What happened next?

A couple of weeks ago my son, out of the blue, asked me what happened to the disciples after the death of Jesus. I took a deep breath and burbled something about Judas supposedly killing himself and Peter going to Rome and then, very quickly, my reservoir of knowledge went horribly dry.

I am amazed at how little I know about the details of the background to the New Testament and of the history of the early church. I would feel horribly ignorant were it not for the fact that hardly anyone else I know has a better grasp of it all.

As chance would have it, there was a documentary about this very subject last night on Channel 4 - who was at the Last Supper and what happened to them. It was called The Secrets of the Twelve Disciples. It was fascinating and at two hours long, pretty detailed. A nice addition to the other documentaries over the Easter period - one about the Lost Gospels and another about the Turn Shroud. It was presented by a theologian - Dr Robert Beckford - and whilst he did not question the Gospels themselves or their authorship, he did question whether Peter really was buried in Rome, whether James went to Spain, whether there were female disciples and introduced (to me anyway) the wonderful notion of Thomas sailing to India to set up a community of Christians there.

Unfortunately it resulted in a rather heated exchange when John Clark who I share a studio with and Judith, his partner, (who took the photograph of me on this page) stopped in after we'd walked to Grantchester. Neither John nor I really knew what we were talking about and so of course we simply became louder and louder until the kitchen started to rattle.

We had a wide-ranging ill-informed theological debate about the veracity of the Gospels, the historical Jesus, religion in schools. Shakespeare popped in at one point. So did Franco and Mussolini. So did the relative merits of football and rugby (John is an ex rugby player). It was that kind of argument.

Snow started falling. . .

I could hear the angels calling.

As Patti Smith once said.

And I love that line of James Joyce from the end of The Dead: His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling. . .

I couldn't hear the angels calling, but I could hear the voices of the choir in King's College Chapel seeping out into the snow and that will do me.

Forgive them for they haven't got a clue

I haven't been watching the BBC's Passion because I read a review saying that it was a more 'realistic' interpretation of the last days of Jesus. That put me off. I suspect the watering down of the story was meant to appeal to sceptics like me. But it didn't.

I actually caught part of it last night. The disciples looked worryingly like a Bee Gees tribute band. And Penelope Wilton as Mary had another chance to do the shouty thing she thinks is a Bafta-winning show of grief, when it is actually a bit rubbish. Terry Jones in drag would have had more gravitas.

I saw Pilate/James Nesbitt asking the crowd who to crucify and I saw Judas hang himself down a well and I saw Jesus crucified. But it was all empty somehow. He looked like a victim of political expediency. He came across as a sad and even deluded figure. The sky didn't darken when he called out in pain. We didn't get the lance in the side for some reason. We got the thieves, but none of the conversation that gives their presence any meaning. The poetry of 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' was reduced to the crass 'Forgive them for they don't know what they've done.' Urrgh. Why would you want a Jack Vetriano crucifixion when you could have a Giotto or a Rembrandt?


Question the truth of the gospels by all means, but do that somewhere else. Even if you see the story as myth, there still seems no reason to reduce the potency of that myth. Jason and the Argonauts without the magic is just a boat trip after all.

May the creepiest man win

I happened to have a look at Michael (Achuka) Thorn's achokablog last night and noticed - with a great deal of pleasure - that I seem to be up for an award. Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror has been shortlisted for the UKLA Children's Book Award although I am up against some very good writers.

That said, I have heard nothing from my publisher or agent so it could all be some terrible mistake. I checked the UKLA website and there is no mention of the shortlist. So I'm hoping that Michael Thorn is right.

The shortlist was chosen by teachers and the award is given to honour writers whose use of language has a powerful impact on the reader. The winners will be announced in July.

Picture Book Shortlist:

The Cow that Laid an Egg - Andy Cutbill & Russell Ayto

The Way Back Home - Oliver Jeffers

A Long Way Home - Elizabeth Baguley & Jane Chapman

Eliza and the Moonchild - Emma Chichester Clark

Stuck in the Mud - Jane Clarke & Garry Parsons

Penguin - Polly Dunbar

Fiction Shortlist:

Here Lies Arthur - Philip Reeve.

Give me Shelter - Ed.Tony Bradman

Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Chris Priestley

Anna Hibiscus - Atinuke

My Dad's a Birdman - David Almond

Tamburlaine's Elephants - Geraldine McCaughrean

The Bower Bird - Ann Kelly

The Story Spinner told by Phil McDermott

Saki

I had an email from Kate Johnson at Heffers in Cambridge today that warmed my heart a little. Someone who had listened to my readings last week had been asking about buying copy of Saki short stories and what was my edition called. I know I ought to be bothered that they were not actually asking about my book, but I'm not. I sold a few books on the day, so I'm happy. And I am more than happy to think I have helped someone discover a writer like Saki.

My edition is ancient. It has a truly dreadful illustration on the cover - I am sorry Paul Leith but it is. The present Penguin Modern Classics edition has this cover, which is certainly eye-catching, if a little over the top for Saki's subtle stories.

Saki was the pen-name of H H (Hector Hugh) Munroe. Anyone who has yet to read one of his stories is in for a treat. Like all collections of short stories the content is variable - not necessarily because the quality varies, but simply because some will be more to an individual's taste than another. I love the ones with children in them - Sredni Vashtar, The Open Window, The Storyteller. He has a range going from bone dry Wildean wit to genuine chills.

Women do not fare well in Saki's work however. His hatred of maiden aunts is clearly heartfelt and is a scar from his unhappy childhood - his mother was killed by a charging cow (or at least by the shock of the attack). It is the kind of tragi-comic incident that Saki could easily have made up. Animals are often malevolent in his stories. And he gets the intensity of children bang on: the boredom and the intensity of play and their imagined world. He gets their potential for cruelty too. He was very much in my mind when I wrote Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror.

The power of darkness

Another Wordsworth Editions' Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural I have been reading recently is their collection of E Nesbit stories. It is called Tales of Terror with another subheading of The Power of Darkness just to punch it home (if the laminate skull wasn't enough)that these are creepy stories and not something to do with The Railway Children. As with Robert E Howard being called R Howard, the publishers have decided to call her Edith Nesbit rather than the E Nesbit we all know her as.

E Nesbit is a great writer. Her books for children still hold up really well. And she was a fascinating woman, co-founding the Fabian Society along the way. The stories I have read so far are surprisingly odd. In fact they are very, very odd. The Head is utterly bizarre from beginning to end and has a plot that even Edgar Allen Poe might have worried was a little over the top. A man happens across a house in the middle of nowhere, the occupant of which has built a scale model of a particularly traumatic event in his life in the cellar. Not only that, but he is persuaded to reproduce this life-size as a money-making scheme in London, all in the hope of attracting the attentions of a man he has sworn vengeance upon. Nesbit clearly has a horror of such things because The Power of Darkness itself has a (slightly) more believable plot about a waxworks at night.


But just as with Robert E Howard there is something compelling about the atmosphere she creates and the feverish intensity of the writing. People might be saying 'By Jove!' a lot and getting into a 'funk', but there is something much darker and stranger going on. A psychoanalyst would have a field day.

The right hand of doom

And so from Robert E Howard we arrive at Mike Mignola and Hellboy. Not only has Mike Mignola knowingly borrowed the title from Robert E Howard, but he has also drawn Conan who has had a rebirth in Dark Horse Comics who also publish Hellboy.

I am a huge fan of Mike Mignola. I like my comic books to have well crafted, punchy drawings. I don't want multi-layed arthouse nonsense. I don't want collage. I want something that I can actually read. Mignola's work is so well-designed. He is a great storyteller. Everybody who ever intends doing a graphic novel should have a look at one of his pages - many of which carry little or no text at all.

There is a lot of talk about graphic novels and Manga (yawn) in the UK at the moment - though mostly by people who would never be seen dead actually buying a comic book. Mostly they just don't get what comics are about and the results are just plain poor. If only we had someone like Mike Mignola here to show them how it's done.