Review of Landscapes and Desire: revealing Britain's sexually inspired sites

Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 04 December 2003 Page Views: 22152

**Men-An-Tol** submitted by vicky : Adults with rheumatism or back pain still crawl through the holed stone of Men-an-Tol, nine times anti-clockwise, in an attempt to relieve themselves from the pain. (Vote or comment on this photo)

I do not wish to be churlish about a book which actually quotes my Ireland and the Phallic Continuum web-page as an epigraph to a chapter - but I'm sorry to report that this book is - forgive the term - misconceived.

It looks very much as if it has been cooked up (let's say 'commissioned') for a market - indeed a Christmas market - rather than written with a serious dedication to the illumination of our imaginations with regard to prehistoric landscapes and how they were perceived. It is an entirely 20th century Commercial New Age production. The fabulous dust-jacket (of the inevitable Men-an-Tol) belies a certain sloppiness. "Britain's sexually inspired sites" actually includes some of Ireland's. Do British people not realise that Ireland is a separate island ? Having said that, the choice of Irish sites is extremely limited.

For a coffee-table book there is far too much repetitive - not to say wearisome - text and too few of the excellent photographs which express far more - far less sententiously. The view of what is phallic in appearance is rather broad, and the photos do not include (apart from the famous Turoe Stone) any of the startlingly-phallic Irish standing-stones. Some of the British ones illustrated are not very phallic at all - unless you take anything tall and erect - like a church steeple - to be a phallic object. The very phallic North-eastern Irish gateposts (also found in SW Scotland) are not mentioned, either.

The interpretation of what is feminine/mammary/cunnic is also somewhat wide. There is no real evidence for or against cups-and-rings or spirals being female symbols, let alone images of "desire". They could just as easily be metaphysical - or, as many believe, astronomical.

The Desire word is troublesome. Fertility and Desire are quite separate things: compare the now-blurred distinction between sensuality, sexuality, and eroticism. The title obviously uses the word 'Desire' to attract customers in a sex-obsessed age where we actually control fertility but not desire. This may well have been at the publisher's insistence: I was unable to prevent my book on exhibitionist figures and the sin of wealth being called IMAGES OF LUST, a title which still makes me cringe.

The famous natural feature of the Paps of Anu in SW Ireland are (inevitably) illustrated (we inevitably get the Kilpeck female exhibitionist, too), but there is no mention of the recumbent female or simply human forms which can be discerned in the Irish - and the southern British - landscape by those with eyes to see them, especially when they dominate prehistoric sites. The landscapes that we see now are very different from what was seen in prehistoric times, when most of Western Europe and almost all of the British Isles were covered with forest. Neolithic farmers would have had no Wordsworthian/New Age view of the landscape - a concept that was invented in 18th century England. Like most farmers through the ages, they would have seen it as someting to fear, dominate by slashing and burning, and - when all else failed - to try and placate, along with the weather.

The text of this book rakes over the well-trodden sententious and tendentious ground of Mother Goddess lore on the archæo-folkloric fringe, a product of the late-Victorian and Edwardian period: when people continued in a demented fashion (which we have even yet not recovered from) to drape tables so that we could not see their upper legs - while producing salt- and pepper-pots and municipal domelets of amazing phallicity. The author does not 'break new ground' (so to speak) - and the book would be a much better buy if it consisted mostly of photos - maybe five times as many as we get - and a tenth of the repetitive and unscholarly text. Since the book was produced for a certain market - which will inevitably be disappointed - why did everyone concerned (whether a commissioning editor or a committee) not go the whole hog and produce a nice honestly-sexy ogle-book full of pictures of phallic, cunnic, mammary and egg-shaped stones, rocks and natural features ?

LANDSCAPES AND DESIRE: revealing Britain's sexually inspired sites, text by Catherine Tuck, photos by Alun Bull is published by Sutton Publishing.

Review by Anthony Weir, author of Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches, published by Routledge, and lots of excellent web resources such as Potency and Sin: Ireland and the Phallic Continuum, and Satan in the Groin.

Note: Review by Anthony Weir

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

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