birds, feeling the heart, smelling the salt of the gulf, I read the Cervantes classic. And it seemed like a very different book than the one I read when I was 17.

Even though I was technically doing something, it was still rest. Sitting for long stretches of time and reading, finding myself transported to Spain in the late 1500s, and tilting at windmills, was restful.

It was the kind of experience Ann Kroeker describes in On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts (co-authored with Charity Craig). She finally convinces herself to go with her kids to a family camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and she finds herself reading and resting.

“At camp,” she writes, “I sat a lot, often with a book but just as often with nothing. I sat at a picnic table. I sat in an Adirondack chair. I sat on a beach towel on the sand, on a couch in the lodge, and in a folding chair by the calm, cold water of Lake Huron.” She did go jogging one morning.

What she was doing was engaging in mental rest. We have to take time to let our minds rest and regenerate.

Our minds, like our bodies, need a Sabbath.

Photograph by Aaron Burden via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Crypt

March 26, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Trafalgar Square in London is highlighted by three landmarks – the statue of Nelson in the square itself, the National Gallery on north side, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church at the northeast corner.

At ground level, you have to look up (way up) to see Nelson atop his column. The National Gallery is huge, running the entire length of the square, including both the original building and the relatively new (and contemporary) Sainsbury Wing. St. Martin’s, however, has always seemed the most striking building, perhaps because of its steeple and its architecture, which has inspired thousands of church buildings in the United States.

St Martin-in-the-Fields — The church nave

The church is named for St. Martin, born about 316 A.D. in what is now Hungary and right when Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire by Constantine. He was originally in the Roman army but left because of his faith and settled at Poitiers in France, where he founded the first monastery in France. The monastery lasted until the French Revolution in 1789. Martin was almost kidnapped by the people of Tours to become the bishop. He refused the bishop’s lifestyle and actually lived in a cave outside Tours. He was associated with many acts of healing, including raising the dead to life. He died in 397; the day of his burial, Nov. 11, is still his feast day.

A church has existed on this spot since at least 1222, when it’s first noted in the records. As the area grew in population, an official parish was organized. By about 1544, the old church building was torn down and a new, although small, church was built in its place. In 1603, when James I became king, a considerable number of Scottish nobles settled in the Charing Cross area. The church building was too small, so James had it enlarged.

Finally, in 1720, Parliament passed an act approving the construction of a new church. The architect was James Gibbs, a friend of Sir Christopher Wren. Gibbs built the church known today. The large clear glass window, rather modern in style, behind the altar was added after World War II bombing destroyed the originally stained glass.

The church today is known for its outstanding classical music ministry, with both paid concerts inside the church and free lunchtime concerts outside in the courtyard. Below ground, in what was the church crypt, there is a restaurant, Café in the Crypt, serving lunch and dinner at generally more reasonable prices than can be found nearby (this area is close to being ground zero in London for tourists from around the world).

The café and the church are among our favorite places in London. We’ve eaten here numerous times, had our first real Victoria sponge cake here, used the crypt as a refuge from the rain, and attended concerts and lectures. St. Martin-in-the-Fields is like our home away from home. (The church also has a great shop next to the crypt, and I’ve found numerous books there.)

The church has a small reference in my second novel, A Light Shining, and then only being noted as one of the places damaged during The Violence, a jihadist uprising that happens in London and other cities in Britain. In Dancing King, Michael Kent-Hughes and his chief of staff meet with the church vicar for lunch in the crypt, and Michael commits to underwrite the rebuilding and to help with the fundraising effort. This has its origin in the historical fact that the church and the area have long been associated with Britain’s royal family (the land on which the National Gallery sits was known as the Kings Mews or stables).

If you visit London, St. Martin-in-the-Fields is a must-see, and the Victoria sponge cake in the Café in the Crypt is a must-eat.

Top photograph by Robert Cutts via Wikimedia.

Writing: Is It Themes or Is It Story?

March 23, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

In 2013, a study by three researchers at the University of Toronto suggested that people who read literary fiction are more comfortable with ambiguity, tend to avoid snap judgments and can deal better with disorder and uncertainty. Publishing in the Creativity Research Journal, the researchers found that reading fiction may help people open their minds. (You don’t have to read the entire study; a short and succinct article in Salon translates the study from the original Academic-ese.)

Business executives don’t read novels to help them make decisions. But perhaps they should read novels to help them understand the culture around them. They might make better decisions as a result.

I spent a career writing non-fiction – speeches, articles, reports, studies, and essays. And I read the business stuff I had to read – The Wall Street Journal and a multitude of business and trade publications. But I also read a considerable amount of fiction and poetry, and the understanding followed was reflected in my career work. I don’t think I could have written a lot of what I did without having read Charles Dickens, for example, or The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (as bad a novel as it was, it changed the laws governing food production).

Reading fiction and poetry also leads me to ask myself questions, like “What are you trying to say in your own fiction?”

I have three published novels and a fourth is in the works. I would be kidding myself and everyone else if I claimed to have had specific themes in mind when I started writing. What I had was the story at hand, a story that kept insisting it be told. I wasn’t thinking of grand ideas or themes; I was completely focused on telling a story, a story that often seemed to have a life of its own and characters who did things I didn’t plan on them doing.

In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Charity Craig (co-author with Ann Kroeker) says this: “We have something to say that can come only from us. Though we often find ourselves, our lives, in the pages of others, what’s missing? Where is the story, the perspective, the hope that only I can express? I can look and look for it, but I’ll never find it until I sit down and write.”

I can reread those three novels now, and I can see the themes and ideas. But they were not, and are not, intentional. But they’re there, and I didn’t really know what they were until I sat down to write:

There is nobility in the world. There are people who know, and who live, what it means to serve.

It is possible to act honorably, no matter what trials or disasters one faces.

There is evil in the world, but it will not overcome the good.

The best way to teach people about God is to live as God would have you live.

Forgiveness is a gift, a gift to give and a gift to receive.

If I had been determined to write a novel with any of themes as my purpose, I likely would have written a very bad novel.

Photograph by Luke Stackpoole via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: The Buckingham Palace Library

March 19, 2018 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

Several short scenes in Dancing King are set in what’s called the Buckingham Palace Library. Michael Kent-Hughes meets here with Josh Gittings , the man who becomes his chief of staff, the Monday after the family’s arrival in London. He tells Gittings that the volumes in the room are dusty, and he wished he had an inventory of what was in the room. Michael conducts interviews here, most notably the one with Geoffrey Venneman, one of the chief villains of the novel. Michael is using the library as a quasi-office until his own office is remodeled.

I should mention here that there is no official “royal library” in Buckingham Palace. I invented the room for the novel.

At the rear of the ground level of the palace, there is the Bow Room, a large room that arcs on the terrace side. On the official tour, you walk through this room to exit to turn in your tour head sets and find the refreshment tent. The Bow Room is officially a kind of waiting room for guests, until they’re conducted to meet with the monarch. There are rooms on either side of the Bow Room, which were originally designed to be the library. From early on, though, Victoria and Albert, the first to occupy the palace, used the two rooms and the Bow Room for other purposes.

There was a King’s Library, created by the king who reigned during the American Revolution, George III. When he came to the throne, there was nothing one could really call a library, and so he created and built one. The King’s Library, as it was called, was housed at Buckingham House, the predecessor to the palace. The library had four rooms, the largest of which was the Octagonal Library. George III also kept collections at Kew Gardens and Windsor Castle, mostly of subjects he was personally interested in and personal papers.

King's Library Gallery — The King’s Library Gallery at the British Museum

In 1823, George IV presented most of the collection of the King’s Library to the nation. For more than a century, this was housed at the British Museum near Russell Square in London, until the new British Library opened in 1997, where it is now stored. The collections at Kew and Windsor, however, were retained by the monarch.

Today, Queen Elizabeth has the Royal Archives and Royal Library at Windsor Castle. If you ever wondered what went on inside the large round turret-like building on the castle grounds, guess no more – it houses the Royal Archives, while the library is another part of the castle.

Royal Archives Windsor Castle — Where the Royal Archives are stored at Windsor Castle

While most of the royal papers, books, and archival information is at Windsor, other royal locations contain small parts of the overall collection. These include an art reference library at York House in St. James Palace, a small reference collection and materials on Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s literature collection at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, collections at Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle, and a set of Parliamentary records at the Palace of Westminster (Parliament).

In a future book in the Dancing Priest series, Michael will receive an audit and assessment of all of the royal collections and libraries and, with the help of his staff, determine what to do with them.

Top photograph: the Octagonal Library at Buckingham House.

Dancing King Stories: The Green Drawing Room

March 12, 2018 By Glynn Young 4 Comments

Before there was a Buckingham Palace, there was a Buckingham House, built by the Duke of Buckingham in the early 18^th century. George III bought it in 1761 as a residence for his wife, Queen Charlotte, and it became known as the Queen’s House. The royal family spent considerable and increasing time there, and it came to be known as the family’s London residence. The Green Drawing Room, known by that name today (or simply the “Green Room”), was originally the Duchess of Buckingham’s saloon, and was the largest room on the first floor (what Americans call the second floor) of the house.

Over the centuries, the room has been remade a number of times. For Queen Charlotte, large wall drawings were brought from Hampton Court Palace and the ceiling was painted. Later, the drawings were replaced, and the ceiling plastered. Doorways have been added and chimney mantles replaced. In the 1830s, green silk was used to decorate the walls.

Green Drawing Room Dancing King — The Green Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace.

When he was completely redesigning Buckingham House to turn it into the royal palace, John Nash kept the house structure and then added two wings. Eventually, a fourth wing was added, making the familiar “square around the central courtyard” design that’s known today.

The last time the Green Drawing was redecorated was 1949. It is one of the official state rooms that’s included on the public tour of the palace. Its walls are decorated with green and gold silk wallpaper (replaced every 30 years) and highlighted by white and gold plasterwork. The doorway at one end leads directly to the Throne Room; the Green Drawing Room, in fact, serves as an anteroom for the Throne Room.

In Dancing King, Michael Kent-Hughes agrees to meet with protestors, and the place selected for the meeting is the Green Drawing Room. To reach the room, the four representing the protestors would enter the building on the lower level, walk up the palace stairs, and then arrive at the Green Room. A table and chairs have been placed in the room for the meeting. Michael is waiting and introduces himself as he shakes their hands.

Once all are seated, what the protestors would have seen would be Michael with the doors open to the Throne Room behind him – a reminder of his position. He meets them as petitioners, and he firmly rejects their demands. One demand he finds particularly problematic and objectionable – and that is that he change the coronation oath to style himself “defender of the faiths.”

Palace Floor Plan Dancing King — The Green Drawing Room is marked by the letter G and the Throne Room by the letter F.

I had an original source for that demand – Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne. Almost 20 years ago, Charles made a public comment about seeing himself as a “defender of the faiths,” to acknowledge all of the religions in Britain. The comment caused something of an uproar, and we can only imagine what the Queen herself, a devout Christian, thought (and said, privately). He’s tempered that sentiment somewhat in the intervening years, and now leans toward “defender of faith” or the traditional “defender of the faith.”

Michael explains to the protestors what acceding to this demand would mean – that they would be acknowledging him as the head of all religions in Britain, including Islam, and their clergy would serve at his pleasure. They’re horrified – that isn’t what they thought their demand was about.

This scene, like the one that immediately follows outside the palace, begins a theme that actually surprised me when I realized what was happening. Both scenes were written toward the end of the manuscript process and were not part of the older manuscripts written more than a decade ago.

The theme is the limits of constitutional and representative government, and what happens when that kind of government begins to falter. That theme was never part of the “original intent” of these stories, but the seeds of it can be found in A Light Shining and the sprouts in Dancing King.

Top photograph: Looking through the Green Drawing Room to the Throne Room.

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