William Morris - the incredible life of the man who influenced the Inklings

Hello and welcome to the Mithmakers Podcast. Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, my name is Julia Golding, I'm an author but also I don't direct her of the centre. Now here's a little quote for you, see if you recognise it. This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race, what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks. Now perhaps some of you are sitting there thinking that J.R.R. Tolkien talking about Lord of the Rings where he wanted to write a story for the North, but actually it's by William Morris, his Victorian predecessor, and today we're going to spend time with William Morris in this podcast. And to tell us through this enormous subject because William Morris was a man of so many talents, we just couldn't possibly cover them all, is Dr. Ingrid Hanson, who is a lecturer of English literature at the University of Manchester and also a very old friend of mine, so hello Ingrid. Hi, nice to be here, Julia. So first of all, let's put William Morris in context. He's a figure that people may have heard about, but they may not know him so much as a writer. Looking up his dates, if I've got this right, he was born in around 1834 and lived to 1896. But let's think about him first as a poet and prose writer. So can you give a little sketch of the range of his works under that title? Absolutely. So I'll just kind of dive in for a moment where you started, which is to say that, yeah, in the 1870s, and then I'll go backwards to the beginning, but in the 1870s, Maurice got really excited about Iceland and Icelandic literature. So that quotation is about the saga of the Valsums, which he translated with Icelandic scholar, Erika Moundsson, and he also went to Iceland, and then later produced an epic Icelandic poem telling the story of the Valsums and the Nibblums called, Sigurd the Valsums and the fall of the Nibblums. So he first translated the saga with Moundsson, called Valsums saga, and then he wrote his own version of it. That's in kind of the middle of Maurice's career that Sigurd the Valsum comes out in 1876. But let's go back to where he started. So yes, he was born in 1834 into a kind of upper middle class family. His father had made a load of money in a mining interest called Devon Consoles. And Maurice was sent to a minor public school, I think it's a minor, Marlborough, and I wish he hated, called it a boy farm, spent all his time escaping and getting out into the countryside, having a look at historical buildings and old barrows on the hillsides and so on. And then he went up to Oxford in 1852 or 53, and 53 I think he actually went up and to read greats. But it was there that he met the Edward Bern Jones, who of course became a very well-known artist, and a group of other young men with whom he got really excited about literature. And so Maurice had written a few things early on in his undergraduate life. There's a few poems that he wrote then. And he started reading Malarie's more doth, and that really excited him, as well as Ruskin, the artist and art critic. And also Tennyson, Browning, and all kinds of other writers of the day. He and his friends used to read them out loud to each other. Or at least Maurice did most of the reading out loud. He was very keen on reading and less keen on listening. Yes, go on. Could I ask you about the group of friends? Did they have a name? So, because obviously Tolkien and Lewis, who we often talk about on these podcasts, name themselves the Inklings. I'm just wondering if there's a precursor inklings also in Oxford that we've forgotten about. I mean, it was very much that kind of group. They didn't really have a name. They started off wanting to call themselves the Brotherhood, and they temporarily called themselves the Brotherhood. Edward Bernjohn said, we must take segala haves our model. And they thought about having us. At that time, very early on, Maurice was thinking about going into the church, and they were thinking they were influenced by our fury and ideas of Brotherhood, and also an idea of a kind of holy fellowship. But they very quickly dropped that actually, and instead poured that kind of Brotherhood energy into a magazine called the Oxford and Cambridge magazine. It was called the Oxford and Cambridge, because although almost all of them were Oxford, there were a couple of Vernon Lushington and his brother, were at Cambridge, and a couple of others who were part of that sort of Brotherhood as it were. But they didn't, so they didn't end up calling themselves the Brotherhood. They started the Oxford and Cambridge magazine, which they brought out in 1856, 12 issues in 1856. That's as long as it lasted. And when Maurice looked back on it later, he wrote to somebody later in about 1868, I think he'd written to him asking about starting his own magazine, and Maurice said, oh, I wish you hadn't looked at it really, it wasn't that great. But that's where he published his first work, which was a series of short stories, actually. He published a few poems in there, but also wonderful short romances. One of them, which is about a church, a builder, or a decorator, carving designs on a church in the Middle Ages, and one of his friends coming back from the Crusades, who's also the lover of his wife. So a lot of those stories are where you start to see Maurice is interested in the work of the hands, in the relationship between art, architecture, landscape, and romantic relationships, but also relationships of Brotherhood, so the narrator of that story, and Amiart, the friend who come back, are obviously really close and loving, and that idea of male friendship runs through Maurice's work. So there's a series of books. You can see the influence of Ruskin, as well, with the idea of the medieval craftsman, which is like his ideal idea of creativity for a public use, but also having an individual imprint, as opposed to the era in the Victorian times, when you're getting mass produced things, which remove the individual expression. So it's all part of a reaction to industrialization amongst other things. Yes, completely. So that obsession with the Arthurian stories and the past is about saying, yes, the way things are now, what Bernard Jones called an article, Kant and hypocrisy, and a kind of sense of people being removed. In a way, it removed also from their bodily experience. So Maurice is always, I mean, hands are huge, and he's working another one of those stories, girthers, lovers. We have lots of different iterations of people's hands and how their hands, the way that their hands are, show what kind of people they are. And he himself is going, as he writes to one of his friends, I went to Brassing the other day. So he loves going and rubbing grasses in churches. And so that physical contact with the past and with story and myth is really important for Maurice. And so then once he finishes Oxford, and the Oxford and Cambridge magazine closes, he publishes in 1858 his first collection of poetry, The Defense of Guinevere and Other Poems. So a lot of those are Arthurian, they're all medieval. All his stories, actually, in Oxford and Cambridge magazine, are set in the distant past, apart from one called Frank Sealed Letter, which is in the contemporary moment, very rare for Maurice. He's got a couple of other things that are contemporary, but they're almost all in the past. Could we just have a little pause? As I said, there's so much to talk about. But I just want to pause so people do note The Defense of Guinevere, which is such an interesting text, particularly because it is putting quite a feminist spin. You might think all these buff-looking Victorian gents of beards are all going to be very anti-women. But of course, Maurice was not at all. He is an equal opportunities person at heart. And his defense of Guinevere is pleading her case from her point of view, if I'm correct. Catch you with us. I'm not the expert. You tell us about The Defense of Guinevere in Guinevere. It's a fascinating poem. And I think there's a number of things going on there. I think there is a really interesting proto-feminist reading going on, although there are also some more complicated males, men looking at women, looking beautiful matters going on. So it starts, but it starts off giving Guinevere a voice. I love that. It starts in the middle of the action where Guinevere is on trial for her adultery with Lancelot and it starts off, but knowing now that they would have her speech through her wet hair backward from her brow, her hand, close to her mouth touching her. This incredibly associated had there a shameful blow. So this wonderful immediately kind of we see her body. And the kind of distance is those she had had there a shameful blow, but she feels she must a little touch it. So it's a Tertzerima poem as well, which means that the three line stanzas and the middle line of one stanza links to the first line of the next stanza in terms of the rhymes. And that's a form that was used by Dante. So it's reaching back to Dante in the 15th century as well. And it's so knowing now that they would have her speak for quite a few lines, Guinevere doesn't. I love that beginning. She takes her own time. And then when we do get to her speaking, she does a fantastic thing where she says, you know, I know that you're all great lords. And I ought to apologize for what I've done. But imagine this. And then she sets up a scene where imagine that your time would come to die and you're lying there and an angel appears. And he's got two cloths and one of them's red and one of them's blue and says, choose. And so you think, oh, heaven's color, blue. After half an hour of wondering about it. And he says, hell, it's a great moment again. Absolutely refusing the kind of moral structure that would say, OK, we know how things work and we know what you've done. And she starts to go, OK, where does meaning lie? And how do you know what I've done wrong? So there's this one. It's a wonderful poem. And she keeps coming back to Galwayne, the knight who's her key accuser in Morris' version of it and says, you were so Galwayne lie. But at the same time, she tells the story of her romance with Lancelot. So there's a lot of questions raised. And the one last thing that I want to say about it, I mean, do go and read it. It's wonderful and glorious. But what's really interesting to think about is this is called the defense of Guinevere. And her defense is not, let me tell you why I'm right or let me tell you what I did or why I did it. Her defense is, look at me. I'm a beautiful queen. I can't possibly have done anything wrong, which is a kind of medieval beauty. You don't look at my body. I can't have done anything wrong. Yeah, oh, I did all kinds of things. But you know what, you're still lying. And so she's defending herself like a nut. And at the very end of the poem, Maurice makes it. He says that she turns, she's waiting for Lancelot to come and she listens like a knight listening out for the sound of his brother, his brother warrior. So in fact, it's like a trial by combat. And she's in combat again and again. She's on the attack here as well as the defense. So yeah, it's complicated and glorious as a poem. And then there's a whole load of other Arthurian poems in that collection as well. Right, I stopped you on Guinevere. So let's kind of run because we've got a long career to follow. So after the Arthurian poems. So after the Arthurian poems, he goes on to write some really, well, so the Arthurian poems kind of, you know, in terms of critical reception, people were a little bit puzzled by them. Thought they kind of fell under the slightly sort of sensorious views of the preraphalites that people held at that time. You know, and they're odd. And I mean, angles are fantastically important to Morris as they are to preraphalites, you know, odd angles. The description of her kiss with Lancelot, with her mouths wondering in one way. And it's very interesting. So but they were critics weren't terribly pleased with them. But then he goes on to write the earthly paradise, which is a series. It's a sort of, you know, short series and you have a prologue with wanderers and then each one of them tells a different story. And there's a whole collection of both classical and then northern tales told in verse. And this was hugely popular, hugely successful. He published it between 1868 and 1870 and that really made his name. And he also published some, again, some classical works for life and death of Jason, which was very well received. And by now he started collaborating with Edward Bern Jones as well. So Edward Bern Jones was doing woodcuts for his work. So these were beautifully produced works. And you know, he was praised for being malifluous and melodious and sort of sweet and beautiful and such a wonderful voice. And then he, so that was a kind of really sort of high period. And then in 1868, just as he was sort of, you know, bringing out the earthly paradise, that's when he met Erica Malnison, the Icelander, and became really interested in Iceland, started doing translations of Icelandic prose tales. And then became interested in kind of what he talks about, the worship of courage of the north of Iceland. And he went on two trips there, 1871 and 1873, and was just stunned by the landscape. And so again, you know, the importance always, by this time Morris was working, he'd gone on leaving the university, he'd gone first for all to work for an architect, GE Street. And then he left that architect and became, set up his own firm, again, with several other of his friends and associates. They set up in 1861 and then in 1865. This was really jiktic, so it was just Morris, it's called Morris and Co. So they were producing wallpapers and stained glass windows. And by 1875, when Morris started writing Siga, the vault and this fantastic story of, you know, revenge and drama and so many kind of talkiness motifs in Siga, the vaulting as well. You know, we have the kind of, you know, faff me and the serpent and all kinds that the sort of hidden treasure, lots of bewitchment, lots of traveling through landscapes, which are very, you know, I'm sure, talking to you on some of those landscapes for his own landscapes too. Could we just ask two things there I'd like to draw out? Because one, we're going to go back to the north in a second, but you mentioned that with his collaboration with the pre-Rapha lights and burn Jones, is that he begins this emphasis in his work on the presentation of it, which carries on all the way up to the end of his life and particularly typeface and woodcuts. And I think it's worth putting him in a tradition of other poets. So you've got another poet you need to see the visual as well as the word is someone like William Blake earlier to him. But going forward, he also does remind me of talking himself who spent a lot of time on his, creating his own calligraphy, his own languages and of course illustrating. In a sense, he's quite a good, William Morris is quite a good bridge between those two figures. But so it do look up the visuals everyone. That's the top tip really. But going back to where we want to spend in the north, I think it's, we've forgotten now just how well known, William Morris was as a writer at the time. So the later generation coming along, thanks to this golden period of the Arthurian tales leading on to the other stories you've just talked about. He was actually thought of in sort of poet laureate terms, wasn't he? Absolutely, yeah. So the next generation, when they are reading Arthurian romances, they're reading him as well as Tennyson. So someone like Charles Williams amongst the inklings would have had all of this in his background, and CS Lewis, this medieval version filtered through the pre-Raphaelites. But let's talk about the north and go back there because this I think it's, you know, talking as a boy, this is where he would have first found these stories. It was the way they were coming into the English language. And as well as the translations, he also wrote a fantastic diary of his voyages, which I wish I went to Iceland a few years ago. I wish I'd had them because I can recognize every place he talks about reading it. So he's also a notable travel writer if there wasn't already enough on his very heavy, heavy plate. So what do you think he admired in the Icelandic culture? You mentioned the courage factor. What are the sort of themes as he bringing into an audience who've not heard these stories before because they've not yet been translated for a mass audience? So he's interested in a couple of things, actually. And again, his interest in the relationship between landscape and people comes out here. And that's why that moment that you quoted at the beginning, which is at the beginning of his first translation of the Valsungas, I wrote Ericka Magnuson, is important because he's interested in a relationship between people and the land in which they live. So he's a kind of internationalist. Later he becomes very interested in international relations. He's anti-imperial, but he's interested also in people's own kind of belonging to their land. So one of the things that he sees in Iceland is a kind of consonance between people's lives and their land. He likes the old kind of styles of governance, of old Iceland, the all thing, the way in which people met together kind of communally to make, to discuss the way that things were going to be governed. He likes the stoicism of the people. He talks about the terrible and tragic land. He goes there himself to kind of find some courage. He writes that in letters. That's why he's going there in a way to find some courage. And he comes back feeling renewed and revitalized. He goes off to Iceland, in fact, leaving his wife, Jane Morris, in Kelmscott Manor, the house that he's bought recently with his friend, Antigabra Lizetti, who, by that time, is having an affair with his wife, Jane. And he leaves them there together, kind of goes off to find some courage, you know, to feel, OK, because he talks elsewhere about how he doesn't, you know, Morris is not keen on the idea of the pro-crusty and bed of marriage, where people are kind of forced into something. And kind of once people to be, he expresses later in his sort of great utopian novel news from nowhere that people should be free to choose their loving relationships. But of course, within the context of his own sort of Victorian period, you know, people are not moving around so freely, but he kind of chooses in a way to live with that. So he admires the stoicism of the people. And he admires the sort of connection between their stories, their landscape, and the way that he sees them living. Those are some of the things that he likes. And he loves the landscape. He loves the barrenness of the landscape. And the way you have to force yourself through difficult paths. And yeah, in his account, those diaries are so fascinating on those travel diaries, because he figures himself, quite often, as a little bit of a sort of, you know, a little bit feeble, a little bit lacking in courage. And there are moments when he sort of says, oh, you know, I really didn't want to do it. Or, you know, I felt too, but he sort of forces himself. So that's really interesting, that. And always, with Morris, that sense of the connection between the body, the landscape, and that the art or myth or story runs through it. So, and of course, in Sigurd the Valsk, I mean, it's a fantastic tale of kind of, you know, love and betrayal and revenge. And it's a beautifully told story, absolutely cracking. So I really recommend that to people too. It's long, but it's beautiful. Well, I think this is, you know, we're doing this stuff before Christmas. And so it's something to put on the wish list, definitely, a nice long read for the new year. Okay, so my understanding is, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that sort of the later decades of Morris's life were definitely dominated by his interest in social socialism and politics. So is the 1870s the pivot, or has he already started being interested earlier on? Yeah, I mean, I think there's just a complete continuity, really, because he's always interested. He's always, you know, struggling against, it's really what he later came to understand as Victorian capitalism, you know, the rise of industry, alienation of labor, all of those things which are really identified in kind of Morris's socialism, but he's always struggling against it. He's always looking for a way of greater human connection and he's bothered by inequality and injustice. And you see that in his early works. And even the fact that he gives a voice to Guinevere, you know, he's kind of giving a voice to people who don't have a voice early on in his work. 1876 is really the turning point. He gets involved in the Eastern question, kind of agitation at the time about Britain's relationship to Turkey and Russia. And Britain at that point is supporting Turkey. Morris sees Turkey and the Ottoman Empire as it is at that point is a sort of a pressing power. So some massacres have taken place in Bulgaria and Britain was supporting Turkey against Russia and Morris speaks out against. He gets really involved in agitation about the Eastern question. So that's really, and at that point he's a great supporter of Gladstone, he thinks he's a fantastic outstanding politician. He's really in support of the liberals, but very quickly gets disillusioned with the liberals, not least because of what he calls their stock job in war in Egypt. So they go off, once he starts to see that the liberals actually, they're not against oppression and empire. And he finds that he gets put off by that. And he writes in a letter later at that point in the 1870s, I was just looking for some kind of body to join where I could express the things that mattered to me. So then in the early 1880s, in 1883, he finds the Social Democratic Federation, which is really the first sort of post-mark socialist body in Britain set up in London, and he joins that. So he's not just interested in socialism. He is body and soul, because that is really how Morris does things. And he's body and soul committed to socialism from then on. He finds that as a way of trying to change the injustices that he sees, and he catches those injustices often in terms of ugliness. And by ugliness, he means a kind of a smallness of life, a diminishment of the quality of life that he sees for particularly for the working class in Britain. And so he then spends the 1880s traveling the length and breadth of the country. He goes up to Scotland. He goes all over the place preaching socialism as he puts it. That becomes his real focus. And a lot of his writings then start to deal with socialist themes. I think as well as sort of talking about him as a precursor to the sort of inkling circle and some of their interests, it's also worth at this point when you're saying that is pointing out the difference. I think one of the things that you get hold of when you read about Morris is just how hard he worked. I mean, incredibly hard, because he is running a business, which still has a recognisable, the William Morrison Co is still a brand today. Look it up. You all recognise the fabrics. But this unpaid work, really, for a socialist cause is phenomenal, which he is doing on top of everything else. And this is very different from the professorial lives of the inklings. I mean, it's more like Charles Williams, actually, of the inklings who carried on being a full-time editor. But the actual intensity of his work with this industrial, he would say, handcraft, industry, shall we say, which he's also running, trying to make financially sustainable. He's very much well in the full flow of society. He is not in his ivory tower. He's not sitting in Oxford or somewhere. He's fully engaged and a real powerhouse. Press at this point would be quite good to have a little think of what he was like as a person, because people might not know about him as a physical presence. He was often caricatured, for example, wasn't he? Because he was quite memorable to look at. Would you like to have a go at describing him? Yeah, absolutely. And again, for people listening to this podcast, go and just look up online. Edward Bernjones is caricatures of Morris, who he called Topsy, his friends from his youth called him Topsy, which his later socialist friends found a bit shocking. But Edward Bernjones has a whole series of caricatures, Topsy in various different positions. So as he got older, I mean, he was a good looking guy with a great big beard in that common Victorian way, quite a high forehead. And he became reasonably stout as he got older. And he used to go around in a kind of blue, a kind of blue fairly coarse material, blue top and blue trousers at some point. He's got a description in his great utopian novel news from nowhere about a character in these blue clothes, looking at a ship's purse. And in fact, Morris describes himself like that at some point. And in his letters quite frequently, he's writing to his wife and he's like, oh, I'm going to get my hair cut. I know I need to get my hair cut. So he's got quite a lot of hair and looks a bit wild. And I think he seems to be all accounts to have been a really big physical presence. He responded to things hugely. Again, in news from nowhere where the cat central character in there is clearly modelled on Morris. He talks at one point about how he's in a socialist meeting and he loses his temper and tells them all for fools. And this is clearly from his daughters accounts from other people's accounts clearly. This is one of Morris's ways of responding to things. But he is, as he was saying, he's absolutely. He's in the swim of life. He's really committed to the cause that he's working for. So by the age of eight, he's not, I'm so sorry, I can't second that. Oh, I'll have my cup of tea. Not only is he whining the firm and going out literally speaking on street corners for socialism and on occasion getting arrested for doing so because he's taking part in demonstrations. And again, there are caricatures in the newspapers in that the poet of the earthly paradise being taking part in these demonstrations. And of course, lots of his other friends from those kind of more respectable echelons of society are a bit kind of shocked at this, but he carries on regardless. He's also in the 1870s, as part of his work for Morrison Co, he'd started rediscovering methods of dying. So he spends a whole load of time in sort of between 1875 and 1880 with his hands buried and that's of dying. Start signing himself to his daughter, your Prussian blue, because he's discovering. And he's wanting to discover natural life. So he's funny as well. I think that's important to say, as well as all of these things, he's also set up the society for the protection of ancient buildings, protesting against kind of work to what was seen as sort of improved buildings. He wants to see no kind of adding stuff to old buildings or cleaning them off in any but the most necessary way because he wants to preserve that kind of link between their past and keep them as they were. So that's an organization that draws in all sorts of people from Ruskin to Disraeli at various points. So he's kind of a leading figure in that writing letters, sending out campaigns. But at the same time, he's also taking care of his family. So he has two daughters by this time, Jenny and Mei. Jenny had epilepsy, which at a time was not very well understood. So she was often kind of sent away to try and find places that were better for her and Morrison's letters to Jenny. A beautiful letter's full of affection. He often signs off using the words of Joe from great expectations. What locks? Oh, I'm looking forward to seeing you, my dear. And then what locks? So there's a lovely sense of warmth and affection, although this kind of complicated family life because of the relationship that his wife is having with other people. He has some kind of various close relationships with other women as well as men in his life. So it's a really, it's a really busy and full life, all sorts of things going on. And he also sets up. Yes, another connection here. We can make just thinking about connection to other fantasy writers with the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, is I may be think of Beatrix Potter with setting up the National, or helping establish the National Trust, which is, for those of you outside the UK, it's one of the main charities that protects large areas of land as well as buildings. And Beatrix Potter, the famous illustrator and writer, coming shortly after William Morris' life, of course, she helped establish that by buying up a certain amount of farmland in the late district that was going to be developed. A very, very much a kind of cause, which I'm sure William Morris would have approved of as would the later writers we often talk about, Tolkien in particular. So we have this man who is, it's like stepping in front of a furnace when you start looking at his life. It's so much rushing out at you, so many things you could talk about. But I think it's worth spending some time now thinking about his art and design, because this isn't separate at all. It's all part of the same aesthetic, the same kind of sensibility that's producing this poetry. And one of the really enjoyable things about following William Morris is that you can, of course, now go and see things that he helped design. And they're often in quite unremarked places. So there's a set of burnjos and William Morris windows in the Unitarian Chapel. I think it's Harris Manchester College here in Oxford, which I only just happened to see because I was there for an event. And they're fantastic. They're so beautiful. And that's just one small example. And another place you can go when it's open is Kalmscott Manor, which is further up the Thames from Oxford, near a place called Letchlaid, which is a house that kind of represents the soul of his work, I suppose. It's full of his design, as well as, of course, the architectural work he did with the street practice in Oxford. So there's so much you can actually see. But let's have a think about his design. You talked about the hands-on exploration of old ways of dying. So that's one thread, which is rediscovering old techniques. Where do you think this fits with his kind of approach to art and craftsmanship? I mean, again, it's really part and parcel of his concern about the connection between people, their work, and the land. He's really interested in the environment. I mean, his first biographer, Mikhail writes of him that somebody who knew him, when he was a young man in Woodford in Essex, where he lived for a while, said that he always knew the names of birds. I love that about Morris. He's really precise about his knowledge of nature. And this comes through into his artwork. So he has wallpapers and fabric designs, which are named after rivers. So he's got cray and he's got way. He's got wallpapers and fabric designs, which are named after plants. You've got even load. You've got the lovely well-known one, which probably many people will know, called Strawberry Thief, which has brushes on it, which are related to blackbirds. Morris is fascinated by blackbirds, endlessly writing letters about the blackbirds in the garden. And if you look across his works, often we have the sound of blackbirds. So a kind of a relationship between people and the specificity of the things of the earth, he's really interested. Again, if you look across his works, it's extraordinary how specific he is about the kind of trees that are growing there. Plains and sycamores, but maybe slightly too many of the larger ones. And beach trees, he's got a wonderful description in the hollow land, one of his early stories, about the way that the light filters through the leaves of a beach tree and the way that the beach nuts that have fallen underneath start to produce sapling. So he's really interested in author. And those natural shapes come into all of his work as well. And it's just worth saying there that as well as all the other stuff that he's doing across the 1880s, he's also lecturing up and down the country both on socialism and on art. And so in lectures like The Beauty of Life or also how we live and how we might live, he's making connections between the earth that belongs to everybody and the politics, socialist politics, suggesting that we need to change the way people work. We need to change working conditions radically so that people are not disconnected from the earth, people are not rewarded for the labor that they're doing. And that's really important for him. So it comes into his design. Also, of course, there's stories in his design. There's lots of new dots of those stained glass windows drawn off urine themes as well. So the sense that there's a connection between story, art, the land on which you live and the way in which you live it, and that work is really important. So the idea of work across all these things, you know, Morris is doing his own work with his hands, he's revitalizing old methods and he's interested in work that's connected, work that has pleasure in it. He quotes Ruskin saying that, you know, we work must be pleasurable. That's a really important aspect of Morris' understanding of work and Ruskin's understanding of work. And Morris says, no, don't come back and say, well, people can't enjoy their work. What about the dustman? He says, okay, fine, we can organize it. We've got to do some unpleasant work, fine. So let's organize it so that that kind of work is done on a rotor. Or that kind of work is done for short periods of time. I mean, he's very practical too. He's not some kind of, you know, dreamer in the earthly paradise. He calls himself in the idol singer, but he's not at all. He's a real practical man thinking about, you know, he's thinking about the kind of thing we might think about now in terms of a four-day week or changing the structures, changing the structures of work, so that everybody gets to enjoy the beauty of the earth. And that makes me laugh because my academic background involved the sort of Kola Ridge Wordsworth connection. And when they were in their radical phase, they had this idea of pantheosocracy. They were going to go off in the 1790s. We're going to go off to America and set up an ideal community on the banks of the Susquehana River. They hadn't been there. I think they like the sound of the word. But I always remembered Kola Ridge estimating that in this ideal society, you just needed to do two hours of manual labour to make it work. And I remember thinking, hmm, someone's never raised a child or, you know, a garden, two hours, but just doesn't cover it. It's hung glad that William Morris, in a later generation of poet, was a bit more, well, from his life, his practical experience, you can see that he would have been a much more practical man. And in fact, probably would have run the community single handedly and done all the jobs himself. So I'd have joined his commune, not Kola Ridgees, definitely not Kola Ridgees. England, there's so much to talk about. So we probably have to invite you back on an other occasion and actually do a deeper dive into one of these things we've talked about. And now I'm going to spring something on you, which I forgot to mention is that always at the end of the podcast, I ask someone, where in all the fantasy world save ever been is the best place to go? And it might be something like, where's the best pub to go and drink in or the best library to go and read a book? I think because we've been talking about William Morris, I'd like to ask you where you think in all the fantasy worlds that you've ever read about in literature, all the way from the beginning, you know, literature to the present day, is the best place to be a crafts person, craftsman, craftsman because we've been talking, obviously, around the arts and crafts movement with William Morris. And so that's a good thing to think of. To allow you to think, I'll give an answer, which is I actually wrote a whole book about this. I think I was, it's called The Glass Swallow and it's about someone who makes stained glass windows, a female character in a world where women aren't allowed to be crafts people. And she goes off to a place where that's allowed, a place called Madonna. So in my own, I'd be selfish once and normally choose somebody else's world, but I'll choose the world I thought of, which would be a good place for a crafts person. And that's Madonna, where you can do the most beautiful stained glass windows, if, you know, as long as the economy is there to pay for you, which is the problem in the particular book. So where do you think would be a good place to be a crafts person? Well, strangely enough, Juliet, the thing that came to my mind, and perhaps this is right you and I have been friends for a long time, the thing that came to my mind is the moment in Morris' utopian novel news from nowhere, which is set in a future period, but kind of draws kind of drawing on a medieval past. So it's a future post-industrial period where people work in banded workshops rather than factories, where work can pleasure or continue as people make things that they like to make. People are able to be individuals while also living communally. And in that world, so guests, who's a visitor from the 19th century, goes there. He arrives in London in Hammersmith, where Morris' own house is. And he travels down the river to Comscot Manony, a letter late. And while they're on their way there to see the harvesting, that everybody takes part in, they meet a few people in a way that's so unusual in a utopia who dissent from the general way in which the world works. And some of those people are the obstinate refuses. And I would love to be one of the obstinate refuses. The main one of them is a woman called Philippa. They call the obstinate refuses because they're not joining in with the harvest, which is sort of what everybody's doing. And that's okay in this world. In this utopia, you're allowed to 20% and what Philippa and her obstinate refuses is they're carving on a new building. So like going back to Morris' very early story, the story of the unknown church with the carver, Philippa and her women are carving on this building and someone else is putting the roof on. And they're too busy, sorry, they're not going to join in with the harvest. What a fantastic place, you know, validating, women's work, women's choice, the capacity to do your own thing in a world where people are communing. So I love that. That's the place to go, very simply to your heart. Okay, so shall we make this the first meeting of the obstinate refuses? I think this definitely needs to be agreed. Absolutely. I'm joining. And you still, I think, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much, Ingrid. It's been lovely to talk to you and thank you to everybody who's tuned in to listen. Goodbye. Bye. Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast. Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCenterForFatasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford. Plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide.