Showing posts with label Margot K Juby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Margot K Juby. Show all posts

Monday 15 April 2019

Gilles de Rais was Innocent, OK!


So not last Sunday but the one before that Ed (with the cap) and Dmitry visited to take even more footage of Margot for a short documentary. They chose to use the paddocks off Snuff Mill Lane which on a Sunday afternoon is dog walkers' rush hour. Film making may sound interesting but unless you're stuck behind the camera or making the decisions it's a just big drag so I walked off and left them to it. Which is a shame because on their way back they encountered some native youffs who entertained by "mooning" them so I'm told.


The reason for this tomfoolery is that Margot has written a book, The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais, about how he was not the devil worshipping, child abusing, mass murderer of French history but rather a bit of a saintly patsy set up and used by the power players in 15th century Brittany. By going over the trial records in detail and asking simple questions (How can Gilles be in two places at once? and how did no-one notice a pile of bones/rotting cadavers lying around in a busy castle?) it is a brilliant and at many times humorous demolition job, nay polemic, on the long accepted 'historical' narrative, concocted mainly by a lazy French cleric and others who really ought to have known better, that bears scant or no relation to the records or indeed common sense ... I may be a bit biased but never forget: ... Gilles de Rais was Innocent, Ok!

And neither was he the inspiration for Bluebeard of folk and fairy tales as so many think. 

You can find out more about (and maybe buy) this book here


A touch of camera envy ...


They're smiling 'cos they're going home in one piece ...

Monday 21 June 2010

Memory under threat


Even as  I posted this statue on Thursday I was knew that something was not right. Notice the strange marks on the ground, as if something has been removed. This statue has been castrated. 

But I couldn't find how it used to look anywhere on the web ( try Googling "Mankind under Threat" and see what you find!!!).
Fortunately, a very close friend of mine took a picture (below) of the original in 1986. Now the title "Mankind Under Threat" makes a bit more sense (though not much). The iron bars give it a more menacing air. Why they were removed and who by, I don't know; but my guess is that Hull Council had one of their perennial fits of stupidity and took an angle grinder to them. 

As it stands now, it's more "Mankind don't care at all"; no?

I think they should bring back those prison bars and give this thing some meaning again!

Photo by Margot K. Juby

The statue is the work of Jimmy Boyle, once said  to be the most violent man in Scotland and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. It was gifted to the city by Susan and Alec Horsley who founded Northern Foods which until 2005 had its HQ in Hull but has now shifted to Leeds.

Thank you Margot , I owe you.