A medieval stroll, football and a bit of scary stuff...

A photograph, some words and a film clip...

...although very ornate, the work is not an example of thoughtful construction. It is very irregular in design and execution. The adjacent parts are clumsily brought together and rude of workmanship as compared with Maurice the Architects work at Dover.

W.H Knowles clearly unimpressed by Maurice Caementarius' (more commonly known as Maurice the Mason / architect) efforts at Newcastle Castle

Despite its nightlife, broad cultural offering and historical architecture, Newcastle-upon-Tyne is not a 'go-to' tourist destination for many. Cities such as York, Oxford, London, Bath and Edinburgh are far more likely to be on someone's 'to see' list. Yes, the Northumberland coast attracts people, as does Hadrian's Wall and the land around it. Still, even those beautiful locations come lower down the list than the Cotswolds, Lake District, the Highlands of Scotland or the Peak District.

This means that northeast England must work hard and be innovative to attract visitors from even the UK, never mind overseas. One initiative the city of Newcastle took was the establishment of 'The Heart of the City Partnership', a registered charity joint venture company limited by guarantee with profits reinvested in the organisation's aims. This Partnership brings together several Newcastle organisations, all passionate and vested in promoting Newcastle as an attractive place to live, work, and visit.

The Partnership focuses on projects that support hospitality, tourism, retail, and urban regeneration efforts. This requires collaboration between several stakeholders, including, amongst others, the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, the Northeast Chamber of Commerce and the Newcastle Gateshead Heritage Venues. Their combined intent is to enhance the area's vitality, appearance, and commercial appeal. The Partnership also works closely with travel companies, from public transport operators to tour organisations, cruise lines, and experience days operators.

One of the places I regularly visit that comes under the Partnership's wing is Newcastle Castle, where they strive to ensure the building's future preservation and protection.

As with many who look after historical sites around the UK, the Partnership must constantly seek new ideas to generate the revenue necessary to keep the castle in good order while encouraging the local community and visitors to Newcastle to appreciate and enjoy the castle's history and fabric.

As a historically significant Grade 1 listed building, Newcastle Castle qualifies for grants and funding from heritage organisations, trusts, or government bodies focused on preserving cultural heritage. However, added revenue is still needed to support the building. This revenue comes from several streams that use the castle's historical and cultural significance. One of the most important streams is ticket sales from exhibitions, tours, themed events, historical re-enactments and seasonal celebrations, such as Halloween or Christmas. Those wishing to make a more long-term and constant commitment can become a 'Friend of Newcastle Castle,' whose annual fee offers benefits like free entry, access to unique events, and discounts. The castle also accepts charitable donations from the public.

Volunteers looking after the castle always seek something new to offer that caters to different interests. From workshops and talks on various historical subjects to a gift shop selling themed merchandise, the castle also serves as a unique venue for weddings, corporate functions, private parties, film shoots, TV productions, and photoshoots. 

As well as taking advantage of the tours, I've been to talks on various subjects such as the Newcastle Witch trials, the Gin Craze and the early history of Newcastle that, of course, covered the history of the castle that gave the city its name. However, that's not the current 'New' castle. The one that stands there today is the second to carry that name. Its predecessor was built around 1080 by William the Conqueror's eldest son, Robert 'Curthose' (that epithet can be translated as' shorty' - and probably wasn't used in his presence). The castle Robert built was on the same site as the current building (as was the Roman fort built a thousand years earlier) and of a 'motte-and-bailey' type with a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (the motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (the bailey).

Some fifteen years later, it was a rebellion by the Earl of Northumbria against the then King, William Rufus, another of William the Conqueror's sons, which saw the first capture of Robert's original castle. Rufus soon sent an army north to crush the revolt and successfully recapture the castle; however, the north remained a rebellious territory. So much so that Henry II, William the Conqueror's grandson, decided that the wooden structure was not strong enough to repel any future rebellion. This prompted the building of the current stone structure. On its completion in 1177, it became crown property, an essential base from which future Kings or Queens of England could control their, still prone to rebellion, northern barons. 

Last week, I attended two events in the castle: 'Novum Castrum Super Tynam: A Stroll through Medieval Newcastle' and 'An Evening of Ghost Stories of M.R. James.' The drawing above is the oldest known of Newcastle, dating from the early 1500s. The castle takes centre stage, sitting on Castle Hill, and St Nicholas church (now cathedral) is also shown beside it. The imposing wall, built in the 1200s to keep out the Scots (it didn’t always), is clearly visible. At the time, the population of Newcastle was around seven thousand people; today, it’s over eight hundred thousand (but the city’s urban sprawl is much larger than that of the drawing).  Interestingly, the population has fallen by one hundred thousand since 1950, reflecting the economic turndown in the northeast of England suffered in the last seventy years. For those who know Newcastle, the bridge in the drawing is on the site of the current swing bridge, and for those who may have read my Of Keelmen, Sandgate is just outside the wall on the far right of the drawing.

I found the medieval ‘stroll’ enlightening. I know a fair amount of Newcastle's history. Yet, this talk offered some engaging insights into what it might have felt like being a medieval flâneur crossing over the old Tyne Bridge from Gateshead; as you can see from the drawing in those pre-industrial days, it was a small rural hamlet (today, it is home to close to two hundred thousand people), into what was then the town of Newcastle. It didn't become a city until the 19th century. In the modern era, Newcastle's wealth came from coal and shipbuilding. Yet, in medieval times, the primary trade was in wool, leather and urine. Yes, there was money in urine, a key ingredient in leather and cloth making. This medieval trade was mainly with the 'low countries', the modern-day Netherlands, Belgium and part of Luxembourg, and it made Newcastle so wealthy that it rated only behind London, Bristol, and Oxford.

Anyone who comes to Newcastle today will notice the gulls. Birds that occupy every coastal city or town. What surprised me was that the gulls would have competed with red kites, which were also very much urban dwellers in medieval times. Today, red kites are country dwellers. I guess they were pioneers in leaving the rat race behind and opting for more peaceful surroundings.

Newcastle is known throughout the UK today as a hotbed for football. Despite little success over the decades, they keep a passionate following (when I lived in the southwest of England, I would rise at 5 am to take the train into London and then to Newcastle - watch NUFC play (and usually lose), then catch the trains home to arrive there around midnight). It therefore seems apt that the first record of a football game comes from Newcastle assizes in the 1300s and the investigation into a death. During a game of 'football,' two players came into close contact, leaving one of them fatally wounded. The fact, as recorded, was that the victim 'ran into' his opponent's dagger. Ummm, you might say, isn't it a bit strange wearing a dagger while playing a 'sport'? Well, people in Medieval England always wore such things as knives and daggers. English authorities even allowed the open wearing of swords—something banned in most of the rest of Europe. Not surprisingly, given the abundance of weapons readily to hand, the murder rate at the time was high. The murder 'capital' was, of all places, Oxford because of the rivalry between students and locals - a tension that is still in many university cities today. 

But back to our football game from which the court found a verdict of misadventure as the dagger was not drawn but had apparently swung up from the wearer's belt as he and his opponent jostled for the ball, with the blade going into one man's stomach (I guess the dagger was not within a sheath). The handle pushed into that of the other, causing bruising. Far-fetched? Who knows? The Video Assistant Referee would no doubt have a view these days, but as L. P. Hartley's opening sentence of 'The Go-between' goes, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

I also attended an evening of ghost stories with M. R. James as Jonathan Goodwin in the titular role. We, the audience, could choose the two stories that Jonathan performed, scripted by him from the original M. R. James stories.

I much admired the performance of Jonathan, or should I write M. R. James, who made excellent use of the sombre setting of the Grand Hall of the Castle Keep. Jonathan brought the characters of the M. R. James stories, which the audience chose, vividly to life. One story was 'A Warning to the Curious' about finding an ancient crown and the following ghastly consequences. The second was 'Wailing Well' of a rude and badly behaved schoolboy named Stanley Judkins. Stanley's lack of respect for authority ultimately sealed his fate.

It was an excellent evening's entertainment, but it begged the question, who was M. R.  James? Well, in parallel to the probably more well-known J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, Montague Rhodes James was a renowned English scholar and medievalist who also wrote stories, in his case supernatural fiction, becoming one of the most influential figures in the English ghost story tradition.

Despite his reputation today as a ghost story writer, James' was widely recognised as a highly respected, distinguished and influential medieval scholar during his academic career. He specialised in biblical apocrypha, medieval manuscripts, and the history of Christianity. He spent much of his academic life at King's College, Cambridge, where he served as Provost and later as Provost of Eton College. His scholarly work involved cataloguing ancient manuscripts and making significant contributions to studying medieval history and Christian apocryphal literature. 

But it's James's ghost stories for which many remember him. Initially, he wrote stories for his friends and colleagues at Cambridge as Christmas entertainment. His unique storytelling style, which became known as 'Jamesian', is characterised by his use of suggestion and minimalism in describing the supernatural, a style that has fascinated and intrigued readers, making them eager to explore James' works. He relied on atmosphere, detailed settings, and an underlying sense of dread rather than gore or overt horror to create suspense. His detailed descriptions of manuscripts, antiquities, and historical artefacts add to the authenticity of the stories that typically involve ordinary protagonists (often scholars or antiquarians) meeting malevolent supernatural forces via a gradual, slow-building tension that focuses on atmosphere rather than overt horror. The action usually occurs in quiet, everyday locations (such as libraries and churches) disrupted by the uncanny intrusion.

Some of James' most famous ghost stories include 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad': A tale about an academic who uncovers a mysterious whistle with terrifying supernatural consequences. 'The Mezzotint' revolves around a haunted engraving slowly revealing a sinister figure. And 'Casting the Runes': A tale of a cursed manuscript and its deadly effects on anyone who encounters it. His work has influenced later horror writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, and Stephen King. His legacy in the ghost story genre is profound, and many believe him to be one of the greatest writers of supernatural fiction.

James is closely associated with the British tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas. UK-based readers of a certain age might recall the BBC's "A Ghost Story for Christmas" series in the 1970s; I was an avid viewer of those. Indeed, just before last Christmas, I went to Newcastle's Tyneside cinema to watch some remastered copies of several of his stories.

And I'm back to the castle later this month on the theme of psychological chillers to watch a remastered copy of 'The Exorcist’. Newcastle's sombre medieval castle keep is a perfect setting for a classic horror film, although, by today’s standards, most people would not see it as particularly frightening. That was not the case when the film first hit UK cinemas in 1974. It was a more innocent time when it came to horror on the 'Big Screen', and although I’ve watched the film again on DVD, this will be the first time I will see it again on such a screen, some fifty years after my first viewing.

In earlier horror films, there were mutant insects, Christopher Lee as Dracula, Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster (far from the tragic figure of Mary Shelley’s classic) and alien invasion. But nothing that explored the battle between pure evil and flawed good, as did the Exorcist. A film that proved ground-breaking.

The screenplay, written by William Peter Blatty, is based heavily on his best-selling book of the same name—that book inspired by a 1949 supposed demonic possession. The screenplay was the foundation upon which the direction, acting, cinematography and special effects were built to create a masterpiece. At the time, Stanley Kauffmann, an author and film critic, wrote, “This is the scariest film I’ve seen in years — the only scary film I’ve seen in years. …If you want to be shaken — and I found out, while the picture was going, that that’s what I wanted — then The Exorcist will scare the hell out of you”.

From its first opening, people flocked to see the film. Something much to the surprise of Warner Bros studio. They held no high hopes for the film’s critical and financial success on its release. Especially as it had far exceeded its original production budget. Unexpectedly, the US certification board did not give the film the highest adult rating of X. Instead, it decided upon R, allowing people under sixteen to see it with an adult. The logic for the rating is that the film contained no nudity or sex. That rating helped attendance. The UK certification board took a quite different view on the rating. The film, rated an X, proved so controversial that cinemas refused to show it in some parts of the UK because of its theme. Despite the adults-only rating and the considerable controversy it generated, it became among the highest-grossing films ever. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, a rare feat for a horror film, it won two (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound). 

I saw the film with my three roommates in late July 1974 (regular readers will recall that in my first months in London, I shared a room in a hostel) at the Odeon in London's Shepherds Bush, some three months after its release in the UK. It had been well-publicised in terms of its horror but not much detail about the plot, ending, etc. It was with both excitement and nervous anticipation that my roommates and I entered the cinema. There, we met with the sight of uniformed nurses, “Here for the welfare of the audience”. A bit of a publicity stunt, no doubt. Still, it had the effect of heightening the anticipation of the horror we were about to see.

The four of us took our balcony seats. These were still the days when most cinemas had both balconies and stalls. The 'nurses' now took up a position at the top of each aisle. The lights dimmed, and for the next two hours, we watched a film that scared the life out of us. I won’t share any spoilers, but some scenes provoked a physical and verbal reaction throughout the audience, not just mentally. Commonplace now, we watched scenes not before seen by a cinema audience. It wasn’t just the physical horror but the psychological horror that dug deep. You believed in the authenticity of the characters; you empathised with them. That empathy heightened the horror even more. Usually, after a film, the four of us would go for a beer and discuss it. Not that night. 

I have never feared the dark, even as a small child. Today, I happily walk at night through the large, unlit cemetery I live beside. I remember my father telling me when I was young that there was nothing to fear from the dark other than our imagination. As a teenager, I helped in a morgue, so death holds no fearful mystery either. Yet after watching The Exorcist, my roommates and I, all aged eighteen and full of the bravado that teenage years bring, were very unsettled. One roommate, Ian and I co-owned an old motorbike that we'd parked down an alley along the side of the cinema. After the screening, we debated whether to walk down the unlit alley to get the bike or leave it until the following day and return to the hostel on the brightly lit tube. He and I eventually plucked up the courage to retrieve the bike, but so disturbed by what we had seen, we four young men even slept with the light in our shared room. To this day, there are sounds within any house where I’ve lived that cause me to pause.... what is making that sound in the attic….?

Even decades later, The Exorcist is still a highly effective horror film. Its ability to disturb and unsettle audiences has remained strong, mainly because it taps into universal fears. To me, it remains the best horror film that I have seen. It sets a standard that some have reached, but none surpasses its storytelling. Others have more gore, jump scares, scary characters, etc. But none seem as grounded in the ordinariness of life and human frailty. 'The Exorcist' delves into profound existential and religious beliefs, particularly the existence of evil and the potency of faith. It delves into primal fears of possession, loss of control, innate evil, and spiritual doubt, transcending the boundaries of a typical horror film to become a spiritual and philosophical drama. Its influence can be seen in numerous horror films that followed, establishing many of the tropes and techniques still used in the genre today.

William Friedkin's direction played a crucial role in elevating the film. He combines documentary-style realism with atmospheric tension, using slow pacing and shocking horror moments to create an experience that stays with audiences long after the movie ends. His commitment to authenticity and carefully constructed exorcism scenes added credibility to the supernatural elements. For an important scene, a real priest was called upon to play a role. Unhappy with what he saw, Friedkin notoriously slapped the priest to provoke the emotion the director wanted to capture. It worked, but much to the distress of the priest and others on set.

The film's score, particularly the use of the haunting 'Tubular Bells' by Mike Oldfield, became iconic (albeit chosen through a happy accident). The sound design, with its eerie noises, distorted voices, and ominous silence, played a significant role in creating the unsettling atmosphere. This combination heightened the terror and sense of dread, a fact underscored by the film's Oscar award for sound design that not only added to the film's horror elements but also played a crucial role in manipulating the audience's emotional experience, making the film more impactful and memorable.

In the fifty years since watching The Exorcist, I can’t think of another horror film with such a psychological effect on me. I found ‘The Blair Witch Project’ unsettling, but not to the same degree. The film that comes to mind when I think of one that has significantly touched me in terms of psychological horror is Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’, based on the novel by Martin Amis, which explores the banality of evil and the psychological distance between ordinary life and horrific atrocities. There are no heinous scenes, just those of the idyllic, bourgeois, domestic life of the commandant of Auschwitz and his family, who live in a house just outside the camp’s wall while the unseen horrors unfold just beyond their garden wall. The victims are invisible and irrelevant to the commandant’s family's daily life. The victim’s absence in the family’s worldview speaks volumes about how the ‘othering’ of victims can be part of the mechanism of atrocity.

Having written earlier that death holds no fearful mystery for me, I did find the crypt of the Capuchin monks in Rome somewhat disconcerting. Located beneath the Church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, it's an eerie place famous for its decorative displays of human bones. The crypt consists of six small chapels, each adorned with the skeletal remains of around 4,000 monks who died between the 16th and 19th centuries. The bones are arranged in elaborate patterns on the walls, ceilings, and arches. Skulls, femurs, and other bones are used to create chandeliers, floral motifs, and religious symbols. This macabre display is meant to reflect life's transient nature and death's inevitability. In addition to the bone displays, several bodies of Capuchin monks are partially mummified, dressed in brown robes, and displayed in various nooks. Each of the six chapels has a different theme; the Mass Chapel is without bones and is meant for prayer. The final chapel reminds you of your mortality with the phrase, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be."

So, what scares me these days? Well, watching Newcastle United defend often gives me the heebie-jeebies ….

I leave you with a short and simple clip from The Exorcist that includes Oldfield's music. There is no need to hide behind your hands, as it's simply a woman walking down a street, but add the right music and leave things to your imagination, and ….