Wenlock & Mandeville: cheap gimmicks or echoes of a vanished England?

I suppose that “mascots” of the type that have just been unveiled in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics are a bit of a soft target. They’re all ridiculous, and there’s not much more to be said. The only crumb of comfort is that those of other countries are normally even worse than our own. I was in China for the Asian Games of 1990, when the twee little panda Pan-Pan must have set the cause of wildlife conservation back by decades, as a whole continent fantasised about panda-shooting. By the 2008 Olympics they had had the sense to diversify the target, producing five little manikins named after the five syllables of “Welcome to Beijing”. I suppose you sorta had to be there.

But I had hopes when I heard the names Wenlock and Mandeville. Soon dashed, of course; Wenlock is named after the Shropshire village whose “games” apparently put the Olympic idea into Baron de Coubertin’s head. (The village put a few ideas into A. E. Housman’s too – must be quite a place.) And Mandeville, the Paralympic mascot, is named after Stoke Mandeville hospital for spinal injuries, a noble but rather prosaic derivation.

But just for a moment I heard the alarums and excursions of a vanished but cherished England. Was it not Sir John Wenlock who fought on so many sides in the Wars of the Roses that the historian Alison Weir dubbed him “Prince of Turncoats”? Wenlock’s ultimate come-uppance was entirely appropriate; ending up on the Lancastrian side at their last hurrah at Tewkesbury in 1471, he was forced to retreat. His fellow Lancastrian general the Duke of Somerset misinterpreted this as yet another convenient change of allegiance, and split Wenlock’s bonce down the middle with a mace. I suspect that in a few months’ time we’ll all be wondering where the Duke of Somerset is when you need him.

Strangely enough Sir Geoffrey Mandeville, 12th century Earl of Essex, was another notorious side-switcher, this time in the Stephen-Matilda fandango. He got his earldom from Stephen for supporting him against Matilda, then went over to Matilda after Stephen’s capture at the Battle of Lincoln, changed sides again on Stephen’s release, and finally abandoned the King after a dispute over some castles in 1143. By now neither side would trust him as far as they could throw him, and he set up on his tod as an outlaw in the Fens around Ely, as Hereward the Wake had done before him. The next year Stephen put an end to the yo-yo act by putting an arrow in him.

Neither really seems an ideal mascot for a great national enterprise; both civil warriors and notorious double-dealers. Or does someone perhaps know something we don’t? Perhaps our javelin throwers will all turn on each other (mascot Mandeville had better watch where he is standing) or we’ll find our athletes defecting to Australia halfway through the 1500 metres. Nothing is impossible in the Olympics, or in English history – last time round, we even won a few medals.