London

The Journalists’ Prayer

October 30, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

St. Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Steet is known as the “Journalists’ Church.” The church and the area around it have a long history with writers, publishing, printing, and newspapers. But it’s history – the newspapers that once occupied the buildings of Fleet Street are long gone, absorbed into other newspaper or moved to other locations.

British journalism grew up here for a simple reason: the first printing press with moveable type was brought to the area in 1500, and the printing (and later the newspaper business) grew up around it. But a church had occupied the site since about 500 A.D.; the current St. Bride’s was completely rebuilt in the late 1950s to restore what had been destroyed during the German Blitz of December 1940.

A nearby building which once housed the *Sunday Telegraph*.

The church has seen its fair share of famous purposes. Samuel Johnson lived across Fleet Street; John Milton at one time lived in the churchyard; Samuel Pepys was baptized here; the 18^th century novelist Samuel Richardson was buried here; and Charles Dickens lived for a time in the parish (we forget that Dickens started his writing career as a reporter).

On a recent visit to London, we visited St. Bride’s and its crypt during one of the two London Open House weekends. When it was restored, it was rebuilt with all its former Christopher Wren elegance. The church’s interior is simply beautiful.

The crypts below the church are another story altogether. Over the centuries, they had been forgotten and buried; they were rediscovered after the German bombing. You can see part of a Roman building foundation, a small medieval chapel; and the area where hundreds of people were buried (the nameplate for Samuel Richardson’s coffin is on display).

Placed around the church proper are various plaques, listing the names of journalists killed in World War I, World II, Iraq, and other conflicts. And many of the seats have nameplates in memory of journalists; I sat in the one bearing the name of Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist well worth knowing about and reading.

What struck me most profoundly was a polished stone sheet bearing “The Journalists’ Prayer.” The words are attributed to St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the patron saint of Catholic writers and journalists. While St. Bride’s directs them to journalists, the words could apply to writers in general, and more generally to anyone who works. But I read those words, and I felt the gap between them and me. The prayer is something that writers, and especially Christian writers, can aspire to.

The Journalists’ Prayer

Almighty God,
strengthen and direct, we pray,
the will of all whose work it is to write what many read,
and to speak where many listen.
May we be bold in confronting evil and injustice,
and compassionate in our understanding of human weakness,
rejecting alike the half-truth that deceives, and the slanted word that corrupts.
May the power that is ours, for good or ill,
always be used with respect and integrity;
so that when all here has been written, said, and done,
we may, unashamed, meet Thee face to face,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Related:

Footsteps at St. Bride’s.

Top photo: The Journalists’ Prayer inscribed stone in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. Below, the church’s famous tiered steeple of St. Bride’s, the inspiration for wedding cakes everywhere.

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

October 16, 2024 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

During a recent trip to England, we took advantage of our trip coinciding with London Open House, two successive weekends where citizens and tourists alike can view many buildings usually closed to the public, or take walking tours, or get behind the scenes views of many places that are open to the public.

One of the places we visited was St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, known as “the journalists’ church.” Fleet Street as the home to Britain’s big newspapers is a memory; the newspapers and the journalists moved to other parts of the city decades ago. But St. Bride’s remains, and it’s still known as the place where journalists worshipped.

A church has stood on this spot since the late Roman / early Briton period. It gets its name from St. Bride, or Bridget, a nun who lived in the late fifth century but who may never have visited London or England. Several church buildings have been erected on the site. The old medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and then rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. It was destroyed again, on December 29, 1940, during an incendiary raid by German bombers. But it was rebuilt as close to the Wren building as possible and reopened in the late 1950s.

It’s a beautiful church. We were able to descend through 2,000 years of history to see the crypt, with its old Roman wall, the nameplates found on old coffins, and two chapels, including a small medieval chapel whitewashed and made into an intimate worship space.

I had some to time to sit in that chapel, and I did. And it was there that I thought I could hear footsteps above and around me.

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

I hear footsteps here, overhead
and around, echoes of Celts.
and around. echoes of Celts
and Romans, Britons and
Saxons, Vikings intent on loot
and pillage. And the builders
and architects, bricklayers
and monks, whispering of
the Irish saint inspiring it
all. Footsteps become
louder, years passing,
building and tearing down,
rebuilding and reconstructing,
and footsteps running,
accompanied by screams
and the roar of fire. And more
rebuilding, with the Architect
himself stacking the spire
like tiers of wedding cake,
standing in splendor over
the newspapers of growth
and empire so pervasive they
defined generations. I hear
more footsteps, first those
running from the bombs and
then those running to fight
the fire, but above me is ruins.
Yet new architects and
new builders return, workmen,
intent on recreating what
was once there. Newspapers
move on, but the footsteps
remain. They never go away.

The Anonymous Spot with an Incredible History

September 25, 2024 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

If you like Brutalist architecture, and I don’t, an excellent example of it is the U.K. Ministry of Justice Building in London. It’s located near Buckingham Palace, where the streets of Petty France and Broadway converge. I’ve passed the building dozens if not hundreds of times, on my way to and from the St. James’s Park tube station. It’s right around the corner from where we stay when we visit London.

The complex was designed by Sir Basil Spence, a celebrated architect associated with the Modernist / Brutalist style (some call it the Soviet style). In fact, Spence had a plan to replace most of the government buildings in Whitehall with buildings like this one. Fortunately, the plan never became reality, except for this building which at its top resembles Darth Vader. At least Darth Vader had a personality.

On a recent visit to London, I signed up for a walking tour of the Petty France area, offered by London Open House. It’s a rather neat program offered each September, with hundreds of places to visit or numerous walking tours you can take, all focused on architecture. The Petty France tour was right near our hotel, so I thought, why not?

The thing about London is that it’s been built, destroyed, rebuilt, attacked, burned, bombed, and rebuilt yet again for the past 2,000 years. Wherever you go, you see what’s there, and you also know you’re walking upon the ghosts of history. A lot of ghosts, and a lot of history.

After several stops and chats, including one in front of our hotel which the guide explained had started out as a block of mansions, or flats, we turned on to Petty France. The street got its name in medieval times. It was the center of the wool trade, and because so much English wool went to the continent, it passed through the hands of the French wool merchants, who lived in this area. The name was changed during the French Revolution (when anything French was suspect in Britain) to the Duke of York Street, and then it was changed back to the Petty France in the World War I period, because France was now an ally and there were just too many Duke of York streets in England for the postal office to keep track of.

We passed the Wellington Guards Barracks, and then we stopped at the corner of the Justice Ministry building pictured at the top.

If you wanted to design something that looked nondescript, anonymous, and vaguely threatening, this corner is it. It’s difficult to imagine anything historical ever happening here; Sir Basil’s brutalist building shuts the imagination down hard. And yet this spot is one of the most significant spots in the history of English literature.

The only hint is the pub diagonally across the street. It’s called the “Adam and Eve,” and on weeknights and especially Fridays after work, patrons spill out onto the sidewalk and even into the street, chatting and drinking their pints.

Our tour guide pointed to the pub and asked if any of us could guess where we were standing. None of the 30 people on the tour had a clue, so he told us.

In a house that occupied this personality-less spot, between 1652 and 1658, the poet John Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Actually, he dictated it, a necessity because of his blindness. He referred to this house as “a pretty little garden house;” Vic Keegan’s Lost London has a nice illustration of what the house looked like superimposed on the photograph of the Ministry of Justice building.

History abounds in this part of Westminster. Around the corner from the Justice building is a home built by John D. Rockefeller. The Queen Anne architectural style began here. The collection that eventually became the British Museum started in a house here. The model for M in the James Bond stories lived here, and he actually had a tunnel connecting his house on Queen Anne’s Gate to the Special Operations Building on Broadway. The Cockpit Stairs leads down from Queen Anne’s Gate to connect to Birdcage Walk, and, yes, it’s named for the cock fighting that went on in the 17^th century. The printer William Caxton has his presses here for a time.

But it was that spot where Milton’s house had stood that stayed with me. The house had likely disappeared long before Basil Spence arrived with his concrete. But here, on this spot I’ve passed so many times, a blind poet composed one of the greatest poems in English literature.

Finding Hope in a Cemetery

January 29, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I walked into a John Constable landscape and found hope – in a cemetery.

A bit tired of seeing tourist sights on a recent vacation, my wife and I took a Saturday to explore Hampstead in north London. We’d been here in 2015 for a guided walk about the poet John Keats. Walk, perhaps, isn’t the right word. It was more of a brisk run up and down the hills of Hampstead.

One place I wanted to see during this visit was where our Keats Walk had started – St. John-at-Hampstead Church, also known as the “Keats Church,” even though it was the family of his love interest, Fannie Brawn, who were members. Keats himself never attended. The church does have, however, a bust of the poet.

Unfortunately, the church was closed and locked for the day. A few people were walking by; a couple sat talking on a bench. Instead of leaving, we wandered around the churchyard and its cemetery. The original cemetery is adjacent to the church; a larger and newer extension is across the street.

To continue reading please see my post at Cultivating Oaks.

Dancing King Stories: Researching a Novel

July 16, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

I’m looking at a web site called English Historical Fiction Authors. Its audience is authors who write period historical novels. The various posts are written by the authors themselves. So, you can learn about how ice cream was made in the 18^thcentury, what pieces of furniture would have been found in an upper-class hoe in the 16^thcentury, who the Lord Proprietors of Carolina were in the 17^thcentury, the friendship between the British Saxon Osulf and one of Charlemagne’s sons; and similar kinds of really detailed information. If you want your period novel to show authenticity, you need authentic historical details.

I don’t write historical novels. Mine fall into the more contemporary genre; actually, they’re set a few years ahead of our own times. So, I don’t have to be concerned with a lot of historical detail, like what Osulf really thought of his friend Charles a thousand years ago.

But it doesn’t mean I’ve escaped the research yoke. Far from it.

I do two kinds of research for my novels. The first is the reading kind – books, articles, web sites, blogs, even social media. The second is the foot-power kind – research by walking around.

A section of A Light Shining is set in Tuscany and Umbria; I’ve never been but I almost went in 2007, and had read so much and studied so much that I had the map of Florence memorized. For Dancing Priest, I had so many books and travel guides on Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh that I could have opened a travel library. That’s the reading and study kind of research.

bookshelf Dancing King — The bookshelf above my computer

And then a crucial scene in Dancing King happens in Southwark Cathedral; I’ve been there three times, walked around, bought and read the guidebook, took pictures, and talked with the nice lady in the gift shop. I stood in the pulpit and looked at where people would be sitting in the nave. And that hill in downtown San Francisco where Michael Kent rides his bike in Dancing Priest? I’ve walked up that hill.

Walking-around research is extremely valuable. You see and feel what the streets look like, you peer into windows, you see a barrister’s gown and wig on sale for 550 pounds, you notice how Essex Street slopes toward the Thames River. A pub in London may superficially resemble a pub in St. Louis, but if you sit long enough, you begin to notice the differences.

Both kinds of research are critical, even for a contemporary novel.

On the bookshelf above my computer sit the guidebook to Buckingham Palace; four volumes of Peter Ackroyd’s history of England (the fifth is to be published later this year), a guidebook to London, a book entitled Crown, Orb & Sceptre which will tell you everything you want to know about every coronation in English history, a history of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, a booklet on the royal line of succession, a guide to Southwark Cathedral, a brochure about the guards associated with Buckingham Palace, and related books. I turn to them often.

I been to England five times in the last six years, and every trip has been both vacation and research. Whatever place we visit – the British Museum, Canterbury Cathedral, the Museum of London, All Hallow’s by the Tower Church, the Imperial War Museum – I buy the official guidebook, which is always packed with information. I see art exhibitions to enjoy the exhibitions and to imagine what they would be like in a novel. I take photos of favorite paintings.

And I take walks. I’ve walked London’s South Bank countless times, along with Piccadilly, the City, Westminster, Hampstead, Pimlico, Belgravia, Mayfair, the Temple, Lambeth, Covent Garden, Charing Cross Road, the West End, and Spitalfields. I’ve walked Oxford, Cambridge, Salisbury, and Windsor. Every walk is research.

I pay attention to contemporary British artists and writers. I read novelists like Paul Kingsnorth (Beast) and Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). I read contemporary British plays. Contemporary literary culture provides a take on the pulse of the country and insights you can’t get from non-fiction.

It’s not just the historical or period novels that demand research. Contemporary ones do, too. And I think I’d rather eat ice cream in 21^stcentury England than what the Georgians considered ice cream in the 18^thcentury.

Top photograph by Gaelle Marcel viaUnsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Fleet Street and St. Bride’s Church

April 9, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Fleet Street in London has been long associated with newspapers and journalists. But it’s been a long time since any newspapers were actually located there, since all moved to other part of the metropolitan area. In the fall of 2017, I walked Fleet Street and some of the side streets on a cloudy, rainy Sunday, and say only one vestige of the area’s newspaper past – fading letters on the side of a building. A few former newspaper buildings have been listed on the historic register and preserved, but no newspapers operate here today.

St Brides interior — The interior of St. Bride’s

The area includes the Temple, still a part of the legal industry, notable buildings like St. Dunstan-in-the-West Church, the Samuel Johnson House, the Royal Courts of Justice at the western end of the street and the Old Bailey near the eastern end, and many more. On my visit that Sunday, I stopped long enough to take a photo of a lawyer’s gown and wig for sale at a shop.

St Brides Courtyard — The side courtyard of St. Bride’s, where Michael has a press conference

The church long associated with Fleet Street, so much so that it’s still called the “journalists’ church,” is St. Bride’s. The site may be one of the oldest church sites in London, dating back to the 7^th century. Seven church buildings have stood here; one was burned during the Great Fire of 1666 (and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren) and another was bombed during the German Blitz of World War II. After the war, it was rebuilt according to the Wren design.

The church contains considerable history. One of the first printing presses (and thus the origins of the newspaper business) was set up next door in 1500. The parents of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, were married here. Author Samuel Richardson is buried here.

One of its distinctive features is the steeple, which looks exceedingly like a wedding cake (another connection to the church’s name). The interior is beautiful; the day and time I was there the church service had just ended and the parishioners were having a fellowship time and it was rather crowded and joyfully noisy.

The area of St. Bride’s and Fleet Street have a small role in Dancing King. St. Bride’s is one of the churches where Michael Kent-Hughes preaches a sermon. And Trevor Barry, who becomes a consulting attorney for Michael for the coronation, parliamentary law, and the history of the monarchy, has offices near the Royal Courts of Justice, between Fleet Street and the Thames, on a small street called Essex Street. Law offices actually exist on this street, which is close to the Temple tube station. Barry finds himself frequently taking the District or Circle line to the St. James’s Park station, about three blocks from Buckingham Palace.

Fleet Street Temple — Gown and wig for sales in Fleet Street

After his sermon at St. Bride’s, Michael does have a short press conference in the side courtyard with reporters, but it’s mentioned in the book only in passing. There are a number of more extensive scenes involving the news media, but those are mostly set at or near the palace. They include the BBC interview, the media present at Michael’s meeting with protestors, and others.

Essex Street Temple — Essex Street, where the attorney Trevor Barry has his law offices

The news media play an important role in Dancing King because they play an important role in British society and in the lives of the royal family. Michael’s experiences with the media reflect my own career background in communications and media relations, where I learned that your have good reporters, so-so reporters, and bad reporters, like every other profession.

Top photograph is the famous wedding-cake steeple of St. Bride’s. Photograph of the interior of St. Bride’s by Dilff via Wikimedia. Used with permission. Top photo and all other photos are by me and my trusty iPhone.

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