The Kingdom of Redonda is the name for the micronation associated
with the tiny uninhabited Caribbean
island of Redonda.
The island lies between the islands of Nevis and Montserrat, within the
inner arc of the Leeward
Islands chain, in the West Indies. Redonda is
currently legally a dependency
of the country of Antigua and
Barbuda. The island is just over one mile long and a third of a mile
wide, rising to a 971-foot peak. The island teems with bird life, but is more
or less uninhabitable by humans because there is no source of freshwater other
than rain, and most of the island is extremely steep and rocky, with only a
relatively small, sloping plateau area of grassland at the summit.
Nonetheless, from 1865 until 1912 Redonda was the centre of
a lucrative trade in guano mining, and many thousands of tons of phosphates
were shipped from Redonda to Britain. The ruins associated with the
mineworkings can still be seen on the island.
Redonda also is a micronation which may,
arguably and briefly, have existed as an independent kingdom during the 19th
century, according to an account told by the fantasy writer M.P. Shiel. The title to
the supposed kingdom is still contested to this day in a half-serious fashion.
The "Kingdom" is also often associated with a number of supposedly
aristocratic members, whose titles are awarded by whomever is currently the
"King". Currently there are a number of individuals in different
countries who claim to be the sole legitimate "King" of Redonda.
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.
During Shiel's lifetime
M.P. Shiel
(1865-1947), an author of works of adventure and fantasy fiction, was the first
person to give an account of the "Kingdom of Redonda," in 1929, in a
promotional pamphlet
for a reissue of his books.
According to tradition, Shiel's father, Matthew Dowdy
Shiell, who was a trader and Methodist lay preacher from the nearby
island of Montserrat,
claimed the island of Redonda 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 of
Redonda 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 the writer M.P. Shiel) claimed he was crowned on Redonda at the age of
15, in 1880, by a bishop from Antigua. However, as M.P. Shiel's recounting of this
story never saw print until 1929, it is possible that some, or most, or
possibly all of the story of his being crowned 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, suggesting that there was may
have been some truth behind the coronation and the kingship. Shiel also gave
differing names to the bishop who performed the coronation: the Reverend Dr
Mitchinson and the Rev. Hugh Semper.[4]
These men were both genuine clerics in the Caribbean during 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 of fiction concerned various
aspects of monarchy. One of his detective heroes is called Cummings King Monk.
In Shiel's 1901 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. In 1899, Shiel wrote about visiting Redonda in his
adventure novel Contraband of
War.
In later life, Shiel gave the title, and the rights to his
work, to his chief admirer, London poet and editor John Gawsworth (Terence
Ian Fytton Armstrong), the biographer of Arthur Machen, who was the
realm's Archduke. Gawsworth (1912–70) seems to have passed on the title several
times when the writer was 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.
During 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 name of Juan.
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. M.P. Shiel’s granddaughter, 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, although the writer Iain Fletcher was the
joint literary executor for Gawsworth.
Later developments
Jon 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 given the title of "Baron L'Angelier
de Blythswood de Redonda". From his home at Thurlton, Norfolk, Gates, as
"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 since 1989. Bob Williamson, who lived on Antigua
until his death in 2009, set himself up as the rival "King Robert the
Bald". King Robert the Bald was succeeded in 2009 by yachting writer
Michael Howorth.
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, Cedric Boston (born on Montserrat in 1960). Boston claimed the Redondan
throne in 1984, winning the allegiance 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
ennobled 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 Almodóvar,
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 were all interviewed in the BBC Radio 4 documentary Redonda:
The Island with Too Many Kings, broadcast in May 2007.
List of Kings
Undisputed
Matthew Dowdy
Shiell, 1865–1880
Matthew
Phipps Shiell, 1880-1947 (styled as King Felipe I)
John
Gawsworth, 1947-1967 or 1970 (styled as King Juan I)
Disputed
Arthur John
Roberts, 1967-1989 (styled as King Juan II)
Jon
Wynne-Tyson, 1970-1997 (styled as King Juan II)
Javier Marias,
1997-2012 (styled as King Xavier)
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