From fiction to fact
Published: Wed, 02/07/18
I have just finished a novel which was originally published in 1951. Title is The Masters by C P Snow. It was a highly regarded book when I was a child and I read it at quite a young age. I am not sure why, it certainly isn’t a children’s book but I guess it was on my parent’s bookshelf and it caught my attention. The Masters is set in 1937 and tells the story of an election for a new master of a fictional Cambridge college. The story follows the process over a period of about a year, The current master is dying of cancer so two factions gather around two possible candidates. Alliances are made and broken and eventually a new master is elected. Okay, the book is a bit light on car chases, gunfights and explosions but there is plenty of drama in the intrigues and betrayals depicted. At another level The Masters was seen at the time of publication as portraying the changing importance of the major subject areas. The arts and
humanities are in decline and science and engineering in the ascendant. Although the book is set before the war it was written with an awareness of the 1944 education act and the coming of state grammar schools. Snow’s book records the very end of the universities as the preserve of the relatively wealthy who could afford to send their sons to public schools and then a good university almost regardless of ability or intelligence. By the time Snow was writing universities had already become far more egalitarian and meritocratic in the students they accepted.
The author is very good at characterization and the most engaging character portrayed is the oldest fellow of the college Professor Gay who is the professor of Old Norse Studies. He is arguably the most successful academic in that he has published both academic and best selling poplar books on the Sagas and Norse mythology. Professor Gay is also a borderline obsessive in that we are told that he has a hundred foot long relief model of Iceland in his garden. On this representation are marked all the major settlements which are referred to in the Icelandic Sagas. All the characters in Snow’s book were supposed to have been based on real people. I rather hope there was an eccentric professor of old Norse who built such a feature in his garden. I found myself so involved in the story that I rather wished I could have studied under Professor Gay, I think it would have been rather fun.
Of course The Masters is fiction but real life can be interesting too. On Friday morning last week I traveled all the way to Klitmoller near the top of the North West Coast of Denmark. This involved a flight from Heathrow to Billund and then a two hour drive across the farmlands of Northern Denmark. I arrived in time for a late lunch on the Friday where I met the people I would be teaching on the Saturday. It was a cold and blustery day but we still had a walk on the beach and explored the fortifications which have been there since the second world war. On the Saturday evening we had some talks before a celebration supper for Winter Thing. After supper we played a traditional game which involves taking it in turns to hit a suspended wooden barrel with a training axe until the staves broke and the sweets inside fell out. I guess you had to be there to fully appreciate the experience.
On the Saturday I taught three sessions of martial training. Then another late night before leaving at 7am for a 16 hour journey home by car, plane, metro and coach to Hull where Venetia collected me from the bus station.
It was a great weekend for lots of reasons, thanks to Mads Knudson for organising the event and being such a hospitable host. It was also great to catch up with a couple of old friends, Roland Zerpe who invited Venetia and I over to Sweden in 2015. Also, Benjamin Weber Pedersen who I had not seen for over ten years. It was great to catch up with both of them and Benjamin lectures in Old Norse studies at Syddansk University. A kind of real life Professor Gay, except that Benjamin is much younger, and more or less sane, as far as I can tell. We had a discussion about studying the Norse mythology, in particular how to approach the Volspa which may be the single most important text in the collection we call the Eddas. As a result we explored the possibility of bringing Benjamin over to the UK for a couple of days of studying and discussing the Volspa. Okay, not everyone’s cup of tea but if you are really interested in the mythology
which underpins Stav then it might just be the event for you. Let me know if you might be interested and we can start discussing dates, probably towards the end of the year.
regards
Graham
PS Of course you don’t have to wait that long to do some training. I am teaching close quarter weapon skills this coming Saturday and you can find the whole programme here http://iceandfire.org/calendar.html