But I always thought the Brits didn’t grasp it until the Arab nations learnt of it from China, and brought it across continents to Europe. Gunpowder shapes have been around since the tenth century in China. There is no magic about the gunpowder dragons: just mastery of the art of painting with explosives. Who can forget the astonishment of the Shire dwellers at Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party when dragons swoop over their heads? It is an aspect of Gandalf”s character of which we see little: he is a magician first and foremost, but he has a little sideline in science and technology. I thought dragon fireworks were a fancy of JRR Tolkein’s, a whimsical manipulation of gunpowder conducted by his arch-wizard Gandalf.
They jousted and wrestled, and on the occasions Henry lost he did not do so gracefully.īut Wolsey was a stickler for detail, and the closing ceremony went ahead as planned.
But the whole business had gone a bit sour. It was a splendid event, sumptuous, with no expense spared to parade each country’s greatness. How much more, then, should the English and French have carefully considered a couple of weeks just outside Guînes? It was designed to hail the ceremonial mass said by arch-organiser Cardinal Wolsey.įriends have to think very carefully before they holiday together. It was released -or should I say, let off – on June 23rd, the day before the English packed up their bags and trundled back across the channel homewards. Not according to the Royal Collection, the curators of Historic Royal Palace’s beautiful things. As far as I knew, anything resembling a dragon had died out some time before.Īh, I thought, it is symbolism. What was a dragon doing, flying above The Field? This was the famous meeting between Henry VIII and King Frances I of France, which took place in June 1520. So I took my camera and I snapped and I snapped and I snapped, detail after detail so that I could blow up images when I got home and put them on the wall and think about them.īut even standing there, this character jumped out at me.
And the painting wouldn’t fit in the toilet anyway. It is the sort of picture, my husband would say, that one should have in one’s toilet: endless detail to contemplate and re-contemplate, on which to speculate, to stare and stare and still see something new.īut when one is cruising Hampton Court with a clutch of three endlessly inquisitive children one does not have that luxury. I stood in front of The Field Of The Cloth of Gold, marvelling.