Dover Castle painting fakes and fantasy, some pictures of Ramsgate today and more lies.

Back in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the mid 1500s if you are a bit vague about dates, a clergymen by the name of Darrell who was chaplain to the queen wrote a history of Dover Castle.

Just at the moment here in my bookshop we are preparing a cheap reprint of my copy of the 1786 edition, I hope to have it in print for around £6, I think it will be a useful addition to my range of local books. Partly because it is one of the earliest history books relating to this area and partly because having the original Latin accompanied by an English translation will be useful for those hoping to improve ther grasp of Latin.

To finish this task in need a cover picture of Dover Castle for the book, sounds simple. Doesn’t it? Well there are complications, firstly it has to look like Dover Castle for people buying the book and secondly it needs to look like Dover Castle did in 1550 and not how it looks now or as some later intermediate time.

There is for instance a very nice painting by Turner but unfortunately it doesn’t look much like Dover Castle, or does it? Anyway I can't use it as it has a seam boat in the middle, not invented in the mid 1500s.

In fact there are lots, I particularly like this Turner watercolour 

Anyway at the moment I think the only solution is to paint the thing myself, here is my first crack at it, mostly done using Turner’s sketchbooks which date mostly from the early 1800s and not from the mid 1500s.

I don’t think that I am very good liar and trying to be a liar with paint is very tricky, added to this is the business of trying to depict the castle by the sea in my mind an presumably other people’s.

At the same time I would like you all to know that I have a lot of decorations for valour and academic qualifications, and am not the rather stupid coward that presumably most of you thought I was, I am also a lot taller than I look.

Where was I? Oh sorry I got a bit carried away there. The truth is another matter with painting, you can of course take a photo, trace it, paint over it, use a light box, all sorts of tricks to get it right. Of course this isn’t lying, in fact the result is likely to be much nearer to the truth than the paintings I do directly from life.

Anyway today I breakfasted (toast and marmalade) on the end or Ramsgate’s East Pier at The Royal Harbour Brasserie and added a bit more to my sketch of Ramsgate from there.  

 Here are some photos I took today, which of course tell the truth.

Dover Castle Pictures 9th October 2011

The weather forecast yesterday wasn’t encouraging and the old question of what you do, when you have children, a wet weather forecast and you want a day out in this area raised its ugly head, like the square root of minus one. 

The idea being that everyone, adults as well as children wind up feeling as though they have had some sort of weekend break, so Dover Castle was elect. The idea being to do the parts of it that we don’t usually do, church, roman lighthouse, and the tunnels that are just open, requiring no guides or safety elf.

As it was it didn’t rain, so we spent a fair bit of the time outside. I used my large digital camera that has virtually no delay between pressing the button and taking the picture, so there are a lot of photographs, about 500 I think.

The problem was lunch, English Heritage for the most part have greatly improved their cafés and although the price is high the quality is usually ok, they also normally have a range of sandwiches that children will eat.

This means ham without mustard, cheese without an exciting spicy chutney and so on, yesterday they only had the dreaded “adult” sandwiches at around £4 a go, or something that looked like expensive school dinners. The children at the next table were exclaiming about the worst ever lunch and trying to remove the offending ingredients from their sandwiches. Mine opted for a bag of crisps each at 95p a go. I tried the pie and it was reminiscent of school dinners.

What seems to have happened is the healthy option degenerated into something institutional and the only institutional food that children will eat, sos – buger and chips has gone.

Next time we will take our own sandwiches and just drink their tea which while expensive is palatable, as are their jam, cream and scones. 

With so many pictures I am bound to get some flack: Why don’t I edit them? Why do I publish the bad ones? Why do I put 100 on a page? So my recommendation is to avoid looking at them altogether.

I should point out that at the time of writing this I haven’t even seen the pictures, the computer is processing them while I am writing, the camera was supposed to rotate some of them automatically, something it doesn’t always do and I will look at them when I get time, just like anyone else who wants to.

Here are the links to the pages of pictures

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id7.htm

Dover Castle

 My day off yesterday as my bookshop is closed on Thursdays and those of us who were in the mood set off to look around Dover Castle.

I particularly wanted to see the changes that they had made to the parts of the underground tunnel system that is open to the public there as there are moves afoot to try and get some of the Ramsgate tunnel system open to the public.

 The Dover tunnels have been a big tourist draw for some years now, and at the moment they have them set out as an Operation Dynamo experience. Not much mention of the little ships and none of Ramsgate, but very entertaining nonetheless.

Unlike the Ramsgate Tunnels there are signs saying photography is not allowed in the Dover Tunnels so no pictures of them I am afraid.

 The Great Tower of Dover Castle has for many years been somewhere that I found disappointing to visit,  years ago when I used to visit the keep it was decorated with an eclectic collection armour and weapons. I suppose it looked a bit like one would expect a baronial hall to be decorated in an old American film based on a British novel.

It then went through a bare period, I believe this was caused by the removal of everything that was thought to be historically incorrect, which was just about everything, this left the castle with about as much atmosphere as an empty industrial unit.

 The last time visited the keep was I think about five years ago, at that time it was going through a sort of educational period, the displays seemed to aimed at people who hadn’t had history lessons at school.

You know the sort of thing large cardboard cut-outs that on closer investigation are made out of plastic, that appear to have been produced with very large primary school children in mind.

Anyway they have finally cracked the thing and done a reasonable job of making it look like an inhabited castle, even a real log fire burning, I took some pictures

With the inside I wanted to produce a series of pictures that were something like a dream of visiting a castle as it could have been in ones imagination, well I have done my best see what you think.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id7.htm

Part of the way they have produced the atmosphere in the great tower is with subtle the lighting, this would be insufficient for conventional photography and of course using a flash would have spoilt the effect.

The rest of the pictures are more conventional, see

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id8.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id9.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id3.htm

Dover castle

We went to Dover castle this week, seeing a successful heritage site I am very conscious the a combination of Ramsgate Harbour, some interesting historic vessels, the maritime museum and the Ramsgate tunnel system, the main line part of which is big enough to display substantial historic items, could all be used to a lot better.

Anyway so much for the gripe you can click here if you want to see the pictures.