Classical Odes List of poems in Contents Preface on Classical Odes xv The Principle Behind the Order of the these Odes xx Book One: A Tudor Knot Preface 23 I At Otley: Timber-Framed Tradition 24 Pastoral Ode: Landslide, The End of Great Britain 26 At Chartwell with Churchill 29 At Colchester’s Keep 33 At Chalfont St Giles: Shakespeare’s Dark Lady 35 At Caernarvon Castle 39 At Tilty Battlefield 41 At Scadbury 42 At Pengersick Castle 45 At Raleigh’s Sherborne 46 Contemplations by a Sundial 49 At Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Compton Castle 50 In Boulge Churchyard 52 In Letheringham Priory Church 53 Ancestral Seat: At John Hagger’s Bourn 55 At Netherhall 57 In Dark Age Angle-Land 58 On Curtius Leaping into the Earth 60 At Butley Priory Gatehouse 62 At St Osyth’s Priory 63 In Edward de Vere’s Castle Hedingham 66 At Royal Sutton Hoo: Raedwald and the End of England 69 In Anglo-Saxon Suffolk 70 Sixty in Lavenham Priory 71 South Wraxall Manor, Wiltshire 73 In Otley Hall’s Medieval Gardens* 74 II A Tudor Youth 77 At St Mawes Castle: The Defence of England 79 Imagination and Reality: The Globe Actors Search for Realism 81 Sheep at Tilty Abbey 82 Imagining Tudor Players in the Plahouse 84 At the Bell: The Past 86 At the Bourn Fête: Ancestors 87 Stone Circle: Reflections on Leedon Tor, Dartmoor 88 At Holcombe Court, Devon: Tower 91 At Little Coggeshall Abbey 92 In the National Gallery 94 At Columbine Hall 95 Round Hedingham Castle 97 With Holbein’s Ambassadors on 11 April 1533 99 Among Otley Hall’s Enthusiasts 101 III Second Pastoral Ode: Landslide Unchanged: The End of England 104 At Helmingham Hall 107 At the Earl of Southampton’s Titchfield 109 At Sandringham 113 At and With Somerleyton 115 At Spains Hall, Finchingfield 117 At Shake-speare’s Globe 119 In Westminster Abbey: Sanctuary Pavement 121 At Middle Temple Hall 126 In Rutland’s England 129 Farewell to my Tudor Knot 134 In Somerset’s Avalon 138 In the Empress of India’s London 140 In Westminster: The Passing of an Era 144 At Surrey’s Tomb, Framlingham 145 In De Vere’s Hackney 149 At Beckingham Palace: Talent of a Meritocracy 152 At the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, London: The End of a Golden Age 154 At the Thaxted Horn Dance 161 In Poets’ Corner with Marlowe: Marigold 162 At Tudor Otley Hall: The End of England 166 IV In the De Vere Society Library, Otley Hall: Caleygreyhound 168 At Horham Hall 170 Outside the Old Bailey: A Ruthless Queen? 172 In Search of Bartholomew Gosnold’s Boyhood Home 177 On Harrowdown Hill 179 In Old Charlestown 184 In the Houses of Parliament 187 At Roxwell Church 189 In the Carlton Club 190 At Cistercian Tilty Abbey 193 In Buckingham Palace’s State Rooms 194 At Normanhurst School: A Lost Leader 199 At Bancroft’s with the Conservatives: Plots and England’s Decadence 204 In the Commons: Coup 207 With the Ofsted Inspectors 209 Tracking Shake-speare 210 Return to Stratford* 213 The End of Otley Hall 224 The Conquest of England 228 Book Two: In Europe’s Ruins Preface 237 I At the Gates of San Sebastian: The Fall of Rome* 238 On Delos: Island of Apollo 239 In Porto Cheli 241 On Skiros 242 At Versailles Palace: Palace of Art 244 At the Chapel of the Holy Blood, Bruges 248 At Waterloo 250 At Rembrandt’s House, Amsterdam 251 At Beethoven’s Birthplace, Bonn 252 In Habsburg Prague, with Knights and King of Jerusalem 255 At the Villa Careggi, Florence 259 At San Marco, Florence 263 By the Arno, Pisa 266 On the Führerbunker, Berlin 268 In Potsdam 269 At Jasna Gora, Czestochowa 270 In Cracow 272 In Old Buda 275 In the Serbian Orthodox Church at Szentendre 277 Summer Palaces 278 At Mozart’s Salzburg 282 In Rothenburg: Blood and Rose 283 In Obersalzberg 285 In Hitler’s Nuremberg 287 At Goethe’s Houses, Weimar 289 Auschwitz and Immortality 292 II In Pythagorion, on Polycrates’ Samos 294 In Byron’s Ithaca 297 With Munich’s Wittelsbachs 299 In the Harz Mountains, on Mount Brocken 301 On Montgomery’s Lüneburg Heath 303 At Rheims’ Jerusalem 304 On and under Athens’ Acropolis: The First Greek Theatre 305 In Plato’s Athens and Eleusis: The Mysteries of Death 309 At Paestum 311 At the Grotto of the Sibyl, Cumae 313 At Pompeii 315 At Virgil’s Tomb 318 On Vesuvius 320 At the Villa Jovis, Capri 322 At Herculaneum 323 At Poppaea’s Villa, Oplontis 324 A Leaping Diver in Sybarite Paestum 326 In Delphi: Oracles, Inevitability and Freewill 328 In Pheidias’s Workshop 331 At Nestor’s Palace, Pylos 333 In Cleon’s Pylos 335 At Byzantine Mistras 336 At Menelaos’s Palace, Sparta 338 At Aegina’s Temple of Aphaia: Athenian Sea Power 340 On St John’s Patmos 342 Among the Knights of Rhodes 344 At Knossos: Minotaur 346 At Sounion: Dreaming of Empires 348 III The Admiral’s House in Atlantis 351 At Daphni 353 At the Pantheon 354 At Horace’s Sabine Farm 356 At Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli 358 At the House of Augustus, Rome 360 In the Vatican 362 At the Ara Pacis, Rome 365 At Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome 367 In Domitilla’s Catacomb, Rome 369 In the Sistine Chapel 371 In Keats’ House, Rome 373 In Dante’s Verona 375 At Catullus’s Sirmione 378 At the Doge’s Palace, Venice 380 In Edward de Vere’s Venice 383 At Rennes-Le-Château: Mission 1891 387 At Carcassonne and Montségur: Castles of Light 389 On Motya and the Ephemerality of Nationalism 392 Etna: Eruption of Intense Power 394 At the Turin Shroud: The Face of Christ 396 In Syracuse: The End of Empires 400 IV In the Baroque Royal Palace of the Defunct House of Savoy, Turin: On the Ephemerality 402 of Monarchs In Nero’s Golden Palace 403 Among Botticelli’s Rediscovered Illustrations of Dante 405 A Walk through the Palatine into Julian Rome 406 At Bracciano Castle, near Rome 407 Looking at Cleopatra’s Palace 408 On the Rediscovered Library at Herculaneum 410 Among Lisbon’s Discoverers 412 At the Bourbon Royal Palace, Madrid 415 At Philip the Second’s El Escorial: The Unity of Knowledge 417 In El Greco’s Toledo 421 In Moorish Cordoba: An Orange Tree 423 In the Moorish Alhambra, Granada: Paradise, Oneness 426 At the Moorish Alcazar, Seville 430 At Agamemnon’s Mycenae and Epidavros: Justice 434 At Epidavros: Temple-Sleep 437 At Chania’s Hill 439 In Selinunte’s Carthaginian Settlement 441 Among Aeneas’s Trojans 442 At Su Nuraxi, in Sardinia 446 In Colonial Menorca 448 A Teenager in Greece: Youth and Age 449 In Aphrodite’s Cyprus: Body and Spiritual Beauty 451 In Turkish Cyprus 454 In EOKA’s Cyprus: End of Empire 457 In Aquitaine 462 In the Fortunate Isles with Columbus 465 In Maspalomas Wellness Centre 467 Near Baiae’s Oracle of the Dead: Gateway to the Underworld 469 In Paphos’s City of the Dead 473 In Euro-City, Brussels* 475 Book Three: A Global Sway Preface 483 I At the Bank Managers’ Dinner, Grosvenor House Hotel 484 At Troy VI 485 In Hellenistic Pergamum 487 In Ephesus 490 At Didyma’s Oracle 492 At Dostoevsky’s Apartment, St Petersburg 494 At the Winter Palace, St Petersburg 496 At the Yusupov Palace, St Petersburg 497 In Conference Yalta 499 At Chekhov’s House, Yalta 500 In the Kremlin 502 At Tolstoy’s Winter House, Khamovniki 505 On Martha’s Vineyard 507 At Jamestown, with the Founder of America 509 On Top of Jefferson’s Mountain 512 On Roanoke Island 514 Whale-Watching under Snæfellesjökull 519 In the Westman Islands off Iceland 520 Petrol Blockade 522 At the Tomb of Kha: On the Transcendence of Mortality 523 Watching Revolution in Belgrade 525 In Stephen Ward’s Web 526 Reflections on the Nice Summit 530 II At the American Embassy, London 534 At Cyrene: Apollo’s Bride 536 Near Leptis Magna 537 At Sabratha 539 Return to Tripoli 541 At El Djem Amphitheatre: Desert Rose 547 At Carthage 549 In the British Library: Proofs of Genocide 551 At Chingford Assembly Hall: Leaders After Laeken 554 In the Global Economy with Bill Clinton 556 In the Lord Lieutenant of Essex’s Yorktown 558 In Tilty: Star of Bethlehem 561 At Sulgrave Manor 565 On the Queen’s Visit to Ipswich: Dissident 567 In Global Eden 570 Commonwealth Games: Peace Through War 572 III In the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Suzhou 574 In Shanghai’s New Manhattan 578 Among Yichang Museum’s Ming Treasures 580 In the Yangtze’s Three Gorges 581 At the Foot of Baoding Mountain 585 In People’s Hall Square, Chongqing 588 In the Hall of a Hundred Grasses, Chongqing 589 With Xi’an’s Terracotta Army 590 With the Tang Court Musicians 593 In the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong 594 In the Forbidden City, Beijing 597 In the Taoist Temple of Heaven, Beijing 599 In Cixi’s Summer Palace 601 At the Beijing Opera: Moving Boat 602 On the Great Wall of China 603 At Yongle’s Tomb, Changling 605 In the Jamestown Fort: The Discovery of Bartholomew Gosnold 606 On Iraq: Peace or War? 609 After the Iraq War: Reflections on the Fall of Baghdad 615 On Stansted’s Second Runway 619 In Egypt: Tyranny and Armageddon* 621 Book Four: The Western Universe Preface 633 I The Eclipse of Reason (Or: Totality)* 634 At Theydon Garnon Church 636 On the Order in the Universe 638 At Coombe House, Devon: A New Millennium 639 In North Tawton Churchyard 641 Wedding at Otley Hall 642 Hearing Aid: Retirement and Art 645 Accident 647 At the Bank’s Dinner at Grosvenor House: Turnover 648 Among Neanderthals 650 At the Employment Law Seminar: Law Like Old Age 651 At the Chingford Carol Service: Christian Religion 652 At Coopersale Hall’s Christmas Concert: Education 654 Among Brueghel’s Peasants: On the Artist as Truth-Teller 655 At the Start of a New Millennium, the Sun Rising against Aquarius 656 Blood Test: Anti-Phospholipids 659 Eclipse: Moon Drenched in Blood 660 At the Osteopath: Soul and Body 662 At St Andrew’s Church, Alexandra Palace 663 England Seen from the Bell