"Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens"
Gareth McLean
Tuesday December 23, 2003
The Guardian
As well as being a great cure for insomnia, Galileo's Daughter (Channel 4) was full of useful facts - as well as jolly good gossip - about the Italian mathematician, philosopher, good Catholic, and starry messenger. (There wasn't a whole lot of information on his daughter, other than that she was a nun, but we weren't really interested in her anyway, were we?) Did you know, for example, that Galileo originally wanted to be a priest but was persuaded by his father to study medicine at the university of Pisa? Or that he eventually dropped out? Were you aware that he landed himself a handsome reward and a salary for life for selling spyglasses to Venice so the Free Republic could see its enemies sailing towards it a full two hours before they could be seen with the naked eye? Had you any knowledge of the house arrest under which Galileo was placed for the last nine years of his life after his scientific persistence finally proved too much for the Vatican, the Inquisition and the catchily named "Hammer of the heretics" Robert Cardinal Bellarmine? (Or indeed, that a Scottish heretic was burned at the stake wearing a pitch shirt so he would blaze all the brighter?) You see. You do learn something new every day. (Also learnt today - the only thing in the world worth learning: how to renounce.) But even if you were already a Galileo aficionado and thus familiar with much of the astronomer's life, times and illegitimate children (if not the flaming Scot detail), there will be one thing revealed by Galileo's Daughter that will have surprised you. He spoke with a Yorkshire accent. Whether he was grinding lenses (which is very tricky), musing upon the surface of the moon, or "enjoying many forms of pleasure" (as Dava Sobel, from whose book this profile took its lead, put it), Galileo provided us with commentary in a hearty Yorkshire timbre. Not that Galileo, as played by Simon Callow, should necessarily have spoken in Italian, but it just seemed a little odd to have him as a northerner. Every time he appeared - in a variety of bushy beards - you were half-expecting a chorus of On Ilkley Moor Bar T'at. Perhaps Callow, in some high-falutin, actory way about which we mortals can only speculate, considered that Tuscany (from whence Galileo hailed) was the Yorkshire of Italy. This will have pleased the residents of Hebden Bridge no end. FYI, there was no mention of whether Galileo Galilei could do the fandango.
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