Cognitive Dissonance

If history has taught us anything, it's that making predictions is a bit of a fool's game.  But there's one prediction that, I think, can be made.  Change is coming.  This century will not look very much like the last one.  And that, for some people at least, is a problem.  Some people do not handle change, or the prospect of change, very well at all.

Take one of the most pressing and urgent issues facing humanity: climate change. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, there is little or no disagreement among scientists that climate change is happening and that mankind's activities are largely to blame.  However, some people see the implications of this as an infringement of their personal liberties, their beliefs in the infallability of the free market, their 20th century convictions.  The scientific data comes as a threat to their beliefs, their worldview.

When evidence, or data, or a theory, or a new idea comes along that challenges your deeply held convictions, you tend to experience something called "cognitive dissonance".  It's basically the inability to hold two opposing views at once.  There's your settled worldview, and then there's the new information.  You can't accept both (they're mutually contradictory), so you attack the new information.  And its source.  You make out that the scientists are in disagreement with each other, when they're not.  And then you reject science altogether.  You make faith the cornerstone of your thinking and reject all the evidence which shows your faith to be misplaced.

The problem is exacerbated by a trend that has been apparent over the past few decades.  It can best be described, perhaps, as a shift to the right (politically speaking).  One of the results of this shift is explored in a new independent movie, Compliance.  Basically, many people have been all too willingly placing far too much unquestioning faith in authority.  We have all been following unworthy leaders without daring to question what they say.

The institutions which should be challenging political authority - namely, the media (i.e. journalists) and academia - have failed to do so.  This is partly because success in those fields has come to be reliant on a willingness to comply, to conform, to accept and repeat hand-me-down beliefs.  Those academics and journalists who should have been questioning a rather threadbare and faith-based political philosophy have themselves been caught up in that same philosophy.  They cannot question, because they have been imposing their own belief systems on the students and readers, and demanding that those same students and readers comply and conform.

With regard to my recently published book about the historical Arthur - The King Arthur Conspiracy (published by The History Press) - it has been interesting to note that the most positive feedback has come from educated readers and academics who haven't subscribed to some formulaic notions along the lines of a consensus.  The most savage attacks have come from those who fear to question the consensus which has built up over recent decades (in line with the general shift in the direction of reactionary thinking and compliance with authority figures).

Or, if you prefer, the free-thinkers like the book.  Some of them love it.  But those who are trammelled in their thinking, and who cannot adjust to new information, have attempted to undermine it.  That is, they have experienced cognitive dissonance (information and ideas which do not square with their preconceived notions) and so they fight back, dismissing the message and vilifying the messenger.  Unsurprisingly, most of these readers subscribe to a rather imperialistic notion of King Arthur and resent the very idea that he might have been of Scottish descent.  There have even been veiled suggestions that The King Arthur Conspiracy was written purely to cash in on the debate surrounding Scottish independence - a suggestion which reveals the latent nationalism behind the 'consensus' view of Arthur.

The same problems hover around William Shakespeare.  Back in the 19th century, there was a great deal of scholarly interest in a death mask which was believed to be of Shakespeare:

The current consensus in Shakespearean circles, however, is that it is not Shakespeare's death mask.  The leading British authority on Shakespeare is usually pretty scathing of any suggestion that it might have been.  The thinking here seems to be something along the lines of: "If the death mask was Shakespeare's, I would be interested in it.  But I'm not interested in it, so it can't be of Shakespeare."

The death mask has been in Darmstadt, Germany, for many decades now, British interest in the mask seemingly vanishing at around the time of the first World War.

But, as I explain in my next book, minutely detailed scrutiny of the death mask and various acknowledged portraits of Shakespeare reveals something very interesting.  The chances of the death mask NOT being of Shakespeare are miniscule.  There are, quite simply, far too many unusual correspondences, too many unique features in common, for it to have been anybody else's.  To put it simply, this is the death mask made of William Shakespeare in 1616.  So why does the country's leading authority on all things Shakespearean reject the very possibility that it might be?

It's that same old problem of cognitive dissonance.  During a period of right-wing political retrenchment, of reactionary thinking, faith-based certainties and authoritarian judgements, an academic consensus surrounding Shakespeare has emerged (in its way, it's not too dissimilar to the nonsensical scholarly consensus surrounding Arthur).  Because the death mask does not fit into the model of Shakespeare that these academics have developed, embraced, and sought to impose on students and readers, then the death mask has to be rejected.  A proper study of the death mask would prove that it is almost certainly Shakespeare.  But the leading academics of the past few years don't like that idea, so it is consigned to oblivion.

Unfortunately - as with Arthur - this means rejecting all sorts of evidence out of hand and mercilessly abusing those who find such evidence.  The academics, you see, have spoken.  Arthur could not have been Artuir mac Aedain; the death mask cannot have been Shakespeare's.  These standpoints fit comfortably in with the current academic consensus (that is, voicing them means that you stay on the right side of the bigger boys, and don't face the wrath of the authoritarians), but they do nothing whatever for our understanding of Arthur or Shakespeare.

Part of the change that is coming, then, is that the intolerant academics who have dominated their fields for so long will be toppled.  Their beliefs - which they have insisted on everybody else paying lip service to - cannot be sustained in the face of the evidence.

But they'll fight tooth and nail, all the way.  Because for them - as with the climate change sceptics - it's not a matter of evidence.  It's all about belief.

Hello

Apologies, one and all, for having neglected the blog for a few weeks.  The reason being that I've been tied up with revisions on my Shakespeare manuscript, working towards a deadline in early October.  The pressure's on because the book is already up on Amazon.co.uk (no cover image yet), which makes it all feel a bit real.

While Lindsey, my editor at The History Press, is going through the manuscript ahead of my final revisions, I've been dipping my toes in what is unfamiliar territory - the acquisition of images, or rather the licences permitting me to reproduce those images inside the Shakespeare book.

Didn't have to worry about that sort of thing too much with the Arthur book; expecting to publish The King Arthur Conspiracy myself, I avoided any images in the book which weren't essentially of my own making.  Besides which, images of the historical Arthur and his world aren't all that easy to come by: I could have included photos of various hills, and the odd crumbling hill-fort, but that's about it.

Who Killed William Shakespeare, on the other hand, will have a fair number of images in it.  Many of them portraits of one kind or another.  And, hopefully, a death mask.  And a skull.

These images - portraits, death mask, skull - all have features in common.  Some of those features merely identify them as representing the same individual (William Shakespeare).  Most give clues as to how he died.

So, as you can imagine, they're fairly important.

Anyway, that's why I've been away, as it were.  Finishing the manuscript and starting the painstaking process of accessing and studying images and (hopefully) acquiring the rights to reproduce them in the forthcoming book.

The King Arthur Conspiracy, meanwhile, has been doing its thing.  That is, it's been dividing people.  Those whose thinking is essentially dualistic have been trying to undermine it.  Those whose thinking is more Hermetic have expressed admiration.  No great surprises there, then.  Indeed, that's why I included a quotation from Andre Gide early in the book:

"Alas! there exists an order of minds so sceptical that they deny the possibility of any fact as soon as it diverges from the commonplace.  It is not for them that I write."

I anticipate a similar reaction when the Shakespeare book comes out (next August, according to Amazon).  The dualistic tendency has held sway for an awfully long time, now.  But in history, as in politics, it has become reductive and obstructive.  It argues fiercely against any new fact.  Under cover of a supposed logical rationalism, it advances an agenda which is remarkably political and extremely backward-looking.  It's the reason why we, as a species, are in so much trouble these days.

But then, "It is not for them that I write."

Back soon, I promise!

King Lear

They might have lived a thousand years apart, but there are several connections between my two main subjects: Arthur and Shakespeare (Art & Will - geddit?).  One of them is the legendary King Lear.

Like a great deal of Arthurian source material, the Lear legend has been ignored or overlooked because, on the face of it, it has nothing whatever to do with Arthur.  The problem is one of names.

Historically, names are a problem.  Let's take an individual from the lifetime of William Shakespeare.  Sir Robert Cecil was the deformed, diminutive son of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who served as chief minister and adviser to Elizabeth I.  Robert succeeded his father, and went on to serve James I.  Together, William and Robert Cecil were among the most ruthless and rapacious statesmen this country has ever known.

In 1603, Sir Robert Cecil became Baron Cecil of Essenden.  The following year, he was made Viscount Cranborne.  The year after that, he was elevated to the earldom of Salisbury.  Over a period of just a couple of years, Cecil's name changed more than once. It was proper to refer to him as Lord Cranborne and, later, the Earl of Salisbury.

He also had nicknames, and plenty of them.  Robertus Diabolus, the Toad, King James's 'little beagle' ...

Now, if we were to apply the "only one name per historical individual" rule which is routinely applied to Arthurian studies, then Sir Robert Cecil ceased to exist in about 1603 (he actually died in 1612).  Out of nowhere appeared another person altogether, known as Salisbury.

And Will Shakespeare, of course, was not indicating Robert Cecil in the impish character of Robin Goodfellow ('Puck') or the malignant and deformed Richard 'Crookback' of Richard III.  No way.  Shakespeare would never have done such thing (except that he did).

You see the problem?  If we insist that everybody in history only ever had the one name, and the one name only, we're not going to make much sense of history, are we?  (In The King Arthur Conspiracy I also cite the example of General Schwarzkopf, who commanded the allied forces in the first Gulf War: he was also known as "Stormin' Norman" and "The Bear" - which would appear to have made him three different people.)

The character of Llyr (Irish: Lir) occurs in British tradition.  His name meant "Sea".  If we approach this character with our modern-day heads on, pretending that everyone throughout history has only ever had one name (so that Margaret Thatcher and the Iron Lady were obviously not the same person), then we are stuck.  Who was Llyr, or Lir?  No idea.  Probably a myth.

Or maybe he was a lord of the sea-kingdom of Dalriada, the homeland of the Scots on the "Coastland of the Gael" (Argyll).  Which would have made him, effectively, Arthur's father.  Aedan mac Gabrain, the father of the historical Arthur, did become King of Dalriada in 574.  He was renowned for his powerful navy.

Now, let's take this further.  In the traditional legend of King Lear, as used by one William Shakespeare, the king has three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.  During the course of my Arthurian researches, I found three women intimately connected with Arthur's father.  They were:

Gwenhwyfar - Arthur's wife (and therefore Aedan's daughter-in-law)
Muirgein - Arthur's half-sister (Aedan's first daughter)
Creiddylad - Arthur's mother (Aedan's lover)

The second of these was not exclusively known as Muirgein.  Several of her alternative names derive from rigan, an Early Irish word for a "princess", which obviously developed into the more familiar "Regan".  Creiddylad also had other names.

According to the Welsh sources, Arthur's last battle was brought about by a quarrel between two sisters, Gwenhwyfar and Gwenhwyfach.  These can be identified as Arthur's wife and his half-sister, Gwenhwyfar ("Goneril") and Muirgein ("Regan"), who did end up on opposing sides.

The Lear legend suggests that two of the King's daughters betrayed him while the third remained constant.  In the case of Arthur - or rather, his father - it could be argued that Aedan's two daughters, Gwenhwyfar and Muirgein, brought about the cataclysmic battle which claimed the life of his son, although his lover Creiddylad appears to have played no part in that. 

The lovely Creiddylad was essentially subordinate - a "daughter" - to Aedan, the lord of the isles and King of Dalriada.  The earlier, pre-Shakespearean versions of the legend have King Lear reunited with his beloved Cordelia after his other two daughters very nearly ruined the kingdom: in fact, Aedan did live for another fourteen unhappy years after the quarrel between his two daughters brought about the death of his son by Creiddylad.

This is a quick summary, of course, but the basics are there: the legend of King Lear and his three daughters corresponds with the historical situation of Aedan, the father of Arthur, who had two squabbling daughters (one being his daughter-in-law) and a third princess, whom he truly loved.  The names of Lear's daughters can all be derived from the original princesses in Aedan's immediate family circle, while the name of Lear himself relates to Aedan's role as the lord of the sea.

(While we're on the subject, in Shakespeare's King Lear, Goneril marries the Duke of Albany - another name for Scotland.  Regan marries the Duke of Cornwall, a place frequently, and mistakenly, associated with south-west Britain in Arthurian lore - in the book, I explain what "Cornwall" really meant.)

What, then, of Arthur?  Well, British - i.e. Welsh - tradition preserves several legends of the Children of Llyr.  And in my next blogpost, I'll explain where Arthur fits into that tradition, albeit under another name.

High Five

Well, an interesting 24 hours or so.  A lovely interview about The King Arthur Conspiracy with Sean Moncrieff on Newstalk, Ireland's independent talk radio station.

And then, History Today magazine sent through the proofs for an article they'll be publishing in next month's edition.  It's entitled "Arthur and the Church", and with the fantastic illustrations the whole thing runs to seven pages.  New territory for me, and all very exciting.

First, though, I came across my first Amazon review for the Arthur book.  John, who wrote it, is an American author and post-graduate researcher.  He put out a shout a few months ago for somebody to mentor him through a university paper on the subject of Arthur and Sustainability.

I was intrigued straightaway.  But I also knew that the other Arthur enthusiasts on the site would simply see his request as an excuse for some nitpicking and squabbling.  That's why the "experts" haven't found Arthur - they're too busy arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I saw John's request as a fascinating opportunity, a chance to explore what the history and legends of Arthur might have to tell us about sustainability, which is surely the biggest issue of our age.  John and I communicated by email, and after a while I suggested he have a look at the manuscript of my Arthur book (then with the publishers) so that he knew where I was coming from.

John, I have to say, is a great reader.  He read the Arthur manuscript twice, to my knowledge, and had many kind, encouraging and thoughtful observations to make about it.

So, he had a bit of a headstart.  And his 5-Star review on Amazon is a lovely tribute.  I'll share it with you here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0752476858/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Hope to post a link to the History Today article when it makes it onto the 'net.  Till then, best wishes to all!!

First Press Piece

Just thought I'd share this.  It's the first newspaper article about The King Arthur Conspiracy, courtesy of Jim McBeth and the Scottish Daily Mail:

To Kindle Interest

It's out!  On Kindle, that is.

The real books will be on their way soon.  But for those who Kindle, or those who just fancy a taster, Amazon is the place:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-King-Arthur-Conspiracy-Scottish/dp/0752476858/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340102692&sr=1-2

I'll also provide updates on the publicity as it happens.  A couple of magazine articles are pending, including a big piece in History Today (August edition).  We'll keep you posted.

But that's enough about The King Arthur Conspiracy.  I'd also like to draw your attention to another new book.  Not one that I've been involved with in any way.  It's the first of a trilogy.

The Chronicles of Iona: Exile by Paula de Fougerolles is a novel about "the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation" - Aedan mac Gabrain, King of the Scots, and St Columba.  The author describes them as "a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur".

The similarities between St Columba and the literary invention that is Merlin had occured to me whilst I was researching and writing my history of Arthur.  Aedan mac Gabrain was Arthur's father (the first man on record to be known as Arthur, that is).  The original Merlin (a name of later date) was fairly close in age to the historical Arthur.  He also did not look much like the Merlin we have come to know and love.

Arguably, St Columba did look a bit more like the traditional Merlin.  Hair cut in the Druidic tonsure (shaved at the front, long at the back), with a blackthorn staff and stained eyelids, Columba might have passed for a Merlin figure.

But the "real" Merlin was an enemy of Columba.  I've even wondered whether their antipathy had anything to do with Geoffrey of Monmouth's invention, in the twelfth century, of the name Merlin.

You see, Columba's adoptive name meant "Dove".  And the hunting bird known as the merlin is scientifically known as Falco columbarius.  Merlin, you could say, was the raptor who hunted the Dove.

Anyway, that's all by the bye.  Please feel free to check out The King Arthur Conspiracy on Amazon.  And then, when you've done that, and ordered copies for everyone you know, check out this page:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chronicles-Iona-Paula-Fougerolles/dp/0615602541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340103057&sr=1-1

The Chronicles of Iona - potentially, a companion-piece to The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero.

Why History Matters

Watching the endless succession of images from the Queen's Diamond Jubilee over the long weekend, I was reminded of the importance of history.

Part of the disconnect I felt had something to do with the fact that I was writing up the section on the Gunpowder Plot in my book about William Shakespeare.  (For the uninitiated, the Gunpowder Plot was apparently an attempt by certain Catholic fanatics to destroy the King and the Parliament in a massive explosion in 1605; the exposure of this diabolical conspiracy is still celebrated every year in the UK on 5 November.)

If you were able to watch the TV images of the Jubilee with the sound turned down, you would have enjoyed a remarkable spectacle.  But the incredibly asinine commentary throughout ruined the occasion.  Or maybe it didn't - for some, at any rate, it would have been a fitting narrative on the last 1,000 years of British history.

It all depends, of course, on what narrative you believe in.  Take Scotland, for instance.  Only 60 street parties were held in Scotland to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee.  Of those, 20 were organised by the extreme Unionists of the Orange Order, with funding from Glasgow City Council.  So, apart from a few hard line Protestants, the whole of Scotland managed just 40 street parties.  The rest of the UK held some 9,500 street parties.  What does that tell us about the state of the Union?

Well, you could say that it merely reflects a different view of history.  In Scotland, the narrative of British history is largely one of cruelty and repression.  England, of course, sees things differently, and continues to spin myths about the Scots being subsidy-reliant whingers.  The spectacle of David Starkey weeping on Sky TV was symptomatic of the English view of their own history: simplistic, imperialist, and about as realistic as Downton Abbey.

The Gunpowder Plot is a good example of how history gets skewed, then and now, to shore up a certain set of prejudices.  Going through the contemporary accounts and records, one thing really stands out: there is, in fact, more evidence that there never really was a Gunpowder Plot, and that the entire thing was manufactured and manipulated as a propaganda coup for a harsh and corrupt State, than that the plot was genuine and was opportunely discovered by a hyper-efficient government, with a little help from God.  Even so, every fifth of November we light bonfires and burn effigies in memory of a plot which, in all likelihood, wasn't anything like what we were told it was.

What we celebrate, in other words, is a phantom conspiracy which in fact allowed the King and his ministers to round up and execute a whole range of "enemies", real or imagined, and to impose even more stringent and unpleasant laws against Catholics (who were merely remaining true to the religion which had prevailed in these isles for a thousand years).  Even senior Anglican churchmen came to doubt the government's story of the plot.  No one challenged the official account more than Shakespeare.  But Shakespeare, too, has been the victim of ongoing historical revisionism.  You think we don't know very much about William Shakespeare?  Well think again.  We know a great deal about him.  But to maintain the fiction that he was a good little Protestant patriot and well-behaved family man, we have to pretend that we know nothing.

The BBC commentators over the Jubilee weekend didn't have to pretend that they know nothing: it was abundantly clear that they had no idea what they were talking about.  A historic river pageant involving a thousand boats was ruined by a gormless soundtrack of ignorance and sycophantic nonsense.

The problem, at least in part, was a woeful lack of historical knowledge.  Even the BBC's own Radio Times magazine has run a piece in next week's edition, bemoaning the frantic dumbing-down of history on TV.  "Celebrities" who have little or no grasp of history are set the task of presenting history sections -  including a hairdresser who was invited to comment on the execution of King Charles I!  History, in that sense, has become a pointless section of a magazine-type show, a kind of endless soap opera of trivia and falsehoods.

Even a slightly more intelligent history programme this week managed to muddle up the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 with the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  Women achieved a visibility in London as a result of the Restoration of King Charles II to the throne which was promptly denied them in 1688, when parliament overthrew the legitimate King - Charles's brother James - and brought in a foreign monarch.  James was Catholic, so he had to go.  William, a Dutchman, was Protestant, so he was appointed King in a remarkable coup d'etat which ushered in another Reformation.  But much of this detail was lost in the programme.  Why?  Well, we need to maintain the fiction of hereditary succession of the monarchy, and to overlook the fact that the freedoms achieved by the Restoration of a legitimate monarch were sacrificed in order to bring in a monarch of the Protestants' choosing!  Somehow or other, the Restoration of a popular monarch and a political coup designed to bring in an alternative monarch - one more acceptable to the puritanical fanatics - became the same thing!

This trivialisation of history, and the perpetuation of nationalist myths, has a political purpose.  It means that we are all encouraged to wave a flag, the history of which we simply do not know.  We do not know that the monarchy is a political construct.  We do not know the crimes that have been committed in its name.  We simply cheer a woman in her eighties, even if we're not sure why.

Those long-term job-seekers who were bussed into London to act as unpaid stewards at the river pageant, and were then abandoned to spend the night under London Bridge, were as much a part of the history of these isles as the current inhabitants of Buckingham Palace.  They are, if you like, the flipside of the bejewelled dream of British history - they are the serfs, the slaves, the underclass whose exploitation keeps the dream alive.

Which makes Scotland's ambivalence towards the weekend's celebrations rather encouraging.  For King Arthur is as much a part of the dream of British history as anything.

If you buy into the centuries of propaganda which have sustained the English crown, then you'll probably think of him as being essentially English, and certainly a Christian.

But then, when you get down and dirty with real history, you find that he wasn't.  His enemies were the English, or their ancestors, at any rate.  His legend was stolen from Scotland, just as an English king stole Scotland's royal Stone of Destiny.

The Scots were right to look askance as England celebrated its faked and fictionalised history.  Whether or not Queen Elizabeth II is the true sovereign of the United Kingdom is irrelevant.  It is the mass amnesia of the English, the ongoing process of forgetting and the creation of myths, which made the Jubilee distasteful.  With the sound turned down, the whole event was a fantastic advertisement for Britain.  But when the commentary was audible, it was a foolish, tabloid misrepresentation of almost everything that has ever happened.

And for as long as august bodies like the BBC are allowed to wreak havoc with history, turning it into the silliest of subjects, then many, many people will continue to buy into the dream - even though it is, in reality, a travesty based on a nightmare.

For the sake of national sanity and the good of our children, it is high time we jettisoned these propagandist myths, delved deeply into the historical evidence, and recognised the reality of our national past.  And that includes restoring Arthur to his proper place and time and no longer kidding ourselves that Shakespeare was a Protestant conformist.  Those myths hold us all in check.  They prevent understanding.

Worse, they encourage the continuation of atrocities.  Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.  We need to reclaim our history.  Otherwise, we will never be free.