Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i History Extra

“In 865 the ‘Viking Great Army’ arrived in the British Isles and began a lengthy campaign to conquer the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Our knowledge of this invading force is still incomplete, but thanks to some recent archaeological research, several new insights are now emerging. On page 36 Julian D Richards and Dawn Hadley reveal some of the latest findings about this dramatic period of English history. One of the major milestones being marked this year is the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. The 1666 blaze caused tremendous destruction to the city and saw a new metropolis eventually rise from the ashes. As the inferno took hold, Londoners began to wonder what had caused this tragedy to overtake their city. Was it divine retribution or something rather more sinister?…

When they awoke on 27 September 1825, investors in the new Stockton and Darlington Railway could have been forgiven for feeling nervous. Four years after parliament had voted to permit a railway line from the inland collieries of County Durham, the shareholders, most of them Quakers, had spent more money than planned. With their company £60,000 in the red, everything depended on a successful start. Not long after dawn, workers began attaching the first coal wagons to the groundbreaking locomotive, which rejoiced in the name ‘Locomotion No 1’. It had been built by Robert Stephenson and Company, a local firm set up just two years earlier, specifically to construct steam trains. Since this was the first time a locomotive had been used in a public railway, interest was intense. With…

“Through reading, eavesdropping, or word of mouth, Jemmy and the leaders of the Stono Rebellion had learned that Spain promised freedom to slaves who escaped to Florida. Their insurrection threatened the increasing wealth of white planters, so in 1740, just months after the rebellion, South Carolina enacted legislation regulating nearly every aspect of enslaved people’s lives. The slave code declared that children born to enslaved mothers would be absolute slaves for life. It restricted movement and deputised all whites to capture and punish any enslaved person found away” from the owner’s premises without written permission. It prescribed capital punishment for a range of crimes including burning crops or other commodities, attempting an insurrection, or enticing other slaves to run away from the colony. The law made it illegal to teach…

“There are points when we are sure to be walking very close to Harold’s footsteps” It may be almost a millennium ago, but 1066 is a date that continues to have a significant pull in the British popular imagination. And now, to mark its 950th anniversary, a team of volunteers is aiming to recreate one of the year’s key episodes: King Harold’s epic march to meet William the Conqueror in battle at Hastings. Harold had spent 25 September 1066 defeating an invasion force led by the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Yet no sooner had the Anglo-Saxon ruler sheathed his sword than news reached him that William, Duke of Normandy had landed in Sussex with a massive invasion army all of his own. Harold’s men…

@HistoryExtra: How acceptable is artistic licence in history entertainment? Simon Kingsnorth As a passionate history lover and a theatre director I don’t like historical pieces that change facts to fit the story. That confuses people and does damage to historical figures Susan M Morris Real history is far more interesting than overheated ‘historical entertainment’ that boils facts to mush. It is one thing to responsibly and plausibly interpret scenarios and characters when telling a story, it’s quite another to fabricate or omit facts or events to fit a preconceived narrative @HenrikSchilling Let my answer be a question: what would Blackadder be without artistic licence? Mags Kondrat I prefer historical authenticity (but not necessarily accuracy) in what I watch, but I have no problem with writers taking a historical figure and…

“The North began the English identity. After the Romans, after 200 years of warring tribes, came Northumbria, the first kingdom of the new England” What do we mean when we speak of ‘the North’? This is open to dispute, but I think we’ve made a fair shot of it in the series. The map we’ve drawn starts in the far north across Hadrian’s Wall, from west to east, and then we go from Wallsend down the North Sea to the Humber and Hull. We trundle across country, including Sheffield, and get to just below Liverpool before going up the west coast back to the wall. So it’s that chunk and it contains a mass of northern landscape. It contains the place where the Romans made the most intensive military settlement.…

Martin Luther’s contradictions are at the heart of this excellent book Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper The Bodley Head, 592 pages, £25 Martin Luther did not simply wake up one morning in 1517 and decide to tear Christendom apart. He was a little-known Augustinian monk teaching, as Lyndal Roper puts it in this new book, at “an obscure university in an unknown corner of the empire”. His Ninety-Five Theses, which surfaced on 31 October of that year, can best be understood as “hypothetical claims to be tested through subsequent argument”. The theses were certainly provocative, mocking the idea that people could “earn their way out of purgatory” through an invention such as ‘indulgences’ (rewards for good works, prayers, or acts of penance that were held to reduce…

A Year in the Life of Medieval England by Toni Mount Amberley, 352 pages, £20 There is a myth that the Middle Ages suffer from a lack of sources. This is untrue, especially for England, and especially from the 13th century. With the accession of King John in 1199, the chancery began to enrol the majority of its outgoing correspondence. The abundant records of a precocious state thus bulk the ranks of letters, chronicles, sermons, wills and miracle collections (the list goes on) to form a base of sources far larger than any person can hope to survey in a lifetime. Here lies the evidence not only for the politics of the great, but for the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. This material can make a penetrating history: Dan Jones’s Realm…

The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola Tinder Press, 368 pages, £14.99 In the year that Queen Victoria ascends the throne, Edmund Fleetwood is a young and idealistic lawyer, struggling to make a living and escape from the shadow of his domineering father. His chance appears to have arrived when the home secretary, Lord John Russell, appoints him to investigate a petition for mercy submitted on behalf of Sarah Gale, incarcerated in Newgate prison as an accomplice in the so-called Edgware Road Murder. Her ex-lover, James Greenacre, has been convicted of killing another woman, Hannah Brown, dismembering her body and disposing of the parts at assorted locations in the city. Sarah is believed to have known about the murder and helped Greenacre in its aftermath. Determined to seek out the truth, Edmund…

“Samuel Pepys described Delft as “a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in every street”. That description still holds true” Samuel Pepys visited Delft in May 1660, a member of the delegation sent to convey Charles II to England to claim his throne, and described it as “a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in every street”. That description still holds true. The wide streets, the broad Markt (market place) with its grand town hall, and the light reflecting from the water, give the town a sense of space and a fascinating variety of vistas. Delft is characteristic of the Dutch canal towns, its historic core criss-crossed by a network of waterways, enclosed within a wide perimeter canal. The main streets have a central canal flanked…

1. In June 1967, TV actor Reg Varney became the first person in the world to use one. What was it? 2. Why were hammers and chisels offered for hire in the Wiltshire town of Amesbury in the 19th century? 3. What links Good, Bad, Merciless, Addled, Short and Long? 4. According to the RAF Museum, No 303 Squadron was the RAF’s most successful Battle of Britain fighter unit. What was the nationality of nearly all of its pilots? 5. How is Jane, Duchess of Gordon, said to have helped with late 18th-century army recruiting? 6. What is significant about this building, which is in Brougham Terrace, Liverpool? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. A cash machine 2. So that people could go to nearby Stonehenge and chip off a souvenir 3. They…

Pease pudding Nowadays most commonly cooked in the north-east of England, pease pudding is a dish that evolved from medieval pease pottage, one of the main filler dishes before potatoes arrived in the British Isles. It merits a mention as ‘Perry of Pesoun’ in The Forme of Cury, a 14th-century recipe book whose authors are described as “the chief master cooks of King Richard II”. Three hundred years later, it appears in the written record again – this time courtesy of Samuel Pepys. “At noon I went home and dined with my wife on pease porridge and nothing else,” the famous diarist tells us. Best served with bread, salty meats, ham hock, sausages, even fish and chips, it’s a versatile dish that can be used as a spread similar to…

Alexander Larman There are an endless number of myths around the Great Fire of London. It still fascinates and appalls us, 350 years after the event, and I wanted to find out what really happened. • Alexander charts the fallout from the Great Fire of London on page 22 Alex von Tunzelmann The twin crises of 1956 represented the point of most danger between the Second World War and the Cuban missile crisis. People were seriously scared about what the result of it all was going to be. • Alex discusses her new book on 1956 on page 65 Robert Gerwarth The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich was the most spectacular secret service mission of the Second World War. Yet the terrible consequences for those living in Bohemia and Moravia help…

“Nationalists argued that secularisation was not anathema to Turkish culture – that Turks were already more ‘western’ than the west”DR REBECCA BRYANT Turkey’s modernisation path has always been marked by the paradox of wanting to prove itself to the west and at the same time wanting to prove that it does not have to prove itself. This was as true of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country’s founding leader, as it is of the current government in Turkey, even if they had different ideas about what that implies. For several hundred years the Ottoman empire was western Europe’s most immediate competitor, threat and cultural Other. By the end of the 19th century, European powers had colonised former Ottoman territories in north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and the Ottomans were in…

Questions on power I found some of your panel of historians rather pessimistic regarding Brexit (The Historians’ View, August). Dominic Sandbrook claims that “historians will look back on 23 June as the day the United Kingdom died.” Helen McCarthy foresees the possible rise of the far right. David Abulafia alone sees Brexit as a golden opportunity to make connections across the globe without having to ask the EU’s permission. I remember in 1975 campaigning alongside the late Tony Benn to leave the Common Market. When voting this time, his questions still rang in my ears. If people have power, he said, you should ask: who put you there? To whom are you accountable? How can I get rid of you? If the answers include: “you can’t get rid of me”…

“It’s the people’s collective memory that keeps the past alive” “History as we receive it from books and TV is usually shaped by professional historians. But it has a separate life in the minds of the people, especially when it concerns great communal events. In few cases is this more obvious than with the First World War. I found the Somme anniversary this summer especially poignant, with no living voices now to tell us what it was actually like. The warriors finally are all gone. Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy of the war, died in 2009. We can listen to their voices, of course, many recorded in the 1960s for the wonderful BBC series The Great War. There we can still hear their tone: deferential, accepting their place in…

History is largely dominated by men. Kings, popes, bishops, monks, knights… they have defined the course of history, and they have written history. Despite the valiant attempts of feminists in the past century, writing women into history is a difficult process. Individuals who managed to break the mould are now widely celebrated: Joan of Arc, Æthelflæd, Elizabeth I. Yet for every one woman written into history there are many hundreds of men that drown out their achievements. And so it is with literature. The canonical texts of the past two millennia are largely written by male authors. We read Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Joyce. The father of English literature is Chaucer. But who is the mother? The first known woman to write a book in English is an obscure anchoress from…

Henry was genuinely worried about the plight of the poor Henry V was an exceptionally hard-working king. He spent as much, if not more, of his time dealing with the burdensome affairs of church and state as he did on military matters. Henry’s direct intervention in the business of ruling, his speaking voice, and his decisive – often abrupt – manner are spelt out in the surviving documents. Some of these are endorsed with his signature, or ‘sign manual’, in the form ‘RH’ (Rex Henricus or Roy Henry). Around one in 10 of these documents survive today, and some are annotated in the king’s own hand. His extraordinary grasp of detail and his concern that a just resolution be reached, are striking. Humble men and women, not only the great…

A lively and very human account of our prehistoric ancestors The Tale of the Axe: How the Neolithic Revolution Transformed Britain by David Miles Thames and Hudson, 432 pages, £19.95 Despite the title of this book, it is certainly not a ‘tale’: it is far more comprehensive. So let me try to give an impression of its huge range. It would make a first-rate textbook for university students, as it covers a large selection of past and present research projects, and everything is comprehensively referenced. The first three chapters are devoted to human origins, going right back to early hominims and the unknown LCA (last common ancestor) of humans and apes, some 7 million years ago. We are then escorted through the rise of Heidelberg, a settlement in what is…

The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford Yale University Press, 296 pages, £16.99 Trees, as Fiona Stafford demonstrates in this delightful book, are built into our human experience in deep and meaningful ways. Taking Stafford’s personal approach to the subject, a favourite tree of mine is the Platanus orientalis, or oriental plane, in the garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London. This specimen was grown via a cutting from a tree at the Rockefeller Institute, New York – and that tree, in turn, was grown from the seed of the ancient plane tree on the island of Kos, under which Hippocrates, legendary founding father of medicine, is said to have taught. Its presence at this august institution reflects a desire, even among the most scientific of us,…

Fred and Edie Jill Dawson (2000) In October 1922, Percy Thompson was attacked and killed while walking home from a night at the theatre. His wife Edith and her young lover Frederick Bywaters were later charged with the murder, tried, and found guilty. Despite pleas for mercy, particularly for Edith, they were both executed. Jill Dawson’s remarkable novel takes this suburban crime passionel and turns it into a moving and tragic tale of thwarted love and desire. Crippen John Boyne (2004) More than a century after he was hanged for his crime, Hawley Harvey Crippen, the mild-mannered homeopathic doctor who killed his wife, a blowsy music-hall singer, remains one of the most celebrated murderers in English history. In this novel, John Boyne vividly reconstructs the story of the murder and…

1 Strat eld Saye House HAMPSHIRE Where a funeral carriage resides Stratfield Saye has been a home of the Dukes of Wellington since 1817. Within the stables is the Wellington Exhibition which includes a vast collection of military memorabilia from the 1st Duke’s career, including his cast bronze funeral carriage made from melted-down French cannons seized at the battle of Waterloo. stratfield-saye.co.uk 2 Walmer Castle KENT Where the Duke of Wellington died Walmer Castle was the official residence of the Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports, a post held by the Duke of Wellington when he was made Lord Warden in 1829. (He would die here in 1852.) The castle’s Wellington Museum includes a pair of the famous ‘Wellington’ boots. english-heritage.org.uk 3 Waterloo battlefield SOUTH OF BRUSSELS, BELGIUM Where the…

BEST TIME TO GO Go in the spring or early summer, for the clarity of the light. Holland’s colourful bulb fields are in bloom then, although the industry has recently invested in large covered structures. GETTING THERE From the train station at Amsterdam airport (Schiphol) there are frequent trains to Delft’s brand-new station (40 minutes). From The Hague there is a regular tram service to Delft. WHAT TO PACK A comfortable pair of shoes is a must, because this is a town best enjoyed on foot and there are many cobblestones. Delft’s good shops should supply anything you may have forgotten. WHAT TO BRING BACK The Delftware company’s factory, not far from the centre, sells a range of its famous blue-and-white pottery. Bulbs and distinctive cheeses can be discovered at…

Victorian slum life Jerry White explores the tough existence faced by some of the poorest people in 19th-century Britain A Georgian adventurer Hallie Rubenhold on the extraordinary story of a Scottish woman caught up in the French Revolution The genius of Cnut Eleanor Parker shows how a Viking invader became a beloved monarch The battle for the rock Jules Stewart recounts the vital battle for control of Gibraltar during the Second World War…

Tombs may have aided prehistoric stargazers The entrance passages of ancient tombs in Portugal may have been deliberately aligned to improve the view of the night sky, archaeologists have suggested. The 6,000-year-old structures in Carregal do Sal, in the north of the country, appear to have been orientated to provide a good view of Aldebaran, a bright red star in the Taurus constellation. The star’s reappearance in the sky may have been a key marker in the area’s ritual and agricultural calendar. Van Gogh may have cut off his entire ear Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh may have severed his whole ear rather than just part of it, newly found records suggest. The sketches, made by a physician who treated van Gogh following the incident in 1888, were found by…

I read with interest Eugene Byrne’s article on wet-nursing (Miscellany, July). Having been a voluntary breastfeeding counsellor for 36 years, I remember being fascinated by Valerie Fildes’s books on wet-nursing and infant feeding, published in the 1980s. Dr Fildes referred back to the ancient doctors Soranus and Galen, who believed that breast and womb are joined by a mythical vein, given the Latin name vasa menstrualis. It was surmised from this that semen could travel up the vasa menstrualis and foul the milk of a nursing woman. This rubbish drove the wet-nursing industry for nearly 2,000 years! Ordinary lower-class women breastfed for centuries, though, and it was used as a method of contraception. Dr Fildes also tells that, before the 19th century, a baby born to a wealthy family would…

A visionary polymath Born in 1098, Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess known for her work in music, astrology, linguistics, natural history and medicine. She received numerous visions that she wrote up in a series of powerful books. Nivelles’ miracle-worker Marie of Oignies (1177–1213) was born in Nivelles in modern-day Belgium, and was the founder of the Beguines, a group of pious laywomen who cared for the sick. Her life was recorded by her male confessor, and in it he charts the miracles she performed and visions she experienced. The sensual celibate Born in Bishop’s Lynn around 1373, Margery Kempe visited Julian in her cell when she was 30 and the anchoress was approaching the end of her life. She was married and had 14 children, but her…

The theory that the Viking Great Army was small – its size exaggerated by Anglo-Saxon scribes for propaganda purposes – has been well and truly exploded by the discovery of a Norse winter camp at Torksey. Our investigations of the site nine miles north-west of Lincoln – occupied by the Viking army over the winter of AD 872–73 – have recovered a wealth of plunder. This includes 26 ingots of silver and gold, as well as 60 pieces of broken-up silver jewellery, known as hacksilver. The Torksey investigations also uncovered fragments of broken-up Anglo-Saxon jewellery, ready to be melted down for recasting. The Vikings were trading, as well as processing their plunder. The site contained more than 120 fragments of Arabic silver coins, or dirhams (the largest collection of its…

Born in 1904 in the city of Halle, Reinhard Heydrich came from a middle-class background of professional musicians. His father was a successful composer, while his maternal grandfather was the director of the world-famous Royal Dresden Conservatory. Although young Heydrich displayed great talent in music, he decided to join Germany’s small navy as an officer cadet after the First World War, mainly because running a conservatory became unsustainable in the economically troubled Weimar Republic. In 1931, Heydrich was discharged from the navy after a scandal revolving around him being simultaneously engaged to two women. Up until that point, he had shown little interest in politics. It was his future wife, Lina von Osten, who introduced him to the ideology of Nazism and encouraged him to apply for a vacancy as…

The Thorpe presented here is a mean and shallow man, lacking principle or loyalty A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment by John Preston Viking, 352 pages, £16.99 Millions of words have been written about Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal leader from 1967 to 1976 and hardly the most significant holder of that office. Does John Preston have anything new to bring to the party? Thorpe was brought down by the accusation that he instigated a plot to have a former lover, Norman Scott, murdered, in order to keep secret the fact that he was gay. A jury found him not guilty after he refused to give evidence in his own defence and the trial judge devoted his summing up to a brutal…

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan Bloomsbury, 656 pages, £10.99 At the start of this compelling book, Peter Frankopan turns to geography as the key to unlocking a new narrative of global history. His argument is beguilingly simple: the region where Europe and Asia meet, from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Himalayas, is the central motor of world history, acting as the conduit and meeting point of peoples, ideas and goods. The inevitable consequences of this location are both progress and conflict, the sum of which is the narrative of historical change. This area, of great antiquity in its historical role but only known since the 19th century as the Silk Roads, is arrestingly described by Frankopan in his preface as…

EVENT Gloucester History Festival Various venues, Gloucester 3–18 September 01452 396572 • gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk This year’s festival turns the spotlight on the anniversary of the coronation of Henry III in Gloucester. On 10 September, ‘The Boy King’ parade and re-enactment of the coronation takes place at Gloucester Cathedral, to celebrate 800 years since the nine-year old prince was crowned. The event opens on 3 September, which is ‘Gloucester day’ – an occasion that commemorates the day when the Civil War siege was lifted. There will be historical re-enactments aplenty, plus other activities at various local venues including the Soldiers of Gloucester Museum, the Folk Museum, Waterways Museum and City Museum. The festival also features music recitals, exhibitions, guided walks, a medieval market and family craft activities. A highlight is the series…

The term ‘multi-talented’ barely seems to do Maya Angelou justice. She was an actress, screenwriter, dancer, musician, poet, author and leading civil rights activist, who campaigned alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. She endured a traumatic childhood, and was raped as an eight-year-old. She related this incident in her 1969 memoir I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings, which became the first nonfiction bestseller by an African-American woman. Her position as one of America’s foremost cultural figures was confirmed when she recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. When did you first hear about Maya Angelou? When I read I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings while studying GCSE English at school. This was one of the first examples of a…