Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i History Extra

“In 1972 the Ugandan leader Idi Amin expelled the country’s Asian population. Given just three months to leave, and allowed to take only a small amount of money, almost 30,000 Ugandan Asians made their way to Britain to begin a new life. The immigrants encountered hostility and racism, but at the same time many Britons flocked to their aid, providing food and shelter and even lessons in how to take tea. On page 50 of this month’s issue, Becky Taylor revisits the events of almost half a century ago and reveals how the Ugandan Asians went on to become one of Britain’s immigration ‘success stories’. New arrivals of a far less peaceable kind are the subject of this month’s cover feature, which takes us back to the turn of the…

The date was 12 February 1947, the place the headquarters of the Christian Dior fashion house at 30 Avenue Montaigne, Paris. Having just launched his own house, the eponymous Dior was desperate to make a splash. After years of wartime austerity, he thought, fashion badly needed a dash of glamour, turning its back on the privations of the last decade. Instead of the boxy silhouettes so popular in the early 1940s, Dior’s outfits were voluptuous and curvaceous, with boned, busty bodices, tiny waists and long, wide, sweeping skirts. Given the pinched feel of the last few years, the effect could hardly have been more spectacular. Dior himself boasted that he had “designed flower women”, and the collection was entitled Corolle, meaning a circlet of flower petals. When Dior’s models walked…

“Although the Edict of Thessalonica provoked no immediate change, its rulings fundamentally transformed the late Roman empire over the following century. Most importantly, it made religious belief a matter of law and offered one of the earliest uses of the term ‘heretic’. Differences of religious opinion and interpretation had existed long before AD 380, but the edict made heresy a criminal act. This did not just affect Christians who didn’t subscribe to Nicene Christianity, but also Jews and adherents to traditional Roman cults. Elites increasingly turned to Christianity as a way of legitimising their public status. Family structures, attitudes to sex and even calendars were also gradually adapted in response to the growing influence of Christian morality and social custom. Christianity took hold in the empire’s physical spaces too. Temples…

Remains of leather-booted medieval man found Archaeologists working on the Thames Tideway tunnel in Bermondsey have unearthed the remains of a man thought to have fallen to his death in the river 500 years ago. Found lying on its front, with its head twisted to the side, the skeleton was found to be wearing a pair of remarkably preserved knee-high leather boots, stitched together with waxed flax thread. The wearer of the boots may have been a dock worker such as a fisherman or mudlark. Campaign to see BME figure on £50 note More than 200 public figures have backed a campaign to see a black and minority ethnic (BME) historical figure on the new £50 note. Those who joined the campaign include Lord Victor Adebowale, comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar and…

I write in response to your recent article Peterloo (December). I have two relatives who were in different political camps regarding the massacre. And their differences seem to have stemmed from their economic circumstances. David Bellhouse (1764–1840) and George Bellhouse (c1769–1825) were both born in Leeds, younger sons of a Leeds joiner. Both took up their father’s trade. There the similarities end. David Bellhouse moved to Manchester in the 1780s, where he initially worked as a joiner. Soon he speculated successfully in workers’ housing. By 1819, he had become a wealthy businessman running a timber yard, a building and contracting business and a cotton-spinning factory. On his father’s death in 1796, George Bellhouse took over the joinery business in Leeds but it failed in the early 19th century, whereupon he…

c950-90 Probably born around the middle of the 10th century, Wulfstan becomes a monk at a time when the Benedictine reform movement is strengthening the power of the church. 990 s Wulfstan gains a reputation as an eloquent writer and preacher. While Viking raids grow in intensity, he composes apocalyptic sermons about the coming of the Antichrist. 996 Wulfstan becomes bishop of London, named in his correspondence as Lupus episcopus: ‘the Wolf bishop’. 1002 He is raised to the bishopric of Worcester and archbishopric of York, held in plurality – the north is an unstable, borderland region, and it is usual to combine York with a see in the south. 1008 By 1008 he is drafting lawcodes and public legislation for King Æthelred, including the famous penitential code of 1009,…

Born in Alexandria in 1917, Eric Hobsbawm spent his youth in Vienna and Berlin, witnessing the rise of Nazism, before moving to Britain in 1933. He studied history at Cambridge and became a lecturer at Birkbeck in London. His books, notably The Age Of… series, which covered the years 1789–1991, were global bestsellers, making Hobsbawm one of the world’s best-known and most influential historians. He was a lifelong communist, and his ideology infused his research and writing. Hobsbawm’s other great love was the jazz scene, which he chronicled for the New Statesman under the pseudonym Francis Newton. He died in 2012 and his ashes were interred in Highgate Cemetery, close to the tomb of Karl Marx.…

Olympia: The Story of the Ancient Olympic Games by Robin Waterfield Head of Zeus, 224 pages, £18.99 The Olympic story has been told many times, but archaeological finds and literary interpretation do not stand still. In this new book, classical translator and historian Robin Waterfield makes fine use of both. Held in honour of Zeus, god of Olympus, the games were staged every four years in Elis, a backwater of the Peloponnese 120 miles from the mountain itself. Greeks dated the first games to 776 BC, but one can rarely trust such confident assertions. Here, however, Waterfield shows that 776 BC looks about right: huge bronze tripods (often used as prizes) are found there from that period, while there is evidence that wells were dug, a nearby hill was terraced…

The Royal Art of Poison: Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicines and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman Duckworth, 320 pages, £14.99 In July 1553, a 15-year-old boy lay dying at Greenwich. His emaciated body was covered with scabs and sores, his hair had fallen out in clumps and his fingernails and toenails had turned black. Barely able to breathe, he coughed up mucus that one eyewitness described as “sometimes coloured a greenish yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood”. When the poor wretch died on the sixth of that month, the London clothier Henry Machyn noted that he “was poisoned, as everybody says”. The boy was Edward VI, king of England. The agonising death of Henry VIII’s “precious jewel” had all the hallmarks of a classic poisoning case.…

Making mayhem The Radical Story of Patty Hearst TV PBS America Scheduled for Saturday 2 February It’s 45 years since members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical leftwing group, kidnapped 19-year-old US heiress Patty Hearst. After two months in captivity, Hearst announced she had joined the group, and was filmed wielding an M1 carbine during a bank robbery. Later, she would claim she’d been brainwashed and would be pardoned by Bill Clinton. This acclaimed six-part series traces her story along with that of the SLA – many of whom, like Hearst, came from privileged backgrounds. Divided house Archive on 4: American Incivility: Year Zero Radio Radio 4 Scheduled for Saturday 2 February Can democratic government function without legislators observing some standards of decorum? Will democracy survive if people…

1 Red House BEXLEYHEATH, GREATER LONDON Where William Morris could dream The Red House was the rural retreat of William Morris, the guiding light of the Arts and Crafts movement, and his muse/wife Janey – a place where Morris could indulge his dream of “transforming the world with beauty”. In 2003, the house was purchased by the National Trust, who set about restoring it to its original condition. • nationaltrust.org.uk/red-house 2 Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden ST IVES, CORNWALL Where a sculptor sought sanctuary St Ives became a haven for artists during the Second World War, among them sculptor Barbara Hepworth. She moved into Trewyn Studios in 1950, where she remained until her death in 1975. The studio, now a museum in line with Hepworth’s wishes, features some of…

BEST TIME TO GO Temperatures vary wildly in Warsaw: while the summer months are balmy and often wet, the mercury can dip below zero from December to February. A peak-season visit means you can catch the feted open-air Chopin recitals – but the city is magical in the snow, with Christmas lights wreathing those famous squares. GETTING THERE Warsaw Chopin airport operates flights from Heathrow, Gatwick and other UK locations such as Liverpool. The city’s bus, metro and tram lines run on a shared ticketing system, with good-value day and weekend passes available. Over 70s travel for free! WHAT TO PACK Phrase book, walking shoes, waterproofs and warm clothing, depending on the season. WHAT TO BRING BACK Amber jewellery, vodka and – rich donuts made with cream fillings – could…

Laverbread breakfast A traditional, centuries-old Welsh recipe, laverbread is a distinctive dish made from seaweed, which makes for a brilliantly salty breakfast ingredient. Hollywood royalty Richard Burton even termed it ‘Welshman’s caviar’. Abundant along the shoreline of west Wales, laver seaweed was historically a popular food of the working classes. In a 1607 edition of his book Britannia, the antiquarian William Camden recalled encountering a bunch of Pembrokeshire locals gathering laver along the beach. During the 18th century, it became a classic component of miners’ hearty working breakfasts, fried up with locally picked cockles. If you’re not near laverbread’s spiritual home of Swansea today, you can pick up a jar from the shelves of high-end delicatessens. Laverbread can be eaten hot or cold – personally, I think eating it cold…

Suzannah Lipscomb I read over 10,000 pages of often illegible French manuscripts to discover more than 1,200 moral cases that give new insight into the lives of ordinary women living in the 16th century. • Suzannah looks into the lives of the female residents of Reformation France on page 36 Becky Taylor I’ve spent the last few years exploring Britain’s ‘tradition of welcome’ of refugees, looking at exactly how German Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Ugandan Asians and Vietnamese were received when they sought refuge here. • Becky tells the story of the Ugandan Asians who fled to Britain in the early 1970s on page 50 Richard Sugg I was researching the phrase ‘The Great Unwashed’ for my new book, Talking Dirty: The History of Disgust, when I stumbled upon the letters…

“I cycle to the office every day past the British Library, and recently I’ve been feeling a bit doleful seeing the huge poster for the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition, with the fourth and final month drawing to a close. I was on the planning committee, and unbelievably, looking at my emails, it was well over four years ago that the curator, Claire Breay, mailed her early thoughts about the exhibition. That’s how long it takes to create a show like this. I remember the first meeting in early 2015 to think about what we might hope to see in it. Not just the stars – Beowulf, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Domesday – but texts and artefacts that illuminate social history or provide insights into women’s lives, like Wynflaed’s will: the first for…

Following the BBC’s recent restaging of Victoria and Albert’s wedding, we asked: which other event from history would you like to see recreated? @hisdoryan The Field of the Cloth of Gold, or maybe a ball like the Devonshire House Fancy Dress Ball of 1897. @AthelstanKing No contest: the battle of Brunanburh, on the actual battlefield. Janelle Gerke The marriage of John of Gaunt to Katherine Swynford in Lincoln Cathedral. A medieval love story begging for a BBC drama series! @KateWilliamsme The trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. @stephenfinch The first Ashes cricket Test match. @SPloeg The Glorious Revolution and all its intertwined political threads. Victoria Lynn Lyttle The moment when Elizabeth I found out that Cecil had already had Mary, Queen of Scots executed. @Geiser_Rules When George III read his…

In December 1600, a French maidservant called Marguerite Brueysse claimed that her master, Anthoine Bonnet, had made her pregnant. Anthoine, who was probably in his fifties or sixties, was an influential man. When summoned to the consistory (a sort of Huguenot church court) in the city of Nîmes in Languedoc to answer the accusation, Anthoine denied everything and called Marguerite a whore. He also claimed that she was pregnant by cobbler Andre Fauchier, who lived nearby. Before leaving, Anthoine even displayed a declaration Marguerite had apparently made before a magistrate assigning paternity to Fauchier. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. The consistory wanted to know more, and asked Marguerite for her story. She initially said that Anthoine had “persuaded and induced her by words and promises” to have…

Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the World’s Richest Man By Jonathan Conlin Profile Books, 416 pages, £25 Calouste Gulbenkian was an Anglo-Armenian oil magnate and the guardian of a historic collection of art, antiquities and sculpture – the largest collection of art ever owned by one person. Gulbenkian helped establish the oil majors we know today as Royal Dutch Shell and Total, and personally owned 5 per cent of Middle East oil production – hence his nickname: ‘Mr Five Per Cent’. Taking this memorable moniker as its title, this new volume from Jonathan Conlin – a cultural historian at Southampton University – re-examines Gulbenkian’s complex private and public life. Published on the 150th anniversary of the oil magnate’s birth, Conlin’s biography is a business history…

They may get less attention than the pharaohs, but from the 13th–16th centuries, the Mamluks ruled Egypt and built a great civilisation, albeit one where slavery was a mundane fact of day-to-day life. Tumanby (Radio 4) is an epic drama that traces life under the dynasty, and returns for a new eight-part series on Monday 4 February. Also listen out for Book of the Week – Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle (Radio 4, weekdays from Monday 4 February), in which curator and textile artist Clare Hunter uncovers stories of women and men who have, down the centuries, used sewing to tell their stories. Meanwhile, From Sensuality to Puritanism (Radio 4, February) is the story of how the nature of Islam has…

THREE NEW GALLERIES Ancient Egypt Rediscovered, Exploring East Asia, and the Art of Ceramics National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh From 8 February - 0300 123 6789 • nms.ac.uk This month, National Museums Scotland will reveal the culmination of its 15-year, £80m redevelopment project, in the form of three new galleries: Ancient Egypt Rediscovered, Exploring East Asia and the Art of Ceramics. The new galleries will allow a number of internationally significant objects to go on public display – 40 per cent of these will be on permanent show for the first time in at least a generation. Ancient Egypt Rediscovered – whose opening coincides with the 200th anniversary of the first ancient Egyptian objects entering National Museums Scotland’s collections – will explore 3,000 years of Egyptian history. Highlights will include…

Petra Kelly was a German Green politician and activist who co-founded the German Green party. Educated in Germany and the US after her family relocated there, she returned to Europe in 1970. She was elected to the Bundestag in 1983, and became one of the German Green party’s leading lights. In 1992, she was shot dead by her partner, ex-general and Green politician Gert Bastian, who then killed himself. She was aged just 44. When did you first hear about Petra Kelly? I first heard of Petra in the early 1980s when she was involved in the founding of the German Green party, and I had the honour of meeting her in the early 90s. What kind of person was she? She was absolutely full of energy and life –…

MEAD DRINKERS Production of mead – an alcoholic drink fermented with honey, which can be traced back 9,000 years – is on the increase, according to several producers of the beverage. The drink first became popular in ancient Europe before the development of wine making. VICTORIAN DINOSAURS Slash, the lead guitarist from Guns N' Roses, has joined a campaign to raise funds to build a bridge to an island in Crystal Palace Park that holds a group of 165-year-old dinosaur sculptures. The bridge would mean the sculptures could be visited and maintained.…

Elizur Wright is one of the most remarkable Americans of whom you have probably never heard. Born into a fiercely pious family in Connecticut in 1804, Wright (pictured left) came close to studying for the priesthood, yet spent his final years as an atheist, campaigning against his country’s puritanical obscenity laws. In between, he taught mathematics, practised engineering, risked his personal safety fighting for the abolition of slavery, reformed American life insurance and developed a vigorous interest in the social and political problems afflicting Great Britain. That latter passion was sharpened by a trip Wright made to Britain in 1844. This was nominally a personal business venture, designed to boost his family fortunes. But Wright also used the trip to engage in walks, tours and political campaigns in locations as…

1 They weren’t afraid to pass judgment In 1588, a group of women led by the wife of Guillaume des Arènes and her neighbour Marguerite gathered outside the house of Vidal Raymond, a maker of pack-saddles living in Nîmes. These women were his neighbours. They beat their fists on the door and cried out to Raymond to let them in, saying that they knew he kept a woman inside. Raymond refused, so the women forced an entry and found a woman trying to hide herself beneath a pile of straw. They called her a ‘whore’ and chased her out of town. The women then went on to report the matter to a church elder. 2 They could force men to marry them In 1598, Catherine Lamberte,…

“My family’s Ugandan history began with my great-grandfather who moved there from Gujarat in 1913, sold on promises by the British Raj, which had pitched Uganda and Kenya as lands of opportunity for hard-working Indians. His five sons, including my grandfather, followed in the 1940s and the family built a thriving business empire that included an orange juice factory and printing press. When Idi Amin announced the expulsion of Asian families from the country, the family embarked on a dangerous journey to Entebbe, where, as British passport holders, they could take a flight to the UK. My grandfather had heard rumours that Ugandan Asian girls were being raped as they fled the country, so he wrapped my 16-year-old mother in bedsheets and hid her in the back of the van.…

Hungary: A Short History by Norman Stone Profile Books, 288 pages, £16.99 Back in the 15th century, one king of Hungary offended his foreign guests by serving them over-seasoned food. And over the years, Hungary itself has presented something of an acquired taste. There have been long periods when it was thought highly palatable. In the aftermath of Hungary’s failed 1848–49 War of Independence against the Habsburgs, the exiled revolutionary leader Lajos Kossuth was feted by British and US audiences, while his Austrian adversary, General Haynau, was chased by draymen down Southwark’s Borough High Street. In the late 19th century, Hungary did a plausible impression of constitutional government with a parliament building that even looked like the Palace of Westminster (with the dome of St Paul’s on top). Then, in…

A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith During the First World War by Owen Davies Oxford University Press, 304 pages, £20 In his 1929 play But It Still Goes On, Robert Graves – a veteran of the First World War – writes: “High-explosive barrages will make a temporary liar or visionary of anyone.” Such mistruths or apparitions, conjured amid the horror of war, could easily be dismissed by the historian as falsity and fantasy, irrelevant compared with the rigour of verifiable evidence securely stored in the archive. But as Owen Davies, an expert in witchcraft, magic and ghosts, highlights in his new book, that would leave our understanding of the sociocultural fabric of the First World War all the poorer. For “whatever the spurious or mundane origins of wartime visions,…

Sacred Hunger Barry Unsworth (1992) Joint winner of the 1992 Booker prize, this sprawling saga of the slave trade has the confrontation of two men at its heart. Erasmus Kemp strives for wealth and position through the traffic in human beings. His cousin Matthew Paris is a physician forced to witness the horrors of the middle passage first-hand. Unsworth provides a sophisticated, moving investigation of greed, power and the terrible relationship of oppressor and oppressed. A Respectable Trade Philippa Gregory (1995) Set in Bristol in the 1780s, Philippa Gregory’s cleverly told story recounts an impossible love affair. Frances Cole is the wife of an ambitious small-time slave trader, while Mehuru is a high-status nobleman in his native Africa, who has been captured and made her husband’s property. Avoiding potential pitfalls…

Can I start with a confession? On the (ashamedly) few occasions I have contemplated Poland as a destination for a city break, I have been drawn to the old-world ambience of Kraków. However, as 2018 marked the centenary of Poland declaring its independence from the German, Austrian and Russian empires, it seemed the perfect year to explore the country’s capital. And, as I soon discovered, Warsaw is a revelation. My perception of Warsaw had long been dominated by the horrors of the decimation of the city’s Jewish population during the Second World War and its near-total physical destruction at the hands of the Nazis, as well as the crushing austerity of the communist era that followed. However, the city has risen from the ashes. The renaissance of its historic centre…

1. In July 1948, 13-year-old Sylvia Diggory became the first person to receive something. What was it? 2. Which classic 19th-century English novel’s climactic scene is set at Stonehenge? 3. What role did Jane Cooper play in the royal court of Mary Tudor? 4. Mary Rose, Vasa, Titanic, Bismarck. Which of these ships didn’t sink on its maiden voyage? 5. The year 1536 saw a major rebellion in northern England against the policies of Henry VIII’s government. What was it known as? 6. Although this medal was instituted in 1943, no man or woman has ever been awarded it. Why? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. Free treatment on the NHS. 2. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 3. Court jester. 4. Mary Rose. 5. The Pilgrimage of Grace. 6. It’s the Dickin Medal,…