Thousands of years of long toes
Anne Chisholm
SARUM by Edward Rutherfurd
Century Hutchinson, £9.95
0 n the first page of this mammoth historical saga about life in and around Salisbury, it is very cold and dark and the date is 20,000 BC. Next, 'Centuries passed; thousands of years passed, and nothing changed, nor seemed likely to.' However,
by page 897, the last, it is 1985 and an appeal has been launched to save the spire of Salisbury cathedral. In between, we have been spared almost nothing, or so it feels, of Edward Rutherfurd's dogged, remorseless researches into the history of his native patch. It must have required considerable stamina to write this book. Unfortunately it demands exceptional sta- mina to read it.
The story really begins with Hwyll, Tep, Ulla and Akun on Salisbury Plain in 7500 BC. There is something dispiriting about the certain knowlege that you are going to be grappling with their descendants and recognising odd traits like deviousness and long toes for thousands of years to come. Rutherfurd is not an inventive or stylish enough writer — his prose is clear, but monotonous — to avoid the obvious pit- falls of this genre of historical writing. We cannot help knowing that after the Romans leave there will be a bad patch, or that the arrival of a rat off a ship from France in 1348 is not good news. None of the people stays around long enough to be engaging and there are sadly pathetic attempts at background and judgment: 'Nero was unst- able, though brilliant', we are told, and `The conversion of the Anglo Saxons had taken time'.
We do, however, come to trust Ruther- furd's reliability, which is something. If he says that by AD44 the fields round Sarum were 200 feet long and cross-ploughed, you believe him. I am now also convinced that Alfred the Great had piles, the Druids smelled awful and that urine was used to dissolve dyes for woollen cloth. No doubt the two facts connect. The human dramas are less convincing; every now and then a wench gets raped or a gay monk makes a pass at a novice. What did it mean? Were such things done? But on the whole it is fact, not imagination, that fuels Ruther- furd's vast enterprise.
Not before time, about a third of the way through, the cathedral gets built. Osmund the Mason hides a prehistoric fertility goddess carved by Hwyll up the tower (some symbolism here, perhaps?) and his- tory mercifully speeds up a bit. Quite soon the Reformation is causing trouble, and then it's `the king and his terrible doctrine of divine right . . . in her heart, she cursed him'. A young Shockley (as the name hints, of Saxon descent) goes to the New World, which enables his descendant to reappear as the glamorous yank during the second world war. In the meantime, Mr Shakespeare has acted at Wilton and Mr Constable has painted some lovely views of the cathedral.
This book is not really much fun, but it is instructive. The bookshops of Wiltshire will doubtless be selling it hard this sum- mer to earnest tourists seeking to learn about our heritage. It would be a godsend to any child or parent stuck with a holiday project about everyday life in ancient Salisbury.
Previous page
