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1914–1945
A 30-YEAR GLOBAL WAR
The enigma of Alan Turing
R
M E
Simon Schama’s
portraits of Britain
The Georgian London underworld
• Nero • Augustus • CaligulaWhy the bloodiest ancient Romanemperors were loved by their people
AGINCOURT: ENGLAND’S FINEST HOUR?
BRITAIN’S BESTSELLING HISTORY MAGAZINEOctober 2015
ROME’S GLORIOUS TYRANTS
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All Men Dream But Not EquallyLawrence Of Arabia
City Of DreamsA History of Vienna
City Of SpiesCold War Berlin
The Darts of LoveHenry VIII’s Six Wives
HISTORICAL
T R I P S
Rendezvous With DeathTh e Battle of the Somme
War And WineBordeaux in WW2
The Sugar BaronsProfit & Plunder in the Caribbean
Liberté, Égalité, FraternitéTh e French Revolution
Popes, Power & PurityReligious Orders in Medieval Italy
Operation Sea LionThe Nazi Invasion of Britain
Red HeatTh e Cuban Revolution
Deeds Done Beyond the SeaTh e Crusader Kingdom
I GigantiArt, Love & War in the Renaissance
A House DividedTh e American Civil War
Last Night I Dreamed Of PeaceTh e Vietnam War
The Great WarAn Introduction to the Western Front
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3
THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS
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OCTOBER 2015
WELCOME
CONTACT USPHONE Subscriptions & back issues0844 844 0250 – Those with impairedhearing can call Minicom 01795 414561Editorial 0117 314 7377EMAIL Subscriptions & back [email protected] [email protected] Subscriptions & back issuesBBC History Magazine, PO Box 279,Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8DFBasic annual subscription rates:UK: £59.80, Eire/Europe £62, ROW: £64Editorial BBC History Magazine, ImmediateMedia Company Bristol Limited, Tower House,Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN
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e
1914–1945A 30-YEAR GLOB
The enigma ofAlan Turing
MAGAZINE
Simon Schama’sportraits of Britain
The GeorgianLondon underworld
• Nero • Augustus • CaligulaWhy the bloodiest ancient Romanemperors were loved by their people
AGINCOURT: ENGLAND’S FINEST HOUR?
BRITAIN’S BESTSELLING HISTORY MAGAZINE£4 60 October 2015
ROME’SGLORIOUSTYRANTS
*Subscribers to BBC History Magazine receive FREE UK P&P on this collector’s edition. Prices including postage are: £11.49 for all other UKeresidents, £12.99 for Europe and £13.49 for Rest of World. All orders subject to availability. Please allow up to 21 days for delivery **Calls will cost 7p per minute plus your telephone company’s access charge. Lines are open 8am–8pm weekdays & 9am–1pm Saturday
Ian Kershaw
Why did the ‘war to end
war’ lead instead towards
an even greater conflagra
tion? And why was the
ultimate outcome of that
Second World War peace
and unprecedented pros
perity? There seem to me
to be few more fundamen
tal questions in the history
of 20th century Europe.
Ian discusses Europefrom 1914–45 on page 51
Tom Holland
The lurid glamour of the
Julio Claudians has
resulted in them becom
ing the very archetypes of
feuding and murderous
dynasts. They are the
ultimate in ancient world
box office. What could be
more fun than to write
about them?
Tom investigates Rome’sfirst emperors on page 22
Anne Curry
A few hours of fighting
but 600 years of history!
It’s not just the battle of
Agincourt that fascinates
me but why it still matters
to us today.
Anne offers her thoughtson the battle of Agincourt on page 42
The names of some of Rome’s earliest emperors the
likes of Nero, Caligula and Tiberius have become
bywords for tyranny and depravity. So it might seem
strange to discover that this dynasty was in fact hugely popular
throughout the Roman world. How can this conundrum be ex-
plained? That’s a challenge that ancient historian Tom Holland
takes up in this month’s thought-provoking cover feature. It begins
on page 22.
Henry V’s historical reputation couldn’t be more different from
these scandalous Roman rulers. Revered as one of England’s most
virtuous and accomplished monarchs, he is, of course, best
known today as the victor over the French at the 1415 battle of
Agincourt. On the 600th anniversary of that clash , we’ve asked
world-leading Agincourt expert Anne Curry to offer a fresh apprais-
al of Henry’s triumph and consider whether it really deserves its
iconic status. You can read her analysis on page 42.
Agincourt is, unsurprisingly, one of the topiccs under
discussion at our History Weekend festivals, which
begin shortly with a three-day event in York. WWe’re
looking forward to seeing many of you there and at
the later Malmesbury event, for which a numbber of
tickets are still available. Turn to page 48 or vissit
historyweekend.com if you would like to findd
out more about what should be two really
fascinating weekends.
Rob Attar
Editor
MAGAZINE
4
Features Every month
OCTOBER 2015
CONTENTS
6 ANNIVERSARIES
11 HISTORY NOW11 The latest history news
14 Backgrounder: the Labour Party
16 Past notes: Rugby
18 LETTERS
21 MICHAEL WOOD’S VIEW
32 OUR FIRST WORLD WAR
48 EVENTS
63 BOOKSThe latest releases, plus Andrew
Roberts on the battle of the Somme
77 TV & RADIO The pick of this month’s new history
programmes
80 OUT & ABOUT80 History Explorer: the Jacobites
85 Five things to do in October
86 My favourite place: Brittany
93 MISCELLANY93 Q&A and quiz
94 Samantha’s recipe corner
95 Prize crossword
98 MY HISTORY HERO
Nathaniel Parker chooses Henry VIII
USPS Identification Statement BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE (ISSN 1469-8552)(USPS 024-177) October 2015 is published 13 times a year under licence fromBBC Worldwide by Immediate Media Company Bristol Ltd, Tower House, Fairfax Street,Bristol BS1 3BN, UK. Distributed in the US by Circulation Specialists, Inc., 2 CorporateDrive, Suite 945, Shelton CT 06484-6238. Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, CTand additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, PO Box 37495, Boone, IA 50037-0495. G
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Find out why Lewis Carroll photographed Alice Liddell, on page 36
22 The glorious CaesarsTom Holland explains how Rome’s first
emperors, often painted as sex-mad
tyrants, ensured peace across the empire
28 Alan Turing: the man, the enigmaJoel Greenberg deciphers the troubled life
of Alan Turing, codebreaker extraordinaire
36 Portraits of a nationSimon Schama reveals what famous
British portraits tell us about both the
subjects and the eras in which they lived
42 Agincourt: medievalEngland’s finest hour?Anne Curry tells the story of Henry V’s
famous victory, and asks whether the
battle really deserves its iconic status
51 How Europe rose from the deadIan Kershaw explores how the continent
emerged stronger and more prosperous
from the rubble of the Second World War
58 The power of theGeorgian underclassTim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker
reveal how London’s poor transformed
the city’s justice and welfare systems
48 EVENTS
History Weekends atYork and Malmesbury
Last chance to
book for York
32 SUBSCRIBE
Save when you
subscribe today
5
51
Why Europe
prospered after the
Second World War
28
Alan Turing’s
codebreaking feats
32
Gory and heroic accounts
from the First World War
58
How Georgian ‘lowlifes’ influ-
enced justice and welfarej
42
How Agincourt became
a propaganda triumph
Expert advice, practical tips and inspiration forstudents hoping to plan a future based on the past
FR
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ION
SUP
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STUDY HISTORY FREE
16-PAGE
PULL-OUTMAGAZ I N E
Expert and practical
advice to help you plan
your history studies
22ODROR HAD
ICE BUT BE A
ACTOR”
BBC History Magazine
Dominic Sandbrook highlights events that took place in October in history
ANNIVERSARIES23 October 42 BC
Brutus commits
suicide
The leading conspirator inthe assassination of Julius Caesar
falls on his own sword
16 October 1888
‘Jack the Ripper’ posts
a gruesome memento
Half a human kidney is delivered – but is it really a gory souvenir cut from a recent victim of the serial killer?
For Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the aristocratic assassins of Julius
Caesar, the second battle of Philippi was a catastrophe. More than two years since Caesar’s murder, Brutus might have been forgiven for thinking himself safe. Even at the beginning of October 42 BC, when he was facing the combined armies of Caesar’s lieutenant Mark Antony and his heir Octavian, his position looked pretty good. But after a stalemate on 3 October at the first battle of Philippi, in modern-day Greece, things began to unravel.
The second battle could hardly have gone worse for Brutus. He had a strong defensive position but his officers were impatient to settle matters, and their insistence on mounting an attack soon backfired. After bitter hand-to-hand fighting against Octavian’s forces, Brutus’s army fell back in disarray.
That night, after fleeing from the battlefield, Brutus and his senior officers sat and talked in the darkness. He asked his old friend Volumnius to help him kill himself, but was refused. Brutus was undeterred. “After clasping each man by the hand… he said he rejoiced with exceeding joy that not one of his friends had proved false to him,” wrote the historian Plutarch, “and as for Fortune, he blamed her only for his country’s sake.” Then he withdrew with another old friend, Strato. According to some reports, Strato held Brutus’s sword, upon which the commander “fell with such force that it passed quite through his breast and brought him instant death”.
When Brutus’s enemies discovered his body, they treated it with striking respect; Antony even ordered that it be covered with his own expensive cloak. Brutus was cremated and on Antony’s orders, his ashes were sent to his mother in Rome.
The autumn of 1888 found George Lusk most agitated. Lusk was one of
Whitechapel’s most prominent local figures, a self-employed builder and churchwarden who had been elected chairman of the area’s Vigilance Committee. Like his fellow volunteers, Lusk was horrified by the police’s inability to solve the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and his name featured promi-nently in posters appealing for informa-tion. But as the tension mounted, Lusk began to worry that somebody – a mysterious bearded man, he thought – was watching his house.
On 16 October, a little parcel arrived at Lusk’s house in the evening mail, its postmark showing that it had been sent the day before. Lusk read the accompa-nying letter. “From hell,” it began, and continued in ungrammatical, misspelled
English: “Mr Lusk. Sor, I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer. signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk.”
In the parcel he found a little lump, preserved in alcohol. Initially thinking it a hoax, Lusk put away the box in his desk drawer, but next day he was persuaded to take it for medical tests. The results were chilling. It was indeed half of a human kidney; according to a newspaper report, one medical expert thought it had come from a woman aged about 45 who drank heavily. The Ripper’s second victim, Catherine Eddowes, had been 46 and was a drinker – and it was known that her kidney had been cut out. Could Lusk’s gory gift have been sent by the Ripper?
AR
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HIV
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A picture from the Illustrated Police News shows Constable Watkins discovering the body of Catherine Eddowes, whose left kidney was removed by ‘Jack the Ripper’
BBC History Magazine 7
Dominic Sandbrook is a historian and
presenter. His next series,
Let Us Entertain You, is due
to air soon on BBC Two
AL
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Brutus begs his companion to kill him in a 1756 painting by Giacomo Zampa. Having been decisively defeated in battle by Mark Antony and Octavian – later to rule Rome as emperor Augustus – Brutus felt he had little choice but to commit suicide
8 BBC History Magazine
Anniversaries
19 October 1922
At the Carlton Club in London,
Conservative MPs vote to break up
the coalition led by Lloyd George
(right), throwing the Liberals out of
office for the first time since 1906.
30 October 1864
After a series of devastating defeats,
Denmark signs the Treaty of Vienna,
ceding the duchies of Schleswig,
Holstein and Lauenburg to Prussia
and Austria.
12 October 633
At Hatfield Chase near Doncaster,
the troops of Gwynedd and
Mercia smash their Northum-
brian adversaries and kill their
king, Edwin.
On 11 October 1649, guns rang outacross Wexford. For more than a
week the Irish port had been besieged byOliver Cromwell’s New Model Army,which had identified it as a key royalistgarrison and a crucial base for attacks onparliamentarian shipping.
During the siege, Cromwell had beennegotiating with the local governor,David Synnot, for a peaceful surrender.The English commander promised thatif Wexford capitulated he would allowthe garrison leave to disperse, and that“no violence” would be offered to thetownsfolk. But on the morning of11 October, the talks broke down.A few hours later, for reasons thatremain unclear, the officer commandingWexford Castle decided on his owninitiative to hand it over to Cromwell.Now the New Model Army had theupper hand. As the town’s defendersbroke and fled, Cromwell’s men burstinto the town.
What followed was carnage. Theparliamentarian troops stormed throughthe streets of Wexford, and hundreds ofdefenders fled for the river Slaney; manydrowned, while others were shot downby their pursuers. Estimates of the totaldeath toll at Wexford differ widely, butmost historians agree that at least 2,000people may have been killed – perhapsmany more.
Contrary to popular belief, Cromwellhad not personally ordered the attackon the town, but he shed no tears forthe town’s victims – for this was thejudgment of God. “They were,” he wrote,“made with their blood to answer for thecruelties they had exercised upon diversepoor Protestants.”
11 October 1649
Cromwell’s army ravages
Wexford
Thousands are slaughtered despite promises of “no violence” by the English
Oliver Cromwell as painted by Robert
Walker in 1649. That same year, Cromwell
besieged the Irish town of Wexford, whose
population was ravaged by the New Model Army A
LA
MY
BBC History Magazine 9
The March on Rome had twoevident characteristics, raising
issues that lingered through the Italiandictatorship and today dividing historiansin their assessments of ‘the Italian road tototalitarianism’ (a word invented in Italy).
On the one hand there was violence and murder. The Fascist squads were armedand belligerent. Once the king hadappointed Mussolini as prime minister, the Fascists raged through the working-classsuburb near San Lorenzo, a raid thatculminated in the burning of the small local socialist library. It was a demonstrationthat, from that point on, there was only one truth – and it was Fascist. Between 18 and
20 December, a still more brutal assault on working-class Turin followed.
Yet Mussolini had not himself marched with the squads. He had stayed by the telephone in Milan, negotiating with this politician and that one. His government was a coalition. Only in January 1925 did he pronounce himself ‘dictator’ of an entrenched ‘totalitarian regime’, where “all [must be] for the state, nothing outside the state, no one against the state”.
In 1922 the king, the Vatican and almost the whole of the national establishment backed the new government. This dictatorship won considerable consensus, one reason being that, in contrast with
Hitler’s radical revolution, most of the time the ‘duce’ “worked towards Italians” – at least, those from the com-fortable classes.
COMMENT / Professor Richard Bosworth
“From that point on there was only one truth – and it was Fascist”
Richard Bosworth’s latest book is Italian Venice: A History (Yale University Press, 2014). He is now working on a study of Mussolini’s last lover, Claretta Petacci, and her world
28 October 1922
Mussolini marches to
power in Italy
The rise of the Blackshirts intimidates the king into
inviting a Fascist government
GE
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The March on Rome, which assumed mythical significance in the Fascist
imagination, was a chaotic affair. Italy in the autumn of 1922 was a turbulent, unhappy place, seething with industrial unrest and political discontent. By the final weeks of October, the Fascists’ paramilitary ‘Blackshirts’ were itching tostrike. On the 24th, with thousands of Blackshirts heading for the capital, their leader, Benito Mussolini, told an audience in Naples: “Our programme is simple: we want to rule Italy.” Tellingly, though, Mussolini himself held back from joining the march. A self-interested opportunist rather than a fanatic, he wanted to stay out of trouble if the elected government regained control.
As it happened, the authorities lost their nerve. With much of the liberal regime paralysed by indecision, on 26 October
the cabinet resigned, though the primeminister, Luigi Facta, agreed to remain in post to maintain order. Two days later, early on the 28th, Facta decided to strike back. He prepared to declare a state of siege, sending troops to defend Rome’s gates and bridges, and ordering the army to arrest the Fascist leaders. By the time he took the draft declaration of martial law to the king, Victor Emmanuel III, news of the state of siege was already being broadcast on agency wires – but the king refused to sign the declaration.
Victor Emmanuel’s decision changedthe course of Italian history. By lunch-time, the state of siege had been officially suspended. Facta was finished; Fascist supporters were openly celebrating in the streets of Rome. Two days later, the king invited Mussolini to form a government.
Why had he done it? Fear of civil war, some said, while others suggested that the king had deluded himself into thinking he could control Mussolini. If that was true, as events were to prove, he could hardly have been more mistaken.
Benito Mussolini (centre right) joins other Fascist leaders, including (left to right) General Emilio de Bono, Cesare Maria De Vecchi and Count Italo Balbo, for a celebratory
march after being sworn in as prime minister
Celts: art and identity24 Sept 2015 – 31 Jan 2016
The British Museum
This is the first major exhibition to
examine the full history of Celtic
art and identity, and is organised
in partnership between the British
Museum and National Museums Scotland.
The story unfolds over 2,500 years, from
the first recorded mention of ‘Celts’ to
an exploration of contemporary Celtic
influences. Discover how this identity
has been revived and reinvented over the
centuries, across Britain, Europe and beyond.
Around 500 BC, the peoples first referred
to as Celts lived across much of northern
Europe. They made objects decorated with
intricate patterns and fantastic animals, rich
with hidden meanings, which were used for
feasting, religious ceremonies, adornment
and warfare. Over time, their distinctive
abstract art style transformed and took on
new influences, through Roman conquest,
the spread of Christianity, shifting national
politics, right up to the present.
Many objects in the exhibition provide clues
to and raise questions about Celtic identity.
From the depths of the River Thames come
magnificent Iron Age treasures such as the
Waterloo helmet and Battersea shield. Roman
jewellery, early medieval manuscripts and
crosses, a Liberty tea set and even a modern
football shirt tell a constantly evolving British
and Irish story. Major loans, such as the
spectacular Gundestrup cauldron, reveal
profound cultural connections with Europe.
Combine your exhibition visit witha 3-course meal in the Great CourtRestaurant, at the heart of the Museum.Enjoy a special set menu inspired bythe Iron Age, including wild, foraged andseasonal ingredients from across the British and Irish Isles.
FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN a pair of
tickets, accompanying exhibition book
and a Celtic themed meal, please visit
hotticketoffers.com/competition/celts/
and use the code HISTORY.
www.britishmuseum.org/celts
IMAGES: TOP LEFT Slab of grey sandstone with a cross on
one side. From Monifieth, Angus, Scotland, c. AD 800 900. ©
National Museums Scotland TOP RIGHT Hunterston brooch
Silver, gold and amber Hunterston, south west Scotland,
AD 700 800. © National Museums Scotland BELOW LEFT
Horned helmet. Iron Age, 150 50 BC From the River Thames
at Waterloo Bridge, London, England. © The Trustees of the
British Museum BELOW RIGHT The Battersea shield. Iron
Age, c. 350 50 BC. Found in the River Thames, London,
England. © The Trustees of the British Museum
BBC History Magazine 11
The latest news, plus Backgrounder 14 Past notes 16
HISTORY NOW
Sowing the seeds An 18th-century illustration of the Venus flytrap, whose discovery contributed to new ways of seeing the world
BR
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Have a story? Please email Matt Elton at [email protected]
How the
Venus flytrap
caused
the French
RevolutionPoor harvests and unfair taxes are
widely blamed for sparking the
18th-century unrest, yet the discovery
of a strange meat-eating plant may have
contributed too. Matt Elton reports
A plant that catches and devours insects in the lush subtropical wetlands of the United States is
unusual enough in its own right. Yet a new study suggests that the Venus flytrap’s story could be even more peculiar: it may have contributed to the French Revolution.
“The Venus flytrap caused a stir when its discovery came to European attention in the 1760s: it had leaves, flowers and roots alongside something that looked and acted a lot like an animal’s mouth,” University of Cambridge historian Susannah Gibson tells BBC History Magazine. This blurring of the lines between ‘plant’ and ‘animal’ life, Gibson argues, disrupted the estab-lished way in which scientists categorised the natural world – and even more crucially, contributed to the changes in intellectual thought that were to feed into France’s revolutionary movement.
Buy why? The answer lies in the fact that people had traditionally assumed that nature was divided by God into three discrete ‘kingdoms’: animal, vegetable and mineral. They also widely believed that society was similarly ordered by God into upper, middle and labouring classes. So the discovery of the Venus flytrap – with its category-crossing characteristics – led
12 BBC History Magazine
them to pose the following question: ifnature’s boundaries weren’t as rigid aspreviously thought, what about the boundaries of society?
It was a question seized upon by a wide range of social campaigners in the18th and 19th centuries, most especiallyadherents of the Enlightenment, whochampioned the power of reason andanalysis over dogma and tradition.“Many of the characters associated withthe lead-up to the French Revolutionhappily mixed politics, the sciences,philosophy and mathematics,” saysGibson. “As evolutionary theories weredeveloped into the early 19th century,the idea that plants and animals couldtransmute to other, higher forms wasjumped on by radical campaigners eagerto show that being born working classshould not necessarily condemn a personto a life of drudgery.”
Of the many figures mixing scientific, political and social thought in the period, Gibson cites Denis Diderotand Jean le Rond d’Alembert as being
particularly important. As editorsof the Encyclopédie, a wide-rangingreference work published between1751 and 1772, they collected articlesfeaturing the kind of Enlightenmentperspectives that were to play a vitalrole in revolutionary thought. Indeed,some of its writers used their contribu-tions to challenge religious authority,and hoped that the publication wouldwidely disseminate such thought amongthe public for generations to come.
Gibson is keen to caution that seeingdiscoveries such as the Venus flytrap asthe sole reason for revolution is overlysimplistic. “The French Revolution hadbeen fermenting for a long time and wasborn of a range of social, political andintellectual factors, so we can’t attributea single cause,” she says. “And, initially,the link between changing conceptionsof nature and how society was viewed was more a matter of questioningaccepted wisdom than anything else.”
Yet Gibson’s research – which appearsin Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?: HowEighteenth-Century Science Disruptedthe Natural Order, recently published byrOxford University Press – points to theimportance of exploring connectionsbetween the scientific and political worldduring the period. “Scientific discoveriesand revolutionary thought existed in thesame milieu and influenced each other in subtle ways,” she says. B
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“Many figures associatedwith the lead-up tothe French Revolutionhappily mixed politicsand the sciences”
Scientific revolution? An 18th-century depiction of the storming of the Bastille,the fortress in Paris that symbolised royal authority. Such political actions must beunderstood in the context of wider intellectual discoveries, argues Susannah Gibson
WHAT WE’VE LEARNED THIS MONTH
Experts are stumped
by ancient inscriptionsA series of Hebrew inscriptions,found at a dig site in Jerusalem,are being examined by archaeolo-gists in a bid to discover what theyrepresent. The markings are thoughtto be roughly 2,000 years old andfeature words and symbols of palmtrees and a boat. Early suggestionsfor possible meanings range from areligious message to ancient graffiti.
Document could be the
world’s oldest Qur’anRadiocarbon dating of a Qur’anmanuscript stored at the Universityof Birmingham indicates it is at least1,370 years old, meaning that it isamong the earliest known examplesof the Muslim holy text. The testssuggest that the fragments, writtenon goat or sheep skin, were createdwithin a few years of the foundingof Islam between AD 610 and 632.
Nefertiti may be buried
with TutankhamunThe whereabouts of Egyptian queenNefertiti’s remains have long beena mystery – but, according to oneexpert, they may be inside Tutankha-mun’s tomb in the Valley of theKings. Nicholas Reeves from theUniversity of Arizona believes thatscans of the tomb carried out in 2014show evidence that it was plannedfor a queen rather than a king. Theyalso reveal a portal that could leadto a room containing Nefertiti’s body.Egyptologist Joyce Tyldsley urgedcaution, but said that it would be
“absolutely brilliant”he theory provesbe correct.
Does Nefertitishare a restingplace with themost famousof all pharaohs?
absif thto
History now / News
BBC History Magazine 13
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He defeated the French atAgincourt in 1415, staving
off civil war in England andsecuring the oceans for Englishtrade. Yet only 26 per cent ofrespondents in our recent surveywere able to correctly identifyHenry V in a famous portrait.
We asked members of Insiders,a panel of magazine readers setup by Immediate Media – thecompany that publishes BBCHistory Magazine – to attach theeright name to portraits ofhistorical figures who have hitthe headlines in the past year.Of the 10 faces (some of whichare featured below), Henry V’scame second to last.
So why did Henry score sobadly? Juliet Barker, a specialiston the medieval period, suggests
that the reason may be asfundamental as the king’s face.“As French ambassadors noted,Henry looked more like aclergyman than a warrior king,”she says. “His portrait doesn’t fitour image of what the victor ofAgincourt should look like – he’snot wearing armour or carryinga weapon, let alone flaunting thecrown and royal regalia as mostother monarchs would do.”
Barker hopes that this year’sanniversary brings Henry backinto the public eye. “I hope thatthe Agincourt commemorationsbring his remarkable achieve-ments into greater focus,” shesays. “Henry’s victory confirmedhis status throughout Europe asa king to be reckoned with. On amore permanent basis, I’d like to
SURVEY
Would you recognise Henry V?
This poll suggests you may not...This year marks the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt
– yet our new survey shows that the king who secured English
victory is less famous than we might think. By Matt Elton
see Agincourt and Henry madea part of the school curriculum.Medieval history is full of larger-than-life characters, and it’s areal shame it is not taught morewidely.” (A series of anniversaryprojects aimed at school pupilsis being run by the HistoricalAssociation: full details areavailable at history.org.uk.)
Henry wasn’t the onlyhistorical figure whose faceproved unfamiliar. Of the 2,884
respondents surveyed, only onein five recognised John I. Thismay seem surprising, givenmedia coverage of this year’s800th anniversary of the sealingof Magna Carta, but it’s nota painting that is particularlyfamiliar – and the date of itscreation means that it’s rathermore rudimentary than some ofthe other portraits in the survey.
Richard III is another figurewhose story has been hard tomiss in recent years. His portraitwas correctly identified by justover three quarters of entrants:more impressive than Henry andJohn, but still fewer than mightbe expected given media focuson the discovery of his remains.
Other historical heavyweights fared better: all respondentsspotted an image of Queen Victo-ria, while only slightly fewer iden-tified Henry VIII. Napoleon beathis rival, the Duke of Welling-ton, by 9 percentage points (93and 84 per cent respectively).For more on Agincourt, see our
feature on page 42 . Juliet Barker
will be appearing at BBC History
Magazine’s History Weekend:
turn to page 48 for more details
“Henry V’s portraitdoesn’t fit ourimage of what thevictor of Agincourtshould look like”
Queen Victoria
100%
Napoleon93%
Duke ofWellington
84%Henry VIII97%
Richard III76%
Henry VKing John20%
Of the famous faces featured in our survey (some of which are shown here, in chronological order), Henry V andJohn proved largely unfamiliar, while others – including Henry VIII – were recognised by almost all respondents
Per
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14 BBC History Magazine
History now / Backgrounder
Just becauseLabour has never
won a general electionwith a radical economicvision does not meanthat it never could winsuch an electionBRIAN BRIVATI
Jeremy Corbyn’s transformation from rank outsider to
bookmakers’ favourite electrified the Labour leadership
campaign. But what does that campaign tell us about the
party’s prospects for winning back power? Two historians
offer their personal perspectives
Interviews by Chris Bowlby, a BBC journalist specialising in history
When Labour loses power, it swings left. Following the party’s split at the formation of a Conservative-dominated National Government in 1931, George Lansbury – a pacifist – replaced Ramsay Macdonald as leader. He was destroyed by Ernest Bevin at the 1935 party conference for repudiating the party’s policy of opposing the European dictators. Lansbury thought sanctions were economic warfare. Bevin ridiculed him for “hawking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what to do with it”. He was replaced by Clement Attlee.
Labour won a landslide in 1945, then held on narrowly in 1950; when they suffered defeat in 1951, the Bevanites (supporters of Nye Bevan) dominated the post-mortem. But while the party swung left, the leader-ship did not. Attlee stayed on as leader to ensure that the right kept control, trying to
prevent his arch rival, Herbert Morrison, from taking over.
When Labour lost in 1970, having won in 1964 and 1966, it adopted one of the most left-wing manifestos in its history. From 1945 to 1951 the manifesto had sat on the cabinet table, and every word was imple-mented. From 1974 to 1979 every word was ignored. So after defeat in 1979, the left tried to change the rules to ensure that they would never again be shut out.
Labour leadership changes have rarely been unpredictable events. There has traditionally been much loyalty to leaders. When Wilson resigned mid-term in 1976, it was Callaghan who was positioned to succeed; yet when he in turn resigned, things became extremely messy. The already veteran left-winger Michael Foot just beat Denis Healey for the leadership. But it was Tony Benn and his entryist supporters from Militant and other hard-left groups that made the 1980s a turbulent decade for Labour leaders.
With the election of John Smith in 1992 and then Tony Blair in 1994, the real contest went underground. Brown’s long leadership campaign and the Shakespearean duel between the brothers Miliband kept the leadership interesting, but most of the action was behind the scenes. In 2015 the leadership has perhaps got a little too interesting!
When Labour was defeated in 1983 – at the time, its worst electoral performance since the Second World War – Tony Benn’s response
was magnificent in its folly. The lesson Benn took away from that election was that at last millions of people had voted for socialism, so more – not less – left-wing socialism was the route to victory. The precedents of the past 100 years do not support this notion. Most of what seemed outlandish politics of the hard left in the 1970s, such as gay rights and the sharing economy, is now mainstream – except the two key issues that make Labour electable or unelectable: the economy and defence. Labour does not usually win elections with an economic policy not in accord with the consensus of the time. Labour does not usually win elections when advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Blairites suggested that these observations were universal truths from history. Historians know there are no such things. Simply because Labour has often swung to the left after defeat and never won a general election with a radical economic vision does not mean
that it never could win such an election. These debates will not go away.
Brian Brivati’s books include a biography of Hugh Gaitskell and The End of Decline: Blair and Brown in Power (Politico’s Publishing, 2007)
The historians’ view…
What does the future hold for the Labour party?
Labour leadership candidates Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Jeremy Corbyn pictured at a hustings in Glasgow in July 2015. “When Labour loses power, it swings left,” says Brian Brivati
BBC History Magazine 15
On one level, the leadership contest has been a very modern campaign in its use of technol-ogy to reach out to voters and encourage participation and party registration. But if modernisation is taken to mean abandon-ment of Attlee-era ideas of socialism and stateownership, things look somewhat different.
When Attlee and other social democratic leaders introduced sweeping nationalisation and state intervention in the market after the Second World War, most viewed this as a ‘modern’ renegotiation of the 19th-century liberal consensus. The postwar mixed economy suffered a near-mortal blow in the 1970s and 80s. Kinnock and Blair led the Labour party during a period when the @
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Dr Laura Beers is a lecturerin modern British history at theUniversity of Birmingham, andauthor of Your Britain: Mediaand the Making of the LabourParty (Harvard, 2010)
political firmament in Britain (and interna-tionally) had shifted dramatically. They believed Labour could remain relevant only by advocating a more pro-business, individu-alist, social democratic future. The question being posed by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters iswhether it is now possible to reopen the debate about the ideal relationship between the state, the market and the individual in modern society.
One thing this contest has also shown is that there’s no substitute for the intimacy of the hustings. Personal connection between representative and represented had been largely severed by more-mediated political communication via the press, film and radioin the first decades of the 20th century, and more recently through social media. Corbyn’s campaign, in particular, with its emphasis on mass meetings, offered an opportunity to reestablish that physical connection between politicians and supporters. If Corbyn wins the leadership, it will be interesting to see whether other politicians start to rethink their reliance on mediated communication.
One other historic change is the possible election of Labour’s first permanent female leader. But that didn’t stop more traditional questions being asked. Both Liz Kendall and
Yvette Cooper took offence at the debate overwhether Cooper being a mother and Kendallnot was relevant to their fitness to lead theparty. But there remains a larger questionabout the difficulties of combining mother-hood with a political career. In the UK, longparliamentary sittings and cabinet sessionshave been notoriously family unfriendly.
Britain’s first and second female cabinetministers, Margaret Bondfield (1929) andEllen Wilkinson (1945), remained single andwere often characterised as being married totheir careers. Later, neither Barbara Castlenor Jennie Lee, though married, had children.Margaret Thatcher, of course, is the exceptionthat proves the rule. As Thatcher emphasised,she did not work before her children wereschool age, and she was able to employdomestic help. The House of Commons hassince evolved to become more family friendly,and it’s a testament to changing politicalculture that one of the Labour leadership
candidates is a motherof three.
Margaret Bondfield, who in 1929 became the first female cabinet member, was character-ised as being married to her career
BOOK
British Labour Leaders by Charles Clarke and Toby James, eds (Biteback Publishing, September 2015)
DISCOVER MORE
Is it now possible to reopen the
debate about the ideal relationship between the state, the market and the individual in modern society?DR LAURA BEERS
16 BBC History Magazine
History now / Backgrounder
An illustration showing an early rugby union game in London, 1871
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n the small village of Manxbridge,Somersetshire, Mr Judcote kept
a monkey named Hulch. For a longtime the animal had been given thefreedom to roam around its master’shouse and gardens; though large, it wasbelieved to be harmless. One morningin the summer of 1870, though, the monkey escaped.
Mrs Hemmingway, one of MrJudcote’s neighbours, was out walkingin her garden with her youngest sister,Clara, when Hulch suddenly appeared.Snatching Mrs Hemmingway’snewborn baby out of Clara’s arms – asa special favour, Clara had been allowedto hold the child – Hulch sprang ontothe roof of a nearby outhouse, stillcarrying the baby, then disappeared.
Mrs Hemmingway, distraught andterrified for the safety of her baby,immediately ran to Mr Judcote’s house;he dispatched a number of his manser-vants to find both child and monkey.No tracks or evidence of the missingcould be found, and all parties weredeeply worried. Quite by chance,around eight o’clock that evening, somefarm labourers discovered the runawaymonkey, still holding the baby – luckily unharmed – in a nearby wood, andreturned both to their respective homes.Newsfrom bperarcand reered bRidderegulaBBCFree T
OLD NEWS
A child is stolenby a monkey
Illustrated Police News/ 9 July 1870
Did William Webb Ellis really inventthe game at Rugby School?The evidence for this story – that aschoolboy invented rugby by pickingup and running with the ball during afootball match – is sketchy to say theleast. At the start of the 19th centurya number of public schools (includingRugby) were playing a version offootball, all with slightly different rules,though it was normally permissible tocatch the ball to kick it. In the 1820s,boys at Rugby began running withball in hand, and this graduallybecame an integral part of their game.
In 1863 the Football Associationwas formed to standardise the laws ofhe game. Running with the ball was
outlawed but Rugby carried on withts own version of ‘rugby football’.
How did the game spread?Mainly through the influence oformer Rugby pupils who introducedt where they lived and worked. Soonrugby clubs’ were being establishedhroughout Britain and the colonies
but, as with early football, there wereconsiderable variations in the rules.
How was rugby standardised?n 1871 a meeting was held atLondon’s Pall Mall Restaurant. The
Wasps representative turned up atthe wrong restaurant but 21 otherrugby clubs were represented; theRugby Football Union (RFU) wasfounded and three former Rugbypupils, all lawyers, deputed to writethe laws of the game. However, itwasn’t all plain sailing. Disputes overthe laws continued at an internationallevel for some time.
Why did the game split intoRugby Union and Rugby League?Money. When, in 1895, the RFU votedagainst the payment of players for‘broken time’ (ie for lost earnings)while playing, 22 northern clubs brokeaway to form the Northern Union.Later renamed the Northern RugbyFootball League, it would allow itsplayers to be paid and introducedchanges to the laws of the game.
The Union authorities determinedlydefended the concept of amateurism,imposing draconian penalties – in-cluding life bans – on any player whohad anything to do with the profes-sional game. It wasn’t until 1995, acentury after the original split, that theInternational Rugby Board bowed to the inevitable and accepted thatUnion players could be paid.
As England hosts the 2015 Rugby World Cup,
Julian Humphrys looks at the origins and early
history of the sport
PAST NOTESRUGBY
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ps story sourcedbritishnewspa-chive.co.ukediscov-by Fernell. Fernarly appears on Radio 3’sThinking
wthoit
HMfoit‘rthbc
HInL
AgincourtThe battle of
ww roya armour es org
#Ag ncourt
600th Anniversary
Exhibition
Discover the medieval armour, art,
music, sculpture and manuscripts
which together reveal the story,
legacy and myths of this
extraordinary battle.
Tower of London
23 Oct 2015 - 31 Jan 2016
The national collection of arms and
armour at the Tower of London
18 BBC History Magazine
Your views on the magazine and the world of history
LETTERS
Readers of your recent article onHiroshima (Should America HaveDropped the Bomb?, August) may be?interested in the following.
In July 1963, I had a meetingwith ex-president Truman in his
library in Independence, Missouri.A postgraduate student in the USA, I hadwritten a thesis on ‘presidential decision-making’, choosing as my case studyTruman’s decision to use the A-bomb.I told him, with what I took to be appro-priate respect, about my project. Butthe old man broke through my deferential
manner with a guffaw: “That wasno decision!”
He reminded me that he had becomepresident only a few months beforeHiroshima upon the sudden death ofFranklin D Roosevelt, and had beenconvinced by FDR’s advisers, notably thevenerable secretary of war, Henry LStimson, that dropping the atomic bombwas the one initiative that might bring thePacific war to a rapid end without the needfor a protracted and bloody invasion of theJapanese islands.
Truman felt he had no option other thanto order the bomb project toproceed. Indeed, if he had been thekind of person to have said ‘No’ tosuch a proposal, he would hardlyhave been elected senator fromMissouri in the first place or beenchosen to run with FDR asvice-president. When asked about,for example, the dangers of nuclearradiation, or whether the bombhad really been used in part at leastto impress or scare the Soviets,Truman was dismissive. Thesewere the dreamings, he said, ofpeople who had nothing better to
do than speculate about matters that theyweren’t competent to judge.
Truman by now – at the height of theCold War – was something of a nationalicon, and he clearly enjoyed tellingincredulous ‘youngsters’ about the olddays when giants stalked the land and he,Harry Truman, had stood up to them andmade the world safer (as he saw it) for therest of us. And he undoubtedly went to hisgrave a few years later confident that his‘decision’ to drop the atomic bomb wasright and inevitable.
Incidentally, Truman also told me thatthe topic I should really have chosen formy dissertation was his decision to go towar in Korea!Daniel Snowman, senior research
fellow, Institute of Historical Research,
London
The day I discussed Hiroshima with Harry Truman
We reward the letter of themonth writer with our ‘HistoryChoice’ book of the month.This issue it is The War in theWest: The Rise of Germany,1939–1941 by James Holland.Read the review on page 67
No pangs of conscienceYour article on the bomb was highlyilluminating and reflected the change inmoral compass with the passage of time.In August 1945, Britain, among manynations, was war-weary and, havingeliminated the horrors of Nazism, facedan extended war in the far east with anequally brutal and inhuman regime. I donot believe many British citizens, at thetime, harboured much sympathy for thefuture fate of Japan.
I volunteered as a soldier in July 1945with the prospect of protracted activeservice to reinforce the many who hadserved up to that time and who still facedmore intense danger and deprivation. Iactually joined the colours on 16 August1945 – VJ+1 – and became the definitivepostwar solider! I regard myself as areasonably moral man, lucky enough tomiss out on the gruelling combat of the
Second World War, but II felt no pangs ofconscience then and, desspite theblandishments, feel none today.Martin Sinnatt, Bordon
Death by smartphoneWhen reading the articlee in your Julyissue entitled The Perils oof Piety in TudorEngland, I wondered if your magazinewill have an article 500 yyears from nowon the perils of technology in the 21stcentury? I have a strong feeling yourreaders of the future wouuld be amazed tolearn how many people ddie or severelyinjure themselves now because theyare playing with their smmartphonesor other technical toys wwhile walkingor driving. Of course, the other issueis whether the victims off todaywill get to heaven as quicckly asthose who died in TudorrEngland while
orshipping God!woebra Gambrill,De Bratislava
Israel’s white-knuckle raidhis article on the raid on EntebbeIn
( Brilliant Rescue?A , August) Saul Davids successfully recreated the extremehad mounting tension as the Israelianilitary and government consideredmieir options, as well as the white-the
nuckle moments of the raid itself.knut never in a thousand years could heBunvey the explosion of joy and reliefcoat swept Israel in the aftermath, whichthaas a growing boy at the time in whatI, aas (and remains) a very small place,wall vividly recall.stiIt is worth mentioning that thetermath to the Entebbe raid alsoaftcluded Amin’s massacre of hundredsincKenyans in Kampala, and that furtherof
alestinian-Ugandan co-operationPa
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The opinions expressed by our commentators are their own and may not represent the views of BBC History Magazine or the Immediate Media Company
Harry Truman (pictured) told Daniel Snowman the US had no option but to drop the bomb
BBC History Magazine 19
SOCIAL MEDIAWhat you’ve been saying
on Twitter and Facebook
WRITE TO USWe welcome your letters, whilereserving the right to edit them.We may publish your letters on ourwebsite. Please include a daytimephone number and, if emailing, a postaladdress (not for publication). Lettersshould be no longer than 250 words.
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included the bombing of a Jewish hotelin Nairobi, as well as the invasion ofTanzania, only ending with the downfallof Amin’s regime.Dr Eyal Meltzer, Holon, Israel
Dylan still rocksJust a minor point of disagreementconcerning Michael Wood’s columnin the August 2015 edition. The lastsentence should read: “...the Beatles andDylan really do (not did) matter”. BobDylan still records and tours and is stillimportant. The Beatles will always beimportant, and both will always matter.Dr Albert Williams, Manchester
It’s a date!I refer to the image of the Spitfires onpage 19 of the August issue (Letters,shown above) and the subsequentrequest for an exact date. I think that youwill find that the image depicts SpitfireLF XVIe’s of No 19 Squadron at RAFMolesworth in September 1945.David Watkins, Barnstaple
Running for the cameraThe picture in question shows SpitfireMk XVI’s (Mark 16s), probably LF Mk
16e’s. These were introduced into servicein early 1945 and were effectively SpitfireMk IXs with US Packard-built Merlinengines. The bubble-canopied versionjust about saw service in the closingmonths of the war.
The photo is interesting as it probablyshows Spit 16s of No 19 squadron betweenMarch and November 1946 – when thesquadron was briefly equipped with themafter relinquishing its P-51 Mustangs, andbefore it re-equipped with DeHavillandHornets. The location is possibly RAFWittering, or perhaps Molesworth.
My guess is this picture was staged –perhaps for a Battle of Britain anniver-sary (the timeframe of this squadronhaving these Spits fits for this if thepicture was taken in August or Septem-ber 1946 too), as there seem to be at leastthree similar but different photosin existence, two of which feature arunning dog with the pilots, and groundcrew waiting on and around the aircraft.Jonathan Tabinor BFA Oxon, Oxford
Corrections As reader Nigel Pocock points out, theimage of a sugar plantation in Septem-ber’s News depicts Antigua and notJamaica as we had stated.
@HistoryExtra: Was America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2 justified?
Dominic Romani Yes it was justified,
and the arguments against the bomb
show an appeal to emotions and an
ignorance of the complicated
situation the world was in at the
time. America was not dropping
A-bombs on an innocent and
peaceful, defenceless society
Eleanor McLees It is hard to judge
with impartiality. War is a terrible
evil and evil things were done by
all sides. True, it ended the war
sooner, but the bombs unleashed
the horrors of atomic war. So I
would say no. Nothing can
justify death on that scale
Lupe Torres Yes they were
justified. If they did not drop the
bombs the US would have had to
invade Japan. In the process, many
thousands of American soldiers
would have died
Philip Meers Part of military
success is striking the first blow.
Already far too many had died
in the conflict, including the many
innocent civilians caught up in the
war. By making this attack, untold
numbers of people were saved
Jane Degnan War is hell. It ’s
bloody and messy. Let’s not seek
to justify it, rather to learn from
its horrors and avoid it at all costs
You’ve also been saying...
@GloryGloryTHFC Subscribing to
the @HistoryExtra podcasts is one
of the best things I’ve ever done
#historystudent
@ClemKirby Flight delayed
but I have prosecco and
BBC History Magazine so #winning
@LivChapter Luna has decided I’m
not allowed to read @HistoryExtra
so she’s shoved it away, got comfy
and dribbled on it
A hostage is greeted on her return to Israel following the raid on Entebbe in 1976. “An explosion of joy and relief” swept the country, writes Eyal Meltzer
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BBC History Magazine 21
Michael Wood on… the battle of Agincourt
What a year it has been for historyanniversaries – and there’s another greatone this month: Agincourt! When I wasyoung, my father had an Edwardian
children’s book on British history which had manygripping pictures: the Thin Red Line, Lucknow, Rorke’sDrift. One of the most affecting to my mind was apainting from 1884 by Sir John Gilbert: The Morning ofAgincourt. Banks of lowering cloud; swirling smoke fromdistant campfires; crows rising over the sodden forest;and the solemn demeanour of the English knights,hands held in prayer on their saddle pommels. Thepainting is constructed as a myth, which of course it is:good old Sir Thomas Erpingham standing shoulder toshoulder with the English yeomen. As Shakespeare said:“Gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think them-selves accursed they were not here.” It’s one of the hoaryold myths of the English state.
Son of a usurper, Henry V was new on the throne. Hehad already faced a Lollard rising which had reachedLondon. A war of aggression deflected from domestictroubles. Easy to forget this when you watch Shake-speare’s play, so electrifyingly recreated on film byLaurence Olivier just before D-Day in 1944.
The story of English intervention on the continentgoes far back in time, long before the Angevins andPlantagenets spent vast resources and countless livesprosecuting their claims in France. First, as far as I know,was Æthelstan, who provided ships and men to help hisfoster son Alan Twisted Beard regain the kingdom ofBrittany from Viking occupiers. This was one of ourmore successful foreign interventions.
Later, of course, intervention became a matter ofpolicy: stepping in whenever one continental Europeanpower – usually the French – became too powerful. TheWar of the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years’ War; theNapoleonic Wars; and then two world wars. Thankgoodness for the European Union, I can only reflect!
Still carrying those childhood myths, I went toAgincourt long ago, one late sixties summer hitching
back from Greece. Heading for Calais, just as Henry haddone with his bedraggled English army that October1415, I took a local train from Arras to Blangy surTernoise and then walked up the D 104, then just a pittedcountry road.
After a couple of miles I came to Maisoncelle whereHenry camped the night before the battle, his army wet,hungry and plagued with dysentery. The battlefield is amile beyond, just as described by an eyewitness in thechronicle Gesta Henrici Quinti, flanked by two woods,about a thousand yards apart – easy to imagine thickwith autumn mud. Back in the sixties, there was ascruffy country crossroads where an old signpost showedAzincourt to the left, and Tramecourt to the right.There, a wooden cross stood over the grave pits with aweathered inscription commemorating members of theTramecourt family lost in wars over the 500 yearsbetween St Crispin’s Day 1415 and Flanders fields in 1915.
Shakespeare must take some of the blame – or credit– for this particular myth, though he was recycling anearlier play, The Famous Victories of Henry V, loved byjingoistic Elizabethan audiences in another time of war.But Shakespeare being Shakespeare, he never lets us gowith only one viewpoint. Into the mouth of an ordinary soldier, Michael Williams, he puts one of his mostfamous speeches about the sorrow of war:
“But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath aheavy reckoning to make… I am afeard there are few diewell that die in a battle; for how can they charitably disposeof any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if thesemen do not die well, it will be a black matter for the kingthat led them to it…”
These issues never go away, as many will recall whowere at the memorable National Theatre production ofHenry V after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when at halftime the audience berated foreign secretary Jack Strawabout the fateful decision to go to war. Something to remember, perhaps, this year on 25 October?To read our feature on the battle of Agincourt,
turn to page 42
Michael Wood
is professor of
public history at
the University of
Manchester. He is
currently working
on The Story of
China, a series
for BBC Two
“English campaigns on foreign soil have a long and bloody history”
CommentR
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22
Rome’s early emperors
Listen to
Tom HollandON TH E
PODCAST
THE
Rome’s first emperors are often decried as
tyrannical, sex-mad monsters – but, as
Tom Holland explains, the likes of Augustus,
Caligula and Nero brought
peace and stability to
the Roman world
COVER STORY
Augustus, Caligula andTiberius, depicted (left toright) in contemporarybusts. For all their despo-tism, Romans thankedtheir first three emperorsfor delivering them fromthe curse of civil war
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24 BBC History Magazine
Rome’s early emperors
Almost 2,000 years after hisdeath, Gaius Julius CaesarAugustus Germanicusremains the archetypeof a monstrous leader.Caligula, as he is betterknown, is one of the few
characters from ancient history to be asfamiliar to pornographers as to classicists.
The scandalous details of his reign havealways provoked prurient fascination. “Butenough of the emperor; now to the monster.”So wrote Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, anarchivist in the imperial palace who doubled in his spare time as a biographer of theCaesars, and whose life of Caligula is theoldest extant account that we possess. Writtenalmost a century after the emperor’s death,it catalogues a quite sensational array ofdepravities and crimes. He slept with hissisters! He dressed up as the goddess Venus!He planned to award his horse the highestmagistracy in Rome! So appalling were hisstunts that they seemed to shade into lunacy.Suetonius certainly had no doubt about thiswhen explaining Caligula’s behaviour: “Hewas ill in both body and mind.”
But if Caligula was sick then so, too, was hiscity. The powers of life and death wielded byan emperor would have been abhorrent to anearlier generation. Almost a century beforeCaligula came to power, his great-great-great-great-uncle had been the first of his dynasty toestablish an autocracy in Rome. The exploitsof Gaius Julius Caesar were as spectacular asany in his city’s history: the permanentannexation of Gaul, as the Romans called
what today is France, and invasions of Britainand Germany. He achieved his feats, though,as a citizen of a republic – one in which it wastaken for granted by most that death was theonly conceivable alternative to liberty.
When Julius Caesar, trampling thispresumption, laid claim to a primacy over hisfellow citizens, it resulted first in civil war andthen, after he had crushed his domestic foesas he had previously crushed the Gauls, in hisassassination. Only after two more murder-ous bouts of slaughtering one another werethe Roman people finally inured to theirservitude. Submission to the rule of a singleman had redeemed their city and its empirefrom self-destruction – but the cure itselfwas a kind of disease.
Their new master called himself Augustus:the ‘Divinely Favoured One’. The great- nephew of Julius Caesar, he had wadedthrough blood to secure the command ofRome and her empire – and then, once hisrivals had been dispatched, had coolly posedas a prince of peace. As cunning as he was ruthless, as patient as he was decisive,Augustus managed to maintain his supremacyfor decades, and then to die in his bed. Key tothis achievement was his ability to rule with, rather than against the grain of, Romantradition. By pretending that he was not anautocrat, he licensed his fellow citizens topretend that they were still free. A veil of shim-mering and seductive subtlety was drapedover the brute contours of his dominance.
Over time, though, this veil becameincreasingly threadbare. On Augustus’s deathin AD 14, the powers that he had accumulatedover the course of his long and mendaciouscareer stood revealed, not as temporaryexpediencies but rather as a package to behanded down to an heir. His choice ofsuccessor was a man raised since childhood inhis own household, an aristocrat by the nameof Tiberius. The many qualities of the new Caesar, which ranged from exemplaryaristocratic pedigree to a track record asRome’s finest general, had counted for lessthan his status as Augustus’s adopted son –and everyone knew it.
A diseased age
Tiberius, a man who all his life had beenwedded to the virtues of the vanishedrepublic, made an unhappy monarch; butCaligula, who succeeded Tiberius after a reignof 23 years, was unembarrassed. That he ruledthe Roman world by virtue neither of age norof experience but as the great-grandson ofAugustus bothered him not the slightest.“Nature produced him, in my opinion, todemonstrate just how far unlimited vice cango when combined with unlimited power.”Such was the obituary delivered on Caligulaby Seneca, a philosopher who had known himwell. The judgment, though, was not just onCaligula, but also on Seneca’s own peers, whohad cringed and grovelled before the emperorwhile he was still alive, and on the Romanpeople as a whole. The age was a rotten one:diseased, debased, degraded.
Or so many believed. Not everyone agreed.The regime established by Augustus wouldnever have endured had it failed to offer whatthe Roman people had come so desperately tocrave after decades of civil war: peace andorder. The vast agglomeration of provincesruled from Rome, stretching from the NorthSea to the Sahara and from the Atlantic to theFertile Crescent, reaped the benefits as well.Three centuries on, when the nativity of the G
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A first-century BC coin shows Augustuswearing a laurel wreath – symbol of militaryvictory. “No sooner had he seized control ofthe world,” says Tom Holland, “than his face
was being minted everywhere”
A detail from the Ara Pacis, an altar dedicated to the goddess of peace. It was built underAugustus who, having butchered his way to power, recast himself as a prince of peace
BBC History Magazine 25
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“Nature produced
Caligula, it was said,
to demonstrate just
how far unlimited vice can go when
combined with
unlimited power”
A statue from first-century Pompeii showing Caligula on horseback. The emperor’s favourite horse was called Incitatus, and it was said that Caligula planned to make it a consul
26 BBC History Magazine
Rome’s early emperors
most celebrated man born in Augustus’s reign– Jesus – stood in infinitely clearer focus thanit had done at the time, a bishop named Eusebius could see in the emperor’s achieve-ments the very guiding hand of God. “It wasnot just as a consequence of human action,”he declared, “that the greater part of the worldshould have come under Roman rule at theprecise moment Jesus was born. The coinci-dence that saw our Saviour begin his mission against such a backdrop was undeniablyarranged by divine agency. After all, had theworld still been at war, and not united undera single form of government, then how muchmore difficult would it have been for the disciples to undertake their travels?”
The price of peace
Eusebius could see, with the perspectiveprovided by distance, just how startling wasthe feat of globalisation brought to fulfilmentunder Augustus and his successors. Thoughthe methods deployed to uphold it werebrutal, the sheer immensity of the regionspacified by Roman arms was unprecedented.
“To accept a gift,” went an ancient saying, “is to sell your liberty.” Rome held herconquests in fee, but the peace that shebestowed upon them in exchange was notnecessarily to be sniffed at. Whether in thesuburbs of the capital itself – booming underthe Caesars to become the largest city theworld had ever seen – or across the span of theMediterranean, united now for the first timeunder a single power, or in the furthermost corners of an empire, the pax Romanabrought benefits to millions.
Provincials might well be grateful. “Hecleared the sea of pirates, and filled it withmerchant shipping.” So enthused a Jew fromthe Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria,writing in praise of Augustus. “He gavefreedom to every city, brought order wherethere had been chaos, and civilised savagepeoples.” Similar hymns of praise could be –and were – addressed to Tiberius and
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“Propaganda and gossip, each feeding off
the other, gave the dynasty of Augustus
a celebrity that became continent-spanning”
This etching shows theemperors Claudius (left)and Tiberius, with theirwives Agrippina andLivia, respectively
A fourth-century relief shows Jesus with three apostles. One bishop of
that era claimed that the Augustinian peace
hastened the spread of Christianity
but inspire in his subjects. He alone hadcommand of Rome’s monopoly of violence:the legions and the menacing apparatus ofprovincial government that ensured that taxeswere paid, rebels slaughtered and malefactorsthrown to beasts or nailed up on crosses. Anemperor did not constantly need to beshowing his hand for dread of his arbitrary power to be universal across the world.
Small wonder that the face of Caesar shouldhave become, for millions of his subjects, theface of Rome. Rare was the town that did notboast some image of him: a statue, a portraitbbust, a frieze. Even in the most provincialbbackwater, to handle money was to bebfamiliar with Caesar’s profile. WithinfAugustus’s own lifetime, no living citizenAhad ever appeared on a Roman coin – buthno sooner had he seized control of the worldnhan his face was being minted everywhere,ttamped on gold, silver and bronze. “Whosesikeness and inscription is this?” Even anltinerant street-preacher in the wilds ofit
Galilee, holding up a coin and demandingGo know whose face it portrayed, could bet
confident of the answer: “Caesar’s.”cNo surprise, then, that the character of an
emperor – his achievements, his relationshipse
Caligula. The depravities for which these men would become notorious rarely had muchimpact on the wider world. In the provinces itmattered little who ruled as emperor – so longas the centre held.
Yet even in the empire’s farthest reaches,Caesar was a constant presence. How could henot be? “In the whole wide world, there is nota single thing that escapes him.” An exaggera-tion, of course – yet a due reflection of the fearand awe that an emperor could hardly help
BBC History Magazine 27
Tom Holland discusses the early Romanemperors on our weekly podcast historyextra.com/bbchistorymaga-zine/podcasts
ON THE PODCAST
BOOK
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of theHouse of Caesar by Tom Holland(Little, Brown, September 2015)
DISCOVER MORE
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Claudius (10 BC–AD 54,
emperor from AD 41)
The nephew of Tiberius was prone to twitching and stammering, which hindered his political progress. He became Caesar when his nephew Caligula was murdered. Though widely despised as being
under the thumb of women and freedmen, he proved
an effective emperor, invading Britain and commissioning a new port for Rome. His deathwas believed to have
been caused by his wife (and niece), Agrippina.
Nero (AD 37–68, emperor from AD 54)
Known initially as Domitius, the son of Agrippina was adopted by Claudius; he later had his motherand wife murdered. He refined Caligula’s policy of appealing over the heads of the senatorial elite to the mass of the people; the more murder-ous his regime became, the more his showman-ship flourished. Faced with rebellion, he committed suicide in AD 68 – marking the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
THE FIRST FIVE ROMAN EMPERORS
Augustus (63 BC–AD 14, emperor
from 27 BC)
Born Gaius Octavius, his adoption by hisgreat-uncle Julius Caesar left him with a commanding name and fortune. By his mid-thirties he enjoyed an unprecedented
dominance over the Roman world. In 27 BC he took the
title Augustus: ‘Divinely Favoured One’. By the time of his death, he had established an autocracy secure enough to survive
as long as the empire itself.
Tiberius (42 BC–AD 37, emperor
from AD 14)
His mother’s marriage to Augustus won Tiberius a place at the heart of the new imperial dynasty. Though an accomplished general, he was unpopular
with the masses, and his respect for republican traditions ensured he was never entirely comfort-able as emperor. His
retirement to Capri in AD 27 fuelled salacious
rumours, but by maintaining peace he won respect
in the provinces.
Caligula (AD 12–41,
emperor from AD 37)
Properly called Gaius, as a young boy he was nicknamed ‘Caligula’(‘little boots’) by soldiers serving under his father. “I am rearing a viper,” declared Tiberius – and so it proved.On becoming emperor, Caligula’s twin tastes for theatricality and hurting people fuelled attacks on the authority of the Senate. Even so, when he was assassinated by his own guards in AD 41 hisdeath was widely mourned.
The first emperor
fThe iconic general
e
TThe able ruler The showman
The witty sadist
and his foibles – should have been topics ofobsessive fascination to his subjects. “Yourdestiny it is to live as in a theatre where your audience is the entire world.” This was thewarning attributed by one Roman historianto Maecenas, a close confidant of Augustus.Whether or not he really said it, the sentimentwas true to his master’s theatricality.Augustus, lying on his deathbed, was reportedby Suetonius to have asked his friends whetherhe had played his part well in the comedy oflife; assured that he had, he demanded theirapplause as he headed for the exit.
A good emperor had no choice but to bea good actor – as, too, did everyone else in thedrama’s cast. Caesar, after all, was never aloneon the stage. His potential successors werepublic figures by virtue of their relationship to him. Even the wife, the niece or thegranddaughter of an emperor might have herrole to play. Get it wrong and she was liable topay a terrible price, but get it right and her facemight appear on coins alongside Caesar’s own.
No household in history had ever beforebeen so squarely in the public eye as that ofAugustus. The fashions and hairstyles of itsmost prominent members, reproduced inexquisite detail by sculptors across the empire,set trends from Syria to Spain. Their achieve-ments were celebrated with spectacularlyshowy monuments, their scandals repeatedwith relish from seaport to seaport. Propagandaand gossip, each feeding off the other, gave thedynasty of Augustus a celebrity that became,for the first time, continent-spanning. Timehas barely dimmed it. Two millennia on, thewest’s prime examples of tyranny continue toinstruct and appal.
The exhaustion of cruelty“Nothing could be fainter than those torcheswhich allow us not to pierce the darkness butto glimpse it.” So wrote Seneca, shortly before his death in AD 65. The context of hisobservation was a shortcut that he hadrecently taken while travelling along the Bayof Naples, down a gloomy and dust-chokedtunnel. “What a prison it was, and how long.Nothing could compare with it.”
As a man who had spent many yearsobserving the imperial court, Seneca knew allabout darkness. He certainly had no illusionsabout the nature of the regime established byAugustus. Even the peace that it had broughtthe world, he declared, had ultimately beenfounded upon nothing more noble than “theexhaustion of cruelty”. Despotism had beenimplicit in the new order from its beginning.
Yet what he detested, Seneca also adored.Contempt for power did not inhibit him fromrevelling in it. The darkness of Rome was lit bygold. Looking back to Augustus and his heirsfrom 2,000 years on, we too can recognise – in
their mingling of tyranny and achievement,sadism and glamour, power-lust and celebrity– an aureate quality such as no dynasty sincehas ever quite managed to match.
“Caesar is the state.” How this came tobe so is a story no less compelling, no lessremarkable and no less salutary than it hasever been these past 2,000 years.
Tom Holland is a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s d
Making Histor He will speak aty BBC
History Magazine’s History Weekend
in October – see historyweekend.com
28 BBC History Magazine
Alan Turing
Alan TuringTHE MAN, THE ENIGMA
Computing genius The brilliant but ultimately tragic British scientist Alan Turing. In the background is the keyboard of an Enigma machine, part of a system that he was instrumental in unravelling
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Imber 1939, just as the Secondn SeptemWar was declared, a youngWorld Wrived to stay at the Crown Innman arramlet of Shenley Brook End,in the hghamshire. He was fit enough Buckingceptional long-distance– an excin fact – and his new landlady,runner,voiced concerns that such aMrs Ramshaw,
died young man wasn’t doingclearly able-bodwar effort by joining up.his bit for the w
w’s indignation couldn’t haveMrs Ramshawplaced. The man was Alanbeen more mispwork at nearby Bletchley ParkTuring, and his
e of the Government Code and– the secret bas(GC&CS), the Foreign Office’sCypher Schoolection – was to prove crucial incodebreaking s
man military actions.thwarting Germeturned to England the previousTuring had reeveral years of research atsummer after seersity, which led to his PhD.Princeton Univof Cambridge then renewed hisThe University ong’s College, to which he hadfellowship at Kid in March 1935 after earning first been electeours degree there.a first-class honthe threat of conflict in EuropeIn 1938, withg was among a number oflooming, Turinics approached by GC&CS toBritish academiet work for them in anticipationundertake secreof war. He worked part-time of the outbreakending several trainingfor GC&CS, attllaborated with Dilly Knox,courses, and co
World War codebreaker, ona veteran First Wak the Enigma machine. attempts to brea
iationsEnigma varr 1939, the day after BritainOn 4 Septembe
n Germany, Turing reporteddeclared war onchley Park and stepped up hisfor duty at Bletc
ma. He would go on to lead thework on Enigmut 8, after the wooden hut inteam named Huitially based.which it was inipopular belief, there was noContrary to pcode’. The Enigma machine –single ‘Enigma cy of portable encryptionactually a family
bstituted each letter of a messagedevices that suber of the alphabet – was firstfor another lettee 1920s and enhanced overdeveloped in thrs. By the late 1930s differentsubsequent yearsed by the various branches ofversions were uslitary. The Germans’ operatingthe German miloited the reciprocal nature of procedures expl
Letters and numbers This working Enigmamachine was sold at auction in April 2015,on the same day as a 56-page notebook ofTuring’s. The notebook raised $1m – threetimes more than the machine
The code makers General Heinz Guderianoversees men operating an Enigma machinein 1940. Effective and secure communicationwas key to the German campaigns
ounding father of computing played a vital role in breakingThe fo
man codes during the Second World War.Germ Joel Greenberg
deciphers the brilliant but troubled life of Alan Turingd
mplements the BBC Radio 4 seriesCom Computing Britain – The Story of British Computing
the machine. When two Enigma machines wereset up the same way, if on one you typed ‘A’ andit turned it into ‘B’, on the other machine if youtyped ‘B’, it would turn it into ‘A’.
The setting that governed these substitu-tions was known at Bletchley Park as the dailykey, because it was usually changed every 24hours. If the Bletchley Park codebreakers couldwork out the daily key, they could decrypt andread all of the intercepted German messagessent that day. This was done using replicaEnigma machines, manufactured in Britain.But the number of possible daily keys wasalmost too big to imagine. In the case of theGerman army and air force Enigma, therewere 158.9 million, million, million possibili-ties. It was this daily key that Turing and hiscolleagues were trying to work out.
In the preceding months, Knox had metwith members of the Polish Cipher Bureauwho were collaborating with French intelli-gence. Having worked on Enigma for severalyears, the Poles had enjoyed some success inbreaking the system used by the German armyand air force in the 1930s, but their methodsno longer worked because of changes madeto Enigma by the Germans. They had alsodesigned a semi-automatic machine – a bombakryptologiczna (reputedly named after a Polish ice cream dessert called a bomba) – todetermine the settings that were vital todeciphering the codes produced by Enigma,hugely speeding up the process. In July 1939,they shared their findings with Knox.
At Bletchley Park, Turing devised a new andmore powerful kind of electro-mechanicalmachine for determining the crucial Enigmasettings. Another Cambridge mathematicianworking at Bletchley Park, Gordon Welchman,made a crucial addition that increased theeffectiveness of the machine – called theBombe – providing Bletchley Park with a vitalcodebreaking tool. By the end of the war, some211 machines had been produced.
“The number of possible daily keys for the
Enigma system was almost too big to imagine:
158.9 million, million, million possibilities”
30 BBC History Magazine
Alan Turing
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The Bombe, though, wasn’t the completesolution to Enigma. Early in 1940, Turing wasasked to take on the task of breaking theGerman navy’s Enigma system, which usedmore secure procedures than those of the airforce and army. Many at Bletchley believed itcould not be broken – yet doing so was vital.
These were desperate times for Britain. Thecountry became increasingly dependent onconvoys of ships carrying vital supplies acrossthe North Atlantic, and German U-boatattacks were wreaking havoc on theseconvoys: average monthly shipping losses in1940 exceeded 220,000 tonnes. To tackle this,Turing’s Bletchley Park team was expanded.
The challenge was this. Having set up theirmachines using the daily key, each Enigmaoperator applied one final setting beforeencrypting a message. The operators for theGerman army and air force were allowed tochoose this setting themselves, but theGerman navy issued code books for thispurpose. In a remarkable piece of work,Turing managed to deduce, quite quickly, howthese code books were being used, but realisedthat his team would need to acquire copiesbefore further progress could be made.
It wasn’t till a German naval code book wascaptured that Turing and his colleagues began
to achieve success in working out the daily key and reading encrypted German navalmessages. Intelligence reports aboutGermany’s U-boat and ship movements couldthen be produced and sent to the Admiralty for dissemination.
The interception and decryption ofGerman naval messages played a crucial rolein the great sea battles of the Second WorldWar. German ships and U-boats could belocated and attacked, and Allied convoyscould be diverted to reduce shipping losses.
Public recognitionAt its peak, Hut 8 had more than 150 staff. Itwas part of a large codebreaking operation atBletchley Park that broke a number of otherenemy code and cipher systems as well as Enigma, and employed as many as 10,500people – the operation truly was a team effort.Yet Turing’s contribution was fundamental.
In late 1940 Turing wrote a report describ-ing the methods he and his colleagues wereusing to solve the German Enigma system. Itwas known as ‘Prof’s Book’, and it becameessential reading for new recruits.
Years later, Bletchley Park codebreakerPeter Hilton explained that what set Turingapart from his colleagues was his ability to
THE LIFE OF ALAN TURING
23 June 1912Born Alan Mathison Turing in
Maida Vale, London, the second son of Julius and Sara Turing
October 1931Turing takes up a mathematics scholar-
ship at King’s College Cambridge, earning a first-class degree. In 1935 he is
elected to a junior research fellowship
January 1937A paper by Turing is published that is
later recognised as laying the foundation of computer science
June 1938At the age of 25, Turing receives his PhD
from Princeton for his dissertation Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals
4 September 1939Turing arrives at Bletchley Park to begin
his wartime work on code and
cipher systems. He goes on to
lead the team in Hut 8 (left)
March 1940The first Bombe machine, designed
by Turing, arrives at Bletchley. More than 200 machines will be manufactured
2 November 1942Turing travels to the US to liaise on several
joint US/UK projects, including an American Bombe machine
March 1946Turing produces a detailed design for an
Automatic Computing Engine
31 March 1952He is convicted of being “party to the
commission of an act of gross indecency”
8 June 1954Turing is found dead.
The coroner’s verdict is that he had taken his own life
Shared purpose Though Alan Turing’s team made some of the most important break-throughs in deciphering Enigma messages, they were among an army of some 10,500 people who contributed to the success of the codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park. These women and men are translating and interpreting intercepted German messages
Alan Turing played a key role in the
evolution of computing
BBC History Magazine 31
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he’d undertaken much earlier that broughthim academic renown in later years.
In 1935 Turing had attended a lecture bymathematician Max Newman, discussing theEntscheidungsproblem (‘decision problem’)which asks for a way of determining whichmathematical problems are computable. Thishad intrigued Turing, and his research yieldedthe paper ‘On Computable Numbers with anApplication to the Entscheidungsproblem’,published by the London MathematicalSociety in 1937. By the early 1950s, his fame asthe author of ‘On Computable Numbers…’was growing, and in 1953 the University ofManchester appointed Turing to a speciallycreated readership in the theory of computing.
But while Turing’s academic renown wasgrowing, his private life was in turmoil.On 31 March 1952 at a court in Knutsford,Cheshire, Turing was charged with being“party to the commission of an act of grossindecency” – in effect, he was charged with
Joel Greenberg is the author of Gordon Welchman:
Bletchley Park’s Architect of Ultra Intelligence
(Frontline, 2014)
RADIO
BBC Radio 4’s 10-part series,Computing Britain – The Storyof British Computing is due to begin in September
DISCOVER MORE
being homosexual. He pleaded guilty. Insteadof imprisonment he opted for hormone ‘treatment’ – oestrogen injections that made him put on weight and enlarged his breasts.
On the morning of 8 June 1954, Turing wasfound dead in bed by his housekeeper. Thecoroner’s verdict found that he had taken hisown life; there were reports that a partly eatenapple by his bed contained traces of cyanide.
It was not till many years after the publica-tion of Turing’s 1937 paper that it became clear it had probably laid the foundations for theevolution of computing. His story has nowbeen told on stage and screen; perhaps notsurprisingly, he remains the only BletchleyPark figure to be widely known. Yet it was only after his death that much of Turing’s life andwork, obscured for so long, was revealed.
come up with ideas that Hilton felt he wouldnot have thought of “in a million years”.These ideas gave rise to a number of statisticalmethods with colourful names such as‘Banburismus’ and ‘Turingery’.
In June 1946 it was announced that Turinghad (in 1945) been awarded the Order of theBritish Empire (OBE) for war services. Therewere rumours that he had been considered fora higher award, but that the OBE was thehighest that could be awarded to civil servantsof Turing’s official wartime rank – his true rolenot being revealed for another three decades.
After the war, Turing worked at the NationalPhysical Laboratory in London, where hedesigned an early digital computer. In 1945,he took up a position at the University ofManchester and contributed to its pioneeringcomputer developments. Biological researchwas now occupying much of his time and inNovember 1951 he completed a paper onmorphogenetic theory. However, it was work
“Years after publication it became clear that
Turing’s paper had laid the foundations for the evolution of computing”
Genius at work
Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed Turing in the Oscar-winning 2014 film The Imitation Game. His performance in this fiction-alised account was particularly impressive given that there are no known video or audio recordings of Turing
32 BBC History Magazine
WWI eyewitness accounts
Grim routinesIn part 17 of his personal testimony series, Peter Hart takes us to October 1915, when
repetitive sequences of preparation, fighting and treating the injured began to merge into
a dismal blur. Peter will be tracing the experiences of 20 people who lived through the
First World War – via interviews, letters and diary entries – as its centenary progresses
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES ALBON
OUR FIRST WORLD WAR
George Wainford
George was born in 1897,the son of a regular soldier.He joined the Royal Navyas a boy seaman in 1912,and carried out his sea-going training aboardHMS Crescent in 1914.
For the men of the Royal Navy,the war had settled down intoa grim routine as they waitedfor the chance to face theGerman High Seas Fleet. Bylate 1915, George Wainfordwas no longer a boy andhad been promoted to ableseaman, though he wasstill serving aboard the pre-dreadnought HMS Albemarle.
We thought we were somuch better than the
Germans that it would havebeen a cakewalk. There was noquestion. The Grand Fleet wasa good sight – to see all the greatships, mile after mile of them,perhaps in two columns, withthe small ships guarding themall round.
But we were beginning to feelthat we’d never go into action.So much routine – it was boring!One day was like another – it just went on and on.
Sister Kate Luard
Kate Luard was born in 1872.She volunteered to join theQueen Alexandra’s ImperialMilitary Nursing Service in1914, and was dispatched toFrance, where she served onambulance trains, then at a fieldambulance behind the line.
John Palmer
John Palmer joined the armyas a regular in 1910. Heserved as a signaller withthe Royal Field Artillery on the western front.
“On the ward this morning a delirious boy
with a bad head wound and a large brain
hernia tore off his dressings and threw
a handful of his brains on to the floor”
I happened to go into the[ward] this morning, in time tosee a delirious boy, with a badhead wound and a large brainhernia, tear off his dressings andthrow a handful of his brains onto the floor. This is literally true,and he was talking all the timewe re-dressed the hole in hishead. Then we picked up thehandful of brains, and [he] wasquiet for a little while. He is verydelirious and will not get better.
A boy came in at 6pm with hisright arm blown clean off in itssleeve. He was collapsed when hecame in, but revived a bit later.“Mustn’t make a fuss abouttrifles,” he explained. “We’ve gotto stick it!” What a trifle!
The boy who threw his brainson the floor died yesterday.
The boy with the arm blownoff would not survive. Thenurses kept him in Lillershospital as long as possible,fearful he would not last the30-hour journey by ambu-lance train to Le Havre. Theywere right to be worried – hehad a haemorrhage an hourbefore arriving, and died thenext morning. When Kate wastold the sad news she re-marked that “He, of all people,one wanted to hear of beingpetted at his own home.”
In mid-October Kate Luardtook up a new post with No 6Casualty Clearing Hospitalat Lillers, France. She foundmany of the scenes sheencountered daily deeplyunsettling: some soldierssuffered bravely, while otherswere in agony, oblivious to their surroundings.
A boy is lying, smiling allday, with his head, right
hand and both legs wounded,and his left arm off. When asked:“Are you happy?” he said with abeam: “Trying to be!” Today heis humming ‘Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers.’
Bombardier John Palmer hadbeen wounded at the battleof Loos on 25 September. Hedeveloped a fever, and wasevacuated via Lillers – whereKate Luard was working – toVersailles hospital, which he reached on 15 October.
Am now in hospital whereeverything is wonderful.
To rest between real sheets andsleep and sleep and sleep was anexperience I could hardly realise.One poor fellow here has botharms missing and is blind. Howlucky I must consider myself. I doknow one thing, however. I amlike a little child as regards nervenow. A shell has only to explodewithin 500 yards of me to scarethe life out of me. As I feel at themoment I shall never be capable of returning to my old job.
Palmer was suffering fromshell shock: post-traumaticstress. But the war had not finished with him.
BBC History Magazine 33
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PART 17 OCTOBER 1915
NEXT ISSUE: “The point of the bayonet caught my rib, broke it and skidded off”
patrols in no man’s land. Thiswas another dangerous task,as shown by one incident thatJack recalled:
I was out in no man’sland, and one of the
companies had a coveringparty out in front of their ownbarbed wire.
As I approached them, oneof the covering party – PrivateSomerville – received a sniperbullet right through the body.He began to make a lot of noise.Arriving on the spot I said to thecorporal in charge: “Send yourmen back. Because with thisnoise the Germans are going toknow something’s happened!”
The corporal and I were leftwith this man, out in no man’sland in front of three lines ofbarbed wire… We got a hold ofSomerville and we flung him ontop of the barbed wire, and weclimbed over afterwards,Somerville shouting all the timeand me clouting him to keep himquiet. It didn’t keep him quiet!
The Germans used a couple ofmachine guns sweeping backand forward along the length ofthe trench. Then an officer fromthe trench, Major Walsh, cameout, and he says to the corporal:“You go back and the sergeantand I will bring the woundedman in!” We were then in
between the second and thirdlines of barbed wire. We bentdown to pick up Somerville anda bullet came and hit Walsh inthe shoulder – it must have justpassed my face.
He dropped the wounded manand left me... So I got a hold ofSomerville, pulled him up,shoved him on top of the barbedwire, climbed up over him androlled him off the wire. Themachine guns were then firing tohit the exact top of our trench,which deterred anybody elsecoming out to help me.
This had all taken time, andmy worry was that daylightwould catch me out in no man’sland. I had about 8 or 9 yards tohaul him to our trench. Thefellows in the trench wereshouting encouragement, butnobody could come out and helpme... When I thought there wereno machine-gun bullets strikingthe top of the trench, with myfeet I rolled Somerville up thefront of the parapet and soldiersinside the trench picked him up.
Dorgan would be awarded theMilitary Medal for his courage.Later he was presented with acommemorative watch by hishome town of Ashington. Heproudly showed that watch tome when I interviewed him in1986. It was a tangible link with his past.
British Royal Engineers erect barbed wire defences in October 1915
Jack Dorgan
Northumberland-born Jack Dorgan took partin the attack on St Julien during the secondbattle of Ypres. After the battle he waspromoted to sergeant and continued to serve on the western front throughout 1915.
In October 1915, SergeantJack Dorgan was serving onthe western front with the1/7th NorthumberlandFusiliers. The long nights ofautumn cloaked activities thatwould not have been feasiblein daylight. Working parties were often sent out toimprove barbed wire defences.
We had wooden postswith pointed ends, and a
big wooden hammer. The postshad to be driven into the ground.Fellows used to wrap sandbagsaround the head of the hammerto deaden the sound... Even withthe sandbags, the sound of thathammer would stretch out in thequiet night. You would hear thesniper’s bullet come wingingacross, or a machine gun. Youonly got a couple of blows or soto drive it in and then you had toduck down. Then, when themachine-gun bullets had passedby, you had another few strokes.
The barbed wire was single
strand, wrapped on a polecarried by two men – veryawkward in no man’s land in thedark. You’d stretch your wirebetween one post and another,back and forward to make anentanglement. Before thesummer was over, that woodenpost was abolished and we had a3ft steel twisted bar with a loopat one end, and at the other endit was sharpened. All you had todo was put a piece of stick in theloop at the top and turn it downinto the ground.
The single strand had beendisregarded and barbed wire wasin coils – about 2x6ft wide – thatwould stretch about 8 yards andcould be compressed intoa foot or so. One end could beattached to the steel bar and thenstretched to the next bar. It madethe erection of barbed wireentanglements a much easier job.
In front of each wiring partywould be a covering party toprotect them from German
Peter Hart is the oral historian at
the Imperial War Museum. His
books include The Great War:
1914–1918 (Profile Books, 2013)
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36
British portraiture
Simon Schama has joined forces with the National Portrait
Gallery and the BBC to explore the history and development of
British portraiture. Here, using the themes of love, people, fame,
self and power, Simon selects some of the most significant
photographs, paintings and caricatures of the past 800 years
Accompanies a new BBC Two series, The Face of Britain by Simon Schama
Words by Charlotte Hodgman
Alice Liddellby Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), 1860 and 1870
Charles Dodgson, better known by hispen name of Lewis Carroll, met the Liddellfamily in 1856. Dodgson would entertainAlice and her siblings with his stories,and they in turn became the subjectsof another of his passions: photography.Alice – pictured above left when she waseight – was a particular favourite of theaspiring writer, becoming the inspirationfor the high-spirited Alice in his 1865children’s classic, Alice’s Adventuresin Wonderland.
“Like many Victorian image-makers,Dodgson loved to capture pictures ofchildren – particularly girls – during their
‘age of innocence’, before the awkward-ness of adolescence set in,” says SimonSchama. “The frank, composed stare ofthe young, fresh-faced Alice in contrastto the passive-aggressive pose of her20-year-old self suggests a dramaticchange in the sitter during the 10-yearperiod between the two sittings.”
Dodgson had, in fact, cut contact withthe Liddells at some point between thetwo sittings. Some speculated that Alice’smother had grown uncomfortable with hisattentions towards her daughter, or thathis infatuation with Alice had even to led to a proposal of marriage.
King George IVby Richard Cosway, c1780–82
Designed to be kept on, or about, thebody like a piece of jewellery, miniatureportraits – mainly of loved ones, andoften boasting accompanying locks ofhair – peaked in popularity during the18th century.
The future George IV – a hopelessromantic – was a particular fan of thegenre, and almost always sent the objectof his devotion a miniature of himself. Theimage below, which may have beenpainted as a gift for actress Mary Robin-son, sees George painted against a cloudysky, and was designed to show off hisfeatures to their best advantage.
“Richard Cosway, who became painterto the Prince of Wales in 1785, was soonpainting two or three miniatures a year– the prince’s amorous turnover beinghigh,” says Schama. “Ironically, it was hismother, Queen Charlotte, who inspired hislove of the medium. She habitually wore aminiature of her husband, given to her as awedding present, over her heart as apublic expression of her devotion.”
“George IV almost
always sent
the object
of his
devotion a
miniature
of himself”
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BBC History Magazine 37
NATION
Surveillance photograph of militant suffragettes by Criminal Record Office, 1914
After labelling the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) a terror organisation, in 1912, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office began compiling a photo dossier – the first such security surveillance file – of imprisoned suffragettes. The images were taken using the first long-distance lens made in Britain, and usually showed women exercising in prison yards. They were then distributed to institutions deemed to be under threat of attack by suffragettes, including the National Gallery, which had seen suffragette Mary Richardson attack a Velázquez masterpiece – the Rokeby Venus – with a meat cleaver in March 1914.
Says Schama: “One photograph – of suffragette Evelyn Manesta (no 10) – was even doctored so that the policeman’s arm that gripped her neck in the original version subsequently resembled a harmless scarf!”
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solo-mon) by William Hoare, 1733
Pictured in the costume of the Fulbe people of his native Senegambia, west Africa, Diallo – a slave-owner – was himself taken into slavery in 1731, on his return from a slave-selling mission. Diallo was sent to work on a plantation, but eventually found himself in London, where he was celebrated for, among other things, his skills as a translator of Arabic. His is the first known portrait to honour an African subject as an individual and equal.
“Devout black men and women were the first to find their way into solo portraiture,” says Schama. “Here, Diallo is shown with one of the three Qur’ans he wrote from memory, as a symbol of his Muslim piety.”
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38 BBC History Magazine
British portraiture
Kitty Fisherby Nathaniel Hone,
1765
Dubbed the ‘first celebrity’ in the sensethat she was famous simply for beingfamous, 18th-century courtesan KittyFisher was a master of her own image.She shot to fame with a brilliantly con-ceived stunt in St James’s Park in 1759,which saw her fall spectacularly from herhorse during which it was revealed thatshe was not wearing underwear.
“The incident, which had been stagedfor maximum exposure, was immediately reported, drawn, printed and sung inballads,” says Schama. “Kitty hadsuccessfully made herself a name.”
Knowing she needed to capitalise onher new notoriety, Kitty employed theservices of leading portraitist JoshuaReynolds. Soon, images of the courtesanwere appearing in all sorts of mediums,including tiny miniatures that could beconcealed inside watch cases or snuffboxes, to be viewed discreetly.
“Kitty intuitively grasped the conditions which could give her her opportunity,”says Schama, “and she knew exactlywhat she wanted from a painter: an image that was simultaneously refined andteasingly sensual.”
This painting, by Nathaniel Hone, wasdescribed by the Public Advertiser as “aportrait of a lady whose charms are wellknown to the town”. The reflection in thegoldfish bowl shows a crowd of peoplelooking through a window at the goldfish,reflecting Kitty’s life in the public eye. Theimage even contains a play on her name:the kitten (Kitty) is trying to get into the bowl of fish.
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Emma, Lady Hamilton by George Romney, c1785
Born into a poor blacksmithing family inCheshire, Emma Hamilton (born Amy or EmyLyon) was a woman who knew how to useand display her considerable beauty to itsbest advantage. After a period of time inLondon theatres, Emma became mistressto a string of older men before catching theeye of the most fashionable painter of theday: George Romney.
“Emma sat for Romney 118 times between1782 and 1784,” says Schama, “and hebecame entranced with her. His paintingsdepict Emma in simple cottons and muslins,glowing with flesh-and-blood warmth.Through his works, she became a sensation,and her face could be found in prints, and onchina and snuffboxes, everywhere.”
“Emma’s face could
be found on china
and snuffboxes,
everywhere”
FAME
Already famous for her beauty and arenowned fashion icon, Emma – nowmarried – caused an international scandal when she embarked on a very publicaffair with Lord Nelson. News of theirrelationship was greedily lapped up bythe newspaper-buying public. Emma, likeKitty Fisher, had become one of the first celebrities of her day.
BBC History Magazine 39
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Gerlach Flicke; Henry Strangwish (Strangways)by Gerlach Flicke, 1554
This tiny diptych – measuring just8.8x11.9cm – was painted by GerlachFlicke (below left), a German immigrantfrom Osnabrück, north-west Germany,while he was in prison, probably inthe Tower of London. Whileincarcerated there, Flicke metand befriended gentleman-pirateHenry Strangwish (below right), theso-called Red Rover of the Channel inlight of his fiery red hair.
“The artist – depicted with his palette –wears an expression of what might, atfirst, seem like intense self-regard,” saysSchama, “but it is more likely workingconditions and the small, corroded mirrorhe was using that account for hisintent peering.”
The unlikely duo were imprisoned in thesame cell: Strangwish for piracy, andFlicke possibly as part of Mary I’spersecution of Protestants, which hadbegun in 1553. Flicke was a known portraitartist who had painted men such asThomas Cranmer.
His work is the earliest known oilself-portrait produced in England. Itsinscription reads: “Such was the face ofGerlach Flicke when he was a painter in
the City of London.This he himselfpainted from alooking-glass for hisdear friends. That theymight have somethingby which to rememberhim after his death.”Flicke was eventuallyreleased but died in1558; Strangwish diedfour years later.
Self-portrait from a Book of Hoursby William de Brailes, c1240
“When 13th-century illuminator William deBrailes painted himself into the historiatedcapital ‘C’ of an English Book of Hours, itwas not an ego-announcement, but rather acarefully judged combination of self-pro-motion and self-effacement,” says Schama.
Depicted kneeling in prayer, eyes closedas the hand of God blesses him with agentle two-fingered touch to the side of hisface, de Brailes has also written in themargin in tiny French script: “W de brailq(ui) me depeint” (“W de Brailes, who paint-ed me”). The image and script were deBrailes’ permanent, and effective, way ofreminding his (now unknown) patroness –painted elsewhere in the book – of his skillsas an illuminator every time she opened itto pray – eight times a day!
In fact, de Brailes is the only 13th-century English non-monastic illuminatorwho is known to have signed his work, andthis image is widely celebrated as beingthe first self-portrait in English art.
“The images of de Brailes are probablynot true likenesses, though,” saysSchama. “Aside from the fact that mirrorswere notoriously distorting surfaces,medieval artists were also all too aware ofbeing taken to task for their preoccupationwith depicting outward appearances – thevanities of the world.”
“It was not an ego-
announcement, but
rather a carefully
judged combination
of self-promotion
and self-effacement”
“The artist
– depicted
with his
palette –
wears an ex-
pression of
what might,
at first, seem
like intense
self-regard”
SELF
40 BBC History Magazine
British portraiture
EXHIBITION
Simon Schama’s Face of Britain ison show at the National Portrait Gallery,London, from 16 September–4 January2016. npg.org.ukTELEVISION
The five-part series, The Faceof Britain by Simon Schama, isdue to air on BBC Two this autumn
DISCOVER MORE
Simon Schama is professor of history and art
history at Columbia University, New York. His
latest book, The Face of Britain: The Nation
Through Its Portraits, is out this month,
published by Viking
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Winston Churchillby Yousuf Karsh, 1941
William Pitt (An Ex-crescence; A Fungus; Alias – A Toadstool upon a Dung-hill)published by James Gillray;
Hannah Humphrey, 1791
In 1941, with events at Pearl Harbor freshin his mind and weary after a long sessionwith the Canadian government, primeminister Winston Churchill walked into theSpeaker’s Chamber to be greeted with ablaze of lights and Yousuf Karsh, a youngArmenian-Canadian photographer.
“With his face a mask of fury, cigarsmouldering, Churchill agreed to a singleshot being taken of him, but refused toremove his cigar,” says Schama. Whathappened next would result in one ofthe most iconic images (shown top) inBritish history.
Determined to get the photograph hewanted, Karsh walked up to Churchill andpulled the cigar from his mouth. “He
Widely celebrated as Britain’s firstprofessional political caricaturist, JamesGillray turned caricatures into powerfulweapons of political and social criticism.One of Gillray’s primary targets of ridicule was Whig prime minister William Pitt.
“Visual satire could be enjoyed byunlearned as well as learned people,”explains Schama. “For the first time inhistory – anywhere – politics had becomeentertainment and no caricaturist wasmore fought over than James Gillray.”
Here, Pitt is depicted as a toadstool,planted on a dunghill, with his tentacleroots forming the shape of a crown – “anod to the common accusation that Pitt’sgovernment sustained itself by feeding off royal patronage”, says Schama.
Gillray’s caricatures turned men of power into objects of comedy.
“Churchill looked so
belligerent he could have
devoured me”
POWER
[Churchill] looked so belligerent he couldhave devoured me,” Karsh later recalled.This was the image he wanted; thescamera shutter opened and closed.
“Cheek could go either way with theprime minister and in this case he choseto be amused,” comments Schama. “Heeven agreed to another shot – a far morewarmhearted image (inset, above).”“Yet it is the glowering image of Churchillthat is now remembered. It spoke tomillions of invincible resolution. It was the face of the finest hour.”
Constantinople, 1453: Three fates entwine in a city under siege
An epic adventure from
TV historian NEIL OLIVER
BBC History Magazine
As we approach the 600th anniversary of
Henry V’s famous victory over the French,
Anne Curry considers whether it really
deserves its iconic status
Agincourt
AGINCOUMEDIEVAL ENGLAFINEST HOUR?
42
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BBC History Magazine
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” These nine words from Shakespeare’s Henry V are among the best
known in the great playwright’s canon. Yet they are also seriously misleading. For, as King Henry prepared to do battle with his French foes at Agincourt 600 years ago, he did so not with a hopelessly outnumbered force – as Shakespeare’s description of the battle would have us believe – but with an army of around 8,500 men.
That army had numbered close to 12,000 when Henry led it across the Channel in mid-August, making it the largest sent to France since Edward III’s invasion 70 years earlier. The English king was hellbent on conquering Normandy – and he was not about to fail through a lack of numbers.
But despite the size of his army – and the subsequent acclaim for his victory at Agincourt as a high-water mark in medieval English history – Henry’s campaign in Normandy started badly. After more than a month, his army had seized just one target – the port of Harfleur on the Channel coast – and at a terrible cost. As the author of the
contemporary chronicle Gesta Henrici Quinti observed: “Dysentery carried off more of our men than the sword, and had so direly afflicted and disabled many of the rest that they could not journey on with him further.”
Muster rolls of the sick show that at least 1,500 were sent home, while Henry’s heavy bombardment had weakened Harfleur’s walls so much that he was forced to leave a huge garrison of 1,200 men to defend it. Hardly surprising, then, that he decided to abort his campaign and attempt to return home quickly via Calais. There is no evidence that he sought a battle with the French.
So how did the battle at Agincourt come about? The answer is that the French were determined to catch and crush the English king. When Henry reached the river Somme (see the map on page 44) he was dissuaded from attempting to cross by rumours that the French were waiting for him on the northern bank. Even as Henry moved eastwards, he knew his pursuers would try to intercept him. Prisoners had divulged that the French planned to override the English archers, prompting Henry to “proclaim throughout the army that every archer was to prepare for himself a stake, square or round, six feet B
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ABOVE: A 15th-century depiction of the battle of Agincourt. Anne Curry says that the English victory was soon forgotten, only for its importance to be revived in later centuries thanks to Shakespeare and further conflict with France
44 BBC History Magazine
Agincourt
long… and sharpened at both ends.Whenever the French army drew near to dobattle and to break the English ranks… thearchers should drive in their stakes in frontof them.” This was a wise precaution, and onethat shows Henry’s awareness of the dangers facing himself and his army.
Once Henry had managed to cross theSomme, the French sent heralds summoninghim to battle. Agincourt was a pre-arrangedbattle, and it was the French who wanted tofight it.
On the face of it, all advantages lay with theFrench. They chose the location and, as theyarrived first, we must assume they chose theirposition. They also enjoyed a numericaladvantage. Contemporary chroniclers’ claimsthat the French army numbered anything upto 100,000 men are wildly unrealistic – thefigure was probably nearer 12,000 – yet, for allthat, they undoubtedly took to the field withmore men than their English rivals.
So why were they unable to make theseadvantages count? The answer lies inrudderless leadership, lack of cohesion andthe withering power of Henry’s archers.
Archer enemies
The most senior member of the French royalfamily present at Agincourt on the morningof the battle was the 21-year-old, militarilyinexperienced Duke of Orléans. Chroniclesplace a great deal of blame on France’s callowyoung leaders, who ignored the warnings ofthe older, more seasoned commanders andpredicted that Henry’s men would be afraid ofthe larger French army. Instead, as the authorof the Religieux of St Denis remarked: “TheEnglish marched in resolute fashion on theFrench, determined to hazard the chances ofcombat, and exhorting each other to fightvaliantly to the death.”
The many weeks of living and fightingtogether in enemy territory had served tostrengthen rather than undermine Englishconfidence: they knew that they could relyon each other in a way that the French, beset by political divisions and a lack of royalleadership, could not.
Yet the real ace in Henry’s hand was hiscorps of more than 7,000 archers. These were
“French men-at-
arms had to push
forward across
sodden, muddy
ground in the face of
a storm of arrows” BR
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Build-up to the battleHenry V launched his August 1415 invasionof Normandy during the long contest forthe throne of France between French andEnglish rulers known as the Hundred Years’War. The seeds of that conflict were sownwhen the French king Charles IV died in1328. Edward III of England was the nearest male relative (his mother, Isabella, wasCharles’s sister). Yet the French, hardlykeen to be ruled by an Englishmen, chosePhilip, Count of Valois, who reigned asPhilip VI. Though initially accepting Philip,in 1340 Edward declared himself king,partly in response to Philip’s seizure of Eng-lish landholdings in Aquitaine.
Edward defeated Philip at the battle ofCrécy in August 1346. In 1356 the BlackPrince, Edward’s son, captured Philip’ssuccessor, John II, at Poitiers, forcing theFrench to the negotiating table.
In 1360 the treaty of Brétigny was signed,
A c15th-century depiction of Edward III’svictory over the French at Crécy in 1346
a diplomatic settlement giving Edwardhuge swathes of south-west France freefrom French overlordship. But in 1369 theFrench reneged on this treaty, depriving the English of almost all of those gains.
In 1396 the 10-year-old lord Henry(the future Henry V) accompanied hishalf-cousin King Richard II to Calais tocelebrate the latter’s marriage to the Frenchking’s daughter, a match accompanied bythe agreement of a 30-year truce.
After he was crowned in England, Henrychose to end this truce and to invadeFrance. He was the first English king to leadan army to France in person since Edward IIIin 1359. But Henry also pursued a newapproach in the Hundred Years’ War: his aimwas conquest. He had engaged his troopsfor 12 months in order to take Normandy.But after a longer-than-expected siege ofhis first target, Harfleur, he chose to march quickly to Calais, avoiding battle. TheFrench, however, had other plans, and intercepted him at Agincourt.
A c16th-century portrait of Henry V,who led the English army at the
battle of Agincourt
The Agincourt campaign
45BBC History Magazine
Key moments at Agincourt
The most decisive points in this historic engagement, from
eve of battle to the controversial execution of prisoners
24 October, afternoon
Henry’s army arrived at Agincourt to findthe French blocking his route to Calais.He expected the French to give battle thatday, and he drew up his men into battleformation. Chronicle accounts tell us thatHenry gave his pre-battle speech andthat other preparations were made at thispoint. His soldiers confessed theirsins and made ready to fight. But theFrench did not attack: they were stillwaiting for more troops to arrive. Theyhad missed their chance to attack Henrybefore he had the opportunity to choosethe best possible position for his archer-strong army.
1
not only far more numerous than theirFrench counterparts (most of whom werearmed with slow-reloading crossbows) butalso far more effective – and it wasn’t longbefore they were raining down hell ontheir enemies.
The French army’s opening move of thebattle to was to launch a cavalry chargeagainst Henry’s archers in an attempt toknock them out of the fight. This was anentirely sensible tactic, yet it seems that toofew Frenchmen volunteered to take part inthe charge, and it failed to make any impact.“God and our archers caused them soon tostumble, for our archers did not shoot a singlearrow that day which did not kill and bring tothe ground man or horse.” This observationin a version of the Brut chronicle is anexaggeration – not all of Henry’s 7,000 or soarchers were up to Robin Hood standards –but the cumulative effect of their arrowstorm, as well as their determination anddiscipline, proved devastating.
The failure of the cavalry charge dealt aserious blow to French prospects of victory.But the real key to understanding the scale oftheir defeat lies in what happened when theythen attempted a mass advance on foot.
Up to 5,000 men moved forward, intend-ing to engage in hand-to-hand combat withthe English men-at-arms – troops of similarmartial training, armour and equipment.Some did reach the English lines – whichexplains the death of the Duke of York inthe subsequent fighting – but the majorityfailed miserably, falling beneath what oneFrench chronicle described as a “terrifyinghail of arrow shot”.
Imagine what it must have been like, havingno choice but to try to push forward slowlyacross sodden, muddy ground in the faceof a storm of arrows. The fact that the arrowsrained down in spurts rather than a continu-ous bombardment made it all the moreterrifying: the French didn’t know whenthey were next going to face the barrage.
The result was a funnelling effect, forcingmen to crowd in on each other, packed soclose that they could no longer raise theirweapon arms. As men fell over, others piledon top of them, and many died fromsuffocation without ever actually engagingin the fight.
Those French men-at-arms who did surviveto reach the English line were so disabled thateven the lightly armed English archers wereable to enter the melee, “throwing down theirbows and arrows and taking up their swords,hatchets, mallets, axes, falcon beaks and otherweapons”, as the Burgundian soldier Jean deWavrin put it.
In this scenario, in which hand-to-handfighting between the men-at-arms of both
25–26 October, evening
The two most important English casualties,Edward, Duke of York and Michael de laPole, Earl of Suffolk, were dismemberedand their flesh removed by boiling, sothat their bodies could be taken back toEngland. Other English dead were burned.Henry remained concerned that theFrench might attack again. He orderedhis soldiers not to distract themselves bycollecting booty from the field but rather toburn it. Early on 26 October Henry had hisarmy march quickly away from Agincourt in defensive formation, ensuring that theremaining prisoners were well guarded.
Cautious exit6
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Henry’s speech
25 October, mid to late morning
The French opening move – a mountedcharge against the archers – was tooweak, with men reluctant to expose theirhorses to the damaging rain of arrows.The main assault of men-at-arms on footfollowed, but was halted by a large-scale
arrow storm, which made the Frenchmen crowd together so closely
that they could not raise theirweapons. Some fell, and othersfell on top of them. The force ofthe attack was lost and theremaining men provedeasy pickings even for thelightly armoured English
archers. The French reardivisions, seeing what had
happened to their compatriots, fled without engaging.
4 Fatal charge
525 October, between noon and 1pm
Henry stood down his army and allowedhis men to search through the enemyheaps for prisoners. A cry went up that anew French troop was approaching.Henry’s men, with their helmets andgauntlets removed and their weaponsput aside, were in no position to offerresistance and feared that their prisoners could take advantage of the situation.Henry ordered the prisoners to bekilled. Some were herded into a barn,which was set on fire. A brief engagementfollowed but the French soon chose to withdraw completely.
Capturing prisoners
Night of 24–25 October
Henry prepared for the next day by sendingout scouts to survey the ground anddiscussing with his commanders how bestto deploy his troops in order to givemaximum protection to his archers. TheFrench camp was noisy and chaotic – even now not all troops hadarrived. Some of the olderFrench commanders –such as the marshalBoucicaut (pictured) –expressed concernsabout giving battlebut their advicewas ignored.
2 Preparing for battle
25 October, early morning
Henry adopted a defensive position withthree battalions of men-at-arms in thecentre, and archers on the flanks and initiallyin front. All were protected by a wall ofstakes, while woodland at the sides also provided useful defence.Initially there was astand-off. Henry movedhis army forward togoad the French, but remained on thefirmer ground,forcing the French to cross water-logged terrain.
3 Taking positions
RIGHT: The Englishenter the fray at
Agincourt
46 BBC History Magazine
Agincourt
sides was limited, it is hardly surprising thatEnglish fatalities were relatively low; we don’tknow the exact figure but it’s unlikely to haveexceeded a few hundred. The number ofFrench deaths was much higher, though todate it has only been possible to identifyaround 500 dead. And when you factor inthat these men met their deaths in just acouple of hours – many of them hailing fromthe same noble families in Upper Normandyand Picardy – there’s little doubt that theimpact of the defeat on the area was consider-able. At least 320 prisoners can be identified.
So the English were the conclusive victors at Agincourt. But does that make the battlemedieval England’s finest hour? Whenconsidering this question, it’s important toremember that Agincourt was not a decisivebattle. Charles VI may have been known asthe ‘mad’ king but he was astute enough notto join the French army at Agincourt, nor tosend his son, the dauphin. Therefore, thoughthe English took some high-rankingFrenchmen prisoner, these were not politi-cally significant enough to force the French tothe negotiating table. However, the battle didenhance Henry’s position at home and gavehim leverage to raise money and troops forfurther expeditions, culminating in theconquest of Normandy between 1417 and1419. Not surprisingly, the French chose not to engage Henry in battle again.
Spurious claimsSoon, however, other developments weremore significant than Agincourt, especiallyCharles VI’s recognition of Henry as his heirand regent of France in the treaty of Troyes ofMay 1420. And this event had as much to dowith political divisions in France as Henry’smilitary prowess.
Though Henry made efforts late in 1416 tohave his victory remembered through thesaints on whose day it fell (Crispin andCrispinian, though he also credited St John ofBeverley with help in the battle), there is noevidence that Agincourt achieved ‘cult status’in any modern sense. Once Henry was dead,parliament petitioned for campaign wagesthat had not yet been paid to be recalled, and
there was never any major income from theransoms of the leading prisoners.
By the middle of the 15th century (whenEngland faced defeat in the Hundred Years’War), English military losses in France madeAgincourt a distant memory. However, inNovember 1449, when most of Normandywas already lost, the House of Commonsmade a significant gesture by choosing astheir speaker Sir John Popham – the only MPwho was a veteran of Agincourt.
Edward IV visited the field during hisFrench campaign of 1475, and the author ofThe First English Life of Henry V (1513–14)hoped to stir Henry VIII to action in Franceby recalling his namesake’s successes.
For all this, it wasn’t until the late 16thcentury that Agincourt began to attain itsiconic status. This was linked to a growinginterest in late medieval history, genealogyand aspirations to gentility. In order toacquire coats of arms in the visitations of the heralds, it was useful to claim that yourancestors had fought at Agincourt.
As a result, many spurious claims wereadvanced and tales improved in the telling.One particularly egregious example camefrom the Waller family of Groombridge inKent, who added the escutcheon (heraldic
shield) of Charles of Orléans to their armsbetween 1592 and 1619 on the false groundsthat Richard Waller had captured the duke atthe battle and housed him at Groombridge,making so much money out of the ransomthat he could rebuild his house and church. Infact, Waller had the duke’s younger brother inhis custody, and not as a result of the battlebut through a hostage arrangement of 1412.
French skullsFrom the late 16th century onwards, manyminor gentry families created Agincourtmyths for themselves. Michael Drayton’spoem The Battaile of Agincourt (1627)regaled its readers with stories of derring-do– some of which starred men who had noteven been at the battle. An example was JohnWoodhouse. He was credited with hittingFrench soldiers on the head with a large club,which found its way onto the Woodhouse coatof arms, along with the motto Frappe fort (‘hithard’ – the expression allegedly used byWoodhouse when wielding his club againstFrench skulls).
Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) is a manifes-tation of the huge interest in the medieval pastthat blossomed in late 16th-century England.Its portrayal of Agincourt dominates modern A
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“Readers wereregaled with storiesof derring-do – some starring men whohad not even been at the battle”
A painting of French king Charles VI. “He may have been known as the ‘mad’ king but he was astute enough not to join the French army at Agincourt,” says Anne Curry
BBC History Magazine 47
views of the battle, to the extent that manypeople believe that Henry V actually utteredthe words attributed to him by Shakespeare.
The play all but disappeared from theatresduring the 17th century but enjoyed arenaissance in the mid-18th century when itsinvocation of a triumphant victory over theFrench made it a powerful piece of propa-ganda amid renewed and regular outbreaks ofconflict with France. Indeed, when The Timesfirst noted the anniversary of the battle on25 October 1757, it was Shakespeare’s wordsthat it chose to employ.
The Bard’s battleA study of newspapers reveals how usefulAgincourt, and especially Shakespeare’sversion of Agincourt, was as a means ofconjuring past successes against the Frenchand encouraging contemporary politiciansand soldiers to try to emulate their predeces-sors on the battlefield. The FrenchRevolutionary and Napoleonic wars provideda major impetus: the first HMS Agincourt waslaunched in 1796 and a horse called Agincourtran at Newmarket in 1805, the same year thatpunters could pay a shilling to view RobertKer Porter’s picture of the battle – a panoramacovering 261 square metres.
Within this scenario, the notion developedthat the English had won because of theirdemocratic tradition. Charles Dickens, in his
Child’s History of England (1853), contrastedthe good stout archers with the proud andwicked French nobility who dragged theircountry to destruction. A lecture script sentout to accompany the showing in schools andfactories of Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry Vin 1944 brought to mind a kind of ‘TommyAtkins’ of the 15th century, depicting thearcher who broke the charge of the Frenchknights at the battle.
Colonial and pioneer societies haveroutinely invoked Agincourt, too, as theepitome of a heroic spirit in challengingcircumstances. At the 50th anniversary of thefoundation of the town of Agincourt inFennimore County, Iowa in 1907, John PhilipSousa was commissioned to compose hisMarch to Agincourt. Another anniversary,the silver jubilee of King George V in 1935,prompted the BBC to commission theAgincourt overture from Walter Leigh.
The first known tour for those withan interest in inspecting the scenes ofHenry V’s triumph was organised by ThomasCook in 1886. That Agincourt held a place atthe head of the long list of British militaryachievements was confirmed by its inclusionin the Army Pageant held at Fulham Palace in1910. Since its director was the well-knownShakespearean FR Benson, it is hardlysurprising that the dialogue used was largelypenned by the Bard.
By the time of the 500th anniversary of thebattle in 1915, Britain and France were alliesin the First World War, engaged in a mortalconflict against a common enemy. The Frenchbattalion stationed near Agincourt invitedBritish officers to share the day with them asa “joint celebration of an ancient battle day ofhonourable memory to both”, reported theIllustrated London News. That same spiritunderlies the collaborations planned for the600th anniversary (see box, above right).
Stripping away the myths and legends oflater centuries, what have we left? For me,Agincourt is a battle that, above all else,demonstrates the significance of goodleadership. Its lessons are perennial: the size ofan army matters less than the skills of itscommander and the cohesion of its troops.
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“During the Napoleonic Wars, Agincourt was invoked to inspire Britons to defeat the French again”
BOOK
Great Battles: Agincourt by Anne Curry (Oxford University Press, 2015)LISTEN AGAIN
Hear Melvyn Bragg and historiansdiscuss the battle and its legacyon BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time atbbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y25q
DISCOVER MORE
Anne Curry is professor of medieval history
and dean of humanities at the University of
Southampton. She is heavily involved in the
Agincourt 600 commemoration programme
Laurence Olivier in Henry V. Shakespeare’s depiction still dominates views of Agincourt
Battle honoured How the British and French are marking Agincourt’s 600th anniversary
An exhibition at the Tower of London will tell the moving story of the build-up to the battle, the unfolding events of the day, the aftermath and the legacy, using objects loaned from British and French collections alongside arms and armour from the Royal Armouries’ extensive holdings. The exhibition in the White Tower will run from 23 October to 31 January 2016.
At the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, the exhibition Chevaliers et Bombardes (7 October–24 January 2016) will trace how gunpowder artillery changed the face of warfare for the French between defeat at Agincourt in 1415 and victory at Marignano in 1515.
A service of commemoration will be held at Westminster Abbey at noon on 29 October. That choice of date reflects the events of 1415. The Letter Book of the City of London records that on the day of the battle, 25 October, no one in England knew what was happening on Henry’s campaign – so everyone feared the worst. The joyous news of the English victory arrived in London early on the morning of 29 October, and was proclaimed at St Paul’s at 9am; the bells of the city’s churches were rung and Te Deums sung. Later that day the mayor and other leading citizens processed to Westminster Abbey to give thanks.
More anniversary events are planned for 25 October at Brecon Cathedral and elsewhere in the UK. At the battlefield itself in France, morning Mass will be celebrated, followed by the inauguration of a new monument dedicated to the fallen, with various military displays in the afternoon. There are also hopes to commemorate the events of 25-26 October 1915 during the First World War, when French and British troops met on the field in an act of friendship.
You’ll find details of all events at agincourt600.com
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48 BBC History Magazine
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BBC History Magazine 49
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BBC History Magazine 51
THE HISTORY ESSAY
HOW EUROPE ROSE FROM THE DEAD
While the First World War triggered 30 years of terrible violence, the
Second ushered in decades of peace. How can we explain the contrast?
By Ian Kershaw
LEFT: The residents of a German women’s shelter after the First World War RIGHT: A West German advert for a VolkswagenBeetle in 1955. Europe recovered from 30 years of hell in ways that “few could have imagined possible”, says Ian Kershaw
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THE HISTORY ESSAY
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of the First World War – what had been optimistically labelled the‘war to end war’ – made another conflict likely. Within a generation,that conflict had begun, and in terms of human and physical de-struction turned out to be far worse even than its predecessor. InEurope alone probably more than four times as many people werekilled in the Second World War than the First, most of them civil-ians, while vast swathes of the continent (far more than in 1914–18)were left in ruins. Yet the catastrophes had utterly different out-comes. While the First World War produced lasting turbulence thatpaved the way for another conflict, the Second resulted in decades ofpeace, stability and unprecedented prosperity. What explains suchan extraordinary contrast?
Some answers have looked no further than ‘the German problem’.The Germans – the explanation runs – were largely responsible forthe First World War, which left them simmering with resentment attheir defeat and, led by Hitler, were certainly responsible for the Sec-ond. The different outcomes have, consequently, a simple explana-tion. Germany was left to recover and cause further difficulties after1918; ‘the German problem’ was ended by the total defeat of Germa-ny in 1945.
Like most simple explanations of complex historical issues, it is notthat it is utterly wrong; rather, that it is just inadequate. The plethoraof works that appeared last year on the 100th anniversary of the out-break of the First World War showed the difficulties of reducing thecause of the war solely to Germany’s role, important without doubtthough that was. And a vast amount of research over many years hasdemonstrated plainly that there was no one-way street in Germanhistory that led to Hitler. After all, as late as1928, Hitler’s party was supported by lessthan 3 per cent of the German population.Even once Hitler had gained power in Ger-many, his escalating aggression – as librariesof books have spelled out – was made possiblein good measure by the divisions and weak-nesses of the European ‘great powers’, Britainand France. Hitler took Germany, Europe andthe world into war, to be sure. But the cause ofthat war cannot be reduced just to Hitler.
Nor can the causes and outcomes of bothgreat conflagrations be reduced just to Ger-
many. While Germany is a crucial component, an explanation has tolook to wider European (and world) dimensions, and to structuralreasons for such contrasting outcomes to the two world wars.
As it emerged from the carnage of the First World War, Europe wasbeset by a multi-faceted comprehensive crisis that lay at the root ofthe subsequent descent into the even greater catastrophe of the Sec-ond World War. Four strands can be singled out, though it was theircombination that led to such disastrous consequences.
The first was an explosion of ethnic-racist nationalist conflict, es-pecially in the eastern half of the continent. A surge in extreme na-tionalism, in which national identity was usually defined ethnically,followed the collapse of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires and theviolence of the Russian Civil War. Hatred of Jews – though Jews hadin reality little or nothing intrinsically to do with conflicts between,say, Romanians and Hungarians or Ukrainians and Poles – becameboth more acute and also more widespread as part of these ethnicconflicts. Nationalist resentments could easily find scapegoats for so-cial misery in the Jews, who in central and eastern Europe were gen-erally both more numerous and less well integrated into society thanin west European countries.
The new nation-states that were founded on the ruins of the fallenempires were not only products of defeat. Their multi-ethnic popu-lations in some of the poorest and most war-stricken parts of Europealso faced struggles for limited material resources, and had weak andfragmented political systems that had been established in the mostunpropitious circumstances imaginable.
A second, interrelated, strand of the comprehensive crisis was ter-ritorial revisionism. The Versailles Treaty of 1919,however well-intentioned its architects had been, pro-duced a settlement that guaranteed conflict over dis-puted territories and demands for revision. Borderswere disputed nearly everywhere in the newly createdstates of central, eastern and south-eastern Europe,with potential for serious disturbance from signifi-cant ethnic minorities that invariably faced discrimi-nation from the majority population. And, of course,there was seething resentment in countries that sawthe settlement as grossly unfair. Neither Italy norGermany had internal ethnic divisions (though Italy
Europe between 1914 and 1945 stood completely in the shadow
of war. The two world wars were a double – and interlinked –
catastrophe for Europe (and for much of the rest of the world),
while the years between largely amounted to the aftermath of
one and the prelude to another great conflagration. The legacy
Interwar Europe
A German poster from c1920 depicts Bolshevism as a harbinger of famine. Fear of communism triggered the rise of violent far-right forces across Europe
BBC History Magazine 53
THE HISTORY ESSAY
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Jews pictured in Poland, c1920, at the dawn of a decade that saw increasing unrest. Social misery stalked poverty-ridden,war-stricken eastern Europe between 1914 and 1945, and many of its residents blamed their Jewish neighbours for their woes
54 BBC History Magazine
THE HISTORY ESSAY
“In interwar Germany, ethnic nationalism, territorial
revisionism, class conflict and the crisis of capitalism
reinforced each other in dangerous fashion”
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Ethnic Germans, pictured near Gdansk, prepare to leave Polandin 1938. Ethnic tensions exploded during the interwar years
Interwar Europe
had – and still has – a mainly German-speaking population in theSouth Tyrol). But the demands for revisionism in both countries in-tensified imperialist nationalism with evident ethnic implications.Italy was resentful at not being granted parts of Yugoslavian territory,while German ethnic minorities were a rising source of tension inPoland and Czechoslovakia.
Thirdly, there was the festering sore of class conflict. This gainednew and sharp focus after the First World War through the success ofthe Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the So-viet Union. The overthrow of capitalism and the creation of an en-tirely novel political system offered a model of government and soci-ety that posed an attractive alternative to the social misery anddeprivation felt by wide sections of the impoverished industrialworking class and the landless rural proletariat.
However, the presence of the Soviet Union both fatally split thepolitical left and at the same time inordinately strengthened the rad-ical right. Those who felt most threatened by the prospect of socialistrevolution soon flocked into the new extreme counter-revolutionarymovements. Hungary, Romania and Austria, countries in centraland eastern Europe, where the fears of Bolshevism were palpable,produced strong counter-revolutionary forces. But where – as in Italy,then a decade or so later Germany – nationalist and virulent anti-Bolshevik forces harbouring expansionist ambitions gained powerover the state, their hate-filled energies could be directed into foreignaggression. As a result, Europe’s peace stood in great danger.
The fourth element was interwoven with the other three. This wasthe unprecedentedly deep and lasting crisis of capitalism that fol-lowed the First World War and fed into the Second. This crisis hadtwo enormously destructive phases, separated by only a brief inter-mission. The first, an inflationary crisis that flowed from the massive
economic disruption produced by the war, lasted until 1924.Practically all countries experienced inflation. But in central andeastern Europe it ran completely out of control. The calamitous Ger-man hyperinflation is well known. But hyperinflation was far fromconfined to Germany. In Poland, Austria and Russia the currencywas ruined. People who had only cash assets were ruined, oftenturned into beggars. “There were endless heaps of money,” recalledthe mayor of a Polish village. “Purses and the like were useless.For things for the house one paid in thousands, then in millions,and finally in billions [of Polish paper marks].” This state of affairslasted until the introduction of a completely new currency, theSłoty, in 1924.
Stabilisation of currencies and what seemed for a time tobe the prospect of better conditions and hopes for the future lastedonly five years before the second, even more destructive crisis of cap-italism – global in extent, though especially damaging in Europe –struck. This time it was the deflationary crisis of the Great Depres-sion. Where this afflicted countries with shaky political systemsfacing significant radical opposition from the left and, especially,from the right, the chances of dangerous dictatorial regimes gaining power were high.
Europe’s overwhelming and comprehensive crisis –political, socio-economic and ideological-cultural– arose from the interaction of all four components.It took Europe from catastrophe to even greater ca-tastrophe, and to the verge of self-destruction. No-where escaped the crisis altogether – not even non-belligerent countries. Western Europe came off
better than eastern, central and south-eastern regions of the conti-nent. Even so, in the Mediterranean zone Italy succumbed to Fascismin 1922, Portugal was under authoritarian rule from 1926 onwards,and Spain – more mildly affected by the Depression than many othercountries – experienced dictatorship between 1923 and 1930 and wasplunged into a terrible civil war in 1936.
One country, though, experienced all four elements of the crisis intheir most extreme form. This was Germany. Ethnic nationalism,territorial revisionism, class conflict and the crisis of capitalism rein-forced each other in exceedingly dangerous fashion. They werelinked by the ideological focus on ‘the Jewish Question’, which couldbe used to mobilise powerful forces both against what was now por-trayed as ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’ on the one hand, and the ‘Jewish plu-tocracy’ as the backbone of rapacious capitalism on the other.
Hitler, a product of the postwar conditions, proved more adeptthan any other politician in Germany at exploiting the comprehen-sive crisis of state and society. Once he had consolidated his hold onpower, a new catastrophe in Europe became far more likely and with-in a few years inevitable. Germany’s military and economic potentialhad been temporarily restricted, but not destroyed, at the end of theFirst World War and its strident revisionist ambitions had direct im-
BBC History Magazine 55
THE HISTORY ESSAY
“The Second World War eliminated the potential for
German aggression: the political force of Nazism was
destroyed, and its ideological basis totally discredited”
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Some of the leading figures in the Nazi regime stand trial at Nuremburg, 1945. “The purging of those who had perpetrated the worst war crimes, grossly inadequate though it was, drained much of the poison from postwar politics,” says Ian Kershaw
plications for the territorial integrity and independence of numerousother countries. So once this potential could be re-established, andunder assertive nationalist leadership, the chances that the Europeancrisis would end in a new cataclysm for the whole of the continentwere high. Equally probable was that central and eastern Europewould be at the centre of the crisis as the continent descended intowar once more, and that, once war had begun, the lands in the eastwould see the worst of the horror, the greatest destruction and themost grotesque inhumanity.
The Second World War touched depths of depravity that even theFirst World War did not reach. And the devastation to economiesand societies as well as to the physical environmentwas immense. It seemed hardly conceivable in 1945that Europe could within a decade produce politicalstability, flourishing economies and, above all, avoidanother war engulfing the continent. Yet this is whathappened, even if Europe was now divided down themiddle by the Iron Curtain, producing contrastingpolitical, social and economic developments in theseparate halves. How did this remarkable transforma-
tion come about? Why did prolonged crisis follow one war; peace andprosperity a second?
Again, an answer has to be structural and multi-faceted. But, crucially, the Second World War in all its brutality, inhumanity anddevastation fundamentally broke the crisis matrix that had led fromone catastrophe to another and created a contrasting matrix of self-reinforcing elements that provided the preconditions for a new Europe to emerge.
First, the potential for further German aggression was eliminated.German ‘great-power’ ambitions and the militarism and extremenationalism that had underpinned them and proved such a baleful
element in Europe’s history since well before the FirstWorld War had been ended once and for all. Atenormous cost, the political force of Nazism had beendestroyed, its ideological basis (and that of fascismmore widely) totally discredited. The purging of col-laborators and those who had perpetrated the worstwar crimes, grossly inadequate as the process was,drained much of the most deadly poison from post-war politics.
A c1947 poster promoting the Marshall Plan, which became an important symbol of western Europe’s economic rebirth
56 BBC History Magazine
THE HISTORY ESSAY
“At great cost to the peoples of the eastern half of Europe, subjected
to communist rule for 40 years, the Iron Curtain proved to be an
essential platform for Europe’s postwar recovery”
Secondly, Soviet domination of eastern Europe largely re-moved the sources of ethnic conflict. Border shifts, populationtransfers and drastic ethnic cleansing in eastern Europe, involv-ing hundreds of thousands not only of ethnic Germans but alsoof Poles, Ukrainians and others – and carried out with great bru-tality and amid terrible bloodshed – produced much greater eth-nic homogeneity than had existed before the Second World War.This contributed to the pacification, under Soviet repression, of the eastern half of the continent.
Thirdly, geopolitics had been completely trans-formed by the war. The former ‘great powers’,which had for so long competed for mastery inEurope, were all irredeemably weakened. Thetwo superpowers, the USA and USSR, now re-cast separate halves of the continent in their ownimage and produced a binary political and ide-
ological contest between democracy and communism. The ruth-lessness with which the Soviet Union established near-monolith-ic control over almost the whole of eastern Europe promoted thegrowth of virulent anti-communism that became the ideologicalcement of western Europe. The prewar rampant anti-Bolshevismof the extreme nationalist right was thereby converted into thestate-sponsored anti-communism of conservative governments.
At great cost to the peoples of the eastern half of Europe, sub-jected to communist rule for what would turn out to be morethan 40 years and deprived of personal freedoms that people inthe west took for granted, the Iron Curtain proved to be an es-sential platform for Europe’s postwar recovery.
Fourthly, in contrast to the searing crisis of capitalism ofthe interwar years, which had bedevilled the politics of Europe,the take-off into sustained and spectacularly high levels of eco-nomic growth, with roots reaching back to the war itself, nowprovided the platform for political stability.
A pivotal moment in Europe’s split was the announcement ofMarshall Aid – the European Recovery Plan, as it was properlyknown – in June 1947, welcomed by west European countries butrejected by Stalin for the Soviet bloc. Marshall Aid was not thecause of the economic growth. The $12bn given to Europeancountries over four years were simply not enough for that. ButMarshall Aid gave impetus to the growth already under way andwas of great symbolic importance, not least in the defeatednations of Germany and Italy, in helping to establish growingconfidence in the economic new start.
Lessons had been learned from the disastrous economic legacyof the First World War. Without the sustained economic growth,the stabilisation of the new Europe would have been much moredifficult – perhaps even impossible, as after 1918. Before long, too,the first steps were being taken towards a co-operation, initiallyeconomic though with political implications from the outset,which had been unthinkable in the nationalist, protectionist erabetween the wars.
Last but not least, there was now the prospect of nuclear devas-tation. The USA’s monopoly of nuclear power lasted only fouryears. By 1949 the Soviets had their own atom bomb. And by 1953both superpowers possessed the far more devastating hydrogenbombs. Mutual assured destruction, though the term came later,concentrated minds. There could never again be the kind of warthere had been in 1914 and in 1939. The prospect of nuclear warhelped to establish a stable equilibrium, though the price waslearning to live with the bomb. The mushroom cloud cast a longshadow.
Europe had nearly destroyed itself in its double catastrophe.But the Second World War had eliminated the negative constella-tion that had been the legacy of the First. From perhaps the lowestebb in its long history, Europe had the chance to rise from theruins in ways that few in the devastated continent of 1945 could have imagined possible.
Professor Sir Ian Kershaw is regarded as one of the world’s leading
biographers of Adolf Hitler. He will be discussing Europe in the 1930s
at both the York and Malmesbury events at BBC History Magazine’s
History Weekends – see historyweekend.com
The Soviet Union projects its military might to the worldduring the annual May Day parade through Red Square, 1969
BOOK
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914–1949by Ian Kershaw (Allen Lane, September 2015)
DISCOVER MORE
Next month’s essay: Sam Willis explores the Royal Navy’s inadequacies in the American Revolution
Interwar Europe
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THE FULL STORY OF THE KING UNDER THE CAR PARK
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58 BBC History Magazine
Georgian London
Life was changing in 18th-century England – and the changes would be dramatic for criminals and the poor. Georgian London saw the
evolution of the modern adversarial trial, crime reporting, a newly professional police, the reformatory prison and the workhouse. A new, and newly extensive, form of governance was being created.
Yet these developments were not primarily the result of high-flown theories or abstract arguments but, rather, emerged in response to the clamouring voices of the poor and the criminal. The pace of reform was forced by violent gangs and serial escapers, insistent paupers and aggressive beggars, manipulative defendants and prison escapees. It was action ‘from below’ – the strategies and pleas of working people – that most fully explains how London, the modern world’s first million-person city, came to invent new forms of modern social policy. Plebeian
Londoners may not have liked the new brand of policing, nor the punishment that resulted from it, but they forced the pace of change and redefined the limits of the possible.
The forces that drove changes in practice are clearly discernible in the lives of paupers and criminals, acting individually and collectively. Paupers used their limited written and oral skills to cajole and embarrass parish elites, so creating a more comprehensive welfare system, while the courtroom strategies of street robbers laid the foundations for the rise of the adversarial trial. Criminals who illustrated the failure of justice through constant escapes and charis-matic leadership forced the state to build a new world of prisons but also gave hope to some in the wider working class.
In the following pages you’ll meet five characters whose crimes or reaction to poverty helped influence changes in social policy.
Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker reveal how the
cunning, courage and sheer resourcefulness of some of
18th-century London’s poorest residents forced the
authorities to overhaul the justice and welfare systems
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BEN JONES
BBC History Magazine 59
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another escape attempt that was foiled onlywhen a file was discovered hidden in agingerbread cake in his possession.
Later, when charged with attemptedrobbery and told he would be fined thesubstantial sum of 40 marks (about £26),he replied: “Give me a receipt for it, andI’ll pay you now.”
Dalton and others, notably the jail-breakerJack Sheppard, became widely notorious butpopular with the poor. Having seen TheBeggar’s Opera (1728), featuring a characterbased partly on Sheppard, Dalton said that heand his gang thought “the whole seem’d tobe an encouragement of their profession”.
The cocky criminal
In the 1720s a wave of gang robberiesand prison breaks alarmed London.At the centre of this emerging cultureof criminal defiance was leading gang
member James Dalton. Having reportedlyseen his father hang when he was five,Dalton himself appeared in at least sevenOld Bailey trials, four as a defendant andthree as a prosecution witness (turningking’s evidence).
Dalton’s actions brought the workings ofthe judicial system into sharp focus. Afteran early conviction he was sentenced totransportation, but joined a mutiny off theSpanish coast. Recaptured, he plotted
Dalton himself is referenced in WilliamHogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress (1733), inwhich his wig box is seen on top of aprostitute’s bed. He was executed at Tyburnin 1730, aged 30.
Dalton helped to create a rebelliousplebeian culture that prompted thegovernment to offer enhanced rewards forthe conviction of street robbers. But thisled to new forms of corruption, promptingOld Bailey judges in 1732 to make theepochal decision to admit defence lawyersinto the courtroom in felony cases – thefirst step in the creation of the modernadversarial trial.
“His escape attemptwas foiled when a filewas discovered in his gingerbread cake”
Georgian London
BBC History Magazine60
The bloodthirsty gang
The letter-writing pauper
angs in the 18th century were quite different from their modernequivalents. They generallycomprised threatening networks of
thieves, loosely organised and supported byfriends and neighbours. The most frighteningwas named for its base on the ill-policedboundary between the City of London and itssuburbs: the Black Boy Alley Gang.
In 1744 this “profligate sett of audaciousbloodthirsty, desperate, and harden’d villains”carried out a series of street robberies andresisted efforts to arrest them, leading to amoral panic. When one was seized, the othersfreed him “in defiance of justice”. In response,the authorities increased rewards,encouraging thief-takers to assume the job ofarresting and prosecuting members of thegang; in December 1744 alone, £1,400 waspaid out. One thief-taker claimed that “thevery sanction of Black-boy-alley will hang anhundred of them with very little evidence, nomatter who swears”.
Faced with the danger of being convictedand hanged on dubious evidence, gangmembers increasingly recruited the newlypermitted defence lawyers. These lawyerschallenged cases prosecuted for profit bythief-takers or on the basis of accompliceevidence, leading to a high acquittal rate andthe survival of several gang members of theBlack Boy Alley Gang.
The balance of power in criminal trials wasthus altered, and the authorities were forcedto develop new methods of combatting streetcrime. A few years later, in the late 1740s,Henry Fielding created the Bow StreetRunners, often seen as the forerunners of theMetropolitan Police.
CJones was sick, disabledatherinei-literate. That didn’t stopand semthousands of others, fromher, and t
pauper letters’, by whichwriting ‘pthose outside their parish ofliving
nt (their ‘home’ district)settlemeghtsou to extract financialupport from that parish.sFew such letters survive,
ut Jones’s are found in abache from the City ofcandon parish of St DionisLonchurch. In the mid-18thBackcshe was living 200 milescentury sn, on the Welsh border; shefrom LondonDionis churchwardenswrote to the St Ds, and threatening to returnoutlining her needsting the parish even more)home (thereby cosd her money.if they did not sendte: “Their is none knowsIn 1758 she wrot
baer in my limes [limbs] andwhat paines I do bm time for the ruptor, but II can not stire sum
do keep my contyenas [countenance] as wellas I can or eles I should be sent to my parch[parish] before now. And if… I must go theofissers of this parch… they will hunt me fromheer… Then I must come to London. But I doraether have to gunyes [two guineas] heir.”
These pleas were successful: for a decadeCatherine received substantial sums. Suchletters set precedents for the level of support a pauper could expect from their parish,driving up the cost of poor relief. Theycontributed to the pressure for change,culminating in the New Poor Law of 1834mandating the national operation of a poorrelief system along with new workhouses.
“‘Their is none knowswhat paines I do baerin my limes [limbs]’”
61BBC History Magazine
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Tim Hitchcock is professor of digital
history at the University of Sussex, and
Robert Shoemaker is professor of 18th-century r
British history at the University of Sheffield
BOOK
London Lives: Poverty, Crime and theMaking of a Modern City, 1690–1800by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker(Cambridge University Press, August 2015).It is also available as an ebook
DISCOVER MORE
The unruly prisoner
“Harriet was shippedhundreds ofmiles to work in a cotton factory”
nted children did not changeunwandiately, her voice was added to aimmedng body of criticism that wouldgrowinually lead to new legislation and theeventu
abandonment of the policy.abandWith her peers, Harriet Russell helped
to change the history of social policy byshaming the men who ran it.
The cotton-mill labourer
In the 1780s London’s authorities had aproblem: there were few reliable ways ofdisposing of criminals. The AmericanWar of Independence had curtailed
transportation, while several London prisonswere destroyed in the anti-Catholic GordonRiots of 1780.
This suited Patrick Madan, a criminalcelebrity who repeatedly eluded justice. Onone occasion at Tyburn, convicted of a brutalrobbery and with a noose around his neck, aman in the crowd claimed that he, not Madan,was the guilty party, so Madan was reprieved.(It seems that the man may have been amember of Madan’s gang willing to put hisneck on the line for his leader.)
Madan once escaped from prison bydonning women’s clothes, and was freedfrom a local police station by a mob who toredown the house and carried him to freedom.
Madan was as dangerous in prison as hewas at liberty. In Newgate in the late 1770s he
took ccontrol of the system of ‘garnish’(payymments from prisoners for basicameenities), and ran a school for criminals.In 17777 he led a prison riot in which “all thewindoows were broke”.
TThee subject of two biographies, Madanraileed against authority. Finally, as part of adisaasttrous attempt to find a new home forconnvicts, he was transported to Africa,wheeree he probably died. His example drovehommee the need for both a new prison colony andd a new kind of prison.
arriet Russell as born in thearriet R ssell as born in theSt Clement Danes workhousejust before Christmas 1779, andher childhood was spent in the
18th-century equivalent of social care.The parish separated her from her mothersoon after birth and sent her to a nurse inLow Leyton (near Hackney) for the next10 years.
Harriet was healthy and smart – shelearned to read and say her prayers beforethe age of four – but she became a victimof one of the most painful policies of18th-century poor relief. At the age of 10 shewas one of the thousands of parish childrenshipped to Yorkshire and Lancashire ascheap apprenticed labour for the cotton millsin the early years of the industrial revolution.
In early March 1790 Harriet was put in theIn early March 1790 Harriet was put in theback of a cart with a new set of clothes, ahat and two aprons, and taken hundreds ofmiles from any familiar face to JosephWells’s cotton factory in Sheffield, whereshe was to work at his bidding for the nextseven years.
But despite the cruel treatment shereceived, Harriet was not broken. Oncompletion of her term she headed ‘home’,and in early September 1797 the Londonparish was confronted by “a girl by thename of Harriet Russell” and forced tolisten. Despite being only 17 she prompted the all-male body of middle-classchurchwardens and overseers to call aspecial meeting explicitly to hear her story.
While the policy of shipping off London’s
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Upcoming editions of The Historian:
Autumn 2015Agincourt 1415-2015 Coinciding with the600th anniversary ofthe Battle of Agincourt, and guest edited byProfessor Anne Curry, this issue exploresthe myth and realityof Welsh archers atAgincourt, LaurenceOlivier’s charismaticportrayal of Henry V,and the campaigntrail of the Hundred
Years War.
Winter 2015Regionalism and nationalism
Spring 2016From Source to Screen
BBC History Magazine 63
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Experts discuss and review the latest history releases
BOOKS
INTERVIEW / ANDREW ROBERTS
“I’d like to put an end to the ‘Blackadder’view of the First World War”
Andrew Roberts talks to Matt Elton about his book on the first day of the battle of the Somme,the infamous 1916 operation that resulted in the deaths of thousands of men
Andrew Roberts photographedin a hotel in London. “Was
this level of blood lossnecessary? The answer has
to be no, especially for solittle ground gained,” he says
Photography by
Helen Atkinson
64 BBC History Magazine
Books / Interview
ANDREW ROBERTS
Having studied modern history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge,
Roberts worked as an investment banker and company director before embark-
ing on a publishing career that has spanned three decades. His previous books
include The Storm of War (2009) and Napoleon the Great (2014, both Allen Lane).
He has also presented a number of high-profile TV series on historical subjects.
To what extent was the decision to
fight at the Somme a political one?
It was highly political. British forces neededto help the French, which sounds like astrategic military decision – but actuallythe Somme was chosen because it was wherethe two armies would overlap, or at least beadjacent. It would be a powerful propagandamove if the two armies could co-ordinatethe biggest attack of the war thus far.
How much was overconfidence an
issue in the planning of the operation?
It’s clear from General Haig’s diaries that hewas wildly over-optimistic. It wasn’t entirelyhis fault: his chief intelligence officer, JohnCharteris, led him to feel that the Sommewas going to be a big victory instead of theworst day in the history of the British Army.
We can see why they thought this. Thesheer amount of ordnance they were goingto be dropping on the German barbed wireand dugouts should, by any normalcalculations, have resulted in a walkover.The British men were expected to just walkacross no man’s land and take possession ofthe first couple of lines of German trenches,only possibly fighting for the third line.
Key among the reasons why this wasn’tthe case is that barbed wire is an awful lothardier than it seems. The wire was cut insome places but the men, heavily weigheddown by their equipment, came up againstuncut wire all too many times. Ultimately,the intelligence staff must bear some blame for that, as must the Royal Artillery.
What’s your take on Haig?
I usually take very strong views for or againstpeople. I’ve been attacked quite a lot for my
pro-Napoleon stance, for instance. AlthoughI think I’ve been objective about him, a lot ofpeople who have written in about my [BBC]TV and radio shows don’t think that at all.
I certainly don’t go along with the ‘Haigwas an idiotic donkey’ line that Alan Clarkand various other people have come up with.Equally, I think that – though they’re veryfine historians – several of Haig’s apologistshave gone a bit too far. He was in commandof the army on the day that the Britishsuffered the largest number of casualties forthe smallest amount of ground in the historyof warfare. He must take some responsibilityfor that, regardless of whether or not he wasfabulous in the last three months of the war.
But I think Haig was a good moderniser.He was a highly intelligent man, and theidea of writing him off as some ignorantblimp is monstrous libel. He learned fromhis mistakes, and it was only because he andthe army were capable of doing so that wedid eventually have those last three monthsof victory.
Why didn’t the bombardment work?
Some historians argue that as many asa third of the shells were duds. We werebuying a lot of shells from the US at the time,and there are various conspiracy theoriesabout sabotage in munitions factories whereGerman-American people worked.
I don’t personally give very much credenceto that sort of thing. I think the war officeordered the maximum number of shells inthe minimum amount of time and, as aresult, people cut corners and sold thingsthat ultimately didn’t work. I also wonder ifthere was a bigger reason, though: even if allof the shells had gone off, it takes more than shellfire to cut barbed wire. And Britishforces hadn’t developed techniques such asthe ‘creeping barrage’ – infantry closelyfollowing advancing artillery fire – until much later in the operation.
After the bombardment, the order was
given for the men to start advancing.
What did the Germans make of this?
They were shocked. They couldn’t believetheir eyes. It’s important not to generalisetoo much: there were battalions that creptout before the whistle blew at 7.30am, andthere were battalions who made a run for theGerman trenches. But, in the main, the menwere ordered to advance at walking pacebecause the commanders didn’t want themto be exhausted when they captured the firstlines of trenches.
You can understand their concern: menwere carrying any combination of their kit,rolls of barbed wire, Lewis guns, Bangaloretorpedoes, stretchers, water – most cumber-some of all – and more. It could be halftheir body weight. To do it even at a trotwould leave men completely breathless bythe time they got across no man’s land. Soin a way the decision to have the men walk did make sense – they should just haveorganised it so that some of the equipmentcame up after the trenches were capturedrather than at the same time. But they didbelieve that the Germans were going to be surrendering, not firing back.
How unfair is it to paint the British
soldiers as inexperienced and naive?
I think that it’s misguided. Many hadn’t seenaction before, but by no means all of them.Lots had seen action at Gallipoli, and mosthad been volunteering in the autumn of1914, so had 18 months’ training. So while it’strue to say this was a baptism of fire, the mennonetheless performed just as well as soldiers who had seen action for years. They werepretty fit and healthy; some had been gettingbetter food than they had ever eaten before,which is astonishing. The British Army didmanage to give three hot square mealsa day to soldiers who had been pretty muchundernourished until then, particularlythose from working-class backgrounds.
Which personal testimonies
particularly stood out for you?
The ones that really hit me were from thepeople who went back into no man’s landwhen they didn’t need to and weren’tordered to, in order to save their woundedcomrades and bring them back. Many of thewounded ended up in enormous shell holes and had to wait till dark to get back.
“Haig was a highly
intelligent man, and
to write him offo asff
some ignorant blimp
is monstrous libel”
PROFI LE
Starting on 1 July 1916,the battle of the Somme was a jointoperation by French and British empireforces near the river of the same namein France. Military leaders were confidentof the success of their plan – an aerialbarrage followed by infantry advance intoGerman trenches – but the battle was tobecome one of the bloodiest in history:on the first day alone around 20,000 Alliedsoldiers died, with tens of thousands moreinjured. By battle’s end in November, theAllies had gained only five miles. Much ofthe blame for this has since been pinned on British commander Douglas Haig.
I N CONTEXT
BBC History Magazine 65
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Can you imagine having to wait therefor hours? For many of the battalions, thewhole thing was over in 10 minutes, between7.30am and 7.40am. They then had to spendthe entire day in the boiling heat, with onlya limited amount of water, waiting fordarkness to fall so the machine guns wouldnot get them. Anyone who deliberately wentback in to that situation to rescue a woundedcomrade shows a level of heroism that I’venever seen in my life – and I hope never tohave to. It leaves one absolutely staggeredwith admiration.
The volume of the wounded can
sometimes be overlooked, can’t it?
For every man killed, roughly two werewounded. That scale of wounded men wasunexpected, and therefore there weren’t thenurses, the medicaments or the clearingstations, let alone the trains, to bring themback. This is where that overconfidence wementioned earlier resulted in terrible thingshappening. Many more men died as a result
of being wounded than would have been thecase if they’d been a bit more pessimistic.
What psychological effect did
the huge number of deaths have
on the British Army?
It’s fascinating that it didn’t break the moraleof the army completely. It had suffered a 50per cent casualty rate, which is an unbeliev-ably large number for any engagement atany stage in history. It’s a testament to thecheerfulness of the British fighting and work-ing man. These guys had come straight fromfarms and offices and factories, and volun-teered, yet even an attrition rate of 50 percent was not enough to break their morale.
The French mutinied the following year;the entire Russian army mutinied; and in1918 the German army mutinied. But therewas no question of that happening with theBritish. The bravery they showed, the sheerdoggedness and willingness to carry onfighting month upon month upon month, isvery moving. To survive from the beginning
to the end of the battle of the Somme,when certain death faced you on a dailybasis, is something that almost defies belief.
Is it right to see the slaughter as
having been unavoidable?
It was important that we maintained theoffensive. You couldn’t fight the First WorldWar by stopping and hoping that the otherside was going to fall to your machine guns.You don’t win wars by not going forward.
In many ways the most important pointabout the Somme is that the high commandand the general staff, the officers and thejunior officers, did learn lessons. Infantry tactics were completely altered, and thingssuch as the creeping barrage were developed.So in that sense the Somme did ultimatelylead to victory two years later. Was that levelof blood loss necessary? The answer has to be:no. One can never say that the death on oneday of more than 19,000 people was ‘neces-sary’, especially for so little ground gained.
How would you like your book to
change readers’ views of this day?
I’d like to put an end to the ‘Blackadder’view of the First World War – the ‘donkey’theory of a château generalship of moronicupper-class twits, miles behind the lines,who didn’t care about their men fighting andbeing slaughtered. Equally, I think that therevisionist lot, who make out Haig to bebetter than he was, have now gone too far.What I’d like this book to do is to present
a more rational and, to mymind, much more believableview than either of those two extremes.
Elegy: The First Day on the
Somme by Andrew Roberts
(Head of Zeus, 320 pages, £20)
“Anyone who went
back to rescue a
wounded comrade
shows a level of
heroism that I’ve
never seen in my life”
British soldiers repair their bayonets in the opening weeks of the battle of the Somme. Andrew Roberts argues that it is “misguided” to see all such troops as inexperienced
Out in hardback and ebook 5 November
Read an excerpt and fi nd out more at www.thehistorypress.co.uk/matusiak
From the author of
Henry VIII: The Life and
Rule of England’s Nero
and Wolsey.
BBC History Magazine 67
The War in the West: Germany
Ascendant, 1939-1941
by James HollandBantam, 720 pages, £25
On 14 December 1940a British merchant-man, the WesternPrince, was torpedoedin the mid-Atlanticby a German U-boat,with the loss of 15lives and her cargo ofmetals and foodstuffs.
By the standards of that dark secondwinter of the Second World War, when
Britain stood alone against the Naziperil, this was a not-uncommonevent; indeed, the Western Princewas one of some 50 merchant shipslost to U-boats in that month alone.
Yet one of the ship’s survivingpassengers made the sinking quietlyremarkable. Aboard was Cyril Thomp-son, a shipyard director from Sunder-land, who was returning to the UKhaving agreed terms with the Ameri-cans on a programme of constructionof merchant ships – the so-called‘liberty ships’. These were intended toreplace the losses then being incurredas a result of attacks on the British
merchant fleet, thereby securingBritain’s survival. As he clambered intothe lifeboat, Thompson clutched his leather briefcase, containing theall-important contracts. Like Britain, it seemed, he was saved.
Details, symmetries and ironiessuch as these are sometimes passed overin conventional histories – curiositiesthat are perhaps considered irrelevantto the grander narrative. Yet, as JamesHolland shows in his engrossing newhistory, they form an essential part of the popular historian’s art.
Holland has here set himself acomplex task. Though he is tacklingonly the war in the west and ends hisaccount in this first volume in thesummer of 1941, he nonetheless seeks torethink the history of the war – in theprocess, ironing out some of the manypopularly held inaccuracies and clichés.
In this, he does an admirable job,challenging erroneous assumptionsabout areas including the superiorityof German weaponry and the deadlyefficacy of the U-boat war. Hollandshows that, for all the deadly glamourof its panzers, Germany went to war in1939 with more horses than Napoleondid in 1812, and that Hitler’s U-boatsdestroyed barely 1.4 per cent of Alliedshipping in the Atlantic – never enoughto seriously threaten Britain’s survival.
In addition, Holland skilfully blendsa number of perspectives that, regret-tably, rarely feature in a general historysuch as this. The section on the libertyships is a good case in point, combining the story’s strategic, technological,
economic and human strands withina single, elegantly written narrative.
There is much to admire, then.Yet there are a few caveats. For one
thing, one wonders how Holland isgoing to manage the material in hissecond volume, given that this one,covering only the first third of thewar, weighs in at a whopping 600-odd pages of text.
Sinking the clichés of warROGER MOORHOUSE on an ambitious look at the first years ofthe Second World War that aims to overturn accepted wisdom
“James Holland here
seeks to rethink the
history of the war”GE
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MAGAZINE
CHOICEMAGAZINE
New history titles, rated by experts in their field
REVIEWS
A German U-boat as shown in a propaganda image, c1941. James Holland’s take on theSecond World War “challenges erroneous assumptions” about the efficacy of such strategies
68 BBC History Magazine
Books / Reviews
Simplifying the ByzantinePETER HEATHER praises a comprehensive, comprehensible overview of the millennium-spanning history of Byzantium
The Lost World of Byzantium
by Jonathan HarrisYale University Press, 280 pages, £25
Jonathan Harris faced two huge problems in writing a 280-page introduc-tion to Byzantium. Firstly, the empire lasted 1,000 years – that’s four years per page, with every
danger of losing all narrative shape in a barrage of names and political machinations. Second, there’s stiff competition. Nearly everyone who’s been anyone in the field has had a go at writing complete imperial histories.
Nonetheless, Harris has succeeded triumphantly in producing a fresh and highly readable account of this extraor-dinary institution. He grabs the reader’s attention right at the start, with the 16th- century French traveller Pierre Gilles watching the Ottoman conquerors of Constantinople dismantle the equestrian statue of the sixth-century emperor Justinian, symbol of a millennium of Byzantine greatness. Having spent a very happy week in Istanbul myself, hunting for bits of Byzantium, I know just how thorough a job the Ottomans did. An acute eye for detail is sustained through-out the book: Harris never fails to find the best story to focus readers’ attention on each chapter’s central subject.
More fundamentally, the book is beautifully constructed on the back of highly intelligent narrative choices. All corners of Byzantine history receive some coverage, but Harris rightly concentrates his fire on key eras, avoiding the flatness that would follow from covering everything on the same scale. He begins with a concentrated
account of the apparently triumphant Justinian in the sixth century and the consequent deluge of imperial collapse at the hands of Islam in the seventh. Unlike some of the competition, Harris is crystal clear that the Byzantium that emerged was as much a successor state to the Roman empire as any of the contempo-rary kingdoms of western Europe.
The key era of new expansion in the ninth and tenth centuries receives similar focus, as do the final centuries of Latin dominion and the last great dynasts struggling to retain power in the face of the Genoese, popes and everyone else with a finger in the imperial pie. This is my favourite part of the book – perhaps because it’s the era I know least – but it’s also Harris’s speciality, and that shows.
Another huge virtue is the refusal to be tied to political history. Harris rightly emphasises that what made Byzantium distinctive was its long-term synthesis of classical culture and Orthodox Christi-anity, and the book explores this key dimension to the full.
To pack in so much, choices have to be made, and there are points at which I would have chosen differently. For my tastes, the glory-to-disaster story of the sixth and seventh centuries remains just a bit descriptive. Cause and effect here is currently hotly contested, and Harris doesn’t commit himself. But he would surely object to the losses that my choices would entail and, overall, he trium-phantly overcomes the limits of his brief to take the reader to the heart of what it
meant to be Byzantine.
Peter Heather is professor
of medieval history at King’s
College London
The concept of ‘the war in the west’ also seems strangely parochial and old-fashioned. It is perhaps unfair to criti-cise a book for what it isn’t rather than what it is, but one might have thought that the days of narrow Anglocentric perspectives such as this – in which British historians write only about British battles – were long gone. British historiography of the Second World War, even in its popular form, has been exemplary in recent decades in incorpo-rating diverse narratives, in which narrow ‘British interest’ is often peripheral or even absent entirely – for instance, Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad (Penguin, 1998) and Norman Davies’ Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (Macmillan, 2003).
“This is a fine book
that weaves together
original research,
fascinating detail
and human empathy”
COMING SOON…
“Despite developing a pioneering theory of climate change and
inspiring Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt remains obscure. In
The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf aims to bring him back to
the fore; I’ll be talking to her next issue. Plus we’ll also have the
usual mix of expert reviews.” Matt Elton, reviews editor
It is perhaps understandable that Holland should wish to limit his horizons; after all, his thorough, thoughtful approach does not particu-larly lend itself to brevity. But even within those limited terms of reference the result is, for me, an oddly blinkered book. For instance, it mentions cricket matches being interrupted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, yet tells the reader scarcely anything about the reason for that rude interruption – Germany’s invasion of Poland. Though Holland is laudably keen to challenge readers’ lazy assumptions, in this regard he seems happy to allow an even greater misconception – that of the centrality of Britain to the wartime narrative – to go completely uncontested.
That complaint aside, this is a fine book that weaves together original research, fascinating detail and human empathy into an engaging and well-written whole.
Roger Moorhouse is the author of The Devils’
Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941
(The Bodley Head, 2014)
SH
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Emperor Justinian as depicted in a Byzantine
mosaic. Jonathan Harris’s account of the empire’s
history is “fresh and highly readable”,
says Peter Heather
BBC History Magazine 69
“Snyder’s focus
on partisans and
rescuers is insightful
and moving”GE
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Black Earth: The Holocaust
as History and Warning
by Timothy SnyderThe Bodley Head, 480 pages, £25
This is a curious book.Timothy Snyder writestrenchantly aboutthe dynamics ofdestruction in theHolocaust in easternEurope, and hischapters that focus onpartisans and rescuers
are insightful and moving. Yet BlackEarth is not a history of the Holocaustso much as an explanation of why Jewishpeople were killed more ‘successfully’ in some places than others.
Snyder’s argument is that the Holo-caust was facilitated by the destruction
of states. Where ‘the state’ was destroyed– across Poland and much of easternEurope – Jews lost all forms of protec-tion and could be killed with impunity by the German invaders and localcollaborators. Where it survived – in thestates that allied with Germany and whoretained the ability to exercise their ownsovereignty, such as Bulgaria, Italy andHungary, and in most of western Europeunder Nazi occupation – Jews stood abetter chance of surviving. As Snyderpersuasively puts it: “It was in the zone of
double occupation, where Soviet rulepreceded German, where the Sovietdestruction of interwar states wasfollowed by the German annihilation ofSoviet institutions, that a Final Solutiontook shape.” In these areas, Jews couldbe blamed for the Soviet experience asa means of denying or atoning for localcollaboration by the majority population.
Snyder is right to say that politics,rather than stereotypes of easternEuropeans as anti-Semites, are importantin understanding the Holocaust in theregion, and he shows that the killingscould be most ferocious in areas in whichthe Germans replaced Soviet rule. Thethrust of Snyder’s reading is that, whileGermans were motivated by anti-Semiticfantasy, eastern Europeans were provokedby bad faith driven by the need to hideprevious collaboration. Removinganti-Semitism from the eastern Europeanmix in this way will raise some eyebrows.
Snyder is excellent when explainingthe dynamics of occupation in easternEurope. His compelling analysis of local participation in the Holocaust in theBaltic States and western Soviet Union isnot, however, an explanation for why theHolocaust happened in the first place.Snyder’s sophistication in discussing thecomplexities of local conditions in east-ern Europe is not matched by an analysisof the Nazi drive against the Jews. Heaccounts for this through Hitler’s world-view which, he argues, regarded the Jewsas an “ecological” threat to mankind.This premise is taken as read – a curiouslack of interrogation which means that abook purporting to be about the historyof the Holocaust is in fact largely a bookabout the unfolding of the Holocaust inthe borderlands of eastern Europe.
Indeed, the sense of the Holocaust asa continent-wide crime, carried out inthe name of a planetary vision (to rid theworld of Jews), receives little attention.Explaining the course of the Holocaust– showing how local politics enabledparticipation in the name of whitewash-ing Soviet collaboration or in the hopeof nation-building – is not the same asexplaining the cause of the Holocaust.
Dan Stone is the author of The Liberation
of the Camps (Yale University Press, 2015)s
The dynamics of destructionDAN STONE has mixed feelings about an account of the Holocaust thatfocuses on how it unfolded at the expense of the reasons why it did so
Jewish people in Łódz ghetto, Poland. Timothy Snyder’s book is “right to say that politics are important for understanding the Holocaust in eastern Europe”, Dan Stone argues
70 BBC History Magazine
Books / Reviews
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Power struggleHANNA DIAMOND explores an account of France’s polarised,uneasy history, from the end of revolution to the present day
Wolf packTRACY BORMAN goes behind closed doors to explore the realWolf Hall and the family dynasty that made it their home
The History of Modern France
by Jonathan FenbySimon and Schuster, 544 pages, £25
Jonathan Fenby’s newhistory of France spansthe 200 years from therestoration in 1815following the fall ofNapoleon, through tothe present. Focusingpredominantly onFrance’s political past,
it describes the actions of governmentelites with an emphasis on the roles ofsignificant individuals. Fenby seeks toshow that France has never been able tofully embrace its revolutionary heritage,which sits uncomfortably alongsideingrained conservative traditions. Hespends little time on the revolutionaryperiod itself, but seeks to explore howrevolutionary and reactionary forceshave moulded France as the pendulumhas swung from one side to the other.
The Seymours of Wolf Hall:
A Tudor Family Story
by David LoadesAmberley, 296 pages, £20
Before 2009, and thepublication of HilaryMantel’s masterpieceWolf Hall, very fewpeople had heard ofthe Wiltshire manorhouse that was hometo the Seymour familyfor centuries. And if
they were aware of the Seymour family,ethen they primarily knew of Jane, the
He casts the Second World War,for instance, as a period in which‘two Frances’ vied for power. On theone hand were those who supportedthe Vichy government’s policy of Nazicollaboration, while those involvedin resistance represented the forcesof revolution. Fenby argues that thereare few examples when these competingforces have been tamed, citing Charlesde Gaulle’s short period of power inthe 1940s and the demonstrations in thewake of the recent Charlie Hebdo killingsas rare moments of national unity.
Fenby’s well-written, lively narrative isinformed by the period of more than 50years he has spent working as a journalist
short-lived third wife of Henry VIII –the only one of his six spouses to givehim a son. Mantel changed all of thatwith her two Booker-prize-winningnovels, which cast the Seymour brothersin starring roles alongside their haplessfather and naïve sister.
Distinguished historian David Loadeshas capitalised on this newfound interestby penning an account of the Seymoursand their Wiltshire home. Though (forobvious reasons) Wolf Hall is writ large inthe title, it is the family, rather than theirestate, that takes centre stage in his book.
The Seymours were an ancient familywho, according to tradition, could trace
their origins back to the French village of Saint-Maur-sur-Loire – from thename of which ‘Seymour’ is derived –in the seventh century. They probably first arrived in England as part ofWilliam the Conqueror’s invadingarmy of 1066: a Wido de St Maur wasrewarded for his service with a barony and extensive lands in Wiltshire,Somerset and Gloucestershire.
Although Loades ably traces thehistory of the family during the ensuing four centuries, it is with their phenom-enal rise to power during the reignof Henry VIII that he really gets intohis stride. Having already writtenmore than 30 books on the Tudor period,he is well qualified for the task. His bookmight not bring to light any new materialor revelations, but it is nevertheless a clearly written and enjoyable retelling of a now-familiar tale.
“Revolutionary
and reactionary
forces have moulded
France since 1815”
in France. His discussion is littered withtelling anecdotes that provide compel-ling and often humorous insights intoFrench national character, foibles andweaknesses. He also intersperses hisnarrative with page-long studies of keypersonalities such as the 19th-centurycity planner Baron Haussmann and20th-century president Jacques Chirac.
The extraordinary scope of the periodmeans that Fenby sometimes simplifiesthe complex, multifaceted nature ofevents. As a result, on occasion his bookresembles a mad dash through time but,for the most part, it is a great read.
In order to demonstrate how France’spast has directly informed its present,Fenby brings his account right up todate. His final chapter charts what he
Student protesters face the police during unrest in Paris, 6 May 1968. Jonathan Fenby’s book
contends that France’s revolutionary heritage has always sat “uncomfortably alongside ingrained conservative traditions”, says Hanna Diamond
BBC History Magazine 71
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It also takes the reader well beyondthe confines of Mantel’s fictional WolfHall by tracing the fluctuating fortuneslof the Seymours during the reigns of Henry’s children. Theirs was a fall as epic as their earlier rise. Both of Jane’sbrothers were executed during the reignof her son, Edward VI, and Jane’snephew fell foul of Elizabeth I, havingsecretly married her rival Katherine,sister of Lady Jane Grey. But if thefamily never again attained the dizzyingheights of power that it had enjoyedduring the reign of Henry VIII, itnevertheless was to remain at theforefront of English political life formany subsequent generations.
Tracy Borman is the author of Thomas
Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s
Most Faithful Servant (Hodder
and Stoughton, 2015)
Revolutions in the headJONATHAN ANDREWS has high praise for a survey of how ‘themad’ have been regarded by society across thousands of years
For reviews of hundreds of recent history books,
go to our online archive at historyextra.com/
bbchistorymagazine/books
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concluding with a characteristicallysceptical account of modern ‘psychiatric revolutions’ and the ambiguous impactof post-1950s psychopharmacology,neuroscience and community care.
Particularly captivating and distress-ing in equal measure is Scull’s survey ofthe false dawns and ill consequences of“desperate (physical) remedies”, frommalarial treatment and ECT to neuro-surgery, as well as the varied culturaland institutional influences of Freudianand post-Freudian psychoanalysis. Asa cultural history Scull’s text necessarilytraverses a wide terrain, including theplace of madness in art, drama, prose,poetry and music, sometimes requiringvirtuoso leaps of topic.
At times there is an almost voyeuristiccynicism in the way Scull excavates thetragic misconceptions of mad-doctors,psychoanalysts, neurosurgeons andpsychiatrists. The constant saving gracesof Scull’s approach are its compassionate,humanitarian concerns, and its fore-grounding of the consequences of thepsychiatric innovations he charts. Somemight question the rather limited attentionScull gives to the testimony of mentally illpeople themselves, but this would be tounderestimate his achievement inaddressing so enthrallingly what madnesshas meant for societies past and present,and the complex responses it has evoked.
This is a milestone text in its genre.No other monograph has accomplishedsuch scope, perception and balance incovering madness’s haunting, shifting
presence in civilisation’s psyche.
Jonathan Andrews is a reader
in the history of psychiatry
at Newcastle University
Madness in Civilization:
A Cultural History of Insanity
by Andrew ScullThames and Hudson, 448 pages, £28
To provide a compre-hensive narrative ofthe cultural historyof insanity acrosswestern and easterncivilisations over morethan two millenniain a single volume ofunder 500 pages would
be a daunting task for anyone. ThatAndrew Scull has achieved this ambi-tious goal so adeptly is testament to thedepth and breadth of his erudition afterfour decades at the scholarly vanguard ofpsychiatric history, and to his intellec-tual dexterity as a writer. It is also areflection of how far research in this fieldhas come since Michel Foucault’s 1961Folie et Déraison, repackaged in 1964 asMadness and Civilisation – a phrase Scullprovocatively revises in his title. As beau-tifully illustrated as it is written, Scull’s book is so engaging because he is asuperb storyteller with an unfailingappreciation for apposite piquantquotation. His racy, thought-provokingprose aids its readability for both anacademic and general readership.
Inevitably, because of the study’sdizzying scope, enormous discernmentin choosing topics is needed. Scull rarely disappoints in this regard, guidingus pacily but adroitly on an HG Wells-like time machine from madness in Greco-Romanantiquity, early Christian,Byzantine and Islamiccivilisations, through supernaturalconceptualisationsto the stigmatisation of early modernmadhouses andasylums of the 19th and 20th centuries,
clearly sees as relentless decline,describing a nation trapped in its past.He suggests that traditional approachesno longer work in the best interests ofa country that is experiencing seriouseconomic weakness and widespreaddisenchantment with its political classes.
Yet the fact that the past is ever-presentin contemporary France can also be seenas one of its main strengths, providing itwith a strong sense of identity and demo-cratic tradition. Indeed, France is not theonly country that is currently strugglingto reinvent itself in the face of dramaticchallenges for which historical precedent fails to offer solutions.
Hanna Diamond is professor of French d
at the University of Cardiff
A 19th-centuryimage of a ‘madman’.Andrew Scull’s book“is a milestone textin its genre”, saysJonathan Andrews
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BBC History Magazine 73
Books / Paperbacks
PAPERBACKS
Agincourt: The King,
the Campaign, the Battle
by Juliet BarkerAbacus, 494 pages, £11.99
This 10th-anniversarysecond editionof Juliet Barker’sbestselling2005 book arrives in timefor the 600th
anniversary of Agincourt.As the major Agincourt 600
conference held in Southamp-ton in August demonstrated,a lot of research has beenundertaken in the meantime;this new edition unfortunately misses the opportunity toreflect much of this (thebibliography is poor in thisregard). Many now acceptrevised figures of up to 9,000English men-at-arms andarchers facing a French force of12,000 troops, rather than thelong-accepted figure of 6,000versus 24,000. In an important and combative appendix,Barker intelligently challengesthese figures as “guesswork”;here she might have cited otherleading historians who would agree with her English-to-French ratio of at least 1:3.
Despite the book’s subtitle,the battle itself is covered inonly 23 pages, so this is not thevolume for those wishing to getto grips with the minutiae of thebattle or seeking an in-depthmilitary analysis of its events:there is little on the late-medi-eval military revolution debateand purportedly new tactics of the English army. Whatinterests Barker more is theperson of the king – Henry Vreceives high praise (and hewas indeed an outstandingcommander) – and, most of all,the campaign itself. It is herethat the book shines, capturing
are suitably footnoted for thoseof us without his education, buttthe best material requires noelucidation: “In general, actorshave no minds, only memories and poses.”
Alwyn Turner is the author of
several books on cultural history
D-Day Minute by Minute
by Jonathan MayoShort Books, 304 pages. £8.99
There are manyoutstandingnarrativeoverviewsof the invasionof Normandy,the greatestamphibious
operation of all time, notably byleading military historiansAntony Beevor and MaxHastings. Jonathan Mayo’scompellingly readable bookoffers something different butalmost as valuable. Mayo hascompiled from a rich variety ofsources – military and civilian;British, German, American andFrench; top commanders suchas Patton and Eisenhower; andeven humble GIs and squad-dies – a comprehensiveportrait in their words of the
bloody but ultimately trium-phant ‘longest day’.
Mayo takes us from the hugebuild-up, when every harbour,village and road in southernEngland seemed clogged withinvasion vehicles, through thepreliminary glider attacks andparachute jumps on selectedstrongpoints ahead of thearrival of the invasion fleet, tothe beach landings themselves.
Naturally, ‘Bloody Omaha’– most costly in lives of the fivebeaches – commands the lion’sshare of the book, but Mayo iscommendably even-handed incovering all sides of this hugeundertaking. What is perhapssurprising is the pessimismshown by leaders on both sidesabout the outcome of the battle.Rommel rightly feared thathis ingenious beach obstacleswould not be enough to stopsuch a massive onslaught,while Churchill asked of his wife on the eve of battle: “Doyou realise that by the time youwake up in the morning 20,000men may have been killed?”
In the event, 4,413 died – bad,yes, but not as bad as feared. Theliberation of Europe had begun.
Nigel Jones is the author of Peace
and War: Britain in 1914 (Head
of Zeus, 2014)
brilliantly and accessibly thesheer scale of logistics sucha major Channel expeditionentailed – a transport fleet ofhundreds of ships, thousandsof horses, innumerable arrows(up to 100,000 may have beenloosed in the battle) – and thehardships of Henry’s march toCalais and all that preceded thefateful day of battle. The valueof this enjoyable book liesprimarily in its lengthy, carefuland lucidly written account ofthe build-up to Agincourt.
Sean McGlynn is the author of
Kill Them All: Cathars and Carnage
in the Albigensian Crusade
(The History Press, 2015)
For more on Agincourt see our feature starting on page 42
One Hundred Letters
from Hugh Trevor-Roper
Edited by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam SismanOUP, 496 pages, £16.99
“I know thathistory doesn’tconsist of styleonly,” wroteHugh Trevor-Roper – yet hewas one of themost stylish of
20th-century historians, andhis letters are elegant, wittyand wise. Even the gossip andpolitics of what he calls the“introverted village” ofacademia can be fun. Elsewhereit’s the diversity of material thatimpresses, from a devastatingrejection of overtures by KimPhilby, his former friend who’dturned out to be a Soviet agent, through to his “taste forreligious eccentricities”: there are accounts of a Sabbath spentwith the Hasidim in Jerusalem,and of the Amish, long beforethe media had discovered them.
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Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper,
whose “elegant, witty and wise”
letters feature in a new book
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74 BBC History Magazine
THREE MORE TALES OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
Nick Rennison is the author of Carver’s
Quest (Corvus, 2013)t
Master of Shadows
by Neil OliverOrion, 448 pages, £14.99
Through hisappearances onBBC TV series Coast,Vikings and A Historyof Scotland, NeilOliver has becomeone of the country’sbest-known histori-ans and archaeolo-
gists. Having written a number ofbooks based on his TV work, he has now turned his hand to fiction. This isa big, bold novel about a 15th-century Scots soldier who, in search of themysterious truths about his origins,ends up fighting amid the ruins ofConstantinople for the last ruler of the Byzantine empire.
John Grant is brought up in an areaof the lawless Scottish borderlands,where power is exercised by the locallaird Sir Robert Jardine and his violent cohorts. Into the boy’s life comes amessenger from a more exotic world inthe shape of Badr Khassan, a giantMoorish warrior who arrives with wordof John’s absent father, an old enemy of
Jardine. After a bloody confrontationwith the laird’s men, Badr and JohnGrant flee into the night. The boy,grown to manhood, becomes amercenary soldier, fighting his wayacross Europe. In 1453 he reachesConstantinople, a city threatened bythe massive armies of the Ottomanemperor, Mehmet II.
Oliver’s multi-stranded narrativeencompasses the stories of many others.A badly injured prince is tended by thegirl whose actions caused his injuries,and the two fall in love. Mehmet, soonto be known as the Conqueror, urgeshis besieging troops into battle againstthe infidel. A warrior woman onceknown as Joan of Arc, who escaped thefiery end that her enemies planned forher, joins Constantinople’s defenders.
All of the strands of the storyeventually lead back to John Grant andthe secrets of his birth. Master ofShadows is an almost crazily ambitioussfirst novel, and not all of it works, but it isa colourful, highly enjoyable tale of verydifferent lives united by the unantici-pated twists and turns of fate.
A quest for knowledgeNICK RENNISON on an ambitious debut, with a huge cast ofcharacters, that journeys from Scotland to Constantinople
FICTION
Books / Fiction
Byzantium
Michael Ennis (1989)
A dispossessedViking prince travelseast to Byzantiumn the 11th century.As a member ofthe imperial guardhe is both witnessto, and participant
in, the vicious dynastic strugglesthat make Constantinople sucha dangerous place. Based on thetrue story of Harald Hardrada, laterking of Norway, this is a vivid sagaset in a decadent society givenover to excess and the pursuit of power and pleasure.
Theodora
Stella Duffy (2010)
n the sixth century,Theodora, wife of theByzantine emperorJustinian, rises froman obscure back-ground to becomethe most powerfulwoman in the world.
The extraordinary trajectory of hercareer, from the theatres andbrothels of the city to the throne,shapes Stella Duffy’s compellingnovel. The charismatic, seductiveTheodora is brought to life, and sotoo are the filthy backstreets andglittering court of Constantinople in which she operated.
The Walls of Byzantium
James Heneage (2013)
The first in a grippingsequence of novels,the third of which(The Lion of Mistrawas recently pub-ished, this epic adven-ture story is set in
the last decade of the 14th century.The armies of the Ottoman emperorBayezid threaten Constantinopleand the few remaining outpostsof its empire. The book’s hero,Luke Magoris, comes from a familythat holds the secret to an ancientrelic that may yet save Byzantiumfrom destruction.
ITBJagtw
Th t di
AVeiAtht
Tst(wlt
the last decad
Troops lay siege to Constantinople in 1453 in this contemporary miniature. The city is just one of the settings of Neil Oliver’s “highly enjoyable” novel
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BBC History Magazine
TV&RADIOJonathan Wright previews the pick of upcoming programmes
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Reins of Power
TV BBC Four,scheduled for mid-September
By Lucy Worsley’s own admission, horsedancing – the subject of her newdocumentary – “is a subject of nicheinterest only”. Nonetheless, she’s beenfascinated by equine ballet since sheresearched her PhD on the architecturalpatronage of William Cavendish, the1st Duke of Newcastle (1593–1676),a royalist soldier and politician whowrote extensively about horsemanship.
Today, the idea of exercising such closecontrol over a steed may seem esoteric,but in the past it was a key skill for thosewith an aspiration to hold power. “Toride was crucially important for a ruler,”she says. “It not only enabled you tocommand an army, it also demonstratedthat you had the self-control, and thecontrol over others, to manage apowerful, dangerous animal. The ruleron horseback is demonstrating he hascontrol over his own animal passions.The word ‘management’, control overothers, comes from the art of the manège[the movements in which a horse istrained in a riding school].”
Jacobite resistanceThe Stuarts in Exile
TV BBC Two Scotland and BBCiPlayer, scheduled for mid-September
Marking 300 years since James, the ‘OldPretender’, attempted to restore theStuarts to the throne, Dr Clare Jacksoncharts the Jacobite struggle for power.It was a campaign, she argues, thatneeds to be seen as rather more thanmerely a dynastic spat that ended atCulloden in 1746 with defeat for BonniePrince Charlie. Instead, the clashbetween Hanoverians and Jacobiteswas, she contends, one with widerEuropean dimensions.To read our feature on the Jacobites,turn to page 80
Decisive victoryThe Battle of Britain
75th Anniversary
RADIO BBC Radio 2,scheduled for Friday 18 September
Commemorating 75 years since15 September 1940, a day when RAFFighter Command decisively defeated theLuftwaffe in aerial duels over southernEngland, Radio 2 airs a day of program-ming including Chris Evans and JeremyVine broadcasting from Biggin Hill anda special edition of Friday Night Is MusicNight. On Channel 4, Dermot O’Learytmeets veterans in Battle of Britain: TheLast of the Few (13 September), andw Battleof Britain: Heroes Fly Again (15 Septem-ber) charts a flyby of, it’s hoped, 40Spitfires and Hurricanes.
There’s a military element here, too.“On the battlefield, a great leap couldtake the horseman out of danger, while torear up could have crushed foot soldiers,”says Worsley. “The art of horse dancing is really a battlefield skill that’s beenaestheticised, made beautiful.”
For the documentary, novice riderWorsley trained with horse handler and stunt rider Ben Atkinson (who workedon Poldark) atop a white Spanish horseknamed Almonzor. “He was almost toomuch for me to handle,” says Worsley ofher steed. “It was like putting a learnerdriver into a racing car.”
Nonetheless, Atkinson’s trainingenabled Worsley to demonstrate the‘Spanish Walk’ and the ‘Hollywood Rear’to a crowd gathered at a 17th-centuryriding house. “Of course, I dressed forthe occasion as a Cavalier duke,” she says. “It was a dream come true.”
She wasn’t, however, allowed to showoff her new expertise at the world’s mostfamous centre for manège, the SpanishRiding School in Vienna. “I asked if Icould demonstrate my new-found skillson one of their horses,” she says. “Theanswer was: ‘Only if you train with us for
seven years first.’”
Lady of the pranceLucy Worsley tells us about her fascination with how horses showed off their moves
77
A pilot sits on the cockpit of hisSpitfire in September 1940
MAGAZINE
CHOICE
MAGAZINE
Lucy Worsley reveals the importance of horsemanship to
17th-century leaders – and trains in the art of horse dancing herself
“To ride was crucially
important for a ruler –
it showed that you had
the control to manage
a dangerous animal”
Was Bonnie Prince Charlie’s bid to claim the throne
part of a wider European tussle?
BBC History Magazine
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Working-class heroKeir Hardie: Labour’s First Leader
RADIO BBC Radio Scotland & Radio 4,scheduled for Wednesday 9 (Scotland)and Thursday 10 September (R4)
While playing rugby as a young man,Gordon Brown was kicked in the headand suffered a retinal detachment. Blinded in one eye, he lay in hospitallistening to tapes sent by Keir Hardie’sbiographer, Fred Reid, and learned aboutthe Labour party’s first leader.
To mark the centenary of Hardie’sdeath on 26 September 1915, Brownoffers a personal take on his life andinfluence. It’s a remarkable story. Hardie
was illegitimate, brought up in povertywith no formal schooling, though hisparents taught him to read and write. Bythe time he was 10 he was working in amine. Despite these disadvantages,Hardie became first a union official andthen, in August 1892, the independentlabour MP for West Ham South.
During the programme, Brown visitsHardie’s home in Cumnock, EastAyrshire, where he sees his hero’s writingdesk – a present sent from New Zealand.For Brown, this crystallises the idea that Hardie was a figure of not just nationalbut international importance. He wasalso a man, Brown argues, whoseevangelism for socialism was rootedin his own experiences of poverty, hypocrisy and injustice.
78
Grease monkey– and proud of itHow Britain Worked
DVD (£10.99, Dazzler)
Motorcycle racer and lorry mechanicGuy Martin is one of life’s enthusiasts,a man never happier than when eithergoing very fast or finding out howthings work. The latter urge is to thefore in How Britain Worked, first shownon Channel 4 in 2012, in which Martin explores how theinventions of the industrialrevolution still shape theway we live today.
Don’t expecta polishedpresentationalstyle; Martin haslong seemedambivalent abouthis rather accidental
television stardom. Machinery, on theother hand, is clearly something heloves, especially when he gets to donoveralls and restore greasy bits of kitfrom yesteryear.
Which is, basically, what he doesover these six episodes. In Brixham,for instance, he helps out on a projectto restore a sailing trawler, the boatthat transformed the fishing industry.In Birmingham Botanical Gardens he’snot as curious about the plants as he isabout the hidden Victorian technology
that supported these green-fingered efforts.
Throughout, Martinsides with the
underdog, beingfar less interestedin those who paidfor Victorian-eraengineering than inthose who actually
got their hands dirty.
We may constantly be told that fossilfuels need to stay in the ground ifwe’re to prevent runaway globalwarming, but oil still powers muchof what we do. Its central role in ourcivilisation is reflected in The Price of
Oil, a season of plays on Radio 4 inSeptember that looks at moments atwhich the black stuff and history haveintersected. Jonathan Myerson’sThe Weapon, for instance, is centredon 21 December 1975, when Carlosthe Jackal stormed OPEC’s HQ inVienna. Meanwhile, Jim Naughtiepresents Oil: A Crude History of
Britain (Radio 4, September), tracingn
the North Sea oil boom.Also on Radio 4, listen out for
Computing Britain – The Story
of British Computing (Radio 4,g
September), part of the BBC’s Make
It Digital initiative to inspire a newgeneration to get creative with digitaltechnology. In the same season, Ada
Lovelace – Enchantress of Numbers
(BBC Four, September) profiles the19th-century English mathematicianfamed for her work with computer pioneer Charles Babbage.
Around a billion people livein extreme poverty. But, arguesstatistician Hans Rosling for Don’t
Panic – The Truth About Poverty
(BBC Two, 23 September), ananalysis of historical trends suggeststhere is cause for optimism.
For those with satellite TV,highlights include Last Stand at Little
Big Horn (PBS America, Sunday27 September), which explores howthe Native American perspective onCuster’s defeat is very different from that of white America.
Ada Lovelace is often described as the first computer programmer
TV & Radio
Gordon Brown explores the life of Keir Hardie, shown here in Trafalgar Square in 1914
Guy Martin gets his hands dirtyexploring early engineering
80 BBC History Magazine
Perched high on a hill in theSpey valley, surrounded bymountains, Ruthven was onceone of four infantry barracksbuilt across the Highlands inan attempt by George I to put
down further Scottish rebellions in the wakeof the great Jacobite uprising of 1715.
The strategic position of the fortification,lying as it does at an important junction ofmilitary roads from Perth, Fort Augustusand Inverness, meant that Ruthven was a keystronghold for the British Army – and atarget for rebelling Scots. But, despite beingcompleted in 1721, Ruthven didn’t see itsfirst military action until 1745, when a300-strong Jacobite force attempted tobesiege the barracks. (Remarkably, it tookjust 14 Redcoats to repel the attack, with theloss of just one man.)
Although now ruined – little of theinterior structure, and no visible flooring orroofing remains – the layout of Ruthven isstill virtually as it was when it was first built.Once they have climbed the steep path to thebarracks, visitors can see where thegovernment soldiers stationed there wouldhave slept – 10 men to a barrack-room and two to a bed – walk the small parade groundonce used for drilling, and view the spotwhere the horses were stabled.
Craving power
The Jacobite rebellions againstthe crown were ultimatelytriggered by the so-calledGlorious Revolution of 1688,when the Dutch princeWilliam of Orange seized theEnglish and Scottish thronesfrom the Stuart king James II
and VII to become William III and II.“The Stuarts had reigned in Scotland for
centuries, and the Jacobites craved thereinstatement of the Stuart male line,” saysChristopher Whatley, professor of Scottishhistory at the University of Dundee. “Theychampioned the claim of the exiled JamesFrancis Edward Stuart, son of the deposedJames II and VII, the man after whom themovement was named [Jacobus beingderived from the Latin form of James].
“What’s more, many Scots had beenantagonised by King William’s imposition ofPresbyterianism – a more austere form ofProtestantism – as the Church of Scotland.Making James Francis Edward Stuart (the‘Old Pretender’) king would herald changesto the practice of religion in Scotland.”
The Jacobite rebellions were also, saysWhatley, a reaction to the union of Scotlandand England in 1707. “The later Stuarts werenot especially well loved, but the union waseven less so,” he says. “Anti-unionism – andScottish independence – was a strongcomponent of support for Jacobitism in Scotland in the early 18th century.”
Yet Jacobitism was not a purely Scottishphenomenon. There were thousands ofJacobites in Ireland, too, many of whomwere fired by a desire to return their country
to Catholicism, and to free it from whatthey regarded as the shackles of
Westminster political control.English Jacobites were less
militant than their Scottishcounterparts, although therewere substantial numbers ofJacobite sympathisers southof the border.
The rumbles of discontentand scattered episodes of
HISTORY EXPLORER
The Jacobite uprisingsProfessor Christopher Whatley and Charlotte Hodgman
explore Ruthven Barracks in Badenoch, Scotland –
a Highland fort built to suppress Jacobite rebellions in
the 18th century
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Ruthven Barracks looms out of the mist from an isolated hilltop in the Scottish Highlands. The fortification was of great strategic importance to both the British Army and Jacobite forces during the 18th century
Jacobite dwarde aims included placing James Francis EdStua dart on the thrones of Scotland and Englan
BBC History Magazine 81
“The British government
felt it had to crush the
Jacobite insurgents once
and for all”PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER WHATLEY
82 BBC History Magazine
Out & about / History Explorer
unrest that had marked William’s reign inScotland came to a head in September 1715when John Erskine, Earl of Mar raised thestandard for the Old Pretender at Braemar,recognising him as James VIII of Scotlandand James III of England.
Thousands of Jacobites flocked to theuprising, and there was great alarm in thecorridors of power in London. Yet Mar wasunable to capitalise on this momentum.With his army failing to inflict defeat on anoutnumbered government force at the battleof Sheriffmuir in Perthshire on 13 November,his supporters began to lose faith in theirchances of victory, and retreated north.
Victory turns sour
But all was not lost for the Jacobites. WhileMar’s army was fighting at Sheriffmuir, anexpeditionary force from the Highlands hadjoined with Jacobites from northernEngland. The resulting battle of Preston,fought on 12 November, ended in a Jacobitevictory. However, triumph soon turned sourwhen, after finding themselves trapped inPreston with no artillery or supplies, theJacobite troops were forced to surrender.Many fled, while as many as 1,500 weretaken prisoner. Around 40 were laterexecuted, with the remainder transportedto the American colonies.
“What the Jacobites needed was external
support, from a friendly power like Swedenor Spain, which could provide funds,ammunition and soldiers,” say Whatley.“But in 1715, French king Louis XIV – whohad been an enthusiastic supporter of JamesII and VII – died, so French backing was nolonger guaranteed for that year’s uprising. Add to that Mar’s inadequate leadership and the strength and organisation of government forces, and you can see what the Jacobiteswere up against.”
Further uprisings were planned between1715 and 1745, with English Jacobites – attempting to capitalise on the fact thatBritain and France were on opposing sides inthe War of Austrian Succession – seeking tojoin forces with the French. Spanish troopslanded in north-west Scotland in 1719, butwere quickly defeated. Louis XIV’s successor,Louis XV, authorised an invasion of England,but in yet another stroke of bad luck, aterrible storm wrecked the French fleet.
Unwilling to admit defeat, plans foranother attempted restoration were soon laid, headed by the charismatic CharlesEdward Stuart, (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ or the ‘Young Pretender’), son of James Francis Edward Stuart.
“Bonnie Prince Charlie’s arrival onScotland’s north-west coast in 1745 – albeitwith just one ship and a small force of men – revived the flagging Jacobite cause inScotland,” says Whatley. “He was anattractive figurehead who knew what cardsto play to the greatest effect – championing the breaking of the union, and offeringassurances about religion. He eventuallypersuaded Jacobite leaders in Scotland tosupport another rising, promising that they would be joined by English forces.”
Inspired by Charles’s confidence, thereinvigorated Jacobite army went head tohead with British forces at Prestonpans inEast Lothian, where, on 21 September 1745,they achieved their greatest victory. Withmost of the British Army in France fightingthe War of Austrian Succession, Jacobiteforces allegedly took fewer than 15 minutesto win the battle. Hundreds of governmentsoldiers were killed or injured. The rest fled
“ON BOGGY CULLODEN MOOR, THE EXHAUSTED,
DISHEARTENED – AND ILL-LED – JACOBITE ARMY
WAS DEFEATED IN AROUND AN HOUR”
or were taken prisoner. It seemed as if the Jacobites’ luck was turning.
Buoyed by their success, the victoriousJacobite army marched south intoManchester and on to Derby. But thepromised English boost to the campaignfailed to materialise. The would-be king haddeceived his followers. With just 200additional men joining them in England,a decision was made to abandon plans tomarch on London and the Jacobite army retreated to Falkirk where it fought, andwon, another battle against British forces.Yet, instead of proving a bright new dawn,this victory was to be a prelude to disaster.
Says Whatley: “The British government felt it had to crush the Jacobite insurgentsonce and for all, and the last of the majorconfrontations took place on 16 April 1746.On boggy Culloden Moor, the exhausted,disheartened – and ill-led – Jacobite army was defeated by troops under the Duke of G
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A jubilant Bonnie Prince Charlie entersEdinburgh after the Jacobite victory atPrestonpans, September 1745
VISIT
Ruthven Barracks
Ruthven, Kingussie, PH21 1NR historic-scotland.gov.uk
BBC History Magazine 83
The well and courtyard at the now ruined Ruthven Barracks
1 Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh
Where the Jacobites laid siege
In 1715, Jacobite forces tried unsuccess-fully to lay siege to the castle, attempting tobreak in at night by scaling the north-facingcliffs. A second – also failed – attempt wasmade during the 1745–46 rising, underBonnie Prince Charlie. During this attack,the Jacobites captured Holyrood Palace atthe far end of the Royal Mile, but failed totake the castle. edinburghcastle.gov.uk
2 Culloden battlefield, Inverness
Where the final battle was lost
The battle of Culloden was a bitter defeatfor Jacobite forces. The battlefield, whichcan still be visited today, features a 20-footmemorial cairn (mound of stones), whileheadstones on both sides of the roadthrough the battlefield bear the names ofdead clan members. You’ll find information on the battle at the visitor centre. nts.org.uk/Culloden/Home
3 Aughrim battlefield, Galway
Where more than 7,000 died in battle
The battle of Aughrim, in July 1691, wasone of the bloodiest battles ever fought onIrish soil and one that effectively put anend to the Jacobites in Ireland. It wasfought between the forces of William IIIand II and James II and VII. AlthoughWilliam emerged victorious, some 7,000lives were lost in the fight. The Battle ofAughrim Interpretative Centre overlooks the battlefield. discoverireland.com
4 Brixham Port, Torbay
Where William of Orange first invaded
Dutch prince William of Orange and 14,000troops landed at Brixham, Torbay on5 November 1688 where he was welcomedby many in south-west England. Aftermarching to London, William and his wife,Mary, were crowned at Westminster Abbeyon 11 April 1689. A statue of William standsat the spot where he allegedly first set footon English soil. brixham.uk.com
5 Prestonpans battlefield,East Lothian
Where Bonnie Prince Charlie won
Much of the battlefield at Prestonpans –where Bonnie Prince Charlie led Jacobiteforces to victory in 1745 – still survives andcan be seen from the top of a viewingmound at Meadowmill.battleofprestonpans1745.org
AL
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JACOBITES:
FIVE MORE PLACES
TO EXPLORE
example not only of the rebels, but alsoHighland communities they suspected ofharbouring Jacobites or providing Jacobitesoldiers. The punitive force directed againstthese communities, and against the Jacobitesthemselves, has been described by at leastone historian as genocide, a charge that isnot without foundation.”
But, as Whatley explains, anti-Jacobitismwasn’t purely an English sentiment. “Many Lowland Scots saw the actions of theHighland army as a threat to civil society.They feared the Jacobites would challenge the restored Presbyterian Church ofScotland. The revolution of 1688–89 hadestablished constitutional monarchy inBritain, and made clear the Williamite state’sopposition to Catholic absolutism. At leastsome of those who put their lives on the linein opposition to the Jacobites, or who resisted them in towns and villages or fromkirk pulpits, did so in the belief that they were defending certain important liberties.These included the right to own property, to be free from arbitrary governmentintervention, and the right to determinewhat religion they should adhere to.
“There was a perception that Jacobitismwas about the re-establishment of hereditarymonarchy, with kings believing they derivedtheir authority from God. Seen in the lightof such threats – real and imagined – it is perhaps easier to understand thedetermination to defeat the Jacobites.
“There is still much debate about why theJacobites failed,” concludes Whatley. “There is no single reason: often it was just sheer badluck. Jacobite commanders often disagreedover their aims, while other times they werehamstrung by the loss of strong militaryleaders such as John Graham, 1st ViscountDundee (Bonnie Dundee), at the battle ofKilliecrankie in July 1689. Over-optimism– even delusion – about their chances of success played its part too.”
Cumberland in under an hour.”Some 1,500 Jacobites died during the
battle, with the survivors scattering into theHighlands. A large body gathered at Ruthven(which had fallen to the rebel forces inFebruary 1746) the day afterwards, willingto fight on, and awaiting further instruction. But instead of urging his troops onwards,Charles sent instructions for “every man [to]seek his own safety in the best way he can”. With their cause apparently lost, the men set fire to Ruthven and fled. Thus beganCharles’s lengthy flight through the heather to avoid being captured.
“The aftermath of Culloden was brutaland bloody,” says Whatley. “The Britishgovernment was determined to make an
Headstones at Culloden battle-field bear the names of clan
members who died during the bloody clash of 1746
Historical advisor: Professor
Christopher Whatley, author of
Scottish Society, 1707 1830:
Beyond Jacobitism, Towards
Industrialisation (MUP, 2000)
Words: Charlotte Hodgman
In mid-September, BBC Two Scotland will be
tracing the Jacobites’ struggle for power.
Turn to page 77 for more details
85
Out & about
The silver Gundestrup cauldron fromnorthern Denmark, c100 BC–AD 1
BBC History Magazinne
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FIVE THINGS TO DO IN OCTOBER
EXHIBITION
The Crime Museum Uncovered
Museum of London9 October–10 April 2016 020 7001 9844 museumoflondon.org.uk
Never-before-seen objects from the MetropolitanPolice’s Crime Museum will go on show at the
Museum of London this month. As well as considering howthe nature of crime has changed since the Crime Museumwas established in 1875, the exhibition will also examinehow methods of detecting crime have improved over thepast 140 years.
The objects, previously accessible only to police profes-sionals and invited guests, include pieces relating to some ofBritain’s most famous crimes, including a published memoircontaining handwritten notes in the margin by DonaldSwanson, senior investigating officer on the Jack the Ripperinvestigation during the late 1880s. In it he names AaronKosminski as the prime suspect in the case.
Also on show is a pincushion embroidered with humanhair by a woman who was arrested more than 400 timesfor alcohol-related offences, and a violin, tools, false armand folding ladder belonging to Victorian cat burglar andmurderer Charles Peace. Known as a musician, Peace wouldreturn to the houses at which he had performed to rob theinhabitants of their valuables.
Other remarkable items in the exhibition include themasks used by the Stratton brothers – the first British mento be convicted of murder based upon fingerprint evidence– and objects relating to the ‘Great Train Robbery’ of 1963.
Crimebusting
MAGAZINE
CHOICE
MAGAZINE
EXHIBITION
Celts: Art and Identity
British Museum, London24 September–31 January 2016 020 7323 8181 britishmuseum.org
Explore the first Britishexhibition on Celtic art andidentity in 40 years. Intricatejewellery, religious artefactsand weaponry will shed lighton Celtic life.Look out for our
feature on the
myths of the
Celts in next
month’s
issue.
EXHIBITION
Death: The Human ExperienceBristol Museum and Art Gallery 24 October–13 March 2016 0117 922 3571 bristolmuseums.org.uk
Bristol Museum will beexamining the differentways human beings havehistorically approached death
and dyingacross the
world – fromthe Day ofthe Dead
and Victorianmourning
rituals tomummification
and coffins.
EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY
Secret Egypt:Unravelling Truthfrom Myth
Weston Park, Sheffield17 October–10 April 2016 0114 278 2600 museums-sheffield.org.uk
Some 150 objects will goon show in Sheffield thisOctober to challenge someof the enduring myths aboutancient Egypt and answera few of the big questionsof the period. Among theobjects on show will beanimal and human mummies,along with ceramics,jewellery and other piecesof archaeological evidence.
Forensics kits including this example from c1946 will be among the items on show at the Museum of London this month
EVENT
BBC HistoryMagazine’sMalmesburyHistory Weekend
Various locations,Malmesbury, Wiltshire15–18 October 0871 620 4021 (booking line) historyweekend.com/malmesbury
This month will see nearly 40leading historians and authorsgather in the hilltop town ofMalmesbury for four days of lectures at BBC HistoryMagazine’s third HistoryWeekend. Speakers includeMelvyn Bragg and JaninaRamirez. Turn to page 48 formore details.
GALLE RY
historyextra.
com/bbchistory
magazine
/crime
GALLE RY
historyextra.
com/bbchistory
magazine
/celtic-art
86 BBC History Magazine
MY FAVOURITE PLACE
Out & about
Brittany, France
them in the company of mywife, who is not only an ardentFrancophile but also – fortu-nately for me – an able Frenchspeaker. Most of our trips havestarted with a voyage on one ofthe car ferries that shuttle backand forth between Plymouthand the picturesque town ofRoscoff in the department of Finistère.
As these great ships glide intoport at the end of our outward journey, skirting the jagged isletslying just beyond the harbourmouth, I’m always reminded of the “grisly rokkes blakke” ofChaucer’s poem and of thelegions of men and women who have sailed these dangerouswaters before us.
My thoughts frequently turnto Henry Tudor, for example,who spent many long years inexile in Brittany before return-ing from France to seize theEnglish crown in 1485. OrI think of Charles I’s intrepidFrench wife Henrietta Mariawho, fearing capture by theparliamentarians in 1644, made
a desperate escape fromFalmouth to Brest, with asquadron of enemy warshipssnapping at her heels.
From Roscoff, our journeyinvariably takes us south past
the cathedral of Saint-Pol-de- RO
BE
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,AL
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By Mark Stoyle
Continuing our historical holidays series, Mark
explores a region of France with strong links to
England’s West Country
Iowe my earliestimpressions of Brittany– the beautiful regionthat occupies thenorth-western corner of
present-day France – to mygrandmother, who read thePaddington books to me when Iwas a child. The most captivatingof these cheerful narratives, inmy view, wasy PaddingtonAbroad, which tells of the bear’smisadventures during thecourse of a holiday spent withthe Brown family in the Bretonfishing port of St Castille.
There was something aboutthe way the Breton landscapeand people were described inthis book that stirred mychildhood imagination; thatinterest was to be revived a fewyears later when we studiedThe Franklin’s Tale, byeGeoffrey Chaucer, at mymid-Devon secondary school.
Baffling as the words of thegreat medieval poet initiallyseemed, his stories of courtlylove and magic “in Armorik,that called is Britayne”gradually got under myskin. This, together withthe fact that I was by nowbecoming increasinglyaware of the complex webof connections betweenthe history of Brittany and
the history of Devon andCornwall, made me feelespecially pleased when my ownfamily decided to spend our nextholiday in the south Breton district of Morbihan.
During the course of this tripwe visited both the megalithicmonuments at Carnac – ‘theStonehenge of France’, as it isoften described – and the city ofVannes, which contains manysplendid half-timbered housesdating back to the 16th and 17thcenturies. From the momentI first set foot in Vannes, I knewthis was a place I’d want to visit again – its architecture sotantalisingly reminiscent of those huge swathes of my own home city that had beendestroyed in the Exeter Blitz of1942, and which I could nowglimpse only in old photos.
Since then I’ve made manymore trips to Brittany, all of
Léon; its soaring, intricatelycarved 14th-century spiresdominate the landscape andserve as an indication of thearchitectural glories to come.
From here the roads diverge to reach a thousand delightfuldestinations, including themedieval town of Guérande, stillenclosed within its ancientdefensive walls; the magnificentPointe du Raz, the Lands’s Endof France; and the formidablestronghold of Château deFougères near Rennes. One ofmy favourite places, though, isMorlaix, not far from Saint-Pol.
Some of the ancient standing stones around
the town of Carnac
87
words of a famous piece of graffiti near London’sPaddington station): “Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere.”
Mark Stoyle is professor of early
modern history at the University
of Southampton
Read more about Mark ’sexperiences in Brittany at historyextra.com/ bbchistory magazine/ brittany
Next month: Arthur Cotterell
visits Bali in Indonesia
ADVICE FOR
TRAVELLERS
BEST TIME TO GO
Brittany is wonderful to visitat any time of year but ifyou’re looking for warmweather in the summer,make for Morbihan and thePresqu’île de Guérande inthe far south of the region.
GETTING THERE
For anyone with an interestin the past, the best wayto travel to Brittany is bysea. Brittany Ferries sailbetween Plymouth andRoscoff, and betweenPortsmouth and Saint-Malo, while Condor Ferries sailbetween Poole andSaint-Malo. Alternatively,you can fly direct toRennes, Brest and Dinardfrom a number of UKairports, or take theEurostar to Paris, and thenshoot through Brittany toBrest on the TGV train.
WHAT TO PACK
Stout walking-boots, aFrench-English dictionaryand, if heading for one ofBrittany’s many beaches,a bucket and spade.
WHAT TO BRING BACK
Sparkling Breton cider.
READERS’ VIEWS
The medieval town ofLocronan is unspoilt bylater development aftercollapse of local industry in16thc @CarolJFW
See the amazing ceramictiles everywhere. Don’tforget a trip up the tower!Roger Perris
Been there…
Have you been to Brittany?Do you have a top tip forreaders? Contact us via Twitter or Facebook
twitter.com/historyextra
facebook.com/historyextra
Once a thriving port, Morlaixwas sacked and burned by theEnglish in 1522; the townsfolkswiftly erected new buildings toreplace those that had beendestroyed, including a numberof grand townhouses that stillsurvive today and which areknown as maisons à pondalez.
As recent research has shown,
at least one house in this highlydistinctive style was subsequent-ly erected in Exeter, almostcertainly by itinerant Breton craftsmen, in yet anotherexample of the interactions thathave occurred over the centuries between the people of Devonand Cornwall on the one handand the people of Brittany on theother. And though that particu-lar house was torn down long ago, the happy survival of itsBreton progenitors enables meto resurrect it in my mind’s eye. For, as West Country travellersto Brittany so often find, (in the
The town of Vannes, famous for its colourful half-timbered
medieval houses, is reminiscent of Exeter before the Blitz of
1942, says Mark Stoyle
Brittany’s roads diverge to reach a thousand delightful destinations
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With tales of terror and ghosts, Edinburgh has always been a
popular destination for thrill seekers at this most frightful time
of year. As Halloween hits the city and with spooky goings-on
abounding, The Real Mary King’s Close will be running special
events allowing visitors to experience the darker side of its hidden
history. Often the truth can be darker than fiction and for those
who visit; Edinburgh will never look the same again. With standard
tours running daily from 9.30am-9pm and special late night tours
available there are lots of opportunities for visitors to discover the
city’s underground history.
The Real Mary King’s Close,
The Royal Mile,
Edinburgh EH1 1PG
0845 070 6244
www.realmarykingsclose.com
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Myths & Fables – Half Term Activities
24 Oct – 01 Nov
Prepare for a legendary half term at Black Country Living Museum as
stories, crafts and street characters bring the myths and fables of old
back to life. You’ll discover weird and wonderful things about the past as
you step back in time and banish boredom, exploring the Museum’s 26
acres of shops and houses. Watch on as the quack doctor and resident
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FRIDAY 9TH OCTOBER, 7.30PM A talk by Edith Cavell’s biographer, Diana Souhami. Tickets: £11 (£5.50 U18) from 01832 274734 or Cathedral website.
SATURDAY 10TH & SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER, 12 NOON AND 2PM Exclusive tours of Laurel Court. See the 18th Century Grade I Listed building in the Cathedral Precincts where Edith Cavell was a pupil-teacher. Tickets: £8 (£6 conc / £4 under 18s) from 01733 355315 or Cathedral website. + other commemorative events.
EDITH CAVELL Marking the centenary of her execution, 12th October 2015
FIND OUT MORE...www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk
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BBC History Magazine 93
Q&AMISCELLANY
Q How long did journeys across
England take in medieval times?
Howard John Farr, via Facebook
AFew journeys are documented,fewer still from Dover or Penzance
to Carlisle or Berwick-upon-Tweed, butwe can get some idea of the pace of travel.
Wayfarers rode or walked along roadsclogged with horse-drawn carts or ox-drawn wains. Carts from Southamptontook three days to travel to Salisburyand back, while the return journey toGloucester took six days, and eight daysto Coventry. Despite this, in 1447–48carter Stephen Kyng carried 56 cartloadson journeys totalling nearly 4,000 miles.
Horses did not gallop, but walked ortrotted. Even the riding households ofthe nobility required trains of slow-moving carts. Long before the creationof the Highways Agency, or even coachescapable of reaching 12 miles per hour,there were no regular services or evenchanges of horses, though by 1480towns such as Andover, Gloucester, andCoventry possessed comfortable inns.
Armies marched, of course. In 1470the march from London to Empingham, Lincolnshire, took six days. In 1471,troops spent a month marching fromRavenspur, Yorkshire to Barnet,Hertfordshire via Coventry. And in 1487the march from Furness, Lancashire toStoke, Nottinghamshire took 12 days.
In 1462, Warwick the Kingmakerrode 60 miles around the Northumbriancastles each day. We also know that hejourneyed from London to Middleham,Yorkshire in 1462, departing on 7 March and arriving on 26 April.
Sensational news spread quicker, oftenwithin a few days. In 1482 Edward IVestablished a relay of riders who could travel from the Scottish border toLondon in just two days.
Michael Hicks, emeritus professor
of medieval history at the University
of WinchesterGE
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ILLUSTRATION BY GLEN MCBETH
Try your hand at this
month’s history quizONLI NE
QUI Z Z E S
historyextra.com
/bbchistory-
magazine/quiz1 . What links Edward
Bright of Maldon (d1750)
and Daniel Lambert of
Leicester (d1809)?
2. Who were the victims of the
St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002?
3. How did Élisabeth Thible rise to
fame on 4 June 1784?
4 . Henry James Pye (above), Robert
Southey, William Wordsworth…
who came next?
5. Which of these ships didn’t sink on
its maiden voyage?
a) Mary Rose
b) Titanic
c) Vasa
6. In whose chantry chapel can you
see these carvings?
QUIZBY JULIAN HUMPHRYS
QUIZ ANSWER 1. Each was known during his lifetime as thefattest man in England 2. Danes living in England 3. She becamethe first woman to make a journey in a hot air balloon 4. Alfred,Lord Tennyson (as Poet Laureate) 5. Mary Rose 6. Arthur, Princeof Wales (d1502), in Worcester Cathedral. It includes a Prince ofWales feather flanked by the badges of his parents: the Beaufortportcullis of his father, Henry VII, and the rose-en-soleil of hislmother, Elizabeth of York.
6
4
S T A’S IPE CORNER
94 BBC History Magazine
Miscellany
AIn theory, the emperorwas the temporal leader
of Christendom while the popewas its spiritual head.
This partnership startedon Christmas Day 800, whenCharlemagne was crownedemperor of the Romans (the‘Holy’ part came in the 12thcentury) by Pope Leo III.Charlemagne got the spiritualsupport of the church, plusa title implying a revival ofRome’s ancient glories, whilethe pope got the backing ofCharlemagne’s armies.
The geographical influenceand power of the emperorvaried over subsequentcenturies. First among equalsamong Europe’s rulers, hisauthority was said to comefrom God, as mediatedthrough the pope. OnceProtestant emperors wereelected, papal coronationwas discontinued. By thetime Napoleon swept away
the institution in 1806 it hadbecome a redundant honourmonopolised by Habsburgs.
There were frequent powerstruggles between pope andemperor. An emperor with abig army could usually trumpa pope, but the latter had hugeinfluence through the very realspiritual power he had over theemperor’s subjects.
One famous dispute centredon who had the right to appointlocal church officials. Thisended in 1077 with Henry IVgrovelling to Pope Gregory VII,who had made Henry’s gripon power almost untenableby excommunicating him.According to legend, Henryspent three days and nightsbarefoot in the snow, fasting andwearing a hair shirt outside thecastle of Canossa in northernItaly, by way of penance.
Eugene Byrne, author
and journalist BR
IDG
EM
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Q What was the differenceff
between the Holy Roman
Emperor and the pope?
Roger Cowburn, West Sussex
Write to BBC History Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol
BS1 3BN. Email: [email protected]
or submit via our website: historyextra.com/bbchistorymagazine
GOT A QUESTION?
Every issue, picture editor
Samantha Nott brings you a
recipe from the past. This month
it’s a tasty pie that travelled to
America in the 17th century
Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne as
first emperor of the Romans in this French
illustration from the 14th century
Marlborough PieEnglish chef Robert Maycreated this apple custardpie when compiling dishesfor his 1660 recipe book TheAccomplisht Cook.
As the English establishedcolonies in the New Worldduring the 17th century,settlers took the pie recipewith them. Since the 19thcentury it has become afavourite dessert in the USduring holidays such asThanksgiving.
The original recipeincludes equal quantities ofegg, apple and dry sherry.I used a modified recipe toensure the right taste and cooking time.
INGREDIENTSFor the pastry:• 180g strong bread flour• 1 tbsp granulated sugar• ½ tsp table salt• 125g chilled unsaltedbutter, cut into cubes• 3 tbsp ice cold waterFor the filling:• 1½ bramley cookingapples (peeled and grated)• 3 tbsp lemon juice• 3 tbsp dry sherry• 30g salted butter• 140g granulated sugar• 3 large eggs• 240ml single cream• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon • ¼ tsp freshly gratednutmeg• ¼ tsp table salt
METHODPut the flour, salt and sugarin a bowl. Work the buttercubes into the flour withfingers until the mixture lookscrumbly. Add water to makedough. Knead the dough ona lightly floured surface untilsmooth. Roll into a ball andcover in cling film. Refrigeratefor 30 mins.Pie filling: Place the gratedapple in a bowl and stir inlemon juice and sherry. Meltthe butter in a pan and addapple mixture and sugar.Allow the liquid to boil.Reduce heat and stir untilmost of the liquid hasevaporated. Cool for 10 mins.
Preheat the oven to 200°C.Line a 9 inch pie tin withbaking parchment. Roll thedough into a 10 inch circle,1/8 inch thick. Place in thepie tin and fold excess ontoedge of tin to make a crust.Prick the dough and blindbake for 10 mins. Removeweights and parchment andbake for another 5 mins.
Reduce oven temperatureto 180°C. Whisk together theeggs, cream, cinnamon,nutmeg and salt, and addapple mixture. Pour the fillinginto the pastry. Bake for 35mins until the custard is setbut not too brown.
VERDICTThe spices really complement
the creamy filling.
Difficulty: 5/10Time: 1 hour 40 mins
Recipe courtesy of KCRWGood Food: blogs.kcrw.com/goodfood/2012/07/marlborough-pie/
th
DT
RGcm
Marlborough pie: a deliciously fruity treat
Across7 Old word for a fever such asthat caused by malaria (4)8 Old English coin introducedby Edward IV, named afterSaint Michael who wasdepicted on its obverse (5)10/29d/6d Name (appliedlater) of the notoriousestablishment founded by SirFrancis Dashwood at WestWycombe, Bucks, in themid-18th century (4-4,4)11 eg one of the thousandswho followed the Oregon Trailto establish a new life inwestern North America (7)12 Pre-Columbian peopleof the Lesser Antilles andneighbouring SouthAmerican coast, afterwhom a sea is named (5)13 Germanic people whoroamed the lower Rhinearea in the 3rd century ADand went on to dominateEurope (6)15 Iron Age hillfort in EastLothian, considered to beamong Britain’s best-preserved examples (8)17 James IV of Scotland was killedin the 1513 battle at this site innorthern England (7)19 Caribbean island, namedConcepción by Columbus when hesailed past in 1498 (7)22 Term coined by Orwell, applied tothe period of tension between westernand communist powers in the decadesafter the Second World War (4,3)24 Name of the first ocean-going ironwarship, launched in 1859 (6)26/1d Period of European historybetween the end of Roman empire andthe Renaissance (6,4)28 John, 14th-century religiousdissident whose followers werecalled Lollards (8)30 See 32 across31 Israeli political party formed in 1973and led to power by Begin in 1977 (5)32/30a Warship of Henry VIII’s navy– sank in the Solent in 1545 (4,4)
Down1 See 26 across2 Born in 1642, this mathematicianbecame one of the foremost scientificintellects in history (6)3 City, once the site of theRoman garrison of
Luguvalium, near Hadrian’s Wall (8)4 19th-century English medicalpractitioner – a renowned cricketerwho revolutionised the game (1,1,5)5 Thomas, a major furniture designerof Georgian England (8)6 See 10 across9 John, influential 17th-century Englishphilosopher who helped inspire theEuropean Enlightenment (5)14 Personal memorial of a saint, heldin reverence (5)16 Physicist Robert Watson-Watthelped develop this into a vital defencesystem in the Battle of Britain (5)18 Édouard, French premier arrested bythe Vichy regime and later imprisonedby the Germans until 1945 (8)20 The act of (or any one of) the judgesand officials who signed Charles I’sdeath warrant (8)21 Indigenous people of the Antillesand coastal areas of South America,among the first native peoples to beencountered by Columbus (7)23 Cited as one of humankind’sgreatest inventions (5)25 Chinese attempts to ban the trade
of this narcotic in the 18th and19th centuries led to wars
with Britain (5)
27 Nature of the metaphorical ‘curtain’said to have stretched across Europefrom the Baltic to the Adriatic (4)29 See 10 across
Compiled by Eddie James
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What term, coined byGeorge Orwell, later
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(see 22 across)
What is the name of this 15th-century gold coin? (see 8 across) 95BBC History Magazine
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EDITORIAL
Editor Rob Attar [email protected]
Deputy editor Charlotte [email protected]
Reviews editor Matt Elton [email protected]
Production editor Spencer MizenPicture editor Samantha Nott [email protected]
Art editor Susanne FrankDeputy art editors Rachel Dickens and Rosemary Smith
Picture researcher Katherine HallettDigital editor Emma McFarnonr [email protected]
Secret warMax Hastings explores the
role of spies in the fight
against Nazi Germany
MAGAZINE
American RevolutionSam Willis explains why
Britain’s naval strength
couldn’t prevent a victory
for George Washington
The BrontësCharlotte Hodgman visits
the home of the 19th-
century literary family
Anglo Saxons vs Vikings Ryan Lavelle on how these two groups fought
for control of England in the ninth century
97
n
98 BBC History Magazine
My history hero
Henry VIII, who reigned from 1509 until his death, isone of the best-known kings in English history. Thelarger than life Tudor monarch is famous for havingsix wives (two of whom he had executed) and forhis pivotal role in the separation of the Church of
England from the Roman Catholic church.
When did you first hear about Henry VIII?At school. I loved the romance of history – and seeing pictures ofhim in his battle armour, and then learning of his six wives, madehim an irresistibly attractive figure to my young self. I studied theTudors at school. I always loved the family trees of England’s kingsand queens, and Henry’s was so unusual: three Tudors reignedafter him, and yet his dynasty only lasted one generation.
What kind of person was he?Passionate. There is a wonderful line in Wolf Hall [the HilarylMantel novel about Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell] when Cardinal Wolsey declares of Henry: “He believes everythinghe says, at the time he’s saying it.” That fits the impressionable,gifted and vulnerable man that I have come to understand [fromplaying him]. In his youth he was a great sportsman, and excelledat jousting, tennis and sword fighting.
Henry was also passionate in his first love for his brother’swidow, Catherine, fell massively in lust for Anne Boleyn (and just as heavily out too), before properly falling in love with JaneSeymour. When she died, his love of life was badly tainted, andhis wild mood swings made him dangerous in his unpredictabil-ity. He’s often been cast as a tyrant for his behaviour, but his aimand focus as king was to maintain peace. He feared that without a son the country would return to civil war.
What made Henry VIII a hero?This is the most contentious question. Many consider him atyrant, so what justification is there in making him my hero? Firstly, he did have a son [Edward VI] in the end, so thatensured a certain amount of stability. He wasn’t to know that theboy was a brat and that he would die early leaving his equallybloodthirsty half-sister, Mary, to reign. But, that in turn led to the
marvellous other daughter, Elizabeth, so the dynasty equalled out in the end.
Secondly, when he split from Rome and helped give birthto the Church of England, he laid the foundations for what wein the west refer to as democracy. To put an English Bible inevery church and allow people their own interpretations ofwhat had, until then, only been the domain of scholars, ledto offshoots of Protestantism sprouting across the realm.This let people vote their own prelates into power. From thissprang representation.
What was Henry’s finest hour?As king, the creation of the Church of England – but as a man,marrying Jane Seymour. The formation of the church withhim at the head may have been the by-product of his desire forAnne, but the legacy was immense. The sign of a great leader isnever just his autocracy but his ability to successfully delegate – in Henry’s case, to people like Wolsey and Cromwell, who helpeddefine his reign.
Is there anything you don’t particularly admire about him?Well, he did execute two of his wives…
But having had the chance to play Hilary Mantel’s Henry, I haveenormous sympathy for him – although his descent into madnessmade him very dangerous. Signing death warrants for some of his closest friends certainly does not mark him out as a saint. Inmodern-speak, one could say he was enabled, entitled andencouraged, which would possibly ease some of the blame.
If you could meet Henry, what would you ask him?What do you regret most? Henry made huge decisions that haveshaped the world. Leaving Rome. Beheading Anne. BeheadingCromwell. Which one cost him the most? And, as we share a loveof sport, if he’d like a game of tennis!Nathaniel Parker was talking to York Membery
“He’s often cast as a tyrant,
but his aim and focus as king
was to maintain peace.
He feared that without
a son the country would
return to civil war”
Actor Nathaniel Parker chooses
Henry VIII1491–1547
Nathaniel Parker played the title role in the TV drama, The Inspector
Lynley Mysteries, and Henry VIII in the West End adaptation of Hilary
Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall. He stars in The Outcast, out now on DVD RE
X/G
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Henry VIII shown in a Hans Holbein the
Younger portrait. “He laid the foundations for
what we in the west refer to as democracy,”
says Nathaniel Parker
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19. The Exploration and Settlement of Africa
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23. The British Empire Fights Imperial Germany
24. Versailles and Disillusionment
25. Ireland Divided
26. Cricket and the British Empire
27. British India between the World Wars
28. World War II—England Alone
29. World War II—The Pyrrhic Victory
30. Twilight of the Raj
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Our degrees give you the opportunity to explore a theme over time or specialise in
your favourite period, which you will analyse through a wide range of resources.
Our History and Politics courses
• BA (Hons) History
• BA (Hons) Medieval and Early Modern History
• MA Cultural History
• BA (Hons) Politics and Contemporary History
• BA (Hons) History, Literature and Culture
• BA (Hons) Modern History
• BSc (Hons) Politics
Find out more
• Email: [email protected]
• Tel: 01243 816222
• www.chi.ac.uk/history
The University forWorld-Class Professionals
Past, Present, Your Future
Undergraduate Courses:
BA (Hons) History
BA (Hons) American History
BA (Hons) Ancient History
BA (Hons) Ancient and Medieval History
BA (Hons) Medieval and Early Modern History
BA (Hons) Modern History
BA (Hons) War and Society
Postgraduate Courses:
MA History
(online distance learning available for part-time route)
MA Local and Regional History
MA Public History and Heritage
Find out more: mmu.ac.uk/hpp/history
BBC History Magazine Study History
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Applying to university can be a stressful
experience, and with more people than ever
vying for places, it is really important to make
your application stand out.
With this in mind, we have created a supplement,
packed with expert advice on what universities look for
in prospective students, how to sell yourself in a
personal statement, and why now is a prime time to
begin your educational foray into history.
Also in the pages that follow, students share their
thoughts on studying history at postgraduate level, and
we go back to the classroom to find out how the subject
is being taught in schools today.
I hope that this education supplement provides food
for thought and offers historical inspiration.
Charlotte Hodgman
Deputy editor
MAGAZINE
Study History is a free supplement presented within theOctober 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine which ispublished by Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited under licence from BBC Worldwide.
To contact us phone 0117 314 7377, [email protected] or write toBBC History Magazine, Immediate Media Company BristolLimited, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN
STUDY HISTORY
Contents 4 View from
the classroom
Get an insight into the life
of a secondary school
history teacher
7 Tips from an
admissions tutor
Read expert advice on personal
statements, interviews and
university open days from a
history admissions tutor
10 Why study for a
postgraduate degree?
Ten people who’ve studied for
higher degrees in history explain
how it boosted their skills and
their careers
14 History: the
ultimate passport
to the future?
Historian Anna Whitelock
examines the role of the
historian and the new
challenges of the digital age
Welcome
How can higher degrees in historyboost your skill set? Find out on page 10
DECISION TIMETake the stress out of
applying for university withadvice from our experts
BBC History Magazine Study History4
STUDY HISTORY
Secondary-school history teacher
Aaron Wilkes explains what life on
the teaching frontline is really like
Shortly before our Year 11 students leave school, we give them a little Book of Memories in which they record their ‘funniest moments’, ‘best lessons’, ‘contribution to school
life’ and so on. For me, the most interesting part of the book lists their ‘hopes for the future’. Some, disappointingly, write things like ‘I want to be rich’ or ‘I want to be a celebrity’, but others think very carefully about their responses. This year, a student in my tutor group (let’s call him Ethan) wrote that he wanted to “be in a job that challenges me every day and makes me proud of what I do”. I told him I thought it was a lovely thing to write, and he respond-ed: “Is being a history teacher like that?” His question stopped me in my tracks!
Yes, for me, the life of a history teacher is as challenging (and rewarding) as it has ever been in my 17 years in this profession. It’s a job in which you have the opportunity to be as creative as you can be, attempting not only to ensure that students learn about the people, events and develop-ments of the past, but also to nurture the skills they need to get better in the subject. The history National Curriculum, which sets out a range of topics and areas for state schools to cover, gives you the flexibility to do this. From Key Stage 1 (5 –7 year
olds) up to Key Stage 3 (11–14 year olds) there are enough options, examples and suggested topics to keep most history teachers – and their students – happy.
In the early years, for example, students will be taught concepts such as ‘continuity and change’ and ‘significance’. They may be assigned a project on changes within living memory (toy and leisure-time projects are popular) and events beyond living memory (the Great Fire of London or the sinking of the Titanic, for example), as well as topics on significant events, people and places in world, national and local history.
As students move through primary education, most schools will cover content as wide-ranging as late Neolithic hunter-gatherers, Romans, Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. They will look at non-European societies and the achievements of ancient civilisations. Primary schools will also
extend their students’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066 by looking at things such as the changing power of monarchs (often using case studies of King John or Queen Victoria) and turning points in British history – the first railways
or the Battle of Britain, perhaps. Academy schools, which are outside local authority control,
have even more flexibility
and can teach as much or as little of the National Curriculum as they choose. When students move up to secondary school, they will usually spend time reinforcing some of their skills, knowledge and understanding of Britain prior to 1066, before spending the rest of Key Stage 3 focusing on four specified periods of British and world history (1066–1509, 1509–1745, 1745–1901, 1901 to the present day). They will continue to look at local history, often trying to demonstrate its connection to national or world history.
Learning historical conceptsIn both primary and secondary schools, teachers aim to use these topics as vehicles that allow students to gain an understand-ing of historical concepts such as cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance. When teaching about Richard III, for example, they will teach how to weigh evidence, think critically, sift arguments, develop perspective and judgement, and show how interpretations of the past have been constructed.
At Key Stage 4 (14–16 year olds), history becomes an ‘opted subject’ – students choose whether or not to continue with their studies at GCSE level. Most, but not all, schools will offer GCSE history, and
The view from the classroom
NEW APPROACH Getting students engaged with tricky topics can involve trying out various different tactics
INSPIRING FIGURE “You have the opportunity to be as creative as you can be,” says Aaron Wilkes
BBC History Magazine Study History 5
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There are plenty of opportunities
to create inspiring, engaging and
relevant schemes of work and topics
department leaders within the school can pick courses from a variety of exam boards covering a range of topics.
The history National Curriculum, and GCSE and A-level courses, give teachers lots to work with. There are plenty of opportunities to create inspiring, engaging and relevant schemes of work, topics and studies. It’s one of those jobs in which you get things wrong – very wrong, at times – and have to go away to think of yet another way of presenting a new topic or a tricky concept. And just when you think you’ve got it right, when you have that lightbulb moment and something clicks with one group of students, you try the same technique with another class… who look at you as if you’re speaking an alien language!
I’ve lost count of the number of different ways I’ve tried to teach students about the feudal system, or the German revolution of 1918, or the reasons why America boomed
in the 1920s. I’ve had students working collaboratively in groups, on their own or in pairs. I’ve taken whole groups onto the school field or into the gym. They’ve looked at sources, or diagrams, or short video clips, even acted things out. At times I’ve gone for a completely opposite approach, equipping myself with a whiteboard and a marker, and ‘lectured’ students on various topics. Each strategy has worked and failed with different groups of differing abilities at different times.
So what about young Ethan? As you might imagine, I didn’t quite go into this much detail with him – it was lunchtime! But, after giving him the basic outline of what I’ve written here, his response was typically amusing.
“Oh, right, sir” he said. “Lots for me to think about there. I think I’m either gonna be a teacher – or a professional internet poker player!”
AARON’S SCHOOL DAY
8.00AM LEAVE THE HOUSE
y daughters off at their respective
scho nk goodness for breakfast clubs.
8.30AM STAFF MEETING
Reminders to staff about deadlines,
timetable changes, results from school sports
teams, information about children, etc – and
an o ity to tease the deputy head
abo er new poorly fitting suit!
8.50–9.10AM FORM PERIOD
udents in my Year 11 tutor group
spe revising for their upcoming exams.
9.10–10.50AM GEOGRAPHY LESSON
I teach a double geography class to
Year 9 students (13 to 14 year olds) . There
aren’t many teachers today who do not teach
outs r own specialism. Geography is
now several ‘shortage subjects’.
11.05AM–12.45PM HISTORY BEGINS
Double history with Year 10 (14 to 15 year
olds) – we’re looking at life in Nazi Germany.
I was recently asked, in all seriousness: “Sir,
how do you spell SS?”
Une ed questions often crop up– st asked for help spelling ‘SS’
12.45–1.25PM LUNCH ‘BREAK’
ze in a 20 minute revision session
with r 11s.
1.30–2.25PM ROYAL GANGSTER?
History lesson with Year 7 (11 to 12 year
olds) e class: why did David Starkey
com nry VIII to a gangster?
2.25–3.15PM RIPPER QUESTIONS
y class with Year 8 (12 to 13 year
olds as Jack the Ripper never caught?
3.30–5.00PM ADMIN TIME
Curriculum team leaders meeting.
Apply nowto mark/moderate 2016GCSEs and A-levels
aqa.org.uk/apply
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ƯƲȕǜȍˇ Ɓ˅ÖǍ ǍÖȍǀƁȍȕand moderators ţ MǍDZȍǜ˂Ɓ ˇǜ ȍ ƁÖŤƯƲǒƠ ȕǀƲǃǃȕ
ţ MǒƘǜȍǍ ˇǜ ȍ ǒųƁȍȕÖǒųƲǒƠ ǜƘ ƯƁ Ɓ˅ÖǍ DZȍǜŤƁȕȕ
ţ ,Öȍǒ Ɓ˅ȍÖ ƲǒŤǜǍƁ ÖǃǜǒƠȕƲųƁ ˇǜ ȍ ƁÖŤƯƲǒƠ ŤÖȍƁƁȍ
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“He who controls the past controls the future.
He who controls the present controls the past”
(George Orwell, 1984)
History is as much craft as it is knowledge, a skill as well as wisdom.
At UWTSD Lampeter we will help you develop these capacities in
an environment that is utterly unique and beguiling; for instance
the Roderic Bowen Archive includes manuscripts dating back to 13th
Century, giving students direct access to the past.
UWTSD Lampeter acknowledges the past, present and future,
by incorporating traditional educational values with innovative,
bold degree programmes including:
• History and Heritage Studies • Conflict & War • History with Digital Humanities
• Modern Historical Studies
• Medieval Studies
www.uwtsd.ac.uk
Lampeter - Carmarthen - Swansea
BBC History Magazine Study History 7
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What does an admissions tutor actually do? University admissions tutors all have slightlydifferent responsibilities. In my role at King’sCollege London, I spend my time reading UCASapplications and making recommendations to thecentral King’s admissions office, running open daysfor applicants who have received offers, participat-ing in pre-application open days, and running‘taster days’ for Year 12 students who are inter-ested in studying history at a higher level. This isquite a substantial role, so the department also hasa deputy admissions tutor to share the load.
How can candidates make the most of a university open day?Try to do as much as possible while you’re there! Ifthere are sample seminars running, participate – it’sthe best way to get a sense of whether you’ll enjoy
university-level teaching. If there are samplelectures running, go to them – again, they providea taster of the types of subjects and issues you might be learning about. And ask questions, either oflecturers or of current students. Visit as much of thecampus as possible to have a look at where you’ll betaught and, perhaps, the type of places where you’dbe living. The aim at an open day is not just to pick up the free bag and pens (though these are, ofcourse, great!) but to get a feel for the university,and to find out whether you’d like studying there.
What qualities do you look for in potential history students?History students need to be able to write fluently and cogently, and to have the ability to distilcomplex information and arguments into clearanalytical points. Studying history is not just about
Tips from anadmissions tutorDr Alice Taylor talks to Charlotte Hodgman about
what university admissions tutors want to see from
prospective students
STUDY HISTORY
MAKING THEGRADE A-levelresults areimportant – but notthe only factor insecuring a place
BBC History Magazine Study History
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STUDY HISTORY
FAMOUS HISTORY GRADUATES
A degree in history can lead toall manner of careers, as these
celebrity graduates proved
JONATHAN ROSS,BroadcasterUNIVERSITY OF LONDONU
Jonathan Ross, best known asJ
a TV presenter, studied moderna
European history at the School
of Slavonic and East European
Studies, then a college of the
University of London.
SIMON MAYORadio presenterUNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Having graduated from Warwick
in 1980 with a degree in history
and politics, Simon Mayo forged
a successful career as a BBC
Radio presenter.
PENELOPE LIVELY WriterWST ANNE’S COLLEGE, OXFORDS
Penelope Lively studied modernP
history at St Anne’s College, graduating
in 1956. She found success as a writer
of books for children, then of literaryo
novels including Moon Tiger, whichr
won the Booker Prize in 1987.
GORDON BROWNFormer Labour prime ministerrUNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Gordon Brown graduated in 1972 withh
a first class honours degree in history,
and stayed at Edinburgh to complete
his PhD, which he gained 10 years
later with his thesis titled The Labour
Party and Political Change in
Scotland 1918–29– .
SACHA BARON COHENActor, comedian and writerCHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominated writer
and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen graduated from
Cambridge in 1993 with an upper second class
honours degree in history. He is now one of
Britain’s best known comic actors, famed
for creations such as Ali G and Borat.
All historians are trying to say
something – one of the reader’s
jobs is to understand what that is
learning – it’s about understanding and asking newquestions of the past, and investigating themes,places and periods that will be new to our students.So we look for fluency in writing, an interest inreading and curiosity – asking questions about howand why things happened, and how and why thepast is continually invoked and manifested today.
How much weight do you place on personal statements when selecting candidates?It’s part of the application process, so it’s givensome weight. Personal statements have to be veryconcise; this makes writing them a good test of anapplicant’s ability to synthesise.
What can each student do to make theirpersonal statement stand out?The best personal statements are the onesthat show that the applicant has engaged inthe subject. You can do this in many ways – forexample, by writing (briefly) about a historicalwork that’s interested you, and why. Writing aboutbooks you’ve read is quite a hard task in a personalstatement but, when it’s done effectively, it reallydoes work.
All historians, whether popular, textbook oracademic, are trying to say something about theirparticular topic, and one of the jobs of a readeris to understand what that something is. Whatis this particular historian saying, overall and onwhat do they base their argument? Are they using
BBC History Magazine Study History 9
new sources, or are they using a different method to produce a new interpretation of a particular subject? If an applicant can show not only that he or she has read books (either as part of or outside their sixth-form course) but also that they have understood them, then that is a pretty good indication that the applicant will be able to do this at university level – which is what we want.
How can you prepare for an interview? Think about what you have submitted as part of your application. University lecturers may base the content of the interview on issues and subjects that you’ve raised in your application materials. So read through your UCAS personal statement – remind yourself what you’ve said, and why you said it.
If you’ve said on your statement that you’ve read particular books, make sure you’re familiar with those books. If you’ve sent in an essay, re-read it and ask yourself what you find interesting about it and what questions you think it raises. This is essentially the meat of a history degree – reading, thinking and talking with other people about what you’ve read and thought – so interviews are one way of showing that you can do this! Other universities may ask you to undertake an on-the-spot task. They might give you a small primary source extract and ask what you think about it.
In both of these scenarios, it’s important to relax (as far as possible) and answer the questions. Most of the time, interviewers are interested more in how you think than what you know. So if you’re given an extract from a period or place you’ve never studied before, just remember: you’re not necessarily expected to know about its content – but you are expected to think about it. Bear in mind, though, that not all universities ask applicants for an interview.
How do you decide t grades to offer? It differs according to institution. Some will give a standard offer of the same grades to nearly all successful applicants – this is what we do at King’s. Often this is to encourage a borderline student to achieve the higher grade. Some institutions will give an offer within a range (ABB–AAA, for example, or BCC–BBB), while others will give different offers depending on whether you select them as your ‘firm’ choice or your ‘insurance’ choice. So it’s important to check on the website. For mature students and those applying after A-levels, of course, the offer is made on the basis of grades already achieved, so it’s a simpler yes/no response.
Is it all about grades?No, it’s not all about grades – although grades are important. Different universities may require additional application material in addition to the standard UCAS form, and some even ask you to send in work beforehand. The grades may determine where you decide to apply, but they don’t determine acceptance.
What’s the competition for places like? History is a popular subject, and it is competitive, though competition varies from institution to institution. Make sure you check to see what the average applicants-to-places ratio was for the previous academic year, but don’t be put off if the ratio looks daunting. If you have the required grades
and a strong personal statement, you always stand a chance!
Dr Alice Taylor is lecturer in medieval history as well as being an admissions tutor at King’s College London
SMART WORK Asking the right questions and synthesising clear answers are desirable traits
Show you understand the subject
Explain why the subject excites you,
and perhaps how it’s relevant to the
caree you hope to follow.
Demonstrate your interest in the subject
Has the subject inspired you to write a
project or undertake work experience
in the If so, write about it.
Explain what makes you a good candidate
How have your education, work,
interests or other experiences made
you a good fit for the subject you want
to study at university?
Don’t use complex language or clichés
Be as clear and concise as possible
when explaining your interest in the
subje why you’re well qualified.
Paint a picture of you as an individual
Your non-academic interests and
activities give a flavour of your
personality. Use them judiciously to
demonstrate your unique set of skills
and ies, and why they’re relevant.
Don’t waffleIt’s better to explain what you
learned from one particular experience
than to list 10 irrelevant details.
Show that you're a critical thinker
Use examples from your studies or
other of experience.
Plan the structureOpen with a punchy paragraph
sho our interest in the course.
Don’t be negativeBe enthusiastic and focus on your
stren nd qualities.
Proofread carefullyCheck your statement as many
tim ossible before submitting it.
Don’t lie or copyEnough said!
11 TIPS FOR WRITING A PERSONAL STATEMENTYou have 4,000 characters to play with – what should you do with them?
BBC History Magazine Study History10
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Why study for a postgraduate degree?Ten historians who have taken higher degrees reveal the
benefits – for their skill sets, careers and love of the subject
I recognised
that it would be
advantageous to
have a postgrad
qualificationAlison Martin
MA Irish History, Queen’s
University Belfast
During the final year of my undergraduate history degreeI made the decision to pursue an MA. I was motivatedby the fact that I would be able to study historical topicsin greater depth, but also recognised that, in anincreasingly competitive job market, it would beadvantageous to have a postgraduate qualification.
Being a history postgraduate enhances your researchskills. It also helps you to develop into an independentthinker – there is more freedom than there is on anundergraduate course. One of the most important skills I learned was to critically analyse things rather thanaccepting them at face value.
The course
provided a refreshing
intellectual challenge
Neil Matthews
PhD History, University
of Westminster
Some 20 years after completing a historydegree, I studied for an MA as part of
a career break. The course provided arefreshing intellectual challenge,
covering interests I had takenup since my undergraduatedays, and introduced a newgroup of (younger!) friends.A doctoral studentshipthen came up, andsupervisors, archivistsand others made thata great experience, too.
11
at I enjoy most about my MA
g my own research
ergozou
Modern History, University of York
that I wanted to study history. I find myself captivated by thehness of the past, and I always want to learn more.y most about my MA is doing my own research; I love thes of writing a dissertation, especially visiting archives andhistorical documents.story at postgraduate level enables you to develop so manyally, I have grown into quite a confident public speaker, andbeen previously.g taken a general history BA, I am now specialising in theodern period. After my MA I would love to work somewhere
ampton Court Palace, as a historical researcher or perhaps ator.
Wha
is doing
Helena Ke
MA Early M
I always knewincredible rich
What I enjoywhole processworking with h
Studying hisskills. Persona
I never had bHaving
early mlike Haa cura
When retirement loomed, I needed
something to keep me busyDavid Williams
MA Heritage Studies, University of East London
After leaving school at 17 I became a journalist, then spent40 years as a freelance documentary film and TV producer.When retirement loomed, I needed something to keep mebusy. Four years studying part-time for a degree in historywas something I never thought possible. I followed thatwith a two-year MA in Sport History and Culture. I’m nowhalfway through another MA, in Heritage Studies, at the University of East London.
Having an
MA helped me
to secure a job
in marketing
Kris Hunt
MA Social and Cultural History,
University of South Wales
Though I had initially planned to use my MA as a stepping stoneto a PhD, I ultimately decided to postpone my doctorate in searchof work. I thoroughly enjoyed my MA, had some great lecturers,studied fascinating modules and learned a great deal. Ultimately, having the MA helped me to secure a job with a marketing agency in Frankfurt. An MA, regardless of its focus, is a valuablequalification, and history is still a great passion of mine.
Postgraduate
study has
honed various
intellectual skills
Sian Webb
PGDip Medieval History,
St Andrews University
Postgraduate study has honed various intellectual skills,but it is on a personal level that it has affected me themost. I have been able to build my self-confidencethrough interactions with my peers and the variousprofessors with whom I have been privileged to work.The course has also allowed me to interact and shareideas with individuals with similar interests.
BBC History Magazine Study History12
STUDY HISTORY
Finding common threads in
different periods was thrillingMaría González-Nogal,
MA Classical Studies, Open University
The prompt for starting my MA was an OU course I took, onVictorian England. What started as pure curiosity, and a desireto understand how the past had shaped a society with whichI was unfamiliar, ended as an MA in classical studies.
I enjoyed the challenge of studying. Discovering things, goinggbeyond the facts, finding common threads in different periods– these were thrilling. Studying history as a postgraduate hasgiven me the skills and academic discipline to approach newtopics, and allows me to critically analyse not only the past butalso the present.
I had no intention of
returning to study but
I soon missed learningLisa Jones
MSc Second World War in Europe,
University of Edinburgh
I had already studied history as an undergraduate at Edinburgh.When I graduated in 2009, I had no intention of returning to studybut I soon missed learning and researching.
I had always found the Second World War interesting, soEdinburgh’s MSc on this topic seemed perfect. I studiedpart-time while working; it was difficult but it made me realisehow much time I waste each day. Another thing I loved about theMSc was that everyone on the course was there because theywanted to be – unlike at undergraduate level which, for some, isseen as an extension of high school.
I now work in finance – funnily enough at Edinburgh University– where the critical thinking and problem-solving skills I learnt onmy postgraduate course are required daily.
A PhD in
history offers
a real sense of
satisfaction to
any aspiring
researcher
Daniel Long
PhD History, Nottingham Trent University
A history PhD offers the chance to delve into archivesand uncover new truths or to add to existing scholarship, providing a real sense of satisfaction for any aspiringresearcher. I have been fortunate enough to presentmy research to academic audiences here in the UK andat institutes in Germany, which has given me theconfidence, skills and determination to improve mypublic speaking and presentation skills, as well as mywriting and research abilities.
Having a postgrad has given me amazing
opportunities – TV, radio, writing a bookFern Riddell PhD History, King’s College London
I was lucky enough to start my postgradresearch at Royal Holloway for my MA,before moving to King’s College for a PhD.Having a postgrad qualification has given me some amazing opportunities: thechance to write a book, discuss myresearch on TV and radio, write fornational newspapers and magazines,including BBC History Magazine – these
would not have been possible withoutthe platform a PhD provided. Academiais becoming more supportive of youngacademics who want to work outsidethe traditional university atmosphere.Places such as the BBC offer schemessuch as the New Generation Thinkersto get you and your research into theopen. It’s a great place to start.
At Plymouth University we offer a BA (Hons) History, which can be studied as single honours or in
combination with English, Politics or International relations. We offer a wide range of specialisms
including early modern British and European History, US History, Maritime History and World History.
We also offer BA (Hons) Art History. The focus is on working with primary sources, historical debates
and there are a range of field visits. You will acquire excellent communication skills, gain high levels of
critical analysis and develop problem solving abilities, to take into post graduate training and a career.
Many of our students volunteer at local history and heritage sites while they study, where they gain
valuable experience. We also have an international exchange programme that gives you the opportunity
to travel, to spend either a semester or a whole year exploring History with one of our partner
institutions in the US or Europe. From 2016 onwards, we will also offer a new BA International History
(subject to approval) for students who wish to focus on world and global history. As part of the
International History degree, you will be encouraged to study an extra curricular foreign language
and gain experience of overseas institutions through field visits and exchanges. In a world of global
movements and markets, a combination of historical study and understanding, and real life experience
of global cultures, will provide a strong academic training. Above all, we want to share our enthusiasm
for History and the study of the past with you.
Graduate quote:
‘What I learnt has been invaluable, and I genuinely believe the skills obtained by studying history at Plymouth University
have suitably equipped me to carry out my job and they would also be very applicable to a number of other career paths.
Above all the course was stimulating, interesting and fun, as was studying in Plymouth, and it has also lead me to where I
am today, I couldn’t really ask for much more in a degree course and university experience.’
Tom Baycock, Plymouth University graduate, BA History with International Relations
www.plymouth.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/ba-history
+44 1752 585858
@PlymUniApply
The University of Manchester offers the UK’s only accreditedEgyptology courses delivered entirely online. Several shortcourses in Egyptology-related subjects are also available.
Courses include:
Certificate in Egyptology programme:A three year online course which provides an opportunity for the serious,academic study of Egyptology (120 credits)
Diploma in Egyptology programme:A two year extension programme to the Certificate in Egyptology whichprovides for more in-depth, serious, academic study of Egyptology (120 credits)
Short Courses in Egyptology:Six week, non-credit bearing courses in Egyptology-related topics, such as:
• Queens of Ancient Egypt
• Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
• Tutankhamen
Course Tutors: Dr Joyce Tyldesley & Dr Glenn Godenho
For further details please visit our website:
www.manchester.ac.uk/egyptologyonline
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STUDY HISTORY
Has there ever been a better or moreimportant time to study history? Thepast is alive, dynamic, controversial andhugely relevant. History is constantly
being written and rewritten, contested and reinterpret-ed. History is more than simply looking backwards andstudying the past – it is also about critically engagingwith the present and the future. It is about individuals,families, nations and the global community.
A history degree is not just for those who want to beprofessional historians – it is for anyone who is curiousabout the world around them and who wants to be acritically engaged citizen. It is, in fact, one of the mostversatile subjects you can choose to study. Facts anddates are merely the basic building blocks. Historicalstudy teaches us to think critically, analytically andcreatively, to read and interpret all kinds of informa-tion, to evaluate opinions and to write persuasively.
A history degree can lead to a career in law, business,publishing, heritage, teaching, media or politics, but isequally valuable for those wanting to become an artist,author, actor or even computer-game designer. Historyis both a science and an art, combining the carefulanalysis of evidence with compelling storytelling.
The study of history is so much more than learningabout kings, queens and governments; it is also aboutsocieties all across the world and how people have livedover the centuries. It is about justice and injustice,innovation and continuity, freedom and repression.It is about race and religion, ideas and beliefs, about
travel, exploration and discovery, aboutmedicine, sex and death, aboutarchitecture and art, literature and
music. It is, in short, about life. To be ahistorian is to be questioning, to have a vividimagination and an insatiable curiosity.
In publishing and in broadcasting,history is a phenomenon that continues to
exceed expectations; television shows, films,books, plays and computer games attest to thehuge public appetite for all things historical.Yet beyond entertainment, or ‘edu-tainment’as some would have it, studying history isalso a means of critically informing public
discourse. In a world of fast-movingtechnological change and apreoccupation with the future, itmight seem there is little need for
history and for reflecting on an apparently verydifferent past. Yet historical knowledge is a powerfulcurrency for the 21st century. The huge contemporarychallenges of climate change, migration, inequality andthe future of capitalism all require a long-term globalperspective and historically framed arguments. Toooften, policy decisions and political debate arecharacterised by short-termism. History, properlystudied, should inform public policy and democraticdebate. History teaches us about continuities as well aschanges, and reminds us about the timeless qualities ofhuman behaviour. It enshrines collective experience.History is vital to the development of both a nationaland an individual sense of identity; it allows us to makemore informed choices about the future and to hold politicians and policymakers to account.
Communication revolutionThe digital age has brought new opportunities for histo-rians, opening up archives online, digitising documentsand allowing the study of far-flung archives from home.That said, there is nothing better than visiting anarchive, touching documents written hundreds of yearsago by our ancestors. Studying history gives you access to this vast treasure trove.
The digital age has also created new challenges.Curators and archivists now have to be engaged in boththe actual and the virtual world, handling the docu-ments themselves but also sharing and promotingarchives online. There has been a revolution incommunication, with tweets, texts and emails replacing letters and telegrams. Studying history also requiresstudents to consider what the archives of today willconsist of for future generations of historians. Whatshould be preserved? How? By whom? And for whom?These are the practical challenges and ethical questionsfacing historians today.
Historians are custodians of human experience andsociety’s conscience. They are teachers and writers, yes,but also revolutionaries, artists, policymakers andopinion formers. Far from being backward-looking
and rooted in the past, the study ofhistory is the ultimate passport to the future.
Dr Anna Whitelock is reader in early
modern history at Royal Holloway,
University of London
“Studying history is the ultimate passport to the future”Anna Whitelock considers the role of the historian, and the
new challenges and opportunities of the digital age
Truro and Penwith College offers courses in:
Archaeology BSc (Hons)
Archaeology FdSc
Applied Psychology HND and HNC
English Studies FdA
Geography and the Environment FdSc and HNC
Geography and Society FdA
History, Heritage and Archaeology FdA
From King Arthur’s Castle to the mines
of Poldark. Explore the rich history
this land has to offer.
www.truro-penwith.ac.uk
Truro and Penwith College offers a range of Bachelor Degrees,
Foundation Degrees, Higher National Diplomas and Higher National
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fantastic career prospects and the skills that employers desire.
For more information contact Higher Education Admissions:
01872 267122 or [email protected]
Study ininspirationalCornwall.
Write your own history andÞQG RXW PRUH DERXW RXUundergraduate andpostgraduate courses atdmu.ac.uk/discover
Image courtesy of Leicester City Football Club Digital Archive
THIS IS NOT...AN ORDINARY HISTORY COURSE
DISCOVER THE PAST WITH
DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY
Studying for an undergraduate History degree at Newman University offers a broad and varied 3 year spectrum offering modules in Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary History.
History at Newman offers the highest proportion of fieldwork of any history undergraduate degree in the UK and exciting work placement opportunities at heritage conservation projects such as the Coffin Works in Birmingham.
Our academics are passionate and are expert researchers as well as dedicated lecturers, this is why we are voted number one in the country with 100% student satisfaction in the 2015 NSS.
Our History degrees can be combined with many other subjects such as Theology and Education and we also offer postgraduate study with our MA Victorian Studies and PG Cert Heritage and Public History.
To find out more visit www.newman.ac.uk/history
www.aber.ac.uk
• Top 10 in the UK for facilities - Times Higher Education Student Survey 2013
• One of the best package of awards, bursaries and scholarships in the UK worth up to £11,700
• One of the safest places in the UK to be a student - Complete University Guide 2014
• 85% of research rated as “world leading” in 15 of our 16 subject areas the latest Research Assessment Exercise
• 89% of Aberystwyth graduates are in employment and/or further study 6 months after graduation
• Over 130 years excellence in teaching and research
• Guaranteed first year accommodation
Contact us to order an Undergraduate
or Postgraduate prospectus:
ww.aber.ac.ukww
1970 6220210
