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2010-08-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

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First Impressions: Anne Boleyn

2010-07-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

by Charlotte Crow,

Howard Brenton’s new play Anne Boleyn, which has just opened at the Globe Theatre directed by John Dove, pays homage to ‘a great English woman who helped change the course of our history’( in Brenton’s words).

Since her execution in 1536 on trumped up charges of adultery, incest and treason, Henry VIII’s second wife has been depicted in history and literature as either heroic victim or villainous vixen. Here she is decidedly the hero, presented as almost single-handedly responsible for pushing through the English Reformation. But Brenton gives us the dichotomy. Boleyn (Amanda Raison) is an almost too foxy lady whose flirtatious interactions with the king (Anthony Howell) sit confusingly at odds with her pious interest in the works of William Tyndale.

The production is set in historic period, yet Raison (who also performs the role of Boleyn in the Globe’s concurrent staging of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII), perhaps deliberately, has a distinctly 21st-century aura; with her brashness she might have strolled in from Tate Modern next door. ‘Do you want to see it? Do you? Do you?’ she provocatively asks the audience -- before pulling her own severed head out of a blood-soaked shoulder bag in the opening scene. Soon after, she remarks of her rival Queen Katherine, ‘I wish that bitch would piss off to a convent’.

The impact of Anne and Henry’s controversial marriage and its bitter legacy is conveyed through a subplot focused on a subsequent monarch’s struggle with religious division. Sixty years after Anne’s death, James I (James Garnon) finds a chest of her relics that inspire him to revisit her story as he wrestles to reconcile the tensions between bishops and puritans in his own time. Though initially distracting this outer layer produces some of the play’s most lively scenes. There is a cleverly staged debate between Church factions, which drives James towards producing his new version of the Bible, for example, and a sharply choreographed dance between the king and his favourite, George Villiers (Ben Deery), that is both funny and poignant.

As with other broad-sweeping history plays, the effort to get across the high drama of a complex subject to audiences who will have varying degrees of insight comes at the expense of intimate character development. Many who see Anne Boleyn may well have had their interest kindled by Hilary Mantel’s engrossing novel Wolf Hall, yet there is no space here to reflect the subtleties of Thomas Cromwell or Jane Rochford. Through no fault of the actors, these remain limited stereotypes, he a Tudor gauleiter, she a misguided busybody.

But Anne Boleyn nevertheless went down a storm with the audience, suggesting that Brenton’s hunch to give this significant historical woman a platform in our times is right on cue.

Anne Boleyn
Until August 21st
Shakespeare's Globe
21 New Globe Walk, Bankside
London SE1 9DT

http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/

The UK Memory of the World Register

2010-07-29T03:02:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

The Peterloo Relief Fund Account Book is one of the first documents to be inscribed on the UK Memory of the World Register. The register, an online catalogue created to help promote the UK’s documentary heritage, is part of a UNESCO programme to support and raise awareness of archives. The Account Book records the names of 350 people who received payments from the Peterloo Relief Fund, set up in the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre to provide financial assistance to those injured in the massacre and to the dependents of those killed. It also provides details of their injuries and the circumstances in which they were inflicted, with some information on the victims’ backgrounds and characters.

In the words of Jan Wilkinson, University Librarian and Director of the John Rylands Library:

‘The Peterloo Relief Fund Account Book is a unique and irreplaceable manuscript.
It provides vivid, first-hand evidence of the Peterloo Massacre. With its
graphic descriptions of the injuries sustained, it captures the shocking nature
of Peterloo, and helps to explain the political impact that the event had in the
immediate aftermath and in subsequent decades. No other single piece of
documentary heritage relating to Peterloo has this effect. We are delighted that
the importance of the Account Book has been recognised through its inclusion on
the UK Memory of the World Register.’

At least fifteen people were killed and more than 400 were injured at St. Peter’s field, Manchester, on August 16th, 1819, when some 60,000 demonstrators were dispersed by a cavalry charge. The demonstration was organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union to petition for parliamentary reform and the repeal of the first of the Corn Laws and was to be addressed by the British radical speaker Henry Hunt.

Nine other documents from across the country and spanning nearly 1,000 years of history are also inscribed on the register. They include the Pont manuscript maps, the earliest surviving topographic and chorographic survey of Scotland dating to between 1583 and 1614, the charter of King William I to the City of London, the oldest document in the archive of the City of London, and a never-released film on David Lloyd George. The film, shot during the last months of the First World War, is thought to be the first feature length biopic of a contemporary living politician.

Image:

The Peterloo Relief Fund Account Book (The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester)

Ceausescu remains exhumed

2010-07-28T03:03:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

Last Wednesday, July 21st, forensic scientists in Romania exhumed what are believed to be the remains of the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. Samples were taken from the couple’s grave following doubts that they were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest.

The couple’s late daughter Zoia Ceausescu had sued the defence ministry in 2005 saying she had doubts that her parents were buried in the cemetery. When she died in 2006 her brother Valentin, the Ceausescu’s only surviving son, and her husband Mircea Oprean pursued the case.

Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-89) became General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965; however his government was overthrown during the anti-communist revolution in December 1989. Ceausescu and his wife were executed on December 25th, 1989. They were incidentally the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on January 7th, 1990.

According to official reports the DNA tests could take up to six months.

The exhumation is symptomatic of Romania’s struggle to come to terms with its communist past. In Coming to Terms with the Past: Romania Markus Bauer hopes that Romania’s new membership of the European Union will enable it to face down the ghosts of its troubled twentieth-century past.

New henge at Stonehenge

2010-07-22T05:03:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

The University of Birmingham announced this morning the discovery of a new henge less than one kilometre away from Stonehenge. The new henge was discovered by a team of archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology earlier this week, just two weeks into a three-year study that forms part of the international Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project. The project aims to map the Stonehenge landscape and to virtually recreate the prehistoric monument and its surroundings using the latest geophysical imaging techniques.

The new henge consists of a circular ditch aligned with Stonehenge, which measures 25 metres (82ft) in diameter (five metres less than Stonehenge). It has two opposed north-east/south-west entrances and surrounds a smaller circle with internal deep pits that are up to one metre in diameter and could have held a free-standing timber structure. It is believed to be contemporaneous to Stonehenge, dating back to the Late Neolithic period between approximately 2,900 and 2,200 BC.

In the words of Professor Vince Gaffney from the University of Birmingham’s IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre, the finding ‘is remarkable’. In an interview with the BBC, he explained that ‘a major ceremonial site of this type or of this significance’ had not been found for over 50 years.

The discovery has raised many new questions about Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape, which archaeologists hope to solve as the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project progresses.

According to Professor Vince Gaffney,

‘it will completely change the way we think about the landscape around
Stonehenge. People have tended to think that as Stonehenge reached its peak it
was the paramount monument, existing in splendid isolation. This discovery is
completely new and extremely important in how we understand Stonehenge and its
landscape.’

Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, added:

‘This is just the beginning. We will now map this monument using an array of
technologies that will allow us to view this new discovery, and the landscape
around it, in three dimensions. This marks a new departure for archaeologists
and how they investigate the past.’

Mr Paul Garwood, prehistorian at the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, said:

‘This discovery is of great importance for our understanding of the Stonehenge
landscape in the 3rd millennium BC. Its location, a short distance from
Stonehenge, and the fact that the two monuments were inter-visible, raises
exciting new questions about the complex sacred landscape that existed around
Stonehenge when the sarsen and bluestone monument was constructed.’

Prior to the construction of the iconic monument which survives today, there existed an earlier bluestone structure which was dismantled. In March 2008, archaeologists began, for the first time in 40 years, a new series of excavations at Stonehenge in an effort to throw new light on the origins of this little understood structure. Anthony Johnson reports in Solving Stonehenge.

Images:

- The archaeological team on site at Stonehenge (professional images)

From left, archaeologist Eamonn Baldwin, University of Birmingham with archaeological geophysicist Dr Chris Gaffney of University of Bradford with Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna.

- Interpretation: visual representation showing site of ditches (grey), post holes (yellow) and barrow (blue)

Srebrenica Massacre Remembered

2010-07-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

Sunday marked the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, on July 11th, 1995, when the town was attacked by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic. It is estimated that 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, mainly boys and men, were killed by Bosnian Serbs. The victims were initially buried in mass graves, but then dispersed in smaller graves in an effort to cover up the massacre. Over the past few years, forensic experts have exhumed the remains of over 4,500 victims in order to identify them. Last year, during a ceremony to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the massacre, 534 newly identified Bosniak Muslim victims were buried at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial and Cemetery just outside Srebrenica.

Der Spiegel reports on a similar ceremony organised this year to mark the 15th anniversary of the massacre. 775 coffins belonging to the latest victims to have been identified were buried during a service held, once again, at the Potocari memorial. The burial was attended by almost 50,000 people, including European leaders such as the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, and representatives of the European Union. A speech by US President Barack Obama was read out by Charles English, the US ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbian President Boris Tadic also attended the anniversary.

A slideshow of images of the ceremony is available on the website of Der Spiegel.

Wood from Newton's apple tree back from space

2010-07-07T04:23:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

The piece of wood engraved with Sir Isaac Newton’s initials from the tree which inspired him to formulate the theory of gravitation was returned, yesterday, to its home at the Royal Society.

The section of wood from the tree from which Newton famously saw the apple fall was taken into space, on May 14th, by the astronaut Piers Sellers on the NASA mission STS 132. Sellers also took with him an image of Sir Isaac Newton, a former president of the Royal Society, as part of the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society. The piece of wood and the picture spent 12 days in space with Sellers who videoed them floating in the space station.

They are now on display in the Royal Society’s exhibition 'The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science'.

Images:

- Piers Sellers presents wood back to Professor Lorna Casselton, Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society (Royal Society)
- Piers Sellers holding the tree fragment (Royal Society/ NASA)

French Nazi collaborators named and shamed

2010-07-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

In February last year, the French council of state, the Conseil d’Etat, recognised for the first time the responsibility of the French Vichy government in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War. Peter Allen reported on Wednesday, June 30th, in the Telegraph and Mail Online that police reports from the time are now due to be digitised and published online. The files dating from 1940 will be made public in 2015, as soon as the 75-year official secrecy order issued by the post-war government expires. Archives from the following four years will subsequently also be made public from 2016 to 2019. Since the liberation of Paris on August 25th, 1944, the documents have been kept in the archives of the Musee des Collections Historiques de la Prefecture de Police in Paris. They include police logs from stations across France, details of fines, arrests and interviews, as well as information passed on to the Nazis.

In the Guardian, Nabila Ramdani explains how the online publication of the names of ‘second world war collaborators’ will force the country to reconsider official versions of the history of the German occupation and the ‘myth of the resistance’ developed in the aftermath of the liberation. ‘If a beloved great uncle was caught slipping some black market camembert to the Bosch in 1940, then the whole world will be able to read about it from 2015’.

It is not that simple, however. Can giving a German soldier a camembert really be defined as an act of collaboration? How indeed does one define collaboration and what crimes did one have to commit to be classified as a collaborator? When times were hard, queues for food were never-ending and people were hungry, can selling cheese on the black market to have a little extra cash really be defined as a crime? The history of occupied France is not black and white and the lines between collaboration and resistance were often blurred. People could, for example, superficially collaborate with the Germans in order to cover up more active acts of resistance against the Nazi regime. On the whole, the majority of the French population primarily sought to survive and carry on with their daily lives as unaffected as possible by the occupation. The publication of archives from the time will, above all, raise many complex questions about historical memory and issues of responsibility.

The Best of English Football: Can England make it to the World Cup final?

2010-06-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

If the English team is eliminated after this afternoon’s match, it will be the first time that England has been eliminated in the first round of the World Cup since 1958. But Fabio Capello still believes that England can make it through to the final. He said yesterday: ‘I'm not crazy when I said my target was reaching the final of the World Cup.’

But even if England does not qualify, the weight and influence of football throughout history is such that English football will live on, no matter what the outcome of this afternoon’s game.

As John Williams, Eric Dunning and Patrick Murphy explain in Football's Fighting Traditions the history of British football hooliganism, if nothing else, dates back over a century to before the First World War. In 1988, in the lead-up to the European Football Championships in West Germany, the authors voiced their concern that English fans would ‘disgrace themselves once again’.

Issues of crowd safety at football matches are also not new. In Football, Fainting and Fatalities John Walton charts problems of crowd safety off the pitch in England in the first half of the twentieth century.

Football has also often been closely linked to politics. In the interwar period, for example, realising the large scale appeal of football as a participant and spectator sport, governments turned to football as a propaganda tool. The game was invested with considerable political significance. In England v Germany 1938: Football as Propaganda, Peter Beck considers how the British government notably used football to project a favourable image of Britain abroad.

In Politics and Football: Arms raised in shame in our June issue, Trevor Fisher charts a notorious example of political interference in the game. In May 1938, with football overshadowed by the spectre of armed conflict, diplomatic protocol resulted in the English team giving a Nazi salute during their visit to Germany.

But there is also a more light-hearted and amusing side to the history of football and there is still hope that the English team will qualify, and maybe even win the World Cup, as it did in 1966. In 1966, however, a few months before England won the World Cup, the FA lost it. Martin Atherton tells the story of the theft and recovery of the Jules Rimet Trophy in England Loses the World Cup.

To read a selection of our best articles about football visit our ‘Football’ Focus Page.

Image:
Postcard c.1910 (National Football Museum)

70 years ago de Gaulle said 'Non'

2010-06-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, celebrated with British Prime Minister David Cameron today, June 18th, the 70th anniversary of de Gaulle’s broadcast appeal rallying the French to pursue the fight against Nazi Germany. It is the first time that a French president has travelled to London to mark de Gaulle’s historic ‘appel du 18 juin’.

The full text of de Gaulle's speech:

‘To be sure, we have been submerged, we are submerged, by the enemy’s mechanised forces, on land and in the air.

It is the Germans’ tanks, planes and tactics that have made us fall back, infinitely more than their numbers. It is the Germans’ tanks, planes and tactics that have so taken our leaders by surprise as to bring them tot he point that they have reached today.

But has the last word been said? Must hope vanish? Is the defeat final? No!
Believe me, for I know what I am talking about and I tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that beat us may one day bring us victory.

For France is not alone. She is not alone! She is not alone! She has an immense Empire behind her. She can unite with the British Empire, which commands the sea and which is carrying on with the struggle. Like England, she can make an unlimited use of the vast industries of the United States.

This war is not confined to the unhappy territory of our country. This war has not been decided by the Battle of France. This war is a worldwide war. All the faults, all the delays, all the sufferings do not do away with the fact that in the world there are all the means for one day crushing our enemies. Today we are struck down by the mechanised force; in the future we can conquer by greater mechanised force. The fate of the world lies there.

I, General de Gaulle, now in London, call upon the French officers and soldiers who are on British soil or who may be on it, with their arms or without them, I call upon the engineers and the specialised workers in the armaments industry who are or who may be on British soil, to get in contact with me.

Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and shall not go out.’

In our June 2010 issue, Jonathan Fenby goes in-depth to explore the historical background and impact of de Gaulle’s historic speech.

Painting the Armada at the House of Lords

2010-06-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

A press reception was organised this morning at the House of Lords to mark the completion of a project begun in January 2008 to recreate six paintings of the Armada tapestries, which were destroyed in the fire at the Palace of Westminster almost 200 years ago. The tapestries were originally commissioned to record one of the greatest episodes of British history; but the story of the tapestries themselves is equally great, and fascinating.

It begins 418 years ago, in 1592, when Lord Howard of Effingham, who had served as Lord High Admiral at the time of the Spanish Armada, commissioned the Dutch naval artist and first seascape painter, Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (1566-1640) to create a series of ten tapestries to commemorate the British victory. The tapestries were woven in Brussels by Francis Spieringx. They cost £1,582, the equivalent of 87 years wages for a workman in 1590. They are believed to have measured 14 feet in height and between 17 and 28 feet in width and were interwoven with gold and silver thread. When they were completed, in 1595, they initially hung in Lord Howard’s Chelsea manor. They were then moved, in 1616, to his new London residence, Arundel House, before being sold to King James I for £1,628.

In the early 1650s, the tapestries were transferred to the Royal Palace of Westminster, where they hung in the then House of Lords Chamber, known as the Parliament Chamber. In 1801, when the Peers moved to the Court of Requests, a larger chamber which suited the need for increased seating after the Act of Union with Ireland, the tapestries followed suit. They hung in the Court of Requests until the fire on October 16th, 1834, in which all ten tapestries perished.

The significance and influence of the tapestries had been considerable. They were mentioned in debate on several occasions and were used as propaganda. In 1798, for example, when concern over a possible French invasion was being debated, they were used to arouse patriotic popular support against the French forces. The artist James Gillray was commissioned to produce images that ‘might rouse all the People to an active Union against that invasion’. In a series of satirical prints entitled Consequences of a successful French Invasion, he depicted a French Admiral ordering his men to destroy the tapestries in the Lords Debating Chamber.

House of Lords Researcher, Julian Dee, whose research formed the basis of the proposal for the recreation of the tapestries, underlined the changing historical significance of the tapestries:

‘These recreated images will tell us something about every generation that has
risen since Elizabethan times. James I displayed them in the Banqueting
Hall to receive the Spanish Ambassador. It has been suggested that in so doing
perhaps he could pursue dialogue with Spain without the appearance of
weakness. By contrast, his son Charles I folded these martial images away
for much of his reign. Cromwell's men had "The Story of '88" displayed in
Parliament so that generations of peers - most notably the Earl of Chatham -
would evoke the memory of the heroes commemorated in the tapestry
borders. When it was said that Napoleon wanted to put the Bayeux Tapestries
on a pre-invasion tour of France, it was suggested the same be done in Britain
for the Armada ones.’

Seven years after the fire, in 1841, during the construction of the New Palace of Westminster, a Fine Arts Commission chaired by Prince Albert was established in order to oversee the production of artwork for the interior of the palace. It was decided that the Prince’s Chamber would be illustrated with subjects from Tudor history and a space was designed to hang six paintings of the original Armada tapestries. The paintings were to be based on a series of engravings of the tapestries created in the 1730s by the artist John Pine. Pine’s engravings were the only surviving record of the tapestries.

However, when Prince Albert died, in 1861, only one of the paintings had been completed. It was not until 1907, that it was proposed, once again, to recreate the Armada tapestries. But once again, the Armada Tapestry proposal failed to be realised. One hundred years later, in 2007, it was proposed, for the third time, that a generous donation by Mark Pigott OBE should be used to recreate in painted format the 16th-century Armada tapestries. Anthony Oakshett, the lead artist on the project, began his work to recreate the tapestries the following year, using Pine’s 18th-century engravings and the only completed painting in the series The English Fleet pursuing the Spanish Fleet against Fowey as his key historical sources.

The result is spectacular. On Monday, June 21st, members of the public will be able to see the paintings on a tour of parliament for the first time. In the autumn, they will be permanently moved to the Prince’s Chamber where they were originally designed to be hung. Try to spot Anthony Oakshett’s depiction of Mark Pigott as a 16th-century nobleman on horseback in the right-hand corner of the last painting in the series!

Images (Palace of Westminster Collection):

- Richard Burchett, The English fleet pursuing the Spanish fleet against Fowey

- James Gillray, Consequences of a successful French Invasion

- Anthony Oakshett, Drake takes De Valdes's galleon; the Lord Admiral pursues the enemy

The Duel for Europe, 1800-1830

2010-06-16T03:45:00.000-07:00

FCO historian Dr Isabelle Tombs introduces the FCO's first online exhibition, 'The Duel for Europe, 1800-1830'.

by Isabelle Tombs,

This online exhibition, mounted by FCO Historians, charts both the personal duel fought between two of Britain’s top politicians and the national duel between Britain and France for supremacy in Europe in the years 1800-1830. Eventually, Britain won a historic victory over Napoleon’s empire. It covers the efforts of the Foreign Secretary and his staff to keep Britain and her Allies together and bring lasting peace to Europe, after a century of war across four continents and Napoleon’s universal threat. Britain was simultaneously seeking to stamp out the transatlantic slave trade.

The exhibition also highlights the personal rivalry between War Secretary Lord Castlereagh and Foreign Secretary George Canning who, in the midst of war, fought a duel on Putney Heath. The two men embodied differing approaches to foreign affairs but both went on to become great Foreign Secretaries - Castlereagh played a key role in ending the Napoleonic Wars and establishing peace for a century, whilst Canning put his imprint on the liberation of Latin America.

Period artefacts, pictures and manuscripts are on show, including a silver-mounted pistol and the major treaties that sealed Britain’s victory.

Follow www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/online-exhibition to view the exhibition.

Image:

William Heath, Wellington entering Toulouse (National Army Museum, London).

Views of Bloody Sunday then and now

2010-06-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

‘Will unsullied evidence ever be obtained on which definitive judgements can be made? Will not the emotiveness of the events preclude such definition? And would the truth be believed by all parties if it was obtained?’

Those were the questions asked by Dr Anthony Seldon about the events of Bloody Sunday in an article published in History Today almost twenty years ago, in November 1991.

Seldon’s article examined the dividing line between history and current affairs and was part of a special supplement entitled ‘Secret History’, which explored the issues raised by a series of ‘secret history’ documentaries being screened at the time on Channel 4. The Channel 4 series aimed to use new evidence and re-interpretation to uncover the ‘historical truth’ about a wide range of controversial historical events in the 20th century. In his introduction to the series, Channel 4’s then controller of factual programmes, John Willis, described the aim of the series: ‘to establish the firm truths underlying the welter of hearsay, propaganda and partial recollection that obscures so much of our knowledge of the past’.

Twenty years later, have Anthony Seldon’s questions not been answered with yesterday’s publication of the long-awaited Saville report? Has the ‘truth’ about the events of Bloody Sunday not been established at last?

There certainly appeared to be no doubt in David Cameron’s mind about the conclusions of Lord Saville’s report as he delivered his speech, yesterday, to the House of Commons: ‘The conclusions of this report are absolutely clear. There is no doubt. There is nothing equivocal. There are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong’.

Footage of Cameron’s speech is available on the website of the BBC.

Image:

Bernard McGuigan lying dead on Bloody Sunday (Channel 4), published in Secret History (November 1991).

The Saville report at a glance…

2010-06-15T04:46:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

A brief background to the report
On Sunday January 30th, 1972, 14 people died when British soldiers opened fire on civil rights protesters in the Bogside district of Derry. The shootings sparked international condemnation. In Dublin a crowd of protesters burnt down the British Embassy. The day after the incident, the then Prime Minister Edward Heath set up a public inquiry under the then Lord Chief Justice Lord Widgery. A report was published within 11 weeks of the shootings.
The report largely absolved the British soldiers, however, and was rejected by the families of victims and criticised for excluding key evidence. It concluded that shots had been fired at the soldiers before they started the firing that led to the casualties; that the soldiers acted as they did because they believed their standing orders justified it; and that although there was no proof that any of the victims had been shot while handling a firearm or bomb, there was a strong suspicion that some had been firing weapons or handling bombs in the course of the afternoon.
Twenty-five years after the event, in January 1998, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair eventually established a full enquiry under the auspices of former High Court judge, Lord Saville of Newdigate. Blair’s statement to the House of Commons on January 29th, 1998, and Lord Saville’s opening statement, delivered on April 3rd, 1998, can be found on The Bloody Sunday Inquiry website.
The inquiry began on March 27th, 2000, taking oral statements from the first hundreds of witnesses. A timeline of the key moments in the inquiry is available on the website of The Guardian.

Facts and stats about the Bloody Sunday inquiry
The Bloody Sunday inquiry is the longest and most expensive in British history. It cost almost £195 million and took 12 years to complete.
The inquiry closed in 2004.
It took over four years for the Saville report to be written.
The completed report is 5,000 pages long with a 60 page summary.
In November 2008, it was announced that the publication of the report would be delayed for at least another year.
At the beginning of April 2009, it was announced that the publication of the report would be delayed until after the general election.
It was due to be handed over to Shaun Woodward, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, at the end of March this year and was expected to be made public shortly after.

What is happening today?
The Saville report was delivered to the Guildhall in Derry at 2 o’clock this morning and was made available to the families’ legal teams.
Cameron is expected to announce the official publication of the report later this afternoon in the House of Commons.
Full coverage and regular updates are available on the website of The Guardian.

The website of the Bloody Sunday Trust, a history project based in Derry to commemorate the events of Bloody Sunday and to preserve the memory of its victims, provides useful background information to the report and features a gallery of photographs from the collections of the Museum of Free Derry.

Our Picture Editor, Sheila Corr, was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, at the time. She remembers the shock and outrage across the border.

On February 2nd 1972, three days after the event, and while many of the
funerals took place, a day of national mourning was held throughout the Irish
Republic, and, as a mark of respect for the dead, businesses were closed and
services held. In Dublin, so far largely untouched by ‘The Troubles’,
thousands marched in solemn protest behind symbolic coffins, and later, as night
fell, an angry crowd descended on the British Embassy and burnt it
down.
I watched the procession pass slowly and in silence before
the old Irish Parliament building and Trinity College where I was then a
student, and in Merrion Square, usually an oasis of Georgian tranquility, saw
the embassy blaze unchecked against the dark sky. It was an extraordinary
moment when hatred of Britain raged furiously about me, and for the first and
only time in all the years I’d visited Ireland with my Irish parents, I felt an
uncomfortable need to conceal an English accent.

The Mystery of York’s Headless Romans

2010-06-11T04:39:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

Has the mystery of York’s headless Romans, which has puzzled archaeologists for over six years, finally been solved? In 2004, York Archaeological Trust excavated 80 burials in York in advance of housing developments. The burials are believed to be part of a large Roman cemetery on the outskirts of the town, dated to between the early 2nd century and late 3rd century.

However, the burials do not fit in with the usual demographics for a Roman cemetery. They are mostly male and the majority are adults. The people also seem to have suffered harsh lifestyles and met violent deaths; nevertheless, they appear to have been carefully buried. There is evidence, for example, that funerary feasting took place at the cemetery. Were these people soldiers, criminals or gladiators? Were they from a group that had unusual religious beliefs or burial practices?

On Monday, June 7th, archaeologists announced the results of the latest forensic tests carried out on more than 80 skeletons. They believe that the individuals may be gladiators and that the site may be the best preserved gladiator graveyard in the world. Scientists discovered a large carnivore bite mark, believed to have been inflicted by a lion, tiger or bear in the context of an arena. They also found some healed and unhealed weapon injuries, possible hammer blows to the head and a high incidence of substantial arm asymmetry. The development of much stronger muscles in the right arm is a feature that is notably mentioned in several works of ancient Roman literature in connection with gladiators.

Kurt Hunter Mann, who is leading the research at York Archaeological Trust, explained the different possible theories:

‘There are numerous pieces of evidence that point towards or are consistent with
the interpretation that the skeletons are Roman gladiators, but there is also
other evidence that suggest the individuals could have been soldiers, criminals,
or members of a religious cult […].
‘An alternative interpretation – that
the individuals are soldiers – is potentially undermined by the fact that most
of them have been violently decapitated and that one of them has a large
carnivore bite mark, almost certainly sustained in an arena context […].
‘Another potential interpretation – that they are all criminals – appears to
be undermined by the substantial respect (and grave goods) with which many of
them were buried.’

On Monday, a documentary entitled Gladiators: Back From The Dead, exploring the origins of the skeletons and following the lead theory that they were Roman gladiators will be shown on Channel 4 (9pm). York Archaeological Trust will also launch a website next week presenting all the various theories and asking members of the public to give their own opinions.

http://www.headlessromans.co.uk/

Image:

Skeleton with displaced skull - York Archaeological Trust

Praise for Pinochet

2010-06-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

Chile’s ambassador to Argentina, Miguel Otero, resigned on Tuesday evening, just 48 hours after the Argentine newspaper Clarín published an interview in which he spoke in favour of the military rule of Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006). Otero is a member of Chile’s ruling centre-right National Renewal Party (Renovación Nacional) founded in 1988.

The interview was published in Clarín on Sunday, June 6th. Otero claimed that the majority of the Chilean population was not affected by the dictatorship, did not ‘feel’ the dictatorship, and that, on the contrary, the economic situation and hardship at the time meant that many were relieved when the military took power. He also claimed that human rights abuses were not official policies, but rather the result of excesses committed by some members of the military junta.

‘Le explico una cosa. La mayor parte de Chile no sintió la dictadura. Al
contrario, se sintió aliviada. Porque antes usted no podía comprar nada
importado, tenía que pagar lo que se producía en Chile, caro y malo.’

It is estimated, however, that approximately 3,000 political opponents were killed during the dictatorship and that over 30,000 people were imprisoned or tortured.

Otero’s comments sparked immediate protest and demands that he step down in both Argentina and Chile. On Tuesday, the foreign relations committee of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies voted by six votes to five to ask President Sebastian Pinera to sack him. Pinera, who took office in March, is Chile's first conservative elected president since Pinochet’s resignation 20 years ago.

First Impressions: Rude Britannia

2010-06-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Crow and Sheila Corr, deputy and picture editors at History Today, give their first impressions of Tate Britain's latest exhibition.

Charlotte Crow:

Is there such thing as a British sense of humour? The TV show Britain’s Got Talent has addressed that question in more ways than one. If you have giggled at the contradiction between that programme’s title and anything you might have seen of its content, you will be both amused and impressed by 'Rude Britannia'. Tate Britain’s dynamic celebration of British comic art spans the 17th-century to the present and explores the serious interface between humour and issues of identity (and much else besides) with a fitting lightness of touch.

An inspired move is the involvement of guest curators Gerald Scarfe, Harry Hill, Steve Bell and Viz Magazine who bring celebrity to proceedings (in a good way), as well as their own distinct artistic contributions. For example, in a room devoted to social satire, dominated by an enormous three-dimensional Viz Magazine, that comic’s love-to-hate character Roger Mellie ‘The Man on the Telly’ appears in a parallel storyboard offering facetious commentary to each scene in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress. To enter a Sitting Room, where visitors can sit comfortably to peruse cartoon and comic books at close quarters, you must go through the bandy legs of a giant William Pitt, Gerald Scarfe’s take on James Gillray’s The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797).

What this exhibition achieves most successfully, in galleries which explore themes ranging from politics, to social satire, the grotesque, the bawdy and the absurd, is the juxtaposition of historic works with contemporary material so that both can be viewed in fresh ways. Hopefully this imaginative presentation will awaken a new generation to the roots of one of Britain’s genuine talents: the art of irreverence.

Sheila Corr:

Vibrant, witty, colourful and often, as it claims, extraordinarily rude, this exhibition celebrates the role of humour in British visual culture from the 17th century to the present day. What a joy to see a major gallery devote space to this subject which allows for the use of plenty of three-dimensional objects and other large pieces such as Cruikshank’s Worship of Bacchus.

Tate curators have been ably assisted by guest contributors who offer their own unique insights into the exhibits. While this is undoubtedly a refreshing view, explanatory captions could provide some helpful historical background, especially in the 'Politics' section where a person’s ‘tab of identity’ (as Low apparently called it) has to carry the whole story behind some of Gillray’s most vitriolic outbursts.

Most of the historical threads are familiar to me, from broadsides of Cromwell through the work of Hogarth and Patch, and the technological advances in printing which took caricature from the popular Macaronis to the mass market in Punch and comic publications of today. But I was also delighted to discover unknown work such as John Collier’s painting The Hypocrite and the mid-19th-century publication The Penny Satirist.

Self evidently though, the loud and vulgar will draw in the greatest crowds and, while surprised yet again with the explicit nature of the earliest examples in 'The Bawdy' section, I was most amused by the time-warp caption labels for McGill’s saucy seaside postcards of the 1950s stating ‘Original postcard attached to Director of Public Prosecution’s index card’.

Images:

- James Gillray, The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797)

- Shaun Doyle, and Mally Mallinson, Death to the Fascist Fruit Boys (2010)

- Anonymous, Napoleon chamber pot, early 19th century

Tintoretto on display in Dorset

2010-06-09T02:56:00.000-07:00

Our editor Paul Lay comments on a hidden Tintoretto painting, which goes on public dispaly for the first time, today, at the National Trust's Kingston Lacy in Dorset.

by Paul Lay,

If I was forced to choose the ‘greatest painting of all time’ I would plump for Tintoretto’s Crucifixion, which hangs in the Scuola di San Rocco, Venice, a multitudinous vision of Christ’s death. It is therefore very exciting when a new Tintoretto goes on public display, especially in Britain. Today sees the unveiling of Tintoretto’s Apollo (or Hymen) Crowning a Poet and Giving Him a Spouse at Kingston Lacy, the National Trust property in Dorset. The painting has spent most of the last 30 years in storage but has undergone a major programme of cleaning and restoration. Art historians at the National Trust believe that the painting depicts Apollo, or possibly the god of marriage, Hymen, placing a crown on an unknown figure, probably a poet who is holding a book. Mythical figures surrounding them include the god Hercules and a woman believed to be the intended spouse. However, the identification of other figures is still open to question along with the significance of various objects which would have had a clear meaning to those who saw it when it was painted. These include a die depicting five dots and the presence of a gold box and dish with coins in it.

Alastair Laing, the National Trust’s Curator of Pictures and Sculpture said:

‘This is undoubtedly a work of great significance – Titian, Veronese and
Tintoretto are the three great masters of the mid- to late-16th century in
Venice and to have a painting by Tintoretto in an English house, rather than
still in its original location in Venice, or in an Italian museum, is
extraordinary.
‘It is all the more fascinating that we do not yet know who or
where it was painted for, or what the actual subject is.’

The painting was given to the Trust as part of the contents of Kingston Lacy in 1981 but it was in poor condition. Layers of darkened varnish and discoloured paint had caused difficulty in identifying the subject matter of the painting, even whether it was by Tintoretto himself. The cleaning and restoration, undertaken by the Hamilton Kerr Institute near Cambridge, included x-rays and infrared analysis that helped to identify the unquestionable style and brush strokes of Tintoretto. They also revealed original underdrawings that show changes he made to faces, clothing and positioning of subjects in the final version.

The painting probably dates from the 1560s or 1570s from a palazzo in Venice where it was acquired in 1849 by William John Bankes, then owner of Kingston Lacy. It was last known to have been displayed in the dining-room at Kingston Lacy. It is here that it will be reinstated.

Image:

National Trust, Tintoretto's Apollo (or Hymen) Crowning a Poet and Giving Him a Spouse after cleaning and restoration (NT/Hamilton Kerr Institute)

Historypin: Patchwork History

2010-06-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

Our deputy editor, Charlotte Crow, reviews a new digital picture archive, Historypin, launched last week.

by Charlotte Crow,

What aims to be ‘the greatest picture story book on Earth’, Historypin, launched in London at the end of last week. The project was created by the social ideas group We Are What We Do in collaboration with Google, the technical and financial facilitator behind a venture that promises to add a new dimension to digital history.

We Are What We Do is an off-shoot of Community Links, a non-profit organisation founded in East London in 2004 to tackle the causes and consequences of social exclusion in fresh and imaginative ways. The aim of this latest project is to stimulate interaction between different generations by seeking positive ways to bring them together: older people by communicating their experiences and stories and younger people by sharing their digital skills.

Historypin is about creating a reason to uncover from attics and garages forgotten old pre-digital photographs of outdoor locations, peopled or not. These can then be scanned and uploaded onto the Historypin website and ‘pinned’ onto Street View via Google Maps along with a date, caption and personal story. Pictures are layered onto modern Street View scenes (the Museum of London launched an App with a similar function for historic stills of the capital on June 2nd) so that users can ‘walk’ down a virtual memory lane exploring how a neighbourhood once looked and gleaning anecdotal details via contributor’s written reminiscences. The idea is to build a vast, random archive of images and human recollections with an interactive dimension. Ideally a young and an old person will have participated jointly in this process and Historypin plans plenty of outreach projects with schools and old people’s homes to get the necessary dialogues going.

Thanks to Google, the capacity for holding material is not an issue. Photographic and local history archives are encouraged to get on board and this may well prove a positive, cost-free way for them to showcase their images (copyright of all material remaining with the owners). Currently the focus is on photographs as the memory pins, though other material such as paintings and drawings can also be tagged. Historypin will develop links with oral history projects with the view to enable audio material to be tagged as well.

With its emphasis on dating and captioning, supervised by a team of moderators, Historypin hopes to increase a broader sense of historical awareness. In airing what commercial archives would consider in many cases to be worthless, mundane pictures, it will help to develop an appreciation for a non-commercial, non-dramatic version of the past that nevertheless can still tell us much.

Yet whatever the potential this endeavour might hold for social and local historians and those wishing to connect with the past, the greater motive of Historypin is to connect people with each other by cultivating curiosity and mutual interest. With a widening divide between young and old in the fast moving digital age and the isolation experienced by many older people in an aging population, this is a positive and worthwhile ambition.

Images (Trinity Mirror Archive):

- Street party for Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, Children from Methley Street and Radcot Street, London, June 7th, 1977

- Family on holiday in New York City, Peter and Joan Udell with their children Christopher and Jennifer, January 12th, 1969

Henry VIII's conservative religious beliefs

2010-06-04T04:39:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

A rare medieval prayer roll that once belonged to Henry VIII goes on display, today, in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Gallery as part of its ‘Treasures of the British Library’ collection. Whilst there still exist numerous medieval obituary rolls, very few prayer rolls survived the Reformation. The prayer roll also features an inscription written by Prince Henry, which is one of only three surviving examples of his handwriting from before his accession to the throne on April 21st, 1509.

The roll was not discovered until 1858 and many questions about its origin, place of production and illumination remain unanswered. The British Library recently purchased the prayer roll from Sotheby’s for £485,000.

It is believed to have been produced in England in the late 15th century and consists of four parchment strips sewn end to end, measuring four metres when it is fully unrolled. It is illustrated with thirteen illuminations depicting Christ and various saints and their martyrdoms and also contains a two-column text with rubrics in English and prayers in Latin to the Five Holy Wounds of Christ and other related devotions.

The inscription at the top of the second membrane under the central image of Christ’s Passion, believed to have been written by Prince Henry some time prior to 1509 when he presented the roll to William Thomas a Gentleman of his Privy Chamber, reads: ‘Wylliam thomas I pray yow pray for me your lovyng master Prynce Henry’.

Henry’s royal badges consisting of the two Tudor roses, the Prince of Wales crowned ostrich feather as well as Katherine of Aragon’s emblem of a sheaf of arrows at the head of the roll are evidence that the roll was once owned and used by Prince Henry. The prayer roll provides fascinating and surprising insights into Henry’s traditional and conservative early religious practices that he would later destroy when he broke with Rome and established himself as head of the Church of England.

Images (British Library):

- Christ crucified, Angels bearing Christ's side wound

Christ is depicted hanging on a Tau-shaped cross and flanked by two angels each holding a small scroll. The vernacular instructions on the left-hand scroll promise general protection, material prosperity and safe childbirth to those who wear the roll on their bodies: “This cros, 15 times moten is the length of our Lord Jhesu Criste, and that day that ye bere it upon you ther shal no evyl spirit have power of yow on londe ne on water, ne with thonder ne litenyng be hurt, ne dye in dedely synne withowte confession, ne fyre be brent, ne water be drowned; and it shal breke your enemys power and encres your worldly goodes, and if a woman be in travell off childe, ley this on her body and she shal be delyverd withowte parel, the childe chrystendom, and the moder purificacyon.”

- The Archangel Michael and the Devil

The first of a series of images of saints, St Michael is depicted here conquering the devil, personified by a dragon-like monster with six heads and a tail ending in another head. The archangel is clothed in a red, feathered garment, relieved with gold. Beneath is a hymn to the saint: “Gaude princeps pietatis. Miles mire probatis ...”

First Impressions: Exposed

2010-05-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

By Sheila Corr,

‘Snapshot’ started as a term used in firing a gun, which reminds us, together with other familiar photographic terms such as ‘capture’ and ‘taking a shot’, that not all subjects have offered themselves willingly to the camera. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera opens today, May 28th, at Tate Modern. The museum's fifth exhibition devoted to photography analyses and reflects on this hunt for prey, and explores the nature of intrusion throughout the history of photography, and the viewer’s complicity in the intrusion. Is it acceptable to invade someone’s privacy in this way and if so, when and why? If you look at the results of that invasion, are you too crossing the line?

Contemporary photography is at the centre of 'Exposed', but illuminated by earlier, and often more familiar work. The opening room sets the scene where Walker Evans’ surreptitious close-ups of passengers on the New York subway (taken with the simplest of cameras in the 1930s) are paired with Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Heads of unaware New Yorkers. The photographic technology of 2000 is certainly much more advanced, but the result is strikingly similar.

The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections: The Unseen Photographer, Celebrity & the Public Gaze, Voyeurism & Desire, Witnessing Violence, and Surveillance. The first of these includes pioneering work by Lewis Hine, which drew attention to the exploitation of child labour in American mines and factories, and Paul Martin’s Victorian London street scenes. They show ordinary people going about their daily life observed by an invisible but highly skilled photographer who often went to elaborate lengths to conceal himself and his camera, in order to catch what Cartier-Bresson (well represented here) called ‘the decisive moment’, the exact second when all the elements needed to create a perfect composition are in place.

The Countess of Castiglione was the first celebrity to manipulate her own image back in the 1860s when she enacted bizarre personal fantasies for the camera. These days, however, fame generally entails relentless pursuit by the paparazzi and even in 1889, the artist Degas was ‘caught’ leaving a pissoir. Less surprising in this section are shots of Garbo trying to shield herself from the public gaze, or Eliabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ‘papped’ by Marcello Geppetti embracing as they sunbathe. Alison Jackson’s ersatz representations of lookalikes posed as the rich and famous in compromising situations, such as Jack Nicholson in road rage, raise questions of the viewer’s role by highlighting the humour.

The later rooms, starting with ‘Voyeurism & Desire’, move into more uncomfortable territory. Brassai’s shots of a seedy thirties Paris are familiar scenes of low life, as are Helmut Newton’s take on the world of fashion, but more dominant here are the reflections of women photographers who turn their critical gaze back on the peeping toms watching strippers and visiting brothels. ‘Witnessing Violence’ takes this questioning further: ‘Does photography allow us to bear witness to a victim’s suffering, or does it anaesthetize us to the horror?’ The horror is dead bodies (Weegee’s New York features strongly), suicides, assassinations, executions and concentration camp atrocities, dating back to the earliest 19th century photographs of conflict by Alexander Gardner and Felice Beato. The answer is ambivalent as war photographers frequently testify.

The intimacy of the photographer’s relationship with his/her subject disappears in the exhibition’s last section ‘Surveillance’, which opens into a much wider, more open exhibition space thus emphasizing that distance. Some of these are random shots taken at a fixed spot by CCTV, intended to record and sometimes incriminate. They often involve no artistic ‘eye’, but are nevertheless an interesting development in the technology and purpose of photography.

Although I like the early aerial views and love Simon Norfolk’s web of wires on Ascension Island, I was less engaged by the detailed recording of the minutiae of time and place while recognising it as an unavoidable conclusion to an exhibition about surreptitious camerawork. These days cameras are turned on us from all sides pretty much wherever we go, leaving our right to privacy an arguable concept. Well and truly exposed.

Image:
Walker Evans, Street Scene, New York, 1928
Gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
©Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera
Until October 3rd
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Telephone: 020 7887 8888
http://www.tate.org.uk/

70 years ago today: Operation Dynamo

2010-05-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo and the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. Following the rapid advance of German troops during the Battle of France, French and British soldiers became trapped in a small pocket around Dunkirk. It is estimated that between May 26th and June 5th, 1940, over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk to Britain (approximately 200,000 British and 110,000 French).

Memory of the evacuation diverges on both sides of the Channel, however. The 70th anniversary is featured on the front pages of most of today’s British newspapers; it is not covered, however, in the French news. Whereas Dunkirk is viewed in Britain as one of the most significant episodes of the Second World War, in France, the evacuation was on the whole a humiliation, which has been largely forgotten. In May 1940, Operation Dynamo also caused disputes between the French and British generals, when Gort disagreed with Weygand’s plans to organise a counter-attack on Arras.

What happened to the French soldiers who briefly sojourned in Britain and later returned to France? In Dunkirk: Paradise After Hell Rhiannon Looseley uncovers the forgotten history of the evacuation of over 100,000 French soldiers from Dunkirk to Britain.

Another forgotten episode of June 1940 is the sinking of the British ship Lancastria, on June 17th 1940, in the concluding phase of an operation to bring home British troops left in France after Dunkirk. In Dunkirk: For Those in Peril Jonathan Fenby asks why the greatest maritime tragedy ever to affect Britain was hushed up at the time and has remained a virtually untold story for sixty-five years.

Radicals and religious dissenters: London Non-Conformist registers 1694–1921

2010-05-26T05:07:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

The names and details of half a million UK radicals and religious dissenters covering a period of 225 years have been made available online, today, for the first time. The Non-Conformist church registers include the baptism and marriage registers and burial inscriptions, dating from 1694 to 1921, of both famous British non-conformists such as Daniel Defoe (1659-1731), William Blake (1757-1827) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and 224,000 ordinary men and women. The records form part of the London Historical Records, 1500s to 1900s held at the London Metropolitan Archive.

The records include the names of Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Congregationalists, for example, who were persecuted by the state because they refused to comply with the Clarendon Code, the doctrine of the established Anglican Church, which remained in effect until 1828. For the most part, the church registers are the only records of these people in existence because they were not recorded by the state until civil registration in 1837.

Some of these non-conformists advanced progressive causes which formed the basis of modern civil liberties and political rights. The Quakers, for example, were the first religious group to denounce slavery. The Methodists were powerful advocates of women’s rights and the Unitarians campaigned for better conditions for factory workers.

The records are the first part of a number of non conformist collections that Ancestry.co.uk plans to digitise and publish online. They can be accessed at www.ancestry.co.uk/lma_nonconformist

Image:

William Blake's tombstone in Bunhill Fields cemetary in Islington, which was used as a burial site for non conformists from the late 17th century to the middle of the 19th century. The memorial stone is believed to be situated approximately 20 metres away from the actual spot of Blake's grave, which became lost in the 1960s when gravestones were removed to create a new lawn.

Ten Shocking Statistics: Did you know that…

2010-05-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

- Nearly half (47%) of 18-24 year olds don’t know that the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall.
- Nearly half (45%) of 18-24 year olds don’t know that Admiral Nelson led Britain to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.
- 28% of 18-24 year olds believe that the Battle of Trafalgar was part of the English Civil War.
- 15% believe think that Oliver Cromwell was the leader of British troops at the Battle of Trafalgar.
- One in ten adults in England (i.e. those aged over 18) thinks that the Battle of Trafalgar was fought on the border between England and Scotland.
- More than one in three (33%) adults in England don’t know that Charles Darwin was English.
- One in five thinks that Darwin was Scottish.
- 12% believe that he was American or Canadian.
- 14% of adults in England think that the Vikings first came to England in the 16th century.
- Almost one in five adults in England (17%) don’t know that Thomas Beckett was assassinated in Canterbury Cathedral.

These statistics are the results of a survey commissioned by Sing Up, the National Singing Programme, which aims to put singing at the heart of primary school children’s lives. The survey was carried out by the pollster Populus, which interviewed 1,762 adults (over the age of 18) between 23rd and 25th April 2010.

As a result of the findings, Sing Up’s latest campaign, School Trip Singalong, was launched today at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in an attempt to combat these growing gaps in knowledge about British history. Sing Up has partnered with seven of Britain’s leading historical attractions, including the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Stonehenge, Jorvik Viking Centre, the Eden Project, Chester Zoo, Roman baths and Canterbury Cathedral, to develop specially commissioned songs to help bring historic learning to life. From June 7th, a Sing Up school bus will begin a two-week tour of the country giving pupils the chance to take part in school trip singalongs to some of these attractions.

What will become of Gordon Brown? The fates of former British prime ministers

2010-05-21T04:44:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

In 2007, the former MP and journalist Matthew Parris claimed that ‘no British prime minister in history has ever done anything seriously worthwhile or interesting after leaving Downing Street’. A Guardian editorial in 2008 reasserted Parris’ claim: ‘no British prime minister has ever found significance in a new role. Their best times are always behind them’.

History, however, has proved otherwise, or, in the very least, that the afterlives of British prime ministers are not predetermined in any way. In a new History & Policy paper published on Wednesday and entitled ‘What next for Gordon Brown’, Kevin Theakston (University of Leeds) argues that many British prime minsters have pursued successful careers and done ‘interesting and significant things in the years after they have left Number 10’. Moreover, success or failure as prime minister does not predict what may come afterwards.

There are now four living former prime minsters, including Lady Thatcher, Sir John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. What will Gordon Brown do now that he has joined what Theakston describes as this ‘small and exclusive club of living former prime ministers’? There is no established role for former prime ministers: some completely withdraw from the political scene; others write their memoirs; some retire to their country estates; others fall into debt; some die soon after leaving Downing Street; and others hit the bottle.

A few former prime minsters warned of the dangers of seeking a continuing role in politics and public life. When Baldwin retired in 1937 he is said to have resolved to make no political speeches; Macmillan also advised against ‘hang[ing] around the greenroom after final retirement from the stage’. Other 20th century premiers who largely disappeared from the political scene include Attlee, Eden and Wilson. It seems that as time has moved on fewer former prime ministers have stayed on as MPs or party leaders. According to Theakston, whilst nine 19th century prime ministers had two or more consecutive terms in the office, only four premiers serving entirely in the 20th century managed to hold on to the party leadership after losing a general election and came back to serve for a second term (Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill and Wilson).

It seems unlikely that Gordon Brown will ever serve a second term; but it may also be unlikely that he ends his days as plain ‘Mr’ Brown. To date, only nine prime ministers did not accept a peerage or knighthood: Henry Pelham (1694-1754), George Grenville (1712-1770), Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), Spencer Perceval (1762-1812), George Canning (1770-1827), William Gladstone (1809-1898), Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), and Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). 29 prime ministers became Knights of the Garter and many joined the House of Lords, described by Tony Benn as ‘the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians’.

If Brown withdraws from the political scene, he may still follow in the footsteps of the majority of former 20th century former prime ministers and write his memoirs. Brown has already written several books and may publish other historical or political works. In his post-premiership years, Balfour wrote numerous philosophy essays and Churchill completed his History of the English-Speaking People. Heath published books about his interests in sailing, music and travel before completing his autobiography entitled The Course of my Life (1998) and, following the publication of his Autobiography (1999), John Major wrote a history of cricket, More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket’s Early Years (2007).

Several prime ministers have made considerable amounts of money through the publication of their memoirs. Tony Blair has negotiated a deal worth £4.6 million for his autobiography (due to be published in September) and, in the 1930s, Lloyd George received £90,000 from the Daily Telegraph for his memoirs (equivalent to about £3 today). However, some prime ministers have struggled financially after leaving Downing Street. Pensions for former prime ministers were only introduced in 1937 at the rate of £2,000 per year (equivalent to over £70,000 today). Both William Pitt the Younger and his father died with huge debts that were paid off by parliament with public funds, King George III lent money to Lord North (1732-1792) and Queen Victoria also lent money to Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848). Attlee lived modestly off his pension, the House of Lords attendance allowance and the money he made from lectures and journalism. He left just £7,295 in his will, the smallest sum left by any former premier in the 20th century.

Lastly, it is to be hoped that Brown’s health will not suffer too much from the stress of his three years in Number 10. Theakston describes the premiership as ‘gruelling and stressful’ and claims that serving prime ministers age at two or three times the normal rate. Seven prime ministers died in office; nine died within two-and-a-half years of leaving Downing Street. The longest-lived prime minister was Callaghan, who died a day before his 93rd birthday in 2005; the shortest-lived was the Duke of Devonshire who died in 1764, aged 44. The average age of ex-premiers on leaving Downing Street is 61 and their average age at death is 73.

The release of Theakston’s paper was accompanied by an article published in the Yorkshire Post.

First Impressions: Galleries of Modern London

2010-05-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

by Paul Lay,

Next Friday (May 28th) sees the opening of the Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London. It aims to tell the story of the city from its phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666 to its current status as the world’s greatest global metropolis. The £20 million it cost to refurbish the gallery has, by and large, been well spent. The Sackler Hall, the gallery’s entrance and hub, is encircled by a 48-metre long digital ribbon called LDN24 created by a group of conceptual artists called The Light Surgeons. It’s the kind of thing that could go terribly wrong. But it succeeds brilliantly. Its focus is a speeded up film of 24 hours in the life of London, which manages to capture its rush, flavour and diversity, eschewing the stereotypical images of smiling policeman and red buses, and replacing them with images of office workers exercising; packed restaurants; traffic jams; bewildered tourists; shoppers. All go about their business against a backdrop rich in history and referenced again and again in the new galleries. An enveloping stream of statistics is emitted on the surrounding LED display. Looking up, as images of the financial powerhouse of the City of London beamed from the screen, I learnt that the highest paid male executive of a FTSE company earned an annual salary of £36 million; his female equivalent gets by on just £4 million. The statistics never cease.

Wealth and poverty are at the heart of London’s story. Perhaps the most memorable new item on display is a mid-18th century cell from the Wellclose debtors prison, originally located near the Tower of London. Its cells lay beneath a public house called the Cock and Neptune which was connected to a courthouse for which the pub’s landlord acted as a gaoler. The damp wooden walls of the cell are covered in the scratched scrawls of the inmates. One reads:

The Cubard’s Empty
To Our Sorrow
But Hope it will
Be Full to Morrow

The wealthy and those curious of their activities, may have made their way to one of the Pleasure Gardens that grew up on London’s outskirts – most notably Vauxhall – during the 18th century and were much imitated elsewhere. Within the circular Pleasure Garden gallery, a new addition, with its filmed backdrop of 18th-century characters, there are figures in costumes that imitate those of the time, created by the likes of London’s leading fahionistas such as the late Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy. Masked ladies, acrobats, harlequins and ambassadors cavort as a surprisingly witty commentary unfolds.

Elsewhere in the galleries, old favourites remain, though now with more space in which to be appreciated: the Victorian Walk, with its rich, evocative array of pubs, banks, workshops and tea rooms; the wonderfully ornate Selfridges lift from 1928; Nelson’s sword of honour, emphasising the debt that London’s traders owed to the Royal Navy’s policing of the oceans; and the Lord Mayor’s State Coach, made in 1757 and still used annually in the Lord Mayor’s Show, which gets its own gallery, visible from London Wall.

The largest display of new material comes at the end. Much is made of London radicalism and eccentricity, embodied in characters as different as the ‘Protein Man’, Stanley Green, who until his death in 1993, warned commuters and shoppers of the uncontrollable passions aroused by eating too much protein; and Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, whose courage and deep principal, borne at great personal peril, is symptomatic of London at its best. The same embrace of difference is on display in the collections of fashion and music, in which for the best part of half a century, London has been a world beater with no sign of its energies waning; quite the reverse. Pamphlets, magazines and books from the 1960s onwards abound, just as they do in the galleries dedicated to the 1700s. London’s incontinence of ideas, innovation and communication has been a constant for centuries.

All in all, the gallery succeeds, not so much as an encyclopedic trawl of London’s history, more in summoning up the dissenting, tolerant mentality that is at the heart of London’s cultural and economic success. No city has been so successful and influential for so long. While other European cities such as Paris or Rome or Berlin seem mere shadows of their former greatness, replaced by the vigorous new conurbations of Asia and Latin America, London swaggers on. The Museum of London’s new galleries demonstrate how and why.

Our Reviews Editor, Juliet Gardiner, reviewed the new Galleries of Modern London on BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme on May 27th.

Galleries of Modern London
Museum of London
150 London Wall
London EC2Y 5HN
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/

Images:
- The Sackler Hall © Museum of London
- Wellclose Square prison cell, 1750 © Museum of London

Wood from the tree that inspired Newton’s theory of gravitation travels into space

2010-05-10T09:48:00.001-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

A piece of wood engraved with Sir Isaac Newton’s initials from the tree which inspired him to formulate the theory of gravitation will travel into space on the next NASA mission STS 132, this Friday May 14th. The sections of wood pictured here are from the tree from which Newton (1643-1727) famously saw the apple fall at some time during 1665 or 1666. The tree still stands in Newton’s former home, Woolsthorpe Manor, in Lincolnshire. The Royal Society, of which Newton was a former president, has entrusted the section of wood to the British-born astronaut Piers Sellers as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations. He will be flying with the larger piece of wood as well as with a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton.

Piers Sellers described the mission:

‘We’re delighted to take this piece of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree to orbit.
While it’s up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple
on it, the apple wouldn’t fall. I’m pretty sure that Sir Isaac would have loved
to see this, assuming he wasn’t spacesick, as it would have proved his first law
of motion to be correct. After the flight, we will be returning the piece of
tree and a flown picture of Sir Isaac Newton back to The Royal Society.’

The NASA mission will last 12 days. The piece of wood will thereafter be held as a permanent exhibit at the Royal Society.

Earlier this year, the Royal Society made available online, for the first time, the original manuscript of William Stukeley’s biography of Newton. Stukeley was one of the first biographers of Newton and was also a Fellow of the Royal Society.

65th Anniversary of VE Day

2010-05-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Today marks the 65^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe.

The Kremlin has planned the largest parade in history, due to be held in the Red Square tomorrow, with 10,000 troops, 160 military vehicles and 127 aircraft on display. In The Guardian, Luke Harding reports from Russia on how, despite the planned commemorations, the Kremlin has recently been accused of historical revisionism and has failed to recognise some of the horrors of its Stalinist past.

Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp also report in Der Spiegel on how, five decades after his death, Russians are still disputing whether or not Stalin can be a positive role model.

In London, the Soviet Memorial Trust Fund is organising a programme of events in co-operation with Southwark Council and the Imperial War Museum London, this Sunday May 9^th. The events will begin at 10.45am with an Act of Remembrance at the Soviet War Memorial in the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, adjacent to the Imperial War Museum London. It will be followed, in the afternoon, by an illustrated talk by historian and former diplomat Sir Rodric Braithwaite and a series of films screenings from the IWM archives.

Participants in the Act of Remembrance include British and Russian Second World War veterans, The Lady Soames, the youngest daughter of Winston and Clementine Churchill and the Russian Ambassador, HE Yury Fedotov.

Members of the public are welcome to participate in all of the events. For further information, visit the website of the Imperial War Museum.

www.iwm.org.uk

The Last British Hung Parliament: A Short History of British Politics

2010-05-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

In just over an hour David Cameron is due to make a statement and the Liberal Democrats may consider forming a coalition with the Conservative Party.

The last British hung parliament dates back to 1974, although the results of the polls were reversed with Labour winning 301 seats, the Conservatives 297 and the Liberals 14. In The Guardian, Andy Beckett describes the Conservative leader of the time, Edward Heath, as ‘a stubborn prime minister battered by strikes, a sudden recession and Tory rebellions, [who] was determined to cling on’. Heath invited the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, to London to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition, notably in return for a vote in the Commons on electoral reform! The situation 36 years ago appears eerily similar to that today and one cannot help but wonder how Gordon Brown will react. Will he too go down in history as ‘a stubborn prime minister battered by a recession’?
There is an excellent selection of pictures of the 1974 election on the website of Getty Images.

‘The Historic Labour Party’, an illuminating article by R.I. McKibben dated November 1983, is equally reminiscent of the current political uncertainty and crisis of the Labour Party. McKibben argues that the Labour Party’s crisis at the time could only be explained by examining the history of the Party’s structure, in particular its relationship to the trade unions, the social character of the Party's active membership, and its legislative and ideological aspirations.

If Gordon Brown stays in power and forms a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, it seems almost certain that electoral reform will be on the cards and he may finally implement the programme of constitutional reform that he promised when he became prime minister in 2007. If Britain adopts a written constitution, it will not be the first in British history, however. In ‘Writing it Down’, Patrick Little charts the history of two previous British constitutions which date back 350 years: The Instrument of Government under Cromwell and the Humble Petition and Advice, which passed into law on June 26th, 1657.

Finally, if you think the current political situation is complex, Diana Spearman’s article ‘The Pre-Reform British Constitution’, which considers the deep complexities of the pre-Victorian political landscape and electoral system in Britain may prove particularly enlightening and reassuring.

A Short History of UK general elections

2010-05-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

When today’s newspapers are filled with stories about the general election, only ‘The Modern Historian’ seems to have remembered that 43 years ago, May 6th 1967, was also a historic day in India. On May 6th 1967, the electoral college of the Republic of India cast their vote in favour of the country’s first Muslim President. Dr. Zakir Hussain became a week later, on May 13th 1967.

On the website of The Times, Antonia Senior also highlights another important anniversary, which risks being overshadowed by today’s electoral fever: the Stuart Restoration of May 8th, 1660. However, interestingly in our April issue Derek Wilson argues that for most of the population, the Restoration had little effect and life under Charles II was much the same as it was under Cromwell.

Thirdly, it is also important to pay homage to those women who devoted their lives to the fight for female suffrage: Millicent Fawcett who founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage; Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU); Emily Wilding Davison, who became the first Suffragette martyr when she threw herself in front of the king’s horse during the Derby races of 1913… In ‘The fight for a woman’s right to vote’, the Virtual Victorian provides a summary of the history of the fight for female suffrage. ‘Deeds, not Words’ was the motto of the WSPU and in our article of the same name, June Purvis charts the career of the founder of the movement, Emmeline Pankhurst, suggesting that she may have been misrepresented and misunderstood.

Did you know that Scottish men played a significant role in the campaign to get women the vote in the years before the First World War? Leah Leneman explores the forgotten part played by men in the female suffrage movement in Britain in ‘Northern Men and Votes for Women’.

Lastly, to mark today’s general election here are the top three articles from our archive charting the history British general elections. In January this year, in the midst of the scandal over MP’s expenses, Trevor Fischer explained in ‘The Old Corruption’ that our parliament was far from being 'the most corrupt parliament ever'; in the 18th century, bribery was rife and rigged elections were common and gaining public office was a means to private wealth.

Labour came into office for the first time in January 1924, with the election of Ramsay Macdonald as Prime Minister. In ‘The Last Hurrah’, York Membery suggests that if the Liberals had done better in the 1923 polls, they would have formed a minority government with Labour support and 20th century political history would have been very different. Has the moment come for the return of the Liberals?

In January 1979, temperatures of -7ºC were recorded at Heathrow. They fell much further to -17ºC at Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire and flights from Heathrow were cancelled or heavily delayed. In ‘Labour Wasn’t Working’, John Shepherd looks back to the Winter of Discontent explaining how it heralded the demise of the Labour government and paved the way for Margaret Thatcher and 18 years of unbroken Conservative rule. This scenario sounds eerily familiar. Will the results of today’s election see history repeating itself? Will the recession pave the way for the return of a Conservative government?

First Impressions: Antifascistas: British and Irish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

2010-05-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

‘Antifascistas’ opened today, May 5th, at the 12 Star Gallery in the European Commission’s offices in Westminster. Our Picture Editor, Sheila Corr, attended the official opening yesterday evening. She shares her first impressions of this exhibition on the British and Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.

By Sheila Corr,

The Spanish Civil War is now generally seen as the prelude to World War II in Europe’s 20th century fight against fascism. ‘Antifascistas’ puts the conflict firmly in that position.

Between 1936 and 1938, 2,500 British and Irish men and women went to Spain in an astonishing show of international solidarity to defend democracy, and this is their story. It is told on 15 display boards rather than as a three-dimensional exhibition of photographs, posters and banners, though they are all represented here, together with many personal and moving tales of heroism. Much of the visual material reproduced is from the Marx Memorial Library to whom the International Brigade Association donated their archive back in 1975, and where I have been fortunate enough to look through photograph albums and other memorabilia, sitting under the British Battalion banner. This is a fitting home as most of the volunteers in the 15th International Brigade were members of the Communist Party, and many had shown their colours confronting Mosley and his Blackshirts at Cable Street in October 1936.

Picasso’s famous painting in response to the bombing of Guernica was on display in Paris during 1937, where it was seen by volunteers heading to Spain. English artists and writers such as W.H.Auden and Laurie Lee recorded their own experiences, though some, such as Virginia Woolf’s nephew Julian Bell, died in the process.

Altogether 500 British and Irish died in Spain, but others returned to continue the fight, including Tom Wintringham who was the driving force behind the Home Guard, and Jack Jones who became an important Trade Union leader. Last year, in acknowledgement of their enduring debt, Spain gave citizenship to the remaining veterans.

‘Antifascistas’ is an intelligent, informative exhibition which is well worth catching on its forthcoming tour of Britain. It is at the 12 Star Gallery, Storey’s Gate until 14th May, and from 22nd at Newcastle City Library.

A well illustrated book of the same name accompanies the exhibition.

Antifascistas: British and Irish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War
May 5th – 14th
8 Storey's Gate
London SW1P 3AT
http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/

Images:
- The British Battalion banner
- British volunteers returning to the front following convalescence at Benicasim (Marx Memorial Library)

First Impressions: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda ad Art

2010-05-04T02:22:00.000-07:00

Our picture editor, Sheila Corr, reviews the British Library's latest exhibition, 'Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art', which opened on Friday.

by Sheila Corr,

Works of art, signs of power, instruments of propaganda – these are some of the ways maps are, and always have been, subjective. Anyone who has ever been taken aback by seeing a country other than their own at the centre of a world map, will probably already be aware of this, but the British Library’s new exhibition offers plenty of surprises.

Fra Mauro produced what many consider to be the first ‘modern’ world map c.1450 as it included recent Portuguese discoveries in Africa. The importance of these is underlined by the fact that Africa is shown at the top, so you are immediately conscious of Portuguese domination. The East India Company considered the British Empire to be the natural successor to Portugal’s and commissioned this copy in 1804.

The scale and scope of 'Magnificent Maps' is extraordinary. Apart from a Roman marble fragment, the earliest map on display is a 13th-century Psalter Mappa Mundi illustration with God at the top and Jerusalem in the centre; the most recent is a Grayson Perry etching inspired by such spiritual representations and displayed beside them. The world and small significant sections of it are shown on vellum and cloth, in tapestry and wooden globes, and good use of additional visual material adds context to the ways these would all have originally been seen. Eight non-chronological rooms recreate the settings, so the first four, which deal with royal dominance, feature impressive, and often vast, maps designed to be hung as status enhancing works of art throughout a palace. The next four rooms cover political propaganda and advertising, domestic display, government agenda, and finally education or indoctrination. Alongside mass-produced prints reflecting a variety of political viewpoints, are faithful paintings of a Sussex estate and a bird’s eye view of Canton, which reminded the first owners of their source of wealth and power, and impressed visitors. Many of the exhibits require very close inspection, and magnifying glasses are provided for looking at some of the displays.

The Klencke Atlas is the largest book in the world and, at almost six feet tall, you can see why it has not been on display before. Charles II was given the book at his restoration to the throne in 1660 by the Dutch merchant Johannes Klencke. It is displayed close to the smallest atlas, which was made for Queen Mary’s dollshouse in 1924 and has Britain represented on every page.

It was an enormous help to be shown round the exhibition by the curators. Peter Barber, who has been at the Map Library for 30 years, has an enthusiasm for his subject and love of the 4 ½ million maps making up the collection, which is infectious. All but nine of the one hundred examples on display belong to the British Library.

Images:

- William Frazer, The Fra Mauro World Map of circa 1450, 1804 (British Library)

- Johan Maurits of Nassau, The Klencke Atlas, c.1660 (British Library)

Kaiser's warship still ferrying diamond smugglers on Lake Tanganyika

2010-04-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

In 1913, on the eve of the First World War during the arms race between Britain and Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) commissioned the shipyard of Papenburg in Lower Saxony to secretly construct a warship that would be shipped and carried in pieces to the shores of Lake Tanganyika in order to help hold on to Germany’s East African colonies. The ship was christened the Graf Goetzen.

It fought in the First World War, was sunk, and was then brought back up and put into service. It has since been used to ferry traders, prostitutes, diamond smugglers, refugees, missionaries and soldiers to the towns along the coast of Lake Tanganyika.

As a child, Hermann-Josef Averdung, a councillor in Papenburg, had heard many stories about how his grandfather had helped to build the great warship. In March, he travelled to Tanzania in search for the ship now known as the Liemba. Averdung wishes to return the ship to Germany. The state-run Tanzanian company that owns the Liemba has suggested it would be willing to part with the vessel in exchange for a newer one.

Clemens Hoges reports in Der Spiegel.

In Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Cartoonists Professor W. A. Coupe suggests, on the basis of the popular cartoon of the period, that the Emperor's person was the object of sustained criticism which seemed to augur well for the future political development of Germany.

In Germany, Britain & the Coming of War Richard Wilkinson explains what went wrong in Anglo-German relations before the First World War.

Anglo-Saxon treasures published online

2010-04-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Anglo-Saxon treasures published online
Cambridge University announced, yesterday, the online publication of a collection of over 550 Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, held at the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College. The publication is the result of a collaborative four-year digitisation project between Corpus Christi College, where the documents were kept for centuries, Cambridge University Library and Stanford University in the United States. Between them, the College and University Library have digitised almost 200,000 separate pages. The manuscripts include the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the earliest history written in English believed to have been commissioned by Alfred the Great, the sixth-century St Augustine Gospels, which may have been brought from Rome by St Augustine in 597 on his first mission to convert the English, and the Corpus Glossary, one of the earliest English-language dictionaries written in the first half of the ninth century. The dictionary includes definitions of over 2,000 words in Anglo-Saxon, including ones still recognisable today, such as herring and hazel.
For further information, read the press release on the website of the University of Cambridge.

Marilyn Monroe’s secrets revealed
Lizzy Davies reports in The Guardian on the upcoming publication of previously unseen extracts from Marilyn Monroe’s diary, which she kept as a teenager and until her death in 1962, aged 36. The diary was first bequeathed to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who then left the diary to his wife when he died in 1982. The volume is due to be published jointly by the Editions du Seuil in France and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States in October.

Katyn massacre archives released
Yesterday, on the orders of President Medvedev, the Russian State Archive published online, for the first time, once-secret documents relating to the Katyn massacre. The archive’s website recorded almost 700,000 visits within hours of the release of the files. The documents had already been declassified in 1992 by the president at the time, Boris Yeltsin. The files relating to the investigations into the massacre in the 1990s remain secret, however. Tony Halpin reports in The Times.
The BBC also reports.

Memorial to Sheffield’s Women of Steel
Sheffield City Council met, yesterday, to discuss different options for a memorial, which is due to built in the city centre to honour the women who fought in the town’s steel industry during the Second World War.
The BBC reports.

The forgotten history lurking beneath the turquoise waters of the Andaman Islands

2010-04-21T04:22:00.000-07:00

The forgotten history lurking beneath the turquoise waters of the Andaman Islands
‘Kali Pani: A Forgotten History’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier this morning. In the programme Selma Chalabi recalls the forgotten history of the Andamans Penal Settlement, and its Cellular Jail, on the Andaman Islands for Indian political prisoners.
The islands were known to Indians as Kala Pani (literally ‘Black Water’ in Hindi), a place of isolation, torture and oppression. Chalabi’s grandfather, Noel Kennedy Paterson, was a member of the Indian Civil Service, in which he rose to Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, during the 1930s and 1940s. She investigated the history of the prison following her discovery of a series of tapes, which her grandfather recorded during his time as governor of the Andaman Islands.
Read the introductory article on the website of the BBC.
In The Andaman Islands Frances Stewart recalls the time when the Andaman Islands served as a penal colony for the British Empire.

Argentina’s last dictator sentenced to 25 years in prison
Yesterday, April 20th, Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for kidnappings and torture during the country’s military regime.
Read the article written by the Associated Press published on the website of Fox News.
For further information, visit our Argentina Focus Page.

Unseen baby pictures of the Queen released today to mark her 84th birthday
The photographs were taken by Marcus Adams in December 1926 when Princess Elizabeth was seven months old. The photographs will go on display on Saturday in Windsor Castle as part of an exhibition of the work of the photographer Marcus Adams, who photographed four generations of the Royal family between 1926 and 1956.
The BBC reports.
Gordon Rayner also reports in The Telegraph.

Death of ‘the godmother of the civil rights movement’
Barack Obama referred to Dorothy Height as ‘the godmother of the civil rights movement’. She died yesterday, April 20th, aged 98. Height was active in the 1960s US civil rights movement. She participated in various historic marches alongside Martin Luther King Jr and was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.
Richard Adams comments on his blog on the website of The Guardian. The blog post features a video of a public service announcement that she recorded for the US Census Bureau a few weeks ago.
Read the report in The Telegraph.

50th anniversary of the foundation of Brasilia
The Brazilian capital was officially inaugurated 50 years ago today. From 1763 to 1960, Rio de Janeiro had been the capital of Brazil. The idea of moving the capital to a more central geographical location was first suggested in 1891. Prior to that, from 1549 to 1763, the capital was situated in Salvador. There is an interesting video news report of the inauguration ceremony from the time on the website of the BBC.

Replica Stonehenge to be built as tourist attraction in Australia

2010-04-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

Stonehenge replica in Australia
Mark Chipperfield reports in The Telegraph on the recent approval by the shire council in Esperance, 460 miles south-west of Perth, of plans to build a full-size replica of Stonehenge. It is hoped that the new attraction will generate tourist revenue for the small coastal community.
In Stonehenge: How Did The Stones Get There? Aubrey Burl explains how the myth of the stones transported from south Wales to Salisbury Plain arose and why it is wrong.

George Washington owes £195,000 for overdue library books
On October 5th, 1789, the first President of the United States George Washington (1732-1799) borrowed two books from the New York Society Library – ‘Law of Nations’, a dissertation on international affairs, and the twelfth volume of the ‘Commons Debates’, a 14-volume collection of debate transcripts from the House of Commons. However, the books were never returned. At today’s prices, adjusted for inflation, the president would face a fine of $300,000 (£195,000).
Rich Shapiro reports in the New York Daily News. Ed Pilkington also reports in The Guardian.
In George Washington's New Clothes Esmond Wright tells the story of George Washington’s Presidential inauguration.
In Aids to Independence Kenneth Baker charts Washington’s victory in the American War of Independence and explores the conflict through caricature and print.

The Forgotten History of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion
At the beginning of the First World War, Brighton’s Royal Pavilion was transformed into a hospital for troops of the Indian Corps wounded on the Western Front in France and Flanders. A new permanent exhibition recently opened at the Royal Pavilion which charts this forgotten chapter of Brighton’s wartime history. At the time, the hospital was heavily mediatised and served as a propaganda tool to recruit soldiers from the subcontinent. The building and its patients were extensively photographed and paintings and a short film were also produced. It is possible to view the collection of photographs from the time on the website of the museum.
Maev Kennedy reports in The Guardian.
A slideshow of images is available on the website of The Guardian.

Roman temple discovered in Nottinghamshire
A team from Southwell Community Archaeology Group excavated the Minster C of E School site between September 2008 and May last year. The results of the excavations have now been published and suggest that the site may have been an important place of worship in Roman Britain.
Read the article on the website of Nottinghamshire County Council.

Quiet death of a Nazi: the last interview with Martin Sandberger

2010-04-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Quiet death of a Nazi: the last interview with Martin Sandberger
On March 30th, 2010, Martin Sandberger died in a retirement home in Stuttgart, where he lived the last years of his life undisturbed and unknown to the public. During the Second World War, he was a member of the SS. He was notably the head of the ‘immigrant centre’ in Gdingen in Poland and was later heavily involved in the deportation of Jews in Strasbourg in France. He was arrested in 1945, convicted of mass murder and sentenced to death. However, in 1951, his sentence was reduced to life in prison. Seven years later, he was released and the thereafter disappeared.
Der Spiegel tracked him down and carried out one last, and in fact the only, interview with the Nazi officer. It was published yesterday in Der Spiegel Online.

Shakespeare’s 446th birthday
This weekend, Shakespeare’s Globe is organising a series of special events to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday and St George’s Day next Friday, April 23rd. Tomorrow, Saturday 17th April, the Globe continues its tradition of Mark Rylance’s Sonnet Walks. Twelve sonneteers will entertain walkers at various locations across London as they walk to Shakespeare’s Globe. On Sunday, the theatre will open its doors for a free Open Day during which visitors will be able to take part in various workshops and activities inspired by the Mayor of London's ‘Rhythm of London’ campaign to mark St George's Day. The culmination of the events this weekend will be the launch of Shakespeare’s Globe’s 2010 theatre season next Friday with production of Macbeth.

Political Mugs at the Museum of Brands
‘Political Mugs’ opened, yesterday, at the Museum of Brands. The exhibition explores political intrigue over the past 200 years as seen through souvenir mugs and jugs, and contemporary toys and tins. Political pottery became increasingly popular from the 1970s onwards. The Thatcher era in particular saw Maggie squeakers, note pads, toilet rolls and even slippers. The display notably features a gladiatorial play thing between Gladstone and Salisbury from 1885, the game of ‘Poll, or forming a cabinet’ from the election of 1906 and Churchill cigar-smoking manikins from the 1950s.

Twitter Archive: tweets become part of history

2010-04-15T03:10:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Tweets become part of history
The Library of Congress announced, yesterday, its plans to archive digitally every public tweet ever posted on Twitter since Twitter’s inception in March 2006. Twitter processes over 50 million tweets… We will leave our readers to do the maths, but that it a very significant number of tweets!
Read the press release on the website of the Library of Congress.
Richard Adams also commented on his blog on The Guardian website.

Illustrated London News archive goes live
The archive of the Illustrated London News will be made available online for the first time today, April 15th. 250,000 pages and as many as three-quarters of a million illustrations, from the newspaper’s first publication on May 14th, 1842, to its last in 2003, have been digitally reproduced in colour by Cengage Learning. The archive will be initially available only to libraries and educational institutions.
Jemima Kiss reports in The Guardian. A slideshow of images from the archive is also available on the website of The Guardian.
For further information, visit the website of Cengage Learning.

Previously unheard Jacqueline Kennedy interviews made public
The Guardian reports that Caroline Kennedy has allowed tapes of seven previously unheard interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy to be released. The tapes were recorded in early 1964 in the aftermath of her husband’s assassination and have been sealed up ever since.
Transcripts of the interviews are due to be made into a book as part of a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy administration, which entered the White House in 1961.

Historical Memory in Poland
Yesterday, on the website of The Guardian Kris Kotarski told the story of his great-grandfather, Aleksander Wielebnowski, who was one of the victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre. He discusses the significance of the Katyn massacre in Poland’s collective memory and the importance of recent Russian gestures in the aftermath of the Smolensk tragedy.

The bridge that symbolises Germany’s post-war division
Der Spiegel reports on the auction, last weekend, of the historic Dömitz railway bridge over the Elbe River. Previously owned by Germany’s national rail company Deutsche Bahn, the bridge has been bought by a Dutch real estate firm.
The iron bridge, which is around 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) long, was built between 1870 and 1873 and used to be Germany's longest man-made structure. It was largely destroyed by an Allied bombing attack during the Second World War and the post-war division of Germany made repair work impossible. Whilst the former GDR tore down what remained of the bridge on the eastern side, part of the bridge still survives on the western side. It is hoped that the surviving structure will be preserved and that it will be developed as a tourist attraction.
There is also a slideshow of modern and historic images of the bridge on the website of Der Speigel.

The Two Katyn Massacres

2010-04-13T04:05:00.000-07:00

The Katyn massacre then and now
Timothy Garton Ash reflects on and compares in The Guardian the historical circumstances revealed by the original secret massacre of Polish officers in 1940 and the recent plane crash, which killed the Polish president on his way to mark the 70th anniversary of that crime. The markedly different reaction to the two events, both in Poland and on the international scene, is a ‘glimmer in Poland’s darkness’ and Putin’s reaction has been viewed as a sign of a rapprochement between the two countries.

14 Greco-Roman tombs from 3rd century BC discovered in Egypt
Egypt’s Culture Ministry announced yesterday, Monday April 12th, the recent discovery of 14 Greco-Roman tombs believed to date back to the third century BC in the Bahariya Oasis, 190 miles southwest of Cairo. The tombs were discovered during excavations for a planned youth centre. One of the tombs includes a female mummy adorned with jewellery and it is believed that the tombs may be part of a larger necropolis.
Read the article published on the Reuters website.

Discovery of ancient urban centre in Mexico
A team of archaeologists from Colorado State University has recently discovered the ruins of an ancient urban centre in the heart of the Purépecha Empire in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin in the central Mexican state of Michoacán. It is believed that the settlement dates to between 1000 and 1520 AD and that the peak occupation of the site occurred just prior to the formation of the empire. To date, the team has only documented about one-fifth of the site. It is hoped that further research may provide clues about the formation of the Purépecha Empire.
For further information, read the press release on the website of Colorado State University.

Evidence of Soviet plans for WW3?

2010-04-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Soviet Plans for World War III
Matthias Schulz reports in Der Spiegel on the latest research into the purpose of a Communist-era bunker in Kossa in the state of Saxony in former East Germany. The secret fortress was completed in 1979 and may have been designed as a command post in the event of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

Leighton House Museum
Leighton House Museum in Holland Park reopened to the public last weekend following extensive restoration and refurbishment.
The home of the Victorian artist and collector, Lord Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), was built in three stages between 1865 and 1881 by the architect George Aitchison. Initially built as a modest red brick house, the studio on the first floor was then extended. The Arab Hall on the ground floor, which forms the centrepiece of the house, was later added to display Leighton's collection of over a thousand Islamic tiles, mostly brought back from Damascus.
Leighton is associated with the Aesthetic Movement which criticised the ugliness of Victorian Britain and sought beauty across the world and different historical periods.
The house reopens with ‘Closer to Home: Leighton’s Collection Returned’, a special exhibition which brings together Leighton’s own collection of paintings and includes loans from the National Gallery and Tate.
For further information visit
www.leightonhouse.co.uk

Bert Trautmann in The Observer
To mark the recent publication of Catrine Clay’s new biography Trautmann’s Journey, an interview with the former Nazi paratrooper who joined Manchester City in 1949 was published yesterday in The Observer.

David Starkey attacks attractive female historians
Read the article published on the website of the Mail Online.

Rowntree's social poverty archives

2010-04-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

New home for Rowntree’s social poverty archives
Seebohm Rowntree published three detailed studies of poverty in York in 1899, 1936 and 1951. He also created a series of slides which he used during a series of lecture tours analysing ‘the cycle of poverty’ at the beginning of the 20th century. He developed theories about the persistence of poverty without social intervention which helped to shape the welfare state between the 1890s and 1950s. The slides were handed over to York University’s Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, yesterday, by Hugh Bayley, Labour MP for York.
Martin Wainwright reports in The Guardian.

It is possible to view some of the earliest Rowntrees’ television adverts on their website.
www.rowntrees.co.uk/commercials

How and why did the Armenian genocide happen?
To mark the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide this month, a documentary will be shown on Germany's ARD television network today. The documentary entitled ‘Aghet’ (Armenian for ‘Catastrophe’) brings the words of diplomats, engineers and missionaries to life to reveal what motivated the murderers and why Germany and other countries remained silent.
Der Spiegel reports.
In Rethinking the Armenian Genocide Donald Bloxham considers the complex historical background to the Armenian genocide focusing on the issue of great power involvement.

Incas were brutally murdered by Spanish conquerors
Bruce Bower reports in an article published on the website of Wired Science on the results of the latest studies of Inca skeletons discovered in a 500-year-old cemetery in Peru by a team led by anthropologist Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. It is believed that the individuals were killed with medieval weapons such as maces, clubs, steel lances or hammers.

Theodore Roosevelt: an affectionate family man

2010-04-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

Theodore Roosevelt: an affectionate family man
CNN reported, yesterday, on the upcoming sale of a rare letter written by President Theodore Roosevelt to his youngest son, Quentin, who was six years old at the time. The letter is dated 1903 and was sent by Roosevelt during a trip to Yellowstone National Park. The letter is due to be auctioned by the Raab Collection and is expected to fetch $25,000 (£16,500). The existence of the letter was previously unknown until its recent discovery in the possession of a family friend of the Roosevelt family.
For further information visit the website of the Raab Collection.
www.raabcollection.com
In If You Go Down to the Woods Today... Mark Byrant describes the origins of the teddy bear in a political cartoon concerning Theodore Roosevelt published in the Washington Post in 1902.

Shakespearian cesspit
The Telegraph reports on the latest research by a team led by Birmingham Archaeology, which is excavating the ruins of New Place, William Shakespeare’s former residence in Stratford-upon-Avon. New Place was Shakespeare’s final home in which he died in 1616. 250 years ago, in 1759, it was demolished by then owner, Rev. Gastrell. However, it is believed that much of the original remains could lie buried beneath the ruins. Archaeologists currently excavating the site believe that they may have discovered remains of a rubbish dump or cesspit used by the playwright.
The aims of the current excavations are described in a press release on the website of Birmingham Archaeology.
At the end of March, Birmingham Archaeology launched ‘Dig For Shakespeare’, a project designed to give visitors a close-up view of the excavation work.
The latest updates are available on www.digforshakespeare.com
Much controversy remains surrounding the true identity of the bard. In Who Was Shakespeare? William Rubinstein examines the controversy surrounding Shakespeare’s identity.
In The Head that Wears the Crown John Adler explores the changing interpretation of Shakespeare’s history plays on stage.

Katyn massacre 70 years on

2010-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

70 years since the Katyn massacre
Russian and Polish Prime Ministers, Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk, met, today, at the site of the execution of 20,000 Polish officers in Smolensk, Russia, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. It is the first time that Russia has marked the anniversary. Until 1990, when Gorbachev admitted Soviet responsibility, Russia blamed the massacre on Germany. Could this year’s unprecedented joint ceremony be a sign of improved relations between Russia and Poland?
The BBC reports.
Video footage of the ceremony is also available on the website of the BBC.

First edition of the works of St Augustine for sale
An annotated edition of St Augustine’s complete works edited by Erasmus is due to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in Paris on May 18th. The 10-volume edition was printed in Basle, Switzerland, between 1527 and 1529 and is meticulously annotated from 1532, two years after Henry’s VIII break with the Roman Catholic Church. The identity of the annotator is unknown and the majority of the annotations have not been studied academically. The volumes are estimated to fetch between €200,000 and €300,000 (£177,000-£266,000).
Mark Brown reports in The Guardian.

Global culture officials meet in Cairo to demand return of ancient treasures to their countries of origin
Representatives from 20 different countries are meeting in Cairo, today, to discuss how to recover ancient treasures which they claim have been stolen and displayed overseas. The two-day conference is organised by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities headed by Zahi Hawass. Attendees include representatives from Peru, Greece, Italy and China. Greece, for example, demands that the Parthenon Marbles are given back by the British Museum; officials in Peru demand the return of Inca treasures from Yale University.
The BBC reports.

The first urban society in the Middle East
Science Daily reports on the latest research by a team of archaeologists from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute which has uncovered new evidence about a prehistoric society believed to be one of the world’s first urban civilizations in the ancient Middle East. The mound of Tell Zeidan in the Euphrates River Valley near Raqqa, Syria, has not been built upon or excavated for 6,000 years. However, recent excavations suggest that a society rich in trade, copper metallurgy and pottery production and one of the first to develop social classes according to power and wealth, existed on the site between 4,000 and 6,000 BC.

50 Years of Senegalese independence

2010-04-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

Controversial African Renaissance statue
Last Saturday, the Monument of African Renaissance was inaugurated in Dakar to mark the 50th anniversary of Senegalese independence, on April 4th 1960. The 49-metre-high monument is higher than the Statue of Liberty and cost £17 million. The cost and symbolism of the monument have been heavily criticised.
The BBC and The Guardian report.
For further reading, visit our History of Africa focus page.

Serbia apologises for Srebrenica massacre
Last Wednesday, March 31st, Serbia passed a resolution condemning the massacre in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war. There were 127 votes in favour of the resolution in the 250-member parliament.
Serbia hopes to join the European Union next year; however, the EU has made its membership contingent on improved cooperation with La Hague and efforts to find Serbian General Ratko Mladic, who is believed to be responsible for the massacre along with Karadzic.
But Serbia is still struggling to come to terms with its past. The resolution sparked considerable opposition. It was watered down and does not describe the massacre as ‘genocide’ as it has been labelled by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
Der Spiegel reports.
The trial of the former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic began in August 2009. In Conflicting Truths: The Bosnian War Nick Hawton reflects on his time reporting in a region where history is still used to justify war.
In Remembering Srebrenica Suzanne Bardgett describes the setting up of the Srebrenica Memorial Room at the scene where the Bosnian genocide of July 1995 began to unfold.

Former SS member sentenced to life imprisonment
Heinrich Boere, aged 88, has been condemned to life imprisonment for the murder of three Dutch civilians in 1944. The sentence, passed a couple of weeks ago at the Aachen regional court, marked the end of one of the last war crime trials in Germany. Boere joined the SS in 1940 and in 1942 became part of the ‘Germanic SS in the Netherlands’, a special unit charged with breaking any signs of German resistance in the German-occupied Netherlands.
Der Spiegel reports.

The People's History Museum

2010-03-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Corr

Manchester flourished through textiles, progressing from cottage industry to manufacture on a grand scale, in dark satanic mills where workers eked out a pretty miserable existence. As the first industrial city, it was at the forefront of radical thought and reform - a centre for Trades Unionism, the Labour and Suffragette movements, and the Co-operative Society (in nearby Rochdale), so it is a fitting location for charting the dramatic struggle for British democracy and workers’ rights. The People’s History Museum has just re-opened after an extensive re-development made possible with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and others, boasting a four-storey extension to the original Pump House which once supplied power to some of the mills and wound the clock on that civic centrepiece of all Victorian cities, the Town Hall.

The collections of the Trades Union Congress, Labour Party and the Co-op have been augmented by a number of others, including the Communist Party of Great Britain. Material from these sources and some personal political papers can be studied in the Labour History Archive, stored in a controlled environment in the basement of the new building, where on the second floor there is an impressive conservation studio to look after the museum’s textiles - 440 banners for a start.

We were shown around by the Director, Dr Nick Mansfield, who, together with a small but committed staff brings excitement, enthusiasm and a huge amount of knowledge to the museum. The first floor, which begins with Manchester’s own tragedy of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, feels hopeful , sometimes even celebratory, as full enfranchisement is fought for and won; Revolution, Reformers, Workers and Voters are the central themes. Here is the desk on which Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Man, a carved chair leg used as a truncheon at a Chartist demonstration, a ballot box.

The second half (from 1945) feels different, perhaps because I remember much of this period, and is on a completely different scale as small prints and artefacts give way to huge banners and posters (interestingly the slogans on these demonstrate how political parties shifted from the idealism of ‘Labour leads the way’ to the Tory attack of ‘Labour isn’t working’) while large screens show moving footage of protests. The fight for democracy becomes a fight for equality, justice and even peace: but rights painfully won are lost again as unions are crushed, and jobs, then whole industries, disappear. Under the vivid colours of the TUC banners, I was rather poignantly reminded of The Full Monty where the brass band plays on after the steelworks has closed.

As a disengaged population face a general election in which a large portion of the electorate is unlikely to bother voting at all, it is salutary to remember how hard others have fought, and even died, for our right to do so.

For more information:

www.phm.org.uk

www.industrialpowerhouse.co.uk

Imagined Lives

2010-03-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

by Sheila Corr

What does a gallery devoted to portraits of famous British people do with those whose identities have been disputed since their acquisition last century, now being classed ‘unknown sitter’? The National Portrait Gallery have dealt with this dilemma in a particularly creative way by asking seven well-known writers to imagine the lives of these 16th and 17th century men and women based simply on what they look like and how they’re shown.

Alongside but separate, a completely different process was going on as Curator Tarnya Cooper worked with Dr Tatiana String and her MA students of History of Art at Bristol University to research each painting, comparing similar portraits of the period, costumes and iconography and dating the unknowns as accurately as possible. They made practical use of their skills in the National Portrait Gallery’s own remarkable Heinz Archive – a resource I have used for many decades but which is really not well enough known. The result is a fascinating exhibition of all 13 portraits (with comprehensive detailed labels) at Montecute, near Yeovil in Somerset and a book of the imagined lives by John Banville, Tracey Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope and Minette Walters. Since 1975 the National Trust have been collaborating successfully with the NPG to display Tudor paintings, which would otherwise languish in store, in the glorious setting of this Tudor mansion.

One especially interesting example is the portrait formerly though to be of Sir Thomas Overbury. Extensive student research now shows that both facial likeness and provenance of the painting make it more likely to represent Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, the Earl of Leicester. The panel painting, which has been cut down on 3 sides, came to the NPG in 1933 from Ditchley, Oxfordshire which was part of the estate of Robert Dudley’s godfather. This portrait is the subject of Tracey Chevalier’s Rosy in which she imagines the love life of the handsome flushed young man.

The imagined lives process mirrors that of researching paintings for book covers to find a portrait from a particular historical period, preferably of an unknown sitter, which reflects and illustrates as closely as possible the description of a fictional character. Every picture tells a story one way or another.

Gertrude Prescott Nuding argues that the inspiration behind and debates over the founding of Britain's National Portrait Gallery reveal the Victorian establishment at its most earnest about who was worth celebrating, in: Portraits for the Nation

Sharpeville Shockwaves

2010-03-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

David Rosario was an 18-year-old student at the time of the South African Sharpeville Massacre. He participated in the London protests on Trafalgar Square. He remembers the London reaction and his feelings in March 1960.

‘I wake up late, following a long evening’s study and dash for the bus. The news on the transistor is shocking. Dozens of black people are shot by police in South Africa. At college everyone is numbed by the newspaper photos of bodies strewn across the streets. Many victims were shot in their backs as they fled the police – “Sixty-nine people dead – hundreds wounded and injured”. This is the worst incident in South Africa since apartheid was instituted in the aftermath of the Second World War. Some of us, very very angry, want to take immediate action. Our lecturer turns a blind eye. Those most determined decide to go and protest outside the South African High Commission building. Nobody has any experience of demonstrating. We think a placard is needed and agree to meet later at the venue.

We arrive mid-morning at Trafalgar Square. Other demonstrators are already gathering in front of South Africa House, which is bounded by Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Duncannon Street. The building looks empty with locked gates. We join the others, obliged by the police to walk up and down along the narrow, sloping pavement, squeezing past a bus queue. We are not allowed to stop at all. Placards arrive. We take turns in carrying them. There are a few hundred demonstrators present. It is difficult to gauge what effect we’re having on the public and the situation is surreal. Police ensure we keep moving, threatening arrest. We feel dazed as the enormity of the disaster finally sinks in. I think of the horrific newspaper images. We vent anger in bursts of periodic chanting, frustrated that the site is so constricting, that there is only an ‘empty’ building on which to focus and that we can’t stand still. “Verwoerd OUT – Verwoerd OUT”, we bellow. We get through the long day knowing that at least we won’t be shot at.

As it darkens some protesters drift away. Later in the evening, there are even fewer people about. Only Max, a friend, and I remain from college. Eventually the police stop the demonstration at the corner of Duncannon Street and prevent us from turning back down into the loop. We’re aggrieved since we’re not doing any harm and have kept moving all day to comply with the police’s instructions. “O.K. folks”, says a constable, “You’ve done enough demonstrating today - time to go home”. We protest loudly. The police are insistent and edge us away along Duncannon Street.

Max and I decide to go for a coffee. We talk about the day’s activities and what will happen next in South Africa. We’re extremely despondent. We leave. Max thinks he can catch a bus home from the stop in front of South Africa House. We can’t see any other demonstrators. We walk towards the Square, curious also to see if ‘anything’ is still happening. Before the two of us turn at the south east corner of Trafalgar Square a line of six police approach. They recognise us and question our destination and intentions. Max says he is going to the bus stop and that I am accompanying him. Suddenly, an inspector appears from around the corner behind them: “Having trouble lads? Arrest ‘em”, he shouts.

Immediately, they grab us. We go limp as we are pushed into a side doorway of the High Commission building. We are then frog-marched along the Strand to a waiting ‘Black Maria’ police van where we join others whom we recognise. Eventually we’re all taken to Bow Street police station and queue to be ‘processed’. We’re all charged with “Using Insulting Words and Behaviour”. We’re put in cells for a while and then released on police bail sporadically, until our morning appearances at court. I catch the night bus home and creep in to the flat.

I say nothing to my parents in the morning as I leave for ‘college’. At Bow Street court I’m very surprised to see my stepfather. “How did you know about this?” I ask him. “How do you think you got bail? A policeman called last night to check your address”, he retorts. There were about 20 arrests in total. Everyone is remanded on bail, Max and I for two weeks. We decide to contact the National Council for Civil Liberties. They offer to provide us with a solicitor whom we meet before the court case. His name is Clinton Davis. We follow the earlier cases avidly in the press. The police are not having much success.

We decide go to Court to see a similar case the afternoon before our hearing. The defendants are Cheddi Jagan, Chief Minister of British Guiana and another minister, on official visit to Britain. Sir Lawrence Dunne, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate is hearing their case. They are charged with the same offence as us. In summing up Sir Lawrence says to them: “Had you been charged with Obstruction you would have been technically guilty on the evidence. As you weren’t the case is dismissed.” Max and I look at each other. What are our chances now? We daren’t hope.

We appear in court the following afternoon, April 6th, and arrive in plenty of time to meet up with our solicitor. Before he arrives a police officer takes us into a room and tells us how “There is a second charge against you – Obstruction”. We are dumbstruck and extremely worried. After a hurried chat to Davis we are summoned, faced by a stern looking Sir Lawrence. About 15 of our college friends are in the packed public gallery, wearing college scarves. I am wearing a black tie in sympathy. Clinton Davis asks why the second charge has only just been made. A perfunctory reply is given. Davis decides to still proceed when asked. Charges are read out and we both plead not guilty. The prosecution opens. A young policeman who we don’t recognise takes the stand. He reads from his notebook ‘quoting’ us and claiming that we had sworn violently at the arresting officers. When Max and I hear the evidence we look at each other, jaws literally dropping. I am called into the witness box first and cross-examined. I am so incensed with disbelief that I practically spit out my denials – “No, no, no”! Max too is furious, although calmer than me. I decide that if I am found guilty I will most definitely appeal whatever happens!

In his summary our solicitor points out the irregularity of the very late second charge, which he describes as an act of police desperation. We wait and are then asked to stand. Sir Lawrence speaks slowly and deliberately as he peers over his glasses towards us. “You probably did what the police said you did”… I bridle at this… “But I can’t convict you on a probability”… He then quickly adds, “so the case is dismissed”. There is a cheer in the public gallery. Everybody is so relieved – first that we have no conviction, but principally that justice has prevailed, albeit with a face-saving gesture to the authorities. The Metropolitan Police get very few, if any, convictions in this affair, even though the ‘court’ appears to be ‘on their side’.

Our view of the police takes a bad knock. Hearing lies spoken against us on oath in court is a violent shock. However, it does not stop me from opposing apartheid, nor prevent me from eventually joining another part of the criminal justice system as a probation officer.

A few days after our court appearance, South African President Vervoerd is shot in the face. He survives the attempt on his life but is assassinated five years later, in 1966. Apartheid continues until the 1980s and 1990s. I continue to boycott South African produce until the mid-90s. Fifty years on, it still feels disloyal to drink a glass of South African wine or to consume anything with ’Outspan’ on it.

After the killing of 69 black South Africans, the world judged apartheid to be morally bankrupt. The political agitation that ensued would eventually overturn white supremacy, writes Gary Baines, in: Remembering Sharpeville

Should Apollo 11 landing site be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

2010-03-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

Should the Apollo 11 landing site be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Philip Bethge reports in Der Spiegel on how California has recently named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission, which include four urine containers, airsickness bags, a Hasselblad camera and lunar overshoes, a state ‘Historical Resource’. Moon archaeologists hope that the Apollo 11 landing site will in the future be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
For further information on the Apollo space programme, read André Balogh’s article Above and Beyond: The Apollo Space Race to the Moon published in History Today in June 2009.

Publication of Bloody Sunday report delayed
We reported on Wednesday on the expected upcoming publication of Lord Saville’s report of the Bloody Sunday enquiry. According to The Times, however, the publication may be delayed until after the general election. Ministers have requested a security check on the document in order to ensure that no human rights are breached, that individuals such as informants cannot be identified and that national security is safeguarded.
In Coming to Terms with the Past: Northern Ireland Richard English argues that historians have a practical and constructive role to play in today’s Ulster.

Historic march in Red Square
Tony Halpin reports in The Times on the recent announcement that British soldiers will march in the Red Square with Russian troops, for the first time, in a Victory Day parade on May 9th to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. French and American troops are also due to join the parade.

J.D. Salinger letters rediscovered
Jerome D. Salinger died in January, aged 91. A series of letters written from 1945 to 1969 to his friend Werner Kleeman, who he met in Devonshire in March 1944 when the Allies were preparing for the D-Day landings, have recently been rediscovered. They provide fascinating insights into the life and character of the enigmatic author who went into seclusion shortly after he published The Catcher in the Rye, in 1951.
Spiegel Online has analysed the letters in depth and interviewed Kleeman. Marc Pitzke reports.

‘Wembley Way’ built by German POWs

2010-03-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

‘Wembley Way’ built by German POWs
A recent investigation by BBC Radio 4's Document programme has revealed that German POWs were employed to work on the redevelopment of the area around Wembley stadium prior to the London Olympics in 1948. Many German POWs were still held captive three years after the end of the Second World War. The last German POWs finally went home in July 1948.
Read the report on the website of the BBC.

Re-opening of Jewish Museum London
The newly redeveloped Jewish Museum London in Camden opened to the public yesterday, March 17th, following its official launch by writer and broadcaster Nigella Lawson and Alan Yentob, Creative Director of the BBC and one of the museum’s patrons, the previous day. Following a £10 million redevelopment programme, partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the museum has tripled its exhibition space. The museum tells the story of Jewish history, culture and religion through audio visual displays, hands on exhibits and personal stories brought to life through objects and photographs.
Jewish Museum London
Raymond Burton House
129-131 Albert Street
Camden Town, London NW1 7NB
www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

Uganda blaze update
We reported, yesterday, on the fire at the Kasubi tombs in Uganda, the burial site for the kings of Uganda’s Baganda tribe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Relations between the Baganda tribe and the central government have recently become increasingly strained and protesters from the tribe have accused the government of involvement in the fire. At least three people have been killed in clashes between protesters from the Baganda ethnic group and government security forces.
The Guardian reports.

New light on concentration camps in Franco’s Spain
During and after the Spanish Civil War, there existed 132 concentration camps and 541 forced labour battalions in Spain. At the beginning of the week, hundreds of files from the camps went on display for the first time at the Historical Memory Document Centre in Salamanca. The files had been hidden in Spanish government archives until the promulgation of the Law of Historical Memory in 2007. They provide a terrifying insight into the fates of as many as 500,000 prisoners, which included Britons, French, Germans, Polish and some Jews. According to the records, when the Huelva concentration camp opened in Andalusia in February 1938 it held 3,202 prisoners; when it closed in July, there were 662 surviving prisoners.
Graham Keeley reports in The Times.

For further information on Franco's Spain, visit our Spanish History focus page.

Last surviving French guillotine on display

2010-03-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Guillotine on display
One of the last guillotines to exist in mainland France went on display yesterday in a new exhibition entitled ‘Crime et châtiment’ at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The model was designed by Léon Alphonse Berger in 1872. The curator of the exhibition is former justice minister, Robert Badinter, who successfully abolished the death penalty in the first year of Mitterrand’s presidency in 1981. The last person to be guillotined in France was Hamida Djandoubi at Baumettes prison in Marseille in 1977. The guillotine is displayed alongside over 450 works of art, including sculptures by Rodin and paintings by Degas and Munch, in this exhibition which explores attitudes to crime, rehabilitation and punishment from the French revolution onwards.
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/

British plans to assassinate Mussolini
Documents recently released by the National Archives in Kew reveal British plans to assassinate Mussolini in July 1943. In a memorandum dated July 13th, 1943, Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden wrote to Churchill asking him to approve Air Marshal Arthur Harris’ plans to use the Dambusters squadron to bomb the dictator’s headquarters in central Rome.
Nick Pisa reports in The Scotsman. Nick Squires reports in The Telegraph.

The coin that celebrated Caesar’s assassination
A coin struck by Brutus in celebration of the assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15th 44BC went on display at the British Museum on Monday to mark the 2,054th anniversary of his death.
Maev Kennedy reports in The Guardian.

Results of the Saville Enquiry
Lord Saville’s enquiry into the events of January 30th, 1972, when 14 people were killed in Londonderry's Bogside, began 12 years ago. With a total cost of almost £200 million, it has been the longest and most expensive enquiry in British legal history. Lord Saville’s report is due to be handed over to Shaun Woodward, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, next week and is expected to be made public shortly after.
David McKittrick reports in The Independent.

Kasubi royal tombs in Uganda destroyed by fire
Both Reuters and the BBC report on the fire which started yesterday evening at the Kasubi Tombs in Uganda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which dates back to the 19th century. The site is a burial for the kings of the Baganda tribe, Uganda’s largest tribe. The tribe influenced President Yoweri Museveni’s coming to power 24 years ago; however, relations between the kingdom and the central government have recently become increasingly strained. There are rumours that the fire may have been caused by arson.

This week's top news: oldest maritime dog and decapitated Vikings

2010-03-12T05:13:00.001-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

465-year old skeleton of the oldest maritime dog on display
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard announced yesterday, March 11th, that the skeleton of a two-year old mongrel who sailed abroad the Mary Rose will return to the dockyard and Mary Rose Museum at the end of the month. The dog’s skeleton went on display yesterday at Crufts in Birmingham, where it is due to be analysed in an attempt to identify its breed. It will thereafter be displayed, on March 26th, in the Mary Rose Museum.
The dog was discovered trapped in the sliding door of the carpenter’s cabin of the Mary Rose, where she had lain since the ship sank in the Battle of the Solent on July 19th, 1545. It is believed that the dog was a ratter on board the Mary Rose and studies of her skeleton suggest that she was not very active and spent most of her life on board the ship.
Read the press release on the website of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Jack Malvern also reports in The Times.

Decapitated Viking skeletons
In June, 51 decapitated skeletons were discovered in a burial pit in Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth. They were originally thought to be Romans, but the latest studies by scientists from NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, part of the British Geological Survey, suggest that they were instead Scandinavian Vikings.
The team, led by David Score from Oxford Archaeology, unearthed at least 51 skulls and analysed the isotope signatures in the tooth enamel of ten of the men. They concluded that the men came from countries with a colder climate than Britain’s, typical of Norway or Sweden, and believe they were executed by local Anglo Saxons in front of an audience sometime between AD 910 and AD 1030.
Further information is available on the website of the British Geological Survey.

La Rafle
La Rafle was released in cinemas in France on Wednesday, March 10th. The film tells the story of the round-up of 13,000 Jews in the Vélodrome d’Hiver on July 16th, 1942, who were then transported to extermination camps in Poland. Although there had been previous round-ups in 1941, the scale of the rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver was unprecedented with women and children also rounded-up for the first time. The film is viewed as a major step in France’s recognition of some of the shameful episodes of its past notably during the German occupation.
For further information, visit the film’s official website.
Lizzy Davies also reports on the release in The Guardian.

Earliest examples of the use of symbolism
According to the latest research, a series of inscribed ostrich shell fragments believed to date back 60,000 years and discovered in the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa may be evidence of some of the earliest uses of symbolism by modern humans. The fragments have been investigated for the past ten years. The results of the research are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Jonathan Amos also reports on the website of the BBC.

University of Manchester historian receives ‘Antiquités de la France’ award
The University of Manchester announced, yesterday, that Professor Joseph Bergin had been awarded one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious history prizes by the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for his book Church, society and religious change in France, 1580-1730.
The Académie was founded, in 1665, by Louis XIV’s minister, Colbert, in an effort to embellish the French monarchy and its achievements by drawing on the members’ classical learning to devise inscriptions and other suitable emblems. Every year, it honours three publications with the ‘Antiquités de la France’ award in recognition of the most important books published on the history of France. The prize has, however, rarely been rarely given to non-French language publications.

Image (Mary Rose Trust)

First Impressions: The Indian Portrait 1560-1860

2010-03-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

‘The Indian Portrait’ opens today, March 11th, at the National Portrait Gallery. Bringing together 60 works from international private and public collections, including the V&A, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, and the Institut Néerlandais in Paris, the exhibition charts the history of the Indian portrait over three centuries. The diversity of the portraits on display and the insights which they provide into the history of the Mughal Empire are fascinating.

The portraits are, first of all, hugely diverse, varying in subject matter, size, style and technique. They range from scenes of court life to individual portraits which depict Mughal emperors, courtiers and holy men, as well as women and Europeans living in India. The first Indian portraits date to the reign of the third Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605), who commissioned a series of portraits both of himself and of his courtiers. Abu’l Fazl, the historian of Akbar’s reign, recorded this innovation in Mughal court painting in his chronicle the Akbarnama: ‘portraits [surat] have been painted of all His Majesty’s servants, and a huge book [ketab] has been made’. Shah Jahan commissioned a similar ‘official manuscript’ of his reign, the Padshahnama (‘The Book of the Emperor’), which features 44 illustrations depicting events from his life. Another grandiose official portrait is the six-foot life-size image dating to 1617 of the fourth Emperor Jahangir holding a globe, which is believed to be the largest painting to come from the Mughal Empire.

However, the display also provides more intimate glimpses of the Mughal emperors, as well as moving insights into the lives of their courtiers. Alongside the stylised images of Akbar presented in the Akbarnama, for example, there is also a simple black and white ink drawing of the emperor which captures his mood and personality. Particularly sombre and moving are the drawing and accompanying finished painting of ‘Inayat Khan, one of Jahangir’s attendants, in his last days. The portrait was commissioned by Jahangir who recorded in his memoirs on October 10th, 1618, that ‘Inayat Khan ‘was addicted to opium, and when he had the chance, to drinking as well […] He appeared so low and weak that I was astonished… As it was a very extraordinary case I directed painters to take his portrait’.

The exhibition also reveals the evolution of Indian portraiture over three centuries, its richness and its complexity; it both influenced art in regions which gradually fell under Mughal control and was, in turn, influenced by European and British traditions. Art in the Deccan sultanates, which included the five Islamic kingdoms of Ahmadnagar, Berar, Bidar, Bijapur and Golconda on the Deccan Plateau in south-central India, became increasingly influenced by Mughal traditions as the region was conquered by the Mughal emperors from 1596 to 1686. The sultans increasingly commissioned portraits of themselves similar to those of the Mughal emperors. By 1614, the independent Hindu Rajput kingdoms of Rajasthan and the Hill (Pahari) region north of Delhi had also been incorporated into Mughal territory. The conquered kingdoms similarly absorbed aspects of Mughal culture, which is reflected in portraits of time such as that of Kunwar (‘prince’) Anop Singh of the principality of Devgarh in the powerful Mewar kingdom riding with a falcon.

But Indian portraiture was also influenced by British and European traditions and increasingly so in the 18th and 19th centuries as India came under British control. A portrait of Jahangir triumphing over poverty believed to date to 1625 reveals, for example, how Indian portraiture increasingly came to incorporate elements of western art: two European cherubs are placing a crown on the emperor’s head, whilst a third is handing him the arrows which he is using to kill poverty. During the British period, Indian artists were employed to produce paintings of local scenes and people and some also received patronage from employees in the East India Company. Portraits from this period include a curious and amusing depiction of William Fullerton (c.1725-1805), a surgeon with the East India Company, who is portrayed in a totally Indian way reclining against a bolster on a terrace and smoking a huqqa.

A colourful, detailed, beautiful, and at times grandiose, insight into the history of the Mughal Empire from 1560 to 1860.

The Indian Portrait 1560-1860
March 11th – June 20th
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London WC2h 0HE
Telephone: 0207 306 0055
www.npg.org.uk

Images:

- Page from the Padshahnama: Jahangir receives Prince Khurram at Ajmer, Mughal, attributed to ‘Abid c.1635, Royal Collection

- Drawing of Akbar, c. 1595, The British Library

- Kunwar Anop Singh of Devgarh riding with a falcon, Devgarh, Mewar, Rajasthan, attributed to Bakhta, c.1776, Museum Rietberg Zurich. Gift of Dr. Carlo Fleischmann Foundation and acquisition

- William Fullerton seated on a terrace, Patna, Bihar, by Dip Chand, Victoria and Albert Museum

For further information on the Mughal Empire, read our article The Mughal Dynasties

To read more about the history of India, visit our India focus page.

First Impressions: Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain

2010-03-09T07:32:00.000-08:00

by Paul Lay

Paul Sandby, a contemporary of William Hogarth and Joseph Wright of Derby, is a neglected figure of 18th-century art. 'Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain', which opens this Saturday at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly having already been shown in Nottingham and Edinburgh, aims to restore his reputation. It succeeds brilliantly. The curators, Prof Stephen Daniels of the University of Nottingham and Dr John Bonehill of the University of Glasgow, place Sandby within the context of his very vital time, during which the modern concept of Britain was born.

Raised in Nottingham, the 16-year-old Sandby became chief Draughtsman for the Board of Ordnance in 1747 in the wake of the defeat of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion at Culloden Moor. Sandby’s skills as a cartographer were employed on the Military Survey of North Britain, whose aim was ‘a compleat [sic] and accurate Survey of Scotland’, a means of pacifying and integrating Scotland into the newly United Kingdom. One section of the enormous map produced by Sandby is on display at the exhibition, centred on Culloden itself. Those of us whose impressions of the brutally one-sided battle between the forces of ‘Butcher’ Cumberland and those of Bonnie Prince Charlie were moulded by the BBC drama-documentary of Peter Watkins will be surprised to note that the engagement took place within site of Culloden House. This was not wild moorland but relatively tame land. At the same time as he was mapping the region, Sandby produced exquisite pen and wash drawings including the delicate Surveying Party by Kinloch Rannoch of 1749.

Sandby documented a period of rapid change, at its most intense in London to where Sandby moved in 1751, becoming a key member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy. As a pioneer of the printed image, he became the great rival of William Hogarth, then regarded as the ‘leader’ of the English school. His series of splenetic satires, The Analysis of Deformity of 1753-54, an attack on Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty (1753), strike the modern viewer as deranged, distanced as we are from the petty politics of the 18th-century art world. More affecting are his Twelve London Cries done from the Life of the 1760s which preach none of the moral lessons we must endure from Hogarth. Instead, we see cold eyed observations, richly detailed, of London low life, desperate to make a meagre living, menacing in their manner: witness the young woman attempting to sell mackerel to a homeowner fearful behind his bolted door. This is 18th-century London.

But not the only one for, in collaboration with his elder brother Thomas, architect of buildings and landscapes, Sandby produced Canaletto-like panoramas of the social life along the Thames, produced with the aid of the camera obscura, as well as a terrific painting of a turnpike gate at Bayswater: Morning: View on the Road Near Bayswater Turnpike (1790). The turnpikes were the railway stations of their day, where an array of people converged before entering the burgeoning, now unwalled metropolis. The pub that features in this illustration is still standing: The Swan at Lancaster Gate. Interestingly, these works owe much to the techniques of map making. Thomas would construct the panorama, while Paul (and what an unusual name that is for the 18th century) would paint in the details, the whole made up of rectangular strips.

Thomas, unlike his younger brother, held a prestigious position – deputy warden of Windsor Great Park – that provided a secure income. Paul, the commercial artist in a precarious market, documented the changes his brother made at the behest of the Duke of Cumberland and celebrated the social harmony, productivity and prosperity the great estates were supposed to embody. But the satirist is never far away: an amply built fellow sleeps off a fine lunch in the shadow of the castle; a ludicrously attired couple are contrasted with a building’s classical restraint. These watercolours are beautifully preserved, their colours rich and resonant, beneficiaries of the neglect in which Sandby has been held, hidden away for decades in portfolios.

Sandby’s greatest achievement is the final work of the exhibition: A View of Vintners at Boxley, Kent, with Mr Whatman’s Turkey Paper Mills, 1794. A product of his impoverished old age, it looks at first like a traditional landscape complete with country house. But it is loaded with the symbols of an energised Britain: all is production, from the farmers in the foreground to the hi-tech, high-quality paper mill at the heart. And there is much symbolism, not least the prancing white horse, symbol of Kent, the Garden of England. But there is also a sense of paranoia, that this is what Britain is fighting for as the Napoleonic Wars gain speed. In that, it is reminiscent of the propaganda of the Second World War. Indeed, the image of Britain as a pastoral idyll held aloft in 1940 referred back to an image created in large part by Sandby. A great mythmaker and a very fine artist is on view again.

Paul Sandby RA: Picturing Britain
March 13th - June 13th
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
Telephone: 020 7300 8000
www.royalacademy.org.uk

Images:
- Paul Sandby, Socking Vendor, c.1759 (Nottingham City Museums and Galleries)
- Paul Sandby, The North Terrace, Windsor Castle, Looking West, c.1765 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Paul Mellon Collection)

A War Over History?

2010-03-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

by Derry Nairn

A congressional panel in the United States last week recognised the events of 1915 in eastern Anatolia as 'genocide'. This is not the first time that the issue has sparked tensions in the USA, both domestic and diplomatic. As recently as 2007, a similar decision was vetoed by the George W. Bush administration. Similar debates have been going on, virtually since the events themselves occurred.

Here is a selection of viewpoints on the matter, covering all spectrums:

Donald Bloxham on great power involvement.

CBS gives the issue historical context.

Global Voices offers ordinary Armenian opinion.

Hurriyet examines the Obama & Clinton positions.

Norman Stone considers geo-political fallout.

The Guardian's Marcel Berlins questions the whole process

First Impressions: Kingdom of Ife

2010-03-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

‘Kingdom of Ife: sculptures from West Africa’ opened yesterday, March 4th, at the British Museum. Showcasing nearly 100 pieces of Ife sculpture, drawn almost entirely from the collections of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria and most of which have never been seen in the UK before, the exhibition is unique and fascinating. The complexity of the sculptures is astonishing; the insight which they provide into the history of the city-state of Ife and West African culture from the 1200s to 1400s is intriguing.

European fascination with African art began in the late 15th century following the Portuguese discovery of the kingdom of Ife. Travellers to western Africa took works of art back to Europe where they were displayed as ‘curios’. There was a renewed interest in African art in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, notably as artists such as Picasso and Matisse sought new inspiration and studied masks and figures from Africa. One of the first European ethnographers and explorers to travel to Ife was the German Leo Frobenius. He arrived in late November 1910 as part of the third German Inner African Exploration. Frobenius spent three weeks carrying out excavations and unearthed numerous stone and terracotta sculptures. Further research into the nature and origins of African art began after the discovery, in 1938, of a cache of brass and copper sculptures.

The kingdom of Ife is located in southwest Nigeria, south of the river Niger, and is regarded as the spiritual heartland of the local Yoruba-speaking people. It first emerged around 800AD and flourished as a powerful city-state on the crossroads of local and long-distance trade routes from the 12th to the 15th centuries. Legend traces the foundation of the kingdom of Ife back to the supreme god Olodumare, who allegedly asked his son Orishanla to create the world equipped with an iron chain, a snail shell filled with soil, a chicken and a chameleon. When Orishanla drank too much and fell asleep, however, his brother Oduduwa took over. Oduduwa climbed down the chain from the sky onto the watery land and emptied the soil from the snail shell. When the chicken kicked the soil around, dry land appeared and the chameleon tested the firmness of the land. Orishanla then created human beings and Oduduwa founded the kingdom of Ife.

Ife is also considered the birthplace of some of the highest achievements of African art and culture. The stone, terracotta, brass and copper alloy sculptures on display depict human figures from a wide cross-section of Ife society and provide a fascinating insight into local customs and beliefs. Some of the figures have unusually large heads, for example, in accordance with the belief that the head should be emphasised as the source of spiritual power and destiny.

A highlight of the exhibition is a collection of 15 almost life-size copper-alloy uncrowned heads, which date back to 1200-1400 and were made using the highly complex ‘lost-wax’ casting technique. They were discovered in 1938 and the Ooni (ruler) of Ife at the time, Sir Adesoji Aderemi (1930-80), agreed to send them to the British museum for display in 1947-48. They were thereafter returned to Nigeria where they formed the nucleus of the collections of the National Museum of Ife which opened to the public in 1954. One of the sculptures is a copper mask of the third king of Ife Oblafon II, who ruled in the late 1300s and early 1400s, weighing over 5kg. Slits are carved below the eyes of the mask which may be evidence that it was made to be worn.

Despite the insights into the culture and social and economic organisation of the kingdom of Ife which the exhibition provides, the city-state remains largely a legend. Knowledge about the history of the kingdom is primarily based on oral sources - epic tales, prayers, songs and mythical narratives, which were only recently written down. The true significance of the sculptures is unknown and locked in glass cases they seemed removed and somewhat misunderstood. I left the exhibition frustrated and lacking a deep understanding of the culture and history of Ife. The sculptures reminded me, in many ways, of the ‘curios’ which Europeans brought back from Africa from their very first journeys on the 15th century.

Kingdom of Ife: sculptures from West Africa
March 4th – June 6th
British Museum
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DG
Telephone: 020 7323 8299
http://www.britishmuseum.org/

Images: (Copyright Karin L. Willis/Museum for African Art/Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments)

- Head with elaborate crown, Ife, Ita Yemoo. Terracotta, 12th-14th century

- Torso of a king, Ife Wunmonije, brass, early 14th century

- Oblafon mask, Ife, metal, early 14th century

Our Tribute to Michael Foot

2010-03-04T09:54:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Michael Foot died at his home in Hampstead yesterday, March 3rd, aged 96. Born in Plymouth on July 23rd, 1913, he was then educated at Leighton Park School in Reading. He went on to study Classics at Wadham College, Oxford, and in 1933 was elected president of the Oxford union.

Foot first contested a seat for the Labour Party in 1935. He lost, however, and moved to London where he worked as a journalist for the New Statesman, Tribune and the London Evening Standard for the following ten years. He edited the Tribune from 1948 to 1952, and again from 1955 to 1960. As a journalist, he led the denunciation of Nazi appeasement and in 1940 wrote Guilty Men with Peter Howard and Frank Owen, attacking fifteen public figures for their policy towards Nazi Germany. The book was reviewed in History Today by John Charmley in 1999.

Foot was first elected to parliament in 1945 as an MP for the Plymouth Devonport constituency. He remained in parliament until 1992. In the 1950s he was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a cause for which he fought for over 40 years. In March 1974, following Labour’s return to power, he became employment secretary under Harold Wilson and was then deputy prime minister to Jim Callaghan from 1976 to 1979. The following year, he was elected Labour leader. He resigned, however, following the Tory victory in the 1983 elections and was succeeded by Neil Kinnock.

Michael Foot was also a prolific writer and notably the author of a two-volume biography of Aneurin Bevan entitled The Pen and the Sword (1962 and 1973), The Politics of Paradise (1988), a book on Byron, and The History of Mr Wells (1995). His last book was The Uncollected Michael Foot (2003).

Obituaries, tributes and photographs of the ex-Labour leader are all over the newspapers. Michael Foot wrote an article for History Today entitled Thomas Carlyle and the London Library in April 1991 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Library. Our picture editor, Sheila Corr, had the privilege of working with Michael Foot on his biography of H.G. Wells. Here is her tribute to Michael Foot:

‘Back in 1995 I was lucky enough to work with Michael Foot on his biography HG: The History of Mr Wells. I explained that I would seek out
photographs which showed Wells, his friends and colleagues at the time he knew
them (as anything else would feel anachronistic) and that I’d also research
cartoons, books and drawings to give the picture sections variety and interest.
He liked this approach - intellectually he was fascinated by how other people
work, and he was enthusiastic and appreciative about the material I found. For
example, as an editor himself, he was highly amused that the editors Wells
worked for were all photographed in identical quizzical poses with their heads
resting lightly on a hand.

Two pictures I found brought an unexpected
response. The KGB around this time claimed he had acted as their agent, and The Sunday Times printed the story. When I showed him a photograph of
Wells with Ivan Maisky, the popular and sociable Soviet Ambassador to London, he
said incredulously ‘this is the man I’m supposed to have passed secrets to’.
Michael Foot’s patriotism was apparent, and his personality seemed disinclined
to any deviousness – he was proud to have been friendly with Maisky and
successfully sued the newspaper.

When HG Wells died in 1946, Vicky drew
a cartoon which shows him as superman going skywards in a T shirt inscribed
‘Mind at the end of its tether’. I didn’t know until he told me then, that Vicky
was a great friend who had committed suicide in 1966, and I was afraid that I’d
inadvertently opened old wounds for him, but he was completely delighted to
include the cartoon as the final picture in the book and a fitting tribute to
his friend.’

Foot's obituary is notably published in The Guardian.
There is a slideshow of images of Foot on the website of The Times as well as a picture gallery charting his career on The Guardian website.

History lessons on the public debt

2010-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

20 senior economic historians in the History & Policy Network warned against immediate cuts in public spending in a letter published in The Guardian this morning.

They argue that Britain’s current level of public debt is not that high by the standards of the past 200 years and is also relatively low in the context of the developed world - only Germany and Canada’s public debts are lower among the larger industrialised powers. They urge policymakers to take advantage of the fact that Britain is home to four of the world’s top ten universities and to focus on developing the knowledge economy rather than continuing to rely on the financial sector.

The letter was initiated by Dr Glen O'Hara (Oxford Brookes University) and the co-founder of History & Policy Dr Simon Szreter (University of Cambridge). Signatories include Professors Martin Daunton (Trinity Hall, Cambridge), Jane Humphries (All Souls College, Oxford), Jim Tomlinson (University of Dundee), David Edgerton (Imperial College London) and Dr Hugh Pemberton and Dr Richard Sheldon from the University of Bristol.

In their words:

‘Economic growth enabled Britain to escape from crushing debt burdens in the
early 19th century and during the 1950s and 1960s. It could do so again, if the
public spending cuts that would endanger such knowledge-based growth are ruled
out in the short to medium term’.

History & Policy is an independent initiative, which works ‘for better policy through an understanding of history’ and was founded by historians Virginia Berridge, Pat Thane, Alastair Reid and Simon Szreter at the Universities of Cambridge and London.

In The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-39 Patricia Clavin examines the causes and effects of the Great Depression in Europe and in Labour Wasn't Working John Shepherd looks back to the Winter of Discontent which heralded the demise of the Labour government of the time.

Image:

Nurses were among the public sector workers who rejected a 5% pay offer (Getty / Popperfoto)

The Multicultural Origins of Roman York

2010-03-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

According to the latest research by the University of Reading’s Department of Archaeology, published in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, 4th-century Roman York was a multicultural town where individuals of North African descent moved in the highest social circles.

Archaeologists used the latest techniques in forensic ancestry assessment and isotope analysis to study Romano-British skeletal remains, in particular those of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’, discovered in a stone coffin in August 1901 near Sycamore Terrace in York. The research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Strontium and oxygen isotopes are incorporated into the skeletal tissues of humans through the food and drink they ingest. Isotope analyses thus enable scientists to identify where individuals resided at the time of tissue formation in terms of geology (strontium) and climate (oxygen). The ancestry assessment and isotope signature of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ suggests that she was of mixed ‘black’ and ‘white’ ancestry and may have come from somewhere slightly warmer than the UK.

Her grave is believed to date to the second half of the 4th century and contains jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants, beads, a blue glass jug and a glass mirror. These grave goods, as well as evidence of an unusual burial technique, further indicate that she was of high social status and not native to York. She may have been of North African descent and migrated to York from the Mediterranean.

In the words of Dr Hella Eckardt, Senior Lecturer at the University of Reading:

‘Multi-cultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis
of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady' and others like her, contradicts common popular
assumptions about the make up of Roman-British populations as well as the view
that African immigrants in Roman Britain were of low status, male and likely to
have been slaves.
‘To date, we have had to rely on evidence of such foreigners in Roman Britain from inscriptions. However, by analysing the facial features of the Ivory Bangle Lady and measuring her skull compared to reference populations, analysing the chemical signature of the food and drink she consumed, as well as evaluating the evidence from the burial site, we are now able to establish a clear profile of her ancestry and social status.
‘It helps paint a picture of a Roman York that was hugely diverse and which included
among its population, men, women and children of high status from Romanised
North Africa and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.’

The findings will feature in the Yorkshire Museum’s new exhibition ‘Roman York: Meet the People of the Empire’ due to open in August.
Read the press release on the website of the Yorkshire Museum.

Images:

- Reconstructed portrait of the Ivory Bangle Lady by Aaron Watson, University of Reading

- Gravegoods (copyright Yorkshire Museum)

The most expensive manuscript sale in history: Casanova's memoirs

2010-03-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

The most expensive manuscript sale in history: Casanova’s diaries
At the end of last week, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), the French national library, announced that it had acquired the original manuscripts of Giacomo Casanova's memoirs. The 3,700 pages of memoirs were purchased by an anonymous donor on behalf of the library. The price has not been made public but is believed to exceed £4.4 million. The manuscripts were transferred to the BNF today.
Lizzy Davies reports in The Guardian.

Alberto Korda’s photographs of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro for sale
The Telegraph reports on the upcoming sale this Thursday, March 4th, of a selection of Alberto Korda’s photographs of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara by Dominic Winter Book Auctions. Korda was Castro’s personal photographer. The collection of black and white photographs dates from 1959 to 1960 and includes images of Fidel and Che Guevara playing golf in military uniform and of Castro shaking Ernest Hemingway’s hand.

Ground-breaking account of WW2 rape
At the age of 80, Gabriele Köpp has become the first German woman to write an account under her own name of the sexual violence that she experienced during the final weeks of the Second World War.
Warum war ich bloß ein Mädchen ('Why Did I Have to Be a Girl?’) is published by Herbig.
Susanne Beyer reports in Der Spiegel.

First Impressions: Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey

2010-02-24T10:26:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

‘Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey’ opens today, February 24th, at the National Gallery. The exhibition charts the career of the French artist Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) and highlights in particular his masterpiece The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833), depicting the death, in 1554, of the 16-year-old who had been Queen of England for just nine days. Following its rediscovery in 1973, the painting was first exhibited at the National Gallery two years later.

The exhibition is unique in two respects. Featuring a series of the artist’s preparatory drawings, as well as a selection of comparative drawings and prints by his contemporaries, the section entitled ‘Lady Jane Grey’ reveals the work and sources behind his masterpiece. The exhibition also brings together seven of Delaroche’s other great historical paintings on loan from collections across the world, revealing some of the major influences and themes of his work.

Delaroche first visited England in 1822. He returned to London five years later to prepare for his work on The Princes in the Tower (1830). It is believed that he visited the Tower of London itself and that his visit inspired his two further Tower compositions – The Execution of Lady Jane Grey and Strafford on his Way to Execution (1835). In the aftermath of the French Revolution, English history was a powerful muse to represent and reflect upon recent events in France. Delaroche notably depicted numerous scenes of imprisonment and execution from the British past to draw parallels with recent upheavals in French history.

Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) inherited the crown following the death of Edward VI on July 6th, 1553, but her reign ended on July 19th when her Catholic cousin Mary led a successful counter-coup. ‘The Nine Day’s Queen’ was tried for treason and sentenced to death. She was imprisoned in the Tower and beheaded on February 12th, 1554. Within six months of her death, however, she was reinvented in the Protestant propaganda of the time as a martyr and victim of Catholic tyranny.

Delaroche’s depiction of Jane Grey is based on a contemporary eye-witness account. It is immensely tragic and heavily influenced by the theme of martyrdom. The 16-year-old is blindfolded and supported only by Sir John Brydges, the lieutenant of the Tower, as she fumbles for the block. Her white dress vividly stands out against the sombre background of the painting, highlighting her innocence and vulnerability, and the tragedy of her execution is further emphasised by the gestures of her swooning and distraught ladies in waiting.

Martyrdom is a prevailing theme throughout Delaroche’s work. A similar use of symbolism and light to depict the tragedy of martyrdom is notably evident in his later depiction of Marie-Antoinette, who was condemned to death on October 16th, 1793, in Marie-Antoinette before the Tribunal (1851). His painting was, once again, based on contemporary drawings and documentary reports and, similarly to Lady Jane Grey, all that stands out against the dark background is the martyr’s silver grey hair, white shawl and pale face.

A second major influence on the artist was the theatre. The influence was two-fold. From the 1820s, there was a general fascination with period reconstruction in France and a growing tendency in French theatre to draw on pictorial forms with plays divided, for example, into ‘tableaux’ as well as acts. Several of Delaroche’s works, including Lady Jane Grey and The Princes in the Tower, were notably recreated on the stage. But Delaroche was also himself influenced by the cultural trends and theatrical conventions of the time. In Lady Jane Grey, for example, the queen is depicted with outstretched hands in accordance with the conventional theatrical gesture used to portray female martyrs. It is believed that the artist may even have used an actress, Anaїs Aubert with whom he had become romantically involved, as a model for the queen.

Multiple facets of Delaroche's career are put forward in this fascinating exhibition. From the influence of contemporary artists and the cultural context of 19th-century France, where English history was used as a medium to comment upon contemporary political events, on his grandiose historic paintings, to Delaroche's own subsequent influence on artists in France and abroad, 'Painting History' also offers a glimpse of the man himself and his intimate relationship with Anaїs Aubert through a display of some of his letters to the actress.

Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey
February 24th – May 23rd
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London WC2N 5DN
Telephone: 020 7747 2885
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

Images:
- Paul Delaroche, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833
© The National Gallery, London
- Paul Delaroche, Portrait of Mademoiselle Anaïs, 1832
Private Collection
- Paul Delaroche, Marie-Antoinette before the Tribunal, 1851
The Forbes Collection, New York

Habsburg legacy in Austria and Kipling in India

2010-02-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

The abandoned Imperial Crypt beneath the city of Vienna
The Imperial Crypt, 10 metres (33ft) beneath the city of Vienna, is the burial site of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) and of 146 of his Habsburg relatives. However, the site has been largely abandoned by the Austrian government, which still appears to be struggling to deal with the legacy of its Habsburg past. In April 1919, the Austrian government enacted the Habsburg Law. In the words of Walter Mayr in Der Spiegel, ‘the Habsburgs were dispossessed of private property held in family funds, denied the right to run for election, and forbidden to remain in Austria, unless they renounced in writing their claims to the throne and their affiliation with the deposed dynasty’. Today, the Austrian government is still ignoring pleas to preserve the site.
Read the full report.
In In the Blood - The Secret History of the Habsburgs Andrew Wheatcroft examines how an 18th-century succession crisis unlocked a tale of dynastic obsession and myth-history in Austria's first family.

Kipling’s legacy in India
Rudyard Kipling was born in the Dean’s Bungalow in the grounds of the Sir JJ School of Arts in Mumbai in 1865. Plans to turn the house into a museum have sparked considerable protest and have recently been suspended. Andrew Walker discusses the author’s controversial legacy in both Britain and India on the BBC’s Today programme.
In Kipling, Kim and Imperialism Fred Reist and David Washbrook explain how Kipling's view of imperialism was more complex than is usually supposed.
The author also pointed to cracks in the imperial facade at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Denis Judd explains in Diamonds are Forever? Kipling's Imperialism .

1938 comic book sells for £1million
Yesterday, a 1938 edition of Action Comics No 1, the first comic to feature Superman, was sold for $1 million (£646,000) on the US auction website Comic Connect. The sale was over three times higher than the previous record price for a comic book, which was sold for $317,200 (£205,000) in 2009.

Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes: press secretary to Harold Wilson
Trevor Lloyd-Hughes died last week, aged 87. He was press secretary to Wilson in Downing Street from 1964 to 1969. Prior to his position in the press office, he was the political correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post. In 1961 he also became the paper’s first wine correspondent. Following Labour’s defeat in 1970, he was knighted and founded his own lobbying company specialised in government-industry relations.
His obituary is published on the website of The Times.

Israel’s plans to add West Bank shrines to heritage list may halt peace negotiations
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently told his cabinet that two major religious sites in the West Bank would be added to the country’s heritage list and included in a £103 million restoration plan. In the Bible, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried; Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem is the traditional gravesite of the Matriarch Rachel and is one of the holiest sites in Judaism. The announcement has sparked protest from the Palestinian Authority. The BBC reports.

Review and win one of the latest history books

2010-02-22T05:41:00.000-08:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is our selection for February. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary, Miri Rubin (Penguin)
A study of how Mary’s status has evolved – in religious writings, art and architecture and at vast public festivals - from virtual unknown to virginal icon and ultimately God-like figure, as Christianity established itself as a global faith over the centuries.

Choose Your Weapons, Douglas Hurd (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Beginning with the last ministerial duel in British political history between Castlereagh and Canning, this history of the British foreign policy and the role of Foreign Secretary from 1807 to 1956 focuses on eleven Foreign Secretaries, including Lord Salisbury, Anthony Eden, Austen Chamberlain and Sir Edward Grey.

Hitler, Ian Kershaw (Penguin)
A single edition paperback of the author’s two-part biography of Hitler first published in 1998, which traces the story of how an art student from an obscure corner of Austria rose to unparalleled power and destroyed the lives of millions.

The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, ed. A. J. Woodman (Cambridge University Press)
An assessment of the work and influence of Tacitus, whose account of the Roman Empire in the first century AD has been fundamental in shaping the modern perception of Rome and its emperors.

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, Jeremy Rifkin (Polity)
This new interpretation of the history of civilisation considers the evolution of empathy and the ways in which it has shaped our development and is likely to determine our fate as a species, from the rise of the first great theological civilisations, to the ideological age that dominated the 18th and 19th centuries and the merging dramaturgical period of the 21st century.

The Wobbling Pivot, China Since 1800: An Interpretative History, Pamela Kyle Crossley (Wiley-Blackwell)
This history of China since the 18th century focuses on the delicate relationship between central government and local communities and reveals how developments can be explained through China’s swings between centralisation and decentralisation, between local initiative and central authoritarianism.

The Last Empress, Hannah Pakula (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
The story of the life of Soon May-ling (1897-2003), or Madame Chiang Kai-shek as she was known, who, acting as the advisor, English translator, secretary and champion of her husband, was at the centre of the founding of modern China.

Who Was Jacques Derrida?, David Mikics (Yale University Press)
An intellectual biography of Jacques Derrida, a full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence and his philosophical sources, and the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the purveyor of ‘theory’, the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities.

Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency, Thomas L. Ahern Jr, (University Press of Kentucky)
A firsthand account of the CIA’s involvement in South Vietnam in an effort to combat the Viet Cong and earn the allegiance of South Vietnam’s rural population, which illuminates the basic flaws of the US government and CIA policies that directly contributed to the communist victory.

History should be reinstated for all GSCE students: ‘Its lessons are invaluable’

2010-02-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

History should be reinstated for all GSCE students: ‘Its lessons are invaluable’
In The Telegraph, Editor Jeff Randall condemns the gradual disappearance of history from the curriculum in many state schools. He argues that history has much to teach us in today’s financial crisis and that the political challenge facing Cameron is not dissimilar to that faced by Churchill in 1951.

What was Charles I wearing on the day of his execution?
According to the Mail Online, historians and forensic scientist are to carry out DNA tests in an effort to solve the mystery of what Charles I was wearing when he was beheaded. Experts have long-believed that he was wearing a blue silk waistcoat which has been in the care of the Museum of London in 1925. The tests may provide an answer to their questions…

A short history of The Observer: the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper
The Observer was launched in 1791. A video clip on the website of The Guardian charts the newspaper’s history.

Comparing JFK’s love letters to modern sex texts
With the upcoming auction of John F Kennedy’s love letters to his Swedish lover, Alexander Chancellor argues in The Guardian that the future president appears far more ‘modest, solicitous, dignified, almost romantic in his womanising’ than today’s ‘celebrity sleazebags’ such as Tiger Woods or Ashley Cole. Chancellor may be right, but just how valuable is such a comparison?

Death of the last Canadian WW1 veteran
John Babcock died yesterday, February 18th, aged 109 in Spokane, Washington. He signed up for the Canadian military, aged 15, having lied about his age, and trained in Britain with the Young Soldiers’ Battalion. He never saw action, however, because the war came to an end before he reached the legal age of 19 to fight.
Read the article published on the website of the Toronto Star.

First writing system dates back to prehistoric times

2010-02-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

Prehistoric Writing
It is traditionally believed that first the writing system dates back 5,000 years. However, according to the latest research, Man may have first sought to communicate through symbols rather than pictures 40,000 years ago. Markings found in the Chauvet caves in southern France have previously been ignored, but they may be evidence of a form a written code, which is believed to have been familiar to all prehistoric tribes in France and possibly even beyond.
Kate Ravilious reports in the New Scientist.

John F Kennedy’s secret letters to his Swedish lover up for auction
The BBC reports on the upcoming sale of John F. Kennedy’s collection of love letters to Gunilla von Post written in the 1950s. The letters are being auctioned by Chicago-based Legendary Auctions and are expected to fetch up to $100,000 (£65,000).
Further information and images of the letters are available on the website of Legendary Auctions.

What Granny did in the war
In the New Scotsman, Jackie McGlone tells the story of Mona Kedslie McLeod who was a member of the Scottish Women’s Land Army during the Second World War. The Land Girls were largely forgotten in the aftermath of the war, but they are now the subject of a new exhibition, ‘Land Girls and Lumber Jills’, at the National War Museum at Edinburgh Castle.

Mysterious ancient clay figures unearthed in Ghana

2010-02-17T03:47:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Manchester University announced yesterday, February 16th, the discovery of 80 ancient clay figures in Ghana by archaeologists from the universities of Manchester and Ghana. The sculpted human and animal figures, which are believed to be between 1,400 and 800 years old, were unearthed last month from a series of mounds in a remote region of Northern Ghana near the village of Yikpabongo. The 30km square area is so densely packed with a series of mysterious mounds that it took just two weeks to excavate the 80 figures.

Human skulls were also discovered in the mounds. Dr Benjamin Kankpeyeng from Ghana and Tim Insoll from Manchester University believe that they may be the sites of ancient shrines. It is hoped that studies of the number, context and arrangement of the figurines will provide an insight into the ritual practices and beliefs of this ancient society and deepen our understanding of what remains a relatively unknown and little-researched page of African history.

In the words of Professor Tim Insoll:

‘These finds will help to fill a significant gap in our scant knowledge of this
period before the Islamic empires developed in West Africa. They were a
sophisticated and technically advanced society: for example some of the
figurines were built in sections and slotted together.’

Dr Benjamin Kankpeyeng further explained:

‘The relative position of the figurines surrounded by human skulls means the
mounds were the location of an ancient shrine. The skulls had their jaw bones
removed with teeth placed nearby - an act of religious significance.’

However, illegal excavation of the treasures means that archaeologists are in a race against time to ensure the safety of the remains.

Residues of material were also discovered packed into holes within the figurines. What exactly was put into the holes - medicinal substances, blood or other material from a sacrifice - is unknown, however. Some of the figures have been brought back to the UK where Professor Insoll is due to carry out further analysis of these residues in an effort to uncover more clues about the society.

The burial sites have been repeatedly excavated over the past 25 years. The first excavation took place in 1985 with others in 2007, 2008 and 2009 carried out by the University of Ghana. Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered.

Insoll explained:

‘There are still many questions remaining: some of the figurines were
deliberately broken and placed besides body parts. Why?’

Kankpeyeng added:

‘What is interesting is that the people now living in this area seem to have no
connection with the makers of the figurines. That would suggest that that they
have more in common with peoples living in other parts of West Africa - but we
need to do more work before we can be certain.’

Saving Haiti's Cultural Heritage

2010-02-16T04:59:00.000-08:00

The Fight to Save Haiti’s Archives
Members of the International Council of Archives (ICA) in Haiti have formed a crisis cell entitled ‘Heritage in danger’ on the fringes of the official commission for the evaluation of buildings and reconstruction. They have recently issued a statement listing some of the most urgent requirements in order to save the country’s archives and cultural property. Wilfrid Bertrand is the National Archivist of Haiti and Jérémy Lachal is the Executive Director of Libraries Without Borders, who is currently on mission in Port-au-Prince. Both stressed the pressing need for tarpaulins in order to protect the records that are currently lying on the ground and risk being destroyed during the forthcoming rainy season.
ICA explained that it is urgently trying to get these materials out to Port-au-Prince. It is also working with the Blue Shield Network, the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross, which was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts. The two organisations are currently trying to collect hard information as the basis for an initial report on damage to cultural property in Haiti. The report is due to provide an indication of the resources that will be needed to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage.
For further information, visit the websites of the ICA (http://www.ica.org/) and Blue Shield (http://www.ancbs.org/).

Bhutan: An Eye to History
More than 80 photographs charting the history of Bhutan were on display until the end of last month at The National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. The images included photographs of Rinpung monastery in Paro taken in 1864 and of the King and Queen of Bhutan at the Red Fort during their first state visit to India in 1954. There is a slideshow of some of the photographs on the website of the BBC.

Hitler’s secret relationship with Eva Braun
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper concluded that Eva Braun was ‘uninteresting’. However, the first academic biography of Eva Braun: Life With Hitler by the Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker and published at the end of the month by CH Beck refutes traditional views of Braun and Hitler’s relationship.
In Der Spiegel Online Klaus Wiegrefe provides an insight into the realities of the couple’s secret relationship. The article also features a slideshow of images of Eva Braun and Hitler.
Kate Connolly also reports in The Guardian.

Light on Japan’s ‘Unit 731’ experiments
In 1989, a mass grave was discovered during construction work in Tokyo’s district of Shinjuku. The grave contained human remains which are believed to have come from ‘Unit 731’ where the medical research team of the Imperial Japanese Army carried out gruesome human ‘experiments’ on more than 10,000 people per year. Authorities in Tokyo recently announced plans to study the remains in an effort to address this dark, and previously ignored, page of Japanese history.
Julian Ryall reports in The Telegraph.

First Impressions: The White Ribbon

2010-02-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

by Paul Lay

Today sees the release on DVD of Michael Haneke’s masterly meditation on the German past, The White Ribbon (Artificial Eye, £15.99). The drama, filmed in suitably austere black and white, is set in a small village in northern Germany just before the outbreak of the First World War. The atmosphere is fearful and conspiratorial. Quietly chilling figures of authority such as the main landowner, the doctor and the pastor (a brilliant central performance by Burghart Klaussner) stir grievance and resentment among the villagers against a backdrop of ‘accidents’, abductions and abuse. As the village threatens to tear itself apart, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and its promise of war comes almost as a relief.

Many critics have seen The White Ribbon as a mediation on Nazism, pointing out, for example, the similarity of the white ribbon worn by the pastor’s children as a symbol of wrongdoing to the yellow stars worn to identify Jews during the Third Reich (or even, as a symbol of purity, the armbands worn by the Nazis themselves). Such allusions are inescapable. But I was reminded more of recent studies of the witch crazes that scarred early modern Germany, with their mixture of arbitrary power, personal fiefdoms and sexual suspicion. Which makes the beautifully observed and tenderly performed romance between the village schoolteacher (the narrator of the film) and a young local woman all the more powerful.

Ultimately, The White Ribbon, like life, resists simple interpretation. And that is what makes it essential viewing for historians, whether they are interested in German history or not. For, like all history, it is bafflingly complex and never entirely knowable. The White Ribbon sits alongside Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (1975) and Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946) as one of the greatest films ever made on the subject of history. It is essential viewing.

For further information on the 'Power of Women' in Germany during the Renaissance, read She-Devils, Harlots and Harridans in Northern Renaissance Prints , in which Julia Nurse shows how the demonic power of women was an important theme in the popular print of Germany in the 16th century.

Wannabe cavemen in the United States

2010-02-12T04:42:00.000-08:00

Wannabe cavemen in the United States
Philip Bethge reports in Der Spiegel on the development of a Stone Age subculture in the United States. In the belief that men lived healthier lives in prehistoric times, members of the New York based group promote what they term ‘Evolutionary Fitness’. They practice leaping and sprinting as if they were still threatened by mammoths and wild animals and follow a strict diet of lean meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts.
For further information, visit our Prehistory focus page.

The history of the Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival was introduced to West Berlin by the US military administration in the aftermath of the Soviet blockade. The first festival was celebrated in 1951 and was designed as ‘showcase of the free world’, a propaganda tool to bring glamour to West Berlin. Der Spiegel reports. The article is illustrated with a slideshow of images charting the history of the Berlinale.

Death of the inventor of the Frisbee
The Frisbee was invented by Walter Frederick Morrison in 1948. He died on Tuesday, February 9th, aged 90, at his home in Utah. The BBC reports. The article also features a slideshow of images revealing 60 years of the history of the Frisbee.

65th anniversary of Dresden bombing
Every year, since the 1990s, the German far-right has traditionally staged a march to commemorate the bombing of Dresden between February 13th and 15th, 1945. This year, anti-right-wing activists including leftist politicians and celebrities have sought to oppose the march. Steffen Winter reports in Der Spiegel on how the anniversary has raised complex issues about commemoration and how memory is exploited for political propaganda.
In Dresden Plus 93 Days the British veteran Dick Sheehy recalls his experience caught up as a POW in the Alllied bombing of Dresden.
In Sowing the Wind James Barker charts the RAF's wartime bombing campaign of Germany.

Mandela’s former office in Johannesburg: a derelict squat

2010-02-11T08:05:00.000-08:00

Mandela’s former office in Johannesburg: a derelict squat
Chancellor House once housed Nelson Mandela’s law firm, which was the first black law firm in Johannesburg. The building is now in ruins and is occupied by squatters. There are plans to turn the office into a legal resource centre for young black lawyers. However, efforts to raise the necessary funds to relocate the squatters and legal negotiations have been dragging on for the past ten years.
Andrew Harding reports on BBC Radio 4.
For further information on the history of South Africa, visit our South Africa focus page.

The death of palaeography
Professor David Ganz from King’s College London is the current holder of the UK’s only chair in palaeography. The university has, however, recently, announced its decision to close the chair from September onwards. The subject will no longer exist as a separate academic discipline in British universities. Ganz has now begun to ‘fight for his subject’ and many of the world’s most eminent classicists have petitioned King’s College to reconsider its position. John Crace explains in The Guardian why the study of ancient manuscripts matters and why history will be lost without it.

The Staffordshire Hoard returns home
On Saturday, the Staffordshire Hoard will go on display, for the first time, in the county in which the treasure was found, at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent.
Maev Kennedy reports in The Guardian.
The Staffordshire Hoard
February 13th – March 7th
The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery
Bethesda Street, HanleyStoke-on-Trent ST1 3DW
Telephone: 01782 232323
www.stoke.gov.uk

The Nazification of Carnival under the Third Reich
Siobhán Dowling reports in Der Spiegel Online on how the Nazi regime used Carnival, the pre-Lent festival celebrated predominantly in the Catholic west and south of Germany, as a propaganda tool to put forward their own notions of the German nation. There is also a slideshow of images of Carnival celebrations from the time.

Alfred Gregory: Official photographer on the 1953 Everest expedition
Alfred Gregory was the official photographer to the British expedition that made the first ascent of Everest, in 1953. He died on Tuesday, February 9th, aged 96. His obituary was published yesterday in The Independent.

First Impressions: Ministry of Food at IWM London

2010-02-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

By Derry Nairn

The Second World War, which Britain and her empire fought from 1939 until 1945, offered up to history the enduring founding myths of the post-imperial period. The Blitz; the Battle of Britain; Dunkirk; VE Day: the conflict’s major commemorative events were all the result of military and material challenges, overcome by leader, soldier and ordinary housewife alike.

'Ministry of Food', the exhibition opening on 12th February at London’s Imperial War Museum, deals with one of the most unsung but vitally relevant of these heroic victories: the revolution in culinary and dietary habits forced upon Britain by shortages in the island’s staple foodstuffs.

From food rationing, to the donation of tin pots for military hardware, an entertaining exhibition tells how the Second World War was experienced in the most immediate sense by ordinary people. At the war’s outbreak, the shipping of colonial imports such as Canadian wheat and Caribbean coffee, sugar and bananas came to a swift end. As this reality set in, the government attempted to quell public fears and raise morale through co-ordinated propaganda campaigns - the ‘Dig for Victory’ poster being one of the most well-known.

Outcomes were many and various. Mountains of food waste were saved. A wholesale conversion from cattle to arable farming came about. Alternative and ingenious methods of feeding hungry families were developed, often spontaneously, and on a local level. The domestic production of potatoes, oats, orchard fruits and root vegetables was encouraged. Recipes accordingly took account of wartime shortages, with ingredients such as mock cream (sweetened, whipped margarine), mock goose (a mixture of potato, apple, cheese and sage), and potato biscuits (made with oats and mashed potato).

Other surrogate staples were not so successful. Snoek, a cheap, pungent and hugely unpopular South African canned fish, made its inauspicious culinary debut. American imports such as Spam fritters, Wrigley’s chewing gum and Kellogg’s breakfast cereals had been available prior to 1939. However, the only successful 20th-century invasion of Britain - that of GIs - permanently popularised these dubious additions to the food arena.

'Ministry of Food' is not limited, however, to the compact first floor exhibition space. The Imperial War Museum’s café has been transformed, by Company of Cooks, into ‘Kitchen Front’ for the duration of the show. The menu reflects the realities of wartime diets. This is no bad thing, as the menu would feel more at home in a gourmet South Bank restaurant, than lifted from the pages of a rationing book. Alongside the obligatory mock cream and potato biscuits, sit delicious baked potatoes with Stilton and walnuts, marinated herring with red cabbage and miniature vegetable pies.

It is illuminating to query the motivations behind the Imperial War Museum’s choice of exhibit. A clue arrives with the opinions of TV gardener and environmentalist Monty Don, invited to speak at the exhibition launch of how the Second World War helped to redraw society’s attitudes to food sources. By 1943, six million British families grew their own vegetables. Urban pig-rearing societies had a 100,000-strong membership. Allotment space doubled over the course of four years. For Don, these are not flat historical facts. For him, and the green movement as a whole, the story of food production and consumption in wartime Britain has helped to inspire their vision for a brave new world of sustainable eating habits.

The historical parallels are difficult to ignore. Just as in 1939, Britain today relies as never before on cheap, imported food. In the same way as the merchant navy had to do battle with U-Boats, suppliers to UK supermarkets now have to fight rising fuel prices and volatile environmental factors. Reflecting these realities, any appraisal of recent government policy and media coverage will show a developing trend towards discussion of food policy and politics. A pronounced nod to the green bandwagon underpins the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition.

70 years ago, however, the changes in how the nation ate, shopped, farmed and gardened were relatively immediate. By contrast, gestures towards a greener way of life in contemporary Britain are gradual and, a cynic might say, rather superficial. The island is not currently blockaded by submarines. The capital’s soil is not being ploughed nightly by doodlebugs. The trend for more sustainable, ‘ethical’ foods remains just that: a trend. It both limits itself strictly to wealthier supermarket customers, and extends to such anomalies as air-freighted, but organic, tropical fruit. Factor in the embedded status of such post-war trends as fast food chains, TV dinners and intensively-farmed agriculture, and the green lobby sounds more like a minority voice in the debate over food.

Monty Don, like it or not, is the poster child for a decidedly middle-class approach to food: one based on commoditised pleasure and the arbitrary concept of 'ethics', rather than enforced austerity. It may be stating the obvious, but the wartime populations of London, Manchester and Glasgow did not write to their MPs, demanding that their beloved banana shipments be torpedoed. A sad reality which the green movement must face is that tectonic social change does not tend to come about except through necessity. The message to learn from the Ministry of Food exhibition, and from history, is that until this country is forced to move away from its addiction to food convenience – be that, as in the past, through military aggression or environmental catastrophe - there is very little that can be done to change it.

The exhibition, however, is excellent, and comes highly recommended.

Ministry of Food
Imperial War Museum London

12th February 2010 - 3rd January 2011

Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7416 5320
Web: food.iwm.org.uk

Nick Cullather explains how the USA made food an instrument of foreign policy, in American Pie: the Imperialism of the Calorie

Thanks to Doreen J Barber for the images of the exhibition.

East India Company bought by Indian businessman

2010-02-10T02:38:00.001-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Sanjiv Mehta is a 48-year-old Indian businessman who for the past six years has worked to restore the formerly British-owned East India Company. In 2004, Mehta proceeded to buy all the company’s shares, mostly owned by British businessmen. He has spent the last six years travelling and talking to museum curators and historians in an attempt to gain a proper understanding of the heritage of the company. Mehta efforts are somewhat surprising given that the 400-year-old company acted as a vehicle for the expansion of British imperial rule in his homeland.

The East India Company was granted its first charter by Elizabeth I on December 31st, 1600. It was dissolved on January 1st, 1874, after the Government of India Act transferred the company’s powers to the Crown.

The flagship store of the revamped East India Company is due to open in Mayfair this spring. Mehta thereafter plans to open a second store in London, as well as stores in India, the Middle East, Japan, Russia and the United States. The stores will notably sell coffee, tea, spices, chocolate, leather goods and furniture.

For further information, read Adam Fresco’s article published on the website of The Times.

In 400 years of the East India Company Huw Bowen asks whether the East India Company was one of the ‘most powerful engines’ of state and empire in British history.

In The East India Company and the Emperor Aurangzeb Bruce Lenman charts the ambitious and abortive attempts made by East India Company entrepreneurs to challenge the might of the Moghul Empire.

Ride in one of the last Second World War high-speed motor boats

2010-02-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard announced this morning, February 9th, the recent purchase by Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust (PNBPT) of two of the last remaining fully operational high-speed motor boats, MGB 81 and HSL 102, from the Second World War. The acquisition cost £750,000 and was largely made possible thanks to a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

At the time they were built, the two boats represented outstanding examples of British naval engineering and were amongst the fastest boats of their type in the world. They were designed and built at Hythe (near Southampton) by the British Powerboat Company, founded by the aviation and powerboat pioneer Hubert Scott-Paine (1891-1954). The company later went on to build the Supermarine Spitfire. The boats were known as Spitfires of the Seas. However, they were made only of plywood and had no real armament. With 3,000 gallons of fuel in their tank, they were also particularly vulnerable and exploded immediately if they were hit in the fuel tank.

MGB 81 was used during the US landings at Omaha Beach. After the war, she was disposed of by the Royal Navy and bought by a private owner. The motor boat was later used as an accommodation barge for a sailing school and then as a house boat. MGB 81 was restored in 1988. HSL 102 is the only surviving example of the 100 class high speed launch. She was stationed at RAF Calshot during the Battle of Britain and retrieved wounded soldiers from the sea. As a whole, HSL vessels are believed to have saved a total of 10,000 airmen of many nationalities throughout the duration of the war. In two months, HSL 102 is recorded as having saved 38 men from the North Sea, including the crews of two German bombers. She was restored in 1996 and re-launched by HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Both motor boats have now been restored to their working condition and are currently on display at Gunwharf Quays Marina in Portsmouth. Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust plan to make at least one of the boats available for charter so that people can experience something of their power and speed.

http://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/

In The Spitfire Legend Taylor Downing and Andrew Johnston seek the truth behind the legend of the Spitfire.

The History of British Surnames
Louise Tickle reports in The Guardian on the upcoming launch of a research project into British surnames at the University of West England. The project will provide a publicly available, online database of the meanings and origins of up to 150,000 family names.

More on the murderous founders of British obstetrics in the Times Archive
The Times Archive Blog features classified advertisements of The Times in its early days, in which Dr Smellie is mentioned as the inventor of some female pills and Man-Midwifery.

What's on in February

2010-02-09T02:35:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

With the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison on February 10th and the opening of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this Friday, there are a number of film screenings, lectures and conferences coming up this month, notably to mark these events. Here is a selection of those which seem of particualr interest.

Film screenings

A Woman in Berlin
February 12th-28th
The Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
Telephone: 020 7930 3647
http://www.ica.org.uk/
This film was released in German cinemas in October 2008. Based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers, it tells the story of German women who had survived the bombing of Berlin, but were raped by Red Army soldiers as they moved through the city in the last days of the Second World War.

Liberté
February 11th – 25th
Institut Français
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2DT
Telephone: 020 7073 1350
http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Institut Français, Cine lumière is organising a special film season entitled Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité which will run throughout the year.
The following is a selection of some of the film screenings for the first part Liberté.
Mandela Son of Africa, Father of a Nation
February 11th, 6.15pm
This full-length documentary narrated by Mandela provides an insight into his childhood, adolescence and career and sheds light on the charisma and spirit of the man who dedicated himself to the struggle of the African people.
Lucie Aubrac
February 19th, 6pm
This film released in French cinemas in 1997 tells the story of Lucie Aubrac, a member of the French resistance who fought to release her husband from the hands of the Gestapo.
Gandhi
February 20th, 2.15pm
A screening of Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biographical film starring Ben Kingsley, Edward Fox and Martin Sheen.

Lectures and conferences

Queen Mary Olympic Lecture Series: Back to the Future; Flying Down to Rio via London and Ancient Olympia
February 9th, 6.30pm
Mason Lecture Theatre, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End
Telephone: 020 7882 5147
http://www.qmul.ac.uk/
In this first lecture of the Queen Mary Olympic Lectures series devoted to the history of the Olympic Games, Professor Paul Cartledge will compare the first Games held in Ancient Greece to the forthcoming global spectacles of London 2012 and Rio 2016. The series continues until April with a further three lectures, on February 23rd, March 9th and April 20th, during which speakers Dr David Runciman, Professor Marion Kant and Professor Christopher Young will discuss the impact of the three modern Olympics held in London since 1908 on British politics, the Berlin Games of 1936 and Munich 1972.

Re-writing Nefertiti: the history and historiography of Egypt's most famous queen
February 10th, 3pm
The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Telephone: 0161 275 2634
www.manchester.ac.uk/museum
In 1924, a painted bust of Nefertiti was put on display in the Berlin Museum and the general public became aware of her existence. Joyce Tyldesley, from the department of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the Manchester Museum, will discuss the distorting effect that the Berlin head has had on the public perception of Nefertiti, before reviewing the archaeological evidence for her life and death.

Conspirator: Lenin in exile
February 18th, 7.30pm
Bishopsgate Institute
230 Bishopsgate
London EC2M 4QH
Telephone: 020 7392 9220
www.bishopsgate.org.uk/events
Helen Rappaport will discuss her latest book, which tells the story of Lenin’s 17-year exile in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution.

The Bosworth Conference
February 20th, 10am
County Hall
Glenfield, Leicester
Telephone: 01455 290 429
http://www.bosworthbattlefield.com/
Leicestershire County Council and Battlefields Trust archaeologist Dr Glenn Foard will unveil the results of the recent four-year archaeological survey to locate the battlefield. Other speakers include Professors Richard Holmes, President of The Battlefield’s Trust, Anne Curry, expert in 15th-century English warfare, Mathew Strickland, expert in the history of medieval warfare in Britain and Steve Walton, specialist in early artillery. Archaeological finds from the battlefield will be on public display for the first time at the conference, including the largest collection of artillery round shot from any medieval battlefield in Europe.
On February 22nd, ‘Bosworth Battlefield Lost and Found’, a new gallery telling the story of how experts found the true location of the Battle of Bosworth Field, will also open to the public.

Medieval Pilgrims Revealed
February 24th, 7.30pm
Donington le Heath Manor House
Manor Road
Donington le Heath, Coalville
Leicestershire LE67 2FW
Telephone: 01530 831259
Over the last 30 years, metal detectorists have excavated some of the lead relics that pilgrims from Leicestershire brought back from their journeys to shrines at Canterbury, Walsingham, Windsor and St Andrews, for example, and Leicestershire Museums staff have gradually recorded these discoveries. Peter Liddle, Leicestershire County Council’s Community Archaeologist, will discuss the results of the latest research in an effort to uncover the history of medieval pilgrimage in the region.

The Mixed Constitution – Monarchical and Aristocratic Aspects of Modern Democracy
February 25th, 5.30pm
The British Academy
10 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5AH
http://www.britac.ac.uk/
Dr Mogens Herman Hansen from Copenhagen University will discuss the legacy of Montesquieu’s theory of the separation of powers as the foundation of modern representative democracy. He will argue that the older theory of mixed constitution developed by Plato, Aristotle and Polybios deserves to be revived as a corrective to the prevailing view that western states are pure democracies.

Founders of British obstetrics were murderers

2010-02-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

Founders of British obstetrics were murderers
According to the latest research by the historian Don Shelton, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the 18th-century pioneers of obstetrics and gynaecology, William Hunter and William Smellie, killed between 35 and 40 pregnant women in order to dissect their bodies for research. Denis Campbell reports in The Guardian.
In Childbirth in the Middle Ages Peter Biller charts the hazards of pregnancy in the Middle Ages.
In Mother and Child in the Greek World Robert Garland explores attitudes towards women and childbearing in the male-orientated world of ancient Greece.
For further information on the History of Medicine, visit our focus page.

A Byzantine response to the west’s problems in Afghanistan
The Byzantine Empire survived for eight centuries – longer than any other in history. The Byzantines also wrote official guidebooks on statecraft, foreign relations and espionage. In an article published on the website of Prospect, Edward Luttwak argues that the Byzantine art of war and diplomacy may provide a solution to the west’s involvement in Afghanistan today.
In Byzantium: The Emperor's New Clothes? Alexander Kazhdan considers the influence of totalitarianism and meritocracy in the Byzantine empire.

World’s oldest Christian monastery restored
Saint Anthony’s monastery in Suez City near the Red Sea coast is believed to be 1,600 years old and the world’s oldest Christian monastery. Following an eight-year project carried out by the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, the newly restored monastery was officially opened at the end of last week.
Read the article published by the Associated Press.

History Happenings This Weekend

2010-02-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Various historically themed celebratory events are being organised this weekend and at the beginning of next week in anticipation of the Chinese New Year and St. Valentine's Day on February 14th. Here is a small selection...

Valentines Day

The season for love: A collection of choice valentines
Until February 27th
Bodleian Library, Broad Street
Oxford OX1 3BG
Telephone: 01865 277162
www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/bodley
This display of 38 items provides an insight into how St. Valentines Day was celebrated in the 19th century. The valentines range from creations of lace paper, silk, scraps, tinselling and artificial flowers accompanied by elaborate poetry to simple woodcuts. Some valentines were home-made tokens of love; others were produced in manufactories where skill and care were allied to business acumen.

Past Caring: A Celebration of Love in History
February 6th – 14th
A series of walks and talks are being organised as part of this innovative partnership of museums, archives and higher education organisations, which include Birkbeck College, London Transport Museum, The Wiener Library, National Maritime Museum, London Metropolitan Archive and the Hampstead Museum.
For further information visit www.pastcaring.org

Queer Hampstead
February 7th
Hampstead Museum, Burgh House
New End Square
London NW3 1LT
Telephone: 020 7431 0144
Academics and activists discuss Hampstead’s gay and lesbian past.

Rescue and Romance: Love in Word and Deed
February 9th
The Wiener Library
4 Devonshire Street
London W1W 5BH
Telephone: 020 7636 7247
A lecture by Anne Sebba telling the story of Ida and Louise Cook, two sisters who risked their lives to rescue Jewish families from Europe before the Second World War.

Love on the Streets
February 10th
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX
A walk with Mike Berlin and Eu Jin Chua, which starts at 6.00pm from Birkbeck College, followed by talks with Professor Alison Light, Professor Amanda Vickery and Juliet Gardiner at the London Review of Books Bookshop.

Chinese New Year

The Museum of London Docklands is hosting various events to mark the Chinese New Year.
Museum of London Docklands
West India Quay
London E14 4AL
Telephone: 020 7001 9844
www.museumoflondon.org.uk

Letter from an Unknown Woman
February 6th, 2pm
Free film screening organised in partnership with the Chinese Cultural Centre. A love story set against the backdrop of the Chinese Revolution.
Old Limehouse to Chinatown
February 13th, 2pm
A guided walk led by Brian Gover through the streets of Limehouse, the site of London’s first Chinatown, where Chinese sailors first settled in the 1880s.
The great voyages of Zheng He
February 14th, 4pm
Screening of a short documentary about the late 14th-century Chinese mariner, navigator, diplomat and fleet admiral.

Ice-cold whisky and Darwin's DNA

2010-02-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

Darwin’s DNA
Tests on the DNA of Chris Darwin, the great-grandson of the father of evolutionary theory, have revealed that Charles Darwin’s ancestors were among the first wave of modern humans to leave Africa for the Middle East approximately 45,000 years ago. Chris Darwin was one of the 35,000 members of the public to be tested as part of the five-year Genealogy Project backed by National Geographic and IBM to examine DNA in an effort to understand the earliest origins of the human species and map how and when they moved around the globe.
The Telegraph reports.

Ice-cold whisky
According to an article in The Times, five crates of whisky and brandy belonging to Ernest Shackleton have been recovered after being buried under the Antarctic ice for over a century. They were excavated from underneath Shackleton's Antarctic hut by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust.

For further information on Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition read Shackleton in the Antarctic, 1914-1916 .

Death of the Bo language
Boa Sr was the last surviving person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands. She was in her 80s and had survived both the Japanese occupation and the tsunami in 2004. Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages and is believed to date back to the pre-Neolithic settlement of south-east Asia. The island chain was colonised by the British in 1858 and, from 1858 to 1945, the islands served as penal colony for the British Empire. The indigenous population has steadily collapsed ever since. According to the NGO Survival International, over the past 150 years, the number of Great Andamanese has declined from about 5,000 to 52.
Jonathan Watts reports in The Guardian.
In The Andaman Islands Frances Stewart charts the history of the Andaman Islands.

The future of the Magnum photo archive
The international photography co-operative Magnum, founded in 1947 by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson has recently sold its archive to the founder of Dell computers. The collection includes over 185,000 prints chronicling events of the 20th century. Dell is due to lend the collection to the University of Texas, where it will be accessible to scholars and the public. A slideshow of images from the collection is available on the website of The Guardian.

Stonehenge Hedges
A recent survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that the prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges. The results of the survey are published in British Archaeology magazine. Read the article in The Guardian.

The youngest service casualty of the Second World War
Reginald Earnshaw is believed to be the youngest service member to have died during the Second World War. He died on July 6th, 1941, on board the SS North Devon, aged 14 years and 152 days. He lied about his age in order to join the war effort as a cabin boy in the merchant navy. The BBC reports.

Rats and murder in the National Portrait Gallery

2010-02-04T05:01:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

The National Portrait Gallery announced yesterday, Wednesday February 3rd, the launch of its archive catalogue online. Featuring papers belonging to the various directors of the gallery, minutes of the gallery’s committees, publicity material, press cuttings, as well as records on acquiring, conserving and displaying new portraits, organising and staging exhibitions and managing and developing the building, the archive provides an insight into the history of the gallery since its foundation in 1856.

In a document dated February 26th, 1909, the director of the gallery at the time, James Milner, reports on a murder and suicide in the gallery which occurred two days earlier.

‘A well-dressed elderly man and woman… proceeded towards the end of the East
Wing, where they could have been only a few minutes… when a pistol shot was
heard in that direction… Both were shot through the head… when I arrived the
woman was still living but the man was apparently dead… both were swathed in
blood’.

Other archived documents include a list of the rats ‘trapped and killed in the Gallery’ during two outbreaks, between 1940 and 1946, giving the date, the place the rat was seen, and who killed it and how. Two rats were, for example, found trapped in the Library. One was ‘speared by Pittock with [a] poker after it had escaped with great excitement’; the second was ‘drowned by Pitkin’.

Records relating to the First and Second World Wars document the efforts of the gallery’s directors to ensure the safety of the nation’s portraits. During the First World War, some portraits stored in the King Edward Building Post Office Tube Station near St Paul’s Cathedral where they were guarded by gallery staff carrying guns; others were stored at Aldwych station. A search for the Second World War yields a series of papers describing the transportation and subsequent storage of the gallery’s portraits at Mentmore stately home in Buckinghamshire.

Papers of former gallery directors include those of Sir Lionel Cust, who was director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1895 to 1909, and Sir Roy Strong. Sir Roy Strong became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery, in 1959, and director eight years later. Aged 32, he became the youngest director of the gallery.

Yesterday’s launch is the culmination of a two-year project and approximately one third of the gallery’s archive has currently been catalogued. Records continue to be added on a daily basis. A month ago, the gallery received a grant from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives to catalogue the papers of Sir George Scharf (1820-1895), the first Secretary, Keeper and Director of the National Portrait Gallery. His papers cover the first 38 years of the gallery’s existence and are due to be included shortly in the online catalogue.

Sir George Scharf was appointed director in 1857. His papers include around 230 notebooks and sketchbooks, which range from business to personal and family records and document the National Portrait Gallery’s formative years when there was a growing interest in national identity and awareness of the role that portraiture might play in representing British history.

The National Portrait Gallery has also implemented an online catalogue of the Gallery’s library collection, which currently lists almost 10,000 items including published books, periodicals and electronic resources.

To search the archive, visit http://archivecatalogue.npg.org.uk/

Images:

- National Portrait Gallery, Long Gallery, 1885 (National Portrait Gallery, London)
- 1909 Gallery Warding Staff (National Portrait Gallery, London)
- War-time portrait store in the Billiard Room at Mentmore House, with wardens, 1940s (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The Oldest Roman Coin in Britain

2010-02-03T04:48:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Leicestershire County Council announced, at the end of last week, the recent discovery of the oldest Roman coin ever found in Britain in the collection of the Harborough Museum. The silver denarius, which is believed to date to 211BC, was discovered by metal detectorist Ken Wallace, in 2000, amongst over 5,000 other coins at a Late Iron Age shrine of the Corieltavi tribe near the village of Hallaton, Leicestershire.

According to archaeologists, the site was a type of open air shrine, which was used from around 50BC through to the Roman invasion in AD43. The gold and silver coins and other treasures discovered at the site, including an elaborately decorated Roman cavalry helmet and the remains of over 300 pigs, are believed to have been buried as gifts to the gods.

The front of the denarius features a depiction of the goddess Roma; the reverse, is engraved with an image of the mythical twins Castor and Pollux sitting astride galloping horses. Denarii were first struck in Rome in 211BC, making the Hallaton coin a very early version. How the coin came into the possession of the Creiltavi tribe remains a mystery. Whilst it may have arrived in the purse of an invading Roman soldier after the conquest in 43AD, some archaeologists believe that Roman Republican coins found their way into Britain before the conquest through trade or diplomacy.

The previous oldest known Roman coin in Britain, discovered by metal detectorist Malcolm Langford in Berkshire, is believed to date to 207BC. It was recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme last year.

A Leicestershire Council Officer explained:

‘we knew we had a coin dating to 211BC amongst the coins from the Hallaton
Treasure but only realised its full significance after a coin dating to 207BC
was publicised as the oldest Roman coin found in Britain’.

The coin is currently on display at Harborough Museum in the specially designed Hallaton treasure gallery which opened in September 2009.

Harborough Museum
Council Offices
Adam & Eve Street
Market Harborough LE16 7AG
Telephone: 01858 821 085

For further information on Roman Britain, visit our Ancient Rome focus page.

Gandhi's ashes scattered in Indian Ocean

2010-02-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Gandhi’s ashes scattered in sea
To mark the 62nd anniversary of Gandhi’s death on January 30th, 1948, some of his ashes were recently sprinkled into the Indian Ocean off the South African coast. After his assassination, Gandhi’s body was cremated and his ashes were distributed amongst family, friends and followers. The ashes recently dispersed in the Indian Ocean were returned to Gandhi’s family last year, following the death of a family friend, Vilas Mehta, to whom they were given 62 years ago. The BBC reports.
In Makers of the Twentieth Century: M. K. Gandhi Judith M. Brown argues that Gandhi's lasting significance lies not so much in what he actually did, but what he stood for.

Diary of the 'Angel of Death' up for auction
In The Telegraph Allan Hall reports on the upcoming sale of Josef Mengele’s diary and letters by the auctioneers Alexander Autographs based in Stamford, Connecticut. The diary, which begins in 1960 when Mengele was 69, was recently discovered in police files in Brazil where he lived until his death in 1979. It is expected to fetch at least £40,000.

Globalisation in ancient Rome
Excavations at an ancient Roman cemetery in Vagnari, west of the city of Bari in southern Italy, have revealed that one individual buried on the site was of East Asian descent. Tracy Prowse, assistant professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, believes the East Asian man may have been a slave or worker on the site, which was a centre for iron smelting and tile production. Vagnari was an Imperial estate owned by the emperor in Rome and controlled by a local administrator. The discovery has raised important questions about human mobility, identity and diversity in Roman Italy. Read the report on the website of Science Daily.
For further information, visit our Ancient Rome focus page.

Understanding the Holocaust Today

2010-02-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

On Wednesday January 27th, Holocaust Memorial Day, a panel of leading historians of the Holocaust, including David Cesarani, Dan Stone, Zoe Waxman and Peter Longerich, gathered at the Imperial War Museum London to discuss the historiography of the Holocaust over the past ten years. The event marked the tenth anniversary of the museum’s Holocaust exhibition and the founding of the Royal Holloway, University of London, Holocaust Research Centre.

All four historians are in some way investigating a previously unexplored aspect of the Holocaust and each began by introducing his, or her, particular area of research. Whilst Longerich’s research is focused on both the perpetrators of the Holocaust and how existing thematic and geographic studies can be integrated into the general history of the Third Reich, Waxman is primarily interested in the ‘lived experience of those who suffered’. Waxman’s research seeks, in particular, to explore and integrate issues of testimony and gender into studies of the Holocaust. David Cesarani is currently researching the historiography of the Holocaust in the years immediately after the Second World War, and Dan Stone is writing a book about the history of Holocaust historiography.

How have studies of the Holocaust evolved since the end of the Second World War? More specifically, how has historiography changed over the past decade? Furthermore, how is research set to evolve in coming years?

It is generally assumed that studies and public commemoration of the Holocaust largely developed over the past decade. During the 1990s, historical studies came to focus increasingly on the victims of history. Rather than writing the history of the ‘great’, historians sought to redress the imbalance and to give a voice to those who had suffered and had been largely silenced. Increased commemoration of the Holocaust was a core feature of this general trend. On November 1st, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 designated January 27th as an International Holocaust Remembrance Day. January 27th has been celebrated as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK since 2001.

However, the perceived contrast between the considerable attention paid to the Holocaust by contemporary politicians compared to that in the years after the Second World War may be no more than an illusion. According to Cesarani, in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a big drive to research the Holocaust and considerable efforts to gather testimonies and commemorate its victims. Jews dominated British politics, in part as a result of the campaign led by Holocaust survivors to emigrate to Palestine. Although research into the Holocaust was later sidelined, this was, in Cesarani’s view, largely a reaction against its ‘over-commemoration’ in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In the United Kingdom in particular, attention had been focused on the Jewish population for years and there was a sense that the British public had had enough.

Efforts to research and commemorate the Holocaust may be no more widespread today than sixty years ago; nevertheless, studies of the Holocaust have undoubtedly evolved. The changing shape of Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in particular, has been a major influence on views of the Holocaust. According to Dan Stone, the effects of the collapse of communism and of European integration have been twofold, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe has given rise to far-right parties such as the Yobbik in Hungary, which were silenced during the communist era. On the other hand, there is also a sense in eastern European countries of an obligation to carry out national investigations into the Holocaust in their bid to join the European Union.

There remains considerable research to be carried out, especially in Eastern Europe, and views of the Holocaust will continue to change. Dan Stone highlighted important voids in Holocaust studies on the ‘micro level’, once again, in particular in Eastern Europe. Archives in Eastern Europe have only been opened in recent years and remain understudied. These untapped and unexplored archives are notably expected to reveal a great deal about mentalités in eastern European countries at the time and may help historians to understand what led to collaboration in some countries. However, a major obstacle to the study of eastern European archives is that they are mostly written in eastern European languages or in Yiddish. Interestingly, there has been a drive in recent years, in American universities in particular, to train historians in Yiddish. Nevertheless, according to David Cesarani, the future direction of Holocaust studies is clear: ‘the centre of gravity of writing history will shift eastwards’.

For more information on some of the controversies surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day read our article, Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain.

For an insight into the general debate surrounding the commemoration of historical disasters, read The Memory of Catastrophe.

Digging up Lenin and Mussolini on iPhone

2010-01-29T05:21:00.000-08:00

Digging up Lenin
David Crossland reports in Der Spiegel on plans in Berlin to dig up the giant statue of Lenin that was famously torn down in 1991. The statue will be displayed alongside 100 other disgraced statues in a new museum in the Spandau Citadel, a Renaissance fortress in the Spandau district of Berlin, due to open in 2013.
In Makers of the Twentieth Century: Lenin, D.A. Longley questions the usual criteria by which Lenin’s legacy and influence are judged.

Mussolini on iPhone
The iMussolini is an iPhone application released on January 21st which enables users to download the full text of over 100 speeches by Benito Mussolini. It has become a bestseller in Italy on the Italian version of iTunes. Its success has also stirred considerable controversy. Read the article in Spiegel Online.
In The Dead Duce John Foot tells the story of the death and posthumous life of Mussolini and the continuing power of the cult of his body over the Italian imagination.
In Coming to Terms with Fascism in Italy R.J.B. Bosworth describes how Italians of both the left and the right have used memories of Mussolini’s long dictatorship to underpin their own versions of history and politics.

Renovation of Christ the Redeemer
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports on the recent announcement of a 2.7 million euro project to restore the statue of the Christo redemptor in Rio de Janeiro. The construction of the statue took nine years from 1922 to 1931. It was inaugurated on October 12th, 1931. In 2007, the statue was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Staffordshire Hoard E-newsletter
At the beginning on the week, Staffordshire County Council announced the launch of an E-newsletter produced by the Staffordshire Hoard partnership with all the latest updates on fundraising efforts, events and research into the Anglo-Saxon treasure. It is possible to view the newsletter online and to subscribe to it.

The extraordinary story of the owner of the world’s largest poster collection
On the website of The Times, Suzanne Glass shares the story of her grandfather Hans Sachs, who was both Einstein’s dentist and the owner of the world’s largest poster collection in Germany prior to the Second World War. His collection was stolen from him on Kristallnacht, in 1938, and he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. When he wife successfully secured his release, the couple emigrated to the US. He was later told that his collection had been used by Soviet soldiers to wrap sausage meat. However, in 1970, some of the posters were rediscovered in the basement of the Museum for German History. Despite the family’s fight to reclaim the collection, the posters remain, to this day, in the museum.
In The Battle for Art in the 1930s David Elliott looks at how Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler used culture to their own ends and how the ramifications of this has continued to the present.

First archive centre to combine university and local authority records

2010-01-26T08:07:00.000-08:00

New Hull History Centre

The Hull History Centre opened to the public yesterday, January 25th. It is the result of a joint project between the University of Hull and Hull City Council to combine their archives into one purpose-built centre. The project was mostly funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Bringing together material held by Hull City Archives, Hull Local Studies Library and Hull University Archives, the centre is the first in the country to combine university and local authority archives.
The centre notably holds the city’s 13th-century Royal Charter, records relating to the port and docks of Hull, to local and national politics and pressure groups such as Liberty, as well as family and local history archives and over 100,000 photographs, illustrations, maps and newspapers. Other highlights of the collection include the hand-written poems of Philip Larkin (1922-1985), who was the librarian of the University of Hull for thirty years, letters to his parents, his duffle-coat and glasses, as well as documents relating to the pioneering aviator Amy Johnson (1903-1941), who was born in Kingston upon Hull, and to the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce (1759-1833), who was also a native of Kingston upon Hull.

Hull History Centre
Worship Street
Hull HU2 8BG
Telephone: 01482 317500
http://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/

Mona Lisa Mystery: Was Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa a disguised self-portrait?
According to an article by Murray Wardrop in The Telegraph, researchers from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage have recently reached an agreement with French cultural authorities to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci in effort to uncover the true identity of the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci is buried in the chapel of Saint-Hubert at Amboise Castle in the Loire valley. Scientists wish to study the artist’s skull in order to recreate his face and compare it to the Mona Lisa.

State parliamentarians in Germany to be checked for Stasi affiliation
Last Thursday, January 21st, the parliament for the German state of Brandenburg passed a law requiring that all state parliamentarians be checked for past affiliation with the Stasi. Brandenburg was the last of the five former communist states to do so. The ruling comes after a series of revelations that several members of the state parliament newly elected last September had collaborated with the East German secret police prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Read the article published on Spiegel Online.

First Impressions: The Real Van Gogh

2010-01-25T05:22:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

‘The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters’ opened this weekend at the Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition focuses on Van Gogh’s correspondence to provide an insight into his ideas about art, nature and literature and the way he defined himself as an artist and human being. It features over 35 original letters, on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and around 65 paintings and 30 drawings that express the principal themes found in the correspondence. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) wrote mostly to his younger brother Theo (1857-1891), who was an art-dealer and supported Vincent both emotionally and financially throughout his life and career. Other letters are addressed to his sister Willemien and to fellow artists, including the Dutch painter Anthon van Rappard and Paul Gauguin. Many are illustrated with small detailed sketches which Van Gogh used to show a work in progress. The first major Van Gogh exhibition in London for over 40 years, ‘The Real Van Gogh’ provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a misunderstood and misrepresented artist. The diversity and versatility of his works is striking; the breadth of his talent, which was only recognised after his death, is stunning.

Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert in the southern Netherlands in 1853. His father Theodorus van Gogh was a Protestant pastor of the Dutch reformed Church. Vincent began work, in 1869, for Goupie & Cie a firm of art-dealers in The Hague. He was thereafter transferred to London and then to Paris. His employment was, however, terminated in 1876 and the following year he travelled to Amsterdam to study theology. In 1879, he began working as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. Van Gogh’s career as an artist did not begin until 1880, when he was 27. During his relatively short ten-year artistic career he produced, nonetheless, over 800 paintings and 1,200 drawings. In the last 70 days of his life, he completed more than 70 works. On July 27th, 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later.

Van Gogh is most famous for his colourful depictions of still lives and landscapes using rhythmic and swinging brush strokes; however, the majority of his paintings were in black and white. He only used colour during the last four years of his career after he moved to Paris in February 1886. The first section of the exhibition is devoted to Van Gogh’s Dutch landscapes, which he painted, at the beginning of his career, in black and white and shades of brown. For Van Gogh one of the key duties of an artist was to study and depict nature. He wrote in a letter to Theo in July 1882: ‘the duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others’.

Van Gogh’s art was rooted in nature, and he returned to nature during the last years of his career, with his depictions of the seasons and landscapes of Provence that are most typically associated with him. From Dutch landscapes, however, he moved on to depict figures and the farm labourers and local weavers of the rural community of Nuenen, where he lived between 1883 and 1885. Once again, the majority of his works were in black and white and, following criticism of his multi-figure composition The Potato Eaters (1885), he worked almost exclusively on a series of black chalk drawings of labourers during the summer of 1885.

Van Gogh became a colourist when he moved to Paris in February 1886. Based on his studies of Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886), he developed a theory of contrasting complementary colours (red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet), which he perfected in a series of flower and fruit still lives. In the summer of 1887, he produced Two Cut Sunflowers, one of his earliest depictions of sunflowers. Van Gogh’s paintings became even more colourful when he moved to Arles in Provence two years later. He worked on a series of canvases based on complementary colours and increasingly came to view colour as a means to convey feeling and visual energy rather than reality.

A second secret and often underestimated facet of Van Gogh’s work is the influence of Japanese art. Van Gogh’s fascination with Japanese woodblock prints also developed following his move to Paris, where japonisme, the taste for all things Japanese, was very fashionable at the end of the 19th century. Vincent and his brother began a collection of Japanese woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and he later informed Theo that ‘all my work is based to some extent on Japanese art’. This Japanese influence is striking in the series of paintings and drawings that Van Gogh completed in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the Rhone delta, in particular Two Crabs (January 1889).

More could have been made of the artist’s letters upon which the exhibition is supposedly based; they are not translated and are often sidelined in small glass cases beside the paintings and drawings. Some aspects of Van Gogh’s career and correspondence also lack explanation: how, for example, did he meet the artists to whom he wrote so many letters? What response did his letters receive from both his brother and fellow artists? Although Van Gogh's gift for writing letters is somewhat obscured, the breadth of his talent as an artist shines nonetheless: he drew and he painted, in both colour and black and white, he painted landscapes, portraits and still lives, and was strongly influenced by Japanese art.

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters
Until April 18th
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
Telephone: 020 7300 8000
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

Images:

- Vincent van Gogh, Pollard Willow, July 1882 (Christie's Images Limited)

- Vincent van Gogh, Reaper, July-August 1885 (Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands)

- Vincent van Gogh, Two Crabs, January 1889 (Private collection)

Störtebeker’s Stolen Skull

2010-01-22T02:35:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley,

A skull believed to have belonged to the legendary 14th-century buccaneer Klaus Störtebeker and a life-size wax model of the pirate have disappeared from Hamburg history museum. The museum officially announced the theft in a press release on Wednesday January 20th. The skull went missing on January 9th and the police have since been investigating the theft, albeit without success. The museum has offered a reward of up to several thousand euros for any information leading to the skull’s recovery.

The story of Störtebeker’s life has been the subject of many myths and legends. He was the leader of the Victual Brothers, a group of privateers initially recruited by the Dukes of Mecklenburg to fight against the forces of Queen Margaret of Denmark, which had besieged Stockholm in the battle for Scandinavian supremacy. The name ‘victual’ is derived from the Latin term for provisions, victualia, and is thus a direct reference to the first mission of the group, which was to bring relief to the besieged town.

Klaus Störtebeker is believed to have been executed on an island in the Elbe River on October 20th, 1400, along with 30 other pirates. His skull was discovered in Hamburg, in 1878, at a time when the city was rapidly expanding and many large warehouses were being built for the shipping industry. The skull had been on display in the museum since 1922.

Spiegel Online also reported on the theft.

Image:

Störtebeker’s skull (Hamburgmuseum)

Chamberlain’s 1938 plane ticket to Munich sold for over £9,000

2010-01-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

by Kathryn Hadley

Two weeks ago today, we reported on the upcoming auction of Neville Chamberlain’s British Airways plane ticket to Munich. He flew out on September 29th, 1938, at 8.30am. The following day, Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier signed the Munich Agreement. The ticket was auctioned by Mullock’s on Tuesday January 19th. It was expected to fetch between £5,000 and £7,000.

The final selling price was considerably higher than expected. The ticket sold for £9,280. Richard Westwood-Brookes from Mullock’s Auctioneers was unable to tell me the name of the buyer, but confirmed this morning that he was a private individual. It is also believed that the British buyer purchased the ticket with the view to donating it to a British museum. More to follow…

Above is a photograph of the ticket and the envelope belonging to George William Denny MBE, one of the founders of British Airways, inside which it was recently discovered.