Merry Christmas to readers of this blog.

Not quite a card, but feeling festive all the same. It’s a slot-in ‘Chromatrope’ from a Victorian ‘magic lantern’ show, an early form of slide projector. The wheel was turned by the lanternist and a big kaleidoscope pattern was projected.

New on Hathi, Magic in modern London (1925). A serious Folk-lore Society study of enduring superstitions and related lore in London.

Such a pity no-one ever did the same for Stoke. Though here you can see a variety of items suggesting at least relic folk-beliefs circa 1900. The two carved owls atop on the side-posts, the green-man like faces on the wrought iron flanking the door, the four mirrors in the window, and the spread eagle (or possibly a mythic bird, as it seems to have a peacock’s head) above all. Actually it might even be a large duck.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a new comic-book, November 2021.

A glowing review indicates that the unpromising cover does not reflect the fine interior artwork.

It’s not on Amazon but elsewhere I found out that it’s 44 pages in total and, with the above review mentioning the long footnoted essay at the end… it’s not actually the graphic novel I initially thought it was. Still it looks excellent, if you can get past that cover, and is just £5 direct from the author. I assume it’s a paper booklet-comic, but it might be digital at that price.

A new ‘Gawain Country’ picture, not seen before. The ‘Castle Rocks’ near Ludchurch, seen here before overgrowth and perhaps circa 1920 judging by the girl’s attire.

A natural formation. Though perhaps slightly ‘enhanced’ with antiquarian stone-repositioning for visual impact, and denuded by stone-cutting for local walls (see the long groove on the right). It’s relevant to Ralph W. V. Elliott’s 1980s claims for the location of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at and around the nearby Swithamley (see maps below). Actually that claim is not inconsistent with my recent detailed investigation of the medieval Alton Castle and its family. Because it may have been that the young Gawain poet was educated by boarding a little away from home and in a lower-ranking but worthy house, as was then often the custom. Thus Swithamley — some 14 miles north along the Earlsway from Alton Castle, and on the direct route to the family’s Irish holdings — would seem a possibility for that, and could give the writer a lengthy and formative immersion in the required dialect micro-region. This does, however, of course assume that a substantial house of some kind was at Swithamley before the dissolution of the monasteries.

Popping up on eBay, the programme for the Arthur Berry play Dr. Fergo’s Last Passion (aka Doctor Fergo’s Last Passion) from 1979, later followed by Dr. Fergo Rides Again in 1982. New to me. Described as “a rude ballad opera” with comedic songs, by a snippet from one old paywalled newspaper review. It has a local Potteries setting.

Regrettably there never seems to have been a recording or a radio version. Presumably the scripts and staging directions are still available. Might it then be revived? Possibly it would be too bawdy and ‘incorrect’ for our censorious times, but perhaps it could be done as a full-cast audio-only recording?

A major new book on Potteries poet and artist Arthur Berry is to be released in time for Christmas. Arthur Berry: A Ragged Richness is by art historian Peter Davies. The book launch will be followed by a large exhibition of Berry’s work in Newcastle-under-Lyme, during Jan 2022.

New on Hathi and possibly of interest to Tolkien researchers, hundreds of newly Google-scanned items from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Including many books and documents on and from the Library itself.

“Our release has over 250 collection guides, catalogues, exhibition books, and histories to which the Bodleian Libraries are rights holders.”

From The Bodleian Library in photographs.

The Spectator reviews the new book The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain. Those worried that the book might be a socialist wokewash of the man need not fear, because…

“there is not much sign of the ‘radical’ of Hunt’s title [except for] his manufacturing of the anti slave-trade medallion featuring a generic African in chains […] Similarly, the casting of a medallion to celebrate the French Revolution seems less of a radical act when we learn that Josiah’s son suggested that the figure of Liberty could easily be modelled on that of Hope in [an existing Wedgwood] medallion celebrating the colonisation of Botany Bay [i.e. the prison colony in Australia].

Yes he was an abolitionist and lent his name to petitions and suchlike, and even served on a committee, yet so did a great many of his class at that time. My feeling is that such a leading businessman would have had to ‘go above and beyond’ the usual in his efforts, in order to be now claimed as a political radical (in the way that modern leftists think of such things). Also, he would not have seen overseas slave-holding in modern terms. Back then it was often presented as a practice incompatible with Christian and British values of personal liberty and freedom of religious-conscience, and thus framed in terms that do not sit at all well with modern authoritarian leftists.

Conversely he also had a passion for Free Trade, the other great cause of the time. This meant he sold globally and to all comers — and thus today’s leftists can find a few early Wedgwood pots in overseas slave plantations if they dig hard enough. But it seems they can go little further in their witch-finding, without dragging out the old false claim… that the slave trade provided the capital for the Industrial Revolution, and thus set up Wedgwood for success. This claim has, in recent decades, been strongly and convincingly debunked.