Essential History: 27th July

by Derry Nairn

Here's a quick look at some historical headlines making the British press, both over the weekend and today.

Guardian: Brutalist London Housing Estate threatened with demolition

Architectural History

The JoePublic blog at the Guardian today puts forward a case for the 1970s Robin Hood housing estate in east London to be saved from demolition. The key question from the debate is a hugely relevant one - how do we decide what historical buildings are worthwhile and which aren't?

Scotsman: Women's beauty evolving; men remain Neanderthal

Pre-history

The Scotsman today quotes a University of Helsinki report, stating that evolution is forcing women to become more attractive, while men remain rooted to their caveman genes. Raises a smile, but also makes you think...

Iranian periods of mourning have signalled great events

20th Century

Michael Purcell in the Times on the historical resonance of mourning ceremonies and martyrdom in Iranian culture. We have a related overview of recent Iranian history in the current August issue.

Confucianism enjoys a revival in China

Chinese History

Steven A Bell in the Guardian assesses recent uses of Confucianism beyond the realm of Chinese government. Academic spheres such as economics and psychology have been incresingly referring to its principles over the past decade. But did it ever go away, I wonder?

New efforts to record and protect ancient trees

Environmental History

The Times reports on a new campaign to protect Britain's ancient trees, described here rather nicely, as 'cathedrals of the ancient world'.

30,000 tribesmen invade Edinburgh for the Highland Games

British History

The Independent reports on this year's Highland Games in Scotland via several interlocking historical themes: record numbers of attendees; the 250th anniversary year of Robert Burns; inverse levels of interest in Scottish tribal history in Scotland and abroad. This article on Sir Walter Scott, '1822 spin doctor supreme', offers some helpful context.

Heritage site descriptions dumbing down?

British History

The Times reports on new efforts by English Heritage, the state body responsible for managing and promoting historic sites such as Stonehenge, to make its literature coherent to 'all intellectual levels'.

100 years since Bleriót flew the Channel

Science & Technology

The Daily Express remembers when Louis Bleriót flew the English Channel, and marks the occasion by talking to a Swede intent on replicating the historic journey

Profile of our very own Andrew Roberts

Authors

The Observer goes all rock'n'roll over one of our most consistent and interesting contributors, Andrew Roberts. He's 'a social animal of epic proportions'. Allegedly. Check out his last piece for History Today, A Woman at Waterloo.

The Nazi-hunting Jewish Brigade of the British Army

Second World War

The Times compares the exaggerated pulp history of Tarantino's new film with the real story behind Britain's postwar Nazi-hunters.

Madness & Modernity

by Derry Nairn

A fantastic new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection charts the sometimes blurred line between artistic genius and insanity. Madness & Modernity focuses on how the issue of mental illness was broached in fin de siécle Vienna. This was a period of artistic flux in Austria's imperial capital, with radical departures from tradition felt across the arts.

Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily deranged busts by the sculptor Messerschmidt. Next the viewer can observe the grandiose Steinhof sanatorium, 'the city on a hill', built by one of the most celebrated modernist architects of his day, Otto Wagner.

Portraitists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka broke from the norm by depicting their subjects in contorted, often spasmodic positions. Not least of these subjects was Schiele himself who, in a series of famous self-portraits, portrayed his own body in a range of painfully angular poses.

The curators of Madness & Modernity have chosen to display Schiele's work alongside photos of sanatoria inmates. These are taken from contemporary psychological journals which were widely circulating among Viennese artists as source material at the time. The hint is of a canny rather than an unhinged artist, choosing to portray himself in such a fashion, and in the process tapping into an general fascination with mental illness among his peers.

Other rooms boast a Kokoschka portrait, a set of spellbindingly colourful minature paintings by a sanatorium inmate, and studies by Freud - which contrast his mind-centred approach to the 'bodily whole' cures of the original electrotherapy equipment sitting nearby.

It was the penultimate room which captivated me the most, however. Here, two lesser heroes of Vienna's early 20th century artistic renaissance are remembered: Max Oppenheimer and Peter Altenberg. Oppenheimer's works are studies in the disturbed mind, in spite of their subjects' perfect sanity. The caricature of Peter Altenberg (see above), cap in hand with wild eyes and wringing hands, shows an artist who not only insisted on such depiction, but cultivated it. He had spells in sanatoria, slept through freezing winters with windows wide open, and maintained a permanent table at Vienna's famous Cafe Central, receiving both post and visitors there like a private office.

Madness, then, became a central tenet for this set of artists. This fascinating show at the Wellcome Collection suggests that mental faults of one type or another - addiction, obsessiveness, insomnia - continue to mascarade as self-identity. This has been the enduring contribution to contemporary culture of an extraordinary time and place.

Repairs start on the ‘cradle’ of Parliament

Restoration work has started on one of London’s most ancient buildings and home of the first Parliaments. The English Heritage project started its conservation this week (Jan 13th) on the weathered exterior of Westminster Abbey’s Chapter House. The repairs on the Chapter House, which dates from the 12th century and held the King’s Great Council in 1257, are to be completed by 2010. Tim Reeve, Properties Director for English Heritage, said: ‘The Chapter House is a building of international importance and sits at the heart not just of Westminster Abbey but of the Westminster World Heritage Site, one of the most visited places on earth.’ Barry Stow, of project leaders Stow and Beale Conservation Architects, said: ‘The early Chapter House was reportedly 'finer than Salisbury'. In mediaeval times it was used as a place of government, as a meeting place for the House of Commons and subsequently as a document archive.’

See the History Today articles Westminster 1585 and The Cult of St Edward the Confessor.

Evidence of Early Contact with Islam

by Derry Nairn

Antiquity, an Archaeology quarterly, reports in its December issue on the often under-reported historical incidences of contact between Britain & Ireland and Islamic cultures. In a fascinating article, Andrew Petersen documents the different types of archaeological finds which suggest interaction through the centuries.

Pottery, glass and ceramics originating in the Middle East, Moorish Spain, or merely bearing the influence of Islamic art have been found in sites throughout both Ireland and Britain. These can date from as early as the ninth century. Arab dinars are among the coins that have been found in Scandanavia, a relic of Viking raids on these shores.

However, perhaps the most surprising element of the brief review to the non-specialist reader is the indirect but strong influences which Islam held over early modern British and European architecture as a whole. The author traces a line from seventh-century Palestine (the Gothic arch) and ninth-century Iraq (the Tudor four-centre pointed arch) through to prominent Mughal-influenced British buildings such as Brighton's Royal Pavillion.

Petersen quotes no less an authority than Christopher Wren as saying:

'what we now vulgarly call the Gothick, ought properly and truly be named Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians'

(Wren, C. 1750. Parentalia: or memoirs of the family of Wrens, taken from Sweetman, J. 1991. The Oriental obsession: Islamic inspiration in British and American art and architecture, 1500-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press)

The content of the article is all the more interesting given the prevailing interests expressed in the media on relations between resident Islamic communities and European society as a whole. Also of note, next year, 2009, marks the 120th anniversary of Britain's first purpose-built mosque: the Shah Jahan mosque in Woking, Surrey.

Read these free articles from our archive :


Friends or Foes? The Islamic East and the West
Christopher J. Walker asks whether the two religions that frequently appear locked in an inevitable clash of civilizations in fact share more than has often been thought.


Veiled Politics
Zephie Begolo discusses the symbolic power of the veil in Iranian politics, and its consequences for women, before and during the Islamic Revolution.