Yet in truth the weather wasn't too bad. At least not for March alongside the Mersey. It certainly wasn't anywhere close to the stage of aborting mission. A little cloudy, extremely cold, but the sun was occasionally attempting to beam behind the clouds. 

By the time we actually made it to Liverpool's Albert Dock, it looked a little like the beginning of summer. Unless, of course, we had been in that traffic jam for so long that the season had turned on us!

But my Scouse friends were happy to wait in the car-park. They'd more than seen the Liver Birds before and really didn't see the need to peer up at them again. Particularly since the clouds were quite so bright as I was making out.

And as I began to walk around the Canning Dock, towards the Royal Liver Building, said clouds were distinctly becoming darker. Though they made for a great effect in photography. 

Do note that I haven't touched these up at all.  They are all as I found the day and the scenery.  Liverpool is a beautiful city really.

Liver Birds - and Royal Liver Building - duly photographed, I went wandering off around the back, towards the Mersey and its docks.

I'd been distracted by a beautiful monument, its golden tip and central piece glowing strangely in the increasingly bruised light.  I'd never noticed this before, tucked away as it is, beyond easy viewing for a driver on the main road.

As I walked around the docks, I could see the storm coming from the direction of the Wirral. Great swathes of desperate greys and deep darkness across the river. Yet still I took photographs, meandering about catching ships and ferries, returning time and again to the Royal Liver Building, just in case none of the previous pictures had been any good.

The first droplets came as I finally drifting near to the Museum of Liverpool. I covered my camera with my handbag, taking it out only when another great view caught my eye.

I could see the rain coming in, yet still I stubbornly denied that it was quite as bad as it seemed. And there I learned a lesson - denial of the storm will not stop it reaching you and drenching you to the bone. But you can get some tremendous photographs in its midst.

I couldn't feel my hands. By the time I wove my way through the docklands and walkways back to the car, my fingers wouldn't move. I'd long since stashed my camera into my waterproof bag, as the torrential rain plummeted down with no protection. Battering the riverside, brushing me aside in the more exposed junctures of Albert Dock.

I fumbled at the car door, dived inside to where it was nice and warm, and my Scouse friends watched with bemusement. "Ger yer pictures then, gal?"

"I can't feel my fingers! I'm frozen solid! Wow!"  The storm was ferocious outside, sheets of rain pummeling the windows and washing water in a frenzy in the docks. And that beautiful Liverpudlian man took my hands and held them between his own cozy hot mitts, until the circulation returned in tingles and rushing heat.  "Yes, I got some photos. I think I got some half decent ones too."

"Liver Birds?"

"And storm. Over the Mersey."

Here in Britain, we are entering the centenary of the death of Emily Wilding Davison. 

Two days ago, it was the 100th anniversary of the moment that the Suffragette stepped out onto Epsom Racetrack. She survived the injuries that she sustained on June 4th 1913, but only by four days.  On June 8th 2013, memorials will be held in various locations nationwide to mark the centenary of her passing.

I've been busy writing about her on Wizzley.  Two articles were produced for those who want to know more. The Choices of Emily Wilding Davison is a history; while Emily and Me: Empathy Across the Centenary focuses on more personal matters. It's Emily as a real woman, who lived, breathed, thought and felt, rather than her usual quasi-symbolic positioning, as Suffragette, martyr and Feminist icon.

The latter article led to a discussion in the Wizzley forum about open letters, as a writing genre. With the details of Emily's story so fresh in my head, I thought I'd give it a go. I hope it both honours Emily Wilding Davison, and explains why she's such a towering presence from British history.

Dear Emily,

I'm sorry that you were made to feel like your only worth was in brutal self-sacrifice. You were much more than that.  Your understanding of human nature was sublime, and your political acumen was razor-sharp. There was no-one to equal your astounding intellect, amongst the Suffragettes OR the Suffragists in 1913. Your ability to spot the points of leverage was nothing short of uncanny.

You placed Asquith in check, do you realise that? Only the outbreak of World War One stopped that developing into check-mate. You didn't deliver votes for women; but you set an unstoppable chain of events in motion, which made female suffrage inevitable. It was by no means guaranteed until then. You gave Grace Roe and Millicent Fawcett something to run with. And look how they ran!  Four years, that's all it took, from your martyrdom to the first British women receiving the vote.

They called you a maverick mad-woman at the time. Fear ran through every insult. From the Pankhursts to Parliament, you had the potential to topple those in power. Your incredible, insightful genius must have been plain for all to see. But you. Your one blind spot was in evaluating your own worth. For your sake, I hope that it was an accident; that you didn't travel to Epsom all alone with the self-belief that your value lay in dying.

Or did you know, but did it anyway?  Judging that final action too important not to see to its conclusion. Trusting that Asquith would act to prevent a dangerous precedent set by your martyrdom; and that someone in the Women's Movement would have the intelligence to follow through. When you made your move, Emily, you changed the whole game. You left Asquith with only one sane direction to take, leading towards the legislate with votes for women. In just two more moves, played by Roe and Fawcett, it was game over.

When I eventually get my time machine, I'm going to take it to Derby Day, 1913. I'll seek you out at Tattenhall Corner and I'll tell you this:  'Ms Davison, you are my heroine. A little bit crazy, but so, so good. In fact, you're amazing."

I know that I should talk you out of martyrdom, pull you back and hold you safe. But I haven't got your courage; and I'm afraid that if you didn't fall beneath the hooves, then it would be me. One hundred years later, in precisely the same position, because Emily Wilding Davison never got to make her move.

But I half suspect that you would have struggled free and rushed out anyway onto Epsom racetrack. Fired up with the passionate conviction that this was important, and it had to happen. "One, big tragedy to move things along."  Who else could you ask to do this thing? Which you'd judged was the right thing to do.

And it was. The horrific, awful, unpalatable, shuddering truth is that it was the right thing to do. At least if the objective was votes for women in Asquith's Britain, it was the right thing to do. So why, looking back with 21st century eyes blazing with respect and downcast with guilt, does it feel unbearably wrong? A senseless self-slaughter to bring sanity into a ludicrous society.

'Thank you very much, Ms Davison,' just doesn't seem adequate. Nothing but your ending ever was. Your life's disappointments tempered your steel, which - battered into shape by the pounding hooves of Anmer - became the hammer wielded by women to smash the first glass ceiling. We still invoke it. All those future generations of activists, armed and empowered; taking Emily Davison's legacy into every Women's Rights battle, until true equality is finally achieved.

Your tragedy, for shame, was your greatest gift to womankind.  Thank you, Ms Davison; and I'm sorry. I really am.

Respectfully Yours

Jo Harrington
xxxxx

Please do feel free to leave your own letters to Emily Wilding Davison in the comments here.

The evening was closing in, as I drove down the lane into Horningsham.  Sunlight played through the tall trees lining the road, back-lighting their leaves and casting such beautiful shadows upon the way ahead.

It felt almost mystical, like some scene taken from a fairy tale and given form.  The long shadows at the end of day will do that. 

Giving weight to that quest-like feeling was the reason that I was there.  I'd been close by and seen the village on the map, then took a detour to visit it.  There was history between my family and this place.  I wanted to see for myself what they had seen nearly two centuries ago.

On June 18th 1815, a baby named Frederick Harrington was baptized in St John the Baptist Church.  His father was William Harrington, a coachman, and his mother was named Ann.  She was a local girl - born and bred in Horningsham, Wiltshire.  Presumably this was the church where her family worshipped.

As for William, I don't know where he came from.  He died before any census could tell us.

Before Frederick was ten years old, the family up and left for the industrial north.  They ended up in the wool town of Wolverhampton, where William and Ann Harrington took possession of the Red Cow pub in Dudley Street.  Their daughter Sarah was born there in 1823, and died a month later.  Another daughter, Caroline, was born in 1825 and she survived.  She married a Black Country man named William Beech and had many children.

As for Frederick, his marriage to another incomer to Wolverhampton - Mary Pragnall - eventually resulted in me.  He is my gt-gt-gt grandfather.

So now I stood in the churchyard where my ancestors had most definitely stood nearly two hundred years before.  I looked out over the lands of Longleat House, the estate meeting the horizon in a panoramic view.  The sunlight still leaving long shadows from gravestones and buildings.  You could see for miles up there.  All green, fresh and clean, the sort of scenery that you could dream upon for hours. 

They left this for Wolverhampton, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  They swapped those rolling hills and idyllic country for a region which was grimy, noisy and crammed with people.  "Black by day, red by night," is how the Black Country was described back then.  Slums and tenements were thrown up overnight, the population erupted with the factories, foundries and pits.

I couldn't imagine it.  I couldn't grasp why a young married couple would take their baby into that, leaving an area so pristine as this.  Horningsham blew my mind, because I couldn't fathom the rationale.  Until later, that is, when I looked into the history and found famine here back then. 

They Christened their baby at St John the Baptist Church, then moved north into the grime to ensure that he lived.  It was a plan that worked, because I was there to return to the beginning; the gt-gt-gt-gt grandchild of those who took that decision to thrive.

I'll raise a toast to that!

In Parliament House in Machynlleth, there sits a chair. The legend engraved across its back reads Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd.  In English that translates as The Truth Against the World.  But what does it all mean?

It's all about speaking out the truth, even when that's unpopular with the crowds.  People tell all kinds of lies, or say nothing at all, in order to save their own necks.  Some just do it to fit in or 'not to bring everyone down', justifying it as something good and noble.  No matter which innocent party gets placed in harm's way.

The scale doesn't matter.   Joining in or ignoring the bullying in the playground is just as bad as perjury in the courtroom.  Silence means approval.  Bleating the same lines as everyone else just makes you sheeplike.

Nobody said that The Truth Against the World was easy.  Being the lone voice turns the spotlight onto you, but that also makes you the sole light in the darkness.  It's a dangerous place, if the crowd turns into a mob.  Or you could be the one to turn the crowd.  Sometimes it only takes one person to articulate the fact that the Emperor wears no clothes.  They were all thinking it anyway.

When you speak up, you give others permission to speak up too; or at least you set a precedent of freedom of speech.

When I first encountered Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd, I was told that it was the battle-cry of everyone from Boudicca through King Arthur to Owain Glyndŵr himself. It wasn't.  It's uniquely Celtic, and as Welsh as bards and song, but it's not that old.   It was probably first spoken by Iolo Morganwg in 1792.  But then he WAS a bard and who better to say the words.

It's become the motto of the Gorsedd.  The Bardic Chair pictured was from a meeting of the Eisteddfod in Colwyn Bay.  Iolo Morganwg set his own precedent at the first Gorsedd in 1792, when he laid out his vision for peace.  As the people met, he took out his sword and laid it on the Logan Stone.  Then he ritually and visibly sheathed it again.  

"Y gwir yn erbyn y byd?"  He asked, then added a further question, "a oes heddwch?"  And is there peace?

Speak your mind, there will be peace.  There will be no violence here, if everyone just told it as truly as they found it; and heroes were found whenever and wherever the bullies attacked the weak.  Are words really that powerful?  Remember these were Welsh bards, so they certainly thought so.  The pen is always mightier than the sword.   History is written by the winners, and that is the story that is remembered.  The songs sung cement the reputation.

"Calon wrth galon," came the response to Iolo's question.  Heart to heart; and surely on Valentine's Day, as it is at the time of writing, I need not explain that.  The person sitting on the Bardic Chair asks again, "A oes heddwch?"  And is there peace?

Heddwch needs an extra note.  It's not just peace in an abstract sense.  The 'wch' ending makes it a verb, something to do.  More properly rendered then, it's The Truth Against the World, and will YOU bring peace?  Your heart with their heart, all that love, and will YOU bring peace?

There's one final exchange at the Gorsedd.  "Gwaedd uwch Adwaedd, a oes heddwch?"  Shout above the shouting, and is there peace?  Even if the whole world seeks to drown out your voice, will you go on talking?  Can you be silenced, when peace is on the line?  What will it take to make you bow your head, touch your forelock and repeat the words that you're given to repeat? 

Or like the Welsh bards, will YOU bring peace?  For me, there's no question.  Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd.

It's fair to say that I scared myself.  But some things you don't even think about until you're there, in the surroundings, imagining it all on a deep soul level.

Way back in my distant past, I used to be a tour guide at Old Moseley Hall, near Wolverhampton.  As with anyone in that position, I had to be ready to answer any question put to me from a member of the public.  While this was usually about the property, the English Civil War, King Charles II or the 17th century in general, there was another constant.

"Are there any ghosts at Old Moseley Hall?" 

Unlike many National Trust properties, there wasn't much in the way of paranormal activity at Old Moseley Hall.  Which isn't to say that there weren't stories. 

First you need the background.  After the Battle of Worcester, in 1651, King Charles II had to flee for his life.  The Parliamentarians had won and they were after adding his head beside that of his executed father.  During the celebrated pursuit which followed, Charles hid at the hall for a short while.  From its windows, he could see his wounded soldiers limping back to Scotland along what used to be the main road through Wolverhampton to the north.  It ran right outside.

Story number one is that some people, driving late at night down that lane, have sensed those civil war soldiers still passing by.  But that's a rare tale and only ever heard from a friend of a friend of a friend.  It may have even been inspired by the more famous, and much more attested, similar ghostly occurrences from the battlefields of Culloden or Marston Moor.

The second Old Moseley Hall ghost story has much more going for it.  That involves the top floor attic area; and it's the place where I really gave myself the chills.

Back in the 17th century being Catholic was quite dangerous.  The Whitgreave family of Old Moseley Hall were Catholic.  This was always the most interesting part of my tour, as I revealed the hidden chapel and told what happened to the pewter candlesticks and vessels for the altar.  (Pewter melts in fire. There was always a fire blazing in an antechamber hearth during a service, just in case.)  A priest hole was concealed in the floorboards on a lower level.  The Whitgreave family knew the risks to life and limb, yet they smuggled in priests and took the sacrament anyway.

It's in this area where the presence has been so widely felt.  Various visitors shiver there, or feel slightly unwell, and there are those who have seen the Lady herself.  A fellow tour guide in period costume?  No.  There should have been no-one there at all.  But nevertheless she's occasionally seen, just standing before the altar, or moving towards the antechamber; always on the top floor.

On this particular day, I was living the historian's dream.  For the first (and last) time ever on my watch, no tourists had turned up at all.  I'd done an earlier tour, and I did one later, but for this slot I was free to just wander around the property completely on my own.   There was no-one else there at all.  Even the store and cafe were in different buildings.

You're waiting for me to say that I saw her, aren't you?   I went there.  I stood alone in the Catholic Chapel and soaked in the atmosphere.  I remembered the Lady and asked aloud if she wanted to chat.  No response.  I reached out in spirit, seeing if I could somehow sense her.  She was not there; or if she was, then she didn't want to speak with the likes of me.

After a while, I left my pew and wandered out.  But my mind was full of her and her times.  I wondered who she was (nobody knows) and what terrible times she must have lived through (if indeed she was as 17th century as reports on her outfit would have it).  And my memory threw up the nursery rhyme.

So many nursery rhymes are mnemonics.  They recall a moment in history or a useful tip, to be passed on in a way even toddlers could remember.  Goosey, Goosey, Gander is no exception; and it was very relevant to Old Moseley Hall, with its hidden chapel and recusant worshippers.

The geese were the Roundheads.  Parliamentarians, often of the same Puritanical bent as Oliver Cromwell, or just hired thugs enjoying the impunity of committing religious persecution.  They raided homes which were known, or suspected, to belong to Catholic families.  Their searches took them all over, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber being only part of it.  They were looking for the same pewter accoutrements, priests or chapels which Old Moseley Hall so readily kept.

As for anyone admitting to being Catholic, or merely getting in the way, then think long and hard on that last line:  'took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs'.

I knew the nursery rhyme and I knew the history.  But until I stepped out of that chapel and stood at the top of the staircase at Old Moseley Hall, I didn't know a thing.  Suddenly the mental imagery had a real world setting upon which to hook itself.  I could see quite clearly the actual terror and the horrific violence that such a sweet and familiar nursery rhyme evoked.

So I spoke it.  Slowly, half in a whisper, I told the nursery rhyme to the air, as I descended that 17th century staircase.  I felt it, heard it, saw it, in my mind's eye, how it could have happened.  And by the time I reached the ground floor, the goosebumps were raised on my arms and my hair was standing on end.

Had I finally drawn an unseen audience in the Lady ghost?  Or simply scared myself?   I suspect the latter, but it all seemed so very real.

My cousin and I are walking down the street, side by side but sixty years apart. 

I'm not talking about age.  We're the same age, give or take nine months (I was apparently such a cute baby that my auntie wanted one; she got him).  I'm talking about where our heads were at the time.

This was Coventry.  He owns a security business (EMK Events Ltd for ALL your crowd control needs); I'm a historian. He was here on business, as his company are providing the crowd safety for a major event in the city.  I'm there with a camera to photograph the scenery for Beautiful Britain.

"That pub's Victorian."  I tell him, as we stroll along a busy street.  My head is turning back and forth like I'm watching a tennis match, looking at the buildings on one side of the street and comparing them to the other.

He nods, "I wouldn't like to take their business.  It's a bit rough down here."  He would. He'd work out a strategy to deal with the rough customers.  He's always telling me that he wouldn't get involved with such and such a venue because of its troublesome clientele.  Then a month or so later, there is no troublesome clientele, because his security officers are ensuring it.  "And that's a bit of a dive."

"I don't think Hitler agreed with you."  I opine, still comparing buildings.  On one side of the street, it's all 19th and early 20th century architecture.  On the other side, the entire terrace is that bland and frankly awful 1960s concrete block style.  But this IS Coventry, ground zero for Moonlight Sonata on November 14th 1940.  A beautiful name for the most devastating single night, on a single city, of the Blitz. "He left that whole side standing."

"Yeah."  said my cousin, in a tone of voice which suggested that was yet another travesty to lay at the door of the Third Reich.  "He did."

I just love how two people, walking along the same street, have such different perspectives on what they see.  It makes for some interesting conversations.

Chirk Castle seems to go on forever; but in a good way, full of fascination and delight. 

One moment you are in a wing lived in for centuries, all Georgian fittings and Edwardian grace.  Then you're passing through a door like Alice passed through the looking glass.  Now it's stark stone and Medieval staircases, antechambers and armouries.

Of course there's a dungeon.  This is a Norman castle, built by Roger Mortimer (of betraying Edward II fame) to subdue the wild Welsh.  As someone with Celtic DNA, this afforded me the perfect opportunity to stand in his bedroom whispering to the ghost, 'So what are you going to do now?' 

Then there are the gardens.  They go on for what seemed like miles. Long lawns were lined with patches filled with daffodils; winding pathways twisted amongst rockeries into the woods; hidden lakes appeared in sculptured groves; the scenery swept from the edge of the final topiary all the way across Cheshire and Shropshire.  You never quite knew what might lie behind the next bit of shrubbery.  Statues, tiny ornate huts, a pavilion, it all made me feel like a child again, on some big adventure of exploration.

So perhaps it wasn't all that surprising that I failed to notice that I'd stopped encountering fellow tourists.  The gardens were vast enough, with so many concealed wonders, that meetings with other humans had been relatively few and far between.  Out in the garden, there are no National Trust guides to glance at their watches and call time on looking at pretty things.

I kind of got the hint that Chirk Castle was now closed, when I finally meandered back to the gate.  It was locked.  This castle built to keep the Celts out had succeeded in locking one in.  Oops.

The fundamental thing about castles - the absolute fundamental thing and indeed their reason to be - is that they're incredibly hard to break into.  The same is true of the opposite.  They're not designed with a view to just clambering over a gate nor scaling a wall.  Not without a large army furnished with siege equipment anyway. 

I tried to access the castle again, mostly to find a member of staff, but also imagining with some glee wandering through it alone.  There had been too many pesky tourists earlier on, disturbing my historical reveries.  But the doors were locked.  Good fight, Roger Mortimer.

Wandering along a pathway, trailing a curtain wall, I located a door which said 'Staff Only - No Entrance Past This Point'.  What's the worst that could happen?   If guards came clattering out in full armour (or a National Trust volunteer in full tweed jacket), I could just ask to be let out.  It would be the best solution for all concerned.  But I didn't need that to happen.  The door was unlocked.

I found myself eventually outside, looking across to the hillsides of Wrexham, where my ancestors would have come threatening the peace of this evil Marcher Lord.  And more importantly, given that this was now the 21st century, overlooking the car-park, where my car sat lonely.  That car-park had been full when I arrived. 

Feeling quite smug at having extracted myself from Norman hands, I made my way down there, then drove carefully towards the main exit.  There were sheep on the road, each one appearing stunned to find someone still here.  But they're sheep.  They always look stunned.  Then disaster.

I'd been so busy getting out of the castle and gardens, that it hadn't even occurred to me that the estate itself would be secured at closing time.  I could see the road outside, but the tall, black and beautifully decorated railing gates were padlocked.  Oh dear. 

Fortunately, they also had a huge notice, with big letters, giving me a telephone number if I'd accidentally been locked inside.  I wasn't the first then.   They must hate people like me.  I called and was directed all the way back to the entrance gate, a mile or two in the opposite direction.  I would be seen, the gentleman on the end of the line informed me, the gate would be opened. 

A three point turn through sheep is interesting.  They really are quite unaware, aren't they?   Much bleating later, it was managed without ovine injury and I made it back to the other side of the estate.  I never did see the person who would see me.  But the gate was open.  Freedom!  And I happily made my escape.

These Chirk Castle postcards are on the American version of Zazzle.  If you wish to see the same in your local Zazzle store (thus neatly side-stepping any customs duty), then just change the root URL accordingly.  If you're not sure what that is, then check out the International Zazzle!

To say that it rained that day in Leicester is to totally understate the situation.  There are waterfalls less wet than the city streets that August.

But this wasn't any old August.  It was August 2012, part of the rainiest years since records began in Britain; and also the month when the remains of Richard III were discovered under a car-park in Leicester.

We couldn't have known that at the time.  I was there meeting friends and desperately trying to keep dry while sight-seeing. The announcement occurred the day afterwards.

This was a great shame, because two of our number were historians.  Had we known about the trench up Grey Friars, we would certainly have been peering over a fence having a good nosey.  Instead we were huddling under an overhang at the Jewry Wall.  Roman ruins there, bordering a Saxon/Norman church.  All very interesting and, above all, dry.

Yet King Richard III wasn't completely ignored that day in Leicester.  As my friends escorted me back to my own car-park (sadly lacking in any royal corpses), we crossed Bow Bridge with its big legends.  The story goes that Richard rode over it, on his horse, on the way to Bosworth Battlefield.  As he passed by an old woman/witch/hag/prophetess warned him that when he returned he would bang his head on the bridge.

The Battle of Bosworth duly came and was lost.  The stripped naked body of Richard was strung across a horse's back, then brought in procession back to Leicester.  There was nothing honourable about this.  He was being returned solely so enough people could view his body, that there would be no question that he still lived.  Henry Tudor had a kingdom to consolidate and a dynasty to sire.

But as the horse and its sad cargo crossed Bow Bridge, Richard's head struck the stonework at the side.  The old lady's prophecy (or curse) had come true.

That was legend, but there was also an historical rumour attached to this location.  After Richard III's body had lay in Leicester for an adequate amount of time, it was taken away.  Some said that it was thrown into the River Soar, hence the plaque on the wall (pictured above) which sits alongside Bow Bridge.  Others stated that he was retrieved by the Grey Friars and buried in the long-lost friary.   It turns out that they were correct.

'Near this spot lie the remains of Richard III the last of the Plantagenets 1485' reads the plaque on Bow Bridge by the River Soar.  What they actually meant was that the remains were four minutes walk away, under the car-park of Leicestershire Social Services. 

The plaque is slightly to the right of the 'B' marking St Augustine Road.  The body was actually just off Grey Friars, here marked with an 'A'.   In 2014, Richard will be buried again, this time in the more salubrious environs inside Leicester Cathedral.

Which makes us all wonder what will happen to the Bow Bridge plaque.  It's now obviously telling a lie to all Leicester tourists, many of whom will be there to visit the soon-to-be-constructed Richard III museum. They will all KNOW that he's in the cathedral, at least after 2014.   So we have bets on how long it will take for his plaque to mysteriously disappear.  My Leicestershire friend will be keeping his eye out, so we get the alert.

The big question is:  will the plaque just be flung in the river or be shoved in a make-shift grave under Social Services?

The above leads to the American version of Zazzle.  If you wish to see the same in your local Zazzle store (thus neatly side-stepping any customs duty), then just change the root URL accordingly.  If you're not sure what that is, then check out the International Zazzle!