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0:59

Britain likes to think of itself as

1:01

an island nation. It

1:04

often forgets that it is a

1:06

nation made up of not one,

1:08

but thousands of islands. The

1:11

mainland now has a centrifugal code,

1:13

but the outlying islands have played

1:15

a vitally important role in history.

1:19

They were not remote. In the

1:21

days before trains, they were more

1:23

easily accessible than the most inland of

1:25

cities. And if seen

1:27

from an insular perspective, the

1:30

history of Britain looks decidedly different.

1:33

Islands have been the sites of rebellion

1:35

and heterodoxy, radicalism and

1:37

lawlessness, brutal massacre

1:40

and colonisation, experimentation

1:42

and spectacle. They

1:44

are places that reveal the underbelly of history

1:47

to us. They are microcosms of

1:49

the main. My

1:51

guest today, Alice Albina, has

1:53

re-centred Britain's islands in her

1:56

beautiful and latest book,

1:58

The Britannias, an island. quest.

2:01

In it she roams from the Neolithic from

2:04

Anglesey Druids all the

2:06

way through to the present day Thames estuary.

2:09

But I took the opportunity to ask her

2:11

about some of her central chapters on

2:14

islands that should be more central to

2:16

our understanding of the 16th and

2:18

17th centuries. Alice

2:26

Albina welcome to Not Just the

2:28

Tudors. We're going to be talking

2:30

about your work The Britannias which

2:33

is a study of Britain's islands

2:35

and covers everything from the Neolithic

2:37

through to the present day with

2:39

a particular sensitivity to the stories

2:42

of women in history. So

2:44

today we're going to be zeroing as is our want

2:46

on the 16th and 17th centuries. So hopefully

2:51

our conversation will just wet

2:53

people's appetites to know more about the

2:55

centuries either side. But I

2:57

wondered if we could start with thinking about Lindisfarne.

3:00

You say that Henry VIII changed

3:02

the outward spiritual expression of the church

3:04

forever and that at Lindisfarne it's possible

3:07

to see his death blow to the

3:10

island. Can you talk more about that? I

3:12

think you go to Lindisfarne

3:14

and the vision you see of that island

3:17

is of the Priory and then Henry

3:19

VIII's castle up on the rock.

3:22

Lindisfarne had for

3:25

centuries been the site

3:27

of warfare and acquisition

3:29

and battle between monarchs

3:32

but it was with Henry

3:34

VIII's reformation that the decline

3:36

which had already set into that community

3:39

finally found its end point. Of course

3:41

what you're talking about is not just

3:43

the community itself but the pilgrimage to

3:46

the community which had been going on

3:48

for centuries and a whole

3:52

way of life, a whole community, a spirituality

3:55

that didn't find,

3:57

I mean I feel like that's foremost

3:59

spiritual is finally finding its expression

4:03

nowadays, but for centuries thereafter,

4:05

there was no pilgrimage. And

4:08

I came to this idea of pilgrimage

4:11

as something other than Christian,

4:14

from having written

4:16

and traveled and worked in Pakistan,

4:18

where pilgrimage is a really essential

4:20

part of community, spiritual,

4:23

hedonistic life. It does so many

4:25

things in one, it provides a

4:27

holiday, it provides a meeting place,

4:30

it provides a form of spiritual expression, it

4:33

provides revenue from people selling things

4:35

that these chimes have sent. And

4:38

so that was very much the texture of

4:40

my first book, which is about the Indus

4:42

River, the texture of my travels through Sindh

4:44

in particular, the province in Southern Pakistan was

4:47

really from one pilgrimage spot to another. And so

4:49

I knew what we were missing when I got

4:51

to what this land and

4:53

these people were missing out on, when I got

4:55

to these stories about Lindasan and what happened to

4:57

Lindasan. And what happened to pilgrimage all over the

5:00

British Isles with the rest of the nation, what we

5:02

were missing. And it must have been shocking in

5:04

so many ways to see the edifice crumble and

5:06

to see the buildings go, the way of life

5:08

go, the people go. I mean, it's something

5:11

really dramatic visually in the landscape,

5:13

it's such an aesthetic island,

5:16

Lindasan, partly because of

5:18

its ruins, which obviously were

5:20

very beautiful in the centuries hereafter for

5:22

people to come and contemplate, you

5:25

approach it slowly, I don't know if you've been to Lindasan, but

5:28

you approach it slowly over the sands.

5:30

And there it is, the different accretions of

5:32

ruin. And it's interesting how there was obviously

5:34

the precursor with the Vikings, as I say

5:37

in the book, the Vikings take the blame.

5:39

There's a letter from Norwegian Bishop

5:41

of Nidaros, but of course it was

5:43

Henry VIII who did it. And

5:46

it's interesting, it's one of those instances where

5:48

here we see very

5:50

visually on an island, the story

5:52

that is actually true of the

5:55

mainland as a whole. But

5:58

in this island setting, it's... speaks

6:00

very powerfully, I suppose, to that story.

6:02

This is otherwise something we pass over.

6:04

Oh, the decision of monasteries. It's just

6:06

a little phrase. And we don't think

6:08

about the great enormity of the change.

6:10

What I'm always struck by is the

6:12

enormity of the change and

6:14

the paucity of the time. You know, it's done

6:16

so very quickly and must have been like turning

6:19

their world upside down. It was very quick,

6:21

very organised, very efficient. And

6:24

obviously, you know, Linda's fine had been in

6:26

decline and the statistics are there about the

6:28

number of monks who made all retreat into

6:30

the warming house and they weren't buying in

6:32

the saffron that they bought in before. But

6:35

it was still a community in relation with,

6:37

say, Durham and with the villages around. And

6:39

yes, it was very, very quick. And it must

6:41

have felt like the apocalypse, I suppose. This

6:45

sense of the islands telling

6:48

the full story or telling, in some cases,

6:50

the sort of underbelly of the story comes

6:52

out a lot in your book. And

6:55

I wonder if we can look to

6:57

another example, which I think does this

6:59

well, which is to look at

7:02

Rathlyn. And could you tell me about what happened

7:04

on Rathlyn in 1569 and why it happened there?

7:09

So Rathlyn is an

7:11

island in the Irish Sea

7:13

and it's between Ireland and

7:15

Scotland and the Gallic Gaelic-speaking

7:18

family clans of Ireland

7:20

and Scotland had used it

7:23

for a long time as a kind of base.

7:26

It's in a very rough-set sea, but it's a good kind

7:28

of, it's like a kind of commuting,

7:30

sort of like a service pension or something. It

7:33

therefore became a place

7:37

that the English needed

7:39

to take in order to try and

7:42

control Alstair. And

7:44

there was one massacre

7:47

after another by English monarchs

7:50

of the people living on Rathlyn.

7:52

It was kind of the vanguard

7:54

of the kind of colonisation that

7:56

happened from that point onwards

7:58

across the world. And for

8:01

me, very forcefully, the

8:03

story of Rafflin is a kind

8:06

of precursor of what happens in, well, the

8:08

island that I link it to is Bermuda, but

8:10

it could be any of these other islands

8:12

that become colonised by English

8:14

and then British imperial

8:17

zest for domination of other places and other

8:19

cultures and other religions and other peoples. I

8:21

think it just sort of speaks very much

8:24

to the sense of it as being a

8:26

place that permits atrocity in some

8:28

ways. In

8:30

1569, there was a wedding held

8:32

on Rafflin, which was bringing together

8:34

these two clans, Catholic clans, Irish

8:37

clan and Scottish clan, the O'Neill's

8:39

of Donegal and the Campbell's of

8:41

Argyle and the McDonald's of both

8:43

Irish Antrim and Scottish Islay. It's

8:46

a dynastic union with the

8:48

Scottish mercenaries and Irish who are

8:50

hosting everybody and it's a

8:52

moment of celebration of these

8:54

two families, these two cultures and

8:57

the ease of that union

9:00

on Rafflin, which is the in-between point.

9:02

And the fact that the Scots see

9:05

Ulster as an extension of their own

9:07

place in the world and then you

9:09

get this movement in

9:12

by the English who have

9:14

begun to look at

9:16

Ireland and begun to plan their

9:18

plantation and begun to think about

9:20

how to conquer this island beyond

9:22

their own islands. Ireland has

9:24

had this particular quality

9:27

as a place that

9:29

hasn't suffered the conquests of

9:31

earlier conquests that have kind of

9:34

swept through the Britannias. So

9:36

it doesn't really get touched by Rome

9:38

in the same way and it's probably the place where

9:41

the Druid leadership flee to from

9:43

Anglesey. And you see that later

9:46

when efforts are made to kind

9:48

of record the folklore of different

9:50

parts of the British Isles.

9:52

The ancient folklore is

9:55

more intact in Ireland because there

9:57

haven't been these incursions by other cultures.

10:00

It reminded me a bit of the

10:02

way that India somehow managed to keep

10:04

in touch with its ancient literatures and

10:07

folklore and mythology, you know, the way

10:09

that Sanskrit has passed down orally. And

10:11

I suppose there must have been something similar

10:14

in Ireland with the Bardic schools and with

10:16

this form of oral transmission of

10:18

really, really ancient stories, which

10:21

then get tumbled into the Christianity

10:23

that comes into the islands. So

10:26

Ireland has been this place

10:28

that has largely managed to

10:30

keep very ancient mythologies and

10:32

histories and waves of life intact, and

10:35

then the English arrive and colonise

10:38

it. And it's a very brutal

10:40

moment in the history of Ireland

10:42

and of England, I suppose. It

10:44

is a brutal thing to be

10:46

a coloniser. Yes, you're right that

10:48

in Ireland we get a religiously

10:50

tinged conquest, and I'm quoting you

10:52

here, that flourished particularly well in

10:55

particularly nefarious ways on the country's

10:57

borders. And I wonder why you

10:59

think that's the case, why it is that these

11:02

edges, sort of the verges, are

11:05

so open to that

11:07

kind of conquest. Well, islands in

11:10

particular, they can be easy to take and they

11:12

can be easy to hold in good ways

11:14

and bad ways. Nowadays, if you look at

11:16

what people are doing on small islands, for

11:18

example, getting rid of the rut population or

11:21

introducing seed, you can chase

11:23

that back in much

11:25

more dangerous and bloody ways with

11:28

what people have done to each other. And I

11:31

suppose islands also, as we talked about

11:33

with Linda's son, because you can kind of

11:35

see some of these smaller islands, you can

11:37

see them in one glance. And so they're

11:39

iconic. And it's true

11:42

with other islands, they become sacred or

11:44

they become thoughts, so they will have

11:47

to be able to find a way to make

11:49

the islands have a ring with Martello Towers in

11:53

the Chama Islands, and Hitler becoming upset with these islands

11:55

and pouring concrete in and defending them. And

11:57

I think it's something visual in a way. because

12:00

you can see it and walk around it and

12:02

make your mark on it so fast. Also

12:05

in a time in the 16th

12:07

century, people moving fast by boat,

12:11

islands are necessary, you navigate by the islands

12:13

as the Vikings did and as

12:15

the earlier people did too. It's

12:17

the way of getting around, you need to

12:19

go from one bit of land to another before

12:22

it's possible just to sail straight across the OPC. So

12:25

islands are strategic and they're defence

12:27

and they're iconic and they're spiritual

12:29

and there are a lot of

12:31

different things obviously all at

12:33

once. And with Rafflin, this

12:36

lay-by island as it were, we

12:39

do seem to have this extraordinary

12:41

history of violence, the purposeless bafikas

12:43

it seems of the Tudor queens

12:46

plural and in the 17th century

12:49

as a place of horror when

12:51

Charles I garrisoned troops there.

12:54

I don't know if people will know these

12:56

stories so it's probably worth giving some sense

12:58

of what happened. And then again

13:01

back to this question of why there? I'm right

13:03

that it's a kind of... It's

13:06

not a kind of modern gesture,

13:08

I think there is probably something

13:10

about it's a small place, it's

13:12

therefore a poetural place, it's therefore

13:14

in the mind of a mainland

13:17

monarch or a mainland ruler.

13:19

An insignificant place and it's

13:21

pretty far away and when you read the kind of

13:23

letters that go back and forth between Ireland

13:26

and the court. These people who

13:28

are out in Ireland feel like

13:31

they're suffering, Deborah, Walter Deborah suffers

13:33

in the mission that he's been set by the queen and

13:36

it comes through the plaintiveness and the kind

13:38

of agony of what he's doing comes through in

13:40

these letters and you can also see that it's

13:42

easy to, it's not to a scale, it's easy

13:44

to do things there that you

13:47

wouldn't be able to do near

13:49

the centre of power

13:51

and you can see that being scaled

13:53

up obviously later in imperial endeavours much

13:55

further afield. It's symbolic of England managing

13:58

to interfere in the quite... tightly

14:00

woven culture that existed between

14:02

the clans of Western

14:05

Scotland and Northeast Ireland. Again

14:07

it's strategic, it's attacking something that's

14:09

useful to your enemy. An

14:12

island is defended by the sea until the

14:14

point that it tips the tides of fear

14:16

surrounding Raphlin. It feels like you're on a

14:18

fort. As an attacking army you manage to

14:20

arrive and you've crossed through those waters, you've

14:22

arrived on the island and then once you're

14:24

on the island and it really is a small island and

14:27

there's nowhere to go with them. For the people

14:29

who are trying to defend themselves. So the stakes

14:31

are very high and you see that with

14:33

the Maficas of Mary and then again with Elizabeth

14:35

and then as you say with Charles I and

14:38

again and with the clans fighting each other also.

14:40

You're safe until you're not safe. You

14:42

mentioned Walter Devro, the Earl of Essex's

14:44

very unpleasant experience as he sees it

14:46

on the island of Ireland

14:49

and another person who's there and has

14:51

experience as a colonist is Edmund Spencer

14:54

and you suggest that it's both his

14:57

experience as a colonist and his exposure

14:59

to Irish folklore that inspire his fairy

15:01

queen. How so? Tell me about that.

15:04

So the fairy queen is very watery

15:07

and when I came across the passages

15:09

of these women living in the island

15:11

world it became clear to me that

15:13

there's something that Spencer is picking up

15:15

on which is ancient and is

15:18

reiterated through the centuries in

15:20

the mythology and literature and

15:22

culture of the British Isles

15:24

which is this strain of

15:26

thinking about women who managed

15:28

to escape mainland mainstream life

15:30

and find their own

15:32

space and their own sanctity on

15:34

islands, specifically on islands away

15:37

from the mainland. I think there's something

15:39

that Spencer picks

15:41

up on possibly from currents

15:43

within English mythology and literature

15:45

but also stories of mermaids,

15:48

stories of Ireland and its

15:50

islands as a place of

15:52

otherness but also the pressures

15:54

of living as a

15:56

coloniser within a hostile

15:58

population, all those things. different things seem to

16:01

come through in the fairy queen and in

16:03

ways that conflict with each other.

16:05

There's a really interesting way in which

16:07

these forces are very strong but militate

16:09

against each other and I think that's

16:11

what makes it such an interesting poem.

16:14

There's various different

16:16

lake women in the fairy queen and

16:18

for me it reminded me of the

16:20

stories of Albina from an earlier iteration

16:23

of literature and folklore

16:25

but there's a moment when the

16:27

men come to the island of

16:29

Acrazia who lived in this kind

16:31

of really beautifully described

16:35

love nest, the barrel of bliss, which

16:38

is described as melodious and a

16:40

paradise and joyous and angelical but

16:43

she's too free a woman to be left

16:45

and they trap her in a net as

16:47

if they're witch hunters or as if she's

16:49

a mermaid and the words of the poem

16:52

are their bliss he

16:54

turns to balefulness, their groves

16:56

he felled, their gardens did

16:59

deface, their arbors spoil,

17:01

their cabinets suppress, their

17:03

bankit haze is born, their buildings

17:06

race and of the fairest

17:08

late now made the

17:10

foulest place and for

17:12

me that's a coloniser describing what

17:14

he's doing, what he's part of

17:16

within Ireland in the name of

17:18

Elizabeth I and it's

17:20

also interesting that Spencer is working for a

17:23

woman, the queen and the

17:25

difficulties that must have caused

17:27

him and other men

17:29

who worked for Elizabeth I. It's

17:31

not a straightforward thing to work for a woman

17:34

and you see that in the fairy queen in

17:36

terms of the kind of theme of

17:38

female leadership, its instability,

17:40

its noxiousness maybe,

17:42

its power, there was

17:44

always a recognition of the power but

17:46

it's something that is

17:48

being grappled with I suppose, it's huge isn't

17:51

it, dealing not just with monarchy but

17:53

with female monarchy. Welcome

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to elevate your dining experiences at americanexpress.com/with

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Amex. Terms apply. You

19:30

mentioned the discovery of Bermuda, which

19:32

is now a British overseas territory,

19:34

and what it

19:36

meant for early English colonialism.

19:38

And do you suggest that we

19:40

see Bermuda in Shakespeare's play The

19:42

Tempest? What do you think this can

19:44

tell us about this moment in

19:46

history? I think it's amazing.

19:49

I mean, Shakespeare, my God, what

19:51

a source of knowledge and poetry

19:53

and thought that those plays and

19:55

that man were, but it's almost

19:57

just such a perfect example of.

20:00

how Shakespeare seemed to write in his

20:02

use, his very zeitgeisty use

20:05

of the Bermuda's, because of course

20:07

there are chain of islands that have been

20:09

singularized, a bit like the Britannias

20:11

becoming Britain. So the story of

20:13

Bermuda at the time that Shakespeare

20:15

is writing the Tempest is that

20:17

just two years before the play was

20:19

performed, a ship called the Sea Venture,

20:22

which was carrying people and supplies to

20:24

Virginia, which was a struggling colony,

20:26

hit some reefs 400

20:29

miles short of America. The ship was completely

20:31

wrecked, but everybody on board survived.

20:33

And they then were stuck in

20:36

these islands, which turned

20:38

out to be an absolute

20:40

oasis of abundance. There

20:42

didn't seem to have been anybody living

20:44

there, any humans living there. And

20:47

as a result, the birds and the mammals

20:49

and the amphibians and the fish

20:52

were incredibly easy to trap. And

20:55

these English people survived

20:58

by having stumbled upon this oasis

21:00

of abundance. And they

21:02

built themselves two new ships,

21:05

the Patience and the Deliverance. And

21:07

when they eventually got to Japhen,

21:10

they found the colony had

21:12

almost died out. So they then

21:15

became the saviors of this colony. And Shakespeare

21:17

seems to have read the accounts that was

21:19

written in 1610 by two survivors, Sylvester

21:23

Jourdain and William Stolce, who

21:25

described how the island was

21:27

full of noises, these strange guttural noises that

21:30

which they thought were devils, but soon

21:32

found to be seabirds calling to each other. Some

21:35

of the company obviously felt that they were never gonna

21:37

be rescued, because why would they be rescued though in

21:39

the middle of the sea? And so

21:41

they drank themselves to oblivion

21:43

and gave themselves up as if

21:46

lost. They did get away and

21:48

they did come back to write these accounts. Ariel

21:51

mentions the Bermuda and

21:53

the descriptions then merges

21:55

with other colonial adventures, probably

21:57

in North America itself with

21:59

encounters. was Native Americans because,

22:02

as I say, there wasn't anybody on Bermuda

22:04

at the time. You get this kind of

22:06

merging through Shakespeare's genius mind into

22:08

a play, the Tempest, that it

22:11

isn't set as Bermuda, it isn't set anywhere

22:13

in particular. It just becomes the colonial

22:15

island, which stands for all these islands

22:18

that have been colonised at the time and go on to

22:20

be colonised in this brilliant way that

22:23

the encounter between colonisers and

22:25

the Indigenous and the land and,

22:28

in particular, something that I noticed which hadn't

22:30

occurred to me all the many times I've

22:32

seen the Tempest until I began writing

22:34

this book, which of course is that Prospero

22:37

is taking the island from Canavan's mother,

22:39

who he calls a witch. And

22:42

there again you have this kind of chilling

22:44

echo of the story that you see in

22:46

the fairy queen and that we've seen all

22:48

the way through, I trace it all the way back to

22:51

the Neolithic, but at least since Roman

22:53

report of their conquest of

22:55

the Britannias, of islands which

22:57

were associated with women and associated

23:00

with female independence and then become

23:02

the story flip, as

23:04

it often does in kind of patriarchal narratives,

23:06

of these independent women become witches and

23:08

of course, Sycorax is a witch and she's Canavan's mother

23:10

is a witch and she's described as a witch, the

23:13

one so strong that could control the moon, make

23:15

flows and ebbs. And that

23:17

story of a witch carries

23:20

on in British history and there are

23:22

really quite recent stories of women on

23:25

islands in Shetland and in different

23:27

parts of the Hebrides who for

23:29

example sell winds to sailors, which

23:31

is something that also happened in

23:33

Shakespeare and Macbeth, the witches are

23:36

controlling the wind and therefore controlling

23:39

the weather and therefore controlling the climate and

23:42

controlling what you can do on the sea,

23:45

what fish you can touch, also how quickly

23:47

you can get around, also in particular the

23:49

weather, I think this control of the weather,

23:51

of women controlling the weather in this era

23:54

of man-made climate change, it's really potent

23:56

to think about how ancient these

23:58

stories are. associated with women

24:01

and their freedom and their independence and

24:03

their sense. And I

24:05

suppose this is one of the things

24:07

that happens with the various witch trials

24:09

and in particular it's the female connection

24:11

I think to the land, to plants,

24:13

to the waves, to the winds, that

24:16

becomes something that's threatening and has to

24:18

be suppressed. To

24:20

understand these stories, I think as they're

24:22

told often by men, for example Shakespeare

24:24

and by Spencer, and to see what

24:26

that means, to see for me seeing

24:28

the whole history that has kind of

24:30

informed and built into these stories. And

24:33

when you see a witch who's had her iron

24:35

taken away in it and has it colonised by

24:37

Prospero, you remember how that witch got

24:39

there and how that story got there and how these

24:42

stories can turn on themselves and

24:44

become stories of liberation and independence. But

24:47

just at this particular moment that Shakespeare

24:49

is penning the story or Spencer is

24:51

penning his poem, it's a story of

24:53

colonisation. He mentioned there the Isles of

24:55

Scotland and I think perhaps

24:57

before we consider this as an English

24:59

story, by what I mean as a

25:02

story of English colonisation, we ought to

25:04

talk also about James VI, later James

25:06

VI and first attitudes to the Isles.

25:09

What did he make of

25:11

them? He thought they were

25:13

wild and uncrewed faces, full

25:15

of witches. He was following

25:18

his forebears in seeing

25:20

the periphery of very much being

25:22

a mainland monarch and seeing the

25:24

periphery as a dangerous place that

25:26

was uncontrollable and needed to be controlled.

25:28

And again you have a kind of

25:30

parallel with women and independence and islands

25:32

and women as also a kind of

25:34

unstable, as you see in the fairy

25:36

queen, women as a site of instability.

25:38

But yes, James VI thought

25:41

the islands needed bringing

25:43

into line and it was

25:45

a long process, the taking away of

25:48

the culture of the islands

25:50

and the families of the islands,

25:52

taking away their language, taking away

25:55

their musical instruments, taking away their

25:57

form of storytelling, the bards and

26:00

And for James VI who had an

26:02

obsession with witches and witchcraft, the

26:04

islands were the place where these things were

26:06

still practiced. And he may have been right. I

26:08

mean, it may have been that that culture I

26:10

was describing of something that goes back to

26:12

more ancient ways of doing medicine

26:14

or thinking about mythology, which you have

26:17

in Ireland and you probably do

26:19

have in the islands much later than

26:21

you do in mainland England, mainland

26:23

Scotland. In terms of his reach

26:26

and his control of the king, he's right that

26:28

the islands are places of

26:30

rebellion and places of where

26:32

different ways have been kept intact longer

26:35

than the mainland. And that's

26:37

one of the qualities of islands is that they're further

26:39

away and they're at their own place. And there

26:41

are forms that are preserved there much, much longer

26:44

than in the mainland. As

26:46

you see, for example, the Shulina gigs, I

26:48

think it's no coincidence that these medieval

26:50

sculptures of erotic or anyway explicit sculptures

26:52

of naked women are probably all over

26:55

the British Isles. But

26:57

the places that they're preserved often is

26:59

islands, the Isle of Wight, Iona, the

27:01

Isle of Egg. These

27:03

islands are able to keep these

27:05

cultural forms that are later condemned

27:08

intact. You say that it

27:10

was in the civil war that islands

27:12

at last took centre stage in

27:15

mainland English politics. What

27:18

part did the Isles of

27:20

Scilly and Jersey and Lundy have

27:22

to play? So both

27:25

the trials of the islands became

27:28

really central to their lives. The

27:30

prince fled through England

27:33

and he was encouraged

27:35

to, so the civil war has

27:38

a really interesting

27:40

and protected form in the

27:42

southwest and he had

27:44

to flee England. The

27:46

islands were the place that he was able to go,

27:48

which was still part of the wrong, but

27:52

were a safe haven until they were again, no longer safe.

27:55

So he goes to the Isle of

27:57

Scilly and then eventually to the Channel Islands.

28:00

and then eventually to France. But

28:02

the items become for his

28:04

father equally important. He's pleased

28:07

to and is then imprisoned on the Isle of Wight.

28:10

And there's a moment where Charles

28:12

I described the

28:14

way in which his son is

28:16

living beyond England in this kind

28:19

of watery exile. He describes it

28:21

unboying him, and he uses this

28:24

nautical metaphor because it's true that the

28:26

naval battles and the importance of what

28:29

happens out at sea, how the Newtonie

28:31

of the Navy and the attacks that

28:33

are able to come in from outside

28:36

become part of the strategy that

28:38

I suppose create this king and eventually

28:41

the restoration. What's extraordinary

28:43

about this is one of those things that

28:45

reminds one of the past is not dead,

28:47

in fact it isn't even past, well, in

28:49

Fortman, because you talk in

28:51

the book about John Grenville's little kingdom

28:54

in the name of the deposed

28:56

royal family. And this still

28:58

has significance, it still has

29:00

importance in terms of the history

29:02

of the islands and more

29:04

generally. Particularly in Scilly it was the

29:07

people who live on Scilly and aren't

29:09

nobles or landed people, nevertheless use the

29:11

Civil War as a kind of watershed

29:13

moment. It's a bit like the Norman

29:15

Conquest, a lot of power and land

29:17

changes hands. I mean

29:19

it is amazing that you can still trace

29:21

some families back to the Norman

29:23

Conquest. But yes, the Civil War, kind of it

29:25

was like a die running through those islands, and

29:27

people, it tends to be, if you say how

29:29

long have you lived on the island, people tend

29:31

to go back as far as the Civil War.

29:34

And Scilly changes, it goes between the

29:36

parliamentarians and between the royalists, and it

29:39

becomes very emblematic of that fight and

29:41

I think again of the Channel Islands

29:43

in the Second World War, Hitler

29:46

puts all this effort into colonising

29:48

them because of how emblematic they are.

29:51

If you think of Britain not as

29:53

a mainland but a collection of islands, it's a

29:55

way of attacking, they become something

29:58

far greater than... what they

30:00

actually represent, which is a really small

30:02

bit of land. It's amazing that the

30:05

Dutch only remember to declare peace with

30:07

silly in 1986. So piracy is another

30:09

thing that becomes very interesting with silly.

30:11

Who is a pirate and who has

30:13

letters mark when you've got the same

30:15

nation fighting each other in the Civil

30:17

War? I'm interested in the way that

30:19

we see islands appearing in Royalist

30:23

stagecraft, both actually

30:26

before the turmoil of the Civil War

30:28

and in the kind of disappointment of

30:30

the restoration. And I'm particularly interested in

30:32

this theme that you draw out in

30:34

your book about the fear of islands

30:37

ruled by women, but also to an

30:39

extent the celebration of it in this.

30:41

Why do you think we see this

30:43

as a theme in the

30:45

plays that the Royalists are putting on? Of

30:48

the instability of female leadership? Yes,

30:50

the instability of female leadership, but

30:52

also to an extent sometimes the

30:54

celebration of female leadership, but on

30:56

islands specifically. Well, I think it

30:59

is a very ancient and potent

31:01

theme. There are Roman authors

31:04

who talk about the silly. One of

31:06

the reasons that silly is so interesting

31:08

beyond the history of the Civil War

31:10

is because it is possibly a

31:13

candidate for the island of summer, which could

31:15

also be the Ildersen off the coast of

31:18

Brittany. But in here you have an island

31:20

that was said to have been inhabited by

31:22

nine priestesses or prophetesses who

31:24

controlled the weather. And this theme goes

31:26

all the way down through British history

31:29

of islands that are ruled by women.

31:31

And you see it, for example, just

31:34

to pluck another example, in the stories

31:36

of Arthur who has his mainland court

31:38

and the stories we're brought up with,

31:41

the stories of King Arthur and his

31:43

round table, that his whole power

31:45

is enabled by his association with the ladies of

31:47

the lake to provide him with his sword and

31:49

provide him with his prowess and at them who

31:51

take him off at the end of his life

31:53

for his healing. And I think

31:55

the stories are there because there has to

31:57

be an outlet, I suppose, if you

31:59

have a very strong patriarchal culture.

32:01

It's impossible for that to

32:04

function without some counterpoint,

32:06

without some counterculture, without some... I mean,

32:08

humans have to be able to imagine

32:10

some other way of being and it

32:13

seems that there probably was a

32:15

real sense in which islands

32:18

were able to provide a different way

32:20

of living and a different way of being

32:22

for some people. And it also

32:24

a symbolic, emblematic way of

32:26

an alternative way of being. And the

32:28

fact that patriarchal systems and

32:31

histories suppress women means

32:33

that the place where you're having

32:35

a rebellion against that, whether it's

32:37

emotionally, mentally, aesthetically, or in reality,

32:40

it's going to be women who are

32:43

the vanguard. And therefore there

32:45

is an examination, I think, in mainstream literary culture

32:47

of what this means. And you see it in

32:49

the Tempest and you see it in the very

32:51

green and you see it in the plays of

32:54

before and after the Civil War and

32:56

other forms as well. It's something that's potent

32:59

and troubling and I

33:01

suppose needs examination. And that's what

33:04

consciously or not, probably unconsciously, was

33:06

happening when different literary

33:08

figures took up this trope again

33:10

and again to see what it meant and to

33:12

see where it was going and to see what

33:15

you lose when you take away that powerful women.

33:17

What do you get when you give it back

33:19

or when it's taken back or when they reclaim

33:21

it for themselves? Finally then,

33:23

you write this startling phrase

33:25

that we are still in the

33:28

16th century mindset of discovery,

33:30

colonisation and exploitation. This

33:32

is one of those moments when you're reading a

33:34

book and you have to put it down for

33:36

a second just to sort of ponder what you've

33:38

just read. It seems to me

33:41

to summarise the 16th century so well. Why

33:43

do you think we're still possessed by it? I

33:46

wish we could live differently

33:48

from how we do but it seems

33:51

there is a very strong part of

33:53

our culture that teaches us to conquer

33:55

and teaches us to exploit

33:57

and teaches us to extract. The

34:00

seabed now maybe, the

34:03

oceans, is the

34:05

new territory, new means. We're

34:07

still there, we're definitely still there and

34:10

one of the startling things I began to

34:12

touch on in the research

34:14

for the Britannias was coming across

34:16

these people who had naturally

34:18

chosen to live differently. I

34:21

remember reading an essay by an archaeologist who'd

34:23

worked for years and years

34:25

with the Neolithic and

34:28

had been doing detailed observations

34:30

of chambered cairns and stone

34:32

circles, these monumental efforts

34:35

that humans went to from

34:37

Neolithic times onwards to impress

34:39

themselves in the landscape and to make the landscape

34:41

work for them. And maybe there was a harmonious

34:43

way of communicating between humans and

34:45

nature and the landscape. But

34:48

with these huge edifices, there was no getting

34:50

away from the fact that humans were making

34:52

their mark. And this

34:54

archaeologist went to, I

34:56

think it was Finland and encountered the

34:58

Sami culture, where there were no traces

35:00

of the worship places, to give an

35:02

example of early humans, because these early

35:04

humans didn't need to make a worship

35:06

place. A rock face was a chapel

35:08

and a hill was a

35:11

cathedral and a river was

35:13

a palace. And one one

35:15

is struck again by

35:17

modern day modernities. It is reassuring

35:19

and chatted to remember that it

35:22

hasn't always been like that. Of

35:24

course, these roles are less easy

35:26

to trace. The trials, by

35:28

definition, leave no mark. But it's

35:30

really important to see them and to realise

35:32

that even if the force and the exploitation

35:35

is the thing that we see now all

35:37

around us, there is another way of living. Alice

35:40

Albinia, thank you so much for

35:42

joining me to talk about these

35:44

ideas. And your book is beautiful

35:47

and it is called The Britannias, An

35:49

Island's Quest. So for those listening, that's the

35:51

book that you need to pick up for

35:53

your next read. Thank you so much

35:55

for your time. Thank you very much indeed. And

36:05

thanks to you for listening to Not Just

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