Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i History Extra

Early last year we received an unusual request. The producers of the next James Bond film wanted permission to include a copy of our August 2008 issue in one of the scenes of No Time to Die. At the time of writing I don’t know whether we’ve made the cut, but if you do happen to be heading to the cinema soon, there’s a chance you’ll spy your favourite history magazine – hopefully not in the hands of a diabolical villain. Even if we’re not in the film, there’s still plenty of history to be found in the James Bond story and on page 41 of this month’s magazine, Henry Hemming reveals the true-life inspirations behind Ian Fleming’s most memorable characters. Another character returning this month is Thomas Cromwell, with…

Gentlemen behaving badly Here are a couple of interesting asides on the carnage at the cricket match between an English team and the New South Wales side in 1879 that was reported in February’s Anniversaries . The umpire who gave the NSW batsman the “dodgy” decision was from the colony of Victoria, and had been hired by the English team. This exacerbated the situation – there being traditionally not much love lost between the two colonies. The other umpire who corroborated the decision was Mr (later on Sir) Edmund Barton, who went on to become the first prime minister of the Australian Federation in 1901. Minoo Mehta, Queensland, Australia Sticking up for schools Lucy Worsley’s article about the Spanish Armada (February), which set out to debunk a number of myths,…

In December 1558, a matter of days after Mary’s death at the age of 42, Philip II of Spain wrote to his sister Juana, telling her that he felt his wife’s loss deeply. While perhaps not a gushing testament to love, it is far from the picture of indifference between the royal couple often painted by history. The widespread image of the marriage as a mismatch – one in which passion was entirely absent on Philip’s part – seems to have taken its cue from the poisonous polemics penned by exiled radicals. These embittered enemies of the queen described her as everything from an “old bitch” to someone who “could not draw the slightest spark of affection from her lord”. Eyewitness evidence, however, suggests that Mary and Philip were happy,…

Some authors spend years on their first novel. Ian Fleming’s came in a matter of weeks. In January 1952, the middle-aged British journalist was enjoying a little winter’s sun on holiday in the Caribbean. One morning, after a swim and his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee, Fleming sat down to his battered Royal typewriter and hammered out the opening line of Casino Royale. Barely a month later, he had finished. James Bond had come to life. Fleming went on to write a further 13 Bond novels, which have since sold more than 100 million copies globally. Big-screen adaptations have generated more than £5bn at the box office, making the Bond film franchise one of the most successful in history. Bond is a phenomenon. It is rare to find…

Ellie Cawthorne: You argue in the book that celebrity is a slippery concept. How do you define it? Greg Jenner: When I began writing, I made the foolish assumption that there would be a clear-cut definition of celebrity. But a year-and-a-half later, I still couldn’t find one. So I’ve come up with my own. Firstly, a celebrity has to have something about them that’s distinctive, recognisable and iconic. They are someone who is known to strangers, but they don’t know the strangers in return – that’s called ‘parasocial intimacy’ – and their fame is spread through the mass media: they appear in newspapers and on the telly and radio. But it’s not enough for someone to be professionally interesting – they also need to have a private life that is…

In the worlds of publishing and the media, Hitler and the Nazis are often described as the gift that keeps on giving, such is the volume of books and TV documentaries devoted to them every year. Yet, while the vast majority of that output is little more than a rehash and retread of previous work done by other scholars, a few offerings stand out for their rigour or originality. One such is Volker Ullrich’s Hitler biography, the second volume of which has just appeared. One might have imagined that after Ian Kershaw’s monumental two-volume biography from a generation ago, there was little more to be said about the infamous German dictator, but that would be mistaken. Of course, opinion on Hitler has not shifted in the meantime, and is very…

People who love history sometimes make a distinction between fiction and non-fiction when they think about the books that have influenced them. But novelists, poets and creative writers are products of their time – their perspectives can not only be illuminating but also important. Indeed, in some respects, it can even be more useful to read what someone wrote at the time than the work of historians writing many centuries later. History is all about the primary sources, after all. I fell in love with the history of pre-revolutionary Russia when I was a teenager, and tried to learn about the art and music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as reading everything I could find in the school library. So perhaps it is no surprise…

Can you tell us about the real story that inspired your book? Out of Darkness, Shining Light is inspired by what happened after the death of the Scottish explorer, David Livingstone, in 1873. He died some months after being found in Ujiji by the American journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, a story that made sensational news headlines. What happened after his death was even more sensational. His African companions, who numbered about 70, buried his heart under a tree in what is now northern Zambia, dried his body and carried it from the interior to the east African coast, so that he could be shipped to England for burial at Westminster Abbey. It took them nine months of great hardship to make the trip. What sources did you draw on? To…

“Aubrey Beardsley is an incredibly modern figure. He constantly evolved to keep everyone guessing” When did you first come across Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98)? I discovered Beardsley through becoming interested in Oscar Wilde. I was about 16 or 17, I think, deeply pretentious and all about baggy cardigans, eyeliner and long fringes! In a way, Beardsley was the poster-boy for we ‘bedroom decadents’: the scandalous subject matter, the obvious snook-cocking at the establishment and the doomed trajectory of the consumptive artist. I was completely knocked out by his style (or styles) and his mastery of line. How profoundly did Beardsley’s childhood shape him? His father was very absent, almost invisible, making his mother and sister the dominant figures in his early life. But it was a diagnosis of tuberculosis at age…

Henry Hemming I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between real spies and their fictional- ised counterparts, and in particular the world of espionage that produced James Bond. Henry shows how Ian Fleming drew inspiration from wartime spies to create Bond Pamela Roberts I was once told that many black people choose not to study at the University of Oxford. This ignited my interest into those that have, and led to my research into the university’s first ever black student, Christian Frederick Cole. Pamela charts Christian Cole’s amazing life Greg Jenner Celebrity culture doesn’t just titillate and entertain us, it also sets the agenda for what we think is important to discuss, and glues us together. Greg chats about some of the research for his new history of celebrities *…

A 360-year-old passageway used by luminaries including Samuel Pepys, William Pitt the Younger and Robert Walpole has been uncovered inside the House of Commons. For 70 years, the entrance was concealed behind wooden panelling, and historians believed it had been filled in during repairs to Second World War bomb damage. But after researching the building’s original plans, historian Dr Liz Hallam Smith detected a concealed door in the panelling of a cloister. “We realised there was a tiny brass keyhole that no one had really noticed before, believing it might just be an electricity cupboard,” she said. Her team prised open the door to reveal a tiny stone-floored chamber and bricked-up doorway. The passageway was created in 1660 for the coronation of Charles II, to allow guests to proceed to…

I’m a retired officer who served with the Metropolitan Police. I read with interest the article “We are the Lions, Mr Manager!” (February) as I was on duty at Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories. Those who policed the Grunwick strike were drawn from police stations throughout the Metropolitan Police Service. To police the demonstrations at Grunwick, we paraded at 3am. Breakfast consisted of an urn of tea and pork pies brought to our coaches. I don’t remember any actual fighting and, apart from someone shouting in my face who had weapons-grade halitosis, it was largely peaceful. This later changed and there were injuries. I was also on duty at the miners’ strike. We were sent up north for six days at a time and slept in aircraft hangers. We had breakfast…

“ A horrible and bloody time.” That’s how the 16th-century Puritan preacher John Foxe described the reign of Mary I. And it’s a verdict that’s stuck. For much of the past 450 years, Mary has been widely cast as a malevolent force in English history. She’s the cruel reactionary who burned Protestants at the stake; the Catholic traitor who served England up on a plate to her grasping Spanish husband. And perhaps worst of all, she’s the jealous half-sister who plotted the future Elizabeth I’s downfall – thus almost denying England one of its greatest reigns. When historians describe the 16th century as a glorious chapter in English history, more often than not they don’t have the five years that Mary occupied the throne in mind. Of course, not everyone…

Statistics, potted migrant biographies and histories jostle for space in this ambitious, but rather turgid, comparative study of London’s immigration history. The book weaves multiple community histories through 12 broad themes, ranging from housing, employment, politics and religion to food, music and sport. Too often the book sacrifices depth and nuance for breadth. Panikos Panayi argues that London’s exceptionalism is based on the length and continuity of its immigration history, the superdiversity of its migrant population and the concentration of the migrant presence, with more than half of all incomers spread geographically, economically and socially throughout the metropolis. No discussion of the histories of other cities is offered to support this argument. Similarly, there is no attempt to define terms such as globalisation, superdiversity, multicultural and cosmopolitanism, or to unpack…

In Strange Antics, Clement Knox sets out to discuss the history of seduction as a post-Enlightenment and “modern” phenomenon that “serves as vehicle for the exploration of modern values, modern experiences, and modern concerns”. In this context, seduction is a specific action where perpetrators extract consent for sex from the women (and specifically women) they desire in a way that degrades the seduced. Knox does this by tracing a narrative that begins in the late 17th century with the infamous sexual provocateur and criminal Colonel Francis Charteris in London. He then crosses the continent to find Casanova in Italy, follows Lord Byron to the fabled Villa Diodati where Mary Shelley composed her masterpiece Frankenstein, and skips across the Atlantic to follow the boxing and sexual careers of Jack Johnson, the…

MEDIEVAL Medieval powerhouse As the daughter of Henry I, Matilda had a strong claim to the English throne. But the nation was thrown into chaos when she became embroiled in a long and bitter fight for the crown with her cousin, Stephen. This fast-moving biography of one of the medieval world’s great survivors examines the extent to which Matilda was blocked from becoming England’s first queen regent because of her gender. ANCIENT EGYPT Spells and superstition Want to make a woman fall in love? Remove the heart and gall of a shrew, pop the body in a cup of wine with blood from your little finger and make her drink it. Feeling ill? Get yourself a healing amulet. Need to predict the future? Better consult the oracle. This lively little…

The early works of a pioneering Chinese photographer have gone on public display for the first time. The Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York, is exhibiting nearly 50 photographs by Lai Fong (c1839–90), who founded one of the most influential studios in China during the late 19th century. This image, dating from the 1870s, shows two actors wearing costumes associated with Peking opera – an art form combining music, mime and dance. For more information, visit museum.cornell.edu Have a story? Please email Jon Bauckham at jon.bauckham@immediate.co.uk…

Historical finds are spurring us on to the truth about the Trojan War I recently went up to the wet and windy Lancashire coast, with trains disrupted by floods beyond Preston, to talk to the wonderful Lytham St Annes Classical Association. It’s the biggest branch of the Classical Association in the UK, with almost 600 members, 400 of whom were crammed into a school hall on a cold night. There they shared their enthusiasm for the archaeology of Troy; the prehistory of Homer’s Iliad; and the complex but mesmerising detail of the Hittite diplomatic archive, where we actually have correspondence between the Hittites and the Greeks at the time of the Trojan War – including one letter from the king of Achaeans, the real-life Agamemnon! The classics are a lifetime’s…

“In 1916, brothers who had fought on opposing sides were reunited” Even now, a century after the conflict ended, the role that soldiers from the Indian subcontinent played in the First World War remains largely forgotten. This was underlined recently when actor Laurence Fox referred clumsily to the “oddness of the casting” when director Sam Mendes showed a Sikh soldier in 1917. Search more carefully though, and you’ll find many overlooked stories, including that of Mir Dast and Mir Mast, brothers from the Tirah province of what is now Pakistan. Sunni Muslims of the Afridi tribe from near the Afghan border, the brothers were not technically empire subjects, yet both joined the British Indian Army. front. But days before the attack, he led 20 Indian troops into no man’s land…

In 1620, the artist Artemisia Gentileschi was in the process of splitting up with her husband. In between the legal paperwork, she made a painting of the Old Testament heroine Yael. In the Book of Judges, Yael saves the Israelites by assassinating the Canaanite commander Sisera. Artemisia showed her in modern dress, poised to hammer a nail through Sisera’s head. It’s tempting to wonder quite what Artemisia’s ex made of it all. Once perceived as a novelty on account of her sex, Artemisia is now regarded as one of the most important European painters of the 17th century. She was an impressive entrepreneur with what art historian Mary Garrard has called “almost unreasonably grand ambition”. Her extraordinary portrayals rework themes from biblical and classical sources to show women in control…

Before 2009, if you mentioned the name ‘Cromwell’, most people would have assumed you meant Oliver, the Civil War leader. His earlier namesake, Thomas, was far less well known. Those who had heard of him tended to view him as a villain: a grasping, cynical politician who destroyed the monasteries to line his own pockets and ruthlessly dispatched anyone who stood in his path. All of that changed with the publication of Wolf Hall, the first book in a trilogy about Henry VIII’s right-hand man by Hilary Mantel. Thomas Cromwell was one of the most unlikely protagonists imaginable, yet Mantel transformed him into a hero of our time: loyal, wise, humorous and even a bit sexy – a self-confessed ruffian made good through sheer ability and hard work. Her portrayal…

The release of any new history book by Jane Robinson is always a moment for those interested in the history of women to sit up and take notice. Her latest marks the anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. This allowed many women officially to enter the ‘elite’ worlds of medicine, law, academia, engineering, the church and architecture for the very first time. At the beginning of the roaring 20s, these key institutions became legally accessible to women, who wanted the opportunities to qualify, earn and progress alongside their male counterparts. For those inspired by the 2018 suffrage centenary celebrations, Robinson’s book is a welcome continuation of the story. Having finally won the right to vote, women were now concerned with the world they were making for themselves.…

On 30 May 1940, Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary recorded in her diary: “The evacuation of Dunkirk. Dinner with Shirley.” That diary entry isn’t a bad summary of the organising principle of this book: the juxtaposition of momentous national events with the domestic particulars of eating. Gray has used the life of Georgina Landemare, the Churchills’ cook from 1940 to 1954, as a lens through which the wider histories of food, dining, war, gender and class might be examined. Landemare wrote a memoir recounting her long career in the service of others, but sadly destroyed most of it, leaving only a fragment covering her early life for posterity. This means that Georgina herself is one of the less vivid characters in the book. Her personality and spirit are somewhat overshadowed by…

“Rosa’s actions highlighted internationally the plight of black people in the 1950s-era deep south of America” Rosa Parks 1913–2005 When did you hear about Rosa Parks? As a kid, I was interested in the civil rights movement. I read Harper Lee’s novel about racial injustice, To Kill a Mockingbird, and some of the black American writer Maya Angelou’s books, and it was then that I heard about her. What kind of woman was she? Rosa grew up on a farm outside Montgomery, Alabama with her grandparents and as a girl was bullied by white children. Throughout her life she was aware of the injustice she suffered as a result of her skin colour in what was then a very racially segregated society, and she joined the NAACP (National Association for…