Bow Street Runner and The Black Page

I must share this online game, Bow Street Runner, produced by UK Channel 4 and set in London’s Covent Garden in the 1750s: “an open sewer of filth, vice, and corruption.” It is a changing time in England. An increase of vicious crime and gin drinking has encouraged Henry Fielding to institute the beginnings of police law and order. This game is quite historically accurate. The premise is to collect evidence from a series of murders in London as one of Fielding's "Bow Street Runners." This game is rich in detail and realism, from stitching up a dead whore to testing polluted gin on a slum rat. The narrative is adjusted based upon the player's progress. Hogarth’s interactive woodcuts lay about for historical reference. There are a series of tasks to complete and the environment is chocked full of historical tidbits (actual clippings from The London Current, for example, and a 1754 map of the city). Highly recommended for the eighteenth-century nerd who loves interactive history.

THE BLACK PAGE Exhibit and Auction: this is the project of Shandy Hall curator Patrick Wildgust (who I once called "Goldwind" by accident while visiting Shandy Hall, to which my traveling companion replied, "Goldwind? That sounds like a girl's bicycle") to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Vols I & II of T.S. by Sterne and the black page found on (the original pagnation) page 73 in the first volume. The black page follows the death of Parson Yorick, which has prompted a variety of suggestions about its meaning: Yorick's last flip to his critics and collectors, the impenetrablility of being and non-being, and so on. Mr. Wildgust asked 73 artists and authors to each fill in their version of the black page for auction (which closed 31 October 2009). The black pages, however, are certainly worth the view. They are presented without attributions, so viewing becomes a guessing-game when one considers the list of participants and the style, theme, and appearance of each page (I think, for instance, that Black Page 65 is the work of graphic novelist Martin Rowson). All money that was raised contributed to a grant by English Heritage to repair the roof of Sterne's medieval cottage (see: photo below)

This short film, produced by The University of York's Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, features Mr. Wildgust reading from Tristram Shandy. This even shorter film of the same series is a very beautiful introduction to Shandy Hall and the village of Coxwold.

(see: roof) [photo taken January 2008 during my stay]

(My favourite of the Black Page series is probably Black Page 20, a very literal rendition with Hogarth's Marriage-a-la-Mode).