winterbadger | Oct. 5th, 2007

Oct. 5th, 2007

I'm continuing to read this book about the Argylls in Iraq, but the bad job that was done editing it is bothering me more and more. The narrative is all over the place, jumping backward and forward in time without warning or reason. Characters are mentioned without ever being introduced. Acronyms are used without ever being explained. E.g., a lot of the soldiers named in the narrative are from the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment (PWRR), but 'the PWRR' is referred to throughout without it ever being defined. There is no index. Totally irrelevant facts are thrown in higgledy piggledy with relevant ones. Other information is completely omitted, without which a reader who isn't familiar with the way the British Army works or with modern British society (or British geography) would be completely lost.

The crowning moment (so far) came, however, when a soldier was told he needed to go to hospital in 'Shauncliff'. Not in a quotation, just spelled that way in text.

The British army barracks in question is at SHORNCLIFFE, Kent.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Did someone really get paid to edit this book? If so, the publisher (Mainstream Publishing or Edinburgh) should be pursuing that individual for a refund...

Current Mood: grumpy

The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages.

The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed. [ah, bureaucracy--isn't it wonderful?]

The document is a record of the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V in the 14th Century.

The official who found the paper says it exonerates the knights entirely.

Prof Barbara Frale, who stumbled across the parchment by mistake, says that it lays bare the rituals and ceremonies over which the Templars were accused of heresy.

In the hearings before Clement V, the knights reportedly admitted spitting on the cross, denying Jesus and kissing the lower back of the man proposing them during initiation ceremonies.

However, many of the confessions were obtained under torture and knights later recanted or tried to claim that their initiation ceremony merely mimicked the humiliation the knights would suffer if they fell into the hands of the Muslim leader Saladin.

Surely they don't mean to suggest that evidence obtained as a result of torture is somehow not reliable? Anyway, I'm sure that the methods used to collect evidence were simply "harsh" or "rigorous", rather than being "torture". Only bad people torture--goodies never do that!