Rome

‘All roads lead to Rome’. Maybe. Along them have trod rogues, poets and in 1816 a debauched traveller called Gisborne. We can only be grateful that in the opposite direction came heroes. In the shadow of York Minster there is a statue of Constantine the Great who was proclaimed Roman Emperor in York in 306 AD and later became sole master of the Roman Empire. Out of Rome have come other legendary artists and thinkers. York and countless other cities reflect its influence.

The Eternal City

Those who are pessimistic about London’s part in the world in the aftermath of Brexit might be cheered when they look at what happened to Rome after it lost its empires. When I tramped recently the ancient, cobbled streets of Rome that have changed little in hundreds of years, I reflect on the two empires that Rome lost; the Imperial Empire of 27 BC to 337 AD and the Roman Catholic Church’s ‘empire’ of 590 AD to… well, we can choose any number of dates: perhaps 1527, when Charles V sacked Rome; or 1798 when Napoleon’s forces occupied the city. Consider too Rome’s place in the world after the Second World War. Fought around by the Nazis and Allied forces - but the former were plundering its art, whilst the latter were trying to avoid destruction of its monuments as both sides had agreed to avoid bombing in the city - I sense in 1945 it’s precarious position in the world was like that of Britain today, about to lose its second alignment to a great political and economic power.

The ancient Romans belief in their city surviving all other empires is how it earned its nickname. They were a prescient people. Through all the sackings, attacks and bombardments – as well as political corruption, near bankruptcy and civic scandals of the latest century – Rome stands unbowed and proud of its pivotal role in Western culture and civilisation.

The Stylish City.

Will the English of today put the past behind them as the Romans did in 337 and 1798? My feeling is they will find it difficult. Those earnest British folk who would have today’s politicians and academics apologise for the wrongs of our forefathers to the citizens of conquered countries in the British Empire might care to consider how the Romans today view their invasion of Britain. Romans lose not a moment’s sleep over how their ancestors behaved in Gaul. Are these people apologetic for Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Britain in 55 BC; for the wrongs they did to Britons; for enslaving citizens in both London and Rome? They are not.

They are civil and polite to the French and English today, proud and a little aloof. They are the sort who “when it rains in Rome – and they happen to notice – blame it on Milan”. Romans never have been a politically correct race. Above all, Romans put image and style (but certainly not celebrity worship, that’s beneath them), at the forefront of their art, their culture and their society. For them the most important aspects to life are food, wine, football and fashion.

The survival and health of great cities is dependent on its people; the figures that govern, live, love, drink, make music and grow old in their beloved metropolis. Romans welcome visitors to their city but are wary of tourists. When we stop to lunch in a tiny side street cafe with my shamefully lacking Italian speech, (I make an effort), the barista smiles and walks us to a table. He does not gush and ask, “Where are you from?” They are proud of their city despite its current scandals of corruption and lack of sound political leadership. For nearly two thousand seven hundred years Rome has been at the centre of Western cultural and political development. Despite its demise as a major power, tourists from all over the world, including battalions of the newly enriched Chinese middle class from the globe’s latest empire, descend on Rome every year. Is there any other celebrated city that we would take seriously with a history that includes a mythical beginning? Do you believe that Romulus, Rome’s founder, was suckled with his brother Remus by a she-wolf?

My early schooling taught me that civilisation commenced with Rome and the Roman Empire. It then spread to France and across the Channel to Britain, to the United States and as far as Australia. At the age of nine I began lessons in Latin. I did not start with studying the language. Instead I learned about Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Sulla and the battles at Cannae, Trasimene and in Gaul. I was hooked by the romance of it all. Hannibal was my first schoolboy hero. Caesar a soldier/statesman I admired even though he was not loved. Writers of fiction such as Rosemary Sutcliffe brought the ancient world alive to me and in later years Robert Graves, Robert Harris, Conn Iggulden, Lindsey Davies and Steven Saylor have done the same. At the age of sixteen I discovered the poetry of John Keats and Lord Byron – the latter born a couple of leagues from me in Nottinghamshire. These Romantic poets together with Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley were attracted to Rome. Each achieved a glorious immortality from either dying here or penning memorable words about the allure of Italy.

In a similar manner to London ruling the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Rome was a city-state that controlled for centuries lands and people from Scotland to Africa. Figures who left an everlasting impression on this landscape include the Roman Emperors Vespasian (69-79 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180). The former, not without a questionable military record that included a ruthless streak, brought peace and stability to what was becoming a fractious state. He reorganised the financial structure of Rome and ordered the construction of one of the world’s most famous buildings, the Colosseum. Millions of tourists flock in wonder to his legacy – and are fleeced by the modern day ‘centurions’ who charge you for a selfie with them at your expense. Marcus Aurelius to this day has consistently been credited with being a ‘good Emperor’ whose book, Meditations, is a classic text on Stoic thought. (So I am told as I have not read it but he was a good man in the film Gladiator.) He too brought stability to the Empire when others would seek to bring military pressure on Italy.

The history of Rome, like that of the country as a whole, is lacking stories of famous women. There were distinguished women married to men of power but they often met untimely ends or overreached themselves in attempts to grab more power. With over forty emperors (male) followed by ninety-two popes (male) the time surely has come when women break out from the cult of Roman machismo. In 2016, at the thirty-fourth appointment of a mayor, Rome did elect Virginia Raggi as the first female incumbent.

Tourists to the Pantheon

The Resistant City

The charm of a civilised urban society that is Rome is accentuated by the architecture. I don’t see the ruins of the ancient Imperial city as a museum. When I walk amongst the empty shops of Trajan’s Markets I can imagine the hubbub of the shopkeepers, money dealers and Imperial informers, all striving to make a living off their fellow Romans. 

Via Biberatica

The cobbled Via Biberatica, built between AD 100 and 112, formed the same function as Briggate in Leeds. It was home to numerous commercial enterprises that provided employment (and criminal opportunities) to thousands of Romans. My favourite building in the city, the Pantheon, was completed in 125 AD and is artistic perfection in simple design and splendour. Much later the Renaissance, with its wealth and opulence, gave the city a significant boost in the building of palaces. Piazzas were formed and fountains burst into life. The streets and structures of the city landscape that a visitor sees today, perhaps with the exception of Vittoriano, are easy on the eye. There are no ‘high rise’ tower blocks, no concrete and glass eyesores from the 1950s and 1960s. Classical and neoclassical buildings occupy adjacent plots and exude style. Central Rome has resisted successfully the worst of twentieth century construction design.

St.Peters

Vatican City

Whatever your religious background it is impossible to deny the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the city and the wider world. The Vatican ruled Rome until 1870 when Royalist troops took over and completed the unification of Italy. The Vatican became a separate state, independent from Italy, in 1929. To me the City State brings thoughts of a secret society, pontiffs, (old men attired in white and aspiring to be monarchic) and puffs of white smoke from a chimney above the Sistine Chapel when a new pope has been elected. Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel attracts swarms of tourists like bees around a queen, maybe hoping a fleck of papal magic will fall on their shoulders. Both the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 in suspicious circumstances and the shocking contemporary accounts of abuse by Catholic priests focus modern attention on the reputation of the Vatican. It is stained and under attack. With the city of Rome itself the two cities have become beset with corruption and financial mismanagement. (Comparisons with sexism and dark doings in the finance world of the City of London are tempting.)

T

The city of light

Rome is a city to be looked at. The only way I can experience it’s society and feel the life within is to go about on foot. It has ancient buildings to be sure and some ridiculously opulent and obscene art (an example of the latter being in the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone) and architecture (Vittoriano) yet in no other city is there on display the inventiveness, pomposity, humility, bravery and brilliance of mankind. Generations of English and other northern European travellers have been drawn to Rome and mesmerised by its soft light and its warmth. We have fallen for the seduction of the Mediterranean way of life, the graceful stature of ochre buildings and the long history of gladiators, noble statesmen, poets, painters and musicians.

I have yet to copy, there is still time, the 18^th century British fashion of going on a Grand Tour but one of my ancestors did. In 1816 Lord Byron - a man around whom scandal circled all his adult life with tales of debauchery, multiple love affairs and the running up of large debts - left Britain on a Grand Tour with an entourage of similar rapscallions from Nottingham and London. I was delighted to discover years ago that a Gisborne accompanied Byron. Amongst a lineage of godly, sober and righteous Gisbornes (including two prebendaries of Durham, several Members of Parliament, a poet, a president of the College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal Society, Oxford scholars and numerous businessmen) I was excited to learn more about my roguish antecedent who indulged in sex, drugs and drink with the legendary poet. Alas, so far, my hunt for details of this splendid fellow has met with little substance but the search goes on. However I did find that another family member was well known to P.B. Shelley who “made friends with Mrs Maria Gisborne…but wrote in disparaging terms of her husband Mr John Gisborne, the size of whose nose appeared to offend him”. Poor John! During his time in Rome in 1820 PBS took under his wing, (I can only speculate as to why), a young woman he called his “Neopolitan Charge”. He also invested in Maria’s son, by an earlier marriage, who started a steamboat project in Florence! When PBS tried to withdraw his money from the venture the Gisbornes demurred. The poet was driven to writing that the Gisbornes were “the most filthy and odious animals with which he ever came in contact”. I was pleased to discover the quarrel seems to have been made up and letters of friendliness to the Gisbornes were later written.

So after reflecting on my colourful relations and their part in Rome’s history I consider my own introduction to Rome was of a more homely fashion.

Visited city

Dragging our reluctant daughter and younger son around Rome in the heat of August with their starry-eyed brother, a budding Roman Historian, is not a perfect introduction to the Eternal City. My recollection of that visit in 1993 is of dusty narrow streets, lethal rushing cars and scooters, noisy inhabitants, gelati, cats and ancient ruins. Meanwhile my wife saw  Gregory Peck astride every Vespa and my daughter looked in vain for Audrey Hepburn. The day was made bearable by the discovery of a McDonalds restaurant (the garish red and orange signboard replaced by a tasteful grey stone variety at the demand of the city council, ‘we’ll take your dollars and you will do it our way’) close to the foot of the Spanish Steps.

Twenty-six years later, on my fifth visit, I fall for the city in a big way. I feel warmly enveloped by the narrow cobbled streets as they draw us in to their embrace. The old buildings are living and retain their original structure but the street level shop window displays are contemporary. The pizzeria and gelatarie are plentiful as are the bars for a lunchtime beer. “In Rome people spend most of their time having lunch. And they do it very well – Rome is unquestionably the lunch capital of the world”. Gone are the mangy cats from the Colosseum and Forum. I deplored the stringy creatures that stared disdainfully at me. Gone too is much of the noise from the cars, for many are now electric, and scooters still thread a way around pedestrians – or maybe I am getting oblivious or deaf. After all it has been through Rome retains its civilisation. Can London follow suit?

Castel Sant'Angelo

LEEDS

A story was sent recently to the editor of that most august Yorkshire newspaper, The Bluffington Post:

Black Prince accused of improper behaviour

“The Black Prince, renowned throughout English history as the epitome of chivalry, who fought alongside his father Edward III in France and made his name at the battles of Crecy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356, has been labelled in Leeds as a suspected molester of women. Despite having had no connection with Leeds in his lifetime, the Black Prince has sat astride his horse, sword at his side, in Leeds City Square since 1903. Yesterday, early rail commuters crossing the square observed tell-tale footprints leading from the horse to one of the eight naked nymphs on the edge of the square and two muddy palm prints placed upon her breast. Local eyewitnesses say this is not the first time such evidence has been on view. No living soul has ever witnessed the prince get down from his horse, walk across the square and lay a hand on one of the nymphs that border the square and return to his horse. Some Leeds folk interviewed by our reporter expressed sympathy for the poor lad; he has spent a hundred and sixteen years gazing at the eight beauties and some say he should be allowed the odd indiscretion. It seems none of the locals has yet had the temerity to inform the prince, nor the folk interviewed, of the #MeToo movement for fear of being decapitated.”

Whilst the newspaper report is fake, I can assure readers the appearance of footsteps from time to time is true (curiously during student's Rag Week). So what is the relevance of this piece of frippery to the subject of Leeds penned by a sometimes overly serious writer on landscape? The answer is Edward III, father of The Black prince.  All will become clearer when I put the story of Leeds into context. 

Unlike my hometown, Leeds is firmly and defiantly in the north. A different language is spoken up here. A Scouser* in my wife’s family, displaying famous northern bluntness once said “It’s people that matter not places”. When I arrived in Leeds in 1983 for the next stage of my bookselling career I encountered even plainer Loiner speech: “Where there’s muck there’s brass”. Better still is the seventeenth century proverb “muck and money go together”. With a population of three quarters of a million people in just over fourteen hundred square kilometres it could be thought that Leeds people have transcended the land, swamped it and ruined it all in the pursuit of ‘brass’. I don’t agree with the Scouser. Place does matter along with the people, it is of equal importance. Loiners have shown remarkable commercial nouse over six hundred years in exploiting the landscape by the River Aire, but have not despoiled it.

So what has muck, brass and Leeds got in common? The simple answer is considerable. The longer answer is they have been inextricably linked since the reign of King Edward III who did much to help the establishment of the regional sheep and wool industry because Edward required heavy funding to fight his wars in France. Therefore the government and Edward legislated that all overseas trade in certain goods must be transacted by the government (which bought up all England’s wool in partnership with approved merchants) and exported at specific designated market towns or ports. These were called the ‘staple ports’ and in the case of the export of wool, Calais was chosen as the staple port, the only port through which English wool could be exported. This English system remained in place for nearly two centuries, in the process keeping prices high. By the reign of Edward wool was traded successfully on a large scale from Yorkshire when Leeds became am important market centre. When a valuable commodity is regulated and taxed, prices reach upward. High prices enriched the Leeds wool merchants and encouraged them to expand their commercial activities. Wool became very big business. Until the mid twentieth century wool and cloth was a major industry in England and Wales. (By the 1940s with global markets opening up, cheaper imports and the fashion for synthetic materials, for the first time the meat from sheep earned more than the fleece for farmers.)

Leeds lies at the heart of the topography of our overcrowded island of Great Britain. It typifies the attraction of urban centres, which draw increasing numbers of men and women to live and work. They do not farm, they do not tend to nature nor do they work in the woods. In Leeds they make things. As we have seen, Edward III in his fifty-year reign did much to aid the wool industry in Yorkshire. Leeds owes its historical prosperity to sheep. The initial stage of this ‘Northern Powerhouse’ industrial revolution led to machines being required to convert wool to cloth. So casting of metals was established to make the machines. Chemicals, soaps and leathers were also needed for the men and women who made the metals. A Leeds-based industry in furniture was created (Thomas Chippendale was born in 1718 twelve miles away in Otley) to fill the homes of the prospering labour force. Printing and bookselling thrived in the swelling industry of books to entertain and educate the workers and their families. By the mid twentieth century Leeds was a leading British producer of all these commodities and there were more; cardboard boxes, mineral waters, jams, brushes, clocks and watches were all key products made in Leeds.

Now it is a fact that workers love to shop. As far back as 1207 one Ralph Payne who had acquired land bordering the River Aire laid out a new town that had shops. I admire Ralph’s commercial instincts as he set about getting a financial return from his land. He created a market with adjacent “plots for houses, shops and gardens extending on both sides to back lanes. This market place later became known as Briggate, brycg being the Old English word for bridge, and gata the Old Norse for a way or street”. The plots set down on either side of the street were called ‘burgages’. Briggate today is still a magnet for shoppers from all over Britain. It is home to branches of leading fashion stores, coffee houses and hairdressers – just like in the thirteenth century. The street is famously proportioned in that it is one chain wide, a chain being four perches in old money or sixty-six feet in the modern idiom; or more simply the width of a cricket pitch. Now this is not because Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott (not a Loiner but Fitzwilliam born) has been around since 1207 – although to some Leeds folk it feels like that – but a perch could be subdivided easily for measuring out the plots for houses and shops.

Lower Briggate 

I have watched people taking a walk up and down Briggate.  Few raise their eyes above shop window level. It is difficult to do otherwise. Retailers compete to attract shoppers with ever more garish and daring window displays. If you do look up you will not see what Leeds looked like many centuries ago. It must be remembered Briggate has been the heart of modern commerce since Edward III’s unwitting gift (of high prices for wool) to the local merchants. Business people down the ages are keen to set fashions. Then as now there was a constant desire to make properties look modern. You will see only building frontages from the seventeenth century and later when the idea of preserving the past took hold. You will see evidence of the burgage plots. Nonetheless you will enter Whitelocks public house, established in 1715, as I did in my first week in the city and then move past Whitelocks to get a sense of what life in the narrow streets was like five hundred years ago.

Whitelocks public house

Where Briggate intersects with Bar Lane I met a Glaswegian named Craig and stopped to talk with him. He was sitting on the pavement, begging for his next cup of tea, or maybe something stronger. He had been homeless for six months since his mother had died and her landlord would not let him remain in the house. So he was evicted and he took to the streets. He bunks down each night with other homeless people under the hot air vents in a cavernous void under the city railway station.

 “The police don’t move us on as they know we can keep warm and we don’t cause anyone any trouble,” Craig told me.

I asked him why he stayed in Leeds. “It’s Spice City to me,” he replied. “Look in any of the alley ways up Briggate and you can find everything you need in life.”

Leeds may be the variety of life but I discovered subsequently that in urban argot ‘spice’ is a word given to synthetic marijuana or fake weed. However, Craig looked perky enough so whichever way you look at it spice were not doing him too much harm.

The fabulous architecture of Leeds commercial buildings has provided space for the creation of world-famous companies. One such became Britain’s favourite shop for ‘smalls’. In 1884 the open market off Briggate housed Michael Marks’ first stall. Ten years later Marks took into partnership with him Thomas Spencer. They operated penny bazaars with a strapline of ‘Don’t ask the price – it’s a penny’. By 1980 Marks and Spencer had become one of the world’s largest retail businesses, fondly referred to by many as Marks and Sparks and where most citizens have at one time or another bought their smalls.

Briggate in 2019

Not far from the birthplace of Marks and Spencer I found the first office of E.J.Arnold, Britain’s leading educational supplier, publisher and printer and a significant competitor of mine in my early career. Established in 1870 at No. 3 Briggate, now a gentleman’s hairdresser, I was amused to see it’s neighbour is a purveyor of sex toys and aids. We in the book trade knew our place. The history of Leeds includes many people who have imprinted their personality on the landscape. Benjamin Gott was one, an industrialist and a millionaire when he died in 1840. His textile factory in Leeds was for a time the largest factory in the world. He was a hugely successful entrepreneur, mayor of the city and benefactor. In his day there were no professional cycling or football teams requiring obscene amounts of sponsorship so he invested in almshouses for the poor. An excellent man, he initiated the city’s philosophical and literary society.

On my arrival in Leeds my first sight of one of the city’s iconic buildings, the town hall filled me with foreboding. It is a stupendous Victorian structure I admit, but it is so severe, so dark and so stark; like a mausoleum. When I searched for some points of human interest, to learn more about the music and the vibes of the city, I uncovered a bizarre legend. North of the town hall is a famous hotel, the Victoria. It is believed that a tunnel linked the buildings for the judges working in the former. My knowledge of judges is that they like a tipple, but their use of the tunnel may not have been for what we think. The Victoria was built to house those with business at the Leeds Assizes. Much later by 1970 The Victoria had become a venue for nascent pop music bands. It gave space for Mark Knopfler, a student at the university and journalist with The Yorkshire Post, to perform and try out his compositions. He also went on to be a global brand. Back across the street in the town hall I heard tell of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Inaugurated in 1961 by three notable local women (Fanny Waterman, Marion, Countess of Harewood and Roslyn Lyons) every three years young pianists from around the world come to Leeds where the winner will perform successfully in the town hall.

Again in 1983 on arriving in Leeds my wife said to me, “Let’s try out some local Yorkshire culture”.

“What shall it be?” I said. “Rugby league or Opera North?” We tried them both and after thirty-six years we still thrill to the works of Verdi, Puccini and Britten. ‘Oop north’ here in Leeds, opera going is inclusive, not just an activity for the elite; after all it lets me in and I am a mere Tony Hancock fan. Opera North’s headquarters, the Romanesque Grand Theatre with a Gothic interior, plays home to yet another piece of auspicious Leeds life.

Like in other British cities over hundreds of years many women and men have adopted this urban Leeds landscape to create innovative industry, commerce and music. The cities swelled with new, wealthier residents whilst the rural villages began to empty. My working life in retailing coincided with a ‘golden age’ of the book business and popular literature. As I have noted before, workers like to shop; they like to be seduced by displays of ‘stuff’ from clothes to food, books and toys. Almost twenty years into the current millennium citizens are looking for a different vibration to support their shopping thrills. The world wide web of things is hooking people. A tangible shop is losing its attraction. Yet when I walk around the Leeds landscape on a Sunday, when most of the city shops are closed, the scene is one of large numbers of citizens enjoying the peace of the inspiring built environment without its weekday revolving doors. Although, Briggate is open. Briggate is swarming with people

The fell tops of my beloved Lake District and Yorkshire Dales have not changed in usage in five thousand years (contrary to the view of trendy ‘re-wilders’ of today, northern hills have been devoid of trees for all this time) and mankind has grazed sheep there ever since. Likewise, since its inception, Briggate in Leeds has not changed in its essential and prime activity of commerce. The common denominator is the people, working the land and tending their flocks in the former; and opening their shops and minding their stock in the latter. Briggate and Leeds would never have prospered without sheep. Sheep and their wool have provided a way of life for English people for ten thousand years since the animal became domesticated.

Late in life I have come to celebrate the sheep and I have adopted Leeds, or Leeds has adopted me. I admire the Loiners who are suspicious “of that lot dahn south” but get on with mankind’s role of adapting their land to make money and enjoy the process. Yet Leeds is not just about industry and old buildings. Down the years the civic authorities have clung tenaciously to their parks. Roundhay, Temple Newsam, Middleton and Gott’s are spacious, urban parks with woodland, lakes and plentiful wildlife. A visit to Roundhay is an essential part of the locals’ weekend activities. It is renowned throughout the north and Yorkshire folk, famously known for being forward, are proud of it. The Skipton born entertainer Charlie Lawson tells of it like this:

A Dales farmer arrived in Leeds to sell his sheep and, wishing to pay a visit to Roundhay Park, he boarded a tram in City Square. When the conductor came for his fare, the farmer said: “Roundhay Park, please.”

“Sorry sir, but this tram is going the wrong way for you,” said the conductor.

“Well, doan’t tell me abaht it, goa tell t’blinkin’ driver,” was the fiery retort.

The natives of Leeds are proud and confident folk. Yet a split in their view about being part of Europe is plainly visible. They collectively and narrowly voted to remain in the European Union at the 2016 referendum. This was contrary to the resulting votes cast by the citizens of the rest of West Yorkshire. May be when they alight from their commuter trains and buses and walk through City Square of a morning they glance up at the Black Prince and are reminded of glorious victories against the French over six hundred years ago, and are eager for another go at the foreigners. For me as a Remainer and an unelected Loiner the value in the wool trade cemented the city’s dependence of business with the rest of Europe. Once the vote was declared I just want to ‘Leave’ and get on with business.

*For international readers a glossary of northern terms may be helpful:

Brass (rhymes with Crass) -  Money

Scouser - a citizen of Merseyside and the Wirral Peninsular

Loiner - a citizen of Leeds

Muck (rhymes with book) - Dirt, manure

Northern Powerhouse - a phrase dreamed up by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer referring to a proposal (from Westminster) to boost economic growth in northern England

Westminster - a place where crazy people work

Geoffrey Boycott - a Leeds based cricketer who has much in common with marmite.

Marmite - a type of savoury spread on bread (loved and hated by equal numbers of people, superior to Vegemite, but notoriously difficult to remove from a crease).

Smalls - underwear and socks.

Oop north - a place that is the centre of the universe to anyone living within 20 miles of the Pennine hills and where normal people live.

Reading one of the following books will enhance an enjoyable visit to Leeds:

Briggate Yards & Arcades; Peter Brears & Kevin Grady; Leeds Civic Trust. 2007

Baines’s Account of the woolen manufacture of England; Edward Baines; David & Charles. 1970

Memoirs of wool, woolen manufacture and the trade (particularly in England); from the earliest to the present times; John Smith. 1765. A ripping good read!