Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i History Extra

“Who do you see when you think of Walter Ralegh? Is it the chivalrous courtier who soaked his cloak for the queen? Or is it the intrepid explorer whose American adventures gave us chips and cigarettes? These are the popular views of the polymath who died 500 years ago, but they may not represent his most important legacy. In this month’s cover feature, beginning on page 38, Anna Beer argues that Ralegh should be best known for the radical writings he produced during his long incarceration. Ralegh’s incendiary words outraged King James VI & I and later inspired those who would take up arms against his successor in the Civil War. Another legend of Britain’s past under the spotlight this month is King Arthur, the British warlord who is rarely…

At the end of 1926, 36-year-old Agatha Christie was one of the country’s most promising popular writers. Having published seven books, most recently The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie was flying high. But then, in a textbook example of life imitating art, something utterly unexpected happened. On the evening of 3 December, Christie was at home in the Berkshire stockbroker belt. She went upstairs to kiss her seven-year-old daughter goodnight. Then she got into her Morris, started the engine – and disappeared. What followed was a media sensation. Amid a blizzard of headlines, the police mobilised a thousand officers to help with the search, while volunteers chartered aeroplanes to scour the countryside. Christie’s rival, Dorothy L Sayers, visited her house to look for clues, while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle consulted…

“Why did the US not discover the plan to attack Pearl Harbor before it was too late? By December 1941, American decrypting machines were cracking the code used to send messages between Tokyo’s Foreign Ministry and Japanese embassies around the world. But the Foreign Ministry was unaware of the specifics of the Pearl Harbor plan – it had been cooked up within the Navy Ministry. The US simply didn’t get hold of the right intelligence in time. Here was a rare example of the divisions inside Japan’s power structures working in the country’s favour. Across the 1930s and into the 1940s, factions in Japan’s politics, bureaucracy and military fought viciously over their country’s place in the world, with the most extreme points of view steadily winning out: Japan as a…

CAPTAIN COOK A statue of Captain Cook that has stood on Titirangi hill in Gisborne, New Zealand since 1969 is to be relocated to a local museum. The decision was made after protests by the local Maori community, who say their ancestors arrived on the island long before Cook came ashore in 1769. SPANISH ART Three late 15th-century statues in a tiny shrine in the north-western Spanish region of Asturias have been ‘freshened up’ with bright paint by a local shop owner. The move has been condemned by the statues’ original, professional restorer.…

“It was the fourth day of the hearing of this extraordinary case,” reported the Huddersfield Chronicle as it covered Saurin v Starr and Kennedy. The entire country was gripped by an incredible trial involving deception, deceit and – surprisingly – nuns. Susan Saurin, or Sister Mary Scholastica as she had previously been known, was a Catholic nun. All her siblings had become either nuns or priests, and she had travelled from Ireland to join a convent near Hull some years previously. But her life there had not been happy, and her refusal to disclose what she had said in confession, as well as her continual disobedience in sending private and “tender” letters home to Ireland, which she refused to let the Mother Superior read, had led to her expulsion from…

Reading the October edition of your magazine, my family was surprised to see a photo of my Uncle Johnny preparing to entertain the troops (News). Johnny Heawood was a member of the first Canadian troops to arrive in Europe after the country’s declaration of war in 1939. In 1946, he received his discharge papers in England, the country he would make his home until his death in 1995. Uncle Johnny went on to invest in the Players’ Theatre, London, where he would perform regularly with other famous faces, including his wartime friend Bill Dunstan (shown with him in the photo). Johnny enjoyed a distinguished career as an actor, dancer and choreographer, regularly appearing on the London stage, on Broadway and in movies such as Oliver! and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.…

When Henry VIII ascended the throne in April 1509, his subjects were quick to draw favourable comparisons between the new king’s youthful exuberance and his dour old father. One contemporary verse rejoiced that the kingdom “now cleared is from the clerk… By Harry our king the flower of nature’s work.” The philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon described Henry VII as “a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious”, and by the time of his death he was widely viewed as a grasping and miserly old recluse. In stark contrast, his strapping 17-year-old son and heir was hailed as an “Adonis” and “the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on”. At 6ft 2ins tall and with an athletic physique honed in the tournament arena, Henry VIII was the living embodiment of his formidable…

At the conclusion of the Second World War, Vietnamese communist and nationalist forces led by Ho Chi Minh, and known as the Viet Minh, declared independence from the country’s French colonial masters. France fought a protracted but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to retain control, finally acknowledging defeat after a disastrous reversal at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The subsequent peace agreement led to what was intended to be a temporary division of the country, which left North Vietnam under Viet Minh control, whereas South Vietnam was home to France’s ex-allies in the country. Soon, communist guerrillas known as Viet Cong began waging an armed insurrection in South Vietnam, which the regime struggled to deal with. Concerned about the spread of communism, the US offered increasing amounts of aid to South Vietnam,…

Nein! Standing Up to Hitler 1935-1944 by Paddy Ashdown William Collins, 416 pages, £25 What do politicians do when their careers run out of road? Michael Portillo took to the trains, Ed Balls took up dancing and Paddy Ashdown became a historian. This is the fourth book that the former Liberal Democrat leader has written set around the Second World War, and pays a fine, although sometimes confusing, tribute to the leaders of the anti-Nazi resistance, most of whom paid for their courage with their lives. It is, in fact, two books melded into one, which accounts for the occasionally muddled chronology. Ashdown’s main narrative focuses on three men: General Ludwig Beck, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and the conservative economist and politician Carl Goerdeler. All three were nationalists initially sympathetic to…

Time to reflect Collecting the Troubles at the Ulster Museum RADIO Radio 4 Scheduled for Tuesday 27 November It’s 50 years since the Troubles began in Northern Ireland, and two decades since the Good Friday Agreement. How should institutions reflect a history that’s growing distant, yet nevertheless still impacts on everyday life? This one-off show goes behind the scenes at the Ulster Museum in Belfast to follow director Kathryn Thomson and her colleagues as they select work for an exhibition, The Troubles and Beyond. It has much to say about how former warzones are represented in art. Unseen images Through a Lens Darkly TV PBS America Scheduled for Wednesday 7 November The portrayal of African-Americans in photography has at best told partial stories and even reinforced crude racial stereotypes. Yet,…

1 Faenza ITALY Where medieval pottery was made Faenza, not far from Bologna, was historically a centre for the manufacture of glazed earthenware pottery. Today, it’s home to the International Museum of Ceramics, which houses the largest collection of its kind in the world. • micfaenza.org 2 Selb BAVARIA, GERMANY Where white porcelain was created The Bavarian town of Selb might not have the name-recognition of, say, Dresden, but as the home of the Rosenthal porcelain factory, founded in 1879, it’s an internationally important ceramics centre. The Porzellanikon porcelain museum presents a history of the craft from the 18th century. • porzellanikon.org/en/ 3 Limoges FRANCE Where ceramic history is celebrated Limoges in France has been renowned for its fine porcelain since the late 18th century. Its museum, the Musée National…

1. What was Operation Chastise? 2. With which heroic Victorian (pictured left) would you associate the SS Forfarshire? 3. Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, Philip the Good. Who came next? 4. What was the ‘phylloxera plague’? 5. “A town besieged by him was a town captured; a town defended by him was one saved.” Who were the French talking about? 6. Who produced this work? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. The ‘Dambuster’ attacks on German dams carried out by the RAF on 16–17 May 1943. 2. Grace Darling. 3. Charles the Bold (they were all Dukes of Burgundy). 4. A severe blight that devastated most of Europe’s vineyards in the mid-19th century, caused by the phylloxera aphid. 5. The 17th-century military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. 6. The master carver…

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer and conductor who wrote a number of acclaimed pieces of music. He entered the Royal College of Music as a teenage violinist but soon showed great ability in composition. In 1898, he composed the cantata ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, which became a great success, and he was invited to perform in the US on several occasions. However, the royalty agreement he signed for ‘Hiawatha’ earned him relatively little money and his family were left impoverished when he died of pneumonia aged only 37. When did you first hear about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor? In the 90s I had a production company called Crucial Films and people would pitch ideas all of the time. One idea pitched was for a biographical drama on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and I regret…

Stephen Bates The Peterloo Massacre was a milestone in the struggle for democratic rights but has often been overlooked. Hopefully Mike Leigh’s film and the 200th anniversary next year will change that. • Stephen describes the infamous events of August 1819 on page 50 Anna Beer I first encountered Walter Ralegh in his compelling account of his quest for El Dorado. Thirty years on, I’m still fascinated by this multi-talented, problematic man – his words, deeds and legacy. • Anna reveals how Walter Ralegh’s radical writings changed the course of English history on page 38 Max Hastings In my new book on the Vietnam War I have told the stories of a lot of Americans and some French people. But one must never lose sight of the fact that this…

Thousands of images carved into rocky hilltops in the Konkan region of western India could point to the existence of a previously unknown civilisation, say archaeologists. The rock carvings, including the one shown here, are known as petroglyphs and could date to around 10,000 BC. The images feature a range of designs – from animals and birds to geometric shapes and human figures. Most of the carvings were hidden by centuries of soil and mud but have now been rediscovered thanks to the efforts of a group of explorers, who began a search after observing some visible examples in the area.…

Eight-year-old girl finds ancient sword in lake A 1,500-year-old pre-Viking sword has been discovered in Vidöstern lake, Sweden, by eight-year-old Saga Vanecek while swimming. Her find was aided by the lake’s low water level – the consequence of a drought. Further excavations at the site in Jönköping county have already unearthed a brooch, possibly dating from the third century, and it is hoped further objects are waiting to be discovered. Original Wolf Hall unearthed in Wiltshire A team of archaeologists and historians have found the remains of the original Wolf Hall, the 16th-century family home of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. The discovery was made in the grounds of the much later Wolf Hall Manor in Burbage, Wiltshire. The exact location of the first ‘Wulfhall’, which fell into ruin…

@AmHistoryCast You don’t even have to answer “never” to oppose this. This is about the site of one of the top five most pivotal moments in English history. Melissa Without historical places, events become dry facts in books. We need to touch, feel and smell history to understand and appreciate how we came to be where we are right now, and where we are going. @NathenAmin It’s wilful destruction of irreplaceable heritage for little discernible reason. There are always alternatives. @hisdoryan After the battle of Hastings, I would say the battle of Bosworth is tied with Trafalgar and Waterloo in terms of historical significance to the general British population. How can we build on something that was crucial in terms of defining us as a nation? @ChrisFarrelly How far back…

Henry VIII was overjoyed when his son, Edward, was born in October 1537. At last he had the male heir that he had craved for so long. Little wonder that he always referred to the infant prince as his “precious jewel”. Henry commissioned Holbein to paint his son’s portrait (below). The finished work shows the prince dressed as a king in miniature, with a rattle in place of a sceptre. Edward is the image of his father, with the same small dark eyes and red hair. The painting bears the inscription: “Little one, imitate your father and be the heir of his virtue, the world contains nothing greater… Surpass him… and none will ever surpass you.” This neatly encapsulated what Henry expected of his son, and also echoes the self-confident…

It was Lord Mayor’s Day in the City of London, 29 October 1618. King James VI and I and his advisers were hoping that the “pageants and fine shows might draw away the people” from another event taking place upriver, in Westminster. Sir Walter Ralegh, condemned as a traitor in the earliest months of James’s reign, a long-term prisoner in the Tower of London, was to be executed that morning. That the king was remotely concerned about “the people” tells us something important about Ralegh. He had been legally dead for 15 years. He was the “best hated man” in England even before his arrest in 1603. He had no faction of his own and no great family standing behind him. In short, Ralegh’s death should have been wholly unremarkable.…

The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed 1600-1900 by TM Devine Allen Lane, 496 pages, £25 In the popular imagination, the clearances are the great tragic blot on Scotland’s past. It’s a tale of heartless landowners engineering suffering and extirpation by forcing a people and culture from their lands and homes in a process some writers have compared to ethnic cleansing and even genocide. The clearances have become one of the most (in)famous episodes in the story of modern Scotland, and even those who are unfamiliar with the nation’s history may well know a little about what happened in this turbulent period. Even today, the clearances are seen as the great tragic blot on Scotland’s past The clearances are taken to signal the end of clanship and paternal landownership,…

The Indian Empire at War by George Morton-Jack Little Brown, 592 pages, £25 Clearly timed for the finale of the First World War’s centenary commemorations, this engaging soldiers’ history of the conflict is unashamedly populist in tone. The protagonists are the troops (and noncombatants) from the Indian subcontinent who fought for the British and Allied cause, sometimes willingly, but mostly because they had little choice, or were signing up under economic duress. Some 1.5 million recruits were to serve in the Indian army until 1918. Arranged chronologically, the book exposes the fate of these troops as they were deployed across an astonishing geographic landscape, from the bitter cold of the western front to the baking deserts of the Middle East, traversing 50 present-day countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. George…

Dissolution CJ Sansom (2003) Matthew Shardlake made his first appearance in this gripping and well-written novel. The year is 1537 and the lawyer is despatched to a soon-to-be dissolved monastery to look into the brutal killing of one of Thomas Cromwell’s men. At the same time, a sacrilegious ritual appears to have taken place in the monastery. As he investigates, and more murders take place, Shardlake is forced to question everything he believes and holds most dear. Firedrake’s Eye Patricia Finney (1992) In 1583, Elizabeth I becomes the target of a Catholic assassination plot hoping to restore the old faith to England. Simon Ames and David Becket, two agents for Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, work to save the queen and unmask the plotters. As they venture into the dangerous…

Former US senator Joseph Tydings had a unique, insider’s perspective on recent American history. A Democrat who entered politics in the Truman era, he was a friend to both Jack and Bobby Kennedy. On returning to law after Richard Nixon came to power, he wined and dined clients including Donald Trump. In From Truman to Trump (BBC World Service, Tuesday 13 November), recorded just before his death on 8 October, he reflects on a remarkable life. On Radio 4, In Our Time continues throughout November, with highlights including an episode on Marie Antoinette (Thursday 8 November). The BBC has extensive arts programming this autumn, with plenty of shows offering historical insights, including Dangerous Desires: The Scandalous Life of Egon Schiele (BBC Two, November). This charts the career of a painter…

EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY Journey to Justice International Slavery Museum, Liverpool Until 7 April 2019 - 0151 478 4499 • liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism Inspiring stories of men, women and children who have sought to challenge inequality and campaign for cultural and political transformation – in Britain and internationally – are under the spotlight in Liverpool this month. Delivered by National Museums Liverpool in partnership with human rights education charity Journey to Justice, the exhibition examines key events, themes and tactics in the history of activism and campaigning – from US civil rights to gay liberation movements. Among the stories featured is that of Janice Wesley, one of thousands of young African-Americans who – in Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963 – participated in a series of non-violent demonstrations known as the Children’s Crusade. Wesley…

Eggnog This indulgent festive favourite is thought to have its origins in posset, a milky spiced drink popular with medieval monks. However, as colonial trade made rum more affordable, a new tipple emerged. By the late 18th century, it had become known by the somewhat unappealing name ‘eggnog’, believed to have come from the word for a small wooden cup, ‘noggin’. Eggnog was especially popular in America. George Washington was such a fan that he wrote his own booze-laden recipe, laced not only with rum, but whiskey and sherry too. Today, the rich drink brings to mind cosy winter evenings by the fireside, but in 1826 it inspired carnage. After an illicit eggnog-fuelled Christmas party spiralled out of control at West Point Military Academy, cadets went on the rampage, attacking…

What exactly is Beowulf ? Beowulf is the only Old English text that can be called an ‘epic’. The story is set in sixth-century Scandinavia and follows the exploits of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf. The poem is preserved only in an Old English manuscript from around AD 1000. Who wrote Beowulf ? The text has often been credited as a work of fiction by an unknown Christian poet in England. I disagree. Such an author would not have had the necessary access to Scandinavian traditions or been able to correctly describe the poem’s distinct Scandinavian material, ideological culture and pagan customs, especially cremations. I don’t believe the poem was composed in England at all – the story is Scandinavian and there is no English…

War of contrition If anything good resulted from the slaughter on the western front in the First World War (Was It Worth It?, November), it was that thousands of lives were spared in the Second World War. A group of young professional British Army officers, all in the early stages of their careers, served in the trenches in 1914–18. Captain (later Field Marshal) Bernard Montgomery was one of them. The enormous casualties that arose through massive, unproductive onslaughts – the 60,000 Allied soldiers killed or wounded on the first day of the Somme offensive in July 1916 being an outstanding example – made them determined to keep the loss of life as low as possible insofar as they had any power in any subsequent war. Those who served under such…

You may have read about the recent furore over plans to build a huge driverless car testing ground on part of the battlefield of Bosworth. The story made the TV news, amid claims that a priceless part of our heritage was being ruined while Historic England, the body assigned to preserve it, looked on blithely. The issue is more complex than that, but it is an important test case for how battlefields should be preserved as visitor attractions – and also a model for how they should be researched. The battle – which saw Henry Tudor crowned king (as Henry VII) after defeating an army led by Richard III – was fought on 22 August 1485 somewhere near Market Bosworth. Exactly where has never been clear: our sources are surprisingly…

“I had lost three good mates. It was like losing part of my life” HARRY PATCH 1898-2009 The author and producer Richard van Emden and I embarked on our mission to film the stories of the last survivors of the First World War – for a BBC Two series on masculinity and war – more than 20 years ago. Back then, we had no idea that one of our earliest interviewees, Harry Patch, would turn out to be the last surviving Tommy of the war. A quiet, unassuming man whom we discovered in a residential home in Wells, Somerset, Harry had never spoken publicly or privately about his experiences before. Telling his story on camera for the first time was a very emotional experience for him. He’d served four months…

A cry for help As German troops surge into Russia, Stalin pleads for Churchill’s assistance 3 SEPTEMBER 1941 August 1941 was a bleak month for Josef Stalin. On 22 June, German forces had invaded the USSR, and soon Hitler’s Wehrmacht was advancing rapidly, capturing several million Soviet troops. Stalin was desperate for allies, and his British counterpart, Winston Churchill, was prepared to help any enemy of Nazism. As Soviet losses mounted, Stalin’s pleas for help grew shriller. But Churchill had little to offer: the British Army was locked in battle with the Germans and Italians in north Africa. In any case, it was far from clear whether the Soviet Union would survive. By the end of August, Stalin was furious with what he called Britain’s “passive wait-and-see policy”. Ivan Maisky,…

Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt by Chris Naunton Thames and Hudson, 304 pages, £19.95 As former director of the Egypt Exploration Society and current president of the International Association of Egyptologists, Chris Naunton is certainly well placed to be Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt. And here he does so with skill, guiding the reader through a fascinating landscape of pyramids, temples and tombs within which the Egyptians buried their elite dead for more than three millennia. With the premise that the final resting places of some of Egypt’s most famous names remain unknown, Naunton takes a chronological approach in seeking out possible tomb sites of these “vanished celebrities”. He begins with the lost tomb of Imhotep (inventor of the pyramid and himself buried somewhere beneath the…

Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime by Claire Harman Viking, 224 pages, £14.99 On 6 May 1840, a quiet Mayfair street was disturbed by the cries of a distraught housemaid. She had just found her master, Lord William Russell, in bed with his throat cut and blood seeping liberally through the sheets. Her cries woke the neighbours and then sent shivers through genteel London. If an elderly gentleman was not safe behind his own front door, worried his peers, then who was? An aristocratic class made anxious by Chartist stirrings and by the Newport rising of 1839 (which saw more than 7,000 men march in open rebellion against authorities) looked to the servants with whom they lived and wondered if they were safe in their own…

Tombland by CJ Sansom Mantle, 880 pages, £20 One of the most complex, intriguing characters in historical crime fiction over the last 15 years has been the hunchbacked Tudor lawyer, Matthew Shardlake. This is the seventh novel to chronicle his adventures in the dangerous, murky world of 16th-century English politics. Two years have passed since the death of Henry VIII. His son, Edward VI, is still a boy and the kingdom is ruled by the lord protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Shardlake is in the employ of Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the late king. When one of Elizabeth’s distant relations is found murdered in an East Anglian ditch, he is despatched to investigate. The victim had vanished from her home nine years earlier, only to reappear as a corpse.…

Q Did the samurai have the Japanese equivalent of a coat of arms? O Adamberry, Gibraltar A Yes. The closest equivalent of a coat of arms for samurai would be their mon, or ‘emblem’. These were designs based on plants, simple shapes, celestial bodies or even animals, most often printed as a white image on a dark background, or a dark image on a white background. They could be found on samurai helmets, or on their flags and tents, banners and sword scabbards, and sewn onto the uniforms of their soldiers. Mon date back at least as far as the imperial family’s use of them in the Heian period (794-1185). Great warrior families too began to use emblems and pass them down the family line. Japan did not have the…