by Steve Tanham
He did not know how many were up there… Centurion Calogerus stared at the edge of the plateau above him. The vast hill-fort rose from the chalk lands below in what appeared to be a series of grassy layers. There were no walls that he could see. This would be quick… As the dawning sun of the year’s longest day crested the edge of … Read More Patterned in Dorset (4)
by Steve Tanham
It is said that a chapel dedicated to St Catherine once stood on this hill, looking down at the little town of Cerne Abbas, below. The original St Catherine was a pre-Christian figure about whom very little is known. She was associated with the symbol of an eight-armed wheel – the famous ‘Catherine wheel’, remembered now in the name of a firework…. Those visiting … Read More Patterned in Dorset (3)
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Seven. He – the man with the packing cases – picks up his empty tea cup and begins to walk towards the small table near the entrance door of the large room in which the mystery play ran its course. It’s important that everything is cleared, he thinks; restored to how it was, pristine… Laughing to himself, he realises that he … Read More Jewels in the Claw (viii)
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Six. The tea cup is empty, but he continues to hold it – lost, happily, in his reveries on the edge of what was the stage, the royal court floor… He looks down at the cup and then lifts it to toast the great lady from the Saracen world, an unfinished woman who surprised a Queen of England… or did she? … Read More Jewels in the Claw (vii)
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Five. Sipping the tea, his hands clasp around the warm cup. The gesture reminds him of the way she took her husband’s arm, at the end of that first glimpse of what The Queen had in store for him. She, John Dee’s wife, Jane, never entertained the notion that she would not stand, shoulder to shoulder, with her foolish but magnificent husband … Read More Jewels in the Claw (vi)
by Steve Tanham
‘Around the Sun’, my mighty oak returns Resplendent, emerging green Exquisite tones of life reveal What words cannot That life overwhelms The darkness ©Stephen Tanham
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Four. Kind hands pass him a hot tea. He sits on the edge of what was the Royal Court, sipping and watching the ghosts… Many kind faces came to life in this, now-unstructured space – but it was heavily structured then… It takes but little effort to re-animate its dancing atoms… Sir Francis Drake is a clever man. The naval mastermind … Read More Jewels in the Claw (v)
by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part One And now we should go back to an older time – a much older time – to flesh out the story of the islands of Orkney, north-east of the Scottish mainland. The man in the picture is Gordon Childe. It’s 1927. He’s the newly-appointed Abercrombie Professor of Prehistoric Archeology at the University of Edinburgh. The photo shows him emerging from … Read More An Orcadian Diary (2) Before History
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Three. The line of packing cases is nearly complete. The man looks down at the three chairs in the East, one white, one purple and one red. The symbolism of the outer two was plain: the Tudor colours, central features of the royal Tudor Rose – the white of House York merged with the red of House Lancaster. Queen Elizabeth had … Read More Jewels in the Claw (iv)
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by Steve Tanham
Continued from Part Two The man with the packing case pauses as he passes the place that was the East, the place from which the Queen began her direction of proceedings in this, her favourite palace of Nonsuch, in 1590’s South London. There is little left of the ritual-drama space now. Just the mental image of the chequered floor that was the Royal Court … Read More Jewels in the Claw (iii)
by Steve Tanham
It ends beneath the ground; it always does. The bones of soldiers buried in fine ceremony, though the organic memory passed long before the corpse was glorified. Collective kindness crumpled by division in the face of another despot whipping up the many faces of our unhappiness. But, perhaps, not always… His name is Johnny Claude. He’s ninety-eight years old – the oldest man on … Read More An Orcadian Diary (1) Silent Guns
by Steve Tanham
To find that time and circumstance Had placed us in an isle of fertile space Where others led us to a place A ring wherein the sky and earth would quarter meet There is no sense of wonder deeper Than that of being ‘brought’ and left To gaze as heavens’ hands caress the land and sea And consciousness completes the longing three Strange markers … Read More Rings of Sky and Earth
Sun in Gemini 
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