To celebrate the August heat wave Phoenix Ark Press are delighted to announce the free promotion of The Terror Time Spies by David Clement-Davies. Kindle copies will be available for free download this Wednesday, August 22nd. Happy reading adventures! For your courtesy Wednesday copy Click here
Filed under Fantasy, Free Story, Young Adult
Perhaps coming home for everyone begins at that point when you start to read local and international news again. So we met two headlines on EasyJet, one about Julian Assange and David Cameron’s remarks about his time in the Ecuadorian Embassy, another about the brave girls of the Pussy Riot in Moscow.
It would be truly courageous if Assange were to walk straight through the embassy doors right now and face the music, because if not he will make a mockery of British laws, but also undermine all the arguably valuable work Wikileaks has done. He has lost ground all over the place in terms of remarks about his personality and motives. It could only be to his credit, and the media focus itself is protection against any dodgy dealings at a trial for sexual offences. The argument against of course is that the whole thing has been drummed up by America in order to nab him for far more serious offences, in their book, and around it coalesce many important arguments about the Internet and what freedom of speech and information really are.
Equally the Russian Courts should immediately suspend the absurd two-year sentence against the protestors of The Pussy Riot. Politicians and celebrities alike are bending over backwards to give their support, and the spotlight must be kept up on those very brave and also pretty faces and eyes in their balaclava’s, but they are already important symbols in the struggle for truth and human freedom. If the state must at times stress the value of law, even in this case to the extent of wrapping the girls somehow over the knuckles, perhaps, no signatory to a European Treaty on Human Rights can allow such a sentence and the thing has already backfired.
Perhaps, if he is a crusader for truth and justice and he dared step off Ecuadorian soil in London, Mr Assange should openly wear a pink balaclava.
PA PRESS
Filed under Uncategorized
Read Lawrence Durrell, or just look at the sickel shaped island of Corfu on a map, in the middle of the Med and right between Rome and Istanbul, and you will immediately understand the historic and geographical significance of Corfu. It’s why, when the Brits took control of the Ionaian Islands, in the 1815 Treaty of Paris, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Governor built a residence here. In the days when Government officials could do things like that, he built a road up behind Corfu town, along with the road and sanitation works right across the island, that have lasted to today, so that he could have better communications with his Corfeat wife. She is recorded in a dreadful copy of a painting inside the house, all bundled up in Jane Austin pleats, and not at all reflective of the famous beauty of many Corfu girls. The Adams later went on to India.
Mon Repos, on the little peninsula that juts out into the mesmerizing cobalt blue, is where Prince Phillip was born into the Greek Royal family, a fairly small yet elegant Regency building, among a winding forest of wild oak, cyprus and monkey puzzle trees. At the little Hereum in the grounds, the temple to Hera, local archaeological works were underway, which consisted of a half bearded bloke with his two sweet daughters liberally bulldozing earth away in his dump truck, while his colleagues sheltered from the dripping heat, and smoked the odd cigarette. No careful toothbrush combing of earth layers here then.
The ancient Greek remains there are obviously far more extensive than have so far been revealed, but the neighbouring temple on the cliff edge that they describe simply as ‘Doric’ was most likely a temple to Poseidon. The place was lovely for a gentle, sweating walk, but it all seems rather haphazard and down at heel. Ill now and ninety one, the Queen’s hubby Phillip may remember it more clearly, and in grander times too. If another Greek financial crisis is looming tomorrow though, August 20th, when the coffers are due to run dry again, they could make far more of the whole complex of Mon Repos. Perhaps it is natural Greek indolence, some uncomfortable relationship to the idea of the British role in Greece, or because half of Corfu’s immense charm is not doing anything very much at all. It would be a nice idea to stage concerts and plays here though, encourage local tavernas, with regional produce, or make much more of the grounds and facilities, but it will probably never happen. Unless some clever entrepreneur steps off one of those super yachts in the bay and offers to buy it.
More visitors seem to flock up the hill to the palace just above our village of Gastouri, The Achilleion, where the famous Sissy, Empress of Austria and then Austria Hungary, found snatches of happiness. The story of her beauty, isolation and ultimately tragic life involved her sister setting fire to herself, as she learnt the dubious art of secret smoking, her husband playing away, and finally Sissy’s own assassination by some swaggering anarchist, even if Sissy had a comparatively radical temperament. But she found the spirit of the muses away from it all up here and her interest in classical Greece turned the elegant terraces into a stone Tussaud’s of Classical Greek statuary. It is more pleasing than the over-ornate, wedding cake style Baroque interiors and worth a visit.
It is still all very Germanic though, with the gigantic, over stylised statue of Achilles crowning the view that looks out at to Kerkyra, Corfu town. Another is set back in the gardens, with the prostrate hero clutching that arrow in his heel, launched by another Paris, after his tussles with the Apple of Discord. If the myths teach of the relationship between the eternal, and the mortal and transitory, the entry point into the real world around us, perhaps Greece will still prove the Achilles heal to the whole Eurozone. But despite corruption, some primitive superstitions and ignorances, like a neighbour remarking that British spending on the Olympics was a waste of ‘their’ money, and that oddly Greek sense of its own right, on wealthy, warm Corfu, where people are both welcoming and filled with a lively sense of humour, it is absurd to think of Greece as anything but a proud, beautiful and important European neighbour.
So, with all the work here on Edmund Shakespeare, to Lawrence Durrell recording in Prospero’s Cell the theory of a local Count in the 1930’s, as another war loomed, who gently insisted that Corfu is actually Shakespeare’s setting for The Tempest. It’s a lovely idea, as well as being the place that Odysseus overcame that siren song, on his eternal journey back home from war with man and Gods to Penelope and real love. But in the walls between fact and fiction there are few absolutes, and as much as any real place, or the possibility of Shakespeare travelling, that ‘isle full of noises’ is the islands of Shakespeare’s creative psyche and imagination.
Phoenix Ark and oddball family spent two lovely weeks there, filled with the noises of cicadas, skop’s owls and conversation. We swam, ate fish, drank Ouzo, played scrabble, puttered around in a little fiat, went to a festival, hired a boat and had gentle adventures. Now we are dispersed again, sadly, and preparing to face whatever the real world claims to be.
PA PRESS
Filed under Culture
It is an incident that could bring down the British establishment, and exactly in the spot where the celebrated meeting between Lord Mandelson, the British Chancellor George Osborne and their Russian oligarch chum took place. Well, actually, in the small bay of Agni, on Corfu’s beautiful north-western coast, it was not at Agni’s apparently now overated and slightly suspect restaurant, where the previous transgressors are said to have set foot on shore from ‘that boat’, but right next door, at the very nice eatery of Toula’s. If Greece faces further economic storms, with troubled Albania just a ten minute boat drift away, there could be few places more symbolic of what is happening economically in Greece and Europe, and how the ‘them’ and ‘us’ differentials are becoming so great and so potentially destructive too.
Just around the headland is one of the home’s of Italy’s Fiat motorcar dynasty, the Agnellis, and a short boat putter further on the Rothschilds also decamp in Corfu’s chic Kensington on Sea. At Kalami was ‘The White House’, the home of Lawrence Durrell and his wife, eponimised as simply N in his little travel book about the island, “Prospero’s Cell“. It was at pleasant Toula’s though that one of England’s finest circuit judges came to err so badly. The charming judge M, a scholar and gentleman, (well, certainly a gentleman), is from the very London court that hit the headlines recently because of the murderous discovery of unexplained traces of ammonia and phosphates in the kitchens, which in the legal campaign for plain English is a euphemism for some disgusting Caliban peeing in the food, to take a silent revenge on those bumbling wigs of power and justice.
But at lunchtime Toula’s weighty matters of British economic and foreign policy were not being discussed, nor the current state of the Lib-Con alliance, but instead, as the sparkling sun burned on the water, the said judge picked up a gun and shot one of the diners in the back. In fact he had been doing it for several minutes. The weapon was described by forensic experts as ‘a low calibre plastic water pistol’, that belonged to Phoenix Ark Press’s enchanting god-daughter, also called M and currently aged four. She had been distracted from her stewardship of the weapon by the sudden appearance of a plate of souvlaki and chips. So effective was the judge’s trajectory though, as he squirted a standing female client from the end of his table, spurred on by the beautiful, giggling S, that she turned in total fury and spat an incandescent rage at the startled, sunburnt and deeply apologetic member of the UK judiciary. Not since the notably liberal judge has had to impose a twenty year stretch on some of London’s nastier offenders has such a look of total innocence lighted on his roseate features, as he put the gun down and lifted a pair of mea culpa hands to heaven, prompting one diner to remark cruelly that the combined mental age of both the UK bench and the British cabinet is currently only five. The good judge avoided a custodial sentence, is currently resting, and will be back in the saddle soon, tanned but austere, and armed with a paintball gun to correct the great unwashed.
PA PRESS
Filed under Culture
Our unofficial ‘read of the London Olympics’, The Godhead Game by David Clement-Davies, involves kidnapped athletes, including a US soccer star, from David Beckham’s team at LA Galaxy. So, if America’s amazing success in football during these games is anything to go by, perhaps interest in the sport will bring an interest in reading too! The ancient Mayans, a central theme of the new thriller, had a primitive field game, called Ulama, but this happened to involve human sacrifice. We wonder if athletes would prefer that to 50 Million a year and celebrity status. For a copy Click here
Filed under America and the UK, Books, Culture, Thrillers
We are delighted to share the article “Welcome to the Mayan End of Everything!”, about this year’s end of the Mayan Calendar, in Bold Magazine, Click here
The Olympics may be coming to a close, but the countdown to December is hotting up, and a chance to read the eBook thriller inspired by the Mayan Calendar end, The Godhead Game by David Clement-Davies Click here
Filed under Uncategorized
“I hate life,” wrote Edward Lear, “unless I am working, always.” With the sun burning across the wide, blue bay, it was impossible to hate life, walking up the steps of the elegant, British built Museum of Asian art in Corfu town. We had already had the low-down on some of Corfu’s grander visitors, like Stephen Spielberg, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter and Kate Moss, so close to Albania and Italy, where the North East, with its smart homes and influx from London’s Notting Hill, is now dubbed Kensington on C. The main exhibition at the Museum, almost empty and also with a fine collection of chinese artefacts, was of Lear’s drawings and water colours, the way he really made his living and expressed himself beyond “The owl and the pussycat” and those famous children’s limericks. He travelled constantly through Europe in the 1850’s, still a feudal world, and left a prolific record of a long vanished time, except for the recurring permanence of the landscape and his own escape into nature. No great painter, Lear’s work has charm, colour and precision, though it suggests something of the loneliness and eccentricity of such an isolated figure. Not so isolated, the wealthy collector who spent his fortune on his chinese collection, then gifted it to the State, in return for the post of Curator and a small stipend to live on in his fading, Corfu years, a very nice place to fade away.
You wonder what he and Lear would have thought of the headline in a local English paper, warning that the Greek state coffers will run dry again on August 20th. So, after hearing the battles constantly relayed on Newsnight in London, now we hear directly of locals not being paid for months, of medicines running out in pharmacies and the general feeling of unease lingering under the surface. But on such a relatively rich island, where Lawrence and Gerald Durrell both found such inspiration, and on holiday, it’s very hard to feel connected to that. Instead there are the rolling mountains, straightened by noble cypress trees, the marvellous blue, green sea, the gigantic nights skies of brilliant, twinkling stars and a very particular sound, among the cock crowing or barking dogs. It is like some peaceful cuckoo, sounding steadily in the singing night. We saw one, standing in the middle of a country track and as the car got closer, its saucer eyes and squat body, with little hanging ears, took wing into a neighbouring tree. The Skop’s Owl is a regular on Corfu and I think the same kind of owl that modelled the mechanical messenger in the movie Clash of the Titans. Certainly a symbol of wisdom, like the fleet-footed Hermes, messenger of the Gods. The argument here about Papandreou’s thwarted attempt to take cut-backs to the Greek people was that at least it was democratic, and so might reconnect people with a sense of engagement and responsibility, even if such cuts had to be accepted. Well, now we will see where Greece can go, but hopefully something can be done that reflects the wisdom of the gods!
Filed under The Arts
Katrin commented on WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, PRINCE CHARLES AND EDWARD DEVERE
Contrary to one of the uncorroborated statements expressed in this article, the establishment theory does NOT provide so much more evidence than others. The reason that the authorship debate exists is precisely that hardly any evidence exists at all. Where is the evidence for Mister Shakspere’s (spelling of the Stratford man) superb education? The writer of the plays had ample knowledge of court proceedings, geography, the legal system, Italy, languages, the classics. Where did the glove-maker’s son obtain his education and his insights? A vivid imagination is not enough! Not for Shakespeare and not for any other writer, playwright or poet alive today or yesterday.
Always great to have a voice added to William Ray’s but the so-called ‘establishment’ theory DOES provide much more evidence than others, although the details and records are indeed sparse, on the edge of recorded and administrative records, as we have said elsewhere. It is the record on the Stratford Shakespeares, William’s birth, the poems and plays, historical research into the Globe, comments by contemporaries and near contemporaries, and biographical suggestions from the plays too, that make the picture of William Shakespeare from Stratford so much more real and convinving than other ‘theories’, which have to remove all that too to support their own snippets of ‘evidence’. As for and ‘superb’ educational standards, not an adjective we are aware of using, that is a slightly different argument about what Shakespeare was being taught in a local grammar school, and at home, or where he ‘travelled’ in his mind and experience, perhaps for real, perhaps in imagination, perhaps as a tutor, and indeed how deep his mastery of Latin or Greek went. As many writers have suggested, for such a mind and such a genius, it did not demand years of ‘scholarship’, indeed Shakespeare is often opposed to the road of the scholar.
PA PRESS
THE BLOGGER’S BLOG
We’re afraid Phoenix Ark Press has the only blog that is going to be defiantly anti-blogging, anti-social media and anti-facebook. Never a way to sell a thing, replete with the ironies of talking through the medium we do not want to, but recommending all to turn off the bloody blogs, have a relationship, start a revolution, get off the internet, climb a mountain, do anything but witter on into the cybersphere.
The word for a start is awful, a throw away, slightly trashy and nothing to do with the art of writing. How many million words did WordPress user’s broadcast today, now words are pixellated commodities too, and how many are actually being read and give both readers and authors a sense of engagement and real communication? Perhaps when specific issues emerge bloggers can spark important debates that really create chains of true engagement, (individual freedom, justice and a way of fighting back are both revolutionary and important), but otherwise we are all lost in that need to be linked in, limiting real human interaction by endlessly being elsewhere, half present, via our iphones, ipads, laptops and devices. If the very meaning of ‘culture’, a difficult word, is a shared experience, in many ways the internet has disconnected rather than truly connected us, creating niche pockets of interaction, but giving the impression we are all talking as one.
As for Phoenix Ark Press our advice is do ANYTHING but do what we have done in a blog! Though true writing and honesty engages the heart, shows something of the soul, to pour feeling into the void can itself be heart breaking and emptying. What we worry about most are young people, caught in that vapid hall of mirrors of posting, which is often just about putting up pictures of how great we are, how happy, what a lovely holiday we are having, and says very little that reaches to the heart. So, if someone suggests you blog, just tell them to blog off!
ps next time we’ll try to say something more positive, but the hope is readers will air their thoughts on the medium itself!
PA PRESS
Filed under Culture, Education, Publishing
THE EDMUND SHAKESPEARE BLOG
An editor at the FT suggested the story of Shakespeare’s youngest brother Edmund might be ‘flogging a dead horse’. With only six records of his life, over four hundred years ago, who exactly are you searching for anyway, and does it matter? It perhaps matters most in building up a record and portrait of Southwark and London at the time, especially with many players living in the area. But apart from a birth record, and the assumption that Edmund would have shared many of the peripheral experiences William did, back in Stratford, then a death at only 27, with an infant son dying 4 months earlier, as Susanna was being married in Stratford, there is nothing else. A potential biography of ‘an unrecorded life’ indeed! There is a rather weak and unconvincing portrait that is supposed to be Edmund Shakespeare, but how else might you look for Shakespeare’s Brother?
One answer might be the plays, and two images that conjure how brothers and especially youngest brother’s were moving inside the poet and playwright’s psyche. There is that Edmund of King Lear, who rails against the ‘monster custom’, scorns astrology, and branded a bastard, like real Edmund’s ‘base born’ son, engages in the ambitions and cruelties of Lear’s eldest daughters. Edmund of Lear is much the ‘new man’ of an increasingly competitive London world and the striving ambitions of the City of London. But there is almost the diametrical opposite to that character, a youngest son, and that is Orlando, of As You Like It. Although ostensibly set in France, there is so much in the play that speaks of Shakespeare’s attitude to nature, and, of course, with those forests of Arden echoing a Shakespeare family name, of Shakespeare’s movement between country and city, court and commoner.
It is very interesting how Orlando is the hero, in relation to his disposessing elder brothers, and maintains some intrinsic spirit as ‘old Sir Roland’s son’, which is almost about a vision the poet has of full manhood. Well built, muscular, brave, he also has the poet’s heart, and gets perhaps the finest girl in all of Shakespeare, Rosalind. Sensing something about the real Edmund Shakespeare then, and his eldest’s brother’s journey too, perhaps it speaks very loudly of the playwright’s own guilt, and responsive idealization of his youngest brother, whose journey in dangerous London was one that seems to have ended in a kind of tragedy. Although tragedy, like comedy, is the stuff of theatre and drama and maybe Edmund’s life was not so bound up with his brother’s. Yet it is very likely that the by then 40-year-old playwright paid that ’20 shillings’, to bury his brother Edmund in St Saviour’s Church, with an honouring ‘forenoon toll of the great bell.” But what is so fascinating about the research is that it begins to build up a gritty portrait of many London lives, and beyond that, in his mirrors up to nature, it is Shakespeare above all who provides ways of evoking what potentially moves inside us all.
Phoenix Ark's Blog 