An Open Letter to Michael Gove

Director of Education

Sanctuary Buildings

Great Smith Street

London

SW1P 3BT

Dear Mr. Gove.

As part of the 'Big Society', we feel it is our duty to discuss with you some of the finer points of your latest reforms to the English school system. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. This may come as quite a shock.

As graduates in the field of English Literature, we can often be found to take umbrage with many of the current coalition government's policies, reforms, and downright troubling decisions. Student life, and the pursuit of education, has certainly not been made easier by the current regime. We were personally lucky enough to avoid having to pay the extortionate £9000 fees imposed in 2012, by only a couple of years. We have heard the government defending this decision time and again, yet the facts speak for themselves: more and more students will now be unable to ever pay off their student loans, and as this occurs, the country's financial situation will almost certainly be adversely affected. This was, of course, an outcome easily foreseeable by most people, yet the government clearly, and very surprisingly, were unable to do so, until it was too late. However, that is for another rant. The arguments over student loans have long left the doorstep of the Conservatives - the majority perceive blame as resting firmly on the shoulders of the Liberal Democrats, those who made up such a large proportion of the demographic who voted for them feeling, quite understandably, betrayed.

Why is it that we mention this event, then? It had very little to do with you, after all. Well, it is the aforementioned lack of foresight involved which concerns us most at this present moment in time. The government seems perpetually inclined to think of the here and now more than the future, or, in some cases, not to think at all. It is this which bothers us most. It is a common occurrence that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats alike will condemn the Labour party for their lack of foresight, 'leaving' you to deal with the deficit, but it is a problem which seems to plague every party whenever they are in government, and governing with blinkers on, we would suggest, is not the best way to tackle politics.

The radical new changes made by you to the education of schoolchildren in this country has been a controversial matter for a while now. Time and again the public has spoken out against your reforms, yet our concerns have been ignored. It does your party no credit - what do we plebeians know of what is best for our own children, after all? Yet the very core of the matter is that whenever the government makes a severe change to our lives it is us who has to live with the consequences. Politicians can afford to attend good private schools if state schools would not meet their children's needs, after all, but for the common man, this is not a perceivable option. Our schools are for all intents and purposes at your beck and call; is it not imperative, therefore, that you should consider the practical application and ultimate consequences of your reforms? Trust us as we proceed to inform you of the grave error you have committed in your latest radical alterations to our education system.

It was recently reported how you have decided to 'ban' non-English classics from the GCSE syllabus, thus losing the chance to learn of the racial inequality as presented in books such as Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the social themes of John Steinbeck's 1937 classic Of Mice and Men. Within a very short timeframe, an online petition had been set up to convince you to change your reforms, and the hashtag '#Mockingbird' was trending on Twitter. As much as many of us writing to you now detest the 'hashtag', its popularity is testament to the strength of the opposition to this unwelcome announcement.

You soon bit back, however, by clarifying that nothing has been banned, and that you are merely 'asking exam boards to broaden - not narrow - the books young people study for GCSE.'

Unfortunately, your logicality seems to have been turned down to a particularly low temperature that day, so as a kindness we have decided to clarify things for you. It is true that you stipulate students must study (and we quote from your article rebuffing these unsavoury 'rumours' as published in The Telegraph on 26 May) 'a whole Shakespeare play, poetry from 1789 including the [R]omantics [we have kindly added the appropriate capital 'R' for you there], a 19th-century novel and some fiction or drama written in the British Isles since 1914 [why British we can't fathom].' You go on to add: 'Beyond this, exam boards have the freedom to design specifications so that they are stretching and interesting, and include any number of other texts from which teachers can then choose.'

Unfortunately, this only highlights, not refutes, the problem. While you may never have 'banned' these books per se, your reforms have put the English Literature syllabus into a situation where it would be nigh on impossible to include any additional material, foreign or otherwise. The set-up is so fixed and so challenging that there would be no space to add any additional material to the subject whether or not the presiding teacher had the will or the inclination to take on the additional challenge. One of us works for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and can confirm the continued popularity of Shakespeare - the Trust received over 800,000 visitors in 2013, and the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly sells out performances - but these patrons are usually adults and students. Children, conversely, and understandably, often have great difficulty understanding Shakespeare, not necessarily because Shakespeare's language is particularly challenging - David Crystal reminds us that 'Over 90% of the English used in Shakespeare's day has not lost its meaning' - but because it is perceived to be so. Children need to be eased into Shakespeare, introduced to it in fun ways (I would recommend in performance rather than on the page, and in simpler forms, such as the tried and tested Macbeth) and guided through his true challenges. It is for this reason only parts of the plays are usually used in classrooms: by the time a teacher has helped a class fully understand and appreciate a full Shakespeare play, it is time to move on to a 19th-century novel, a period where the form of the novel was relatively young in England and still very elitist, and thus another challenge presents itself. It will be a relief once schools can bring their pupils to the post-1914 works, and they can all uniformly rely on George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945). Where in all this, we ask, is there going to be any room for non-English literature? Anyone with a logical mind can see the problem here.

The nation of origin for these texts should not be just cause for them to be so unceremoniously torn away from syllabuses. They are timeless classics that highlight historical extremes of inequality and the human condition and emphasise their continued application to modern society. Surely the core purpose of the study of English Literature as a subject is to learn about different histories, different cultures, different philosophies. Naturally, as a country it is right and just that we have our own native authors at the forefront of our studies - Shakespeare, as England's elected national poet, should have a prominent position in our education, just as Scotland should teach Robert Burns and Russia should rightly revere Alexander Pushkin - but we should have enough scope to realistically include at least one or two pieces of literature from the rest of the world in there. We are, after all, a part of the world, despite the efforts of certain quarters to cut us off as an entirely independent sceptred isle set in the silver sea which serves it in the office of a wall. Take away our syllabuses interactions with the rest of the globe and your reforms make you little different educationally to how UKIP want to be internationally.

To draw this letter to a neat conclusion, we wish to quote the article by The Guardian newspaper which was one of the first to report on your supposed 'axing' of American classics from the GCSE syllabus:

'Last year, Gove, who has said children should be reading 50 books a year from the age of 11, told a conference of independent school heads that he would much prefer to see a child reading George Eliot's Middlemarch than one of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight vampire novels.'

Wouldn't we all? But the sad fact is that Middlemarch is a far tougher book to tackle than Twilight. Anybody with a literary bone in their body would surely acknowledge that. What is at issue here is not what children read, but developing an enthusiasm for reading. Many of us grew up on comics, yet now several of us are embarking on postgraduate study. One of us is pursuing MA research into early modern English drama; another is writing a PhD thesis reading Lacanian psychoanalytic theory through the writings of the English Romantic poets. It is certainly a big step up from The Beano (not that we are for a minute suggesting The Beano make it onto the GCSE syllabus). The point is, children develop literary skills through different methods, but what is most important is that they enjoy developing them. As much as any of us may like Dickens now, make our teenager selves read Bleak House and we'd be put off English for life. So often we hear people lamenting our chosen subject paths because of their own difficulties in studying English at school, so much so that many now have a mental block against the subject, unwilling even to try to pursue the classics independently. By narrowing the curriculum as you have done, you do not show an understanding for how best to mould intellectual minds, but rather risk torturing students through hours of potentially mind-numbing reading, creating a generation who cannot succeed in English purely because they are bored by it. It is an undesirable reality, but a reality it is nonetheless.

Without the ability to choose a wide range of literature from around the world and throughout time, our children will not have the will or interest to even conceive of reading fifty books per year. At that age, our own interests in literature were probably formed far better with Of Mice and Men, Macbeth and An Inspector Calls than with, say, Middlemarch, Love's Labour's Lost and David Copperfield. If it ain't broke, as the old adage says, don't fix it. Our education system needs reform, yes - one of us could tell you long, rambling stories about having to teach himself the entirety of GCSE mathematics because his teacher was so poor she spent the entirety of each class shouting at one unruly child rather than actually doing any teaching, and there are doubtless many under-performing schools out there, but statistics and generalisation is what gets governments into trouble over issues such as this. Teachers, by and large, do a bloody marvellous job in this country, and it saddens us - no, it outrages us - to see so many leaving their careers because of what you are doing to them and their pupils. Is it not more sensible to allow the professionals in the classroom to choose the appropriate materials for study for their own pupils? They should themselves know what is most appropriate for nurturing their students' intelligence and success, and should be able to teach them beyond the confines of a national curriculum. One of us remembers fondly how an enjoyment of early modern drama first began to formulate after a teacher took a class to see a performance of King Lear despite the curriculum's insistence on the same old chestnut, Romeo and Juliet (which is now, incidentally, despite his love of Shakespeare, his least favourite play, doubtlessly down in no small part to forcibly having the same passages drummed into him class after class after class). The two titles which have been referenced time and again in this controversy - Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird - cover a great variety of themes without the difficulty of language in need of repeated teacher translation. If you will forgive a sudden change in tone, it would be desirable if you would climb down from your ivory tower and actually look at what you are doing to the people who have to live with each and every one of your myopic and narrow-minded reforms. Perhaps it would be wise to acknowledge your own limited knowledge of the classroom and trust the judgement of those who have been trained - at great personal financial expense - to teach. We wouldn't know how to run a government department, after all, and we acknowledge that.

There's good change and there's bad change - McDonald's making their chicken nuggets with 100% real chicken was undoubtedly good change; then again, the new and 'improved' Cornetto is a major let down. Be a chicken nugget, Mr. Gove, and not a Cornetto.

Yours faithfully,
The Pessimist Chronicles, ©2014.

PS: We would point out that, in the current economic client, children should be able to get those fifty books per year from public libraries. But what do we know?

This letter was sent to Michael Gove on the evening of the 9th June 2014. Unless we are refused permission, any response received will be communicated to our readers immediately.

Trashy Fiction

It was while sitting comfortably on the train travelling into Stratford-upon-Avon last week that I began a conversation with the dear friend sitting next to me about the man so infamously born at the site of our destination on approximately 23rd April 1564 - William Shakespeare. How surprised (and disturbed) was I then to hear him say the following words to me.

'I wouldn't know much about that: I only read trashy fiction.'

Naturally, I felt obliged to explain that there were really only a few things which could be described as 'trashy fiction', but if it is written well and, above all, entertains the reader, it is somewhat difficult to label it as 'trashy'.

But it got me thinking: who exactly has the right to decide what is worth reading and what isn't? And, furthermore, what makes something 'trashy'? And (an even more pressing matter), why is it that so many people feel they cannot tackle the 'classics', due to a belief that they are either 'boring' or 'too difficult'? After all, a recent news report from the BBC suggested that some children struggle to read at school because they see reading as 'boring' and 'nerdy', and it seems they receive no encouragement to pursue the subject (the report can be perused here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18644811). I personally, feel this is very sad - after all, the popularity of reading is as high now as it ever was, and the classics even more so... so why are some people so afraid of them?

I suppose the issue of what is worth reading all derives from the literary canon. For those of you who don't know what I mean by this phrase (and, to be honest, not knowing its meaning myself before coming to university suggests that most people who aren't English students will likewise and understandably be completely oblivious), the canon is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, '[a] standard of judgement or authority; a test, criterion, means of discrimination' - that is, which authors/works are 'worth' reading, therefore systematically un-trashy and, according to http://www.victorianweb.org,

'It means that the works in the canon get read, read by neophyte students and supposedly expert teachers. It also means that to read these privileged works is a privilege and a sign of privilege. It is also a sign that one has been canonized oneself -- beatified by the experience of being introduced to beauty, admitted to the ranks of those of the inner circle who are acquainted with the canon and can judge what belongs and does not.'

Now, I personally am not entirely convinced by the idea of the canon myself. After all, what makes a work canon, and why is it instantly worth reading and better than everything else if it has this great status inferred upon it?

Of course, the classics are classics for very good reasons, and I do not mean to decry the idea of a 'literary prestige' entirely; and yet, it would be remiss of me to leave the readers of this article believing that everything in the canon is accessible and 'better' than the more 'trashy' fiction out there.

One of my own literary idols, the legendary George Orwell, in a 1945 essay entitled 'Good Bad Books' mused upon this same topic. In his discourse, he interestingly suggested that 'the "good bad book" [is] the kind of book that has no literary pretentions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished', including within this category the Sherlock Holmes stories (1887 - 1927) and Bram Stoker's magnum opus, Dracula (1897), both of which have undoubtedly gone on to achieve 'classic' and, more importantly, 'canon' status today. He goes on to ask the question of '[w]ho has worn better, [Sir Arthur] Conan Doyle or [George] Meredith?' I think we all know the answer to that one.

'Good Bad Book', or literary phenomenon?

The point of including Orwell here is clear: the suggestion outlined above is that even one of the most prominent figures within the literary canon personally repudiated the idea of the classics being the be all and end all of what makes 'good' literature, a belief I clearly share. As an English student, many would expect me to be a reader solely of canon works, and yet will confess to having read (and, indeed, thoroughly enjoyed) the works of such 'brutish' writers as Andy McNab and Ian Fleming in my time, the latter of which brings me on neatly to my next point.

The vast majority of classic writers, it would seem, were never good enough to be considered so in their own day - sometimes, this is inexplicable, as Edgar Allan Poe, while never having been able to make a good living off his work during his brief lifetime, remains undeniably a master of the gothic horror genre (who doesn't know 'The Raven' or 'The Fall of the House of Usher'?), and John Keats, who was even unable to marry his sweetheart, Fanny Brawne, because his poetry wasn't earning him enough money; some were respcted in their day, and are raved about as the best writers of all time, and yet in reality aren't all that good - Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), for example, is one of the most boring narratives of all time; other writers, hugely successful in their time, are now scarcely read at all (such as in the cases of  Aphra Behn and Jane Barker, of whom I am only aware because of having chosen to study Women's Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century next semester); and some, like the aforementioned Fleming, are very curious anomalies, concretely situated within the canon and widely read as classics, yet still considered by many to be trashy fiction.

Well-rounded character, a timeless storyline, and a downright dark closing line ('The bitch is dead now'),
Casino Royale (1953) is the first in a literary series despised by many scholars... yet it laid the foundations
of one of the most successful film franchises of all time.

Why would this be, I ask? The answer, after much consideration, seems obscenely simple: the more entertaining, 'mainstream' fiction just isn't good enough for the canon, and it is for this reason that, when deciding what book to buy, the canon has very little bearing upon what I choose to purchase. Of course, I have become very enamoured with canon authors through my studies in literature, and if I were to look at the gothic I would be far more likely to buy a copy of Dracula than Twilight (and have done, for obvious reasons); but it is important for those of you out there, like my friend, who don't feel they can read the classics to keep this in mind: just because it is a classic does not mean it is boring and difficult - after all, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; revised 1735) and Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844) must be great stories, because numerous film versions throughout history have been so popular that we all know the stories, and are not even put off by Swift's original rather surprising groin-grabbingly intimidating title for his work (Gulliver's Travels: Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships); but, likewise, it does not necessarily mean it is brilliant and breathtaking. All classics are classics for a reason, but not all for particularly good reasons... and they are not necessarily so because of what Italo Calvino decided - 'classics are not what we say we are reading, but what we are re-reading'. No, Italo, that isn't the case at all. In fact, there are some classics you will never wish to look at twice...

Yawn... I blame the translator (not)

The fact is that some novels are classics for historic reasons. Daniel Deoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), for example, was the first English novel, but despite being a great story is for the most part a torturous read; similarly, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady (1748) is the longest novel in the English language, and as a result has only been finished by a handful of people, and certainly not by me or anybody I have ever met. That said, not all classics are this bad: the majority are some of the best stories you could ever follow, and it shows when you read such greats as John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), classic for the fact that it brough the vampire into the contemporary public consciousness, and a thrilling read because of it, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a great introduction to the Romantic anxieties surrounding the growth of modern scientific knowledge.

But just because a particularly good writer is respected and canon does not necessarily mean they are perfect. Shakespeare has remained incredibly popular since his arrival on the London stage scene in the 1590s, with the Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company almost selling out at every performance, with amateur groups and schools even getting in on the the act, and being very succesful at it - I myself was taught to star as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (c.1595) at primary school when an amateur dramatics society visited one afternoon and got us all to join in a production of one scene. Following on from that, I was highly enthusiastic at my studies of Macbeth (c.1606) and Romeo and Juliet (c.1595) in English at school, and even starred as the Duke in my GCSE drama production of Measure for Measure (c.1603-1604), so much so that I am now specialising in Shakespeare as part of my dissertation. But the main issue people have, I feel, is that the plays they are forced to study at school are in no way Shakespeare's best. They are great works, yes, but not as good as others, and the way English is taught at school is, for many people, enough to put them off for life; but there is so much entertainment to be had - go and see a production of my favourite play, King Richard II (c.1595), or the greatest of the tragedies, King Lear (c.1605 - 1606) or even the fantastic comedy that is Twelfth Night (c.1601) - even if you can't understand Shakespeare on the page very well, a good theatre company like the RSC or Globe will easily be able to make you see the comedy to be had even if you can't find it on your own: its all in the delivery, after all. And yet, Shakespeare has, in fact, written a handful of plays which are downright rejected by scholars, critics and the public alike. The King Henry VI trilogy (c.1590 - 1591), Titus Andronicus (c.1591-1592), Timon of Athens (c. 1605 - 1606) and Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c.1607) have all fallen victim to the phrase 'Shakespeare couldn't have written this tripe!' It seems shocking, I know, but there is so much arrogance surrounding the man that some scholars will not even accept he wrote them. Just because a writer is considered the greatest of all time doesn't mean he didn't write some naff stuff; we all have our off days, although how you could dislike such witty Marxist content as this is beyond me:

Fisherman 3: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

Fisherman 1: Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

(Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II, Scene 1)

A truly touching, often funny, highly witty tale of a father and his daughter,
Pericles has for years been rejected and often loathed by 'experts' and audiences,
and yet it remains one of my favourites.

So the best plan of action seems to be to get people involved in the classics earlier, but that does not mean that it is impossible to do it if you are older. And so, here is a list of the top ten 'classics' which, I feel, could provide a thoroughly entertaining, accessible starting point for anyone who wants to read less 'trashy' fiction but has been indoctrinated to be somewhat pensive about the challenge, or worried they will be a bit 'above' them.

 

 

1) Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) - One of his shortest and simplest works, this contains all the trademarks of Dickens' fiction: hard, edgy, social commentary and great historical realism. He een goes easy on the often mind-numbing descriptive passages here.

 

 

2) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - A gothic classic, we all know the story from the films, but they often over-emphasised the homoeroticism. There is much more on human nature and the dark side of desire in the original.

 

 

3) Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) - Another gothic classic. As above, if you've only seen the film, you don't know the real story. Pulling off your nipple and letting a woman drink the blood while you're doing the nasty? Its all in there.

 

 

4) Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901 - 1902) - Undoubtedly the best of the novels, it retains the detective elements while experimenting with a gothic/horror infusion which works incredibly well. The language isn't at all archaic or convoluted - the way Conan Doyle wrote, it might as well have been written last week.

 

 

5) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) - The ultimate American novel. Don't see the film and let Toby Maguire's acting ruin it for you until you've given the book a chance.

 

 

6) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) - Again, written in a style which is very up-to-date and contemporary, and a story which is as relevant now (with all our repid technological advancement) as it was in the 1930s, when the Nazi Party was just coming to power in Germany.

 

 

7) P. G. Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves (1933 - 1934) - Classic comedy. If you're worried the classics might be a bit heavy, its always good to be able to have a laugh. Written as a critique on the 'idle rich' who dominated England in Wodehouse's day, you could almost be reading about junior members of our current government...

 

 

8) George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) - This allegorical novella is the shortest of Orwell's fictional works, and contains all of the trademarks of his fiction: political rebellion, social parody and a heavy dusting of satire. The first true post-war novel, Orwell had a very hard time trying to get this published, due to its blatant criticism of Stalin and the Soviet Union and their relationship with Britain at the tome, but its a good thing he managed it, because it remains one of the greatest works of fiction of all time, and one of my personal favourites. At only ten chapters it could be read in a day or two - just don't make the mistake of thinking this is in any way a children's book.

 

 

9) Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955) - A first-rate thriller, set in 1950s Indo-China. It became a great film with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, and is a great exploration of the darker sides of forced friendship miles from home.

 

 

10) Ian Fleming, From Russia with Love (1957) - Undoubtedly the best of the Bond novels, and simultaneously classic fiction and trashy fiction. One of John F. Kennedy's favourite books, and the one closest to its film adaptation, you may as well forget waiting for Skyfall to be released - this is classic espionage as it should be.

And so, I send you forth to rediscover the classics, and not to let yourself be intimidated because the snobs at Oxbridge have tuck their noses in the air and decided that only a fictional social elite should be able to read these texts. Nothing is too hard to read if you have a mind to do so, and nothing is trashy if its well-written enough for you to enjoy.

Although, the same cannot be said for Fifty Shades of Grey...

 

 

William D. Green

Vampirism: A Modern Trend?

Ladies, gentlemen, not-so gentle men, ladies who look like men, men who look like ladies, ladies who look like ladies but feel like men, those undecided on their genders and those who’ve read so much Judith Butler that they no longer believe in genders; it has recently come to my attention that vampires are fucking everywhere.

Allow me to explain: I’m not proposing that the hemoglobin-infatuated hellspawn are literally fornicating the world over. No, that would just be silly. What I mean to imply is that the horny blighters appear to have entered into every facet of our culture!

The last thing you want to see you daughter (or boy, as we must be tolerant) playing with: a pony that could KILL YOU!

From Twilight and Tru Blood to Vampire Diaries and the newly-released My Nosferatu Pony, one can’t deny that fangs have overtaken Apple as the world’s biggest brand; and with Steve Jobs; current 'state', it won’t be long until even Apple succumbs to the undead bandwagon.

“Yeah, you may metaphorically suck the life blood from third world countries Bill, but I literally drain the living of their life giving juices! Jobs one- Gates nil. Even death can’t stop you, when you own an apple. Our virus support is just that good!”

Yeah, you may metaphorically suck the life-force from third world countries, Bill...
but I literally drain the living of their life-giving juices!

Jobs 1 - Gates nil. Even death can't stop you, when you own an Apple. Their virus support is just that good!

So, how is it exactly that our culture has become so infatuated with the Vampiric? It’s actually quite simple - all one has to do is go back to where it all began: in the fires of Mount Doom - cough, cough - sorry, I really must fight the urge to reference popular culture. As I was saying: sit back, pop the kettle on and settle down for a little bit of story time...

'3 May. Bistritz. – Left Munich at 8.35pm on 1^st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning […]'

Oh, sorry, I appear to have chosen the wrong vampire-related story. Let’s try this again shall we?

'My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favourite shirt – sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka […]'

No, wait, still the wrong story. What is this trash? 'My carry-on item was a parka' - what’s next? Sparkling vampires falling in love with a poorly rounded narrator? Not on my watch! Enough of these shenanigans and back to the point at hand!

'The time is now.

We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks—as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of the first two thousand years of the living dead […]'

Much better…

“Well you see, in the beginning… we weren’t what you see today. Nowadays you see Colin Farrell topless doing battle with Doctor Who, or you see some actress with the charisma of Keanu Reeves crying to this prick:

Oh my God, this picture balances his good and bad aspects so amazingly! So immensely artistic!

See, it wasn’t like this back when I started. Back when I started it was a cruel, savage act being turned; kind of like a more homoerotic press-ganging. Let’s just say you were lucky if your immortal life didn’t start with an anal raping. Well I guess in those respects… it was just like a press-ganging… come to think of it I don’t even have fangs. I’m not even a vampire if I’m honest. I’m just some poor sod who got done from behind and thrown on a boat. I don’t even like the dark if I’m honest; it brings back bad memories. All that rum and salt, I shudder at the thought; I’m so sorry I can’t do this…”

The Vampire has turned away, tears streaming from his face; a brief shower to wash away the dirt-ridden entrails of his past. Sorrowful he makes for the door, grimacing at the picture in the hall. Now angered by the image of some sea-born vessel he’s fled in a fit of rage, his hands across his rear in defiance of what had been.'

Well… that explained... nothing… yeah.

Sorry about that. I have no excuse for what you just read. MY BAD! So, where were we…? Ah, yes, where did our culture’s affinity to the elongated canine begin? When was society first taken ill with Sanguinare Vampiris? Well, it may or may not surprise many of you that the Vampire is far older than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In fact, myths speaking of Vampiric beings have been told around the entirety of the planet for thousands of years. Some have even argued that the vampire myth may stretch back to prehistoric times.* It wasn’t until the early eighteenth century, however, that the concept of vampirism really hit the mainstream. This was due to the rising number of vampire legends in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Vampire superstitions got so bad in Europe, in fact, that they grew into a hysteria with numerous stakings across the period. So, if you ever travel back to the eighteenth century… don’t sleep in a coffin: it’s not advisable.

It wasn’t until 1819, however, that literature was allowed to bare its fangs. The first published story about the blood suckers was John Polidori’s novella The Vampyre. It was this work that transformed the vampire from an abhorred, undead beastie into the charismatic aristocrat we see in Dracula. Polidori tells the story of Aubrey – a young Englishman – following the mysterious Lord Ruthven – wonder who the vampire is – on his travels about Europe. The story itself was highly successful and lead to numerous tales of Vampiric intrigue being published from this moment on; one such work being the somewhat confused penny-dreadful Varney the Vampire (1845). Woe and behold, this told the story of an aristocratic vampire named… any guesses? I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with (but isn’t) 'Barney'. There were no giant purple dinosaurs in this story, children… sorry, maybe next time.

We’re not there yet, folks. Many more tales of the Nosferatu were published before Stoker made the term popular in Dracula; one such story being Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 tale of a lesbian Vampire, Carmilla. This itself helped in starting off the long-lasting partnership between homosexuality and Vampirism. Come on, you can’t say you’ve never noticed it… even Dracula’s a closet gay…

It was not, in fact, until 1897 that Bram Stoker published his stand-out novel (which also happens to be the only one he wrote still in print), Dracula. So, as you can see, Stoker in no way created the Vampire. He didn’t even sculpt the archetypal aristocratic beastie we all know and love. Far from it: he is in fact just another stepping stone in the trail of Vampires across history.  What Stoker did do, however, is bring Vampires to the novel form. He took them from the realm of penny-dreadfuls and short stories into the newly-erected Kingdom of the Gothic Novel!

So, as you can see, Vampires are not merely some modern outbreak. They’re not like foot and mouth or bird flu, a recent phenomenon and passing trend. No, they’re far more. Vampires have been around as long as language. They’re a mythology that’s lived alongside mankind since the beginning.

In many ways, this is the magnificent thing about Vampires. Not only have they always been there within our culture, but they’re constantly changing, innovated by the world around them. For example, in 1895 there was the first cinema screening ever and it only took until 1913 for The Vampire to reach the big screen, a film shortly followed by F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece, Nosferatu, the first true Vampire movie and one to be followed by thousands more. By 2005, for example, Count Dracula had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character - if you’re to count the vampire itself and not just Stoker’s reincarnation, there’s many, many more...

With this in mind, is it any great surprise that Vampires are everywhere in our culture today? They have always been at the fore of cultural innovation and now in a world built around film, television and the internet the vampire myth is able to thrive even more so as the vampire brand. So when one argues that Vampires have taken over the last few years it’s not actually true. They’ve always been here: it’s society that’s changed. Now they’re not only confined to mythology or stories, but are able to thrive within a world of images. They’ve always been at the door: we’ve merely invited them in.

Now please enjoy some images of the Vampire's evolution over the years: thanks for reading.

Wow... Talk about devolving...

Shaun Beale

*Found in one of the many histories of the period.

Elementary: The Continuing Life of Sherlock Holmes

It is certainly odd to think what the history of crime investigation would have been like if, on that fateful day in 1881, Doctor John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department, had not bumped into his old colleague Stamford, and had not subsequently been introduced to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world’s only unofficial consulting detective. Indeed, if these events had not happened, where would detective fiction be now, without even the humble magnifying glass ever having been used as an investigative tool? Where would forensic science be, had the ‘Sherlock Holmes Test’ of searching for otherwise-invisible blood particles not been developed? Where would we be now if the terrible war which had almost occurred during the events chronicled by Watson under the title ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ had not been avoided? Where, oh where, would the world itself be if these events had never happened?

Well, the shocking truth is, these things never happened. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional creation which burst from the depths of the mind of a struggling 27-year-old doctor in a story entitled A Study in Scarlet, first published in Beeton’s Christmas Annualduring the November of 1887. The original story made very little impact, but a second novel, The Sign of Four, was published in the February 1890 edition of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, with two further novels and fifty-six short stories appearing in The Strand Magazinebetween 1891 and 1927 (with an infamous hiatus between 1893 and 1901). With this in mind, it seems incredible that this character appears to have transgressed the boundaries set by his creator to become a figure almost with a life of his own. Despite him so obviously being fictional, there is still a part within all of us interested in Holmes which believes him to be real. Statements such as ‘I wish I could have met him’ and ‘he was the greatest detective of all time’ float out of the mouths of people fully aware of his fictional nature, and yet we still half-believe what we are saying: that Sherlock Holmes was a real, living, breathing man, who kept his tobacco in a Persian slipper and occasionally made use of cocaine to stimulate his great mind during lengthy periods of idleness.

So what is it about the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that seems so real? It isn’t as though the stories explored exclusively-realistic themes – how, for example, could Holmes have been employed by the King of Bohemia in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ when there was no such position at the time (the Kingdom of Bohemia was at the time of writing owned by the House of Habsburg and had no monarchy)? The continuity, also, is particularly unbelievable - Watson, after claiming to have been shot in the shoulder in A Study in Scarlet, changes his story to the injury being in his leg from The Sign of Four onwards; after claiming never to have heard of Moriarty before ‘The Final Problem’, he readily identifies him in the prequel The Valley of Fear; similarly, in ‘The Final Problem’, Moriarty’s brother’s first name is said to be James, and yet this is identified as Moriarty’s name in every story thereafter; it is impossible for Watson to still be living with Holmes inThe Hound of the Baskervilles, set in 1889, as he got married to Mary Morstan at the end of The Sign of Four, set in 1887, and she did not die until sometime between ‘The Final Problem’ (set in 1891) and ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (set in 1894) – the list of discontinuities and errors in Doyle’s work could go on and on. But the fact is that is simply does not matter – a reader could spend forever trying to explain away the problems in the ongoing narrative, but it would not make any difference to a fantastic body of works. And so, the question remains, just what is so special about Holmes that he is still being read, adapted, talked about and watched today, in 2012, one hundred and twenty five years after his initial appearance in print?

The answer is simple: Sherlock Holmes is such a brilliant creation. What’s not to like about a man with such incredibly powerful deductive powers that he could tell you everything about yourself within a few moments of seeing you for the first time? The man would be incredibly annoying to meet, after all (certainly spending a day with him would be more of a chore than a holiday with Louis Spence), but his brilliance would still be undeniable. People wanthim to be real – he is such a fantastic portrayal of the potential intellectual powers of a human being that, were he to have existed, nothing could be more amazing.

Despite the fact that Holmes has frequently been identified as the worst kind of depressive he could be (constantly requiring mental stimulation or risking falling into a deep, dark melancholy which can only be survived through occasional cocaine abuse), is frequently horrendously rude to the few friends he has (he tells Watson in ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’ that he is ‘only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications’ and gives frequent backhanded compliments to Inspector Lestrade) and is unable to see anything beyond what is relevant to his own ego ('His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know nothing' - A Study in Scarlet), everyone has a soft spot for the character. He certainly isn’t all bad – he does show genuine compassion on numerous occasions; he spares several criminals across his career if he sees their crimes to be the result of understandably grave experiences or situations; he even treats a group of street urchins (The Baker Street Irregulars), neglected and looked down upon by society and downright hated by landlady Mrs Hudson, as equals, incredibly useful in solving several of his cases. If he is arrogant and self-proud about it (‘The air of London is the sweeter for my presence. In over a thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers on the wrong side’ – ‘The Final Problem’) then he certainly has earned the right.

And yet, Conan Doyle hated Holmes, or so it has been reported. In the preface to the final short story collection, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (published in 1927 and made up of the stories to have appeared in The Strand between 1921 and 1927) Doyle stressed his belief that ‘he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of [his] more serious literary work.’ But then again, perhaps for Doyle to judge Holmes as anything other than ‘serious literary work’ is a little harsh: after all, today there is both a blockbuster movie series and a hugely successful modern-day reimagining of the series being fed to the public almost simultaneously, and who has ever heard of Doyle’s other works, such as The Tragedy of the Korosko or The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, or of his historical works, such as Micah Clarke? Furthermore, I am quite certain very few people know The Lost World was a novel by Doyle before it became the basis for Michael Crichton’s 1995 novel of the same name (which in turn was adapted into the second movie in the Jurassic Park series).

Conan Doyle’s feelings towards Holmes could not have been so strong so as to reject him entirely, after all. In 1927 – the same year as the Casebookwas released – Conan Doyle drew up a list of his own twelve favourite Holmes short stories, reproduced faithfully here:

1. The Adventure of the Speckled Band (The Adventures)

2. The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (The Adventures)

3. The Adventure of the Dancing Men (The Return)

4. The Final Problem (The Memoirs)

5. A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures)

6. The Adventure of the Empty House (The Return)

7. The Five Orange Pips (The Memoirs)

8. The Adventure of the Second Stain (The Return)

9. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot (His Last Bow)

10. The Adventure of the Priory School (The Return)

11. The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (The Memoirs)

12. The Adventure of the Reigate Squires (The Memoirs)

I have to say, in many ways I whole-heartedly disagree with this hierarchy. Conan Doyle was the hardest critic of the stories, which may explain why, to my mind, he has outright neglected to include some of the best stories he ever wrote in this list, and also why he has elevated some of the duller narratives to such a high status. It is also clear that he has completely ignored the Casebook, despite the fact that some of these stories are unique in every way. Personally, I have never been particularly enamoured with ‘The Priory School’, and the plot of ‘The Reigate Squires’, despite my having read the stories several times, has almost entirely failed to be retained within my memory. Therefore, it seems right that I should be permitted to suggest my own list of twelve, which would come as follows:

1. The Adventure of the Dancing Men (The Return)

2. The Adventure of the Second Stain (The Return)

3. The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (His Last Bow)

4. The Final Problem (The Memoirs)

5. The Adventure of the Dying Detective (His Last Bow)

6. The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (The Return)

7. The Problem of Thor Bridge (The Casebook)

8. A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures)

9. The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (The Memoirs)

10. The Adventure of the Speckled Band (The Adventures)

11. The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips (The Memoirs)

12. The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (The Return)

Speaking from a fan perspective, it is clear that my preferences come from entertainment value rather than whether the stories themselves are of any real literary ‘worth’. You will notice how I have managed to squeeze in one particularly outstanding story from the Casebook and how the Return certainly comes out on top with four contributions, whereas Doyle tied the Memoirsand Return together with four apiece. As a considerably darker, racier collection, I still maintain that the Return is superior, but who am I to judge Conan Doyle’s own preference. The fact that I took the time to compile my own list shows the fondness I clearly hold for this writer and his greatest creation.

The fact is that, yes, regarding the immense number of continuity errors, the character and his world are incredibly unbelievable; and yet, oddly, it is this fact which, conversely, makes it all so believable: we want him to exist – we want such an amazing human being to be possible, because we ourselves want to believe it is possible to raise a human being to such great intellectual heights. Conan Doyle was a flawed writer – he altered his continuity to suit his newer stories; he allowed himself to live in the shadow of a fictional individual he created; he became unable to rid himself of him. But he never truly wanted to do so, in my belief. Look at the evidence – at the end of ‘The Final Problem’, he makes it as clear as he possibly can that there was no body to be found, and if there is no body, he could always resurrect Holmes, should he so desire. Similarly, despite his assertion that The Return was to be the final Holmes collection before the character retired, he could not help but write another collection of reminiscences from earlier in his career – the first ending with a defiant farewell, ‘His Last Bow’, subtitled as ‘An Epilogue to Sherlock Holmes’. And yet he still could not eliminate him – although clearly tired of Holmes by the time the stories in the Casebook were published, he still showed no sign of giving up –during this period, Doyle’s experimental side is at its best: here, we see him doing things he had never done before: Holmes narrates two stories, there is a story in the third person, and the themes explored include vampirism and child killers (both in the sense of a killer of children and a killer being a child himself).

It is certain that Conan Doyle could not have hated his most famed creation as much as he implied, therefore, and for a writer to continue with the same character throughout such an extended period of time is undeniably something impressive. Whether you find the stories exciting or tedious (God forbid), whether you are jealous that the stories are difficult to work out a solution to yourself, or whether you feel that Conan Doyle ‘sold-out’ by bringing him back from the dead, the talent and continuing popularity of the man and his work is undeniable. Even today, re-runs of the fantastic 1980s TV series starring Jeremy Brett are shown frequently on ITV, a new novel (The House of Silk) has been written and released by Anthony Horowitz, and a blockbuster movie series starring Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law is being produced simultaneously with a high-budget modern retelling starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. And even this shiny new updated version has not entirely forgotten its roots: aside from episode titles such as ‘A Study in Pink’ (2010), ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ (2012) and ‘The Reichenbach Fall’(2012), we are provided within the episodes with plot references to the original stories (look out especially for ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’ and ‘The Five Orange Pips’ in the 2010 episode ‘The Great Game’), as well as jokes tailor-made for the Holmes aficionado (in ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ we are treated to blog titles such as ‘The Speckled Blonde’ and ‘The Geek Interpreter’). The life of Sherlock Holmes is most definitely not dead. Where the world’s obsession with the character will go from here, however, waits to be seen.

William D. Green