BATTLE, 7 July 2000 

1066 Country's neglected Anglo-Norman poets and playwrights are to be restored to the cultural map of the South East in a series of events which began with a Forum in Battle

The image of 1066 Country, the coastal zones of East Sussex - with its focus on the Battle of Hastings - is incomplete without the rich heritage of popular arts and vernacular histories of the post-Conquest era. Our ancestors' cross-cultural initiatives could serve as models for 21st Century policies. The district promoted internationally as 'the birthplace of England' should be seen as the pioneer in development strategies which are in tune with our contemporary European arts and education conscious society.

Writers' Alliance for Cultural Education is dedicated to Maistre Wace, 12th Century author of Roman de Rou. The enigmatic Jersey-born poet, who also created the legend of King Arthur's Round Table with his rhyming version of the Brut, was the central figure in the post-Conquest English 'Renaissance' but his first name is unknown.

His major work was forgotten in Britain until a copy was brought here 200 years ago by refugees from the French Revolution. It has never been translated in full. Ironically it turned out to be a goldmine for historians and geneologists - Wace was the only writer of his time to name more than a hundred of the Conqueror's warriors and, significantly, he immortalised the soldier-minstrel Taillefer. Many academics still dispute his value as an authority on Anglo-Norman social history.

The W.A.C.E. project, launched on 14 July at the Battle Festival, was set up by a Hastings-based network of writers and historians. With the help of University medieval specialists, the local researchers have discovered a thriving popular culture of literature, music and entertainment in the century after the Conquest - with Britain as the source of poems, plays,myths and narrative histories, all designed to create a national language and promote harmony in a turbulent multi-ethnic society. Friendly rivalry between writers on both sides of the Channel led to a wealth of stories being circulated and adapted according to local politics. They borrowed freely from Old English, Norse and Latin sagas and chronicles.

Wace shot to prominence in 1155 with his Brut, which became the most popular and influential work in Europe. Based in Bayeux, he disappeared from local records after 1174, and 19th Century historians in Normandy assumed that he died in England.

The local researchers believe that he came to Battle - then, as now, the heritage and tourism capital and storehouse of popular Conquest literature. Like today's performance poets and novelists, 12th Century writers, teachers and minstrels travelled all over north-west Europe, promoting their work, which scribes then copied or translated.

Said Sussex arts journalist and cultural historian Valentine Fallan, the W.A.C.E project manager, 'Battle was a tourist magnet as soon as the Abbey was completed 900 years ago. According to its chronicle, a second guest house had to be built in the 1170s outside the walls to accommodate journeying pilgrims and Continental traders. There were three clubs in the town for the local workers.

'Wace was the obvious celebrity to launch Battle as a tourism venue and to help promote the Abbey's unique status as the Conqueror's thanksgiving foundation. There is evidence in the Chronicle that excerpts from Roman de Rou were used in a bid to prove the Abbey's superiority over Canterbury Cathedral. The oldest-surviving manuscript of his poem was written in the Battle Scriptorium

'The town's Church, St. Mary's, founded by the abbey in 1115, still enjoys the same Royal status - the vicars are always The Very Reverend. The newly-restored mural depicts the legend of St. Marguerite, also the subject of one of his early poems.'

The project is named W.A.C.E. after the poet and as a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the medieval writers' habit of pooling each other's work in order to produce the most authentic, detailed and topical edition, in order to attract patronage and funding - and new work writing the official histories.

The founders also claim that Wace should be honoured as 'the Chaucer of 1066 Country'.

'Technically, he is English.' Fallan added. 'One of the few personal details given in his Roman de Rou is that his birthplace was Jersey, part of the UK since 1204. From the time of Henry I, especially after the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106, the power base of the Anglo-Norman Kingdom was England, not Normandy'.

The Forum was held in the historic week - 25 to 29 September 2000 - that, according to Wace, the Norman invaders were praying for the right kind of wind.  The dates fall on the same days that year as in 1066, just before the Conquest re-enactment, and are one month ahead of the national Chaucer celebrations. The 600th anniversary of his death, celebrated in Canterbury as well as in the national media, was on 25 October 2000.

Guest speaker at the W.A.C.E. Forum was Meridian TV's former arts consultant Stephen Phillips, now a board member of South East Arts and Vice-Chairman of the region's Cultural Consortium, the creative think tank set up earlier this year by Culture Secretary Chris Smith to review development strategy.

Said Fallan, 'We've also invited another prominent Wace war correspondent - the senior family member, Barbara, now 93, the oldest surviving daughter of General E.G. Wace, wartime Mayor of Rye. A long-time arts sponsor, she now lives in Greenwich and was the last journalist to leave Fleet Street, where she had worked from an attic flat since the Blitz. Barbara, an eminent broadcaster and freelance travel writer, was the first British woman war reporter at the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy. This whole project is full of these historical co-incidences.'

The British family - which includes Mycenae archaeologist Alan Wace and a former Dean of Canterbury Cathedral - never claimed to be descended from the Anglo-Norman poet. One supporter of the project is a Canadian cousin, Lionel Wace - also a D-Day veteran - and a grandson of Dean Henry.

Concluded Fallan, 'We are all aware that the channel towns in England and Normandy depend for their economy and international image on the 1066 Conquest heritage and the 1944 D-Day memorial sites.

'However, recent studies (*) showed that overseas tourists come to England for its cultural heritage as well as its contemporary arts. We are now collecting research material from all over the world, and hope to have a proper archive ready by June 2001.

'Credit is long overdue for the 12th Century poets and playwrights whose learning and multi-lingual creativity was the inspiration for scores of European authors, including Chaucer and Shakespeare. Their work was always entertaining as well as educational. The stories of King Arthur, Tristram and Isolde, Cymbeline, King Lear, Hereward the Wake and Robin Hood, and of course William the Conqueror, were re-told all over Europe and are still hugely popular today, in various guises. There were even Anglo-Norman language musical comedies.

'Unfortunately, they missed the boat on Hamlet. The original story in the Danish history by Saxo Grammaticus wasn't published until early in the 13th Century.''

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