Kingdom of Redonda - History of The "Kingdom"

History of The "Kingdom"

The history of the "Kingdom" of Redonda is shrouded in doubt and legend, and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

M. P. Shiel, an author of works of adventure and fantasy fiction, was the first person to ever mention the idea of the "Kingdom of Redonda" and that was in 1929, in a promotional pamphlet for a reissue of his books.

According to tradition Shiel's father, Matthew Dowdy Shiell, a trader and Methodist lay preacher from Montserrat, claimed the island when his Son, Matthew Phipps Shiell, was born. Supposedly the father felt he could legitimately do this, because it appeared to be the case that no country had officially claimed the islet as territory. Shiell senior is also said to have requested the title of King from Queen Victoria, and as legend has it, it was granted to him, by the British Colonial Office rather than by Victoria herself, provided there was no revolt against colonial power.

The son (originally named Matthew Phipps Shiell but later known as M.P. Shiel) was said to have been crowned on Redonda at the age of 15, in 1880, by a bishop from Antigua.

However, the story may have originated decades later with the son, M.P. Shiel, a fantasy and science fiction writer best known for his 1901 novel The Purple Cloud, and so it is possible that some, or most, or possibly all of the story of his being made king of Redonda, may in fact be pure invention. In his writings about Redonda, however, Shiel is critical of the egotism that led him to accept the title, sugggesting that there was some truth behind the cororonation and the kingship. Shiel also gave differing names to the bishop who performed the coronation: the Revd Dr Mitchinson and the Revd Hugh Semper. These were genuine clerics in the Caribbean at this period. The contradiction could be explained as due to Shiel's faulty memory rather than total invention. In “About Myself” Shiel writes that his attempt to impose a tribute tax on the American guano miners was a request they refused. This early non-recognition of his kingship is another argument that the coronation occurred.

Several of Shiel’s works concern various aspects of monarchy. One of his detective heroes is called Cummings King Monk. In his end-of-the-world story The Purple Cloud the protagonist Adam Jeffson, the last man on earth, establishes himself as monarch of the devastated globe, while Shiel’s novel The Lord of the Sea (1901) has Richard Hogarth, another Overman figure coming to dominate the world. Shiel wrote about visiting Redonda in his adventure novel Contraband of War in 1899.

M.P. Shiel in later life gave the title, and the rights of his work, to his chief admirer the London poet and editor John Gawsworth (Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong), the biographer of Arthur Machen, the realm's Archduke. Gawsworth (1912–70) seems to have passed on the title several times when low in funds. Gawsworth's realm has been facetiously termed "Almadonda" (by the Shielian scholar A. Reynolds Morse (1914-2000) after the Alma pub in Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, where King Juan frequently held court in the 1960s.

Some Redondan scholars accept that Gawsworth bestowed the title on his friend the publican Arthur John Roberts in 1967, by "Irrevocable Covenant". Prior to this the late writer Dominic Behan (1928–89) also claimed Gawsworth transferred the title to him in 1960. It is also said that Gawsworth handed on the throne to one Aleph Kamal, whose peers include the novelist Edna O'Brien.

Self-appointed monarchs of Redonda include Marvin Kitman and William Scott Home. Scott Home's claim to the title was, he says, based on ESP and reincarnation. Shiel’s granddaughter, a Lancashire housewife Mrs Margaret Parry, came to the fore in 1993 and was hailed as “Queen Maggie” of Redonda by various newspapers, including the Daily Mail.

Publisher, author and environmentalist Jon Wynne-Tyson, however, claims that Gawsworth, prior to dying in 1970, bestowed the kingship on him with the literary executorships. Wynne-Tyson subsequently visited Redonda in 1979 on an expedition organized by the philanthropist and Shielian publisher A. Reynolds Morse. Wynne-Tyson ruled as King Juan II until abdicating in favour of the novelist Javier Marias of Madrid in 1997, transferring the literary executorship of Gawsworth and Shiel along with the title.

Arthur John Robert’s title was subsequently inherited by William L. Gates, whom Gawsworth had created Baron L'Angelier de Blythswood de Redonda. From his home at Thurlton, Norfolk, King Leo presides over a group known as The Redondan Foundation, not be confused with The Redondan Cultural Foundation set up by Paul de Fortis (see below). As in Gawsworth’s reign meetings of these rival groups have been held at the Fitzroy Tavern in London. King Leo has reigned as King Leo since 1989. Bob Williamson who lived on Antigua until his death in 2009,set himself up as King Robert the Bald. He has been succeeded by yachting writer Michael Howorth, who styles himself Michael de Grey, in 2009.

In the late 1950s Gawsworth also apparently promised to make the first son of his friends Charles and Jean Leggett, Max John Juan Leggett, his Redondan heir if they gave the child his royal title of Juan.

In 1988 the late London clergyman Paul de Fortis established the Redondan Cultural Foundation. Because of what he viewed as the inaction of the various rival monarchs de Fortis promoted a new king in Cedric Boston (born on Montserrat in 1960). Boston claimed the Redondan throne in 1984, winning the allgiance of a number of Gawsworth’s peers.

On the question of the kingdom of Redonda Wynne-Tyson has written:

The legend is and should remain a pleasing and eccentric fairy tale; a piece of literary mythology to be taken with salt, romantic sighs, appropriate perplexity, some amusement, but without great seriousness. It is, after all, a fantasy.

A stellar legion of Redondan peers, largely writers, date back to the Shiel and Gawsworth eras. They include Arthur Machen, Edgar Jepson, Thomas Burke, Victor Gollancz, Carl Van Vechten, Arthur Ransome, Lawrence Durrell, Gerald Durrell, G.S. Fraser, Michael Harrison, John Heath-Stubbs, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller, Julian MacLaren-Ross, Philip Lindsay, Rebecca West, John Waller, August Derleth, Stephen Graham, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.B. Priestley, Eden Phillpotts, Stephen Potter, Martin Secker, Frank Swinnerton, John Wain, and Julian Symons. Actors enobbled during Gawsworth’s reign were Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Barry Humphries, Diana Dors, Dirk Bogarde, Mai Zetterling, Vincent Price, Joan Greenwood, and Robert Beatty. Also honoured were broadcasters Libby Purves, Roy Plomley and Alan Coren. King Xavier’s peers include Pedro Almodovar, Francis Ford Coppola, A.S. Byatt, Alice Munro, Umberto Eco, George Steiner, Ray Bradbury, Frank Gehry, J.M. Coetzee, Eric Rohmer, and Philip Pullman.

Wynne-Tyson, Javier Marias, Bob Williamson, William Gates and Cedric Boston appeared on the BBC Radio 4 documentary Redonda: The Island with Too Many Kings, broadcast May 2007.