London has so many layers of history and so many iconic places to visit that many forget the smaller museums, the hidden gems behind the busy streets.
One of these treasures is the John Soane Museum, in Lincoln's Inn Fields near Holborn station.
Born in 1753, Soane was the son of a humble bricklayer and yet rose to become one of England's greatest architects. He was Architect to the Bank of England and the Office of Works, so he was responsible for the government and royal buildings in Whitehall and Westminster. Soane was also a great collector and spent his wife’s fortune on acquiring sculpture, paintings and objects of beauty from around the world, storing them in a house that he converted to his particular needs.
The house and contents were given to the nation in an Act of Parliament in 1833. Soane gave directions that the house must be kept as he left it, and it can still be visited, laid out in the way he wished it to be.
I have visited the Museum several times, waiting outside until allowed in.
It is a place to get lost inside, both in a physical sense but also in time.
It has layers of history, just as London itself does.
Me outside the Grand Lodge of England, worked on by Soane and just round the corner from the Museum
Soane was also the Grand Superintendent of Works for the Freemasons during the height of his architectural powers in London. The United Grand Lodge of England is just around the corner, and he was instrumental in remodeling the hall and kitchens, but he also designed an Ark of the Covenant to be used in ceremonies. It’s nothing like the biblical Ark in design but it was constructed for a secret purpose and officially it was destroyed during the great fire of 1883
Here's an excerpt from Ark of Blood, ARKANE Book 3, when Dr Morgan Sierra visits the Museum in order to talk to the Curator, Sir Sebastian Northbrook, who keeps a secret about Soane's involvement with the Freemasons, whose Grand Lodge of England is only a few streets away.
Sebastian pulled open a pair of narrow doors at the back of the salon to reveal a tiny corridor lined with pictures, engravings and paintings. It was lit with skylights cut into the walls and ceiling. Outside the window, a rectangular courtyard with classical sculpture and a water garden was reminiscent of a Roman villa.
The corridor emerged into a gallery, packed from floor to coffered ceiling with classical statues, casts of busts, original sculptures and objects from every historical era. Morgan gaped at the scene. Here was the goddess Sekhmet, a lion-headed stone figure that looked out over the riot of antiquities. There were slave manacles, rusty and worn, as if hacked from the body of the non-person inside them. Chinese dragon dogs played alongside basalt obelisks and a black marble head of Jupiter, six times life-size, gazed out with unfathomable eyes. A huge statue of Apollo looked down into the basement below, while relief friezes of conquest lined the walls about the god.
It was a labyrinth of early civilization, laid out in some kind of chaotic order, but her sense was of being overwhelmed. The brain was unable to process the sheer number of antiquities, the eye given no obvious place to linger in the face of so much choice. Morgan felt an urge to forget the Ark quest and immerse herself in this well of culture instead. To any lover of the classics, this was a kind of heaven.
“Is this all real?” she asked, well aware that the British of the Empire had done much salvaging of artifacts from throughout the world, some of it gathered through official means, kept safe and of benefit to future generations, but much of it ill-gotten and looted.
Soane kept the sarcophagus of Seti I in the basement. Amazing!
“Soane was a man who always got what he wanted,” said Sebastian. “But sometimes all he wanted was a cast, so many of the moldings you see are casts from the original. He was a poet of architecture, enamored of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires in particular. The juxtaposition of the objects here was calculated to produce a particular impression. Architecture was, for him, the queen of the fine arts, with painting and sculpture as her handmaids. Together they combine, and this place showcases his vision of the mighty powers of music, poetry and allegory. But come downstairs to the basement and see the real jewel.”
Sebastian slipped down some stairs, hidden behind yet more classical sculpture.
“I’ll remain here, it’s too steep for me” Ben said. “I can hear you from the balcony. Go on.” He indicated that Morgan should follow.
She descended into semi-darkness, but as her eyes adjusted she saw that the basement was crowded with yet more precious objects. Pale natural light streamed in through the skillful use of light wells cut into the walls, both vertical and horizontal, reflected in a series of mirrors. On sunny days, Morgan could see that the light would permeate into the nooks and crannies of this basement, alighting on the faces of long dead gods frozen in stone for centuries. Today, clouds muted the light, giving a ghostly pall to the figures within. Morgan startled a little as she passed a skeleton hanging in a closet, its bones a fused androgyny of male and female in a sculpted abomination.
The following video from the Guardian takes you into the John Soane museum.
So you know that there's shooting and guns in my thrillers?
Well, sometimes an author needs to go get some practical experience!
Last weekend, I went to Budapest (with my very happy husband) for a shooting experience at Celeritas gun club. Check out the video below for the highlights.(Please note, this was all done with the highest safety standards.)
We also visited some of the places important to the violent century that Hungary has experienced – the synagogue and mass Jewish graves, the shoes left by the side of the Danube from those massacred, the offices of the secret police. It is a pretty harrowing place, as well as a majestic city with stunning architecture.
I will be writing an ARKANE novella entirely set there in the next 6 months, so you can expect more of Budapest then.
I hope you enjoy the video, and I'll be announcing the launch of Exodus soon (and there are free review copies on offer for subscribers of the newsletter.)
One of the important clues in the next ARKANE book, Exodus, comes from a manuscript fragment found in the monastery of St Catherines in the Sinai, Egypt.
No spoilers here, but Morgan Sierra must find a possible location for the Ark of the Covenant at the traditional place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
St Catherine's has one of the most extensive collections of ancient manuscripts in the world, mainly due to the fact that the monastery was never sacked. It is remotely situated in the Sinai desert but was also granted a protection from the Prophet Mohammed so the monastery was safe during the expansion of Islam across North Africa. The dry climate also makes it perfect for manuscript preservation.
The Codex Sinaiticus
Codex SinaiticusThe Codex Sinaticus is just one of the manuscripts that was found at St Catherine's and it is now mostly held by the British Library in London, although fragments remain at the monastery as well. Written in the middle of the 4th century, it is the oldest complete copy of the Christian New Testament, and also contains the Septuagint Old Testament. It is written in ancient Greek and is so fascinating because of how many corrections there are, from individual letters to whole sentences, as well as the differences it represents to the Bible used today. This 2 min video gives you an initial view of the Codex.
The entire Codex has now been digitized and you can read it online – with some translation available if your ancient Greek is rusty! I actually did a whole semester during my Theology degree at Oxford translating John's Gospel from ancient Greek so it is a particular thrill to me to be able to read the text itself. I have seen the actual book at the British Library, it's indeed a marvel and I just had to include it in Exodus.
Palimpsests
Archimedes palimpsest
Palimpsests are pages or scrolls that have been used once, then scraped and used again, but with certain technologies, the original text underneath can be read and exposed. Because material for writing was rare and expensive, in ancient times, they often reused scrolls. One of the most famous is the Archimedes Palimpsest where a 10th century Byzantine prayerbook was written over the original mathematical text from Archimedes dated around 200 BC.
St Catherine's monastery is now working with a team to digitize the manuscripts that remain – this article in the Washington Post (Sept 2012) discusses the preservation project and also the 130 palimpsests, the texts written under other texts, that have been found on the site.
I find the idea of palimpsests to be fascinating, and even the word itself is evocative. What riches could be found under the many thousands of ancient documents in the Vatican archives? What will researchers find with new technologies? And how does a fragment of such a text impact the plot of Exodus?
There are some places that continue to stay with you years later, and Abu Simbel is such a place for me.
It features in a pivotal scene in Ark of Blood, the third ARKANE novel that centers around a search for the Ark of the Covenant as the Middle East counts down to a religious war [no spoilers!]
Thriller author J.F. Penn at Abu Simbel, Egypt, 2004
I have been obsessed with ancient Egypt since I was a child.
I wanted to be Indiana Jones growing up (perhaps I still do! Morgan Sierra is truly my alter-ego.) I used to do coloring books full of hieroglyphics and my Mum would take my brother and me to the Egyptian Mummy rooms at the museum regularly.
In 2004, I did a trip around Egypt and finally visited the places I had dreamed of. Abu Simbel was one of my highlights.
Situated in Nubia, Southern Egypt, Abu Simbel consists of two temples carved into the rock face on the banks of Lake Nasser. They are 230 km south of Aswan, so most people fly there on a day trip while touring Egypt (as I did in 2004).
The temples were placed in the southern part of Egypt so that traders coming up from the heart of Africa would see the might of the Pharaoh.
Detail of Nefertari's temple, Abu Simbel, Egypt. Photo by J.F. Penn
Carved by Pharaoh Rameses II in the 13th century BC, the main temple was dedicated to Amun Ra, Ra-Herakty and Ptah. It features four colossal statues of Rameses outside, wearing the double crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. A frieze of baboons dances over the heads of the giant statues, in adoration of the rising sun. Inside, there are a number of chambers and friezes on the walls showing battle victories. Thick pillars with relief statues line the main hall, creating marvelous hiding places for thriller protagonists!
It was believed that the sunlight penetrated the narrow corridor on specific days of the year, illuminating the faces of all the gods except Ptah, god of the Underworld, who remained in the dark. The second, smaller temple was dedicated to Hathor and was for Rameses' wife Nefertari.
The temple was originally in another position, but in 1968, the Nile was dammed and Lake Nasser was created, flooding the region of Nubia.
The enormous task of relocating the temple was carried out by cutting into huge blocks and then reassembling it above the flood waters. This event made refugees of the Nubian people which is beautifully written about in Anne Michaels' The Winter Vault.
Even though I went on a group tour, I felt a sense of the sacred at Abu Simbel.
It is in a desolate place, somewhere from which you might call for the aid of the gods if you were caught without water in the unending desert. There were few trees and although on the edge of Lake Nasser now, it would have been the only thing for miles around thousands of years ago. The stark colors of the desert rock stand out against the sky. The colossal statues of Pharaoh look out to the horizon with vacant eyes , uncaring of the fate of the tiny people below. When I started investigating ancient Egypt, I knew I had to set a scene at this magnificent place.
I recently spent a few days in the Languedoc region of France, mostly relaxing but also exploring the rich cultural heritage of the Pays Cathare, Cathar country.
It's an evocative place, historically and for religious reasons and I wrote a great deal in my journal about faith and violence.
During the 12th century a new type of Christianity arose in the region, characterized by simplicity of faith, clothing and way of life. The Cathars were opposed to the corruption of the Catholic Church and spread their simple beliefs among the common people, preaching the scripture in local tongue so people could understand and believe. They were against violence and had a flat structure where no person was considered above another.
But the Church couldn't allow such a threat to the established faith. Between 1208 and 1321 the Cathars were systematically hunted down and murdered, besieged in the castles of the region, tortured by the Inquisition and burned alive.
One day, I sat in the Basilique of Carcassonne's Old City and wrote these words while a male choir sang religious music. These are the notes from my diary.
“I sit in the nave, a male quartet sing. Their voices resound, praising God, soaring into the vaulted space above. They are lit by the sun through stained glass, the blood red of massacred saints, the azure blue of heaven. Why do these sounds bring delight to the soul, when the tomb of the mass murderer reminds us of the slaughtered innocents here? The veil is ripped wide between heaven and earth in places like this, where death and eternal life struggle for dominance. Doves roost in the ancient stone, wings lit by the fragility of candles. My vision is blurred by the smoke that carries prayers to heaven, in memory of the final faithful burnt alive at Montsegur.”
I love church music. When I write, I either listen to rain and storms or Gregorian chants, which evoke images of the great cathedrals of Europe, some of my greatest inspiration.
So it was glorious to listen to the music in that place and yet incongruous to do so under the tombstone of Simon de Montfort, who led the mass murder of the Cathars. His body was actually removed from the church for fear of it being desecrated later on.
The juxtaposition of faith and violence is something that I return to again and again. They seem inextricably linked.
I'm currently writing the last chapters of Exodus, the third ARKANE novel, and have returned again to Jerusalem which is perhaps the place where it collides in the most fierce manner. I don't know if Carcassonne itself will make it into my fiction, but the emotions conjured by these places and the music that echoed there remains my central inspiration.
There’s a magic moment for me, and probably other writers, when the story suddenly emerges from the writing.
For me, that happened yesterday when it seemed that all the stars aligned and synchronicity blazed and I was writing in the flow, and the story came to life. [Text below the short video]
Let me explain a little more.
ARK OF BLOOD (previously published as Exodus) is my third novel and is based around a hunt for the Ark of the Covenant as the Middle East counts down to a religious war. I’ve been researching the Ark and possible locations for six months, reading the official papers and also the conspiracy theorists.
I have my series characters in place and my secret government agency, ARKANE which investigates religious mysteries. I had a broad outline and had started writing, but the story hadn’t really caught fire for me.
Then yesterday, that magic moment happened.
I visited the United Grand Lodge of England, the Freemasons Grand Temple in London, and what I saw there crystallized a whole load of ideas. It’s an awesome place, full of symbolism and hints at the secrets that lie within.
Then I went to a spin class and while I was cycling away, the ideas mashed together and the rest of the story fell into place. It fits the research theories and it fits some of the conspiracy theories. My story could actually be plausible, which for me, is essential for a thriller. I won’t give too much of the plot away, but I wanted to share this magic moment and part of how I write a novel.
So I am 40,000 words into the book now, but I know where the story goes from here. I just need to get the words down for the first draft and then move into the editing phase. But this is a precious moment, when you know there’s a story to be told, one that will intrigue and entertain people.
You’ll have to read ARK OF BLOOD to find out where the Ark of the Covenant might be!
I find that basing my writing on aspects of reality makes the fiction appear more real. Therefore I am always on the lookout for fascinating snippets of history, religion, art or culture that can bring a richness to the story.
The Devil's Bible, also called the Codas Gigas, was one of those serendipitous findings as I was searching for an appropriate ‘MacGuffin‘ for Prophecy.
Legend tells of its creation at the hands of monk who sinned grievously. In order to prevent the punishment of being walled up alive, he promised to write down all human knowledge in one night. Finding himself overwhelmed and unable to complete the task, he bargained with the Devil – his soul for the finished book.
The Devil's Bible contains the books of the Latin Bible but also spells, incantations, exorcism prayers and images of the Devil and the Kingdom of Heaven. There are pages missing which was brilliant as the search for the pages became a key part of the story that merged art history with religion, both passions of mine.
The Ark of the Covenant continues to inspire investigation and I did a lot of research for Exodus and loved weaving it into the ARKANE story.
One of these treasures is the John Soane Museum, in Lincoln's Inn Fields near Holborn station.
The corridor emerged into a gallery, packed from floor to coffered ceiling with classical statues, casts of busts, original sculptures and objects from every historical era. Morgan gaped at the scene. Here was the goddess Sekhmet, a lion-headed stone figure that looked out over the riot of antiquities. There were slave manacles, rusty and worn, as if hacked from the body of the non-person inside them. Chinese dragon dogs played alongside basalt obelisks and a black marble head of Jupiter, six times life-size, gazed out with unfathomable eyes. A huge statue of Apollo looked down into the basement below, while relief friezes of conquest lined the walls about the god.
Well, sometimes an author needs to go get some practical experience!
No spoilers here, but Morgan Sierra must find a possible location for the Ark of the Covenant at the traditional place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
It's an evocative place, historically and for religious reasons and I wrote a great deal in my journal about faith and violence.
But the Church couldn't allow such a threat to the established faith. Between 1208 and 1321 the Cathars were systematically hunted down and murdered, besieged in the castles of the region, tortured by the Inquisition and burned alive.
One day, I sat in the Basilique of Carcassonne's Old City and wrote these words while a male choir sang religious music. These are the notes from my diary.
The juxtaposition of faith and violence is something that I return to again and again. They seem inextricably linked.
Then I went to a spin class and while I was cycling away, the ideas mashed together and the rest of the story fell into place. It fits the research theories and it fits some of the conspiracy theories. My story could actually be plausible, which for me, is essential for a thriller. I won’t give too much of the plot away, but I wanted to share this magic moment and part of how I write a novel.
The Devil's Bible, also called the Codas Gigas, was one of those serendipitous findings as I was searching for an appropriate ‘MacGuffin‘ for Prophecy.
