Who knew that Hungary has a special sentimental connection with Wales? Well, to be frank, not a lot of people did know that, as Michael Caine might say, but, well, I did - so there!
But it was nice, nonetheless, to get an email at the weekend from Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, talking about the recent unveiling of a special plaque in the little Welsh town of Montgomery (pop: 1300), to commemorate Hungarian poet János Arany. The ceremony was attended by Ferenc Kumin, the Hungarian ambassador to the UK, and by Jill Kibble, the mayor of the little town.
the Ambassador and the mayor unveil the plaque, which is
in 3 languages: Hungarian, Welsh and English: try as I may
I cannot enlarge this photo well enough to read the inscription - damn!!!!
Arany wrote a poem, famous in Hungary and still studied in Hungarian schools, about the 500 Welsh bards who were slaughtered in 1277 at Montgomery Castle by the English king Edward I. It was an event that resonated strongly with Hungarians at the time the poem was written, and ever since - because just as the Welsh were being bullied and persecuted by the English, the Hungarians felt the same way about their relationship with their powerful neighbours, the Austrians.
Who would have thought it, eh?
My own family, allegedly, are no strangers to the world of Welsh dissent, with possible ancestral links to one of the famous medieval Welsh princes, Gwaethfoed.
My
late mother was born in, and grew up in, Wales and she had a cousin, Howell,
who all his life was interested in genealogy. He claimed he had "proved" that one
of the family's ancestors was a Welsh prince, Gwaethfoed, who once met the
Anglo-Saxon King Edgar (959-975).
A
charming story, but one which I didn't believe for a second, I have
to admit.
Flashback to 2010: An excerpt from
the sketchy family tree in my Christmas Newsletter,
Flashback to March 2005: we visit the
family genealogist Howell's daughter Ruth, crouching behind the sofa with her 2
daughters. On the sofa (left to right) my late
mother, me and my late sister Kathy
Ruth as she looks today - my god!
Fascinating stuff !!!!! [If you say so! - Ed]
10:00 Otherwise an unsatisfactory day.
Lois and I are hoping to move house in the next few months, and last week we were looking at moving to the Worcestershire town of Evesham, where Edward I fought a battle in 1265, 12 years before he slaughtered all those Welsh bards.
Yesterday we were looking in the Petersfield area of Hampshire. Today the plan has changed again, and we're looking again at Worcestershire, this time at the town of Pershore, which has housed an abbey since the 11th century.
Both Evesham's and Pershore's medieval abbeys were comprehensibly trashed by Henry VIII during England's 16th century Reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries.
What madness !!!!!!
Lois, looking online at houses for sale, while juggling
a road atlas at the same time - what madness!!!!
15:00 In the afternoon, we go for a walk round the local football field, and we check on the progress of the horrible new flats being built on the field's so-called "extra bit".
we take a walk towards the local football field's so-called "extra bit";
over my left shoulder can be seen the Parish Council's bizarre
"shrine to giant pencils" and the building site
where some horrible new flats are being built
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!!!
20:00 We wind down with last week's programme in the series "Art That Made Us", which is looking back at the last 1500 years of artworks and literature in the British Isles to create an alternative history of life here.
The series has now moved forward to the 1800's, when Britain was the first country in the world to experience both the excitement, and the horrors, of industrialisation, and of all the processes that led ultimately to today's global warming crisis - yikes!
The programme opens with the unveiling of a new sculpture by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson on an Alpine mountain top, at a point where an ancient glacier is melting rapidly away.
The sculpture is designed to highlight the effects of global warming and to "make the invisible visible", and Eliasson points to a JMW Turner painting "Rain, Steam and Speed" (1844), which depicts the then totally frightening image of a steam-train travelling through the English countryside, and which Eliasson says was art, for the first time in its history, "painting what we cannot see". And this style pre-empts the Impressionists by 40 years, it's pointed out.
JMW Turner's "Rain, Steam and Speed" (1844)
The National Portrait Gallery's Alison Smith says that Turner
"wants to create for the spectator the effect of the force of the locomotive coming right out towards you. He wants people to feel exhilarated and at the same time absolutely terrified".
The V&A Museum's Gus Casely-Hayford says that "
You're surrounded by this eruption of steam and smoke that is bilging out of this oncoming train".
"To the right of the train, can be seen a farmer ploughing his field, in the way that he and his forefathers have been doing for generations.... and in front, on the train track, running towards us, almost running for its life, running down the track, as the train barrels down the line towards it, is a tiny hare."
Did you spot that tiny hare? I know I didn't! But Lois and I rewind the recording slightly, and I suppose you can just about see its little ears!!!!!
Poor hare !!!!!
And who knew that commercial advertising was originally almost entirely just worded statements, boasting about a product's good qualities? Nowadays pictures and videos are such a big part of advertising, aren't they. But it wasn't always so.
typical words-only advertisements from the earlier decades of the 19th century
It was John Millais's painting "A Child's World" (1886) that kicked off the rush towards advertising with pictures, but Millais himself, of course, never knew anything about how his painting was going to be used after his death.
Millais, who in his 20's had originally been one of the pre-Raphaelite rebels, had by his 50's, come to specialise in child portraits. And he knew that the public loved sentimental pictures of children. In 1886 he produced this painting of his four-year-old grandson, Willie James. He's wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, and blowing a bubble, and gazing upwards like a little cherub in awe at one of the wonderful spherical bubble he has made.
In the original painting the bubble is supposed to symbolise the transience of life - you know it's going to burst haha! And the child will eventually grow up and grow old - poor Willie James !!!!!
Copies of the portrait sold in its hundreds of thousands to the growing population of British suburbanites, and the work also caught the attention of Thomas Barratt, a director of the Pears Soap Company. Barratt bought the painting and the copyright for just over £2000. And then he spent £30,000 on an "aggressive" (in 19th century terms) marketing campaign.
the picture had everything Barratt wanted for his Pears Soap adverts
Is there a bar of soap in the picture? - yes, at the bottom, just a tiny one, added posthumously to the Millais original.
But as we know today, advertising is as much about creating an image that will attract consumers, as it is about the product itself, a "
shortcut to emotion and connection", says Kate Stanners of the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising bureau.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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