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You can change your cookie settings at any time Freedom of Information releases and corporate reports operated an illegal waste site on unregistered land burnt it and ignored warnings from the Environment Agency to stop He appeared at Teesside Magistrates’ Court last month for sentencing and having previously denied the allegations changed his plea to guilty to three offences of operating a waste site without an environmental permit which is at the end of Gladstone Street in Brotton is next to council-owned allotments and does not have an environmental permit or a registered exemption which are required by law to manage waste operations Booker was fined £648 and will pay a victim surcharge of £259 A remediation order was made against Brooker for him to clear the site of all waste If he fails to comply he could be subject to further action Area Environment Manager for the Environment Agency Environmental permits are in place to protect the public and environment and we told Booker a number of times that he must stop his activities and clear the waste from the site Illegal activity such as this undermines legitimate businesses that work hard to operate within the regulations as well as putting the environment at risk and impacting on the local community In February 2022 an Environment Agency officer visited the land and saw waste including scrap electricals such as fridges and washing machines as well as shopping trollies and scrap vehicle parts and a letter was sent instructing him to cease all activity and clear the site By May 2022 most of the waste had been cleared but Boooker resumed waste activity on the land By October the same year waste was again strewn across the site and the pathway access to the allotments – including a pram In January 2023 the Environment Agency gave Booker one month to clear the site but a month later it was still full of waste - again with evidence of burning When he was interviewed in May 2023 Booker said he’d owned two garages on the land that he knocked down He said he’d brought rubble to the land to develop it but that people fly tipped the plot and he cleared it by putting it into residents’ bins or throwing it in the allotments He denied being responsible for disposing and burning waste He also claimed not to have a vehicle but evidence from the council confirmed he was seen in a scrap van in Saltburn in October 2023 A final visit on 19 March 2024 saw the site still had waste present Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council Our officers work closely with colleagues in the Environment Agency and other partner agencies every day to protect the public The decision to go to court is never taken lightly if the law which is clearly there to protect our residents businesses and the environment we all share is disregarded in this way this action must be taken and I fully support the EA I would like to thank the Environment Agency and everyone else involved for their hard work on this case Illegal waste activity can be reported to the Environment Agency on 0800 807060 Don’t include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Tech giants said today’s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. The development of the hippocampus can also be stunted in childhood Children living in urban environments rarely see the sun rise or set and cannot tell the difference between east and west When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west – though they could do so if allowed to use their phones Wherever kids do travel they are probably following the blue dot on their phone screen, showing them the way without reference to the world around them. Maps have never been more accessible in the palm of our hands on our phones but they are as much a tyranny as a liberation The famous ‘blue marble’ Apollo 17 photograph of the Earth is upside downCurrent studies suggest a link between this so-called developmental topographical disorientation and mental health as online experiences lead to a digitally poisoned awareness of space and place disoriented in a digital world where we have given up on tools that enhance our cognitive abilities like paper maps and magnetic compasses that enabled us to navigate and orient ourselves in tandem with the physical world We have retreated from using the spatial skills that sustained us for millennia No wonder our sense of being lost is existential as much as directional This was an orientation that defined European Christianity for more than 1,000 years early Islamic maps placed south at the top because the people that first converted to the faith lived directly north of Mecca The easiest way to understand their holy direction was to orient their maps so that Mecca was “up” We still talk about going up north and down south in the UK an old hangover from understanding the four points of the compass according to our bodies: up and down South does just as well as the cardinal direction which had its magnetic compasses pointing south Stuart McArthur published his Universal Corrective Map of the World oriented southwards with Australia at the top The compass appeared in the 13th century on European maritime maps that allowed navigators to orientate themselves on a north-south axis But it took another 400 years for these maps to agree on putting north at the top which had always been an inauspicious direction in most societies as a place of cold and darkness It was crowned cardinal direction by the Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator But Mercator was more interested in enabling pilots to sail accurately east to west distortion was minimised either side of the equator which was ideal for European maritime empires sailing east to west via Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope The north and south poles were projected to infinity as everyone presumed they were ice-bound and travelling there seemed pointless one of the most reproduced images in human history Historically no societies have put west at the top of world maps because of its associations with sunset and death the west has situated north on top after centuries of imperial domination But will it stay there as India and China reorientate our global economy Might the use of compasses disappear altogether – and with them the cardinal directions In my lifetime we have gone from looking up aspiring to a shared global village inspired by Nasa’s blue marble photograph glued to the blue dot on our phones as our hippocampi shrink and many of us withdraw from nature maps and compasses are cognitive artefacts we can take steps not just to appreciate nature acknowledging that it will always be bigger than us Many share basic principles of psychotherapy: grounding imagining ourselves from outside or “above” our bodies we need to explain who we are by understanding where we are Use a compass (even on your phone!) to work out the four cardinal directions so rethink your attitude to clock time by noticing the movement of the sun east to west from sunrise to sunset We’re just a dot in the universe: accept it but using paper maps will make you more aware of your surroundings just like a story: turn your route into an adventure Thousands of years before the invention of the compass we understood and identified the four cardinal directions according to winds Identify the wind’s direction according to your body: is it behind or in front of you This is a simple grounding exercise that reorients us according to the elements Get lost. Take a trip, turn off your phone and deliberately get lost. It’s a little scary, but it will heighten your senses and sharpen your appreciation of the world around you. If that is too daunting, read Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost who knows what you might find when you deliberately get lost Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction by Jerry Brotton is published by Penguin at £20, or buy a copy for £17 at guardianbookshop.com. Jerry is also the presenter of the podcast What’s Your Map? This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025 The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media Humans do not have an innate neurological toolbox like animals The configuration and language of the four directions is common to many—though not all—cultures They probably even pre-dated astronomical observations of the Sun’s movements and the stars and were first inspired by the ‘egocentric coordinates’ of the human body Our most basic corporeal orientations are fourfold: front and back In many ancient languages ‘front’ and ‘back’ are synonymous with east and west while ‘left’ and ‘right’ are often equivalent to north and south east—qedem or mizrach—also means ‘forward’ or ‘front’ while ‘west’—achor—is a synonym for ‘behind.’ In Arabic in which sacred and ritual beliefs are based on facing east Other cultures use the body’s position to interpret directions in very different ways in other words they are dependent on their physical context and can shift according to the speaker’s point of view (examples of deictic terms about space include ‘here’ the dark and cold north synonymous with the ‘back’ of the body north is kita—‘behind’ or ‘afterwards’—with minima meaning south Many south-eastern African Bantu languages also use corporeal references to distinguish between the four cardinal directions the language of the Hehe people of Tanzania ancient rock art made by the Dogon people of Mali often depicted a personification of the ‘life of the world,’ or aduno kine as a simple diagrammatic figure personifying the Dogon creation myth in which the deity Amma stretched an egg-shaped ball of clay in four directions with north at the top to create the world grasped in the god’s hands Cave paintings show a figure with a torso and arms forming a cross that represents the four cardinal directions Dividing orientation into four directions emanating from the body is part of a larger symbolic fascination with ordering natural phenomena In mathematics four is the smallest composite number (a number divisible by a number apart from one and itself) In geometry it is related to the cross and the square and their associations with totality and completeness The Arabic numeral 4 originated in a simple cross which added the diagonal stroke that is now most familiar in Western numerals Quadripartite symbolism has provided many cultures and religions with an organizing principle for the seasons natural causes (according to Aristotle) and the four corners of the Earth The ancient Chinese dynasties divided their domains into four lands (si tu) and imagined the world formed by four seas Each of the four cardinal directions were imagined as ‘intelligent creatures:’ the green dragon of the east; the crimson bird of the south; the white tiger of the west; and the black turtle of the north each colored direction matching the hues of the soil in the corresponding Chinese regions Buddhism believes in the four cardinal directions representing elements and cycles in life moving from east (dawn) through south (noon and fire) west (dusk and autumn) and north (night and dissolution) Hinduism reveres the four Vedas (religious texts) and alongside Hindu mythology includes the Lokapāla the four guardians of the cardinal directions: Indra (east) The earliest surviving record of the four cardinal directions was made during the first great Mesopotamian empire 2254–2218 BCE) is the first known to have adopted the title ‘King of the Four Corners of the World.’ Archaeological excavations undertaken in 1931 at Yorgan Tepe unearthed hundreds of clay tablets containing Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions One of the most significant of them measures just under seven by eight centimeters It is a topographical map and is usually referred to as the ‘Gasur map.’ At its center is an agricultural estate through which a river runs from top right to bottom left before branching off into two tributaries that flow into a larger body of water on the far left The settlement sits in a valley with two mountain ranges running across the top and bottom of the map The lake has recently been identified as Zrebar (or Zerivar) Lake in the Kurdistan province of western Iran The inscriptions offer an account of the central agricultural estate described as 300 hectares of “cultivated land.” The Gasur map is the oldest known map to show and name cardinal directions The damaged semi-circle top left is labelled IM-kur ‘east;’ the one bottom left is inscribed IM-mar-tu ‘north.’ Presumably the missing section of the tablet’s right-hand side originally included the inscription IM-ulù ‘south.’ Yet the naming here is not quite what it seems The prefix ‘IM’ (‘tumu’) refers to winds—the map identifies four directions by meteorological experiences rather than astronomical observations Other Mesopotamian texts describe four principal winds forming a diagonal cross equivalent to the modern directions of north-west These translate into the Akkadian terms on the Gasur map as IM-kur which blows in from the Zagros mountain range to the north-east of Mesopotamia; IM-mart-tu a south-western ‘desert’ wind derived from the word Amurru describing the nomadic Amorite people of Syria and Palestine west of the Euphrates as well as the direction from which hot sand-storms blow; IM-mir yet dry wind that cools the land; and IM-ulù a south-eastern ‘demon’ or ‘cloud’ wind that originates in the Persian Gulf These cardinal directions referred to quadrants rather than points and derived from specific aspects of human and physical geography For the farmers cultivating the land in Azala (modern-day Kurdistan) over 4,000 years ago the four cardinal directions in terms of prevailing winds were not only a means of orientation: understanding wind direction and changeable climatic conditions was crucial for the cultivation of crops and could mean the difference between feast and famine When the cuneiform text on the map is read from top to bottom the direction from which the regular north-western winds blow IM-mir is established as a word with connotations of fertility which operates within Akkadian social conventions and language as a term evoking volatility the connotations of these two directions became embedded in the rhythms of sedentary agricultural societies with little or no reference to travel or orientation which were largely irrelevant to such communities The words and connotations of cardinal directions that are spoken give shape and order to societies; they are part of an activity that anchors people within their physical world and makes sense of their surroundings The Mesopotamian combination of meteorological geographical and ethnological words for the four directions and their various connotations find parallels albeit in very different terms and under contrasting conditions across the globe and in many languages throughout early recorded history such as egocentric references—those from a subjective perspective like front/back left/right—and allocentric examples—using landmarks or objects including rivers and mountains independent of a subject’s point of view—are greater in some languages Indigenous cultures like that of the Guugu Yimithirr people in Queensland in Australia’s far north have an acute sense of cardinal directions but with little perception of egocentric coordinates Instead they use a system of ‘absolute’ geographical orientation referring to things and places as relative to the cardinal directions “Please move to the left,” they would say “Please move to the west,” and “Pass the salt it’s to the north,” instead of “Pass the salt it’s under your nose.” Some—usually societies sparsely populating small regions such as the Yurok people of northern California—possess no terms for any of the four directions Compass points are common to most societies The etymologies of cardinal directions across different cultures reveal their speakers’ preoccupations with and rules for using each word within any given society In Africa the language games within which each direction found expression were often defined through complex ethnological distinctions which translates as ‘many cannibals.’ Traditionally the sea lay directly south of the Zulu kingdom the origin of cold winds and fog that hid malevolent spirits and man-eating monsters Various south-east African languages also derive the names of cardinal directions from neighboring ethnic groups: the Setswana and Sesotho languages use bokane (north) to describe Nguni-speaking people to the north while borwa (south) derives from the word for ‘Bushmen,’ or the Khoisan of southern Africa Ancient Mesoamerican cosmologies used cardinal directions to describe their gods and stories of Creation The Mayans of northern central America understood east and west first based on astronomical observations of the rising and setting Sun before meanings associated with north and south split into four deities called the Bacab (sometimes shown as jaguars) that held up the four corners of the world each one representing a direction and a color East (translated as ‘exit’—of the Sun emerging from the underworld) was associated with red and fire and west (translated as ‘entrance’ of the Sun setting into the underworld) with black North (often associated with white) and south (usually labelled yellow) were less demarcated as both directions and colors and changed over time and across Mesoamerican languages and cultures What was strikingly different about Mayan and subsequent Mesoamerican cardinal directions from those of Mesopotamia and most other cultures was that they operated on three The Aztecs imagined the Earth as a horizontal disk divided by the dual east–west and north–south axes a geometric pattern of five points arranged like a cross effectively structuring the Aztec world picture according to five directions In 1325 CE the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) was founded around the Templo Mayor which symbolized the Aztec centre of the world where the vertical and horizontal axes of the cardinal directions met the Earth and the underworld came together Greek philosophy and science showed no interest in a fifth direction Instead it inherited the Mesopotamian agricultural preoccupation with winds Mythical personifications of the four directions as gods first appear in the ancient works of Homer (c His Iliad and Odyssey both mention four gods representing cardinal winds is possibly an archaic variant of ‘mountains’ or ‘roaring;’ Notos comes from the ‘brightness’ of sunrise; the western wind of Zephyrus stems from the ‘gloom’ of sunset In ancient Greece weather was assumed to emanate from Zeus but his meteorology was fickle and unpredictable Subsequent natural philosophy wanted to challenge the view that natural phenomena such as the weather lay in the hands of Zeus and other deities As the rules of the game shifted so did the language of the four directions: astronomical observations began providing alternative names or ‘the bear,’ taken from the northern constellation of Ursa Major The earliest and most powerful case for the centrality of climate and directions in Greek life was made by Aristotle in Meteorology (c Taking as his subject “everything which happens naturally,” Aristotle described the Earth as a sphere sitting at the centre of the universe Meteorology included the earliest known geometrical diagram to codify cardinal directions according to wind systems showing the northern hemisphere with Greece at the centre or twelve altogether including ‘half winds’ (Eurus is replaced with Apeliotes This systematic codification of winds as coming from a specific direction was central to Aristotle’s ethnological approach to the Earth which he divided into five climatic—klimata They were based partly on meteorological conditions as Aristotle reasoned that the ‘incline’ of the Sun lessened the further north one travelled from the Equator creating intemperate zones at the poles and the Equator leaving just two habitable ‘temperate’ zones Greek agriculture and its growing maritime trade needed to anticipate the weather as Aristotle’s disciple Theophrastus of Eresos (c he claimed that “what happens in the sky on Earth and on the sea is due to the wind.” Timosthenes of Rhodes (fl His twelve wind directions each described different regions and people This was a significant development in human geography that subsequently connected cardinal winds with geographical directions and cultures Aparctias (north) was associated with Scythia the Central Asian nomadic kingdom; Notus (south) with Ethiopia; Apeliotes (east) with Bactriana covering most of Afghanistan; Zephyrus (west) with the Straits of Gibraltar the westernmost limits of the classical world India and others were also aligned with winds As the preoccupations of Greek thinking embraced human geography and trade so the words for each direction changed and the rules of their usage also shifted This began a conflation of direction with identity that still persists today The Greeks even built a ‘Tower of Winds’ that still stands in Athens Designed by the astronomer Andronicus of Cyrrhus around 100 BCE each side of the octagonal tower shows deities facing one of eight principal directions: Boreas (north) Lips (south- west) and Skiron (north-west) Not only is the tower the first known weather station it also functioned as one of the earliest known clock towers (horologion) Below each deity is a sundial; inside the tower are the remains of a water-clock the beginnings of a long history in which the measurement of time is involved in understanding direction The Tower of the Winds stood in the Roman Agora (27–17 BCE) and the Romans gradually adopted the Greek terms for winds and introduced new Latin words a reference to the ‘seven stars’ of Ursa Major including australis (‘harsh’ or ‘sharp’) or meridionalis (from ‘midday’) West was occidentalis (‘falling’ or ‘passing away’) and east was orientalis (‘rising’ or ‘originating’) or subsolanus (literally ‘under the sun’) the adaptation was messy and contradictory competing Latin synonyms introduced and debates about the correct number of wind directions The Roman architect Vitruvius even introduced a twenty-four-point wind ‘rose’ in his book On Architecture (c Vitruvius emphasized the importance of harmony order and proportion in planning “the orientation of the streets and lanes according to the regions of the heavens” and the winds we breathe—from whatever direction—is what keeps us alive The character and quality of winds determined life and death In later societies the winds were central to personal orientation For the Inuit people living in the Arctic regions of Greenland the primary tools for navigation were the winds and snowdrifts elements of a very different environment to that of the Greeks Winds were personified and gendered according to their temperament The north-western Uangnaq is often regarded as the prevailing wind and considered female due to its volatile nature: it can gust furiously then die away just as quickly The ‘male’ south-easterly Nigiq blows in more steadily and is believed to ‘retaliate’ to its opposite with Kanangnaq (north-east) and Akinnaq (south-west) completing the four Inuit cardinal directions Excerpted from Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction by Jerry Brotton Reprinted with the permission of the publisher Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature Masthead About Sign Up For Our Newsletters How to Pitch Lit Hub Privacy Policy Support Lit Hub - Become A Member Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving merchants and chancers: this sparkling book sets out Elizabethan England’s complex and extensive relationship with the Islamic world an Arab chronicler wrote of exotic Sultana Isabel the ruler of a small kingdom under attack by the infidel Spaniard He described how she was delivered from invasion by reehan sarsaran just like that sent against the people of Aad in the Qur’an This was a sure sign that Allah was on her side there was rejoicing at the chronicler’s court in Marrakech – fireworks This Sultana Isabel, queen of a foreign land, is none other than Elizabeth I The sharp winds that saved her were the storms that broke up the Spanish Armada a fleet of 130 ships containing 19,000 soldiers that her merchants and spies were active from Essaouira in the west to Isfahan in the east is a little disorientating (pun intended) to those of us who know English history from the inside But Jerry Brotton’s sparkling new book sets out just how extensive and complex England’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim world once was and tentatively connects the threads of that engagement to our own times There are plenty of stories of incongruity and culture shock such as when Great Yarmouth man William Harborne eunuch and senior advisor to a North African potentate Captured by Turkish pirates a decade before a career as a rich and powerful member of the Algerian ruling elite was more appealing than … life as a struggling The Sultan offered Dallam concubines from his harem and allowed the Englishman to spy on women through a wall grateAnd then there is the moment in Istanbul when Thomas Dallam unveils an extraordinary musical contraption a gift from Elizabeth to the most powerful man in the world and played a song of 4 parts … in the top of the organ did stand a holly bush full of blackbirds and thrushes which at the end of the music did singe and shake their wings.” The Sultan was so impressed that he offered Dallam two concubines from his harem – and allowed the Englishman to spy on the secluded women “through a grate in the wall” “That sight did please me wondrous well,” he wrote when most people died a stone’s throw from where they were born there were nevertheless those whose adventures led them to the edges of the known world – and to cultures so different from their own as to seem dreamlike who charmed Shah Abbas of Persia into making him a diplomat then romped from Moscow to Prague to Rome to Venice leaving a trail of debt and discombobulation in his wake These individual stories form part of a rich tapestry of interaction that was ultimately directed by the geopolitics of the day Elizabeth’s merchants were motivated by money They sold English cloth and imported silks But there were compelling reasons to seek out Muslim partners in particular because fraternising with non-Christians could otherwise be regarded as blasphemous from the point of view of superpower Spain excommunicating Elizabeth in 1570 and effectively encouraging all good Catholics to assassinate her Reinstating the break with Rome made by her father and establishing a Protestant settlement Catholic Spain’s enemies – North Africa’s Arab rulers and the Ottomans – were her friends but it was just as well to have a theological explanation were natural partners because they both deplored idol worship Officials at the Ottoman court were happy to deal with Elizabeth’s representatives “because they are Lutherans Elizabeth styled herself “most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all kind of idolatries” when the “clash of civilisations” could be expected to be at its starkest Brotton mixes historical narrative with vivid portraits of the popular culture of the day. The Turks and Moors that populate the stage in works by Robert Wilson, Marlowe and Shakespeare are variously one-dimensionally evil As the sophistication of the public’s understanding of the Muslim world increased There are powerful lessons for modern Elizabethans here “Despite the sometimes intemperate religious rhetoric,” he writes “the conflict between Christian Europe and the Islamic world was then defined as much by the struggle for power and precedence as by theology This story is part of the heritage of Christians Muslims and any others who call themselves English.” At a time when many see Islam as a recent and strange intruder Brotton’s excellent history is a reminder that a careful study of England’s “island story” shows just how wrong they are To order This Orient Isle for £16 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. The 20-year-old answered questions from the excited youngsters before handing out medals posing for photographs and signing autographs Hayden told the young Boro fans about how his career started and offered them words of encouragement “Thank you to Hayden for taking the time to come over to East Cleveland,” says the Foundation’s Gary Walton  “We appreciate it and the kids absolutely loved it.” Hayden’s visit came after a week of activity that saw Riley McGree send a video message of congratulations to Richmond School after they won a competition centred on environmentally sustainability Academy player Max Howells was in the judging panel for that one this time with Marc Bola proudly displayed a "Football is for Everyone" t-shirt designed by 14-year-old Lillie Heard ahead of Saturday’s win over QPR The first team squad had picked the winner one of the three astronauts on board the Apollo 17 spacecraft took a photograph Released by Nasa following the mission's safe return from the moon it showed – for the first time – the fully illuminated face of the Earth Set against the cloud-streaked blue of the oceans Arabia and Antarctica were all clearly on display was a literally cosmic image of the geography of our planet an unknown scribe in Iraq had drawn on a clay tablet the very earliest surviving attempt to show the world Iraq itself – which on the Nasa photograph could just be made out at the top of the globe – was placed at the centre of an encircling ring of ocean marshes and the river Euphrates: all were represented Portrayed as a massive rectangle bisected by the Euphrates its position within the ring of the ocean only incidentally reflected its actual position within Iraq The concern of the cartographer lay ultimately with what he would no doubt have seen as an altogether more authentic dimension of reality If Babylon was placed at the centre of the map then that was because the Babylonians – with the conceit that comes naturally to a swaggering imperial people – took for granted that their city served the cosmos as its pivot Between the Mesopotamian scribe and the American astronaut there stretched an immense ideological as well as technological gulf not everything had changed over the course of the millennia The photograph released by Nasa might not have been oriented around Washington DC as was the clay tablet around Babylon; but it spoke of a certain level of superpower self-satisfaction was the photograph entirely devoid of its own metaphysical dimensions had described the sphere of the world as something that a soul ascending in a moment of supreme transcendence might behold as fashioned "of colours more numerous and beautiful than any we have seen" with the realisation at last of the dream of extra-terrestrial travel the image of the planet in all its fragile beauty set against the infinite blackness of space prompted in many an almost religious consciousness of the commonality of human experience Its influence over the succeeding decades – whether on third-world identity politics or environmentalism – would prove immense is a representation of the earth's geography so accurate and neutral that it brings with it no baggage at all What is true of a photograph tends to be even more so of one composed by human hand "A map," as Jerry Brotton observes in his fascinating and panoramic new history of the cartographer's art "always manages the reality it tries to show" It is the truth of this observation that enables him to trace mountains and seas have been drawn in various cultures and periods the contours of human self-awareness as well Peaks and troughs; disinterest and prejudice; pin-point accuracy and whole realms of experience imagined as the haunt of fearsome monsters: civilisation bears witness to them all Contained within his book are studies of a dozen landmark maps These range in time from the classical to the contemporary the sweeping self-assurance of his title – A History of the World in Twelve Maps – should not be taken wholly at face value If there is one truth that Brotton's survey repeatedly emphasises it is that cartographers cannot help but betray their own centre of gravity the Hereford Mappa Mundi portrayed the easternmost reaches of Asia as the haunt of griffins and "the accursed sons of Cain"; meanwhile scholars took for granted that the far west was "the zone of cultureless savagery" a year after the Apollo 17 mission took its celebrated photograph the German historian Arno Peters unveiled a new map of the world which corrected what he saw as the unforgivably Eurocentric projection of Mercator and served to increase the size of Africa and South America at the expense of Europe "The applications of the Peters projection," as Brotton points out "throw into stark relief the fact that individuals and organisations have appropriated world maps for their own symbolic and political ends regardless of the cartographer's claims to comprehensiveness and objectivity." Even Google Earth which incorporates so much geographical information that it seems set to consign paper maps to obsolescence still has a way to go before it can provide standard high-resolution data of the entire planet those regions most exhaustively covered tend to be the ones with the highest concentration of computers and credit-cards A clue as to the focus of his own mapping is to be found in the title he holds at the University of London: "Professor of Renaissance Studies" that the meat of his book should consist of a brilliant survey of cartography in the early modern period when Europeans began to explore entire continents unsuspected by Ptolemy and maps bore vivid witness to the geopolitical and commercial upheavals unleashed in their wake Martin Waldseemüller's map of 1507 may have been the first map to name America WashingtonWhether it was Martin Waldseemüller drawing what may or may not have been the first map to name America or Diogo Ribeiro recalibrating the location of the Moluccas in a sneaky attempt to buttress the imperial interests of the Spanish crown the cartographers of the 16th and 17th centuries were fitting standard-bearers for the emerging era of European supremacy Yet the narrative is not simply the one illustrative of western arrogance and greed articulated by Arno Peters far from serving as a monument to the glories of European civilisation was in fact an expression of the very opposite: a deep despair at the savagery of its hatreds "was part of a cosmography that aimed to transcend the theological persecution and division of sixteenth-century Europe." Nor are the subtlety and empathy that underlie this judgment absent when Brotton venturing beyond his home territory of the Renaissance comes to explore the cartographical expanses of the middle ages His study of the delightfully named Book of Roger – a compilation of Greek Latin and Arabic geographical knowledge assembled by a Muslim scholar under the aegis of a Christian king – provides a perspective on the limits of medieval multi-culturalism that is no less hard-headed for Brotton's sense of wonder that it should have existed at all Even more striking is his take on the tension between the dimensions of the eternal and the earthly implicit in the Mappa Mundi – which in its original setting pointed towards the second coming that moment of cosmic transfiguration when the New Jerusalem will descend from heaven and all geography promptly becomes redundant that it belongs to "a genre of map unique in the history of cartography that eagerly anticipates and welcomes its own annihilation" it is only in the period that gave us the phrase "terra incognita" that his mapping of the contours of cartography in the past becomes just a trifle perfunctory Brotton's survey of Ptolemy and the reaches of classical geography that he was drawing on is workmanlike but it lacks the spark and the sense of the unexpected that elsewhere are such features of the book This – since Ptolemy is the first of Brotton's 12 cartographers to be featured – is doubly unfortunate Readers who find the first chapter dry – as many may well do – are strongly urged not to cast the book aside Brotton's idea of tracing within maps the patterns of human thought and civilisation is a wonderful one Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword is published by Little Skelton is an amalgamation of four smaller villages It has an industrial estate to the north which provides a significant amount of employment It also has a conservation area around Skelton Castle and a village green The settlement forms along a railway track and a narrow street layout It benefits from a state of the art secondary school The residents of the two places had wide ranging views and ideas about where they lived Residents of Skelton wanted to strengthen their local centre and attract new investment to the industrial estate Residents of Brotton were concerned about the future of their village centre and the possibility of excessive residential development The difficulty was to achieve a good balance between what Brotton didn’t want and what Skelton did want – in other words to consolidate the issues affecting residents of both communities Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council and the parish council agreed that by working in collaboration and genuine partnership a neighbourhood development plan would give weight to the aspirations of the community whilst also fitting in with the borough council’s own existing local plan This plan would be adopted as a Supplementary Planning Document A working group was established to lead on the preparation of the plan Design Council Cabe was consulted to provide a fresh pair of eyes They helped the working group to think differently about design through a series of workshops so that the group were better equipped to craft an impactful neighbourhood plan Design Council Cabe set up workshops to help get the working group's activities off the ground One of the most notable was a 'Place check' exercise whereby the group toured the area by bus identifying what they did and didn't like about the parish This helped everyone crystallise issues of concern as well as the opportunities of respective areas there was a conflict over the use of a car park in the local centre between Skelton Estates and the Co-op there was interest from housebuilders to construct new homes while there were some concerns that there were still empty older homes in the village Design Council Cabe advised on how the community could address these issues through specific policies in the plan Discussions tackled the questions of: ‘What does good design look like?’ and ‘What makes a good place?’ In the last session the Building for Life criteria was introduced so that the group could evaluate development proposals for their area Design Council Cabe helped the working group to realise that they could set the design agenda rather than reacting to what was happening to their area By understanding what good design looked like members of the parish council gained more confidence in what they were communicating The parish council got in touch with youth groups such as Brownies Rainbows and Guides as well as local schools Children made scrapbooks of the villages and put their ideas onto wish trees to show what they would like to be included in the plan By engaging young people in exercises around what they thought about the area this enthusiasm and interest then filtered through to their parents and other local people this exercise was hugely effective in generating interest in the plan The borough council used the information the parish council had gathered through the workshops and the community consultation to prepare the first draft of the plan which then went out for consultation and is now a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) As this was an SPD the borough council was much more involved than if this had been a neighbourhood development plan The process of creating the neighbourhood development plan has made local people more aware of planning and how they can take a control of change We feel more confident to debate design issues Design Council Cabe supported Skelton and Brotton Parish Councils during 2012 Click here for more information. Want to keep up with the latest from the Design Council Sign up System Shifting Design (October 2021) sets out emerging practice observed from designers who are.. Practical insights from and foracademics and university staff Everything you need for each stepof your study abroad journey Book of the week: Jerry Brotton is enthralled by a book that seeks to overturn just about everything we think we know about maps Book of the week: A secret cartography project is a route to the past – and your house Subscribe today to receive unlimited news and analyses commentary from the sharpest minds in international academia our influential university rankings analysis and the latest insights from our World Summit series The ad-free version is ready for purchase on iOS mobile app today we couldn't find that page";var n=e.querySelector("h2");return n&&n.remove(),{staticContent:e,title:t}},d=function(e){var t=document.createElement("button");return t.innerText=e,t.classList.add("error-page-button"),t},f=function(e){var t=document.createElement("div");t.id="recirculation-404",t.classList.add("brand-hint-bg");var n="\n \n \n Tick here if you would like us to send you the author’s response Doting dad-of-two Kevin McPike has never taken a day sick off work in his life so being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia came as a huge shock They’ve linked up with blood cancer charity DKMS to organise a special stem cell donor registration event Family friend Nicola Borrell said: “Whilst it's amazing that a match has been identified for Kev we know there are many others still waiting for a match that could potentially save their lives – we feel it's only right that we rally the troops and try our hardest to help those in need." DKMS spokesperson Mahima Mathur added: “If you are found to be a match for someone needing a transplant donating your stem cells is a simple process similar to giving blood someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer so you could be giving someone a second chance at life.” Registering as a stem cell donor is a quick and easy process involving a simple mouth swab offering hope to blood cancer patients who – unlike Kevin – are still urgently in need of a compatible stem cell match Anyone aged 17 to 55 and in general good health Anyone who does so at the registration drive at Brotton Community Hall will also be offered the chance to enjoy a ‘breakfast bun’ afterwards people of all ages will be able to join Kevin in supporting DKMS – other shops and the wider community have all pitched in to provide snacks and refreshments All proceeds raised will go toward the work of DKMS which holds the UK’s biggest stem cell register Story SavedYou can find this story in  My Bookmarks.Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right Today was GP Pledge day across parkrun, to celebrate the parkrun practice initiative which started a year ago. We are please to be partnered with Brotton Surgery and were delighted to welcome Dr Jardine and staff to join in our event, well done to them all. We also had our first parkrun cuppa and chat which we held in St Peter's School sport hall but lovely to have the facility and feedback was positive I'd like to say thank you to the following people for making this possible; Richard Unthank and caretaker Martyn for giving us free access to the hall Co-op and Mark Laker the Co-op community representative for donating tea and coffee Judith for the endless supply of tea's and coffee's and Andrew for his cleaning skills when we realised there'd been a minor flood Just a reminder - parkrun is cancelled on the 6th July due to Brotton Carnival requiring access to the playing field for car parking of whom 33 were first timers and 7 recorded new Personal Bests Representatives of 17 different clubs took part The event was made possible by 12 volunteers: Graham HALL • Joanne MARSHALL • Philippa HAMBLEY • Nathan MARSHALL • Andrea SPARKES • Emma JACKSON • David ALMOND • Judith BRIDGETT • Malcolm PEGGS • Alan HARRISON • Gary BEARD • Mark SHORT Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Marshall Drive parkrun, Brotton Results Page Since then 536 participants have completed 878 parkruns covering a total distance of 4,390 km A total of 52 individuals have volunteered 181 times © parkrun Limited (Company Number: 07289574) No part of this site may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner a retired Brough Park racing greyhound?…and so much more….eh – who were this eclectic group of visitors last weekend To try and explain….how did they know each other?….and why visit Marshall Park – a story that doesn’t really need to be told…but can be enjoyed by a readership of thousands –  Mick Hydes originally comes from Ashington There was never a running club in Ashington back in the 80’s/90s so Mick ran for Blyth and Newcastle based clubs before moving up to Paisley Years later Mick heard that Ashington created a club ‘Ashington Hirst’ so made Connie a member and was put in touch with Lee Elder who was on the committee at the time although had relocated to Ashington and then onto nearby Blyth heard her accent and asked if she was from Teeside Of course she was and Mick said something like ‘I only really know of one other person from Teeside.’ When asked by Lee who this was ridiculously Lee knew of him – Rob Nicholls editor of the renowned Middlesbrough FC fans fanzine ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and a regular face on BBC ‘Look North’ and many other similar media outlets Lee explained that back in her Fishburn days and a regular attendee at both Ayresome Park and laterly the Riverside cheering on Boro she regularly purchased the fanzine outside the ground from Rob…..more on this later… moving on – back to more recent times in Paisley Mick and Connie are regulars in the fine bar ‘De Beers’ and are friends with Nic a stonemason from…..go on have a guess….yes Nic gets talking of his hometown and fondly of the Cliff Tramway and would be fun to visit when next in the North-East’ an idea to visit on a Saturday is muted and a search for a potential parkrun is undertaken This was mainly because a quick google search on the workings of the Tramway reveals it takes 55 seconds each way so had to add a parkrun because an 75 minute drive from Ashington to Saltburn deserves more than a 55 second thrill parkrun websites explored and Marshall Drive discovered Saturday 30th December noted as the potential date as part of our New Year trip parkrun starts at 9am and would take Connie around 30 mins Another google search for Saltburn businesses brings about ‘Beehive Beauty Products’ who are incredibly based in a house on…..go on have a guess….yes Marshall Drive – brilliant….more on this later too Lee is invited along as she now lives in Blyth As a native of Fishburn with many Middlesbrough connections Lee sits in the passenger seat and directs us to Saltburn As we arrive skirting around the Middlebrough by-pass the fanzine and weekly Monday trips to the Riverside to witness the construction of the stadium Lee also admitted a liking for a weekly dose of chicken curry and chips (obviously before serious running days took hold…) from a certain catering van nearing the site and we are fairly sure we are heading for Brotton We play ‘hunt the parkrun volunteer hi-viz’ and we see one on the street Wind down the window and introduce ourselves to Judith and the finer directions are granted – we get to the carpark the first people there at the great time of 8.30am – time for a warm-up Milburn is walked around the area for a pitch inspection – gets patted a lot from passers-by volunteers and fellow dog walkers who ask of his racing career Newcastle before being rescued at retirement and now lives safely and we think happily in Paisley with his running mam and very retired from running dad Connie and Lee raced away on their four laps with Mick and Milburn wandering around Full results on the website – check out their times Both attendees enjoyed thoroughly with much talk afterwards of heading for the A-Z of parkrun completion…..if you’ve not heard of this – ask a ParkRunner basically Marshall Drive would be your ‘M’ and you aim to complete the A-Z in any order…..one for another report perhaps a late-night Friday drive home from seeing Boro win at Huddersfield means he sleeps in and then tries in vain to make it on time from his home in Middlesbrough – eventually calling time at 8.53am whilst at Redcar there was a surprise late Christmas pressie for Connie from Beehive Beauty Products appeared with a wonderful gift basket to hand over There was no delivery charge as you can literally see her house from the finish line…. a gift basket presentation and then two times 55 seconds on the Tramway Car – we will be back in Newbiggin for noon at this rate….lets pan it out a little… (a bit like this report…) Connie and Milburn on the downward section coffee in the town centre is welcome and delicious Lee reveals her interest in post-box spotting can be spent exploring the varying types of post boxes and their significance There are websites dedicated to this ‘specialist interest’ Saltburn has a Queen Victoria ‘Penfold’…or does it… Lee informs us that originals were discontinued in 1879 but replicas later introduced at places of historic or natural beauty A walk along the terrace to the head of the Tramway car is filled with trepidation – will they allow Milburn on more to the point – will they let any of us on A 55 second thrill and then we walk along the boardwalk and view the beach-huts to get back on the Tramway and head back to the car – drop off Lee and the rest of us to Newbiggin Marshall Drive – we soooooo enjoyed our visit He gave us a bottle of champagne a few months ago to celebrate Milburn’s 8th birthday – which was a landmark for our big lad We told Nic that we would hold this back for a special event What better than the evening after a day spent in Nic’s hometown enjoying Nic the Saltburn stonemason’s champers of whom 10 were first timers and 1 recorded new Personal Bests Representatives of 7 different clubs took part The event was made possible by 9 volunteers: Dawn HARRISON • Billy SUTHERLAND • David ALMOND • Judith BRIDGETT • Lisa HORNSEY • Malcolm PEGGS • Sonia STOCKS • Mark SHORT • Rebecca CACIOPPO Today's full results and a complete event history can be found on the Marshall Drive parkrun, Brotton Results Page. Marshall Drive parkrun, Brotton started on 23rd February 2019. Since then 2,222 participants have completed 6,027 parkruns covering a total distance of 30,135 km, including 722 new Personal Bests. A total of 161 individuals have volunteered 2,104 times. No part of this site may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner. Frameworks, 2 Sheen Road, Richmond, TW9 1AE Tudor England was hand in glove with Islam I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice a 24-year-old blacksmith and musician from Warrington entered the Topkapi palace in Constantinople and began to play a clockwork organ he had built "in front of the most powerful ruler in the world" and the mechanical organ – along with its young artificer – belonged to a boatload of eye-catching presents that Queen Elizabeth I had sent to help sustain the Anglo-Turkish alliance that had and offered the Englishman his pick of the Topkapi harem concubines "It must have all seemed a long way from Warrington" "By the end of Elizabeth's reign," Brotton notes "thousands of her subjects were to be found in the Islamic world" spied and (fairly frequently) converted to Islam As a counterweight to the threat from Catholic Spain Elizabeth had built up an "impressive network" of diplomatic alliances and free-trade deals They bound England to the Sultanate of Morocco this Anglo-Muslim wall against Spanish hegemony stretched almost 4,300 miles "from Marrakesh via Constantinople to Isfahan" With Henry VIII's break with Rome and then (in 1570) Elizabeth's excommunication as a "heretic" by Pope Pius V England found itself shunned as a rogue state by Catholic Europe It needed friends with clout in strategic locations Around the Mediterranean and the Middle East Thus the stage was set for an extraordinary half-century of adventures conspiracies and misunderstandings: a little-known story that Brotton chronicles with scholarship He tells a very English story: the quest for the sweet deal and the quick groat usually trumps theological niceties It runs from the Leicestershire mercer Anthony Jenkinson's meeting in Aleppo with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to the mishaps and manoeuvres of the freelance diplomat Sir Anthony Sherley at the Persian court of Shah Abbas I With a tempting trade pact or military alliance in the offing it proved surprisingly easy for both sides to forget the little matter of whether Jesus of Nazareth was the divine Son of God or simply the last prophet before the final revelation to Mohammed The human exchange that yielded treaties with Muslim powers soon reached the London stage Brotton calculates that 60 English plays put Turks Moors and Persians on stage between 1576 and 1603 And no writer embarked on a steeper learning curve than William Shakespeare through the 20 years that separate the schemingly wicked – but still charismatic – Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus to the tragic "Protestant England came closer to Islam than at any other time in its history until today" the shift was driven in part by peace with Spain (in 1604) but mainly by the new commercial-imperial focus on south Asia and the Americas The day of the East India and Virginia Companies had dawned So the age had passed when an intrepid but ruthless merchant-venturer such as Jenkinson could despatch a slave-girl known as Aura Soltana from Astrakhan as a gift for the Queen she turns up in a ledger of Elizabeth's servants as "our dear and well-beloved woman Ippolyta the Tartarian" who taught her mistress "the fashion of wearing Spanish leather shoes" What did Aura-Ippolyta herself make of her fantastic voyage Someone should get cracking on the screenplay now Allen Lane, £20. Order at £18 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies book review","description":"Tudor England was hand in glove with Islam Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London is presenting a new ten-part series for BBC Radio 3’s The Essay Written and presented by Professor Jerry Brotton from Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama Blood and Bronze will tell the story of Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) one of the Italian Renaissance’s most controversial yet frequently overlooked artists In the series Professor Brotton turns detective to pursue the trail of Cellini The artist spent his life reinventing himself in his art and autobiography He was a goldsmith; sculptor; painter; poet; soldier; musician; thief Professor Brotton will untangle the man from his mythmaking by recreating his life and times across the city states of Renaissance Italy from Cellini’s birthplace of Florence to Rome Naples and Venice Each episode will recreate moments in Cellini’s life from youthful duels to artistic commissions and murders It will document his escapades as a soldier his imprisonment as well as his poisoning and exile and his turbulent and disturbing love life The series will also explore Cellini’s triumphant art works culminating in the casting of the bronze sculpture of ‘Perseus with the Head of Medusa’ a work that rivals Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and which to this day stands on public display in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria alongside works by Michelangelo and Donatello There is also a contemporary twist that is central to this story In the final programmes Professor Brotton investigates the ongoing authentication of a self-portrait recently unearthed in France The picture was bought in a French flea market on the French Riviera by a Russian businessman It has been claimed that it is Cellini’s only surviving painting Professor Jerry Brotton said: “I’m delighted to work with BBC Radio 3 on this new series about a neglected but important and larger than life Renaissance artist like Benvenuto Cellini In the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter it’s an important moment to reassess the lives and works of such artists It’s also a great opportunity to move into a new medium of podcasts that shows how humanities academics can use their skills to reach new audiences.” Queen Elizabeth I of England reached out to Islamic leaders "for hard-nosed political and commercial reasons," says author Jerry Brotton Catholic Europe shunned England so the Protestant queen traded with its enemies—and changed her country's culture forever and her country was shunned by the rest of Europe The queen sought help from a surprising source: the Islamic world She’s establishing a Protestant state and England has become a pariah in Catholic Europe So she reaches out for alliances with the Islamic world What flows from that is an exchange of trade and goods, regardless of sectarian and theological differences. Elizabeth is not reaching out to Sultan Murad III because she’s a nice person and wants religious accord She is doing it for hard-nosed political and commercial reasons In the last few years, there’s been a parochial identification of the Tudors, reflected in the way they have featured in recent TV shows, like The Tudors. It has become an index of Englishness But it never tells the wider story of what’s going on internationally I started working on 16th-century maps and what the maps were telling me was that there was an exchange between the Islamic and Christian worlds which wasn’t being told in the official histories They all come in with the trade with the Islamic world when she starts to write to the Sultan in 1579 you and I have many similarities in terms of our theology We do not believe in idolatry or that you should have intercession a saint or a priest will get you closer to God Protestantism says you should read the Bible and then you will be in direct contact with God Sunni Islam says the same: You have the Koran you’re fighting Spanish Catholicism; I’m fighting Spanish Catholicism [Laughs] Islam believes Jesus is a prophet They always talk about the fact that they both believe in Jesus but not how they believe in Jesus one of the earliest Englishmen to establish diplomatic and commercial connections with Persia It’s not clear whether this is a slave name or the name of the place she’s come from a similar figure is established as a lady-in-waiting in Elizabeth’s court If it’s the same person—and I believe it is—she becomes a kind of fashion adviser to the queen telling Elizabeth how to wear certain kinds of shoes or materials Her exotic background made her exactly the kind of person to whom Elizabeth could say The subject of this painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger may have been the first Muslim woman known to enter England There’s a tantalizing painting of an anonymous woman by Marcus Gheeraerts, called The Persian Lady, which some people speculate is of this woman. She’s dressed in a very opulent, oriental fashion. It could be our lady Aura Soltana, a slave who ends up in Elizabeth’s bedroom, dressing her. It’s an amazing story. You have many similar stories of people converting to Islam or, in the language of the time, “turning Turk.” It’s relevant to the current situation in the Middle East because, invariably, it’s Christians and Protestants who are embracing Islam, not the other way around. There are accounts of people who willingly embrace Islam because, in contrast to the way in which we see that culture today, the Muslim world is seen as tolerant and embracing difference. Murad III, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, wrote letters to Elizabeth that were dusted in gold. Another Moor pops up there called the Prince of Morocco So Shakespeare is playing with different versions of these Muslim You get the evil Aaron and the rather noble Prince of Morocco Around 1601 Shakespeare then writes Othello powerful military commander: The Moor of Venice He’s drawing on this history of Anglo-Islamic relations to say He might save us but he might also kill us all in our beds Post 9/11, it is one of the most frequently performed tragedies because of the complexity of its relationship with religion and ethnicity, which we are now seeing in North Africa and the Middle East It’s become about much more than simply a black man destroyed by a white man Prince Charles laughs with Muslim students in Bradford the city in northern England where author Jerry Brotton grew up those issues of sectarian differences were never in play Following characters traveling through a world that is now in meltdown They’re moving through places currently under control of the so-called Islamic state What they’re doing at that point is encountering an Islamic world that is powerful and superior to the culture that produced them: Protestant English culture There’s an attempt to understand and accommodate That was the real shock and surprise for me, in a good way. There are Elizabethan Englishmen talking about the distinction between Sunni and Shia in the 1560s when many people today don’t understand the distinction hopefully the book is one little attempt to offer another kind of story of toleration and accommodation This interview was edited for length and clarity wrote letters to Elizabeth that were dusted in gold On Monday April 29 Queen Mary, University of London’s Professor Jerry Brotton will be presenting a television documentary on BBC Northern Ireland called ‘Mapping Ulster’ Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies, in the School of English we explore Northern Ireland's vivid origins tracing the arrival and impact of Scots and English migrants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through a unique collection of extraordinary maps This programme follows on from Professor Brotton’s recent acclaimed book and a recent successful Leverhulme funding application on the history of maps Professor Brotton who also starred in a three-part series about extraordinary stories behind maps on BBC Four is currently writing a book on Shakespeare and Islam and researching the history of discovery in the early modern period For more information click on the links below: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s2t5j set the standard for all subsequent dictionaries Even university students struggle with Johnson’s essays which are mostly about other dead white men Traditionalists might decry Dr Johnson as another victim of decolonising the curriculum in favour of BAME writers They are even less likely to have read his translation of the 17th-century Portuguese Jesuit Jerónimo Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia (1735) Equally neglected is his one and only stage play on the doomed relationship between an Ottoman sultan and Greek prisoner set in Istanbul inspired by his interest in translating Lobo’s account of the religion and politics of the Habesha people of Ethiopia and Eritrea Both reveal an interest in and sympathy with people and places a world away from the elite gentlemen’s clubs and political debates of Georgian England Increasingly the classroom is just one of many spaces to challenge traditional assumptions about figures such as Johnson and his inaccessible writing an urban accident of geographical proximity has led to a reassessment of Irene beyond the seminar room The house where Johnson lived and wrote his dictionary is today a museum It sits in a central London square opposite the Arab British Centre an organisation dedicated to understanding the Arab world and its history in the UK Both institutions teamed up to launch an exhibition this month entitled London’s Theatre of the East It includes an exhibition in Dr Johnson’s house of Arab-British artists responding to the long history of Arabs and Muslims in England and on its stage from Shakespeare to Johnson’s Irene They include the Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil’s dramatic monologue about the wife of the printer who published the first English translation of the Qur’an in 1649 The British-Moroccan novelist Saeida Rouass is cutting up Johnson’s Irene and his dictionary with Arab accounts of British life to create a startling composite text Other artists will also be on display in the exhibition alongside the first public performance of Johnson’s Irene in 270 years The time has come to reassess Johnson’s neglected play When it opened at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in 1749 it only ran for nine nights The problem lay in the play’s central story of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (or “Mahomet” in Johnson’s play) a Greek Christian captured after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Using a trope common to the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras the apocryphal story portrays Mehmed as a violent oriental despot who publicly beheads the hapless Irene once he realises his passion for her threatens to undermine his political authority Decolonising Dr Johnson doesn’t consign him to the rubbish heap of dead white writers: on the contrary it returns him to a more diverse English literary cultureIn Johnson’s version of the story Irene and her friend Aspasia debate their public and religious roles as women Irene tells Mahomet that women share with men thought and she dies because of the decisions she makes not because she is simply a pawn in a male world Mahomet in turn is shown in a state of emotional turmoil at his conflicted situation rather than as the raging Turk of the Elizabethan stage demanded the play was altered for performance with Mahomet portrayed in melodramatic fashion and Irene killed onstage This led to booing and laughter on the play’s premiere and a hasty decision to return to Johnson’s original version Johnson tried to challenge prevailing beliefs about oriental drama especially the assumption that its female characters were passive as much as the mannered language and static staging that led to its critical and theatrical neglect The performance at Dr Johnson’s house restores Johnson’s more compassionate and contradictory depictions of Irene and Mahomet This will never redeem the play as a lost classic But it does allow new audiences drawn from across black Asian and minority ethnic communities to engage with this icon of white English culture writing about their own history they may see that there is no national or cultural purity to what is called English literature The culture and history of Abyssinia and the Ottoman empire were important ingredients imported into Johnson’s life and works and we diminish his achievements if they are ignored it returns him centrestage to a more diverse English literary culture Decolonising the English curriculum as well as Muslim and white Britons – to be part of a conversation about Johnson and his literary legacy It also deepens our understanding of Johnson and his writings rather than diminishing or even dismissing them he was a political and religious conservative but he was also a passionate abolitionist who identified with outsiders based on his own life of mental and physical ill health It is our problem – and challenge – to address Barber’s heritage of slavery and forcible removal that also enabled us to have the version of Dr Johnson that we do – dictionary Jerry Brotton is the author of This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. London’s Theatre of the East is at Dr Johnson’s House through 15 February 2020; arabbritishcentre.org.uk; drjohnsonshouse.org But why let reality get in the way of a story that fires up his base But Johnson’s 2007 essay – an appendix to a later edition of his book praising the Roman empire – reveals a level of historical ignorance shocking even for such a political opportunist He claims Byzantine Constantinople “kept the candle of learning alight for a thousand years” while the Ottomans failed to develop printing presses in the city “until the middle of the 19th century” Byzantine rule had gone backwards for generations prior to its fall to the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II in 1453 who repopulated the ruined city with Jews and Christians to help build one of the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan centres of its time courted for its commercial power by Venice and a magnet for Renaissance Italian scholars and artists (Leonardo even proposed a design for a bridge across the Golden Horn for the sultan in 1502) The city’s first officially recognised printing press opened in 1727 not because of previous objections by zealous mullahs but because of the Islamic handwritten calligraphic tradition that regarded words as art – something print struggled to reproduce Sultan Mehmed II transformed Constantinople into ‘one of the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan centres of its time’ Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty ImagesJohnson argues there is nothing like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in the Muslim world “because it is beyond the technical accomplishment of Islamic art” and “theologically offensive to Islam” He might like to know that scholars now believe Michelangelo took inspiration for designing St Peter’s from the imperial mosques designed by the Ottoman architect Sinan who also influenced the other great Italian architect Johnson’s attack on Islamic aniconism – the rejection of figurative images – betrays a profound ignorance of both Islamic calligraphy and the differences between Sunni and Shia traditions in representing figures But then there’s little sense that he even grasps the differences between the two Islamic denominations as he collapses the diversity of what he calls the Islamic world into one angry his position is understandable: the tradition of Greco-Roman study at Oxford that produced the man we all know has always quietly assumed the “East” from the Persian empire to the rise of Islam And hardly anyone within that field studies Arab or early Islamic history So the myths and prejudices harden into facts There is no awareness of the life of Muhammad a merchant outside the Meccan trading elite The only Qur’anic passages written in the prophet’s lifetime concerned commerce So much for a religion inimical to capitalism embraced industrialisation and struggled in support of political constitutionalism because his anti-Islam statements only shore up his political base in the short term But “speaking your mind” based on proven ignorance is no way to engage in meaningful political dialogue with a quarter of the world’s population Let’s see how successful that is as a strategy for Johnson over the coming years Jerry Brotton is professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Complete digital access to quality analysis and expert insights complemented with our award-winning Weekend Print edition Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times Every TV viewer is familiar with the grotesque image of the aged Elizabeth I’s blackened teeth Jerry Brotton starts his story of Elizabethan England’s interaction with the Muslim world by introducing us to Abd al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri As the envoy looks at the Virgin Queen’s rotten gnashers we see 40 years of Moroccan sugar exports wreaking their havoc If Brotton sometimes overstates his case for the Islamic world’s centrality to Elizabethan court politics Trade with the Islamic world was well under way even as Elizabeth ascended her insecure throne in 1558 By the 1560s England was importing 250 tons Saltburn and East Cleveland is on the north east of England with some parts of this area being inhabited since at least the 7th century Saltburn is home to The Saltburn Cliff Lift which is one of the world's oldest water-powered funiculars Saltburn & East Cleveland covers the TS12 & TS13 postcode areas which includes Skelton Sign up to our newsletter for free Saltburn And East Cleveland updates and breaking news by email.