YOU'LL be surprised to learn that I've read all Rosemary Sutcliff's novels.
“But they’re not illustrated!” you cry. Cheeky. Anyway, some were illustrated.
We’re talking historical fiction for adolescents, a stage of development I hope to reach soon. Wheelchair-bound Rosemary was a wonderful storyteller. Like me, her heroes were outcasts trying to do the right thing, despite the amoral mob.
These tales always end well, which also mirrors my life, as I live in a big castle now, with lots of servants and a beautiful wife who doesn’t speak. Mainly set in Roman times or in yon Dark Ages, the atmospheric stories featured a kindly ethos, a certainty that right triumphs over wrong, just like in the real world (see Sunday when Hibs trounce Hearts).
The only time I found a departure from this script was on reading one of Sutcliff’s few books for adults. I can’t find it on my shelves now, which is odd as I rarely throw out books. But I recall it being unpleasant - too gory, grim and realistic. As I’ve revealed before, reality is over-rated.
Surprisingly, long after her heyday, one of Sutcliff’s stories has been made into a major film, currently showing at a cinema near you, unless you live in a bucolic backwater. The Eagle is based on Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, the legion that foolishly left the safety of Hadrian’s Wall, marched into Caledonia and was never seen again. Result.
Self-hating, craven Scots and Scotland-scorning, revisionist academics claim this never happened, but it did. There are photographs to prove it. The story is fictional, though, and involves the son of the legion’s general coming to Caledonia to reclaim the eagle standard. It’s about more than that, though: master and slave; Celt and Roman; loyalty and whatnot. These are frequent Sutcliff themes.
Despite the risk of having to sit next to neds, I went to see the film, and found it risible. The Americanisation didn’t help, as even revisionist historians cannot claim there were Americans in Roman Britain.
At first, I didn’t mind, as Yanks today impart imperial authenticity. But Movieland’s limitless capacity for crassness eventually floored me. All that eyebrow-knitting and buddy-backslapping. That said, the “North Britons” were accurately depicted: bad hair; killing their own children; eating raw rats. The sort of thing you see on Sauchiehall Street any Saturday.
Actually, not all the North Britons in the film had bad hair. The absurd Seal People were bald which, again, was historically inaccurate. Bald people were only brought to Britain in 1066 by the Normans, who hunted them for sport. The Eagle’s Caledonians were like native Americans, Zulus or Aborigines. Billed as lethal warriors, dozens of them were unable to land a spear on the hero from point-blank range.
Ordinary civilians, meanwhile, stood about outside bothies looking miserable in the never-ending rain. Rain in Scotland? Ridiculous. Failing that, they engaged in the sort of orgiastic dancing – all big drumming and wild gestures to the sky - that Movieland routinely depicts as the day-job of primitive peoples.
Aye, a right bunch of savages, the Celts and Picts. Personally, I can’t wait for archaeologists to find a Pictish library full of learned tomes on astronomy, maths, agriculture. Celtic (particularly Irish) written poetry dating back to at least the 5th century is beautiful, and frequently features paeans to nature. Compare and contrast with the awful Norse sagas, written in early medieval times, and full of prosaic politics and grim back-stabbing.
Hollywood and American TV have been mean to the Scots in recent years, treating us as monstrous or absurd. From Shrek through the anglophilic Simpsons to Johnny Depp’s Glaswegian accent as the Hatter in Alice (to sound unhinged, he said), we’ve been getting it in the neck.
Obviously, The Eagle doesn’t have any anti-Scottish agenda – it’s not standing in the election, after all – nor, as I recall, did Rosemary Sutcliff. You could even see the “noble savage” thing as laudatory, I suppose. But, essentially, we were the weird, bad guys again, which is painful to behold for the 98.2 per cent of Scots today (see forthcoming census results) who are ethical, sensitive and heroic.
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