In response to Sylvia Alexander-Vine’s article in the last Whistler comparing Napoleon and Wellington, it is important not to leave our readers with the impression that the latter’s only contribution to Western civilisation was one single piece of enlightened legislation, the Wellington boot, and advice for military cadets on how best to deploy cavalry, cannon and troops armed with muskets. Sylvia is, nevertheless, correct to say that Napoleon’s legacy as both the greatest general of his age (which even Wellington conceded) but also the greatest creative statesman, has been of much greater significance not only to France, but to Europe. Continue reading Sylvia Should be More Generous→
Thursday – Sunday 26 – 29 May
It’s the last weekend in Brighton Festival, and SNGSA will be running a refreshment tent in the Rest Garden while the Globe Theatre is in residence.
Big thank-you to everyone who is helping with this!
Saturday 4 June – 11am – 4pm St Nicholas Summer Fete
SNGSA will have a little plant stall – if you have any plants to donate could you drop them off around 10 am at the Church?
Sunday 5 June – 12 – 4pm Big Picnic, Big Lunch
Come and join your neighbours in the Rest Garden. (This year with added portaloos)
There will be lots of things to occupy children, so that adults can have an uninterrupted chat!
Story-telling, finger puppets from recycled materials, musicians, bouncy castle. Free entry.
Help needed from 10 am putting up bunting and gazebos. Many hands make light work.
During the picnic – help at SNGSA table at the entrance. It will involve handing out info about the day and about SNGSA as people arrive, signing up new friends and handing out feedback forms as people leave. A nice sit-down job… would you be able to help for an hour or half an hour? Please say yes!
St. Nicholas Church in Dyke Road is holding a festival of flowers and music from 8 – 10 July celebrating the Holy Sacraments and the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible.
The 900 year-old church will be open from 10am to 5pm each day with flower displays by award-winning arrangers and live music by local artists. The money raised will be spent on much-needed restoration work and to improve the space available for local community use. Tea, coffee, ploughman’s lunches and other refreshments will be served during the day. Continue reading Flower and Music Festival→
We will have tools and gloves and over 500 plants … ox eye daisy, calamint, evening primrose, foxglove, field scabious, greater celandine, cowslip, mullein, moth mullein, bladder campion, red campion, fox and cubs, marjoram, small scabious, lesser knapweed, goatsbeard, birds foot trefoil, harebell, wild carrot, red valerian…
Let’s turn the churchyard into a wildflower haven!
Bert WilliamsWhen you get your 2010 diary, please write a memo to yourself at the beginning of October: “Find out when in October Bert is doing his Black History Month bus tour.” I went on it this year, along with many Brightonians of all colours (and sizes) who filled up the chartered double-decker bus while Bert filled us in with fascinating historical facts about Brighton’s black history. The continuous history of black people in Britain dates from the mid 16th Century and the beginning of the slave trade. Many black people “employed” as slave-servants, musicians, footman, soldiers and sailors visited and worked in Brighton.
Starting off from Brighton library, Bert took us on a magical tour of the places in Brighton associated with black history. We passed Dr Brighton’s baths which stood on the site of the Queen’s Hotel. Sake Dean Mahomed (1759-1851) grew up in India, emigrated to Ireland in 1786, and in 1814 Dean and his Irish wife Jane, moved to Brighton and opened the first shampooing vapour masseur bath in England. Both King George IV and William IV appointed him as their shampooing surgeon in Brighton.
Black HistoryAs the bus travelled from the seafront into West Street, we passed St Paul’s Church to which Emperor Haile Selassie made a donation in 1947, in appreciation of the five years he spent in exile in Britain between 1936-41; the King’s Head pub (now The Heist) where, in 1651, Charles II stayed on his flight to France, aided and abetted by ‘a tall Black man six feet and two inches high’.
We got off the bus and went into St Nicholas Church, the oldest church in Brighton, which is packed full of associations with black history – including the resting place of Dean Mahomed; the home to a set of wooden carvings of the stations of the cross depicting African figures, donated by Dame Flora Robson; the wedding venue of Sarah Forbes Bonneta, a West African of royal lineage who was married there in 1862 in a ceremony sanctioned by Queen Victoria. So little room here, so much history to learn – don’t miss the bus in 2010.
The Whistler 