Being rather taken by this definition, history must be larded with examples - would Moses and the Tablets of the Law qualify? or what of Martin Luther posting his notions on the Cathedral door? And Princess Di's TV interview? The knock on effect of these has been considerable but have I misunderstood?

Priscilla wrote:

Being rather taken by this definition, history must be larded with examples - would Moses and the Tablets of the Law qualify? or what of Martin Luther posting his notions on the Cathedral door? And Princess Di's TV interview? The knock on effect of these has been considerable but have I misunderstood?

Priscilla, I don't understand immediately what you mean with "controlling the narative". As excuse I have: not being an English native and as you already know: also a bit "dur de comprenure"...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, I don't know if this Reddit thread will be of any assistance:-

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/77ne3h/what_does_it_mean_when_people_say_controlling_the/

Paul, the expression is used these days to convey when an individual attempts to ensure that public interpretation of events, especially those relating to their own activities, follows that which they themselves wish it to. For that reason only one of Priscilla's examples above actually fits this bill - Moses isn't even an historical person, Martin Luther was attempting to change interpretations of theology but only in a very slight sense could he be accused of trying to "control" everyone's perceptions subsequent to his actions (and history demonstrates that he most palpably didn't). However Diana Spencer attempting to preempt public approbation of her activities by "getting her version out first" certainly fits the category exactly.

The expression can be employed neutrally or cynically. When it is neutrally applied to an individual the inference is that they are simply manipulating their public image, and in many cases this can actually be justified on their part if, for example, there is a propaganda campaign or similar being prosecuted by others against their character, in which case such intentional manipulation is in fact simply a correction of a false narrative gaining currency in the public mind.

Cynically however, and in fact these days this is probably its most frequent use, it refers to individuals who manipulate the truth, or even blatantly lie, in order to ensure that the public perception of them and their activities follows a pattern, however egregiously assembled, of their own devising. The larger the flaw in character or deed that the false narrative is designed to conceal, the more egregious the narrative advertised, and of course the more it requires the originator to keep "control" of its transmission. So Spencer, depending on how much you think she was reacting to attempted character assassination by the establishment or simply trying to garner public approval despite salacious but accurate rumours in the public domain that denigrated her reputation, or even if you believe none of these things and presume she told the absolute truth in her infamous interview, certainly was making a concerted effort to "control the narrative" from that point on. We can differ also regarding how effective her attempt may or may not have been, but the effort and intent on her part is undeniable, and I would argue certainly influenced the narrative regarding her character and actions to this day, even if not quite in the way she originally had assumed it might (almost always the case in these matters).

As Priscilla says, even if her examples may not all conform strictly to the expression's generally accepted meaning, history is of course riddled with examples - in fact one could argue that politics itself is to a large extent the art of controlling the narrative, in both the neutrally applied and cynical case. Organised religion also certainly adopts the principle at its core - whereas Luther may not have been attempting to control any narrative, at least as his priority aim, he was certainly reacting to an institution which by then had, for many centuries, dedicated itself to and was even predicated completely upon narrative control to a huge degree. Its history, character and activities were not open to public perception except on terms that the institution itself rigorously and completely controlled using absolutely every device available to it from persuasion to extreme coercion.

However the key to discovering probably less blatant or flagrant historical cases of "controlling the narrative" is the simple exercise of identifying those many instances in which a "standard" interpretation or account of certain historical events transmutes over time into a new standard very much at odds with its precursor. History is, at its core, a narrative. Moreover it is one that is subservient in many ways to the principles and mores of the society and time in which it is recounted. Where this narrative is overturned by new archaeological evidence or indeed the introduction of any new evidential data then it is also sometimes the case that the new perspective reveals the previous discredited narrative to have been obviously controlled along the way, or at least nurtured and encouraged long after it in fact should have been discounted in that form. Where the narrative is revisionally altered while still based on the same data, this time to accommodate more prevalent modern mores, then in fact the suspicion is that it is the modern historian in this case who is now trying to exercise "control".

I'm not sure how historiographical an approach Priscilla expects in response to her query though. I think she may have been simply inviting others to contribute examples of individuals in history who themselves obviously attempted to or succeeded in "controlling the narrative" in their own lives. So while we can discount mythical characters like Moses altogether as being outside the scope of a historical discussion, and question whether Luther's motives may have been based as much upon open critical inquiry as they were upon establishing revised dogma, we can certainly (and very easily) identify many individuals like Spencer who unashamedly tried to ensure that public perception of her, and indeed posterity's version of her, followed a narrative of her own devising.

The guy who springs to mind immediately for me is, of course, Julius Caesar. Despite the many millions of words expended in analysis of his life and times since his assassination it is nigh on impossible - even amongst his most ardent critics - to recount and comment on his character and actions except through the filter that he assiduously constructed in his own lifetime.

Thank you very much LiR and nordmann for the explanation. And nordmann your take about the expression was, as usual, impressive. I found especially the example of Julius Caesar educating.

Kind regards to both, Paul.

Nordmann has explained the site and had a good guess at my intent........ so perhaps we will get further examples of this aye, indeed yes, rathe political machination.

I want to start a thread called Riposte in which we may argue  points without disturbing the orginal post elsewhere too much. Nowhere to put it, pity, so here goes. 


Riposte to nordman's opinion above - So  he thinks Moses was a myth, hmmm? No he wasn't because, nord, I have seen the film. So. And just supposing he was - now that was a mega big control of a huge narrative, surely. Just saying. I will now get back into my ideas for posts here, box.

Back to the main thread............

Well, yes, though it's a rather convoluted hypothesis. Were I, as a mostly unhypothetical person, suddenly to start publicly communing with burning bushes, flinging stone tablets at the heads of brazen cow worshippers, and then waddle off with "my people" to magically part the Skagerrak and then drown the pursuing Norwegian Armed Forces, I imagine it would be completely unavoidable that I would certainly have influenced the narrative, at least here in Norway - and that's even before the same people started basing lifestyle choices on any silly instructions chiselled out on whatever tablets remained.

When it comes to notable political figures then it's actually difficult to isolate those who "controlled the narrative" under their own volition from the vast majority for whom others have done it on their behalf.

Away from politics however might be more fertile ground for exploration. One person who certainly did so, and not in a bad way either, was Florence Nightingale. Already a pretty headstrong and intelligent person who could talk her way out of and into situations as things suited, she was no slouch in realising that the good will extended to her by grateful patients in the army hospital in Crimea could then be used to her great advantage once she got back home. Even before leaving the Crimea she had nurtured newspaper correspondents in the dark art of "spinning" her image and reputation back in London, and then lost no time at all once she arrived in capitalising on the fame her little lamp had helped precede her. Fortunately for society Florence's narrative was all about effective health care, and not just adoption of sanitary methods but a whole root and branch redesign of the care structures then in place.

Nightingale was also a great example of how to differentiate between someone simply "spinning" a truth for temporary advantage and someone out to "control the narrative" to more lasting ends. To her dying day she not only exploited the image she had established as a young nurse but actively encouraged its continuation, and even its embellishment as time went on. She nurtured a public persona of being both batty and sharp - a great combination as it keeps others on their toes, makes it hard for them to dismiss you, and gives you opportunity to have your views circulated by others that otherwise might not exist. Contrary to popular belief she did not spend the last 40 years of her life languishing in bed, but instead from her home ran a one-woman letter-writing campaign to newspapers, parliament and medical institutions (some of which she set up and financed herself), the fruits of which were effectively the achievement of almost every single ambitious goal she had set herself with regard to clinical reform.

Even now, were it come to light from old letters or similar, that Nightingale kept a harem of sex slave squirrels in her basement who she fed on bread and water, it would be a long time indeed before the narrative she crafted, controlled, nurtured and bestowed to posterity would even be scratched, I reckon. In fact I'd wager you'd find many who would simply infer from the revelation that keeping randy squirrels on strict rations was of course an eminently healthy thing to do. Well crafted narratives encourage everyone to stick to the script.

I've heard it suggested that Boris Johnson deliberately cultivates his bumbling affect and untidy hairstyle.  I've no idea whether that is true.  My understanding is that the late Ken Dodd dressed a lot more sharply and kept his hair tidy when he wasn't doing his stage act.  The story of Brutus - Lucius Junius not Marcus Junius - is of course partially legendary but the nickname "Brutus" which became the familial name from his affected stupidity could maybe be considered to have been due to his 'spin' of his public persona.

Very good examples of people - and they are legion - who, for admittedly different reasons, have attempted to "control the narrative" in relation to how they wish to be perceived as people. However the one glaring exception in your three examples is Dodd - he, as many other performers also do, restricted his attempt to his stage persona. In other words this is a very benign narrative indeed. It relates solely to his entertainment value to his potential audience, the narrative being "when I am conducting my private life I have no wish to pursue, let alone control, a narrative at all. However when I am performing for you then this bumbling buffoon persona is the one I wish you to believe is real solely for the purpose of entertainment, and as long as you do that for me then there is a greater chance that both of us win. You get entertained, and I increase my chances of pursuing this as a career, which of course means that you get further entertained. And so on." Replace Dodd with Stan Laurel, Jim Carey, Groucho Marx, or any one of thousands of others with carefully honed stage personas that people like, and you find the very same contract with the public and a narrative that applies only to that persona, and one which the performer works really hard at controlling.

Compare that to Johnson's "bumbling buffoon" narrative. Now the contract, and the narrative, is immensely more nuanced and very much less honest. This time the narrative demands that you invest belief in this persona being his actual persona, both in public and private life. Also, while its entertainment value certainly exists and is a big reason for its adoption in order to garner popular appeal, this time it is also adopted to deflect attention away from what the real individual behind that persona is thinking and doing. Worse, as each manifestation of the individual's actual thoughts and deeds plays out very much in public view, something that should invalidate the assumed persona, the individual instead "doubles down" on insisting the persona still prevail in the public eye to an extent that masks the evidence to the contrary. This version of "controlling the narrative" through projection of a false persona however is rarely successful, as Johnson is increasingly finding to his cost, even as his efforts increase. Lately, I notice, he has tried the even less likely to succeed ploy of adopting two public personas, each equally false - that of the bumbling buffoon which fits some occasions, and that of the gravitas-laden sensible and caring patriarch which is his attempt at impersonating that which he thinks most people assume they want in a prime minister of Churchillian dimensions. This however, as Dodd or Laurel or any other skilled performer with a well-defined character of their own inventioin would always have known, almost certainly dooms the exercise to failure. Confusing your public with multiple co-existent personas is bad enough, personas presented as genuine but which contradict each other is even more guaranteed to produce loss of control of the narrative. If nothing else, the ease with which he adopts either and slips into each from the other simply advertises to even the most naive member of his public that there is something else behind the facade, and it's being hidden for reasons none of which can be good.

Brutus, in the context of a Roman society that thought nothing of adopting some very unflattering traits or characteristics as family names, is probably the most benign of your examples, in that it is doubtful whether those who bore the name really thought much about whether they should play up to the stereotype its literal interpretation evoked or even be motivated to play against it. This is not to say that these guys, all of whom were actively political in their time, didn't also have narratives they sought to control in relation to their public perception, but I just doubt that the meaning of the nickname which had been elevated to their gens nomenclature played much of a role in these attempts. Incidentally, "Brutus" means "heavy", not "stupid". There are various theories as to why the family Junia adopted the name, two related versions current in late republic Rome being that Lucius Junius was himself a well proportioned individual and that this may be why he toppled over at the oracle and ended up kissing "Gaia" (ie. the ground) in response to the oracle's prediction. The reputation for being dim but loyal that became associated with the name Brutus arose much later with Bubulcus Brutus, famously the first man in the republic's history to be entrusted with the office of dictator during a crisis in the 4th century BCE, allegedly on the basis that he was so unambitious and unimaginative that he was not likely to abuse the office. He didn't - so he was also very much the reason why the name subsequently carried strong connotations of unquestioning loyalty to the republic from that point on too. A "narrative" that many of his descendants certainly wished to control and utilise in their own political careers later, including the famous one.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I've heard it suggested that Boris Johnson deliberately cultivates his bumbling affect and untidy hairstyle. 

 
LiR, perhaps one other example is our "Guy Verhofstadt" he was also a liberal Prime Minister in Belgium. I have it from a "reliable source"  ...One befriended dentist wanted to change the denture of Guy in a way that the two teeth were more normal integrated into the physiognomy of his face. But he would have said that that was his specific trademark to remain staying in the spotlight...

    

It hasn't brought him much...as to his fellow Liberal-Democrat Charles Michel. And I personally have never been for the character and the "explosions" of the guy in comparison for instance with one of my favourites Charles Michel.

Perhaps what nordmann would then call a "benign narrative"? is then the "figure" that Hergé intentionally created of "Kuifje" (in French and English Tintin, but "kuifje" (small crest?) says more about the figure creation)



Kind regards to both, Paul.

PS: And nordmann thank you for your latest explanations about controlling narratives. I learned from it.
Kind regards, Paul.

Paul wrote:

Perhaps what nordmann would then call a "benign narrative"? is then the "figure" that Hergé intentionally created of "Kuifje" (in French and English Tintin, but "kuifje" (small crest?) says more about the figure creation)

No, controlling one aspect to one's physical appearance as a form of branding exercise, while it may be part of the process, is not controlling the narrative - to have a narrative implies an entire story, in other words an attempt at controlling not only everything that is said about you but also even how it is to be said.

However your final remark suggests you are being deliberately obtuse - I have more respect for your intelligence than to assume you can so completely miss the point unintentionally. Tintin, whether called after his quiff or not (same word essentially as in Dutch), has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation whatsoever. We expect creators of fictional characters to control their narratives, of course, but that has little relevance to what we're talking about - which is actual people doing the same thing but in relation to not only influencing but essentially controlling real perceptions of themselves in the real world.

A benign narrative in the context of the actual subject under discussion is where an individual employs all the typical techniques of manipulation to achieve control of their public perception and interpretation of their character, but simply to less malevolent ends than others might. Ken Dodd, and even Brutus, are both rather benign examples, with no attempt to blatantly deceive the public while actually up to nefarious activities behind the scenes that flatly contradict the persona falsely projected, and which that persona is rather intentionally and obviously designed to deflect attention away from.

Johnson however, who also adopts the same techniques, does so expressly to that end. So not benign, and the extent of the malevolence involved hinges simply on how much you weigh his actual intent against the actual effect of his projection. The only thing Johnson has going for him to mitigate any charge of malevolence is that he is signally incompetent, and as a result his technique has begun to fail him despite his malevolent intent. However while not too stupid to recognise this, he is apparently still stupid - or desperate - enough to have responded in recent times by desperately increasing his efforts to control the narrative using the same failing techniques that admittedly worked for him in the past in the desperate hope they might again, which of course simply makes him more pathetic than funny as time goes on.

This is apparently a rather deeper subject than you had perhaps presumed in your post.

nordmann wrote:

This is apparently a rather deeper subject than you had apparently presumed from your post.

 
nordmann, you know me now for some 8 years, even longer when you add the BBC time (if you joined in 2002 as I, some 18 years yet  )...
And yes, in my innocence I got already suspicious (voelde reeds nattigheid (felt already wetness)), hence my question mark to you...and thank you for the explanation...
Kind regards from Paul.

Hopefully Google Translate wrote:

(voelde reeds nattigheid (felt already wetness))

Rather more information than I needed ....

Here's hoping that was one that got more than a little lost in translation.

nordmann has alluded to 'spinning' a story.  In the 1990s Alastair Campbell, sometime political aide to Tony Blair, was often referred to as a 'spin doctor'; there is an American pop group called 'Spin Doctors'. One case of "spinning" which had unfortunate results was the way some of the newspapers at the time belittled the scientific abilities of Dr David Kelly when he said the threat of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq prior to the 2003 Gulf War was not the danger the Powers-that-Be were claiming it to be.  This isn't the 'whistleblower' thread but nordmann's observation on that thread that whistleblowers don't always have an easy time of it certainly rings true with regard to Dr Kelly.  I don't think Dr Kelly was "bumped off" but it was shameful that he was treated in such a way that he felt compelled to take his own life.  The scientific community had started to speak out and say that Dr Kelly's scientific knowledge was sound but sadly it was too late by then.

I had only vaguely alluded to "spinning" in the political sense, and there is an important semantic difference between "spinning a yarn" and "spinning a fact" despite use of the same verb. The latter is what so-called "spin doctors" task themselves with, and the aim (at least until the present breed) was traditionally less to tell an outright lie, as with the "yarn" expression, than to ensure that certain policies and their effects were presented to the public in a manner that avoided political damage to the policy originator. In that kind of spinning half-truths certainly feature, and sometimes even porkies when done by an incompetent spinner, but by far the most frequent and most typical instances of dishonesty involve ignoring or even burying data deemed better for the public not to know when releasing it for consumption.

Like Verhofstadt's teeth, or Johnson's hair for that matter, spin-doctoring also plays a role in "controlling the narrative" but falls well short of achieving this on its own. Spin-doctoring is all about the moment - an expedient, if dishonest, attempt at getting past potential political traps into which the spin-doctor's employer might fall. Proof of how much it falls short of course is to be found always in retrospective analysis - posterity's 20-20 hindsight applied to what the politicians and their "doctors" left to posterity for examination. In almost all instances the "spin-doctoring" itself is what is remembered - Blair's egregiously false justifications for committing his country to a war that few agreed even needed fighting (the very spin-doctoring incident that cost Dr Kelly his life) being just one very infamous incident of this nature. And this is how you know that the narrative, though seriously compromised and subverted by their actions in real-time, ultimately eluded their control.

Which is why I said earlier that it is actually very difficult to find politicians who, in the real sense of the term, have ever managed to fully "control the narrative", with or without someone doing it on their behalf (as "spin-doctors" do for them in real-time). Finding ones who achieve this under their own volition is extremely hard indeed.

In UK prime minister terms I suppose you could point to Churchill and the Duke of Wellington as two who achieved this goal, and in both cases you could point to the similarity between them of both being individuals who placed political fortune and short term success secondary in their careers to keeping absolute personal control of the image they projected as a person. In both cases this commitment to controlling their own narrative also saw each, at points in their career, reaching lows that could have been easily avoided had they taken more expedient action that may have temporarily abdicated control of this image to other more canny political operators - "spin-doctors" of their day. But they didn't, instead placing absolute trust and investment in keeping control of their own image, whether through vanity, principle, or simply retaining a longer view, and taking the consequent political hits that could easily have been avoided had they "spun" their policies as Blair & Co later certainly did to retain hold on the reins.

So, while it might be tempting to include all incidents of "spin doctoring" in a discussion about "controlling the narrative", and in a political sense the overlap is not only obvious but mandatory, those politicians who ultimately achieve such control to the point that posterity continues the narrative long after they're gone are namely those who in fact transcend such petty political considerations during their own lifetimes. Instead, as I said up-thread, really successful examples of individuals achieving this goal are probably to be found elsewhere in public life, where interaction with public perception is less likely to be hampered by mundane political considerations at all and therefore more malleable and open to manipulation by clever practitioners. Alternatively practitioners whose status rests on being members of an establishment that already itself transcends mere politics might also - even if not the cleverest people on the planet - achieve the same goal through help from within the establishment. Which is where I suppose monarchy comes into the debate, an establishment devoted to defining individuals during their lives and for posterity by manufactured reputation and not actual personality. Monarchies' long history of adroitly "controlling the narrative", much like the Catholic Church's, has seen some manifestations of the institution survive even the most intelligent, vicious, and often sustained attack that would make any mere "spin doctor" green with envy and does much to extol the virtues of possessing an anatine dorsal during inclement weather.

To nordmann...... perhaps I am am mistaken but your examples of those who made full use of the concept of narrative control - Nightingale, Wellington, Churchill. imply that self interest was above  concern for the cause of  the common weal. It is my experience that  trying to do the right thing often needs manipulation - and for which one can then be misjudged. The art of using it needs a thick skin or you've shot off your own feet and baby and bathwater come to mind. May be I  have under read your posts.
Ignatius Loyola is an example perhaps of controlling the narrative for what he considered the right reasons. Is there a  prayer which begins Dear God spare us from the focus of the self righteous? I am surprised that Temps has not come forward with examples from her area of special interest because those times were larded with folk tugging the narrative every which way.

There is a website that has the title 'Controlling the Narrative' though I've only taken a cursory look at it http://controllingthenarrative.weebly.com/  I think it is a project examining the concept of c------ t----n-------.

Do the algorithms in search engines such as Google or Bing "control the narrative" in that they make suggestions in the replies to searches?  I certainly wonder about the results in Bing (which is the default search engine on my current computer); the results I get sometimes seem very tenuous compared with my search terms.  With platforms like Google and YouTube I have to agree that 'cookies' can be set on my computer before I can use them, so it's useful to clear out the 'history' sometimes.  If I use a search engine like duckduckgo which says it doesn't "track and trace" to find a YouTube video, I still have to agree to YouTube's terms in order to access it whatever search engine I employ to get there.  There's a website called 'fiverr' which is a freelance market (people offer their skills or ask for someone to do a task for them).  I had a look at it a couple of times but it seemed that the numbers of people advertising their services were legion.  Someone was asking for people to write positive reviews forand like his book on Amazon (I'm assuming it was self-published).  Was that a mundane attempt to "control the narrative" or was it simply someone trying false advertising?

Can't stop giggling. I think you, LIR are a prime example of someone trying at least to control the narrative - all the narratives, come to that. Your distracting waffle seems to change the flow to a direction that interests you more.

Actually I think the thing about algorithms is a very good point. Algorithms won the Brexit vote for Cummings. Watch the official trailer for Brexit: the Uncivil War - "Data is power" - and his chilling last line in this snippet: "...and one that you can't control."



PS Re religion and monarchy controlling narratives - they, like political systems (e.g. Marxism), are metanarratives and are very interesting  - that French chap, Lyotard (not Leotard, as one former pupil of mine wrote) talked a lot about them. Would say more, but am afraid i) I don't fully understand it all myself - does anyone? -  and ii) it would bore everyone to death.

PPS But I still think, as I pointed out in my rambling post which I later removed from the Mask thread, that narratives can't be controlled. People may appear to be in control of such things, and certainly they often smugly think they are; but truth (haha!) will out. It may take time, but it will. But I'm off on a ramble again. Will shut up.

I am saddened that you think so ill of my comment and my intention, Priscilla.  I wasn't attempting to distract.  There have been stories about Russian 'bots'* affecting trends on social media.  Maybe people who visit this site don't use social media a lot but some people do much of their communication by Twitter.

I hope at least Priscilla giggled in a good way because at least that way my post will have brought some cheer.

Pleased to see you managed to get a word or two into the thread,  Temp  - you have been missed. Before the waters close over again, I hope someone else will notice can pick up the points you make to discuss.

Should really have said that other people's "truth" will out - eventually. Nothing like a good counter-narrative to keep us all civilised. It's when the debate stops the control is lost - or won, if you get my meaning, which no one probably does. That's the way the narrative is going at the moment - no debate allowed: my truth or no truth. The horrible, horrible irony is, it's the postmodern lot, or rather it is their insufferable children/grandchildren, who are displaying this terrifying intolerance for a different viewpoint, marching about with their fists in the air. Negotiated understanding and sharing the narrative? Sense of humour? No thanks!

This has been a Temperance rant, albeit a controlled one. I have not had anything to drink except tea.

PS Further to LiR's point, there is something called cyberocracy. I thought the word was a joke, but this is from Wiki (don't know if it is codswallop or not):

In futurology, cyberocracy describes a hypothetical form of government that rules by the effective use of information. The exact nature of a cyberocracy is largely speculative as currently there have been no cybercractic governments, however, a growing number prototype cybercratic elements can currently be found in many developed nations. Cyberocracy theory is largely the work of David Ronfeldt, who published several papers on the theory. Some sources equate cyberocracy with algorithmic governance, although algorithms are not the only means of processing information.

There is also noopolitik:

In political science, Noopolitik, formed by a combination of the Greek words νόος nóos ("knowledge") and πολιτικός politikós (πολίτης polítēs "citizen", from πόλις pólis "city"), is the network-based geopolitics of knowledge. The term was invented by defense experts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in a 1999 RAND corporation study and often appears in connection with that of smart power...

...Noopolitics is an informational strategy of manipulating international processes through the forming in the general public, by means of mass media, of positive or negative attitudes to the external or internal policies of a state or block of states, to create a positive or negative image of ideas and promulgated moral values.

Crikey.

I wish I COULD control narratives.  In the real world if I COULD influence people we wouldn't have had the political result we had last December but quite a different one.  Donald Trump has threatened to ban a short video making application called Tik-Tok popular among the young.  He feels it could pose a problem of security.  It's of Chinese origin.

I realise that Shakespeare's version of Mark Anthony's speech at Caesar's funeral was an artistic interpretation but Antonius had presence of mind to make a speech which swayed the watching crowd.  I can't decide whether that is 'controlling the narrative' or 'spinning'.

The media sometimes attempts to control the narrative on occasion with success. I don't want to sound like a vinyl record stuck in a groove but I've often heard/read that older people voted 'Leave' in the Brexit referendum.  Not everyone wants to mention how they voted in a secret ballot but from conversations with people I know most folk of my age or a bit younger or older voted 'Remain'.  Again, the 23 month job I had at the Natural History Museum was treated as being part of the Civil Service.  I can remember around the time of the 2010 elections some sections of the media had decided it was open season on the Civil Service.  Some papers quoted the salaries of the upper echelons of the Civil Service and there were members of the public who took it as read that salaries like those were what lower grade members of the Civil Service were earning.  I can remember listening to LBC in the morning when I was getting ready for work when I was still in London and some of the notions people  had were wide of the mark.

Well, controlling a baying mob by using all the tricks of the rhetorician's trade is one thing, but controlling the Senate was quite another: most patricians were (presumably) trained in the arts of rhetoric, and were not to be fooled by Antony's clever speeches. Cicero certainly wasn't: I think he recognised Octavian as the one to watch in the coming "narrative-control" game. He should have watched Octavian more carefully as it turned out... Caesar's designated heir, who was, incidentally, enormously rich - always helpful in any battle for control of narratives or of anything else - definitely seems to have been the most media savvy of the triumvirate (Lepidus, according to Shakespeare, was a bit wet and could/can be ignored). I  read somewhere that Octavian used short, sharp slogans on coins - the 40s BC equivalent of the punchy tweet? And he was, so I believe, a master of "fake news". Control of the imperial narrative?

Octavian's genius was that he recognised that it was vital to build up up a brilliant counter narrative if he were to be rid of Antony (whom the legions adored) - and he did just that. It's worth reading Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra  to see how this was done. Shakespeare's source for both plays, JC and A&C, was Plutarch - not sure, to be honest, how historians view this "construction of the counter narrative". According to WW, Antony had gone all "foreign" - gone disastrously and embarrassingly "native" in fact, to use the nasty imperial term so loved by the later British. Octavian realised that Rome needed someone who presented as a "proper Roman", a believer in the old traditions, a disciplined man, a leader who displayed the old-style "virtus", someone in short who could "take back control" after the chaos following Caesar's death. Octavian, according to WW, was actually a nasty little so-and-so, but incredibly intelligent, and fully aware of how to control without seeming to control; and so gain and - more importantly - keep power. The Senate were fooled (I think). A born winner, in other words - or apparently so...until history started looking more closely at the narrative?

I was wondering about how Virgil contributed to the construction of Octavian's - or rather Augustus' - narrative. I read this article with interest:

Making Rome Great Again: Fake Views in the Ancient World


Dr Elena Giusti, in the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge University, is working on a book examining the part that the Aeneid, written by Roman poet Virgil, played in shaping the narrative of Emperor Augustus’ regime. Her book will contribute to a long-standing academic debate over the extent to which the poem is propagandistic.


“My interest in Augustan poetry and its tendency to reshape traditions and place facts in a position of secondary, subsidiary importance was inspired by my experiences as a millennial growing up in Berlusconi’s Italy,” says Giusti. “My research focuses on what, after the events of 2016, we might dub ‘post-truth poetics’ – and a reading of Virgil’s Aeneid as a form of poetics and politics that aimed to shape public opinion by appealing to feelings rather than facts.”


Virgil’s epic poem tells the story of Aeneas the Trojan hero and his struggle to found the Roman race. In Giusti’s view, Virgil was in all likelihood commissioned by Augustus to write the Aeneid, and there is certainly plenty to suggest that he wrote his epic work in compliance with the new regime.


But that is not the whole story - apparently the Aeneid was saying more than Augustus may have realised. As I tried to point out elsewhere, texts do have a life of their own, after all. Slippery little things they are, hard to control, even epic poems in Latin! Same goes for other "texts" - visual images -  or anything that has a "reader"...


Paradoxically, Virgil’s Carthage unveils the delusory nature of Augustus’ restoration of the Roman Republic and its mythical history. The artificiality of the image that Virgil conjures stimulates us to interrogate the legitimacy of the stories and messages encoded in the narrative.

Octavian ... the little sh*t that he was: utterly amoral and manipulative, sly and opportunistic, yet undoubtedly clever, was nevertheless apparently (or perhaps cleverly made himself to be), rather charismatic too. At the time of Julius' assasination and the civil war that followed, Octavian was in his twenties, and he was still just into his thirties when he defeated, or rather out-witted, Marc Anthony and all the Julian 'old guard', around the time of Actium. He nevertheless rapidly re-created himself to become the great Caesar Augustus, The Auguste Emperor, the benevolent, wise and caring Father of the Roman Nation. Although in fairness his reign/rule did bring in a period of much-needed stability, and though no longer a republic, Rome under Augustus wasn't yet the capriciously despotic tyranny that it became under his immediate successors.

Moreover two thousand years later we still recognise this month, August, as being dedicated to him. That's some long-lasting and very effective 'narrative' spin.

Perhaps we should demand it be changed! Who decided August was August? i'm surprised the Anglo-Saxons didn't do something about it. Lord, there's July too.

Bloody Romans - they're worse than the British. They get everywhere.

Splendid stuff, Temps. And since British slaves were fed to African lions in the Colosseum, what a nonsense it is that we have a theatre thus named. Pull it down, I say.  Well someone else can but i am busy for the next few days and have only got a very small wheelbarrow.
I suppose all dictators use a controlled  narrative. Would all those posters of blonde buxom Russian farm wenches fit in there somewhere----- oh yes and the wonderful ballets of  the Red Chinese Army. ...we  can only come up with Gilbert and Sullivan -  and I suppose Shaun the Sheep is our worldwide  rural image.

Duplicate of above - and there's already too much stuff by me without duplcation.

I suppose the time has come to mention Richard III and Henry VII.

As we all know, Richard was absolutely hopeless at controlling the narrative or anything else; poor lad was outwitted at every turn. Even Titulus Regius (1484), which explained why, legally, he was the rightful king, didn't really work. The bishops had tried to help the year before, having the clergy preaching on the text of: “Bastard slips shall not take root”, but no one was very impressed – or convinced. It was all so boring, and smacked of desperation - never a good idea in any attempt to establish control. You can't establish control by being all prissy and legal, certainly not in England: you have to be outrageous.

Enter Henry Tudor, who was much better at the narrative-control game:  HT actually got a whole myth going: his narrative – known to history as the Tudor Myth – was actually utterly ridiculous, but it worked a treat! Nothing like a bit of Bardic prophecy to get things rolling, and the bards had a great time in the “long yellow summer” of 1485 singing away of the longing of all the Britons (not just the Welsh) for the long promised hero, for mab y daragan to appear and make everything all right again. The English, it has to be said, were not terribly impressed by all this Welsh guff, but the real point that Henry was making was that he was British rather than mere Welsh, a man in whose veins ran the blood of the ancient Britons: Henry's colourful narrative was that he was the descendant of King Arthur himself (hence his big red dragon flag, not so important as a Welsh dragon, but extremely impressive because it was the legendary battle standard of Arthur and other great Celtic British leaders). Arthur, of course, was supposed to have been descended from Brutus, which made the myth even more impressive. Nothing like a bit of Roman/Trojan blood to outrank those parvenu Plantagenets! And then calling his first-born son (who was actually the grandson of Plantagenet Edward IV) Arthur, and having the poor little mite born and christened in Winchester, the seat of the ancient British kings, was a master stroke. Henry VIII went on to develop his father's propaganda when he had some old table dug out, a bit of furniture which actually dated back to Edward I (another great fan of King Arthur
- Edward I, of course started the whole Prince of Wales thing) and had it freshly painted with a horribly vulgar, gaudy and absolutely enormous Tudor rose at its centre: this was then presented as King Arthur’s Round Table and it is still on display, hung up on the west wall in Winchester Great Hall. American tourists are apparently very impressed by it to this day. Henry VIII had himself painted on the refurbished table, posing as King Arthur. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up, but the Tudors did.

PS And for a lovely bit of narrative control, don’t forget the confusion around the date the Tudors took over: we may think it was 22nd August, 1485, the date of the Battle of Bosworth, but you would be wrong. Henry VII, according to Henry VII, actually became King of England the day before the battle - on August 21st. Henry "persuaded" Parliament to backdate his reign to the 21st, thus enabling himself retrospectively to declare as traitors those who had fought against him at Bosworth Field. All land belonging to traitors was then confiscated. Neat!

PPS Nearly forgot - as mentioned above, here's a bit of the Bardic prophecy the Welsh were singing during the build-up to Bosworth. Henry was so aware of the importance that could be attached to the apparent fulfilment of such prophecies: he was also aware of the political advantages to be gained by polishing, not just his "spear", but also his image as a "high-Born Briton of the stock of Maelgwyn, prince of the line of Cadwaladr of the beautiful spear". Not sure what the ordinary English made of all this nonsense about beautiful spears and dragons - probably had a good laugh about it all in the taverns: the Londoners no doubt fully understood that Henry  was actually a Lancastrian adventurer who got lucky. Perhaps the narrative was not quite under as much control as Henry thought.


When the bull comes from the far land to battle with his great ashen spear,
To be an earl again in the land of Llewelyn,
Let the far-splitting spear shed the blood of the Saxon on the stubble...
When the long yellow summer comes and victory comes to us
And the spreading sails of Brittany,
And when the heat comes and when the fever is kindled,
There are portents that victory will be given to us...


Here's the table. You can probably get a replica shipped over to the States.

All great examples, though what they demonstrate most to me is that discussing those who attempt to control the narrative is much more interesting than talking about those who actually could be said to have succeeded. Richard is indeed a great example of someone who tried but failed miserably, though Henry Tudor and Augustus, while certainly more determined in their efforts, could hardly be said to have succeeded in their endeavours if, as the thread also demonstrates thus far, they can be - with some justification - dismissed these days as blatant liars and "little shits" respectively. This, in fact, is the fate of most who make the attempt. They are remembered as much for their blatant attempt to control the narrative and divert attention away from their actual characters, often despicable characters indeed, than for any allowance of permanent success posterity has assigned them.

But when it comes to monarchs, emperors and the like, then control of narrative comes with the job. In fact even if the incumbent is less skilled in the art than he or she might need to be, such people tend to have an institution around them that will do the job for them anyway. And the same goes for many prominent historical figures in or near the machinery of power - one does not have to stray too far from Henry Tudor's myth-making establishment of a dynasty to find Thomas More for example enjoying a reputation for principled and level-headed intelligence with one foot in the same myth, though many a heretic tortured at his hands might be turning in their graves at the thought (had their bodies not been incinerated to a crisp by the same politician). I was glad to see Hilary Mantel give the guy's rather dubious reputation (a narrative very much controlled by an institution with infinitely more practise at the art than even the Tudors could dream of) a good going-over in recent years, though even she deferred to that portion of the narrative that More worked very hard at controlling in his own lifetime as being an erudite scholar of lofty intellect who considered himself spiritually above the mundane matters of the very political machinations (including torturing the opposition) in which he was in fact a master and which, after all, was his actual bread and butter.

What is slightly ironic about More and his bosses turning up in this thread is that all of them, in fact, devoted much of their time to preventing one hugely notorious and quite literal attempt at "controlling the narrative" in their own lifetime, namely the lad Tyndale who was beavering away one step ahead of the possee in his attempt at transcribing the Latin bible into English. Scholars of the day, including More himself as well as Erasmus et al over on the continent, were already in agreement that the translation of the bible from Greek into Latin had been a suspiciously convenient opportunity to "tweak" the narrative and accommodate certain Roman sensibilities in the past. Evidence that more recent translations into the vernacular, especially in German (often by anonymous hand) and of course Tyndale's English attempt, were doing exactly the same thing prompted much alarm at the time, even amongst the most committed reformers. The issue at the time was always framed within objections to the "word of god" possibly acquiring semantic inexactitude that may in turn "corrupt" the message. However what was really underlying the most vociferous objections and concerns was that simply making the full text understandable to the layman might in itself undermine more secular and temporal chains of authority, many of which were maintained through reserving rights of interpretation to those explicitly approved by the authorities in any given system. Make it obvious that rich men have as much chance of getting into heaven as a badly translated camel might have crawling through the eye of a needle, and it isn't hard to see how European "camels" of their day might be less than pleased with the sentiment gaining even wider currency than this problematic passage already enjoyed. Even worse for More & Co was that Tyndale, unlike many of his German colleagues, was taking his task so seriously that he had learnt Hebrew, and even some Aramaic, so to better untangle centuries of previous mistranslation, both accidental and intended, that had ended up in the Latin version. Had he cracked the actual camel code, for example, and made it obvious to everyone what up to now only Hebrew scholars and Jews tended to know, then the subsequent depopulation of the Christian Valhalla would have had serious repercussions for every person of means (and by default all monarchs, demagogues and bishops of the day) that simply didn't bear thinking about by those who up to now reckoned this was one narrative whose control they had nailed down pretty fast.

Henry VII's son was one such person of course - and we know from his correspondence on the matter that he alternated between horror and fascination at the potential for control Tyndale's efforts represented. He dithered for ages between putting a bounty on the guy's head and bringing him "into his protection" so that the project could be completed, with not a little editorial input from the Bluff One one must assume based on Henry's own inflated opinion about his scholarly prowess. In the end Henry found a way to achieve both ends - he had Stokesley (who Henry had on a very sticky wicket indeed and who needed to get back into the king's good books - pardon the pun) arrange Tyndale's death in the Low Lands, took over the manuscript himself and published it as his own "Great Bible", one which would later form the basis of the KJV, and of course in which camels and needles still play a prominent and intentionally ambiguous role, amongst other such semantic side-steps befitting monarchical editors.

Interestingly Thomas More, for all his careful nurturing of his image as lofty erudite and the narrative of this nature still in public currency, certainly could never be believed to have been such if all one had to go on was the extant "correspondence" he engaged in over Tyndale. Here the bullying, crass insults and foul-mouthed diatribes of an extremely small-minded, petty, jealous and bitter little man are laid out for all posterity - an image of the man many of those being racked in agony at his behest might readily have recognised as the only image worth remembering. Tyndale, who cared less about his own image than in his single-minded task and defending its progress and integrity, was on the other hand the picture of erudition and humour in his many responses, the most stunningly successful in his day being a response to yet another screed of spite and malice from More with more threat than theology in its pages, Tyndale's best selling riposte "The Parable of Wicked Mammon", with one chapter dedicated to More being a well reasoned examination of Luke's "The Parable of The Unjust Steward". At that point at least the narrative was very much (and deservedly so) in William's control!

Thank you very much nordmann for this interesting and well documented essay.
Kind regards, Paul.

Words that the "fair minded" More could never bring himself to post to Antwerp, ironically enough.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Thank you very much nordmann for this interesting and well documented essay.

Oh, Paul, unlike you, I come to question nordmann, not to praise him. I admire nordmann's erudition and lovely English style as much as the next person, but I refuse to be a Boxer. This "Nordmann is always right!" from you gets a tad irritating. His "essay", as you call his last post, and just about any post he sends, is not "well documented"!

nordmann wrote:

Words that the "fair minded" More could never bring himself to post to Antwerp, ironically enough.

Irony indeed. What's being "fair-minded" got to do with anything: this is the 16th century we are talking about! And are you, any more than Mantel, being completely fair?

More was not a torturer. This suggestion that he was some a sort of 16th century Fred West, a rabid Catholic sadist with a cellar full of screaming evangelical victims and a selection of nifty torture instruments – where is the real evidence for this? Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, and, I should add, no great lover of Thomas More at all, on page 161 of his recent biography, Thomas Cromwell, states unequivocally that More did indeed, as you tell us, turn “to waging implacable war on enemies of the Church”; and that he did indeed display “a positive relish for burning heretics “. Furthermore - yes, it was More's clear ambition to root out reforming opposition - since 1529, he had been saying so “at savage length in print”. But – and it is surely for a historian a huge but - “claims by angry Protestants of the next generation that he personally tortured heretics have no evidence to back them up”...

As for the burning of heretics, a practice which we today find so utterly abhorrent, MacCulloch points out that, even amongst those who supported reform of the Church, "by no means all of them would have thought it a bad thing for the Church to pursue heretics (in fact very few people opposed the principle of burning, just the choice and quantity of those burned)". I agree that More was a man, not for all seasons, but of his times: “his strong sense of being caught up in a cosmic battle for the soul of Europe between the papacy and the forces of the Antichrist” turned him into something less than admirable – at least to our modern eyes. I am reminded of Oscar Wilde’s words: “The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.” Fanatic, yes, I give you that - but was he the villain you paint? You sound like Minette! More indeed was no saint (whatever the Vatican's narrative), any more than Cromwell was, as Mantel would have us accept, an Aristotelian tragic hero. One was a Catholic fanatic, the other - to use the description made by a recent UK Prime Minister of a modern "adviser" or “fixer” - a career psychopath. We can forgive Mantel – she is a novelist, writing fiction, superbly researched and beautifully crafted fiction, but just (as she herself has admitted) someone offering her version of the “story”; but surely it is the historian’s business not to create dramatic characters out of these personalities, but to examine and explore fairly the opposing narratives these two flawed human beings were caught up in – both the Catholic and the Protestant versions?  I actually asked Mantel in 2009, just after Wolf Hall was published (in that loo at Hampton Court), if any victim of a harsh Catholic education could ever be fair to More, and she laughed (not at me, I am pretty sure, although I could, of course, be wrong - hope not). I am tempted to ask the same question of you, nordmann.

I know Paul is a great lover of links        - so here are two interesting and informative articles, both “well-documented" and both "fair-minded", although one argues for More, one against.

Is Sir Thomas More One of the Ten Worst Britons in History?

Wolf Hall Is Wrong


PS Perhaps Henry VIII  ( no messing with him or his narrative) got it right – always a reliably firm monarch, and, I suppose you could say, fair-minded – after a fashion, his fashion, that is. As we know, Henry liked to keep everything nicely balanced - just to show who was actually in control of narratives, religious or otherwise. On the same day, July 30th, 1540,  (just after Cromwell’s execution), he burnt three Protestant reformers: Robert Barnes, William Jerome and Thomas Gerrard for heresy under the Six Articles, while three Catholics, Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherstone and Edward Powell were hanged for their treason in denying the royal supremacy. Six down on one day - shocked everybody, Catholics and Lutherans alike. It was a mad world, my masters, whatever narrative you plump for. No wonder Lytton Strachey, writing several centuries later, said of Henry’s daughter: “She found herself a sane woman in a universe of violent maniacs..." Some were Catholics, some were Protestant: all were alarmingly human. To us they all seem pretty loopy. Perhaps they did to their contemporaries too, although no one dared say so. Mind you, More did write Utopia, which was quite sane - er, wasn't it?

There's a lot about More that doesn't quite square with the "narrative" conducted on his reputation's behalf later by interested parties, for and against - which is why Mantel can have a field day painting his character one way for purposes of historical fiction and MacCulloch can exaggerate trial transcript content to press for another interpretation (one very close to the more prevalent narrative indeed). During his trial, which admittedly was more like a bunch of mud-slingers continuously chucking crap at a guy while he stubbornly bats as much away as he can (they only needed one bit of mud to stick after all), one such dollop that they knew might not stick but would certainly leave a sizeable smear was the fact that he kept his own private detention cells in his Chelsea home in which he detained "people of interest" in often arbitrary fashion and at self-serving whim, some of whom were later executed for heresy (and other crimes) under the authority of his Lord Chancellorship. Audley, the social-climbing little rat that he was and one of the prosecutors at the trial, couldn't resist spicing this accusation up for the gallery and throwing in a question about which tortures More preferred for these "personal prisoners", this immediately after a gallery-aimed snide reference by Audley to More's reputation for self-flagellation. That was when More stated unequivocally that he never as much as "flipp'd theyr forehead" when in his detention for "theyr secure kypeing", and that his family, servants and guests - even the involuntary ones - would also vouch for this. Audley, satisfied that his accusation was more salacious than More's rebuttal and had already raised the required few eyebrows amongst the onlookers, seemed to drop that line of questioning immediately. MacCulloch is technically correct therefore - at his trial torture in that context was brought up and as quickly dropped without any proof having been offered. But that wasn't why it had been brought up at all - just the mention of it while the gallery still entertained a juicy image of More whipping himself for God had served its purpose.

However torture, if a little more indirectly, entered the testimony in a rather more damning manner anyway. At the same trial More was reminded more than once that the court had Cuthbert Tunstall on stand-by as a witness, and though the bishop was never called to give verbal testimony More had a harder job refuting a written submission from his ex-"heretic hunting" companion (Tunstall had earlier been Bishop of London and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal while More, as Lord Chancellor, was Keeper of the Great Seal of the Realm - both with authority to identify, interrogate and execute anyone who threatened royal authority) in which Cuthbert had admitted in this letter their preferred modus operandi. Tunstall, probably even more assiduously than More, had worked hard at identifying purveyors and importers of heretical literature (for a Catholic bishop he had ended up with probably the largest personal library of heretical material in England at the time - which actually stood him in good stead later while changing horses mid-stream), including Tyndale's output, possession of which was automatically treasonable thanks to the Bluff One's proudly held role of "Defender of the Faith". This title Henry gleefully received from the pope is normally presented historically these days as simply a somewhat ironic point of triviality in light of his subsequent actions, but at the time had huge legal repercussions for alleged heretics who up to then could only be tried and convicted as such by an ecclesiastic court but could now, once the king had adopted this title, also face the much more easily prosecutable secular charge of treason for disdaining the king's character and function (respectively within the remit of the custodian of the king's "privy", his private character, and "realm", his public policies - hence Tunstall and More's interest in combining forces). Rather than arrest the actual importers and purveyors however, many of whom being foreign born merchants and diplomats whose detentions would have created international incident and were therefore pretty much immune to charges of treason in many cases anyway, they instead followed the paper trail to English recipients and concentrated on this end of the trade.

Tunstall, by all accounts a quiet and studious lad at heart with little appetite for either espionage or the more confrontational duties of public office*, recounted in his official submission many occasions when More himself had dragged a reluctant Cuthbert out of his cosy study to traipse around the capital in all weathers, together with an impressive and intimidating armed entourage, literally knocking on doors of those known to have such literature in their possession and putting them on notice (admittedly only the higher ranked potential heretics - More's "security" people could handle the lesser heretics on their own). Once notice was served that they were under suspicion, with instruction that leaving the locality would be seen as self-incrimination, they could then of course be detained at the king's pleasure at any point afterwards - and many were. More, on one occasion, rather infamously defended a particularly high number detained - even by the standards of the day - in one notorious nocturnal swoop of heretic-arrests in London and Oxford in one of his polemics (published as Chancellor, not as a private author) as being him simply rounding up "the devil's stinking martyrs" who would be "well burnt". These individuals, and many others detained in similar raids having also been identified largely with the help of Tunstall's intelligence, were processed rather more vigorously than those who More occasionally kept in his own private prison (another great source of intelligence of course), and while he may not have personally ordered torture for any specific individual, as Lord Chancellor he had as a matter of official record authorised their arrests, whatever "extraordinary rendition" (what a horrible expression) ensued, and of course their executions. Outright heretics were burnt, those more easily prosecuted as having committed treason beheaded, and the rest hanged (with optional drawing and quartering of course). Very few of these escaped torture along the way which, if not directly ordered by More, was certainly sanctioned by him and with a frequency that in itself was considered worth mentioning by the prosecution at his trial, a major plank of the prosecution case being that gross disobedience of a treasonable nature was little more than might be expected from someone who had already long exhibited a penchant for such unilaterally devised and self-serving policies even when enjoying royal favour in the past.

None of this is intended to portray More as exceptionally cruel, exceeding his authority, or even dishonest (though MacCulloch's seizure on one rebuttal to a snide attack by Audley within a very limited context smacks of being rather less than honest for any historian to pursue). It is simply to point out that More could form the basis of many different narratives depending on which interpretation is placed on which activities he got up to. Foxe, long before Hilary Mantel, certainly had a good go at putting an extremely negative narrative into public circulation. The rather more experienced and accomplished spinners within the Catholic Church went for the other extreme.

In terms of competing narratives - the "evil chancellor" versus the "stoic martyr" - there was no contest really once the issue of this particular interpretation of heresy, Catholic or Protestant, lost its political bite and the man could be recycled as dramatic fodder. An Elizabethan play about the guy, written only 50 years or so after his death, is famous these days for having additions made to it by a "third hand" which many believe belonged to our good friend Willy himself. The play portrays the guy pretty much as Bolt later did, but what is really interesting is the nature of the "third hand" additions themselves, which - just as you did above - defend his more cruel tendencies (which in the 1590s were pretty much not only a matter of written record but still what many people with longer or more selective memories wished to think first about the person) as simply a product of a time in which ordinary people were often pushed to extraordinary lengths within a highly toxic atmosphere of religious feeding frenzy - the very image Shakespeare (if it was him) also chose to adopt.

"For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another."

Which of course was all in the service of another narrative entirely - the one in which Bessie had ushered in a golden age of religious tolerance, at least when compared to what had preceded her and which was still rampant abroad. When this tolerance, however disingenuous an interpretation of reality this also might have been in the strictest analysis of actual events, was applied retrospectively and extended to notable people, then More - with no little help from the Catholic "spin" that had kept a particular narrative in circulation - could be redeemed and presented as the noble "victim of circumstance" with whom we are still so familiar in dramatic form (Mantel excepted - fair play to her).



* As Bishop of Durham later he doubled as an ad-hoc "ambassador" to Scotland and once rather endearingly wrote to his episcopal equivalent in Edinburgh entreating him please not to request too many personal encounters between them - the better to maintain the "illusion of being gentlemen" who could better settle dispute with "a reason that God more readily imparts through a man's pen than his tongue".

I haven't much to add. An excellent post, nordmann - essay, even! I learnt a lot from it, really! Stuff about Tunstall particularly interesting. I remember reading about him and the Richard Hunne affair, and thinking he was a nasty piece of work. Good to be reminded of these things. I had dug out my Peter Ackroyd biography, and was going to offer more on More, but won't. No more to be said, really, except let's have it on record here that during the time More was Chancellor of England (three years?) only six heretics were burnt; six too many, I know. They were Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, Thomas Dusgate, and James Bainham. All had a trial, and, what is important, all had the chance to recant. Has to be considered that some, like Little Bilney, definitely wanted to die, to "go up to Jerusalem", as he put it. His friends had him on suicide watch long before he was arrested. Martyrdom attracts unbalanced people, and poor Little Bilney was, as Hugh Latimer said, "a simple, good soul". Good indeed, but hardly "simple". A driven man, tortured by his faith, too good for this world. But that is another story.

Also, it should be noted that More swore, "as helpe me, God" that he had never tortured prisoners. As Ackroyd points out, More was not a man falsely to invoke the deity, and it can be believed that the heretics whom he examined did indeed suffer 'neuer...so much as a fylyppe on the forhed'.

And we should remember here that Mantel's tragic hero did cynically and ruthlessly arrange the legal murder of five innocent men - and an innocent woman - all disposed of in a week. And there were were a fair few others hunted out and destroyed besides those six during Crumb's time in power, including More himself and the aged Bishop Fisher. More's six heretics were at least actually guilty as charged - they admitted and gloried in their guilt -  even if we in the 21st century flatly reject the notion that heresy is a crime, let alone one that should be punishable by burning.

Just will add a comment from John Guy which is perhaps interesting here on this thread about narratives and control. His chapter, "Heresy Hunter?" (his question mark), in his excellent biography, Thomas More, looks at all the evidence for and against More as sadistic inquisitor. Guy quotes P. Collinson's Truth, Lies, and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century Protestant Historiography about Foxe, the man who spread the black rumours about our man - notes Foxe was a commentator who really did try to obtain evidence from "credible witnesses", but somehow things, as they do, got twisted: Foxe, as we all like to believe about ourselves and others, did not deliberately propagate fictions, but he, again perhaps as we all do, "wove his material into forms that were as fictive as they were factual". It is a tempting thing to do.

Bit of a muddled post this - always difficult following you -  but I am trying to type this and do something else at the same time.

Deleted.

Just remember that the six heretics you mention were those who were processed through ecclesiastic court first (to confirm heresy, a verdict outside the scope of even the king to determine). More, as Lord Chancellor and using the "Fidei Defensor" royal function as yardstick for measuring sedition, chose as a rule not to rely on ecclesiastic jurisdiction when pursuing so-called "heretics" anyway. It is difficult to enumerate precisely how many people he dispatched using the much easier channel of King's Court to prosecute for treasonable activity (as Lord Chancellor his name was invoked as a formality on practically all death warrants issued against people of rank), but we do know - again from Tunstall's written submission to More's own trial - that they both discussed each "heresy" case and decided that only those who could be demonstrated to have "offended God" (in the early 16th century this amounted to preaching to large congregations as well as committing their theses to the new-fangled printing process thingy) should be allowed to go through the ecclesiastic process while those who had "offended the King", even if only by repute, should be processed using the functions of state within More's control. Tunstall mentioned "a hundred souls for the king against one for the Lord", suggesting a ratio that would push More's rather more efficient method of dealing with "heretics" closer to the 600 number during his three years of office. The number of course could even be much higher given that anyone being prosecuted for their heretical views, if discovered that they had other more secular crimes to answer for (and as 16th century English people of property almost all of course invariably had), tended to be tried on those grounds rather than on  the more esoteric issue of faith (difficult under a monarch who was by then blowing hot and cold on these issues anyway).

A related sidestep, but very relevant to this discussion about narrative disguising reality, would be the question "Why to this day should the queen of the United Kingdom give daily thanks to Thomas More's obsession with prosecuting heretics?". The answer, as with most things, is to be found in real estate and Her Madge's present ownership of about 30% of Greater London, including 90% of the City of Westminster. More didn't just execute people - he was fantastically effective at confiscating private property and diligently handing it over to the Bluff One. It would be interesting in fact to compare lands acquired through this method against the rather more infamous confiscation of monastery lands that started a decade or so later - if only we could, for reasons too obvious to mention the Land Registry records in the UK tend however to report those pages in the ledgers as "unfortunately missing". And best of luck if you ever wish to trace acquisition of "palatinate territory" (ie. confiscated land) by the so-called "Duchy of Lancaster" (a dukedom invented by England's most effective and invisible king ever, John of Gaunt, purely to acquire property the acquisition of which might be embarrassing to even the most brazenly avaricious monarch - back in the day when people in power actually understood the concept of embarrassment).

Which is all just a nudge on my part of course to remind people to please look beyond the controlled narrative. There is a reason why we are steered into believing that all conspiracy theories are the reserve of fools. The best ones, the ones which actually worked and in which no fool was ever involved, yielded much more profit to a select few than any proponent of the notion of Neil Armstrong hopping around a TV studio suspended on wires could even envisage.

How determined you are to damn Thomas More!  

Of course, he did actually resign his position - and so risked losing everything, which he did: career, home, family, life. Was his decision to abandon his position just over his reluctance to take the Oath of Supremacy, or was it that he had simply had enough of it all? Had serving "mammon" so diligently, as you suggest he had, led to self-disgust, guilt, a real fear, not just for the Church, but for what he knew was happening to his own soul? I've been thinking about More's writings while incarcerated in the Tower, especially his A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. Are there hints in that work that he had been tormented by regret and guilt - had even considered suicide, except it was a mortal sin? His consideration of Psalm 91 in that work is intriguing, especially his translation of the word usually given as "pestilence". More says "busyness".

His character Anthony defines the second temptation as pride. He interprets "the arrow flying by day" to consist of temptations that find their source in prosperity, and the third temptation as covetousness -  “the busyness walking about in the darknesses*” - the frantic pursuit of riches, worldly possessions and status.

More may not have been a saint, but as sinners of the Tudor age go, he at least seems to have examined his conscience. You have to give him that.

But perhaps it is time, as you indicate, to steer this thread away from More and the rest. Let's have a look at the British monarchy and their various attempts to control the narrative, keeping us all in the dark while laughing all the way to the bank. The latest attempt at narrative control, the book published today about the unfortunate couple who are now being unkindly referred to as the Duke and Duchess of Disney, has gone spectacularly wrong.


* KJV is "...the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday." Wonder what the original Hebrew word was? The Douay-Rheims Bible, like More, gives it as "business".

I have no reason to damn the man, or even any interest in doing so. As a politician like any other he stands to be condemned or praised on the basis of his policies, how he implemented them and to what degree he succeeded or failed. While it is tempting to continue to judge the man based on a prescribed narrative in which he figures as a form of tragic hero, and within his own conscience he may even have subscribed to that narrative himself, it is actually difficult to find even one thing from his political career which you could hand on heart claim benefited anyone else besides himself or his boss.

You are right however, in my opinion, to draw attention to the fact that as a politician he was in that tiny minority of the breed who at least exhibited that he possessed such a thing as a conscience, and was eloquent enough to express it, though it must be said only apparently when it suited him to be viewed as a man capable of such introspection. And it may even have been that same conscience that ultimately led to him coming a political cropper. However one is also obliged to wonder by the same token where that conscience had been as a younger man clawing his way up through the political ranks. What did he feel, for example, about the sitting MPs for Great Yarmouth and London who were both ousted by Wolsey to make way for his own political advance (the latter, a man called Burnham, who ended up attainted when he complained, though never convicted of any crime, and who conveniently died in the tower shortly afterwards). Did he lie awake at night after his promotion to Master of Requests by a royal committee delighted at the speed and efficiency with which he appropriated lands and money for the exchequer from the poorer people in society as a prosecuting lawyer? Did he even once attempt to justify - theologically or morally - any one of his successful prosecutions for heresy against individuals whose "crime" was often merely possession of the very same banned literature that graced his own bookshelves at home? By what conceivable mental gymnastics did he ever possibly attempt to convince himself that his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (not to be confused with his other Chancellor position) was to the public's benefit? If one is going to subscribe to the narrative of the tortured conscience then surely these, and many other little anomalies which would have been unavoidable within a meteoric political career such as his, must also be examined as clues to the man's real character, especially if the prescribed narrative is to be believed as one based in fact and not just superficially so?

When it comes to the present British royals and narrative control I am less inclined to believe that they are losing their grip in that respect and more likely to acknowledge that they are still beneficiaries of some very skilled practitioners who do little else but control these people's interface with public attention. A fundamental function of a live narrative broadcast in real-time is to distract and divert attention from something the narrative itself will never address. Controversy, ridicule, scandalous and salacious information are all sure-fire and well attested distractions when introduced for general consumption - so the more stupidity on their part that is artfully inserted into public discourse by persons unknown the more I'm inclined to wonder just what exactly it might be that we are being steered away from.

nordmann wrote:

However one is also obliged to wonder by the same token where that conscience had been as a younger man clawing his way up through the political ranks. What did he feel, for example, about the sitting MPs for Great Yarmouth and London who were both ousted by Wolsey to make way for his own political advance (the latter, a man called Burnham, who ended up attainted when he complained, though never convicted of any crime, and who conveniently died in the tower shortly afterwards). Did he lie awake at night after his promotion to Master of Requests by a royal committee delighted at the speed and efficiency with which he appropriated lands and money for the exchequer from the poorer people in society as a prosecuting lawyer? Did he even once attempt to justify - theologically or morally - any one of his successful prosecutions for heresy against individuals whose "crime" was often merely possession of the very same banned literature that graced his own bookshelves at home? If one is going to subscribe to the narrative of the tortured conscience then surely these, and many other little anomalies which would have been unavoidable within a meteoric political career such as his, must also be examined as clues to the man's real character, especially if the prescribed narrative is to be believed as based in fact?

I am sure he was guilty as charged by you. Most of us, looking back at our ambitious younger self - or selves - wriggle a bit. At least More ended up asking mercy of his God, unlike Cromwell, whose abject final letter sent from the Tower his King - "Most gracious Prince: I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!" -  is very difficult to read with any compassion. I was going to bring up Richard Whiting -  the last Abbot of Glastonbury - who, at nearly eighty, was dragged on a hurdle to the terrible death reserved for traitors. That was Cromwell's doing. I suppose the argument was that the old Abbot, head of one of the richest abbeys in England, deserved everything he got. But it was a bad business. Likewise Cromwell's dealing with the Pole family, especially the wretched Geoffrey Pole who was actually let off -  shrewd psychological torture that - freedom - when living is a worse punishment than death. This particular Pole tried to commit suicide after interrogation by Cromwell - by eating a cushion, possibly the strangest attempted suicide in history. Pole had been "persuaded" to betray his family. But had he also been threatened with physical torture and a traitor's death - but no merciful beheading? Had he been almost frightened to death, like poor Mark Smeaton? Cromwell was a master at torturing without torture after all. The wretched man attempted suicide a second time after his release from custody. But enough - we can both find examples of "bad business" from both More and from Cromwell, so perhaps it is time to move the thread on.

And yes, I am sure we are all being successfully diverted by the doings of the Woke Ones and their little royal Wokelet. Nothing like a bit of royal gossip to keep us Brits all agog and happy. Not as boring as Brexit trade deals - or lack of them - or as distressing as the coming economic ruin, not to mention worry about autumn Second Wave supplies of Dettol and loo rolls. Never mind a vaccine and a civilised agreement with the EU, we just await the next season of The Crown with bated breath.

I wrote:

And yes, I am sure we are all being successfully diverted by the doings of the Woke Ones and their little royal Wokelet. Nothing like a bit of royal gossip to keep us Brits all agog and happy. Not as boring as Brexit trade deals - or lack of them - or as distressing as the coming economic ruin, not to mention worry about autumn Second Wave supplies of Dettol and loo rolls. Never mind a vaccine and a civilised agreement with the EU, we just await the next season of The Crown with bated breath.

Suspect I have missed the real point about monarchy that nordmann was trying to make. Yes, I suppose the English people - sad lot that we are - have indeed been successfully distracted and diverted for going on a thousand years. We did have a dose of reality 1649 - 1660, but God, it was awful! Cromwell (Oliver) was hopeless at distraction and diversion - the entire nation nearly died of boredom!

MM has told me I'm not to delete anything, so I won't.

PS Little note from Cromwell's (Thomas) memoranda: "The Abbot of Reading to be tried and executed." Whatever his sins, I really can't imagine More, a lawyer who does seem to have had some respect for the law, writing such a thing. Even Mantel seems worried: "He has seen the evidence and the indictments; there is no doubt of the verdict, so why pretend there is?"  Wince.

Temperance wrote:

Thomas More

The Thomas Mores and Thomas Moores are thick on the ground today. There’s Henry VIII’s chancellor above and Thomas Moore (Captain Tom) veteran of the Burma Campaign, who featured on the BBC today with regard to the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War. But it doesn’t end there. I was perusing a copy of Life of Lord Byron: with his Letters and Journals published in 1829 by the Irish writer Thomas Moore a friend of Byron’s and executor of his estate. In the work Moore refers to Byron’s martial ancestry:

'it is sufficient, perhaps, to say, that, at the siege of Calais under Edward III., and on the fields, memorable in their respective eras, of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor, the name of the Byrons reaped honours both of rank and fame'

What Moore may or may not have realised is that also present at Crecy and Calais was Sir Thomas de la More, an Oxfordshire knight who was himself a contemporary historian. And there’s a whole historiography regarding what should or should not be attributed to him. De la More was the patron of another historian Geoffrey the Baker also known as Walter of Swinbroke or Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke (just to complicate matters). The Elizabethan and Jacobean historian William Camden suggested that de la More wrote in French and merely employed Swinbroke to translate his work into Latin which Camden said was common practice at the time. Writing 250 years after Camden, however, the Victorian historian William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, suggested that the work was all Swinbroke’s, with de la More as patron taking the credit. Writing 50 years after Stubbs, the Edwardian historian Edward Thompson took a middle view suggesting that some work was by de la More and translated by Swinbroke while other work was by Swinbroke and attributed to de la More. Take your pick.

P.S. Thompson was also a champion of the theory that the play Sir Thomas More was written by William Shakespeare but that’s perhaps for another thread.