Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i History Extra

“Anyone familiar with the works of Charles Dickens will have some concept of the Victorian underworld – the seamy underside of 19th-century British cities, populated by a criminal class, enveloped in soot and grime. It was as familiar a picture then as it is to us today, but is this construction based on truth? In this month’s cover feature, on page 20, Professor Heather Shore seeks out the inhabitants of the ‘underworld’ to see how far they accord with the legend. Our Victorian theme continues on page 28 where we go back to school in the 19th-century. The curriculum, discipline and attendance are frequent subjects of debate today, but how did they differ 150 years ago? Susannah Wright and Ellie Cawthorne have the answers. Of course, many Victorian Britons spent…

On the evening of 1 March 1932, the pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh was at home in New Jersey with his wife, Anne, and 20-month-old son, Charles Jr. At 7.30pm, a nanny laid the toddler down to sleep in his crib. About two hours later, Charles heard a noise he thought sounded like a crate smashing, but thought nothing of it. Then at 10pm, the nanny, frantic with worry, reported that the baby had disappeared. In his bedroom, Charles found a handwritten, misspelled note: “Dear Sir! Have 50000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills ... We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The child is in gut care.” So began one of the most lurid cases in American…

“Thomas Cranmer’s burning has become such a focal point of England’s Reformation that we miss its continent-wide significance. Cranmer was the most prominent 16th-century European to be burned at the stake for heresy; as archbishop of Canterbury he was primate of All England. Thus his renunciation of the Protestant faith was absolutely crucial to the Catholic cause. He was the chief living symbol of a national Reformation which was the largest that Europe had witnessed so far – just as Queen Mary’s Catholic regime was the largest-scale attempt yet to roll back the frontiers of this religious revolution. Therefore, when Cranmer rejected the six recantations he had signed, dramatically repudiating them in front of hundreds of witnesses who were clutching printed copies of the text, it was a massive blow…

Military flypast for US lost airmen A Sheffield pensioner who has spent years tending to a memorial to 10 US airmen who died in the Second World War is set to achieve his dream of a military flypast to honour the crew. Eighty-two-year-old Tony Foulds witnessed the American B-17 Flying Fortress crash as a child. Colonial collections under the spotlight A group of British museums are employing staff to reassess the descriptions of some of their objects acquired from overseas, especially during the empire. The controversy surrounding the provenance of these artefacts will be flagged up to visitors on information panels and labels. Australia explorer’s remains found The remains of 19th-century explorer Captain Matthew Flinders have been found in a London burial ground during excavations for the HS2 rail project.…

In the January edition you asked for opinions on Professor David Reynolds’ stimulating article on the Treaty of Versailles (Did the Versailles Peace Trigger Another War?). In 1998, did anybody anticipate the financial crisis of 2007–08, the worst to afflict the world economy since the Wall Street Crash of 1929? In which case, is it reasonable to expect the peacemakers in 1919–20 to have had any inkling of that crash occurring? This perhaps even applies to Keynes himself, critical as he was of reparations and “the economic consequences of the peace”. No doubt historians will continue the debate about other fundamental post-Versailles factors: the weaknesses in the constitution of the Weimar Republic; the controversial economic actions taken by Bruning as chancellor between March 1930 and his departure in May 1932;…

The one-man crimewave Charles Frederick Peace (1832–79) was a Sheffield burglar whose escapades included the fatal shooting of a policeman in Manchester (two local villains were arrested for the crime: one was convicted and sentenced to death), the shooting of an acquaintance in 1876, and a series of burglaries in London. Peace’s one-man crimewave made him one of the most infamous offenders of the century. “It certainly is marvellous to find how many London people know about Peace,” declared the Illustrated Police News in 1878. “Never before has any country scamp jumped so suddenly and completely into metropolitan conversation.” Peace was arrested in Blackheath during a burglary and tried at the Old Bailey. On being taken to Sheffield to be tried for murder, he attempted escape by jumping from the…

Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anna Pasternak William Collins, 368 pages, £20 Anna Pasternak is a brave woman. Untitled is pitched as the first positive biography of Wallis Simpson, the woman we love to hate. The adventuress who stole our king away, the Wicked Witch of the West dressed by Mainbocher – and Dior, and Saint Laurent, and Givenchy… Wallis undoubtedly did Britain a favour in causing the erratic Edward VIII to be replaced by his dutiful brother Bertie. Noel Coward even said that every town in England should erect a statue to her. All the same, Pasternak has her work cut out if she hopes to rewrite the usual narrative of this fascinating royal story. Pasternak’s villains are the palace people bound by their prejudices,…

One of the recurring strengths of In Our Time (Radio 4) is the way it alerts listeners to characters from history we really should know more about. The episode devoted to sixth-century pre-Islamic knight and poet Antarah ibn Shaddad (Thursday 28 February) may well fall into this category. Listen out too for an episode about Queen Elizabeth I’s advisor William Cecil (Thursday 7 March), where the expert guests include Diarmaid MacCulloch. Another upcoming highlight on Radio 4 is a new adaptation of A Passage to India (Monday 11 March), EM Forster’s masterpiece exploring life in the British Raj. Storyville: Under the Wire (BBC Four, February) looks back at Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy’s mission to Homs, Syria in February 2012. It was an assignment that…

1. Which 12th-century mystic and polymath was known as the Sibyl of the Rhine? 2. What links Maurice Bavaud, Georg Elser (left) and Rudolf von Gertsdorff? 3. When it opened in 1937 it was the longest of its type in the world. What was it? 4. On 1 January 1892, 17-year-old Annie Moore from County Cork became the first of 12 million people to pass through this place. What was it? 5. Which British king’s funeral was attended by Caesar? 6. Which queen of England is buried here? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. Hildegard of Bingen. 2. They all planned to assassinate Adolf Hitler. 3. The Golden Gate suspension bridge, San Francisco, California. 4. The Ellis Island immigration station, New York. 5. Edward VII. Caesar was his wire fox terrier dog. 6.…

“At this time of year I’m sure many of you will be thinking about travel plans for the months to come. In case you’re in need of ideas, we’ve teamed up with Lonely Planet’s editorial director, Tom Hall, to select some of this year’s star history destinations. Many of his picks are particularly appropriate for 2019, from the European Capital of Culture Plovdiv, to Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and Florence, 500 years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci. Others are just superb heritage destinations, as anyone who has visited Morocco, Vietnam or Denmark will surely attest. I hope you find something to inspire you here and that, if nothing else, it provides a welcome break from the winter chill!…

Catherine Hanley Matilda should have become England’s first queen regnant. She was an influential figure whose legacy stretched far beyond her own lifetime. • Catherine discusses her new book about the 12th-century claimant to the English throne on page 65 Lauren Johnson Henry VI is an unfairly overlooked monarch. Without “the shadow on the wall”, as one contemporary called him, there would be no Wars of the Roses and no Tudors. His reign was disastrous, but completely compelling. • Lauren analyses the character flaws that scuppered Henry VI’s reign on page 34 Jeffrey Auerbach The Victorian empire was full of excitement, but it could also be dull and disappointing. Happily for me as a researcher, boredom turned out to be a fascinating topic, one that sheds new light on the…

Why did the V&A stage a conference on Henry VII’s bed – and why now? The bed was discovered in 2010 and its significance has become much more apparent since. It’s a wonderful resource for understanding Henry’s relationship with his wife, Elizabeth; it’s the last of the medieval royal marriage beds, and the only one that survives. Investigations into the bed have been ongoing over the past nine years, and the conference gave analysts who’ve been studying it the opportunity to present their findings to press and public. How did you first hear about the bed? In 2012 I was contacted by antique bed specialist Ian Coulson who believed that a supposedly Victorian bed, bought at auction, was actually much older – a Tudor royal bed to be precise. I…

Much postwar emergency planning by the British government had a military flavour, focused on the possibility of nuclear attack during the Cold War. But from the 1970s on, a system of planning for civil emergencies emerged. This was prompted in particular by the miners’ strike of 1972, when government assessments described how “industrial action could have the most serious and immediate effect on the life of the nation or threaten the health and safety of the community”. “During the miners’ strike, Britain was days away from a major loss of electricity supply. There was a feeling the government had been slow to respond”DR CATHERINE HADDON Britain had been days away from a major loss of electricity supply, which would have brought much of modern life to a standstill, and there…

“There’s a scene at the end of the old John Wayne–James Stewart western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in which we discover the hero’s whole reputation was built on a fiction. But the newspaper editor responds: ‘‘This is the West, sir – when the legend becomes fact, print the legend!” This story came to mind recently as I was reading the debate about historical accuracy in The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots. Does it matter that film-makers play fast and loose with history and just make up the facts? After all, Shakespeare did it – and his Richard III is the one we all know today. The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins, for instance, thinks film-makers have an obligation when dealing with history to get the basic facts right. Historian…

Following the success of period films and series such as The Favourite and Call the Midwife , which event or period from history would you like to see dramatised next? @hisdoryan I’m always surprised about the lack of dramas about Bess of Hardwick considering the potential there (strong female roles aplenty, scandal, plots etc). @ruthjoyceart Isabella of France, the so-called She-Wolf of France, and wife of Edward II – her story involving Roger Mortimer, Edward II and Edward III. @MattLewisAuthor The Wars of the Roses. Given a long-term, deep and accurate treatment, it would be like Game of Thrones on steroids. @KateWilliamsme Josephine and Napoleon! @simplyjaye Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their ‘devil’s brood’. It’s a period of history that had…

A child dragged from the Thames half-drowned; a girl impaled on a pitchfork; a prisoner rescued by angels; an epileptic nun. These were among 300 people who reported being miraculously preserved by King Henry VI (pictured below) after his death. Their stories were painstakingly recorded by the monks of Windsor as proof of the late king’s sanctity. The cult of ‘Saint Henry’ took off within years of his murder: embarrassingly for the Yorkist Edward IV, his namesake northern city was among its earliest proponents in the 1470s. Henry’s suffering during deposition, and violent death, made him seem a sympathetic intercessor to his former subjects. During life he had been famously pious and generous, concerned for education and, according to a papal collector who visited England in 1437, “more religious than…

The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics by Diarmaid Ferriter Profile, 192 pages, £12.99 As the UK’s only land border with the EU, Northern Ireland’s border with the Republic of Ireland has been much in the news recently. Meandering for 310 miles across backroads, and passing through farms and even houses, it could hardly be described as a natural border. With its 200-plus road crossings, and myriad twists and turns, it might have been designed by smugglers. Even during the Troubles, when the number of approved crossings was reduced to 20, smuggling went on. Although there was never a clear faultline between a ‘Catholic’ south and a ‘Protestant’ north, the dividing line established in 1922 was a sectarian construct, a flawed recognition of conflicting loyalties. By opting…

Citadel of the Saxons: The Rise of Early London by Rory Naismith IB Tauris & Co, 256 pages, £20 London is now the dominant city in Britain. In this impeccably researched, engagingly written and handsomely presented book, Rory Naismith sets out to discover why and how this came about, focusing on the period from AD 400 to 1066. This focus is not unprecedented. From the 1890s on, murals depicting the city’s history were commissioned for the Royal Exchange, emphasising Alfred the Great (reigned 871–99) and William the Conqueror (r1066–87) as influential founding fathers. Nevertheless, the focus here is unusual and the argument is original, albeit the outlines of the story are well understood. Roman Londinium ceased to be a city in the fifth century, but retained a physical presence and…

The Czar’s Madman Jaan Kross (1992) Baron Timotheus von Bock, an early 19th-century Estonian nobleman, is an idealist with faith in the equality of all men. Von Bock believes that Russia’s tsar, then ruler over Estonia, will listen when he tells him of the injustices in his realm. Far from listening, the tsar assumes von Bock is insane and has him incarcerated. This is an engrossing, complex novel by Estonia’s greatest 20th-century writer. The Visit of the Royal Physician Per Olov Enquist (2002) Sister to George III, Caroline Mathilde is married to Christian VII, the mentally unstable king of 1770s Denmark. The royal physician, Johann Friedrich Struensee, becomes her ally in the intrigues and infighting at court, and eventually her lover. In Enquist’s powerful evocation of a world in which…

EXHIBITION Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams V&A, London Until 14 July 2019 020 7942 2000 • vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/dior-designer-of-dreams The history and impact of one of the 20th century’s most influential fashion designers, and the six artistic directors who have succeeded him, is under the spotlight at the V&A this month. Spanning the years from 1947 to the present day, the exhibition – the largest and most comprehensive ever staged in the UK on the House of Dior – explores the enduring influence of the fashion label. More than 500 objects are on show across 11 exhibition sections. Among these items are more than 200 rare haute couture garments, which are placed alongside accessories, fashion photography, film, vintage perfume, original make-up, illustrations, magazines and Christian Dior’s personal possessions. The exhibition also examines…

Asure (Noah’s pudding) According to legend, as the waters receded and food stocks ran low on the ark, Noah threw all the remaining food into a pot and hoped for the best. The result, if legends are to be believed, is Asure, one of history’s oldest desserts. Today, the dish is eaten by Shia Muslims on the day of Ashura – when sacrifices made by the Prophet’s family for the sake of mankind are remembered. There are many variations of Asure, and the dish has the added bonus of using up store cupboard leftovers. INGREDIENTS 130g pearled spelt (soaked overnight in water) 100g tinned chickpeas 70g pudding rice 250ml skimmed milk 350ml water 1 tbsp honey 1½ tsp orange blossom water Small pinch ground cinnamon 60g mixture of walnuts, pistachios…

WELSH HISTORY A statue of Betty Campbell, Wales’s first black headteacher, is to be placed in the plaza of Central Square in Cardiff. Betty, who was told as a child that she would never achieve her dream of becoming head of a school, topped a recent public vote to find Wales’s hidden heroines. FACIAL HAIR A historian from the University of Exeter has found evidence that some 19th-century women tried to grow, or emulate, facial hair. Dr Alun Withey discovered advertisements for grooming products such as Tricosian Fluid, for women who wanted to change the colour of their whiskers or eyebrows.…

On the morning of 22 May 1455, King Henry VI heard the tolling of the bells of St Albans in the shade of his battle standard, surrounded by armed followers. For the first time, at the age of 33, he was about to experience battle – against his own subjects. Yet Henry was no bellicose tyrant. He was devoted to peace, and even now, with a Yorkist army at the gates, led by his greatest enemies, he was so confident that matters could be resolved peacefully that he and his bodyguard failed to don armour. But as the bells fell silent, the distant sounds of violence shattered the king’s complacency. The Yorkists had abandoned negotiations with Henry’s commanders and forced an entry through the gardens on the edge of the…

Your new radio series aims to bust some myths about British history. Which of these stood out for you? The most important is to do with England’s relationship with the other parts of the British Isles. So for example, when I was at school, more than 40 years ago now, I was taught about the ‘English Civil War’, which was essentially presented as a dispute between royalists, who tended towards the divine right of kings, and the more earthy parliamentarians trying to assert the constitutional rights of Englishmen. Since then, most serious historians have revised the title to be the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’. Charles I was king of England, Ireland and the Scots, and you cannot understand what was happening in England in the 1640s without linking it…

The Bolshevik Revolution of 7 November 1917 was followed by a wave of armed insurrections across the former Russian empire by anti-Bolshevik factions loosely characterised as ‘White’ Russians. At the height of the civil war the Whites appeared to surround the Bolshevik strongholds of Moscow and Petrograd, but in reality they were a disparate group of moderate socialists, ethnic nationalists, Romanov loyalists, proto-dictators and bandits, and never really formed an effective opposition. In Siberia the Whites were led by their self-proclaimed ‘supreme leader’, the former tsarist naval officer Admiral Alexander Kolchak. The Allied intervention in north Russia was partly intended to link up with Kolchak, but his regime was corrupt and unpopular and he lost the support of his most formidable force of 40,000 former Czech and Slovak prisoners of…

Born in 1102, Matilda was the daughter of King Henry I and the granddaughter of William the Conqueror. As Henry I’s only legitimate child at the time of his death, she had a strong claim to the English throne. However, there was opposition to the idea of a female ruler, and her cousin Stephen was crowned king. From 1135–53, the pair were embroiled in a battle for the throne often known as ‘the Anarchy’. This civil war was finally brought to an end by a negotiated peace that saw Matilda’s son appointed Stephen’s heir. He went on to become King Henry II.…

Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America by Michael P Winship Yale University Press, 368 pages, £20 In 1646, a Puritan preacher in Massachusetts told a group of Native Americans that, unfortunately, they were mired in barbarism, sin and ignorance. They digested this news and then asked “whether English men were ever at any time so ignorant of God?” We might expect the preacher to have reached back to Roman times for an answer. But instead, he replied that even in 1646, “There are two sorts of Englishmen: some are bad and naught, and live wickedly… in a manner as ignorant of Jesus Christ as the Indians now are.” Even after travelling across 3,000 miles of ocean, and finding themselves balanced on the edge of a wild,…

The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities by Violet Moller Picador, 336 pages, £20 In Constantinople in AD 512 the imperial princess Anicia Juliana was presented with a stunningly illustrated manuscript. It contained several Greek texts, including Dioscorides’ important pharmacological treatise, De materia medica, a text that dates from the first century AD. This manuscript remained in Constantinople for around 1,000 years, but in the 16th century it passed to the Holy Roman Empire and has since been kept in Vienna, hence its nickname of ‘Vienna Dioscorides’. Its owners over the centuries annotated the manuscript in Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. The ‘Vienna Dioscorides’ makes a few appearances in Violet Moller’s exciting new book, which will appeal to anyone interested in the…

Policing the police Macpherson: What Happened Next? Radio Radio 4 Scheduled for Monday 11 March In April 1993, a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, was murdered in a racist attack in the London suburb of Eltham. The Metropolitan Police bungled the investigation into his killers, and the inquiry that followed, led by Sir William Macpherson, produced one of the most damning documents ever to emerge from the British establishment. Twenty years on, barrister and broadcaster Hashi Mohamed examines what’s changed since the Macpherson report was published. Behind closed doors Private Lives TV Yesterday Scheduled for March After series devoted solely to the Tudors and to British royals, Tracy Borman widens her remit to take in the personal lives of some of history’s more notable characters. These include Peter the Great, a…

Ivon Hitchens was a British painter best known for his panoramic landscapes created from blocks of colour. He started exhibiting in the 1920s and became part of the London Group of artists in the 1930s. During the Blitz, he was forced to move to Petworth, Sussex, where he spent the rest of his life. When did you first hear about Ivon Hitchens? My mother would take me to Southampton Art Gallery and there is a painting there by the artist Paul Nash. It was that which, in my late teens, led me to discover Ivon Hitchens. The two of them were friends and hung out together and, while there are parallels, their work is different: one is known for his war paintings and the other [Hitchens] for his visually striking…