"Any Human Heart" (2010)

I'm so excited to be able to post a link to Channel 4's new television series, Any Human Heart, an adaptation of the bestselling and award winning novel by William Boyd, which has one of my favourite people, Emerald Fennell, amongst its glitteringly delightful cast. Very exciting. 

Emerald and I first met at Oxford just before Christmas of 2006, when I was directing my second student play and she auditioned, as one of 83 girls competing for the three main roles in my favourite play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We got to speak properly for the first time at the call-backs, when I accidentally scheduled the next auditionee an hour after Emerald's audition ended. So, we stayed and chatted for a while and I was heartily relieved that, at last, someone told me that my neurotic fear of flying was more than justified. It's not how often it happens, but how bad it will be when it happens. Even worse if the plane nose dives, then rights itself, and you're the person who wet yourself mid-plummet and have to live with that shame for the rest of the flight. True words. Perhaps some of my favourite memories of our time in Oxford include us, bedraggled and exhausted sitting, without shame, with various 18th century costumes and props slung over our arms as we waited for a post-rehearsal supper table to open up at the Chiang Mai restaurant. Good times. Less endearingly, on my part, there was an incident during a rehearsal for Dangerous Liaisons in a music room at Worcester College, when I - very tired and stressed with the dress rehearsal approaching - was interrupted by someone banging away on a defunct drum kit behind me. For some reason, I assumed it was my friend Johnny Rhodes, so I spun round in high fury and snapped, "Johnny, for f***'s sake! What are you doing?" Only to discover that it was Emerald on said drums; at which point, my demeanour changed entirely and I beamed, "Oh, it's you, Emmy. Well done." Johnny meanwhile, from the far corner of the room, glowered with seething fury from behind his 18th century valet's attire.

The novel Any Human Heart - published by Penguin - is written like a diary or a collection of papers and it follows the life of a fictitious author and art expert, Logan Montstuart, through his existence in the English upper-classes for most of the 20th century. Educated at Oxford in the years between the two world wars, Logan marries into the aristocracy - his wife Lottie (played by Emerald) is the daughter of an earl. However, life is not exactly plain sailing and the story of Any Human Heart chronicles Logan's misadventures across the British Empire as it enters its twilight, his interaction with the ex-King, Edward VIII and his social-climbing American wife, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (played by X Files and Bleak House alum, Gillian Anderson), and his life in America and France in the later half of the 20th century. 

It's a fantastic book with a wonderful cast for the adaptation, which was written by William Boyd. It will be broadcast later this year by Channel 4, in four 2-hour segments. So do look out for it! Amongst the cast are Oscar winner Jim Broadbent as the elderly Logan, with Pirates of the Caribbean 4's Sam Claflin and Pride and Prejudice's Matthew Macfadyen playing the younger versions; joining them, apart from Emerald, are Brideshead Revisited's Hayley Atwell, Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, Tom Hollander as Edward VIII, Gillian Anderson and The West Wing's Richard Schiff. 

I'm obviously hugely excited about this, especially since it seems absolutely no time at all since I was directing Emerald in a student production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Dangerous Liaisons. And giving her the first three chapters of Popular which I had written, to see if she thought they were any good. I'm obviously incredibly grateful for the feedback I received right after she had finished reading them. Johnny, on the other hand, failed to read them at all and got away with saying, "Yeah, yeah, I loved the party in Chapter ...." And inserted any number he could think of. A clever strategy which worked until he accidentally hit upon the one chapter in the book sans party.

It's incredibly exciting that Any Human Heart is finished and I can't wait to see it.

The trailer for Any Human Heart can be watched here.

Summer Reading

So, I have arrived in Connecticut to spend two weeks with my friend, Alexa. I'm off to D.C. for two days to catch-up with some old friends from school and the delightful Courtney Pannell.

With the 7 hour flight from London and a two hour train ride from Grand Central to New Haven, I wanted to bring along some summer reading. Of course, I should probably be spending this time working on my sequel to "Popular," but working on an aeroplane or on the Metro North railroad is pretty difficult! I think I'm going to wait until I reach Alexa's beautiful family home in New Canaan, to start writing by the pool-side, and, of course, to catch-up with her wonderful family, who I had such a happy summer with last year.

In my carrier bag is a copy of Mary Lovell's utterly fantastic, sympathetic and pithy book "The Mitford Girls," a chronicle of the lives of six upper-class English sisters born in the first part of the 20th century. All of them fascinating, many of them controversial. I also brought along Alison Weir's "The Children of England," a great account of the period 1547 - 1558, focusing on the lives of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey. I've read it before and I particularly enjoy her account of the "quiet years" for Mary and Elizabeth (if such a thing was possible) during their brother's reign, when they spent their days as great chatelaines and ladies, as well as being powerful landed magnates with immense wealth and vast properties throughout the kingdom.

Upon arrival at Alexa's however, I was even more delighted to discover that two more books were waiting to be added to my summer reading list - "Trianon: A Novel of Royal France" by Elena Maria Vidal and "Eat, Drink & Succeed: Climb Your Way to the Top Using the Networking Power of Social Events" by Laura Schwartz. Two very different books, both gifts from the authors and both wonderfully and very kindly inscribed. I cannot wait to get reading on them both and to post reviews here as soon as possible!

An Interview with the fabulous Laura Schwartz, author of "Eat, Drink and Succeed"

Below is an interview on American television with my wonderful, fabulous friend, Laura Schwartz, author of the new book "Eat, Drink and Succeed," which is a phenomenal book based on Laura's incredibly popular series of lectures about the importance of social networking - the does and the don'ts - and it bears out Laura's brilliant personal maxim that whilst a job is 9-5, a career is 24/7.

Laura and I first met when she was speaking at the Oxford Union and visiting the area for the first time. I offered to give her family a tour of the city and I'm pleased to say we all hit it off and have been friends ever since. A fantastic weekend with some fantastic people!

Apart from being incredibly fun and a very dear friend, who has been incredibly supportive about my own book, "Popular," which is due for release in the UK in February 2011, Laura is also intelligent, gracious and unbelievably good at what she does. This blog's American readers may recognise her from her articles which have appeared in the likes of the New York Times and USA Today, or her appearances on Fox News, MSNBC, Larry King, the CBS Early Show and the Lehrer News Hour. International readers may have seen her on BBC World News, Newsnight, GM:TV and Al Jazeera's Frost over the World, with Sir David Frost. Today, Laura is an author, a media personality and the creator of the events, media, political and message consultancy firm, White House Strategies, which is based in Chicago. She is also the veteran of three presidential campaigns in the US and she was the Midwest Press Secretary, then White House Director of Television and finally White House Director of Events and Special Assistant to the President of the United States, during the Clinton Administration. Check this interview out and there's a link below for those of you who are interested in Laura's amazing book, which I'll be reviewing on this blog in more depth very soon - but consider it a firm recommendation!



You can order "Eat, Drink and Succeed" from Amazon.com, here.

May 12th, 1536: The Trial of the Queen's Concubines

"So we'll live and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too- who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out- and take upon's the mystery of things as if we were God's spies."
- From William Shakespeare's "King Lear," Act V, Scene III

On Friday, May 12th, 1536, Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower of London, escorted Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston and Mark Smeaton into Westminster Hall where, three years earlier, Anne Boleyn had been honoured with a lavish Coronation banquet at the height of her triumph.

Built during the reign of King William Rufus, who had ruled England from 1087 until 1100, the Hall would now play witness to one of the most extraordinary and shameful trials in British history. Thomas Howard, 63 year-old Duke of Norfolk, sat as presiding judge and the King's representative over the four men accused of having committed treasonous adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn. According to the indictment created by the Grand Jury of Middlesex who along with the Grand Jury of Kent had jurisdiction over the trials (they were the closest two to London and thus the easiest to control and organise from the Crown’s perspective), the men had been partners in the Queen’s “frail and carnal appetites” and insultingly referred to them as “her adulterers and concubines”. Grim-faced and self-righteous, the Duke ordered the trial of the four men who had dishonoured their king to begin.

May 6th, 1536: The Mystery of the Queen's Letter

“At the close of life, thoughts hitherto unthinkable rise into the mind of one who meets his fate with resignation; they are like good spirits that diffuse their radiance upon the summits of the past.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)

On the fourth day of her imprisonment, legend has it that Anne Boleyn wrote a letter to her estranged husband, King Henry VIII, in which she asked for a fair trial, mercy for her fellow prisoners and hinted at Jane Seymour being the reason for her downfall. This letter was allegedly found amongst the papers of Thomas Cromwell, after he was executed for treason in 1540 – which implies that if the letter is in fact genuine, it was intercepted by Cromwell and never reached the King. Scrawled across the top in what seems to be Cromwell’s handwriting: “To the King from the Lady in the Tower”.

In his The Reformation in England, J.H. Merle d’Aubigny wrote admiringly of the letter, “We see Anne thoroughly in this letter, one of the most touching that was ever written. Injured in her honour, she speaks without fear, as one on the threshold of eternity. If there were no other proofs of her innocence, this document alone would suffice to gain her cause in the eyes of an impartial and intelligent posterity.”

Mean Girls (2004)

“I know she's kind of socially retarded and weird, but she's my friend... so, just promise me you won't make fun of her!”
- Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Mean Girls (2004)

Unlike most other movies in its genre, Mean Girls isn’t about some faux-ugly teenage girl who, with the help of a hardened jock who falls inexplicably in love with her once he gets bored of dating the cheerleaders, suddenly becomes beautiful, radiant and beloved, all the while simultaneously and paradoxically proving that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Instead, Mean Girls is a tongue-in-cheek comedy-drama about a 16 year-old girl called Cady (Lindsay Lohan), the child of two travelling academics, who is about to go to an American public high school for the first time.

There, clueless, plaid-wearing Cady is befriended by the indie kids, Janis and Damien (Lizzie Caplan and Daniel Franzese), who explain to her how the pecking order at North Shore High works. However, since she is a “regulation hotty,” Cady soon attracts the notice of North Shore’s manipulative Queen Bee, Regina George (played superbly by Rachel McAdams.) Spurred on by her indie friends, who want Cady to gather information on “the Plastics,” so they can laugh together later about the popular girls inane lifestyle, Cady reluctantly begins to eat lunch with at Regina’s table, hang-out with them and, bit by bit, she becomes sucked into the intoxicating, gossip-riddled world of the teen it-crowd – including falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, school sexpot Aaron Samuels, (Jonathan Bennett) and stirring up trouble between Regina and her brilliantly played sidekicks - “totally rich” Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and “the dumbest girl you will ever meet,” Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried.)

Now, I absolutely love Mean Girls – unsurprising, I know. Yes, I hate the ending, but then, who doesn’t? But long before Tina Fey was famous for her side-splittingly hilarious impersonations of Vice-Presidential contender, Sarah Palin, on Saturday Night Live ,she was critically acclaimed for writing this funny, bitchy exposé of high school cliques and popularity contests. (She also plays the schools Maths teacher, Miss Norbury.) Sadly and probably quite dysfunctionally, Mean Girls makes me miss school and the glory days of secret house parties, sexuality panics, dress code fears, crash dieting, needlessly overcomplicated scheming and the endless deliciousness of being slightly ridiculous on a daily basis – oh... to be 17 again. Also, another very good movie. (See what I did there?)

Black Saturday

“May angels lead you into paradise;
May the martyrs receive you at your arrival,
And lead you into the Holy City of Jerusalem.
May a choir of angels receive you, and,
With Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.”
- From the 'In Paradisum' section of the Requiem Mass for the Dead

In certain parts of Ireland, the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is sometimes referred to as "Black Saturday," because of the custom of visiting the graves of loved ones on the day when Christ was buried in His own tomb. Personally, I think the Russian Orthodox name for the day - "The Great Sabbath" - is more lovely, but "Black Saturday" is perhaps the name I am more familiar with.

As in Ireland, throughout Christendom the Great Sabbath is often kept as a day of remembrance and many people's minds naturally turn more to contemplating death on this day, much as it might on the Feast of All Souls on November 2nd.

As I was thinking about this day and how different people cope with death and loss, I remembered a deathbed letter I had once read by a 17th century princess that - along with the final letters of Katherine of Aragon, Marie-Antoinette and Bartolomé Blanco Márquez - probably rank as the most moving farewell letters I've ever had the pleasure to read.

The letter in question was written by a 70 year-old German princess, Elisabeth-Charlotte, who had spent the last fifty years of her life as a member of the French Royal Family, by marriage.

Born Elisabeth-Charlotte van der Pfalz in 1652, daughter of the Elector Palatine, Elisabeth-Charlotte was related by blood to most of the German royal and aristocratic houses. At the age of nineteen, she was placed into an arranged marriage with Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, the younger brother of King Louis XIV of France. Elisabeth-Charlotte, nicknamed “Liselotte” by her family, was required to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism under the terms of the marriage contract – although, in later years, some doubted the sincerity of her conversion, noting that the princess did not seem particularly enamoured with her new religion. (She once complained that the Latin Mass was “nothing but vowels, like aaa eee ooo iii, which is enough to make one burst out of one’s skin with pure impatience!”)

Religion aside, Philippe and Liselotte were an ill-matched pair; her new husband was one of France’s most gifted and brilliant military leaders, but he was also a homosexual, and had for years been in love with the Chévalier de Lorraine. He had also been married before, to the late Princess Henriette-Anne of Great Britain, with whom he already had two daughters – Marie-Louise (the future Queen of Spain) and Anne-Marie (the future Queen of Sardinia.) Henriette-Anne had been beautiful, gracious, sophisticated and charming, the unacknowledged queen of Versailles society; Liselotte was, by her own admission, fat, boisterous, ugly and cursed like a sailor.

Yet, somehow, despite the personality clash, the marriage between the flamboyant, glamorous French prince and the earthy, no-nonsense German princess seemed to work and, by the end of their lives together, they had become firm friends, if nothing else. Taking her marriage vows seriously, she never took a lover or betrayed her husband in any way and he, in his turn, gallantly protected her from the intrigues launched against her by the glitterati of Versailles. In time, she even came to tolerate his love affairs, gamely telling one of her husband’s male lovers: “You are welcome to gobble the peas, for I don’t like them.”

Despite her unattractiveness and his sexuality, Philippe and Liselotte also had three children together – Alexandre, who died young, Philippe, the future Regent of France, and a daughter, also called Elisabeth-Charlotte, the future Duchess of Lorraine and grandmother of Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Living in retirement as a widow at the palace of St.-Cloud by the time this letter was written, the 70 year-old princess had written thousands of letters back to her relatives in England and Germany over the last half-century. This, the last letter she ever wrote, was to her half-sister, Louisa. Like Liselotte herself, it was sincere but unsentimental; there were no promises that she would change her lifestyle and have a "Road to Damascus"-style change if God spared her life and she showed no fear or undue hysteria at the prospect of dying, without quite giving up on the idea of life either: -


Saint Cloud,
3 December 1722

Dearest Louisa,

The news of my health today will not, I expect, please you at all. I am getting more miserable day by day, and this may well come to a bad end, but I am, thank God, ready for everything and only beg God Almighty to give me patience in the great pain I must suffer day and night, not only because I am so horribly weak but because I am increasingly miserable all over. Whether I will get out of this God alone knows; time will tell, but I have never been as sick as this. The weather here is not bad, but today it is starting to rain, just a little drizzle. I do not think that any kind of weather will be able to help me now. Time, dear Louisa, will soon show what is to become of all this. If I get out of this you will always find me as I have been all along. If God calls me to Himself, you must take comfort in the thought that I die without regret or sorrow, happy to leave this world in the hope that my Redeemer, who has died and risen for me, will not forsake me and that since I have kept my faith in Him, He will have mercy on me in my last hour. In this trust I live and die, dear Louisa! For the rest, it will have to be as God wishes. Many people complain about coughs and colds now; I am sicker than that and getting worse day by day... Here they are bringing me another of your welcome letters of 21 November, number 83, but I cannot possibly answer it, I am just too sick ... But if God grants me life until the day after tomorrow, I shall answer it; all I can say for now is that until my end I shall dearly love you.

Liselotte.

Good Friday

“Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother, His Mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary, called The Magdalene.”
- The Gospel according to Saint John, Chapter 19

"What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature?"
- Cardinal John Henry Newman (1832)

Good Friday, the day which marks the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, has been the subject of many excellent spiritual reflections and one in particular that I would recommend is posted on Elena Maria Vidal's blog Tea at Trianon .

Since the significance and emotion of Good Friday as an event has been covered elsewhere, I would like to briefly focus on a secondary figure in the Passion narrative: - Christ's mother, the Virgin Mary. She stood at the foot of the Cross on the day her Son was tortured to death, showing heroism and the depths of maternal love in being with Him, even when we cannot imagine what pain that sight must have cost her. It is perhaps revealing that, with the exception of the loyal Saint John the Evangelist, none of the other Apostles had braved attending the Crucifixion and the only people who were there were "the Three Marys" - Christ's mother, aunt and follower, Saint Mary Magdalene, who would earn the later sobriquet of "Dulcis Amica Dei," for her loyalty ("Sweet Friend of God.")

Many years earlier, when she was a young mother, the Virgin Mary had visited the Temple with her Son. In an astonishing breach of etiquette, an old man, a temple prophet named Simeon, approached her and by-passed her husband, Joseph, to speak directly to Mary herself, pointing to her Son and then to her, saying: "Behold! This Child is set for the fall and rise of many and as a sign to be opposed - and a sword shall pierce your own soul - so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed!"

Some of my coreligionist friends have insisted to me that Mary was nothing but an ordinary woman. I'm sorry, but she was nothing of the kind. Leaving aside how any Christian could possibly look at the woman who God chose from the women of all-time and all-places to be the earthly mother of His Son and still call her "ordinary," at whose intercession Christ performed His first recorded miracle, and even if we do not consider the extraordinary story of her life, which is without equal in human history, how many of us could possibly have carried on with the courage to live and love and believe, when we had a dread prophecy like Simeon's hanging over our head for decades? How many of us could have continued to praise God's Name, knowing that He had given us a child whose destiny was to die?

Neither in life nor in character could the Virgin Mary be, by any stretch of the imagination, called "ordinary." To echo the Archangel's words, she was, in every sense, a lady who was truly "full of Grace" and on no occasion did she show the greatness of her heart and mind more than on Good Friday, when she gave what the poets call 'the last gift of love' - grief - and stayed with her Son, even in extremis, and then, when it was all over, she sat and cradled His dead body in her arms, symbolising the pain and loss of any mother who has ever lost a child.

Maundy Thursday

“This is my commandment: that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this – that he lay down his life for his friends.”
– The Gospel according to Saint John, Chapter 15

Maundy Thursday, the fifth day of Holy Week, is known by a variety of names throughout Christianity - including "Holy Thursday," "Covenant Thursday," "Great and Holy Thursday," "Green Thursday," and the "Thursday of Mysteries," which is perhaps my favourite name for the day. The name by which it is most famously known in the English-speaking world, however, is "Maundy Thursday," which comes from the Latin word "mandatum," which is the first phrase of the above passage from the Bible, when Christ spoke to the Apostles at the Last Supper, saying: “This is my commandment: that ye love one another, as I have loved you." (Or, in Latin, "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos".)

Known as "Maundy Thursday" throughout the Anglo-Norman world, the Thursday of Holy Week is a busy day scripturally - for it marks the Last Supper (and thus the institution of Christianity's most important Sacrament - Holy Communion), Jesus's sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemane, the "Judas Kiss," Christ's arrest, His brutalisation by the Sanhedrin's soldiers and His first interrogation.

Historically, Maundy Thursday has given rise to a number of interesting traditions and practices. Bulgarians traditionally paint their Easter Eggs on Maundy Thursday, whilst Swedish children dress-up and go "trick or treating" in search of money or sweet for Easter Sunday. In the Philippines, where Holy Week is celebrated with special intensity, all newspapers cease publication between Maundy Thursday and Black Saturday, whilst most businesses also close down, going into a form of mourning, and in Slovakia, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, Catholic churches cease to ring their bells until dawn on Easter Sunday. Many Christians also go on a form of pilgrimage on Maundy Thursday, moving between seven churches across the course of the day - a practice which has its origins in Rome, where, on Maundy Thursday pilgrims progress between Saint Peter's itself, the Papal Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, the Basilica of the Holy Cross-in-Jerusalem and San Sebastiano ad Catacumbas. In 2000, Pope John Paul II changed the final church from San Sebastiano to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Divine Love, but most pilgrims still prefer to visit San Sebastiano, as their ancestors have done for centuries.

Perhaps one of the most interesting Maundy Thursday customs originates here in the United Kingdom, when the monarch bestows alms or "Maundy Money" on a group of pensioners - one for each year of the Sovereign's life. A special church service is held in a cathedral in either England or Wales, where the Queen hands out specially-minted coins to a group of pensioners, who have been invited to the service by local authorities. (In 2008, the Maundy Thursday service was held in Northern Ireland for the first time, at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh.) The custom itself dates back to the time of King Edward I, who ruled England from 1272 until his death in 1307. He was also the conqueror of Wales, hence the custom of using Welsh cathedrals for the Maundy services as well. From then, until the deposition of King James II in 1688, the main part of the tradition was for the monarch to humble his- or herself by washing the feet of the twelve local paupers who had been gathered for the service, along with bestowing generous amounts of charity upon them. The washing of the feet was done to imitate Christ's act of loving humility, when He washed the feet of His own apostles at the Last Supper. Bearing in mind how filthy the feet of a pauper in the Middle Ages would have been, the royal Maundy traditions indicate just how passionate a hold Christianity had over the hearts and minds of people in that era. One of the most diligent practitioners of the Maundy Thursday washing of feet was apparently Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558 - 1603) and it was from her reign that we owe an image of the custom being carried out, painted by the great female artist, Levina Teerlinc. Elizabeth who, as ever, wore black to church during Lent, had a white apron tied around her waist by a lady-in-waiting and would kneel at the paupers' feet, washing them with water from a silver ewer and bowl, whilst dispensing a large amount of alms to them - the precise amount of which had been set during her mother's time as queen. Elizabeth, who was a devout Anglican, would "take her almost mystical role in this ritual very seriously".

In its original form, the practise was last carried out in England on Maundy Thursday 1688, by King James II, a pious but unpopular Roman Catholic and his lovely Italian queen, Maria-Beatrice of Modena. When James was deposed by his Protestant nephew, William of Orange, the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday was discontinued by the new King, who apparently regarded it as sentimental nonsense of little practical value to any 'real' Christian. Aside from anything else, "people skills" were not one of William's strong points and he was uncomfortable around strangers and it was William's wife and co-ruler, Queen Mary II, who instituted the current tradition of the money being handed out to the elderly, rather than the poor, which continues to this day.

Spy Wednesday

“Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.”
- The Gospel according to Saint John, Chapter 18

"No, it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately. But I imagine that it will only make complete sense to you in the end. When that moment comes, Judas, remember my words: we were both chosen, but we were not helpless. It was not pre-destined. At any moment, we could have rejected the mission God gave us, but neither of us did. That is because God, in His infinite wisdom, knew that we were both entirely suited to the tasks He would assign to us. Remember, if your presentiment is correct, that you were the most suitable candidate for whatever task you shall eventually perform. You may not know why exactly; you will simply know that you were the right choice. For you, even more so than it was for me, I imagine it will be an overwhelming burden."
- The Virgin Mary, Act II, Scene VI, Magdalene by Gareth Russell

The fourth day of Holy Week is sometimes known as "Spy Wednesday," because it commemorates the day on which Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ to the Sanhedrin, agreeing to facilitate His arrest on the following day, in return for the princely sum of thirty pieces of silver.

Judas, as a character, is one I have grappled with, with unintentional degrees of success, apparently. In 2006, when The Da Vinci Code mania was at its height, the historical elitist in me took such umbrage at its presentation of early Church history that I began to research the life of Saint Mary Magdalene, with the thought to do a play based on her life, as it is recorded in the Bible and the Apocrypha.

The result, Magdalene, was set in a generic "modern" setting and followed Mary's life from her time as a victim of demonic possession to the Passion of Holy Week. Apart from the main characters of Mary, Jesus and the Virgin Mary, the supporting characters included three of the Apostles (Saint Peter, Saint John the Evangelist and Judas Iscariot) and three of Christ's female followers (Saint Johanna, Saint Veronica of the Veil and Christ's aunt, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, whose name was changed to 'Maria' in the play to avoid confusion with the other two Marys.) Christ's adoptive father, Saint Joseph, also featured briefly in two scenes early in the first act.

In fairness, some apparently found the play irksome - a few objected to the presentation of the Virgin Mary, Maria Cleopas and Johanna as aristocrats, although I was simply following the ancestry given to her by 1st century Jewish evangelists and, in Johanna's case, the Bible describes her as the wife of a palace aristocrat. Others thought that it was pushing female priesthood or that, paradoxically, it was "too Catholic," that it was promoting the idea of the Virgin Mary as a mediatrix, that it rinsed the idea of Justification By Faith or that it was too pro-Christian in general. Others were more kind and I was delighted with the very kind letter of recommendation Rev. Dr. Andrew Moore of Oxford's Faculty of Theology wrote for the second run of Magdalene in 2007.

As I have said, Magdalene has so far been performed twice - once in Oxford in December 2006 and again in Northern Ireland in September 2007. Recently, when I was discussing some of my work, a friend (who has seen every play I have written since All Those Who Suffered in 2004) declared that he thought Judas was the best character I had ever written. I was somewhat taken aback - flattered, certainly, but also surprised - because during the writing of Magdalene, I had spent far less time crafting Judas than I had some of the other characters and, moreover, Judas only speaks at length in three scenes during the entire play. When I put this to another friend, they also concurred that Judas was the best-written, alongside Gabrielle de Polignac in The Audacity of Ideas.

Happy Birthday, Aisleagh

"Are you frightfully cross?"
"No. Just a little hungry."

Aisleagh M. and I did not have the greatest starts to a friendship. We first met each other within a few weeks of starting at Down High, when I was a podgy scarf-wearing 1st year with a "posh" accent and Aisleagh sported enormous glasses and a cow's lick. Things took a turn for the worse when, one day outside Music class, her best friend Grace's contact lense flipped inwards, Grace crumpled to the ground in pain and her eye turned beetroot red. "Good," I said, as I swept past her agony-wracked body. Aisleagh heard and wasn't pleased. (I can't remember why Grace and I had turned on each other - I think it was something to with Home Ec.) Finally, on a History trip to France, Aisleagh poisoned me by tipping a mountain of salt into my glass at supper one evening. I didn't notice, drank it and accidentally smashed the stem of the glass in my fury when I set it down.

The turning point came in 4th year, when we were both in Miss Gorman's GCSE English Lit class. For some reason, we ended-up sitting beside each other for the first half of the year and fell into conversation about how much we hated some other people in our year. And from that spite, a beautiful friendship was born.

Together, it must be said, that Aisleagh and I didn't always bring out the best in one other. One sweltering summer day, along with our friends Grace and Thomas, we went to Saul for a picnic, near Saint Patrick's Mount. OK - on it. However, since it was so close to Marching Season not a lot of places were open because of the holiday, so supplies were limited. OK - again, that's a lie: we'd eaten everything by the time we got there.

After a few hours, the heat grew unbearable, as did our thirst, so we bullied Grace and Thomas into going and buying some water, handing them my drinks cooling bag to help. An hour later, they returned, with sweat pouring off Thomas and Grace practically crawling along behind him: "Here," they said wearily, proffering the cool bag.

I opened it, to see that they had purchased carbonated water - the only kind available at the only shop available, the Raholp Post Office. I showed the contents to Aisleagh, who was sunbathing next to me, near to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. From behind her sunglasses, Aisleagh peered into the bag before almost imperceptibly shaking her head.

"Ehm.... we would like still water," I said, handing the bag back.
"What?" said Thomas.
"Yes, we are going to require still, chilled, water, please."
Thomas, collapsing to the ground with heat exhaustion, just kept staring at me in horror: "Are you serious?"
"Yes, I am serious. I am also thirsty."
Grace, meanwhile, was just staring at Aisleagh, with a piteous expression in her eyes - begging not to be sent back on the trail. I had never seen Grace so broken and tired before. Regarding her best friend's misery and physical near-collapse, Aisleagh made her decision and propped herself up on her elbows: "I'm allergic to fizzy water."
Grace's mouth fell open and Thomas's was pursed into a seriously unimpressed line: "What?" asked Grace.
"Yep. I need still."
"But..."
"Allergic!"

However, Aisleagh and I failed to consider the logistics of tactics that day - because her evening was being spent with Grace, mine with Thomas. So as I was walking home with Thomas, it's fair to say that my behaviour earlier in the day did not exactly receive glowing reviews and it's equally fair to say that Aisleagh was the victim of a savage physical attack once Grace recovered her energy levels.

Anyway, today is Aisleagh's b'diddy and huge licky love to her on this most glorious of days. Through bullying, poisoning, hair pulling, biting, shopping excursions to Dublin, diets, spiders, Bones, the Lone Ranger, The X Factor marathon, painting with all the colours of the wind, paws up for Lady Gaga, drama practicals in school, the time the curtain rose on us for the school play and we were hugging each other in front of the entire audience and that terrible time were we went to a house party that was so unutterably boring that we tried to escape by climbing out the bathroom window, only to be caught by the host (your boyfriend at the time) - it's all been a delightful cycle of dysfunction.

Happy Birthday, Lovey Loverson. Lots and lots and lots of love xxx

Hugging

Recently I got to thinking (yay!) about hugging and it was actually the events of last week which made me really think about. Hugging, in general, is considered by many British people to be just a bit too "American" - whatever that means. The culture of hugging one another to say hello or goodbye is definitely not a traditional British way of doing things. It isn't always easy to ask "how do you do?" when your arms are clasped behind somebody else's back and I have a sort of schizoid love/hate relationship with the hug - I feel like it's something I should do more, I like the people I do hug, but I also have relationships in my life in which hugging would just seem bizarre, if not downright frightening.

As some of you may know, on Tuesday March 16th my uncle, Richard, passed away very unexpectedly. During Uncle Richard's Wake, the entire extended family got together most afternoons and every evening to meet visitors who had come to pay their condolences, keep an open house and keep the endless supply of never-ending tea, sandwiches and cakes without which, apparently, the entire Northern Irish Protestant culture of mourning would collapse in on itself.

Two days after Uncle Richard passed away, my cousins Jonathan and Andrew called down to see our grandparents. (They, like me, were Richard's nephews.) As Jonathan was saying goodbye to our grandfather, he hugged him and it suddenly occurred to me that Grandpa Richard and I had grown out of the habit of hugging one another once I'd turned about 15 and concluded that it wasn't "manly" or something equally foolish. Grandpa and I are very close, so there's really no good reason apart from habit for not giving him a goodbye hug. I would never leave their house without hugging Nana and giving her a kiss, but for the last eight years I can't remember really hugging my grandfather. With the sadness of Uncle Richard's death I decided to make the effort again to make sure I hugged Grandpa every time I left the house and that really has been a good thing. Undoubtedly, a lot of other family members were spurred on to be more affectionate with one another in the wake of Uncle Richard's passing - my Uncle Ivan, my cousin's husband Martin, my cousins Elaine and June and my sister Jenny were all making a real effort to make sure they hugged everyone before they left the house each night. Exceptional circumstances, no doubt, but lovely all the same.

As I was writing this I also began to think about hugging in general and it struck me that I actually hug astonishingly few of my friends. Am I dead on the inside? There are obviously some very good friends that I do hug on a regular basis, but I have never hugged the vast majority of my close personal friends. There are friends like Emerald, Alexa and Scarlett, all of whom I would usually greet with a kiss, but the only time I've ever hugged a really good friend like, say, Aisleagh, was probably when we both mutually mistook each other for another bottle of gin! And if I went to hug either Beth, Laura or Ellen, they would undoubtedly assume I was trying to choke them in some particularly new and avant-garde manner, with the end result being that Beth would make her panicked pterodactyl sound, Ellen would suffer an enormous panic attack and quite possibly a stroke and Laura would scratch a bloody vengeance into my face.

The greatest example of the anti-hugging phenomenon is undoubtedly my friend Kerry. Kerry is one of my best friends, we've been friends since the age of eleven, we have cried together, laughed together, binged together, we can finish each other's sentences and we pushed each other into self-destructive cycles of delightfulness for the last twelve years and yet not once have we ever hugged each other. When our friend Sarah attempted to mock our "frigid" ways and introduced hugging into the group, the only real result was a wave of paranoia, with me checking my back every five minutes to see if they'd stuck a note onto the back of it or a gleam of suspicious fear glinting permanently in Kerry's eyes.

But, so what? Kerry and I are not any the less close friends - dysfunctionally close, actually - because we don't hug. Neither are Sarah and I. Does it all boil down to the quite sad fact that we don't trust each other enough to hug without an attempt at sabotage? Of course it does! And that's a glorious thing. Have I been lacking in familial closeness with my grandfather for the last eight years? No, I don't think so. I love him, he loves me and that's really all that matters. The friends I do hug - great; the friends I don't - delightful.

Hugging, in the end, is a bit like drinking. There's nothing more delightful when it's the right time and nothing more sickening when you're just not in the mood, time or place for it.