Grip: with Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife

Dominic is joined by Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife for a special episode on Grip.

Chris looks after the world famous ravens at the Tower of London, and tells hilarious anecdotes about his Ravens and how ingenious Dickens' descriptions of these rare and wonderful creatures are in Barnaby Rudge ...

This episode also includes special readings from curator of Jane Austen's House Sophie Reynolds.

HAPPY EASTER!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Charles Dickens' A Brain on Fire, a series that digs deep into the life and works of one of the greatest novelists of all time. Hi everyone. Since the character of Grip from Barnaby Rudge has charmed readers for over a hundred and eighty years, I thought it was only right to devote an entire episode to him. And there is no one I can think of more qualified to talk to us about the dark, mysterious qualities of ravens than Christopher Scafe, who is the Ravenmaster at England's thousand-year-old fortress, the Tower of London. Chris became a yeoman warder at the Tower in 2005 after serving twenty four years in the British Army. Something that struck me, reading about the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, where Chris served, are the regimental colours yellow and blue. Which of course carry a special significance in the world at the moment. In his military career, Chris was sent to Germany, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Belize, the Balkans, and other locations that he probably can't talk about, otherwise he'd have to kill us. Or at least lock us in the bloody tower. Fluent now in Ravenish, Chris has become one of the most successful and innovative raven masters in the Tower's history. With us also is the brilliant Sophie Reynolds, who is the curator at Jane Austen's house, who will be reading some grip sections from Barnaby Rudge. I hope you enjoy the episode and have a happy Easter. Chris, hello and welcome to the podcast. Oh, thank you very much for having me on, Dominic. I'm very excited to be talking to you because people that listen to the series have noticed that I have this obsession with Barnaby Rudge, which is a very obscure Dickens book, of all of them. And the reason is quite simply that I'm I found myself obsessed with Grip, the character. Dickens has somehow put something in my head, this fascination with ravens. And I think you're probably the most qualified person in the kingdom to uh explain a little bit why, because you you spend your life up close to them, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I do, yes. Uh and I was actually taken aback by Barnaby Rudge and how Dickens actually observed ravens because I I mean I've been the Raven Master at the Tower of London now for 12 years. I think I've been with the Ravens for 16 years. So uh I consider myself an observationist. I'm not a scientist or ornithologist or anything like that. I observe the ravens in in as much detail as I possibly can. And I came across a bit of a letter that uh Dickens uh wrote about uh the character of his raven grip. And he said, I have been studying my bird and I think I could make a very clear character of him. And I think that sums up Dickens quite a lot because he must have watched and studied the ravens in great detail to be able to put the information that he writes into Barnaby Rudge about his raven.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

The speaker who made the locksmith start as if he had been some supernatural agent was a large raven who had perched upon the top of the easy chair and listened with a polite attention and a most extraordinary appearance of comprehending every word, turning his head from one to the other, as if his office were to judge between them, and that he should not lose a word. Look at him, said Vagn. Do you see how he looks at me? As if he knew what I was saying? To which the bird, balancing himself on tiptoe, as it were, and moving his body up and down in a sort of grave dance, rejoined, I'm a devil! I'm a devil, I'm a devil, and flapped his wings against his sides, as if he were bursting with laughter.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

And in Barnaby Roger seems to capture that raven spirit, encapsulated in Grip, that sort of kindness, that humanity, and that viciousness as well, if you get on the wrong side of them.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it took me years to understand their characteristics and and what ravens do on their day-to-day uh basis. So his observation of the raven that he had as a pet, Grip, uh, or or one of several that he had as pets, is quite amazing. And it took me back as to the detail that he saw in that raven.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Reading your book, Ravenmaster, there's an extraordinary moment where you get up close to ravens for the very first time in the tower, where I think your predecessor locks you in a cage with two of them.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Absolutely. Yeah, I joined the tower in 2005, and by June of 2006, I was taken onto the team of the uh the Raven team or Team Raven as I call it nowadays. And the old Raven Master, a gentleman, uh, an ex-regimental serpent major upstanding from the Green Harrow's. His name was Derek Coyle, and he'd been looking after the ravens for quite a long time. He'd had obviously seen me as I was going about my day-to-day business, walking around the tower. And these birds, they're huge and they fascinated me. And I watched them hobbling along along and doing their day-to-day business. And he came up to me one day and goes, Boy, he said, I think the ravens might like you. And I thought to myself, first of all, why did he call me boy? Because I was 40 at the time. And how the heck does he know that the ravens would like me? So he invited me down to the enclosure one evening. And uh I stood there outside this enclosure with these two huge ravens. And he says, Right, Chris, he says, I want you to go inside and stand there. So I went, Yeah, okay. A little bit apprehensive of that because they were massive. And it's the first time I'd been really close up to ravens. And uh, so I went inside and I stood there, not really knowing what to do. And this one raven started to make its way along the perch towards me. And ravens, when I look into their eyes, I see that they're they're almost drilling into the soul and they can see inside of us. And this raven started to make its way along the perch, and it just kind of, as ravens do, tilted its head to one side and was eyeing me up with its speedy eye, and it got so close I could almost feel its breath on my face. And then all of a sudden, in the corner, I heard Derrick say, Get out. So I kind of ducked under this uh perch and got out. He says, And he looked at me and goes, Yes, he said the ravens like you. And I thought to myself at the time, how the heck does he know that the ravens like me? But Derek was very canny, and what he was actually doing was to see whether I was scared or showed any frightened tendencies towards the ravens. And of course, if you do, they remember for life, good and bad reasons. And so if I'd shown any type of fear, they would remember me. But I didn't, and I passed the test, and I tell everybody now that the Ravens of the Tower of London picked me rather than the other way around. And so I took over as the Raven Master, and over a period of years, through trial and error, I kind of learned as much as I know to this day about them by observation, really. And uh I hope that I instill that in the team that I have as well. I always say to the new members when they join us, learn how to look after the ravens and care for their welfare and safety. But if you really want to know a raven, you've got to observe it and watch it for months and years at a time.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yes. And something that really stands out in your book is the fact that you don't over-trim their wings. There was a sentence, I think, where you mentioned that if you cut a raven's flight feathers when it's very young, they never grow back. So you could properly imprison them in the tower, but they're not imprisoned at all. They actually have the capability to fly away if if they wanted to. And the fact that they don't is a sign that they're very happy to be there.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, I mean, it was something that was done previous to my time, and it had been done since time immemorial when the ravens arrived at the Tower of London. And it was a means of trying to establish the Raven community here. And uh it was one of those things that I wanted to try and change, and it and it's an awful lot of trial and error, and I don't always get it right. And on occasions I do trim up their flight feathers, but they do all grow back. It's it's like doing your fingernails or cutting your hair. So uh they grow back very, very quickly, and it's just a way of establishing them in the small environment that they actually live in. So uh I I thought it'd be quite a good idea many years ago to see if I could get the ravens to live here amongst us at the tower, but giving them a little bit more freedom uh of movement. You know, sometimes I've got it right, and as the book suggests, sometimes I didn't get it right. And I've done a lot of things over the past to uh save ravens and catch ravens uh all over. And we do have uh urban predators that come into the Tower of London, and so you know, my my job is to husband the predators and the ravens, foxes, uh, away from each other. So I do like to curtail their movements a little bit more during the winter months, but as a general rule, I get it right most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yes, and I think what's what's extraordinary in the book is also the fact the lengths you go to to bring back a raven that's flying away. You know, so the the episode, the the White Tower episode is a fascinating one. Perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit of that story for listeners, because that made my eyes pop out reading that.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yes, uh, certainly. It's uh I don't think there's a single build in the Tower of London that over the years of I have not climbed or scaled or or ran along the rooftops chasing blooming ravens. And uh there was this one occasion, and the raven was called Moonin. And we'd recently moved the ravens enclosure because there was works taking place around the White Tower, it was just before the Olympics, and the White Tower had some scaffolding up on it, and we'd moved the Raven enclosure because it was going to disturb them. And uh one morning I got up. I think I was a little bit worse for wear, I'm afraid. I'd had a few too many uh cocktails the night before, and I went to the Raven Enclosure, and anyway, to cut a long, very long story short, this raven escaped. And I was in the middle of practicing their minimum wing trimming at the time, and this raven, Moonin, decided that she wanted to fly away, and she ended up flying around the tower several loops and then landing on the golden crown on one of the turrets right at the very top.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

What is it, 150 feet off the ground, those turrets?

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah, it's it's way, way too high for me to climb up. But I went to work during the daytime and she sat there most of the day, and then she disappeared, and I thought, well, I've lost her, she's gone somewhere. And then just as we were locking down, closing in the evening, the control room radioed me and said, Chris, I think Moonin's come back and she's on the top of the White Tower. So uh I waited until the public had left, and then in my absolute madness, I decided that I better go and get her. Luckily, there was some scaffolding up the side of the building. So I uh waited until everybody had disappeared. I climbed over the fence and then I decided to ascend up the stairs, going all the way up to the top of the White Tower. I made sure that I took off my Yoma Warders bonnet, and uh there was a hard hat actually on the side that I put on just in case. Uh you know, I don't know why I put the hard hat on, but I thought it might be a sensible idea when I was walking up there. Maybe I thought if I fell it would save my life or something. I don't know what was going through my mind. Anyway, I made my way up to the top where the turrets were, and then I had to go up some other platforms, and I got to the last platform, which was quite high up, and she was still there, which was great. And I thought the only way I'm going to be able to capture her is perhaps if I held on to the weather vane and reached up as much as I could and grabbed her. I forgot that weather vanes move in the wind. And as I grabbed hold of it to pull myself up to go and get her, it spun me round in an easterly direction, I think. And I remember seeing London flash around before me. And I let go and I slid down the Capona and landed on the platform below. And I think I just heard Moonin croak as she flew off into the distance into the sunset. And it was a complete uh I don't know what was going through my mind, to be honest with you, when I done it, but I did. It was a failure in my behalf.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Munin, I think, if I got this right, Munin is a is a raven that gives you a bit of trouble, doesn't she?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

She she was my nemesis, without a shadow of doubt. Sadly, she's not here anymore. She died of old age about two years ago. And uh, but uh, she was my nemesis. I used to call her the Black Widow because she'd been for a few partners. Uh, all of them had died.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

For anyone unfamiliar with the legend, what is the legend again, Chris, about the the ravens of the tower?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

The legend says the ravens leave the Tower of London, it will crumble to dust, and great harm would befall our kingdom. We say at the Tower of London that King Charles II was restored to the throne of England, and he came to see some works that were taking place at the Tower of London. The Royal Astronomer at the time, a man that by the name of John Flamsteed, had a telescope on top of the White Tower. And one day he was studying the stars and the planets and the ravens. Of course, the Tower of London was one of the tallest buildings in London at that time. And the ravens, the local ravens of London, had made the Tower of London their home. Of course, it was an ideal place to spot any dead carcasses or dead bodies floating down the Thames for them to peck at. Anyway, this royal astronomer decided to go down and speak to the king. And so legend says, he said, Squire, he says, Can I please get rid of these confounded ravens? Until someone turned around to the king and said, Sir, if you get rid of the ravens, the tower of London will crumble to dust and a great harm will be fall yourself and your kingdom. So King Charles II decided to keep six by royal decree. In fact, it's been a particularly difficult couple of years, so I've got eight to spare, just in case.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I'm most grateful to you for that because there have been times in recent years where you feel like the country could be on the brick, couldn't it, with some of the things going on. But um, about Munin, I had a kind of theory from reading your book, and I wondered whether, because she was with your predecessor Derek Coyle, wasn't she? And you mentioned in the book that when he came back to visit the tower seven years after leaving, Munin remembered him. And her name even means memory. Do you think that she bonded with him and then would not accept you as a sort of stepfather?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Previously to me, uh, our ravens were donated to the Tower of London. So they were ravens that had fallen out of nests perhaps at a young age and were found injured. And so we took them in. And Moonin obviously bonded very much so with the old raven master. And I I don't know, ravens remember things very, very well. And they remember if you do things well, and they'll come and bring you gifts and hand you over items, and and they can be very, very loving as well. But if you do something wrong, they'll remember that too, and they do not forgive at all. And I think I must have done something or upset Moonin somewhere along the line as a young raven apprentice, and she just did not forgive me, and she let me know.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

On the opposite side, though, is Melina, who absolutely adores you and allows you to get very close to her and and stroke her feathers and sit with her and everything. Is that quite rare?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, Melina was a strange kettle of fish, really, for a raven, and uh her story is uh it's it's been well documented. Uh sadly, Melina is no longer with us. She disappeared the Christmas before last. And uh and on social media, there was a great outpouring on my Ravenmaster uh pages of the loss of her. And she was quite a character at the Tab London. She was loved by many. I managed to take uh many, many great photographs of her uh over the years when I was looking after her. But sadly, she she disappeared uh on Christmas before last. And uh we we don't know to this day what happened to her.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Well, if I've learned anything from reading your words, is that ravens are survivors, aren't they? So there's every chance that she could be out there having settled somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

And absolutely, she she she was a great find of mine. And and I even now, when I walk around the tower sometimes, I look into the sky in the hope that I'd see her flying past. But maybe, maybe one day, maybe she'll come back, come back.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah. And were there sightings of her once she had left? Was there anything you could track of her?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

There were many, many sightings of her. Some of them I chased up. I spent about three weeks walking around sightings of London in various parks and industrial estates and communities walking around after sightings of her, all to no avail. I had one sighting where uh she was seen in Dubai, which uh which I I tried to persuade the tower to let me go and see if I could find her in there, but uh that was to the way.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yes, you and you could try again. I think she might be in the Caribbean, actually. I might need to go and investigate. I need to go there and have a look. But of course, um something that's not hugely known is the warders at the Tower of London. You you're all ex-military, and you have to put in, is it 22, 25 years of unblemished service before you can qualify to join up?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah, so we're we're all ex-military. We come from the army, the RVF, the War Marines, and and the Navy, both male and female. We have to have done a minimum of 22 years in the military, uh, be the rank of a warrant officer and above before you retire, and have a medal, which is called an LS and G C, which is a long service and good conduct medal.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

The thought of you scaling the White Tower, there are things that you did that make me understand that daredevil streak that you have. Um, so for example, your childhood uh climbing a tree, jumping down through a greenhouse to see what would happen. And and this extraordinary moment, I think you're flying over Cyprus and you jump backwards out of an aeroplane.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, I've always been one for doing things differently. When I was a very young lad, myself and my brother at the time decided that we wanted to see what happened when glass broke. And I still bear the scars on my leg to this day of that one. But in Cyprus, yeah, and I was a young corporal at the time, and we were doing a free-fall parachuting course, and we'd we'd learned how to do static line jumps and stuff like that. And my first ever free fall parachute jump was great. It was about eight or ten thousand foot. And I just got ready to go. And just as he gave me the thumbs up, I turned around and fell out backwards and waved to him as I went, which I obviously got told off for, but uh I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

That's good, and it didn't blemish your record, so you were able to use that flying experience to help with ravens. Because you say also in the book that that military training was all apprenticeship for being Raven Master.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Actually, I managed to take top student on that course, which was lovely. I don't know how I managed to do that. I spent nearly 25 years in the military, so my career has been very varied and very wide, and I've I've gone to many different places. But uh, when I when I came back here and and I was lucky enough to be accepted as a member of the body of Young Awarders, and I started to watch the Ravens, I started to understand that their way of doing things is kind of quite enjoyable for me to watch. They think about everything that they do, and they do it for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

You you say in the book about how they can teach us how to be human in a strange way.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, I mean, I I do say in the book that I don't amphomorphosize ravens, but they are very, very human-like in nature and they have all the emotions that we have. They are extremely intelligent, they're one of the most intelligent birds on this planet. And we think that ravens have a capacity to work out information of a four, maybe five-year-old child, and they can be on the same par as primates. So they are very intelligent. And I've noticed over the years that they have happiness and sadness and depression and anxiety and anger and all the emotions that we have as humans, I've kind of observed in ravens uh over the years of looking after them, bearing in mind I spend pretty well every minute of my day in and around ravens, and I have done for many years. And that's what fascinates me with it. And I'm sure that Dickens, when he was writing about Grip in Barnaby Rudge, that he had observed them as well. And it takes a lot to know all the mannerisms of different ravens, and they all have different characteristics.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

It's so thrilling to me as a Dickens fan to know that you strongly identify Dickens' words in describing grip as authentic, that that is how they behave.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

He had three ravens, and uh they they was uh part and part of his life for many, many years, weren't they? I'm just fascinated by how he his perception, his uh ability to to observe makes him obviously one of our best classic writers ever, and it's his observation skills.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Absolutely, and and I think reading his words about grip made me want to know more about ravens. Yeah, yeah. You know, I just I just it was so it's such an extraordinary character.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah, and of course, the inspiration for one of the most famous poems that everybody knows is of course by Alan Poe, is The Raven. And Charles Dickens was probably most historians now who who study Poe probably say that Charles Dickens, as he met him in Philadelphia in 1842, was the inspiration for Poe's poem, The Raven. And Poe was fascinated by Charles having this raven, and uh, as a result of that, he probably went away and wrote the poem The Raven, which everybody knows is a classic.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

That thing you were saying in your book, though, about how they can also mourn, how. How there's, I think there's a moment, maybe it's is it when Thor dies, the Raven Thor dies, that his partner mourns, if I remember that right.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Yeah, it was uh ravens pair off for life, and uh both male and female for for breeding purposes, but ravens can also partner off with the same sex, uh, so female, female, male, and male as well. They can also have several different partners. So a female might have two male partners, or a male might have two female partners. So very much like humans, they they do their own thing. And it was this particular occasion, I think it was back in 2016, that Hoogin, one of my female ravens, was partnered with Melina at the time. And uh they were hanging around together quite a lot. Ravens, when they partner off, like male and female, they you see them kissing and grooming each other, but when they partner off as for friendship, it in the wild, it's mainly done for protection reasons, so a little bit of security and company as well. And these two kind of enjoyed their own company together. And Hoogin sadly was found dead under uh one of the trees, and by the side of uh Hoogin was uh Melina, and she she'd stood there for a long time, and she was just gently tapping Hoogin's face and just trying to wake her up, and it was very, very sad to see. And she wouldn't let any of my colleagues go near her for quite a few hours, just trying to just wake her up. And I observed over the next couple of days and weeks, Melina move out of the territory that she was in. And ravens are very territorial and they like to stay in their own particular areas around the tower. And if a pair of ravens moves into another raven's postcode, all hell breaks loose. So it was very unusual for her to move into somebody else's postcode, and she did. And you could see her wings kind of slowly going up and her head sinking down, and she was like hunched up and looking really, really sad and forlorn. And she'd stopped eating as well, which was a sure sign that there was something very wrong. And so in the end, I had to remove her from the environment of the tower uh into her enclosure, and I'd sit with her at night times, just trying to talk to her and uh feed her and play games with her and stuff like that. And eventually she pulled herself out of it and she was let back out. But that was one instance of a raven that I think mourned the death of the partner that she was with.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yeah, and again, that's a very human instinct as well, isn't it? It's it's fascinating. Most definitely. Yeah, and and on on the subject of what ravens eat, there's this sort of stomach churning passage in your book here. And you're obviously used to it because you you deal with this every single day. But it made me think that if Scrooge was a raven and met the ghost of Christmas present, presented in front of the ghost of Christmas present would be let's have a look. Chicken lamb. So far, that's all right. I can go with that. Chicken, lamb, pig heart, liver, kidney, then mice, rats, day old chicks, peanuts in their shells, the occasional boiled egg, some fish, steak chunks, and rabbit with the fur left on. That last detail of the fur being left on. Was that trial and error?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Did you uh they like they like to pull it off when they do things? They they pull off all the fur, and it makes a hell of a mess, actually. The one thing that I do feed them as well is biscuits soaked in blood. And in fact, the book was going to be called originally Biscuits and Blood. But when you Googled it, it came up with all sorts of strange things. We thought we better just call it the Raven Mast or rather, the biscuits and blood. And so, uh, yes, so they have a varied diet at the Tower of London. They do, of course, go and find food themselves. Melina had a partialness to Pringles crisps, and she was very, very good at getting the crisps out of the packets and spreading them all around the green, and then she'd go and take some of them, she'd soak them in her water bowls, and then she'd go and bury them around the tower because ravens cash food as well. So if they're full, they can they can put food all over the place and and hide it for later on.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yes, that reminds me of Grip again in the book, hiding all kinds of stuff and trinkets that he finds, not even not just edible things as well, and just burying and and and being quite secretive about it. Oh, goodness me, yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Grip, though fond of basking in the sunshine, preferred today to walk about the stable, having a great deal to do in the way of scattering the straw, hiding under it such small articles as had been casually left about. Sometimes Barnaby looked in and called him, and then he came hopping out, but soon returned again to his own grave pursuits, peering into the straw with his bill, and rapidly covering up the place, as if my dislike, he were whispering secrets to the earth and burying them, constantly busying himself upon the sly, and affecting, whenever Barnaby came past, to look up in the clouds and have nothing whatever on his mind. In short, conducting himself in many respects, in a more than usually thoughtful, deep, and mysterious manner.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

There was one uh instance, a couple of years ago, actually, a small girl at the tower had her pocket money in her purse, and one of the ravens took a shine to this purse and tugged it from her hands and ran off of it, and managed to open up the clasp of the purse, and in it were five gold pound coins. And this raven had tipped these coins onto the floor and then proceeded to bury them all around the tower, much to the the annoyance of that small girl who was crying because she'd lost all her pocket money. And so in the end, I had to kind of give her the five pounds and hunt for the pounds to get them back myself. I have actually been training the ravens uh over the last couple of years to steal notes, but I've not quite got there yet.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yes, that'd be a nice earner, wouldn't it? So interesting though. I mean, how do you prepare the public for the ravens when they come to the tower? Because obviously the ravens are free roaming. And are there any sort of guidelines for people so that they don't get their fingers nipped and stuff?

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Yeah, I mean, there are signs around the Tower of London that uh in many different languages it say caution ravens bite. And of course they do. And it's like going to, you know, going to your local zoo. You wouldn't stick your hand in the lion's cage because you know that the lion's gonna come over and bite it off. So, you know, don't put your hand next to a raven's beak because you're gonna get pecked and it hurts. And ravens have huge beaks and they're really strong as well. They have a lot of power in their beak. If you're gonna take a selfie with a raven next to your eye, just be a little bit cautious because you know, they do like eyes and they will peck it if if if you get too close. But a lot of the public come into the Tab London and they see the ravens, and obviously they look very much like crows, but crows are much smaller than ravens. And it's not until you stand next to a raven that you can see their awesomeness and how big and majestic they are. And lots and lots of people have never seen ravens. So for the public coming in, just be cautious, enjoy them, but don't get too close to them.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Yes, uh, I think I'll heed that advice because I'd I'd gone through life thinking, oh, maybe I've seen a raven before somewhere. I'm now seeing uh images of them in preparation for this episode, seeing how enormous they are when you're up close and the size of their of their bills and everything. You think I'm pretty sure I haven't actually.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Well, when when you get pecked by Raven, and I bear the scars of many a raven peck over my arms over the years, because of course, myself and my colleagues, we need to handle them on occasions to give them medicines and stuff like that. And I remember one time, it was the first time actually, that uh Raven Master Dirk Coyle was teaching me how to do a wing trim. And we got this great big raven out of the enclosure. I forget which one it was, but it was huge and it kind of filled up my whole chest. And he says, Whatever you do, Chris, he says, Don't let go of that head, don't let go of it at all. So, of course, on saying that, I let go of it because I was scared of the raven and it bit him, but it bit him on the nipple and it clung on. And I could see, I could see the colour draining from his face. When it bites, it clings on, it doesn't just bite and leave you, and it's got a little barb at the end of its beak, and when it goes in, it digs into the skin. And the only really way that you can get it off is to pull, and of course, that barb comes with it as well. So uh, yeah, he didn't speak to me for many weeks after that.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Gosh. No wonder it took him seven years to come back after he'd left. Something that's very interesting because uh a running theme in Barnaby Rudd is that Grip has all these fantastic sentences and phrases that he says. You know, I'm a devil and all and all of that. But you you make a Yeah, hello, hello. Um I should have let you do the voice, really, shouldn't I? You know how it sounds properly. Oh, yeah, I I I say I speak Ravenish.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Grip was famous for miles round. His conversational powers and surprising performances were the universal theme, and many persons came to see the wonderful raven. When he condescended to exhibit, which was not always, for genius is capricious, he maintained in public an amazing gravity and never stooped to any other gratuitous performances than biting the ankles of vagabond boys. An exercise in which he much delighted, killing a fowl or two occasionally, and swallowing the dinners of various neighbouring dogs, of whom the boldest held him in great awe and dread.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Something interesting that that you pick out from Dickens, actually, about how they seem to speak from inside their feathers, not like a parrot where it's all in its kind of beak sounding. It's sort of somewhere far off, like it has a deep kind of soul, and the voice comes from very far within the sort of black feathers.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah, I mean he writes he said it's not unlike the drawing of some eight or ten dozen of long corks. So uh it's it's that really deep, earthy sound, and ravens have many, many different sounds that they make to each other and many different calls.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

After a short survey of the ground and a few sidelong looks at the ceiling and at everybody else in turn, Grip fluttered to the floor and went to Barnaby. Not in a hop or walk or run, but in a pace like that of a very particular gentleman with exceedingly tight boots on, trying to walk fast over loose pebbles. Then, stepping into his extended hand and condescending to be held out at arm's length, he gave vent to a succession of sounds, not unlike the drawing of some eight or ten dozen of long corks, and again asserted his brimstone birth and parentage with great distinctness.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I'm gonna only do this once because the public asked me to do it because I wrote it in the book. Uh a crow goes ha, ha, ha, and a raven goes, and it's that deep, earthy, resounding sound that it makes. But I say that they can also make some really, really delightful, kind of light and airy sounds as well. So it very much depends on what mood the raven's in. And they pick up sounds and mimic as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yes, the mimicking sounds interesting. So it sounds like sometimes the ravens mimic seagulls just to piss them off, not for any other reason. Or they catch words, they do catch words from people. You don't have to sort of spoon feed words to them.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

No, they pick up most of their sounds at an early age. Uh, they do pick up sounds they'd want. And I heard Melina once, she used to mimic crows to kind of cool crows down to come and play with her as well. And one time she was getting attacked by a seagull, and she actually I heard her mimic the seagull out of flying past her as well. So they can instantaneously pick up a sound and mimic it as well as learnt behaviour. And of course, lots of people come to the Tower of London, they say, you know, do they speak English? Do they speak our language? And of course, I go, no, they've got their own language to speak. And I said, if I want to communicate with them, I speak ravenish. Of course I don't, but I can get away with making lots of uh strange sounds and grunts to the children here at the Tower of London.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yes, and there are videos of you talking to them a little bit. I've seen it, I've seen some clips and things, and they they don't they don't bite you. But what one thing that really stands out in the book, especially at the moment, is is the Raven Thor, who when Putin visited the tower in 2003, made him laugh. Is that right? Yep, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

When Vladimir Putin visited the tower, maybe one day he will come back to the tower.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Well, I was gonna say you should have locked him in. You should have locked him in as he went into the white tower.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Maybe not as a visit. But uh moving on, when he came to visit the tower some years ago, Thor could speak some words. He came to his speaking actually, and he could say good morning and how are you. And many times the the visitors would come in, or or the staff would be walking past early in the morning, and this raven would be sitting there and they'd go, Good morning. So I could see them looking around, wondering where where the heck that sound had come from. And anyway, when when uh Putin walked up the steps of the White Tower, the raven was sitting up there, and uh he said good morning to Putin. And he was taken quite aback by the fact that this raven had spoken to him.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Amazing, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah, uh but also since you wrote the book. You've been to Philadelphia to see Grip, Dickens's actual grip.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Yeah, and it was one of the things I said that I wanted to do to see grip in the free library in Philadelphia. And I was over there on tour at the time talking about the ravens and the book and stuff. I go to the Mutter Museum, do a talk there, and I have friends of uh a lady there called Anna who who runs the cure curator there, and she organized for me to go to the uh free library in Philadelphia and see uh Raven Grip in the box, uh, which I did. And uh it was it was one of those great things, these great moments of my life, having been this young lad chucked in an enclosure with some ravens, knowing absolutely nothing about them by this raven master. And then I was there standing in front of this iconic raven that was one of Dickens' pets.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

And how how's grip looking? Uh and it's a she, is it a she?

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Yes, I it's it's very debatable. Obviously, I think by looking at it that grip is a she, it's very, very difficult to actually discover the sex of a raven. They look very similar. There are some similarities that believe it or not, the male toe is believed to be longer, the middle toe, on a male raven, and they have a more fluffy chest as well because they push themselves out a lot more. But I think the one over in Philadelphia could have been a female. Of course, uh Charles Dickens is believed to have had three ravens in his lifetime, all of them called grip.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

So the Victorian habit of taxidermy of having the pets stuff is a bit strange, isn't it? He had a cat, and I think he had his paws stuffed to be letter openers or something. That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

But you know, during that period of time, although we had pets that we loved, we thought differently about them.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

How did the ravens handle COVID and being locked down when the tower had no visitors every day?

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Yeah, it's it's a great question to ask. And I I'm asked that all the time as I walk around and and the public say to me, Did the ravens miss us? And I I have to confess that they absolutely did not. They they they missed neither human nor anything. Ravens are very, very raven-ish and they do things themselves. What they did miss was the food that the visitor brought in. And uh so that there was nothing in the bins for them to rummage around, or no sandwiches to steal, or no children's crisp packets, or anything like that. So that's what they missed. They didn't actually miss the humans, they kind of looked for things to do, and and I spent a lot of my time locked in the Tower of London on my own because there was very, very few people left during that COVID period uh trying to look after the ravens and trying to entertain them. And they kind of entertained themselves, but because there was no food for them to go and find, I had to hide stuff around the tower and bits and pieces like that, so they could try and find it.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

And I suppose being locked down in the Tower of London, that could have been an interesting experience. I mean, I got from your book that you don't necessarily believe in ghosts, and yet at the same time, you have ghost stories to tell.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yes, yes, absolutely. Uh, so during the COVID period, of course, there was security here at the Tower of London. We have the Crown Jewels and Royal Regalia here. But uh many of my colleagues during that period of time were one furlough and two had gone back to their other homes. But of course, someone had to look after the ravens, and myself and some of my team members volunteered to stay for pretty well the whole period of time and look after them. So I spent most of my time here at the Tower of London. The first couple of months was really lovely. You know, I get to live in a castle on my own, and I was the king of the castle here of the ravens, and then after that, things start to close in quite a lot, and and I start to end up talking to the ravens quite a lot on my own, and that started to become a bit weird to kind of get that uh suppressive feeling of being inside somewhere. That was very, very strange.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Isn't there a walkway, a raley walkway that you don't like very much? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Yeah, there's there's Raleigh's Walk, and uh it comes out of the Bloody Town. When I first got to the Tower of London, I lived right next to the Bloody Tower in one of the little flats there. And there was always stories about that area being haunted by the two boy princes, Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, and the two boy princes that were murdered at the Tower of London. And uh, although I never actually saw these two boy princes myself, thank goodness, there were some strange things that go on. The Tower of London is nearly a thousand years old, and I look at it as the beaten heart of British history. So much stuff has come from the Tower of London, so many tragic tales, so many stories, so many discoveries over the years that there must be something that's been imprinted into the fabric of the tower. And I think that's what we see. So I'm not a firm believer in life after death, but I do think that there is an energy that we give that kind of lingers. And uh there are some certainly some stories that I write in the book about some of the strange things that have happened to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

I suppose the Tower of London, in a way, is an ideal location to test out stone tape theory. I don't know if you've heard of that, the idea that events that have happened are recorded in the very stone walls and then can be repeated or echoed somehow. So that's where these ideas of sightings come from, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Yes, indeed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

I know that at one point you mentioned your wife wasn't happy walking in one of the parts of the tower when you first got there.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Yeah, it was actually, I hadn't even become a yeoman ward at that stage. It was the very first time that myself and my wife, after applying to be a yeoman warder, had gone to visit the Tower of London. Then we were looking around going, hmm, this could all be ours. We could live here, the Tower of London. How wonderful is that? And we were all very excited. My wife went into my wife's very, she doesn't have any grey areas, it's just black and white. There's no, there's nothing in between.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

And uh that prepared you for Ravens then as well, didn't it? Possibly.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Absolut absolutely, yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Would she appreciate that comment or should I cut it out of the episode?

SPEAKER_01 41:30

No, don't put it in, yeah. Anyway, she she uh she went into the Beecham Tower, which is a tower on Tower Green, where some of the prisoners have been kept. And and nowadays it has the graffiti on the walls inscribed by some of the prisoners over the years. And she went in there and she sat down in there, and uh, I just saw the colour draining out of her face. I thought that's a bit strange, maybe she's not feeling very well. And she walked straight out of the tower and I said, I said, Are you okay? And she says, Yeah, there was somebody in there who didn't like me or didn't want me to be in there. And I thought that's really, really weird. And anyway, it's very unusual for her to come out with a comment like that, very unusual indeed. So we carried on and that. But when I got the job, our first house there was on Tower Green, and unfortunately, the bin area was near the Beacham Tower. And for the whole two years that we lived there, my wife never took the bins to that area. She refused to go anywhere near it, and she hasn't ever gone in that tower again. Isn't that strange? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Gosh, Chris, this has been so fantastic to talk to you about all of these ravens and your life at the Tower of London. And actually, your military career could have been another episode in itself, just looking about when you joined a couple of days after Port Stanley was taken back by the British Army. And was it the 18th of June 1982? I remember that. I got that right.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Yes, it was. Yes, that's that's the day I I left Dover and uh waved goodbye to my parents and and never really looked back. Although I had a wonderful childhood, I grew up in the 80s when the 80s children didn't really have that much, but I I have very fond memories of my childhood. I was a little bit naughty and I decided to join the military as a young boy soldier, and off I went, not knowing what career I would have or what I would do. And I I ended up here at the Tower of London, and uh I've been in some form of uniform now for uh uh over 40 years. Yeah, when I look back and think about my life, I've been very blessed, very lucky. I I say I'm a cat, so I I I'm running out of lives because I've been blown up a few times and shot at. And so uh I'm kind of running out of lives, so I've got to slow down a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yes. How many lives have you lost at the tower then chasing after ravens?

SPEAKER_01 43:48

I I have lost count. Only the other week I spent two days running up and down the tower wharf outside after a fox chased one of the ravens outside. And the first day I think I'd done about 16 kilometers running up and down. The second day I done about 18 kilometers, climbing on buildings, trying to get this raven to going. And so, even to this day now, uh I'm still chasing ravens around the tower. But that's another story.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

That is another but if any man can, you can. Like that, like that tale where one of my favorite one of the bits that made me howl reading your book was that thing about what you took to be going mushroom picking in Scotland ended up being uh resistance to interrogation training in Germany with special forces. I mean, who if you can pass, if you can come through that, I think you're well equipped to deal with some some Tchy ravens, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 44:41

I I could write a whole book about that story, believe me. Uh that would that was an incredible time of my life, but uh very enjoyable. And I look back with great memories and great fondness uh to my life, both in the military and here at the Tower of London.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Well, I'm I'm sure that there's a there's a healthy audience out there to to read about your military story as well. Chris, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much. And and and when I can get down to the tower, I will of course let you know. You're more than welcome to come and visit. I would love to come and visit. Thank you so much. Bye for now. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Grip soon recovered his looks and became as glossy and sleek as ever. But he was profoundly silent. Whether he had forgotten the art of polite conversation in Newgate, or had made a vow in those troubled times to forego, for a period, the display of his accomplishments, is matter of uncertainty, but certain it is that for a whole year he never indulged in any other sound than a grave, decorous croak. At the expiration of that term, the morning being very bright and sunny, he was heard to address himself to the horses in the stable upon the subject of the kettle, so often mentioned in these pages. And before the witness who overheard him could run into the house with the intelligence, the bird himself advanced with fantastic steps to the very door of the bar, and there cried, I'm a devil! I'm a devil! I'm a devil, with extraordinary rapture.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Thank you for listening to Charles Dickens' A Brain on Fire. I want to keep adverts off this podcast. So if you're enjoying these episodes and would like to make a small donation, please follow the link in the description wherever you're listening to this, and you can buy us a coffee. All contributions make a huge difference. This week I'd like to thank Alexander McEwen and all other anonymous sponsors for your support so far. See you next time.