Soweto

 People make history. But they require a stage on which to act out their personal drama. What determines the legacy for which any one landscape will be renowned forever? Which people and places become irrevocably joined together? It is this search that drives me to write stories about place. Across the world I have visited sites that bear an unwelcome baggage of history. I have studied history since the age of eight, and learned of some of this unwanted baggage that clings to a place with an odour of terror; a place such as Soweto in 1976. I also remember, in this fire season in Australia, Black Saturday in February 2009 that left the survivors of Kinglake in Australia traumatised; these current fires will be shaking their recovery. An earthquake in Christchurch in 2011; riots in Los Angeles in 1991 and in Chicago in 1968; the dismantling of a wall in Berlin in 1989 – all events of my lifetime, all places where I found only memorials. People quickly cover over the events in their landscapes. A wish to blot out the past and bad things that happened in their backyards is common. For me, they run the risk of both ignoring the wonder of landscape and learning from it. People can repeat history’s tragedies.

I have just visited Soweto and a small part of Africa. I explored just the southern part of a huge and diverse landscape of thirty million square kilometres that receives less international attention today than it deserves (although the Chinese state is quietly working its way into local economies and property). Growing up in the 1960s I watched ‘apartheid’ in action on the news reports. Over twenty years I heard tell of places called Sharpeville, Robben Island and Soweto which were solely that, just places in a foreign and distant land that I would probably never visit. Then my sister set down to live there and I went to see her. The events in these locations came alive to me, thirty-seven years later in Johannesburg.

My sense of what defines the people and the landscape of southern Africa became a little clearer following my latest visit. It bears no comparison to other former British territories. It does not have the noise, clamour and smells of India. Unlike Canada it has herds of exotic animals and abundant bird life. Australia may be closest in nature but its aboriginal people have been all but obliterated. The Xhosa, San and Zulus of Africa still stand proud and are an essential part of the land. The British Empire invaded all this land, took it for its own and violated the indigenous people. When I walked in South Africa I believe these people can have their own future, something quite apart from Britain and The Netherlands.

On 16^th June 1976 an event took place in South Africa that had far-reaching consequences, not only for all South Africans but also for black citizens the world over. (Yet on this day most Europeans were looking inward. Then as now Europe was a nervous community. The British were tentatively getting accustomed to a new prime minister and despairing of an inflation rate of more than eighteen per cent. The Germans closed a chapter on urban violence with the death of Ulrike Meinhof. In Oslo, Britain and Iceland agreed to end a third Cod War.) For me in Britain the events in Soweto that day appeared briefly as another representation of a dysfunctional country that appeared to have no apparent positive solution. The human stories of what was really happening on those streets never got through to us. Besides, I was too busy nurturing a young family and running a business to be overly distracted by the politics of South Africa. White, comfortable and middle class; yes I was. Political activist, angry at the world’s unjustness and prepared to do something about it; no I wasn’t. I could plead guilty to apathy.

 

Soweto in 2019

On this fateful day riots started amongst the Africans living in the township of Soweto, the largest of a wholly black complex of townships in South Africa and a suburb of Johannesburg. Those residents of Soweto that worked did so in Johannesburg – a city where rich, White entrepreneurs employed Black Africans (at pitifully low wages and in appalling physical conditions) to extract diamonds and gold from the nearby mines. The riots resulted from a policy directive put out by the National government that only Afrikaans and English must be used for teaching children in the Black secondary schools. The Sowetans saw Afrikaans as the language of oppression. “It is the language of pass laws, permits and police,” said one black social worker. On 16^th June in Soweto, some parents took their children out of school. Kids in their uniforms, representing every school in the township, were led by their parents through the streets to a rally in the local football stadium to protest. Some of the protestors looted and burned schools and other civic properties. Two passing white men were dragged from their cars by a few locals who beat them and stoned them to death. The police arrived and shots were fired.

One of the first of a dozen school pupils to die that day was Hector Pieterson. A picture of his body being carried by an anti-Apartheid activist with Hector’s sister running alongside caused an embarrassing sensation for the government and flashed across the world’s TV screens. The mass protests did not stop, however, with Hector dying. Further inflamed by his death the residents of Soweto continued to riot through the night and the next day. Prime Minister John Vorster instructed the police to restore order “at all costs”. The result was more police shooting into the crowds without warning. Over three days “the cost” was one hundred people dead on the streets and over one thousand injured.

Forty-three years after Hector’s death we walked along the street where he lost his life. This area is not a landscape in any conventional sense. It is an ugly mixture of roads, shacks and small businesses attempting to find a place in a new world. Minibus taxis ply their way up and down the streets, the drivers constantly sounding their horns in a fashion that only the local customers understand. On our way into Soweto we saw hillsides of bare baked earth covered in tin shacks crammed together, some with a cardboard lean-to attached to the side. There is no grass; there are few trees here. We came across an occasional larger house, surrounded by high concrete walls with razor wire on top. These, many topped with a TV satellite dish, belong to the newly well-off Black inhabitants. We learned, incredibly, that there are an increasing number of millionaires living in Soweto.

I first visited South Africa in 1982 during the time of apartheid. I was out of work and flew to Durban to visit my sister, her husband and two young children. I also spent four days on my own in Cape Town. I did the things that tourists do. I went up Table Mountain, but only on the cable car. I took a bus to Cape Point to see the tip of Africa and sat next to a German international land yachtsman who had competed on the sands of Namibia. On our return to the city the bus passed Cape Flats, a shantytown squatter camp. This was a huge township of the same tin shacks I saw this year in Soweto. In 1982, this was a dismal and hopeless township where Black and Coloured Africans were confined and forgotten by a ruthless national government, still determined to suppress non-white African people.

The sighting of Cape Flats from our bus was my first real confrontation with the tyranny and oppression of apartheid. The view did make me think of the inhumanity of this government. This was accentuated further when our bus climbed away from the flats into wooded and green Kenilworth, a southern suburb of the city. We were shown the rich people’s (White Africans) houses; magnificent brick and mock-Tudor mansions set in gloriously colourful gardens – all, of course, surrounded by high concrete walls and electric fences. Our driver pointed out the staggeringly large house of Wilbur Smith, a successful writer of adventure novels. (I met Wilbur on several occasions in England in later years. Once, at the theatre in London when he introduced me to his stunningly beautiful wife, and later at book trade events in Nottingham. He told me he could not understand why my bookshops sold so few of his books. I told him I couldn’t either.)

What I did not appreciate, and nobody on the bus reminded me of the fact, that our journey took us past Tokai where Pollsmoor Prison held a very important inmate whose eventual release in 1990 was the catalyst for momentous upheavals in modern South African history. I doubt that any on that bus that day spared a thought for Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, incarcerated a few kilometres from our ride.

After my stay in Cape Town I returned to Durban and enjoyed some family time. I was bemused to see the first beach in South Africa where white, black and coloured people could mix in the same place and swim together. The visible dismantling of apartheid started in Durban. Walking those same beach promenades thirty-seven years later I see almost total integration of the peoples of South Africa. Almost, but not quite. In Durban city centre today, as in Soweto, Blacks and Whites are still separate peoples.

In 2019, before our visit, we reminded ourselves about Mandela, apartheid and the hope placed in the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. We did some homework so we could demonstrate some knowledge of this wondrous country. Nonetheless, our visit in Soweto reminded me that, in reality, we know little about the struggle the black people of southern Africa had to endure to just get the vote! Our main purpose in Soweto was not to sightsee with a tour operator. (To go alone and unaccompanied is considered, for Whites, foolhardy and dangerous. This place has one of the highest rates for murder and rape in the world). I felt to drive around and gawp at the locals was disrespectful. (I know, I once climbed Uluru in Australia, against the wishes of both the aboriginal people and my wife, but, hey, we should all be allowed the occasional inconsistency in our lives). Our purpose was to visit the Mandela House at 8115 Orlando West.

It was the opposite of grand, but it was my first true home of my own and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he has a house of his own.

These are the words of Nelson Mandela who moved in to this tiny redbrick, single storey house in 1946. We had come, after a morning spent at the symbolic Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, to learn a little bit more about this incredible man. Now at this point I must state that millions of words have been written, hundreds of books published and Nobel Prizes awarded that attest to the life and work of Mandela. I am not going to attempt to add much more. But we had come, nevertheless, to see for ourselves how one figure bestrode an unfortunate landscape. I also said a small prayer of thanks that this man ever lived, for without him South Africa, prior to 2009, could never have reached so far.

8115 Orlando West, despite being Mandela’s first house, saw little of him as he was mostly away around the country, campaigning against the apartheid regime. After his divorce from his first wife in 1957 he lived here with his second wife, Winnie, until his imprisonment. For twenty years Winnie lived in the house, when not herself in detention, yet she was persecuted continually by the police. Often she was under house arrest, banned from moving outside the property. In 1972 security police smashed through the front door, hurled rocks through the windows and fired shots at the house with Winnie, her family and friends inside. The bullet holes in the bricks are visible today.

I came to Soweto expecting to be emotionally tormented at what we saw, yet left with something missing from my search. Our Uber taxi driver largely drove in silence. He is a new South African. He prefers the music of Phil Collins and Dolly Parton to Johnny Clegg, Ladysmith Black Mambaso, Lemmy Special or Mohatella Queens. I did not push him too much to learn about how far life and prospects have advanced for Sowetans in forty-seven years. They have the vote, but there are few jobs. There are plenty of schools, literacy rates are improving but there remains little incentive to attend university. A corrupt government of nine years halted an expanding economy, and above all, removed hope and aspiration in this meagre urban landscape. Hassling the tourists – Sam outside the Pieterson memorial did it with an engaging smile and a style that will turn him eventually into an excellent guide - is about as good as it gets.

Three landscapes that engulfed me with a sense of horror are Thiepval, Kinglake and Auschwitz. Whether Soweto deserves to be bracketed with those others is questionable, but as with Auschwitz, it has become a shrine for a government that used violence against its people to maintain it’s ends. But it is inescapable that these four landscapes in which I have stood share a common thread of a violent past. Man was responsible at all four. The place-names resonate with terror. Today, in each of the four locations, resides a memorial to the people who came to this landscape and perpetrated their violence on others. I have stood and contemplated these histories and, despite the stories involved, remain confident that some of us do learn from events and most of us make the landscape a better place for our kids.

African skies for everyone

Around northern hills

Trampers in Langstrath

If, like me, you were born a Piscean then you will be reminded constantly of the opposite directions in which your waking brain pulls you. It really is entertaining, even distracting, and this facet of a Zodiac birth sign keeps me forever wondering at the complexities and irrationalities of human thought. Take thinking about trees for example. Since growing up with a stand of magnificent beech trees visible from my bedroom window I welcome springtime when the young leaves of beech, sycamore and larch have a softness and lightness that gives way to darker tones as the months roll by. Of all the trees in the English countryside, beech and Scots Pine are my favourites. One joyous weekend this summer I planted an oak and a walnut in our Yorkshire paddock, not far from five Scots Pines I had planted previously. The walnut is a seventieth birthday present from my two sisters who were each recipients of a tree on their three score and ten years.

Now the humbling aspect to planting trees at my late stage in life is that I shall probably not be around when they reach maturity. Certainly I am thinking that the walnut may wait until I am sharing the earth with it before it produces a worthwhile crop of edible nuts. Nonetheless I am providing the next generation with a beautiful, living thing and that gives me a glow of satisfaction.

So here’s the rub. We are in danger of planting too many trees in the wilderness of north of England. In Swaledale this June my fellow trampers and I see spread before us moors and hillsides free of trees. The dale has a scattering of woods and copses but the landscape is open green space with grazing for sheep (but these are in declining numbers), dry stone walls, isolated stone barns underneath huge skies. There is the occasional village such as Low Row, Gunnerside and Thwaite. This is as it has been for several hundred years and must remain as it is. For this land provides grazing for sheep who crop the grasses low. It provides nesting places for a wide variety of endangered birds. It also provides a glorious wonderland of nature for hikers and botanists. The sheep and birds (especially the grouse) in turn sustain people employed in farming, conservation and tourism. These people live in small communities with schools, pubs and village halls that underpin an enduring English social structure worthy of continuing and celebrating. Let the ‘rewilders’ in to impose their philosophy of reducing the very things that an environmentally conscious country should be preserving – self-sufficiency (oh, that wonderful 1970s phrase) in food and clothing – and they will plant trees everywhere. They don’t want sheep and cattle – they believe these pollute the atmosphere and over graze. They would have us all turn vegan and import our exotic foodstuffs and clothing from India, Singapore and the Americas – at a frightening environmental cost and increased carbon footprint.

Swaledale looking east

The dale lying south of Swaledale is Wensleydale in which I walked the same month. High on a southern slope of Wensleydale Middleham Castle has stood since the twelfth century. It is renowned as the refuge for King Richard III who, as the Duke of Gloucester, first visited in 1461. This summer in pouring rain, typically atmospheric for this windswept northern hill, my elder son and I went visiting to remind ourselves of this massive and impressive castle with walls twelve feet thick and a dominant view over the dale. To the south of the castle we could see the outline of moors meeting the leaden sky, just as Richard would have done five hundred and fifty years ago. This view has changed little in those years. Richard, with his friends Robert Percy and Francis Lovell, found tranquillity in these hills, far away from the anarchy and political intrigue in London. Likewise, my son and I could forget the modern day madness in Westminster. Separated by five centuries we too were figures moving in a solid landscape, a place trusted, known and dependable.

Further south still lies Ribblesdale. The dying village of Horton (the school has closed, cottages lie empty, there are few jobs) sits astride the river between three mighty hills, favourites of mine for nearly forty years. Eighteen times I have tramped round The Yorkshire Three Peaks in under twelve hours, for this is one of the best one-day walks in the county. Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough stand menacingly above Horton and the Ribble yet almost every weekend in the summer they withstand the boots of hundreds of walkers, come to raise money for their chosen charities. The Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge is tough, yet no one making the attempt will leave without a sense of awe at the wildness and rawness of the landscape. This is a grey land manifesting the power of mountains to exert their magnificent domination over mankind. There are not many trees here either. They would not survive in the stony and poor soil. The day of my latest circuit this summer dawned bright but my companion and I expected rain later. Starting from Horton at 7:15 a.m. we noted the gently trickling Ribble low in its bed, gently swishing past the stones and banks. Atop Pen-y-ghent the world looked calm. On Whernside a wind picked up and the sky to the south had darkened. Claps of thunder were sounding every minute. By the time we had descended to the valley rain was falling and grew heavier with every yard we walked. By the time we reached the eagerly anticipated Hill Inn at Chapel le Dale, (where my companion - a most convivial fellow who draws strength from a pint or two and maybe a glass of red - said we would rest). We were soaked. We looked up at Ingleborough as terrified children do a grumpy grandfather. But, oh dear. The Hill Inn was closed. There was nothing we could do but press on.

On the summit of Ingleborough the wind and rain had ceased. To the west lay Morecambe Bay twinkling in the sunshine. But to the south the sky over Horton was black and streaked with horizontal threads of lightening. This was a time to get down off the hill. It was dangerous to be exposed above the skyline in such electric conditions. The rain started falling once more. The streams began to overflow the path. At Sulber Nick the way was submerged and we could only walk in the water. We tried walking on it but we had too little faith. The scene at Horton had changed dramatically in the eleven hours since we left. Filthy, brown water was cascading down the river, appearing above the banks with foam crested waves and now only a few feet below the humpback road bridge. However, The Crown Hotel was open and we got our two pints – and a glass of red to celebrate.

If ever we needed a symbol of the violence of storms and the helplessness of man in his landscape, this was a perfect example. This was the day Swaledale was hit by an even mightier flood, when sheep and cattle were washed down river. Residents of houses in Reeth were invaded by the torrent. Businesses were ruined in ten minutes.

And so, at last I came next to my favourite northern hills and landscape, the Lake District. I was here to walk the Cumbria Way with friends; my fellow Coast to Coaster from 1985 and two Cumbria residents, one the chair of Cumbria Community Foundation. We pondered how his  community was threatened; by ‘re-wilders’, by loss of work and by climate change. This was my latest journey on foot amongst the fells, lakes and tarns that I discovered with my wife forty-six years ago, a land that I have come to love, treasure and wonder at.

Derwentwater from UnderSkiddaw

The Lake District was not always a tourist attraction, only since the late eighteenth century did tourists come. Before that the land had been farmed for centuries by wise men that knew how to manage this wild country and hand it on to the next generation. They knew how to tend flocks of tough Herdwicks and Swaledales, make money by selling the wool and meat. They knew how to sustain their flocks by the judicious acquisition of new tups and keep a strong and healthy stock. They provided employment for local people, enhanced and protected the community by maintaining houses, walls, riverbanks and coppicing in the woods. They also loved cock fighting, hound trailing and hunting foxes on foot. The latter pursuit was not a socially divisive activity as it is in the south and Shires today, but a necessary one that involved all the locals in the community to reduce the vermin that killed their livelihood. Apart from the cock-fighting most of the old activities thrive because that is what happens in a well balanced, (if poor compared with Surrey and Sussex), economy.

More books have been written, more poetry penned and more pictures painted of The Lakes than anywhere else in Britain. John Ruskin, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.H. Auden, Mary Lamb, Thomas de Quincey and Alfred Wainwright are the most famous writers who felt the magical spell that Lakeland casts on visitors. They wrote some of their finest work here. The rock faces hereabouts have provided a stiff training ground to mountaineers such as Chris Bonnington who went on to conquer the Alps and Everest. Bonnington still lives near the fells. Donald Campbell won world water speed records on Coniston and died there in 1967. I celebrate all these famous people, many of whom were visitors or incomers. On this latest tramp through the Lakes I was keen to find locals born and raised amongst the fells, unsung and unknown outside Cumbria. They are the soul of the place, they are the past, the present and the future – if they feel they can stay and not move out to look for work.

When I met David Weir he was brushing the dog ends from beneath the tables in front of our overnight resting place in Coniston. David is 63 years old and the handyman at The Black Bull. His workshop is a redundant red telephone box round the back of the pub; it neatly holds his brushes, cans and tools. With a ready smile for me, a stranger who stopped to talk to him, he knows all about the town and its people. The Ruskin Museum, St. Andrews churchyard where the body of Ruskin lies and the municipal graveyard where Campbell is buried are all familiar to David when I asked about them. He talked of the local people who maintained these landmarks. Then he volunteered the fact that in 2001 he had dug the grave for Campbell’s body and went on to describe how he had to clear the headstone of hundreds of cards from visitors – yet found one the next morning from Campbell’s widow. He talked of a Mr Blackburn who bought the bed of the lake and gave it to the residents who formed a Bed of the Lake Trust that still operates today. What became apparent to us as we walked through this landscape is that each town and valley is its own community. The Lake ‘District’ is a misnomer. This is not a single district. Lakeland is made up of dozens of distinctly separate social and economic units.

In Borrowdale we met a friendly and loquacious man at the core of Lakeland society, a sheep-farmer. He holds a first generation agricultural tenancy from the National Trust. (This means the tenancy can pass on to the next two generations in his family without the Trust taking it off him, thus ensuring continuity of both careful land management and employment). In common with the farmer I encountered in Kentmere - who had to fight the National Trust, successfully, to keep his agricultural tenancy - and another in Swaledale, he is critical of the Trust. Meeting these folk, I am convinced the Trust does not understand farming. The National Trust and Natural England are paying farmers very large sums of money to reduce the number of sheep on the fells by as much as sixty per cent in some areas. These organisations believe that the pastures on the fells are being overgrazed. What they appear to fail in grasping is that the fells are good for no other type of farming; that if the grass grows too long, not only will the sheep not eat it but the indigenous birds will not be able to reach the grubs they live on so they will move elsewhere; and that for a farmer who once had 10,000 sheep on the fells now has less than half that number it will not be worth shepherding them.

Derwentwater and Blencathra

Since Natural England started interfering with the way generations of farmers have instinctively come to regard as best for the sheep, best for the wildlife, best for the visitors who come to enjoy the scenery and wildness, this London based non-departmental public body has failed to provide evidence that its huge expenditure is actually protecting Lakeland’s nature. Locals tell me that more likely it is destroying habitats and a way of life that has endured for many centuries. Lakeland farmers have been successful and trusted key influencers in whatever happens in each small community that is made up of people and land.

My interest in northern hills is not to describe the beauty of Lakeland and The Dales. As with every other place I visit it is the role of the landscape in shaping lives that matters to me. The converse is equally critical; how is mankind managing the landscape? This year a Swedish teenage climate activist has stirred millions of people around the world to look at the places in which we live. She wants us to be alarmed, even angry, at what is happening. My grandchildren are right to be concerned about the natural world in which they are growing up. I hope that sane heads in national governments and world organisations such as the United Nations will come up with some strategies.

My immediate fear is that Lakeland, the Yorkshire Dales and other northern hills of England will pay the price of foot dragging by politicos in Westminster, Washington, Moscow, Beijing and Brazil. Climate change has been taking place for decades, but even now some grey suits in London are ‘re-wilding’ these hills, removing sheep and planting trees to make them feel they are taking action. Again I say, where is the evidence their policies are effective? The thirteen farmers in Borrowdale alone will tell them they are making big mistakes.

The position I take on this issue is admittedly an emotional and instinctive one. There is evidence that the eradication of the consumption of all red meat would have a significant positive effect on the rate of climate change. Nevertheless, allowing large commercial companies and The National Trust, who are major landowners in Lakeland, to enact policies that are contrary to the innate passion and feel for the landscape that farmers have seems wrong. The meat produced from Cumbrian sheep is infinitesimally small; the wool has potentially far more value if imports of clothing materials are to be reduced. From my visits I detect that most farmers, walkers and locals wish to see the fells, valleys and villages left looking like they have done for hundreds of years.

Carrock Fell from Skiddaw House

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.)

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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