Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i History Extra

“Beginning in the late 8th century, the British Isles were subject to around 300 years of Viking raids and invasions. It was an era of dramatic battles, as the Norsemen fought the Anglo-Saxons and others for control of these islands. While many of these clashes remain imprinted in the historical memory, others have faded into obscurity – even though, as historian Thomas Williams explains in this month’s cover feature, “they helped shape the destiny of Britain”. Turn to page 30 to discover his selection of five forgotten Viking battles that should be far better remembered. This month sees the 20th anniversary of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Like the assassination of John F Kennedy, it is an event that people can still vividly recall, even decades later.…

The first two days of September 1870 were ones of abject humiliation for France. Six weeks earlier, when Napoleon III had declared war on Prussia, crowds had packed the streets of Paris chanting “To Berlin! To Berlin!” But by the time Napoleon’s army arrived at Sedan, in the Ardennes, the war was going badly. Early on 1 September battle began in earnest. Within hours it was clear the French were finished. Already a sick man, 62-year-old Napoleon spent much of the day in a state of helpless paralysis. “If this man has not come here to kill himself, I don’t know what he has come to do,” wrote one observer. In the afternoon, with his men under punishing fire, Napoleon ordered that the white flag be raised above the fortress…

“It is striking that the US continues to be governed essentially by the institutional arrangements created in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution has structured American political life in a profound way, making every substantive question (whether about health care, gun control, or almost anything else) a constitutional question. Consequently, the courts have become powerful, determinative political actors in a way that the Founders probably did not fully anticipate. The Constitution was framed by men who were Republicans but not Democrats. Its preamble locates sovereignty in the people, but it does not follow that the Founders wanted the sovereigns to actually govern. The point of the Constitution was to limit the untrammelled power of the populace, which is why they invented an electoral college to decide the presidency, and why they…

A cache of 25 tablets dating to the first-century AD has been discovered at Vindolanda Roman fort at Hadrian’s Wall. Discovered in a trench at the deepest level of the site, most of the letters are written in cursive script (in which characters are joined together) on thin slivers of birch. But one letter has been written on a double-leaved oak tablet comprised of two pieces of timber folded together. The use of higher quality wood, experts believe, could be an indication of the importance of its contents. The letters bear a striking resemblance to another set of correspondence discovered at the fort in 1992. The original letters included first-person accounts of cold feet, beer shortages and even an invitation to a birthday celebration. One character from the 1992 stash…

Portsmouth Evening News 17 December 1902 Although the British are frequently accused of being prudish, it’s our American cousins who were often the most worried about society falling into disarray. It might surprise you to learn that many states in the USA used to outlaw kissing in public, right into the 20th century. In 1902, the Portsmouth Evening News reported that the entire country was about to attempt to abolish all public kissing, and introduce a fine of five dollars for anyone caught indulging in the practice. Of course, this was met with widespread disapproval and a campaign to repeal the old Puritan ‘blue laws’ of Massachusetts. The campaign was aided by a recent case that had caused much amusement and indignation in Boston, when a prominent citizen had been…

Raj reflections Your feature The Bloody Road to Partition (August) brought to mind something that happened while I was travelling in India with two American friends a couple of years ago. While in Jaipur we engaged the services of an elderly university professor who supplemented his income by acting as a private guide for tourists. As he drove us around on the second day, my American companions, who can never resist the opportunity for some gentle ribbing over Britain’s colonial past, asked the professor for his views on the Raj, in full expectation of an anti-colonial diatribe. Turning to them, he said: “You know the worst thing the British did?” My friends looked at me smugly, waiting for me to be put in my place. But the look on their…

1 A match made in heaven How a solar eclipse of 585 BC persuaded two belligerent kingdoms to make love not war For the first known example of a celestial event changing the course of history, we must head to the sixth century BC when King Cyaxares, ruler of an ancient Iranian people known as the Medes, allowed nomad Scythians to settle in his kingdom. In return for Cyaxares’ hospitality, the Scythians trained Median boys in archery. But then the relationship turned sour. One day Cyaxares hurled abuse at the Scythians for going out hunting and coming home with nothing. In revenge the Scythians killed one of their trainees, chopped him up, cooked him and fed the meat to Cyaxares, pretending it was one of their hunting kills. Before Cyaxares…

Welcome to this year’s BBC History Magazine Hot 100 list, featuring the historical ›igures that have been fascinating you in 2017. We asked you to each nominate up to three people, who could have lived in any historical period (but who died more than 30 years ago). The full list is presented here, along with comments on the results from historians. The characters and rankings are bound to provoke controversy… 100 Isambard Kingdom Brunel 1806–59 British civil and mechanical engineer 99 Francis Drake c1540–1596 English admiral and navigator 98 Christopher Columbus c1451–1506 Italian explorer and navigator 97 Catherine Howard c1524–42 Fifth wife of Henry VIII 96 Anne Neville 1456–85 Queen consort of Richard III 95 Simon de Montfort c1208–65 Rebel baron 94 Nikola Tesla 1856–1943 Serbian-American inventor 93 Isabella of…

Walvin catalogues how an Asian luxury product became a staple food for billions of people Sugar: The World Corrupted, from Slavery to Obesity by James Walvin Robinson, 352 pages, £18.99 The idea of exploring the past through the history of a single crop has been around for a while. What is striking about James Walvin’s new book is that, while focusing solely on sugar, it does not restrict itself to the past. Rather, it takes the story of perhaps the most transformative and destructive boom-crop of all time and brings it disturbingly into the present day. Walvin, a world-renowned historian of slavery and the Caribbean, begins his global history of sugar in the place where most of us begin our relationship with the stuff: the sweet shops of childhood memory.…

Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life by Brenda Maddox Bloomsbury, 272 pages, £20 In her wonderful book about Rosalind Franklin, The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox described the fierce rivalries involved in the race to unravel the double helix. In her latest exposé of ungentlemanly conduct, Reading the Rocks, she reveals the competitive quest for a different secret of life – its origins in prehistory. Maddox’s hero is Charles Lyell, the myopic lawyer who dedicated his life to interpreting the Earth’s hidden messages from the past. An ambitious man, he chose his bride carefully, settling on Mary Horner, daughter of an influential scientist and well-trained in editing, translating and cataloguing. Although Lyell could never bring himself to accept that he should count apes among…

The Zealot’s Bones DM Mark Mulholland Books, 256 pages, £17.99 Diligence Matheson is a rich Canadian, more interested in biblical archaeology than he is in the family business. At the end of a jaunt around Europe, he arrives in Lincolnshire where he thinks a treasure might lie. According to legend, Simon the Zealot, one of the more obscure of Christ’s apostles, travelled to Britain and was martyred there. His bones, Matheson firmly believes, are buried somewhere in the Lincolnshire earth. The Canadian is determined to be the man who wins the glory of discovering them. Accompanying him is Meshach Stone, a former British soldier, in flight from platoons of personal demons which haunt him from his service in India and Afghanistan. Stone acts as a protector to the unworldly Matheson,…

Geeks and Dreamers: The Story of the Internet RADIO BBC Radio 4 Scheduled for Wednesday 16 August The internet is in key respects an ungovernable space. What can we do about this? Maybe not much, suggests Aleks Krotoski in a series tracing the internet’s history, because many of these problems are hardwired into it. Still, it may help us to understand how this all came about, and Krotoski profiles digital pioneers, including Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web; traces the security issues that became evident when, in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed the first malicious computer worm; and concludes by asking whether the internet needs a reboot.…

I Am Not Your Negro DVD (Altitude Film Distribution, £12.99) In his later years, Afro-American writer James Baldwin (1924–87) worked on researching a book he planned to call Remember this House. It was a way for Baldwin to reflect on a trio of assassinated civil rights leaders: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, but also a way into writing about his own life. He never finished the project, but Raoul Peck’s documentary, based largely on 30 pages of text Baldwin sent to his agent, tries to do the job for him by mixing Baldwin’s words, voiced by Samuel L Jackson, with archive footage. Considering Baldwin was one of the major writers of his generation – an inspiration to Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, and a man whose prose…

1 Windsor Castle BERKSHIRE Where George III retired and died George III and Queen Charlotte were incredibly fond of Windsor Castle and carried out a series of renovations. George became ill and was confined here in 1788 before being moved to Kew. During his final illness, from 1810, he was kept in the state apartments and is buried in the castle’s St George’s Chapel. royalcollection.org.uk 2 The British Museum LONDON Where George III’s books resided George III’s collection of 65,000 books was given to the nation on his death and a grand 300-foot long room was built at the museum in 1827 to house them. It is now called the Enlightenment Gallery, with an exhibition on the 18th century. The books are now held at the British Library. britishmuseum.org 3…

BEST TIME TO GO Florence is always gorgeous but can be unbearably hot in the summer months of July and August. To experience something really special, visit around Easter or Epiphany and join in the church services. GETTING THERE There are regular direct flights from London to Florence with BA, Vueling and CityJet. To go very cheaply, you can fly into Pisa and take a short train journey (also allowing you to spend some time in Pisa as well). WHAT TO PACK Comfortable walking shoes, light clothing that covers you in the sun and the churches. And don’t forget a camera. WHAT TO BRING BACK Italian delicacies from Mercato Centrale. A handmade journal or sketchbook from the Il Torchio workshop. A bottle of Frescobaldi wine. READERS’ VIEWS Don’t miss San…

Knights Templar Dan Jones describes how a religious order became the medieval world’s ultimate warriors Global crises Simon Beard on moments when the world came close to disaster, during the Cold War and beyond Famine in Ukraine Anne Applebaum on how Stalin’s policies led to millions of deaths in the early 1930s Queen Matilda Alison Weir recounts the dramatic adventures of the wife of King Stephen in the era of the Anarchy The mystery of Brunanburh Michael Wood reveals his new theory about the location of one of the best-known clashes of the Anglo-Saxon era…

Q How did the Romans shave themselves and cut their nails? C Parker, London A Upper-class Romans, and anyone seeking to emulate them, didn’t like body hair. Men did shave themselves, but more usually had a ‘tonsor’ (barber) do it for them, using a range of tools including bronze or iron shears, knives and razors. Using a barber was preferable to doing it yourself, because the crude tools involved called for a great deal of skill. Wealthy Romans had personal barbers (often slaves), while everyone else, even the working classes, could visit a barber’s shop. The more fashionable barbers could become very rich; Emperor Julian was reportedly so outraged at the wealth of one such tradesman that he ordered all barbers be expelled from the empire. There were some female…

1. What links Sundowner, Tamzine, Royal Daffodil and the Medway Queen? 2. What were Fareham reds? 3. What was motorist, speedboat racer and aviator Mrs Victor Bruce (left) the first woman to do in Britain? 4. Which are the odd ones out? Benedictines, Cistercians, Dominicans, Cluniacs? 5. How is the Roman emperor Valerian said to have been humiliated by his captor, the Persian emperor Shapur? 6. Where is this and why might the congregations of 19th-century churches have been grateful to its builder? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. They all took part in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940. 2. High-quality bricks used in the construction of, among other major buildings, the Royal Albert Hall. 3. Be convicted of speeding (in 1911). 4. Dominicans. They are friars while the others…

Czech medovnik Late summer is honey season and what better way to use this golden liquid – considered the food of the gods in ancient times – than a delicious medovnik (honey cake)? Honey cakes exist in many forms, but this recipe is believed to have its roots in 14th-century Bohemia, although Russia, Slovenia and Slovakia are among other countries that claim it as their own. INGREDIENTS 450g plain flour 180g icing sugar 180g unsalted butter 1 egg 1½ tsp baking soda 6 tbsp honey 4 tbsp cream 1 tsp cocoa powder 1 can of condensed milk 200g unsalted butter 100g roughly chopped pecans or walnuts 1½ tbsp sugar 150ml water 50ml rum METHOD To make the caramel, heat the condensed milk in a bain marie over a medium heat.…

Guy de la Bédoyère Historical references to eclipses are invaluable because they can be tied to exact dates. Celestial phenomena also exerted powerful forces over past societies, telling us much about their mindsets. • Guy investigates celestial events that may have changed history on page 43 Jane Ridley The marriage of Victoria and Albert is often seen as a romantic romp in glorious technicolour, but the reality was more complicated, more conflicted and far more interesting than that. • Jane looks behind the facade of royalty’s golden couple on page 20 Thomas Williams The Viking age in Britain was a time of strife that saw the forging of new nations and the cultural landscape irrevocably altered. However, while some battles of the period are celebrated, others have been practically forgotten.…

Who were these men and women and how did they end up at Portchester Castle? The men were soldiers in the French army serving in the local battalions on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia, St Vincent and Guadeloupe. Slavery on these islands had been abolished by France after the Revolution and most of the freed slaves went into service in the French army. When Fort Charlotte on St Lucia surrendered to the British in 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the soldiers and their families were transported to Britain as prisoners of war. How were they treated when they arrived at the castle? The PoWs arrived in October 1796 and were completely unprepared for the cold and wet weather – many had little clothing or no shoes. What’s more,…

Lake District awarded Unesco status The Lake District has become the 31st site in the UK and British Overseas Territories to be placed on the Unesco World Heritage List. Other sites listed this year are Okinoshima island – an ancient ‘men-only’ religious site – and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Experts may have identified St Columba’s cell Radiocarbon dating of the charred remains of a wattle hut on the Scottish island of Iona, excavated in 1957, has given a date of AD 540–650. Experts now believe the hut belonged to St Columba, the Irish abbot who helped bring Christianity to Scotland in 563 AD. British and Irish hillfort details online for the first time The locations and details of every hillfort in Britain and Ireland – 4,147 in total –…

Never heard of the battle of Sandwich? If so, you’re not alone. Set alongside Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the clash off the Kent coast in 1217 barely makes a ripple on the British historical consciousness. Despite this, Sandwich was an example of a navy at the top of its game. The contemporary chronicler Roger of Wendover was right to say that “the English were skilled in naval warfare” and that they “had a superior navy to the French”. In the engagement, about 40 English ships took on 80 French ones. But – with lighter attack ships pitted against a French fleet that comprised heavy transport vessels, laden with supplies of horses, men, treasure and even a trebuchet – they were able to overcome…

Fern Riddell “Popular history has never been so strong, or important” Is the Age of Great Men finally dead, and have we actually arrived in an Age of Equality? If the History Hot 100 is anything to go by, the answer to that is a resounding yes. Women are rising at lightning speed through the chart, and new lives are featuring beside well-known names. The indomitable Bess of Hardwick, Catherine de Medici and Hatshepsut all make first-time appearances, demonstrating powerful women are fully capable of reaching across time to captivate us, as popular history brings their little-known stories to light, As we face huge social upheaval, the desire to understand human nature also stands out. Jane Austen, Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie bring in the worlds of literature, science and…

Caesar’s Footprints: Journeys to Roman Gaul by Bijan Omrani Head of Zeus, 400 pages, £25 One of Caesar’s ‘greatest’ achievements was the conquest of Gaul, successfully overcoming the tribes that inhabited an area spanning much of western Europe. Between 58 and 52 BC, Caesar’s war against the barbarians at Rome’s north-western frontier caused the deaths of more than a million innocent men, women and children, many more being enslaved in the process. At the end of it all, Gaul became one of the most thoroughly Roman of all European provinces – there being little of the indigenous population left with the will to resist. Caesar’s war was nothing more than a well-organised slaughter, conducted primarily to advance his own rather warped political agenda. By the time that the last embers…

Defending the Rock by Nicholas Rankin Faber & Faber, 672 pages, £20 The subtitle of Nicholas Rankin’s book – How Gibraltar Defeated Hitler – unquestionably stands up to scrutiny. Indeed, Hitler himself unwittingly acknowledged in a letter written in February 1941 to Spanish dictator Franco that: “The attack on Gibraltar and the closing of the Straits would have changed the Mediterranean situation in one stroke.” The Nazi leader lamented the fact that Franco had refused to join the Axis and allow the Wehrmacht to cross Spain and take Gibraltar with German land forces. “Two months have been lost,” Hitler said, “which otherwise would have helped decide world history.” Never in the course of modern warfare has so small a plot of land played so pivotal a role in deciding a…

The Fiend in Human John Maclachlan Gray (2002) A killer awaits execution in a London jail, but he insists on his innocence and argues that the real murderer is still on the loose. Only two men – a balladeer peddling doggerel verse about those hanged at Newgate, and a newspaper crime reporter with a taste for alcohol and laudanum – believe him. In Gray’s superbly convincing Victorian mystery, they must scour the fog-bound streets of London to corner the true fiend in human form. Beloved Poison ES Thomson (2016) Jem Flockhart, a woman passing as a man in order to work as an apothecary in a ramshackle London hospital, stumbles across the coffins of six babies hidden away in its old chapel. In her attempts to discover the story behind…

“Rallying English identity only tends to happen in moments of emergency” The English Fix RADIO BBC Radio 4 Scheduled for Monday 11 September When all is well in Albion, says Patrick Wright, English identity is something the English themselves tend not to worry about. Rather, English identity is allowed to become subsumed by Britishness, in great part in the interests of getting on with the other home nations. But this doesn’t hold true in times of crisis. “The rallying of English identity only tends to happen in moments of emergency, when the politeness of not existing for the sake of British equality is no longer compelling,” argues the writer. It’s a theme Wright explores by looking at attempts by four different figures – George Orwell, John Betjeman, Barbara Castle and…

The holiday season is upon us. As Tom Heap reports for Costing the Earth (Radio 4, Tuesday 5 September), this means many of us will journey to historical sites where the sheer number of visitors is becoming a problem. These include Peru’s Machu Picchu, at risk from erosion, and Venice, where giant cruise liners are a threat to the lagoon environment. Does an answer to these kinds of problems lie in Amsterdam, where the city council thinks it has found a way to tempt visitors to explore beyond the most popular attractions? On BBC Two, the Partition season concludes with India’s Partition: The Forgotten Story (Tuesday 22 August), in which filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend it Like Beckham and The Viceroy’s House, crosses India to meet some of those…

Ancient nomads EXHIBITION Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia British Museum, London 14 September–14 January 2018 - 020 7323 8181 • britishmuseum.org The Scythian empire is put under the spotlight at the British Museum this month, with the launch of a major exhibition – the first in the UK for 40 years – on the nomadic tribes who roamed the vast landscape from southern Russia to China and the northern Black Sea from the ninth to the first century BC. The Scythians are known for their exceptional skills on horseback and their heavily tattooed skin. Accounts of their violent clashes with Greek, Assyrian and Persian adversaries support their fearsome reputation. But it is thanks to the discovery of ancient objects preserved beneath Siberian permafrost that we now know more about the…

“His book about his time in Auschwitz doesn’t just remind readers of the Holocaust’s full horror, it helps keep us on our toes and alerts us to the warning signs” Primo Levi was an Italian-Jewish chemist, author and Holocaust survivor. His best-known works are If This Is a Man (1947), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War, and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of short stories named after chemical elements. He died after falling from the third floor of the block of flats where he lived in Turin. The coroner ruled that it was suicide. When did you first hear about Primo Levi? I had a Jewish uncle – a wonderful man from Frankfurt, free of…

1 She enjoyed ball games Jane loved, and excelled at, the game bilbocatch. The game involves a wooden cup with a handle, and a small ball attached to the cup by a string; the player tosses the ball and catches it in the cup. Jane could allegedly catch the ball more than 100 times in succession. 2 She was the first to write about a doorbell The Oxford English Dictionary credits Jane as being the first-cited author of 39 words. Double-bed, doorbell and dinner-party are among them. 3 She was engaged… for one night In December 1802 Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her close friends Elizabeth, Catherine and Alethea, made a proposal of marriage to Jane. Although she initially accepted, by the following morning Jane had changed her mind, unwilling…

“Of all the stories in history, this has got everything” “The other day I met up with a couple of friends who write scripts for cinema. We got talking about great stories in history that could be turned into blockbusters. History of course has always been a great subject for the movies. Only this year we’ve had some epic tales from modern history: the Partition of India, Dunkirk, not to mention the upcoming Darkest Hour (the second Churchill movie in a few months). But I go further back in time for my dream epic: the Spanish conquest of the New World – Pizarro and the Incas; Atahualpa and the room of gold; the El Dorado expedition; Orellana; de Soto; the amazing 3,000-mile Almagro expedition into Chile across the Andes; the…

Following HBO’s announcement of new drama Confederate, which will imagine an America where the South won the right to secede from the Union, what alternative history drama would you like to see and why? Alejandra Fuenzalida Henry VIII not breaking with Rome. Would England be Catholic now? Or what would have happened if Richard III had won the battle of Bosworth? @_Say_What_Again The JFK assassination. What would the US Civil Rights movement have looked like if Kennedy was never shot? Equal rights sooner? Less violence? Steven Brake James II successfully resists William Of Orange. The Glorious Revolution never happens, but nor do the Acts of Union in 1707 Ed Waddington Montezuma defeats Cortés and gains knowledge of gunpowder and iron working Claire Greyson The princes in the Tower surviving and…

One Hot Summer Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli and the Great Stink of 1858 Rosemary Ashton Other than record-breaking summer heat and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, events in London in 1858 were unremarkable. Or were they? This deeply researched book reveals crucial moments in the lives of Victorian Londoners and the lasting significance of their scandals and achievements. 28 b/w illustrations Hardback £25.00 Stormtroopers A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts Daniel Siemens This deeply researched history of the Nazi Stormtroopers whose muscle brought Hitler to power is the first to uncover the full extent of their violent savagery in the 1920s, 1930s and even beyond. The author shines new light on the ‘brownshirts’ and their influence on Third Reich endeavours, the Holocaust and Germany’s fate in the war.…

Princess Charlotte of Wales, died 1817 Like Diana, Charlotte captured the public imagination like no other member of the royal family. When the daughter of the future George IV died in childbirth at the age of 21, The Times thought it a national “calamity” – although the radical poet Shelley claimed that the execution of three men in Derby, who had been convicted of plotting against the government, was a much greater calamity. When her funeral was held in Windsor, thousands turned out to watch, and “the road and streets through which it passed were lined with spectators”. Afterwards, Charlotte’s doctor, who blamed himself for her demise, committed suicide. Queen Victoria, died 1901 Since Victoria was 81 when she died, her death hardly came as a shock. But, as she…

PROFILE CLAIR WILLS Clair Wills teaches at Princeton University. She is the author of That Neutral Island: A History of Ireland During the Second World War (Faber & Faber, 2008), Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO (Profile, 2009) and The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015) “British companies and the government were actively going abroad to source workers” IN CONTEXT Following the Second World War, an exhausted Britain witnessed unprecedented levels of migration, as displaced European refugees and economic migrants from across the globe arrived to fill the gaps in the workforce. Clair Wills’ new book aims to reconstruct what life was like for those who arrived in postwar Britain, through the eyes of the immigrants themselves. Why were you interested in looking…

Even the lightning runes of the SS were part of the same ideological gibberish Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich by Eric Kurlander Yale University Press, 448 pages, £25 In April 1945, Gerda Bormann wrote to her husband, Martin, in Hitler’s Reich Chancellery in Berlin to lament Germany’s imminent demise. The situation, she explained, reminded her of the Götterdämmerung – the twilight of the gods. “The wolf Fenris and the snake Mitgard are storming over the bridge,” she wrote. “The citadel is tottering.” One might have imagined that, in the desperation of their final fight, the German people would have had more important matters in mind than such outlandish mumbo-jumbo. But, as Eric Kurlander’s new book makes abundantly clear, the occult and the supernatural were important ingredients…

Nicholas II: The Last Tsar by Michael Paterson Robinson, 256 pages, £9.99 This year’s centenary of the Russian Revolution has revived interest in the Romanov dynasty that the upheaval swept away. Michael Paterson’s brief life of the ineffectual last tsar is unusual in taking a sympathetic, indeed indulgent, view of Nicholas, stressing his homely human qualities and good intentions rather than the manifold failings that doomed him, his family and his country. Nicholas was the wrong man in the wrong time and place. Lacking the strong character of his iron-fisted father, Alexander III, the last tsar fatally and blindly followed Alexander’s repressive policies when only radical reform could have saved the regime. Isolated from his people, Nicholas was only happy as a family man following such harmless hobbies as photography.…

Streets Apart: The Story of Social Housing RADIO BBC Radio 4 Scheduled for Monday 28 August One effect of the Grenfell Tower tragedy was to bring issues around social housing into the mainstream. Offering context for these debates, Lynsey Hanley’s 10-part weekday series looks back to consider how politicians, social reformers and architects have approached providing housing for those most in need. Encompassing Victorian model villages, postwar new towns and 1960s housing estates, it concludes by asking how, in 2017, social housing fits with the notion of a property-owning democracy.…

“Standing under Brunelleschi’s Duomo is an awe-inspiring moment not to be missed” What I find so evocative about the Renaissance is its desire to express what makes us human – emotion, pain, frailty and love. There is no better place to come face to face with this passion than in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance. Florence sits at the heart of Tuscany, about halfway between Rome and Milan. Founded as a Roman military camp in the first century BC, the city reached its height in the Renaissance, from the 14th–16th centuries. The social mobility of the Florentine Republic meant that families from obscure or even peasant backgrounds could rise to the heights of power and wealth (the most notable example being the Medici, who ruled Florence from the 15th–18th…

1. THE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM OF FREEMASONRY Visit our exhibition at Freemasons’ Hall, London to discover three centuries of English freemasonry and explore how modern freemasonry fits into today’s world. libmus@freemasonry.london.museum 2. ALMONRY MUSEUM The Almonry is a beautiful C14th building in the heart of historic Evesham. Set near the Abbey site the museum showcases the town’s history from pre-history to mid 20th Century with a peaceful secluded garden. almonryevesham.org | 01386 446944 3. WEDGWOOD MUSEUM Trace over 250 years of ground-breaking design and production and discover Wedgwood’s influence on industry and society. This award winning museum houses a UNESCO protected collection of historic and cultural significance. worldofwedgwood.com 4. POLESDEN LACEY Discover the lavish country retreat owned by socialite Margaret Greville. Designed to be ‘fit to entertain Maharajahs’, Maggie hosted countless…