Grant Me The Carving Of My Name

[poliphilo]

I caught the replay of Richard's interment. Like everything else in the sequence of ritual it was more or less note perfect. I particularly approved the opening hymn- words by GK. Chesterton, music by Anon as arranged by Vaughan Williams: they couldn't have chosen better.

O God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die...

Talking about appropriate words,there was a poem written for the occasion by Carol Ann Duffy. I haven't been much of a fan of her work- but this was magic. They had Benedict Cumberbatch read it. He turns out to be distantly related to the Plantagenets- though   by now I suspect everyone in England is-  apart, of course, from the current royals.

There's been a lot of media hostility to what Leicester has laid on.The Mail sneers, the Guardian blusters. It baffles me. All I can think  of while breasting the foam is, "Have they no poetry in their souls?"

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

That's a wonderful poem - thank you for that link.

I wonder if the media would all have been so hostile if the ceremony had been at Westminster Abbey? Heaven forbid that anything significant should happen outside London.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I thought Leicester put London to shame. I've never seen a "proper" state occasion that was anything like as imaginative.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Saints preserve us from overprivileged, cosmopolitan media snobs!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Did they actually watch the ceremonies. I wonder?

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I only saw snippets -- the BBC's two-minute condensation, a YouTube of Benedict Cumberbatch reading the poem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38nodTfpro4

One of the Looking for Richard team, which had to drag the University of Leicester kicking and screaming into the project in the first place and then was elbowed out of the principal limelight by all the Trained Professionals, shook his head and rolled his eyes at one point in the proceedings. That was captured, YouTubed, and circulated among The Faithful. Hilarity ensued.

I continue to be bemused at the broad variety of aspects of this entire project that inspire such vehement and occasionally vitriolic reactions among The Faithful. I understand there is now an online petition to fire the Dean of York Minster -- because she didn't fight hard enough against the Leicester reburial!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I witnessed the eye-rolling but couldn't make out what he was objecting to.

The business of the reburial went to the high court, didn't it? How much more of a fuss did they want to Dean to kick up?

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

They got Richard's birth date wrong in the eulogy -- July instead of October. And also a couple other things. And also also he and his colleagues were slighted a bit. Thus saith the Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/a-historian-gave-the-most-british-look-of-despair-when-someone-screwed-up-richard-iiis-birthday-at-his-reburial-10139268.html

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a fairly basic error.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, from reading his FB page, I get the feeling that everything is All About Him. Either that, or someone is maintaining it for him.

I think that folks who constantly refer to themselves in the third person are unspeakably self-referential and pompous. It's okay to do it once in awhile -- especially when someone is referring to you in a group conversation and you want to make a snappy retort.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad Carol Ann stepped up to the plate. So often these state occasions do not inspire the Laureate, but this one obviously did.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Girl done good!

[sovay]

Like everything else in the sequence of ritual it was more or less note perfect.

I am glad to hear it. I like the last lines of that poem especially.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

She saves her best line till last- always, I think, a good strategy.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

That poem is beautiful.

They should bury kings in the provinces more often.

Nine

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There are other possibilities. I read yesterday that a team of archaeologists is planning to dig up a playing field in Faversham in the hope of finding King Stephen.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Faversham Abbey was his foundation of course and Davington Priory Queen Matilda's.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of Faversham. Wouldn't it be fabulous if the abbey were still standing!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it just.

There's a memorial in what is now the parish church, St Mary,which is though to be connected with Stephen.