If one theme has cropped up again and again in these columns, it has probably
been my general hopelessness as a dad. From my inability to maintain order
at bathtime to my spinelessness when confronted with my children's
territorial demands, to my lack of style compared with the cool dads in the
playground, I am a disappointment to my wife and an object of ridicule for
my offspring.
But there hasn't been just one recurring theme in these columns. There have
been at least three others.
My weird approach to holidays (strongly anti-sun, sea and sand, vehemently
pro-Germany, opera and hanging around sepulchrally dark buildings with
Gothic tracery).
My reactionary views on British history (a source of pride much to be
celebrated, not least feats of arms culminating in the establishment of
Britain as a beacon of liberty).
My general nerdiness (fan of Heroes, openly confessed to enjoying both 300
and Iron Man in the cinema, former wargamer who even played
fantasy role-playing games as a teenager).
Now we all have different strains to our characters which, combined, go to
make us who we are. Mrs G, for example, is an expert in make-up, a scholar
of Italian Renaissance literature and a Star Trek fan. My friend
Sebastian is a retail genius, among the best cooks I know and a speed-crazed
petrolhead. Because we are all complex mixes, rarely do events conspire to
press all our buttons. It's unlikely that L'Oréal is going to organise a
Trekkie convention in Florence with a prize of a year's supply of mascara
for the best Petrarch ode to Captain Spock. And in the absence of such a
treat, the nearest my wife will ever come to a perfect day is me doing the
kids' bath.
Similarly, Sebastian is unlikely to be asked to vie for the chairmanship of
Wal-Mart in a celebrity cook-off with Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White,
with the tie-breaker being a Ferrari versus McLaren Formula One death match.
And in the absence of anyone designing such a contest for him to win in
front of admiring millions, he'll have to put up with watching The
Apprentice along with the rest of us.
I, however, have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the paradise denied to both my
wife and my friend. It was a day that satisfied my love of history, spoke to
my inner nerd and easily outpaced in weirdness any holiday on which I have
ever been.
And, because I inflicted the experience on my family, this choice of leisure
activity will confirm me, once and for all, beyond any reasonable doubt, as
one of the saddest dads in the history of daddery.
The day in question was spent watching hundreds of grown men and women in
sackcloth and leather shoving at each other while a running commentary was
provided on the divine right of kings. At first sight the spectacle would
have seemed like a mixture of a poll tax riot and an American football game
with the action narrated by David Starkey. It was spellbinding. It was
surreal. It was The Sealed Knot's re-enactment of the Battle of Naseby.
The Sealed Knot are, as you probably know, a group who re-enact battles from
the English Civil War. I'm sure that, for many of you, having an English
Civil War battle re-enacted for your pleasure ranks with being invited to a
private screening of the new DVD of Geoff Hoon's Great Parliamentary
Moments, or being offered tickets to a Numismatists of the UK gala dinner
(guest speaker Michael Winner) as a treat that you could just about bring
yourself to miss, on this occasion. But I would urge all sceptics who regard
mass dressing-up in wildly out-of-date costumes as the sort of thing best
left to Eisteddfods or the cast of Sex and the City, to suspend their
cynicism.
For me, seeing hundreds of enthusiasts throw themselves into reliving a
momentous day in 17th-century history was thrilling. As my children waved
their (Parliamentarian) flags, the thunder of hooves from the king's
cavalry, the crack and smoke of musket fire, the push of pike and the
invocations from Nonconformist preachers stirring the Cromwellian forces to
fight combined in a bewitching spectacle.
The volunteers inhabited their roles for as long as the battle raged, in true
Stanislavsky method-acting style, with bearded royalist musketeers berating
the Gove family for their rebel sympathies while lobster-helmeted New Model
Army troopers saluted us. It was as though the children were transported in
time. And then, when we broke for lunch, these same enthusiasts were
transformed from performers to avuncular teachers, holding the children
spellbound with explanations of how apothecaries worked and exhibitions of
how swordplay has evolved.
The day we spent was as thoughtfully designed as any commercial endeavour and
as rich in alternative attractions as a Glastonbury or Reading festival,
with beer tents, organic food, archery kits for children and second-hand
books for older browsers. Yet everything was the result of volunteer
endeavour. Like the St John Ambulance or the WI, the RNLI or the Scouts, the
Sealed Knot shows that civil society can generate wonders of which no
politician or private company could conceive.
A very English combination of eccentricity, enthusiasm, passion for our past
and am-dram spirit has resulted in history coming alive for thousands every
year in a way that makes education entertainment. And what makes the whole
cohere is an absence of self-consciousness. There is no heavy, knowing
archness, no ironic sending-up of conventions, about The Sealed Knot. Even
though the volunteers are recreating the past, they are totally engaged in
the moment - fully present. And if there is a fifth theme to which I have
returned on this page, it is that such a state is not to be mocked, but
envied. So, my Lord Bishop, and impious heretic Prince, bring it on!
A shameful cop-out
Jonathan Dimbleby and Jonathan Freedland are right to draw attention to the
way in which the police are pursuing the journalist Shiv Malik to hand over
material he gathered in the course of investigating Islamist extremism in
Britain. The freedom of journalists to protect sources and preserve the
integrity of their work, at arm's length from the State, is crucial.
It's not as though the authorities need to root through journalists' notes and
pursue their sources to tackle extremism. They could begin by paying
attention to what is already in the public domain. Channel 4's Undercover
Mosque lifted the lid on political extremism, amounting to direct
incitement to violence, from certain individuals. But instead of pursuing
the extremists, the police pursued the programme-makers.
Malik's work, and the testimony of his source Hassan Butt, has laid bare the
ideological nature of the Islamist challenge and the self-
defeating way in which we in the West blame our foreign policy for the actions
of extremists. But our authorities still fail to confront the ideological
threat to our way of life, and fall for arguments peddled by terror's
apologists.
The real challenge for those with the task of enforcing the law and
maintaining order is to show that they understand who, and what, we are up
against. But instead of doing the tough work of identifying the foreign
funding of Islamist extremism, and pursuing the cat's cradle of Islamist
networks that push an agenda of grievance, they prefer to target those who
have shown where we have gone wrong.
Modern hero
I'm delighted that Indiana Jones is back, and fighting the commies.
It's a story that is bound to inspire Tories of my generation. How can we fail
to admire a hero from the Eighties who defied the odds and stood up against
foreign foes, thrilling a generation of youngsters across the globe? Which
is why I think it's high time we gave Sir Alex Ferguson a peerage...
my husband and i read your article with interest and it was nice to hear positive comments about the SK. my husband, son and i were there that weekend on the living history in "kit" (as we call it) and it was great to hear the view of a visitor who enjoyed themselves.
Lucy Johnson, Wolverhampton,