Why Cinders did not go to the Hôtel

There’s a certain character who is ubiquitous on the telly these days. Allegedly he’s suffered personal misfortune in recent times, so I won’t name him or be too hard on him. The Beeb is evidently trying to find something for him to do, something that he can do. Some time ago he did a history of the railways of Great Britain that included a lot of film of  himself doing various things, like pretending to be a navvy and being in Canada, while managing to omit both Brunel and Beeching; more recently he’s appeared on quiz shows looking like a spare part, and the last time I had to switch him off was when he announced that Hitler came to power in 1934. I get heartily sick of being warned about news items containing flash photography; this particular individual should come with a “faulty fact” warning.

At the beginning of the year this hapless soul was scheduled for some other worthy venture at exactly the same transmission time as the new mini-series of “Sherlock”. What a shame. This mischance does, however, provide a link to a discussion of other factual errors. “Sherlock”, starring The Cumberbatch, with Martin Freeman as Dr Watson, is hugely enjoyable television, albeit baffling at times, and the episode featuring Holmes’s best man speech at Watson’s wedding was simply wonderful. The initial use of “postmodernist” cut-and-paste techniques, head-up displays, tag clouds, vast data bases and other I.T. references was inspired and compelling, and not incompatible with the original Holmes. Sadly, by the time of the last episode in the most recent season, the fast moving exhilarating irreverence had degenerated into a load of self-referential, nod-and-wink, smirking metafictional tosh. Amusing, but tosh all the same.

The first episode in the recent series featured a “lost” Underground station between Westminster and St James’s Park stations on the District and Circle lines. “Lost” tube stations are a well researched niche fascination, much is known about them (York Road, City Road, Down Street and South Kentish Town among many others) and one would not have to be particularly fanatical to know that such a station – supposedly directly beneath the Houses of Parliament - does not exist. Never mind, it might do, for that is in the nature of this slightly paranoid transport specialisation. Fair enough.  Holmes and Watson were indeed shown on location in the splendid concourse of Westminster station. As one would expect, other locations, perhaps the disused Aldwych station, were used for filming. Fine. What was unacceptable, and something that millions of people would have spotted, was that on the supposed CCTV images, a deep level tube station was shown – I don’t know which one it was, but it was definitely not a District Line station. Presumably it would have been possible to film in the correct location. Viewers of “Sherlock” are not likely to be stupid; one felt insulted. Apparently there is an entire website devoted to the glaring errors in this episode.

OK, that was fiction, and the annoyingly evident inaccuracy perhaps doesn’t matter very much. Errors in supposedly scholarly works are less excusable. I’ve recently been reading a biography of Napoleon, which refers to the exhumation of the well-preserved body in St Helena, then the transfer of ashes to and through Paris, and finally the re-burial of the body under the great dome of the Hôtel des Invalides. In passing the author, a proper historian, not the hapless TV presenter, refers to the Invalides dome as one of the world’s great domed spaces, like Westminster Abbey. Oh, not St Paul’s Cathedral then? I wonder what line he was on (I suspect him of being an American).

Confused, I read and re-read the section. Was the mighty emperor buried or cremated or what? The impression I formed was that the author didn’t actually know, was copying from some other confused source, and wasn’t taking any chances. I mean, it’s kind of important, and it would be embarrassing to get it wrong. I looked at the English language version of the official Hôtel des Invalides website, which – astonishingly – said much the same thing: body, ashes, body. Recourse to Wikipedia and several other sources established that it was a body throughout, but that the French expression “La retour des cendres” refers specifically to this postmortem Napoleonic homecoming, and that “cendres” refers not to cremated ashes or cinders, but to mortal remains. “The Return of the Ashes” is something quite a few people would like to see ! It would have helped if the biographer had bothered to unpick the details for us.

Some people like to slag off Wikipedia for supposed inaccuracies; used sensibly, I think it’s wonderful, and I’d like it to get even more wonderful, more detailed, more comprehensive in its coverage. Though, you would kind of expect errors in a resource like that. What is more worrying, though, is when supposed authorities – the makers of would-be convincing fictions, historians and biographers – are seemingly happy to allow errors and very doubtful assertions through in this way.