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Sealand: from a Castle in the Sky to a Stronghold at Sea. Holding the Fort in the World’s Smallest Nation

2/25/2020

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The Principality of Sealand, commonly known as Sealand, is a micronation that claims Roughs Tower, an offshore platform in the North Sea approximately 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) off the coast of Suffolk, as its territory. Roughs Tower is a disused Maunsell Sea Fort, originally called HM Fort Roughs, built as an anti-aircraft gun platform by the British during World War II.

Since 1967, the decommissioned HM Fort Roughs has been occupied by family and associates of Paddy Roy Bates, who claim it as an independent sovereign state. Bates seized it from a group of pirate radio broadcasters in 1967 with the intention of setting up his own station at the site. He later attempted to establish Sealand as a nation state in 1975 with the writing of a national constitution and establishment of other national symbols, such a coinage, stamps, titles of nobility and (now withdrawn) passports.

While it has been described as the world's smallest country, Sealand is contentious in not being officially recognised by any established sovereign state despite of Sealand's government's claim that it has been de facto recognised by the United Kingdom and Germany.

The story of Sealand, Holding the Fort by Prince Michael Bates, commences with the history of maverick British Army Major Paddy Bates, Michael’s father and ruler of Sealand – and indeed the story of the Principality of Sealand is intertwined with the story of this larger than life character…

​During the Second World War, the British government built several Fortress islands in the North Sea to defend its coasts from German invaders. Some of these forts were built illegally in international waters.

One of these illegal Fortresses, consisting of concrete and steel construction, was the famous Fort Roughs Tower, situated slightly north of the estuary region of the River Thames, on the east coast of the United Kingdom. In contrast to the original plan to locate the tower within the sovereign territory of the UK, this fortress was situated at approximately seven nautical miles from the coast. This is more than double the then applicable three-mile range of territorial waters. To put it briefly, this island was situated in the international waters of the North Sea.

The forts were abandoned in the early 1950s and, due to their illegal construction in international waters in a time of world crisis, they should have been destroyed, to comply with international law and except for Fort Roughs Tower the neighbouring fortresses were indeed pulled down. The result of this was the portentous uniqueness of the remaining fortress. Fort Roughs Tower, situated on the high seas, had been deserted and abandoned, res derelicta and terra nullius. From a legal point of view, it therefore constituted extra-national territory.

In the early 60s, Roy Bates, a Major in the British army, established a radio station, situated offshore on the abandoned ex naval fort “Knock John”. The theory behind this location was an attempt to bypass the draconian broadcasting restrictions of the time, which permitted little more than formal broadcasting by the BBC. Roy’s station, “Radio Essex”, and others like it, were known affectionately by the media as “Pirate” radio stations, and were much loved by the British public, as they supplied everything that the BBC did not at the time, Pop music and amusing presenters.

In the years that ensued, Roy fought an unsuccessful legal battle with the UK government, which questioned the legality of his occupation of said fort. It was ruled that “Knock John” fell under UK jurisdiction. Smarting from his setback, Roy weighed his options. Another abandoned fortress, Roughs Tower, identical in construction to the Knock John existed further offshore, and crucially, outside of the three-mile limit to which the UK jurisdiction extended. Roy proceeded to occupy Roughs Tower, on Christmas eve 1966, with the intention of revitalising his dormant radio station. This was until he conjured a different plan entirely. After consulting his lawyers, Roy decided to declare this fortress island the independent state of “Sealand”, Claiming “Jus Gentium” (“Law of Nations”) over a part of the globe that was “Terra Nullius” (Uninhabited Land).

On the 2nd of September 1967, accompanied by his wife Joan on her birthday, his son Michael (14), daughter Penelope (16) and several friends and followers, Roy declared the Principality of Sealand. The founding of this country was marked by the raising of a newly designed flag, and in an extremely romantic birthday gesture, the bestowing of a new title on his beloved wife, to be know from that moment on as “Princess Joan”.

It was not long before the British Government decided they could not have what ministers described as a possible “Cuba off the east coast of England”. The military were promptly dispatched to destroy all other remaining forts located in international waters. The Bates family looked on as huge explosions sent the massive structures hurtling hundreds of feet in the air and twisted and buckled debris floated past Sealand for days.

Helicopters that had carried the explosives buzzed menacingly above, and the navy tug carrying the demolition crew passed close by our fortress home and shouted, “You’re next!” with an angry waving of arms. A while later a government vessel steamed to within fifty feet of Sealand, its boisterous crew shouting threatening obscenities at Michael, and his sixteen-year-old sister. Warning shots were promptly fired across the bow of the boat by Prince Michael, causing it to hastily turn and race away towards the UK, amongst a large cloud of black engine smoke.
 
Since Roy was still a British citizen, a summons was issued under the UK ”firearms act”. On the 25th of November 1968, Roy and Michael found themselves in the dock of the Crown court of Chelmsford assizes in Essex. There was much argument, and laws dating back to the 17th century were called upon. The judge concluded that “This is a swash buckling incident perhaps more akin to the time of Sir Francis Drake, but it is my judgment is that the UK courts have no jurisdiction.” This was Sealand’s first de facto recognition.

​HRH Prince Michael – Paddy Bates’ son and current ruler of Sealand - has documented this picaresque story of the establishment and maintenance of Sealand in a detailed historical and autobiographical account Holding the Fort. If this were not a true and autobiographical account, Holding the Fort would make an action-packed, if hard-to-believe, thriller.

The book is fascinating in a providing a first-hand account of the establishment of Sealand, along with numerous photos of the Principality and Royal family throughout its history so far – including the taking hostage of Michael by German mercenaries and subsequent retaking of Sealand by helicopter; causing a diplomatic incident with Germany as Paddy Bates held the would-be mercenaries on treason charges…

In August 1978, Alexander Achenbach, who described himself as the Prime Minister of Sealand, hired several German and Dutch mercenaries to lead an attack on Sealand while Bates and his wife were in England. Achenbach had disagreed with Bates over plans to turn Sealand into a luxury hotel and casino with fellow German and Dutch businessmen. They stormed the platform with speedboats, Jet Skis and helicopters, and took Bates's son Michael hostage.

Michael was able to retake Sealand and capture Achenbach and the mercenaries using weapons stashed on the platform. Achenbach, a German lawyer who held a Sealand passport, was charged with treason against Sealand and was held unless he paid DM 75,000 (more than US$35,000 or £23,000). Germany then sent a diplomat from its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate for Achenbach's release. Roy Bates relented after several weeks of negotiations and subsequently claimed that the diplomat's visit constituted further de facto recognition of Sealand, this time by Germany.

Bates moved to the mainland when he became elderly, naming his son, Michael, as regent. Bates died in October 2012 at the age of 91. Michael lives in Suffolk, where he and his sons run a family fishing business called Fruits of the Sea. The end of this account of the larger-than-life Paddy Bates has not signalled the end of the Principality however – a severe fire in 2006 led to major renovations, and Sealand also publishes an online newspaper, Sealand News. In addition, a number of amateur athletes have represented Sealand in sporting events, including unconventional events like the World Egg Throwing Championship, which the Sealand team won in 2008, and more mainstream events such as skateboarding, marathon running and, recently, a national football team.

And of course the curious micronation of Sealand retains its claims as a sovereign state to this day, with a website at www.sealandgov.org.  Amongst history, updates and a shop an online comic (Sealand Comic) can also be found; by renowned artist Matteo Farinella. This depicts a brief but highly engaging potted history of Sealand … https://www.sealandgov.org/sealand-comic-by-matteo-farinella/ although whilst forming an accessible introduction to the island, HRH Prince Michael Bates’ first-hand account is destined to become the definitive book about the Principality of Sealand. (key historical background in this review 
© Copyright 2012 - 2018 Principality of Sealand. All rights reserved).

“E MARE LIBERTAS”
 
And so, I turn the page and the final chapter in my global journey around the world is at hand. After nearly 11 years, over 250 countries and nations, and 315 books I finally set out for the end of my voyage, the place my travels began – indeed being born here, the place that I began – England. There is a sense of irony that my final trip is from one of the newest and tiniest nations  of Sealand to one which formed the hub of an Empire, and later a Commonwealth, covering at one point nearly a quarter of the world’s population (including my new home of Australia) with a national heritage going back centuries.

Much has changed even in the relatively short period since my first book on my travels… (Salaam Brick Lane by Tarquin Hall) – a love letter to London in all of its multicultural glory, a place based on centuries of immigrants from the far corners of the world; to my final stop courtesy of Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers, a ‘Brave New World’ satire set in Edmundsbury, a small town in England, sometime in the recent future...

Brexit has happened and is real. Fear and loathing are on the rise. Grass-roots right-wing political party England Always are fomenting hatred. The residents of a failing housing estate are being cleared from their homes. A multinational tech company is making inroads into the infrastructure. Just as the climate seems at its most pressured, masked men begin a series of 'disruptions', threatening to make internet histories public, asking the townspeople what don't you want to share? As tensions mount, lives begin to unravel.

But enough of this book until next time, first I need to re-take my bumpy journey by boat from Sealand to the port of Hastings, famous for the Norman invasion of 1066 and the start of the Royal Family line. I walk to the train station from the sea front in a chilly morning dew and board the train to Ashford International, 44 minutes later I am on the connecting train to Stratford International arriving after another 30 minutes.

I grab a sandwich as I jog the 700 metres to catch the train from Stratford (London) to Ipswich (another hour trip), then from Ipswich the final leg brings me to my destination of a small Eastern town on Bury St Edmunds (the actual novel location is named Edmundsbury but is a thinly disguised fiction version of Bury, which resides in the actual Diocese of Edmundsbury).

​So, four hours and $200 later (a timescale and cost that could have taken me halfway across Africa earlier in my journey!), I come full circle to this Blessed Isle, this happy breed, this green and pleasant land, perfidious Albion… England. 
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Sun and Shadow: Searching for Truth from Jersey to Jerusalem

2/24/2020

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Along with the Isle of Man and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey forms one of three island British Crown Dependencies off the coast of the UK (though the Channel Islands are geographically closer to France). The bailiwick consists of the island of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, along with surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks collectively named Les Dirouilles, Les Écréhous, Les Minquiers, Les Pierres de Lecq and other reefs. Jersey has a separate relationship to the Crown from the other Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man, although all are held by the monarch of the United Kingdom.

Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. The Lieutenant Governor on the island is the personal representative of the Queen.

You’ll be relieved to hear that Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom, furthermore Jersey is not fully part of the European Union but has a special relationship with it – so no Brexit shenanigans for now (that will come in a couple of books time!). For more on this status, just don’t forget to (re)watch the ‘UK Explained’ video I posted earlier in the Isle of Man review…

And so onto one of the final novels of my global journey…one that explores this area of natural beauty and biodiversity along with its dubious reputation as a tax haven by some organisations.

This thriller of angels, demons, and corporate espionage could, at first glance, be seen as yet another formulaic Da Vinci Code clone; but it is anything but that… What I Tell You in the Dark is an intelligent, unsettling story of impotent omnipotence, mayhem, capitalism, mental illness and corruption.

Not bad for a debut novel (by John Samuel, nom de plume of Sam Le Quesne – a travel editor and communications adviser – who currently lives with in Jersey).

This book, for all its tales of corporate greed and secretive Vatican machinations, is at its core a character study of a nameless angel who has been out of God’s favour since things went wrong with his last mission, two thousand years ago. He has spent the intervening millennia watching the humanity he so loves fall into moral disrepair – a consumerist ‘greed is good’ malaise. Lately, he’s been watching Will, a London businessman attempting to expose his company’s dark dealings to the press. But Will’s campaign is not going well.

In a moment of weakness and bravado, the angel decides to spiritually take Will over— “jumping in” as he did as he did with Jesus of Nazareth, seeing in Will's struggles an opportunity to make amends for the devastating consequences that his last act wreaked on the western world.  But as the angel comes up against demonic forces fighting to maintain the status quo, Will increasingly loses his grip on himself. As he soon remembers, being human - with all our potential, our insecurities and all our weaknesses - is not easy. As Will begins to lose his grip on himself and his mission, the reader is forced to question exactly whose reckoning this is: Are these the delusions of a man who has lost his grip on reality? Or the illusion of an angel desperate to right our wrongs?

The novel is a page turner with brains, a soul and a healthy dose of pathos and black humour. The wider plot concerning this corporate whistle blower who may or may not be possessed by an avenging angel, and his attempts to unmask an international conspiracy that links the Vatican with a major pharmaceutical company could lead to over-exposition. Instead the book offers a slick and sympathetic portrait of a man falling apart in the modern world, a rich commentary on religious mania and a moving portrayal of the possible effects of mental illness. It's engagingly written throughout - sometimes shocking, often funny, occasionally very sad, but always enthralling, and with a central character that works his way into your heart over the course of the book.

That is not to say that the author does not portray a sense of place and location here – whilst the Vatican remains a shadowy background cult having forsaken God for gold, London is well invoked as the faceless, morally bankrupt landscape of mankind’s disrepair – from the shining corporate edifices to the rat-infested drug havens of forgotten council flats just a stone’s throw away.

Jersey itself plays an interesting part here; a place of natural beauty where the hidden gold assets flow from shady investment fund to shady fund, oblivious to the wonder of the world it traverses. Even more interesting this is the rural idyll of Will's former Physics professor, a discipline which Will chose over Theology (much to his priest father’s sadness) and then similarly abandoned. Yet the search for gold, the unattainable promise of a sun’s new dawn after the dark, touches even here with its relentless drive to find the building blocks, the base elements that the universe must surely be made of?

And finally, mirroring this rural stereotype, Will’s home, his concerned family, the disappointment of his well-meaning but misguided father; the perfect nuclear family symbolised by the eternal gold band of the wedding ring and made imperfect by Will’s ‘episodes’. Another failure to get the real point across as Will sees it, that he was making two millennia ago... enjoy what there is, life is precious, make that enough and don’t waste it on striving for a golden eternity of heaven and baubles of commerce, live your life now, whilst you can. It’s enough.

In a sense these four locations form the four interlinking points that come together in a narrative cross – the story is as much of Fall as Redemption; and from an ‘Angel’ who cried out “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” on the cross at Calvary the ending is especially poignant.

Now, you may think from the above that What I Tell You in the Dark is a hugely sacrilegious and complex read, but you can rest assured – the humour is well balanced, and the references to God, Heaven, and Angels are equally balanced with the improbable vagaries of quantum physics and the rise of consumerism and rapid technological growth. It helps that Will is rather an unreliable narrator – as one continues through the book, it fast becomes unclear to the reader whether Will really is possessed by an Angel, or simply in the grips of mental illness. Neither the religion or the mental illness are taken particularly lightly, despite the humour of this book, and John Samuel’s writing ability is such that one really starts to care about the characters and events.

A climactic ending combined with revelations as to the true nature of Will and his celestial passenger, are particularly affecting, and will mean something fundamentally different to each reader, for we all have our own individual sense of meaning. And perhaps that is the point of this thought-provoking and very human novel.


Thus, I set out on my penultimate trip to the Principality of Sealand – a tiny micronation that, fittingly, raises questions over the very notion of what constitutes a country…

As you might imagine going from one of the world’s tiniest states to an even tinier one (0.0015 square miles in size) is not a simple task…

So, if you’re interested – I take the two-hour Condor Ferries ‘Commodore Clipper’ back to Guernsey for £20 unallocated seating, then connect with the once-daily ferry to Poole ($70 for a three-hour crossing). After a half hour walk, I arrive at Poole station for the regular 2h 9min train to London Waterloo (an eye-watering $190). Once there it’s a brief rediscovery of the joys of the tube (21 minutes on the Jubilee line) to Stratford Station and yet another hour and a half on the train to Harwich (changing at Manningtree) an eastern port town on the North Sea where I can, barely in the sea spray, see my destination of the Principally of Sealand, aka former UK military fort Roughs Tower. As I peer through the mist, I put any thoughts of my trip to Jersey aside and steel myself for the next leg…

For this is no journey’s end. This tiny state does not welcome visitors openly (shots have previously been fired at British Naval Vessels that have strayed too close) and I am fortunate to use my status as an official Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Sealand to gain access with the agreement of Prince Michel Bates.
​
This involved a stomach-churning trip over choppy, cold grey water in an inflatable rig piloted by a genial but taciturn fellow who doubles as maintenance man and sole Sealand inhabitant during Prince Michael’s periods on shore. A quick clamber up decidedly precarious iron steps and I stand atop the main deck of the tiniest and possibly most disputed of my destinations: the Principality of Sealand.
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Chukwuemeka Ike: The Nigerian king who served Toads for Supper

2/11/2020

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Click image below for more...
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Books pulled over 'literary blackface' accusations

2/7/2020

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Diverse Editions - well-intentioned I'm sure, but a pretty daft idea IMHO. Sticking a black character on a cover with no context of the content of an existing book makes about as much sense as putting a white guy on the cover of The Famished Road. We need more systemic support to encourage, recognise and facilitate diversity in literature and publishing; not easy token gestures like this that hold themselves up to ridicule...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51399355
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Summer’s End: Beauty and Sadness in the Setting Sun on Sark

2/1/2020

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Some debut novels are unexceptional coming-of age-stories, others show talent and flair. Fortunately, The Last Kings of Sark, Rosa Rankin-Gee's taut, shimmering novel falls into the latter category. Its primary action, which takes place over a few transformative summer weeks in the lives of three young people on the remote Channel island of Sark, holds a quirky, yet irresistible tension.

The narrative commences with one of the triumvirate, a 21-year-old graduate, being flown in a merchant banker's private plane for a short season of tutoring his teenage son, Pip, on Sark.

Rankin-Gee invests her characters with ambiguity from the start, and the book opens on a gentle Shakespearean gender mix-up which will shade the whole story with paradoxical quirks: "My name is Jude. And because of Law, Hey and the Obscure, they thought I was a boy. Not even a boy. A young man …," says the female tutor in her opening lines.

Jude's reluctant charge is Pip, a nervous, fantastically bright 16-year-old who won't meet her eye. His, father Eddy is a florid public-school bore; and French mother Esmé is rarely glimpsed, silently inhabiting the upper reaches of the house like an elusive, birdlike, Miss Havisham or Bertha Rochester. Eddy and Esmé are only children who have produced an only child; this coincidence includes Jude, and the other person who will make up a fiercely intense trio with her and Pip: Sofi, the hired cook. "Polish," states Eddy dismissively. "Ealing," insists Sofi.

Sofi is the focal point, their unacknowledged leader – "after her stories, ours seemed drawn in the dimmest pencil" – despite her lower status in the pecking order of the household. As staff, she and Jude live out, sharing a basic twin-bedded room in a forlorn establishment that barely passes muster as a hotel. Sofi's frankness, adroit malapropisms and filthy epithets make Jude, the elder by two years, feel immature and awkward, as do the younger woman's unabashed sexuality and boldness: "dirty blonde, dirty tan, denim-blue eyes". The first night Sofi undresses like an unspoken challenge: "She whipped off her top mid-sentence and sat on the edge of the bed, legs open, in a black lace bra."

Rankin-Gee lavishes as much attention on her descriptions of Sark as she does on the golden protegonists. It's an intriguing setting for a novel, this tiny island, rising "out of the sea like a souffle" – the last feudal state in Europe, just two square miles in area, with a population of around 600, where cars are banned and the content of meals depends on what erratically delivered supplies appear in the local store.

The recently-departed feudalism is less than subtly present in Eddy's domain; sharp-witted Sofi's initial disdain for Jude is due to the fact that "I [Jude] was wearing a suit and using the voice I saved for my parents' friends." Sofi uses bravado to cover her lack of formal education, but Jude is something of a fraudulent tutor who doesn't know her Borges from her Hemingway. When Eddy leaves for a business trip, the summer slides into recklessness. Lessons are abandoned, scallop trawled for illegally with Czech casual workers, rosé drunk at noon and rickety bike rides taken in the dark, with Jude always following Sofi's "red bindi" of a backlight. The idyll and the close-knit relationship of the three ends explosively, but also with extreme tenderness, an unforgettable finale to those sun-drenched, prelapsarian weeks – at once spiritual, physical and emotional; a moment never to be recaptured….

Personally, I feel Rankin-Gee should have left the narrative there – a frozen moment in time, unsullied by the future á la John Fowles’ The Magus.

Instead, the novel's extended coda shows Sofi, Pip and Jude at separate moments of their lives two, five and many years later. Sark dwindles or enlarges by turn to become a symbol of rueful remembrance, as the story resumes in a rough Normandy bar, the heart of Paris and, later, in England. Reality shows its inevitable face in random deaths and alliances.

This section seems tacked on, reading almost like an unfinished treatment for an unnecessary sequel… and even the language becomes jarring. Lyrical descriptions of inner awakenings and the outer beauty of Sark, give way to dead-end plotlines and frankly unlikable characters spouting awkward dialogue…

“What are you thinking?”
“What about?”
“Anything, everything, I don’t know”
“I don’t know either. What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know”

Sorry, that’s just irritating. If the author was trying to depict how the past can never be recaptured and life must inevitably move forward, fair enough: I just wish she hadn’t done it in such an anticlimactic way… Still, a very entertaining and at times poignant read, only dropping to 3 stars from 4 for the final 100-page slog.

As I mentioned in my last blog post/Guernsey review, the book selected for the neighbouring Bailiwick of Jersey was still winging its way around the globe to my home in Australia from my native UK (quite appropriate for a book whose main character is an angel!). 

I am pleased to say that this has now arrived and am grateful to Matt Fiott, Executive Director of Arts Jersey, whose organisation not only demonstrated that Jersey has a thriving contemporary arts scene, but also kindly responded to my query by suggesting a modern day novel set predominantly in Jersey that sounds fascinating (What I Tell You In The Dark by John Samuel).

So, it's back to the sea...sadly the handy Sark to Jersey "Manche Iles Express" ferry only runs in summer - whilst only 20 pounds and 1 hour 10 minutes, I am not minded to wait until April to leave, so it's back on the Sark Shipping Company ferry to Guernsey, a 45 minute trip.Condor Ferries go to Jersey's St Helier port hourly, so I have chance for a pleasant lunch before boarding the 'Condor Liberation' ferry for A$54 arriving at my next destination an hour later (be aware - the 'Condor Clipper' ferry takes an hour longer at the same price).

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