Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i History Extra

‘‘One of the great tragedies of the Tudor age was Henry VIII’s destruction of the monasteries, which saw more than 800 religious houses suppressed. The evidence of these actions is plain to see in the ruined buildings that still dot the landscape today. But the story of the Dissolution is not so clear cut, and, as Hugh Willmott argues in this month’s cover feature, this was not just a “smash and grab raid”. By exploring the archaeological evidence – from buried lead ingots to the skeletons of crushed dogs – Hugh offers a more nuanced picture of events. Turn to page 20 for that. Archaeological discoveries also lie behind new history film The Dig, which is about to be released on Netflix. It focuses on the excavations at Sutton Hoo…

EYE-OPENER Cross examination When it was plucked from the earth of the Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway in 2014, this ninth-century cross was coated in centuries of soil and far from its former glory. But now, thanks to an extensive restoration process, the skill of its creators has been revealed. Each of the Anglo-Saxon artefact’s arms features an intricate gold-leaf design representing the New Testament evangelists: an eagle (John), a lion (Mark), a man (Matthew) and a cow (Luke). Experts think that such a detailed work must have been commissioned by a high-ranking member of society, such as a priest or king. The cross, along with the rest of the Galloway Hoard of which it is part, is set to go on display at the National Museum of Scotland…

18 FEBRUARY 1478 The Duke of Clarence meets a sticky end Edward IV’s brother is apparently drowned in a barrel of wine Even by the standards of medieval England, George, Duke of Clarence met a colourful end. “Take him on the costard with the hilts of thy sword,” says one of his two murderers in Shakespeare’s play Richard III, “and then throw him into the malmsey-butt in the next room.” And so, for generations, the stage-Clarence has been stabbed repeatedly (“Take that, and that”) before being dragged away to the barrel of sweet wine. “I’ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within,” says the First Murderer. So who was Clarence? The short answer is that he was the brother of the Yorkist king Edward IV, but that doesn’t convey his ambitious,…

“The weather worried them more than the war. If war was going to come, it was going to come, but the weather could damage the site while they were digging it.” That’s Professor Martin Carver’s take on a key concern of the Sutton Hoo excavation team as they rushed to unearth and record the fabulous – and now globally famous – seventh-century ship burial in rural Suffolk, during the summer before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Carver is a leading expert on Sutton Hoo, and he directed excavations there for a decade from 1983. However, it’s that 1939 dig that is going to come into sharp focus again, as it’s the subject of new Netflix film The Dig (itself based on a book by the same…

Kick in the teeth The body of John Milton (pictured) was exhumed more than a century after his death, and some of his teeth were sold. During renovation work on St Giles-without-Cripple-gate in 1790, what was assumed to be the poet’s body, buried there in 1674, was disturbed. One parishioner “pulled hard at the teeth”. When they refused to budge, “someone hit them a knock with a stone, when they easily came out”. The pearly whites were then put on sale. Tragic telescope The largest refracting telescope in the world once stood in a 60-foot-high brick tower on Wandsworth Common in south London. It was the brainchild of a vicar, amateur architect and astronomer named John Craig who spent a small fortune on constructing it in 1852. There were problems…

Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book pieces together the centuries following the fall of Roman Britain in around AD 400. This was an era that fell between two major, limelight-grabbing historical epochs. So what makes it an interesting period to study? Max Adams: Every early medieval archaeologist has to take on the ‘Dark Ages’ sooner or later. It’s a bit like a Shakespearean actor taking on Lear. At some point, you’re going to have to take a stab at it. You could think of this very obscure period as a black hole into which our history tumbles. You have to hold up a candle to get the merest glimpse of what’s going on, which also makes it irresistible. Anyone investigating the early Middle Ages starts with the great historian of western…

London and the 17th Century: The Making of the World’s Greatest City by Margarette Lincoln Yale, 384 pages, £25 In the 17th century, London was a jumbling, juggling city of work, play, debate and discord. It was the beating heart of England’s economy: a multicultural metropolis at the centre of a growing empire. And, with its sister city of Westminster, it was the apex of English politics and law. Famously, it groaned under plague in 1665, then burnt to cinders in 1666. But, as Margarette Lincoln’s new book shows, there is so much more to London’s 17th-century story than plague and fire. There is plenty to relish about this book. It shows a growing city, grappling with a turbulent century of history. It shows how much of the modern landscape,…

Time’s Monster: History, Conscience and Britain’s Empire by Priya Satia Allen Lane, 384 pages, £25 The absorbing depth with which Priya Satia addresses an ambitious range of modern society’s most pro-found problems and questions in this book is phenomenal. In asking how British men felt able to justify running an empire rooted in violence and systemic inequality, her discussion of this ethical conundrum runs into wonderfully imaginative, even astronomical and spiritual spaces. She is really concerned with the making of history as a modern discipline over the centuries since the Enlightenment, and the powerful impact of this on humanity’s relationships with power, nature and time itself. During the Enlightenment, she suggests, history emerged as an ethical idiom for the modern period. She contends that “The narrative of the British empire…

SOCIAL Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen by Carol Dyhouse (OUP, 288 pages, £20) Happily ever after? In the 1950s, the western world fell in love with Cinderella, cheering her on in the hunt for Prince Charming. Fast forward four decades, and a very different fairytale was being proffered to women, in the freedom and flings of Sex and the City. In her new book, historian Carol Dyhouse explores how films and pop culture have refected women’s evolving expectations of love, sex and marriage since 1950. GERMANY Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance by Stephan Malinowski (translated by Jonathan Andrews) (OUP, 469 pages, £30) Deal with the devil When it comes to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, there’s far more to the story than a…

TASTE Sly cakes This sweet treat from the north of England is thought to date from the 19th century. Its name indicates both its surprisingly rich filling, belying its seemingly dull exterior – but also a tale of young love. It’s said that a baker’s daughter in South Shields fell in love with a man who lived on her street, and smuggled love letters into cakes that she gave him when he bought something from her father’s shop. After five years of cake communication, they sought permission to marry – but were denied. It’s hard to get in the way of romance in such stories, though, and elopement, marriage and love are still said to have followed. Even if this story is merely a tall tale, these delectable pastries are…

Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny died 1650 “My hands shook as I examined letters written to Katherine in code by King Charles I, when he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle ” IN PROFILE Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny was a noblewoman and royalist during the Civil War. In 1638 she married her first husband, George Stewart, 9th Seigneur d’Aubigny, who was killed at the battle of Edgehill (1642). She was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for her royalist activities. After being released she tried but failed to free Charles I from captivity. Following his execution she fled to the Netherlands with her second husband, James Livingston, Earl of Newburgh, where she died in 1650, age unknown. When did you first hear about Katherine Howard? When studying 17th-century English history for A-level.…

Hugh Willmott I am fascinated by the Dissolution of the Monasteries and have spent the last decade studying the subject, conducting excavations at Thornton Abbey and Monk Bretton Priory. Hugh argues that the Dissolution was not wanton destruction, but instead a highly organised undertaking on page 20 Elma Brenner I was keen to investigate the lived experience of childbirth in the Middle Ages, and the medical expertise, divine assistance and community support that women drew upon at this time of both joy and danger. Elma shares six ways that medieval women readied themselves for childbirth on page 50 Malcolm Smith When I started researching the impact of the hat feather trade on wildlife, I was astonished at the scale of the killing. Some species were driven to near extinction. And…

It’s arguable, of course, that the lives of the British royal family are already stranger than fiction. They may be elite and some may think them eccentric, but are they as scandalous as The Crown – the fourth series of which debuted on Netflix in November – suggests? Such was the question that has exercised many over the past few weeks, not least the culture secretary Oliver Dowden who called on Netflix to add a disclaimer that the series is drama, rather than reality. Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter (@RoyalDickie) supported Dowden. “No one has the right to embellish [the facts] about living people for the sake of drama,” he wrote. “There is a very definite line between fact and fiction and @TheCrownNetflix has gone beyond that to the…

On 4 March 1801, in the city of Washington – then just a half-built, muddy encampment on the banks of the Potomac – a living head of state gave up power peacefully and a new one took over. The outgoing president, John Adams, had lost a bitter election – the first presidential contest in the short history of the United States in which a sitting president had been defeated – and he was not a happy man. Once, Adams had regarded the incoming head of state, Thomas Jefferson, as a friend. But the election had pushed the bond between the two founding fathers to breaking point. Jefferson’s supporters, with the complicity of the candidate himself, charged that Adams was a quasimonarchist. If he won a second term, with his centralising,…

A hundred years ago, on 21 February 1921, a column of ragged troops from what remained of Iran’s armed forces marched on the capital, Tehran, and took command of the city. At their head was a then-unknown officer, Reza Khan. This coup had been orchestrated by British representatives in Iran who wished to consolidate their position in the country in the face of the threat from the Bolsheviks, just across Iran’s northern border, and the growing importance of Iranian oil. Their choice of Reza Khan as leader was based on their opinion of him as a simple soldier, entirely lacking in political ambitions of his own. In this they were spectacularly mistaken. His rise to power was inexorable. Immediately after the coup he was appointed army commander by the new…

1524–29 Cardinal Wolsey suppresses 29 small monasteries with papal blessing in order to use their revenues to found two colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. This so-called “Little Dissolution” sets an unintended precedent for the later Dissolution. 1534 The First Fruits and Tenths Act diverts the 10 per cent annual tax on clerical incomes from the papacy to the crown. November 1534 The Act of Supremacy sees Henry VIII declared as the supreme head of the Church of England. January-May 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus, a valuation of all church and monastic revenues, is compiled and reveals the full scale of the wealth of the monasteries. January 1535 Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners begin to examine and report upon the state of the monasteries in England and Wales. February 1536 The Act for the Dissolution…

Bishop Pilgrim was determined to provide a distinguished history for his diocese, Passau, and, like many other holy men of the time, he turned to forgery. Between AD 971 and 991, he fabricated a number of documents, from papal privileges to charters in the name of past kings and queens. These were intended to strengthen his assertion that his lowly diocese had once been home to a grand archbishopric, and that Passau was the lineal descendent of this archbishopric. (See page 32 for more details.) But, given the extravagant nature of Pilgrim’s claims – and those of many other medieval forgers – it’s often wondered if anyone took them seriously. Was this not some sort of elaborate parlour trick? The existence of so many forgeries suggests otherwise. It is hardly…

Sutton Hoo is thought to be the burial ground of the early seventh-century rulers of one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which had grown up in the aftermath of the Roman imperial presence in Britain. Those mounds were, according to Carver, an explosive expression of intent from East Anglia’s pagan rulers against the spreading power of Christianity (Pope Gregory the Great famously sent Augustine as a missionary to England in AD 597). “It’s a great burst of activity. I imagine these mounds must have been very demonstrative. The burials are extravagant and very richly furnished. They are strong statements about the wish to continue this particular regime, this dynasty, and in some ways there are signs of anxiety of what’s coming from over the Channel,” Carver says. “In other words, a…

Call the midwife As labour pains kicked in, many medieval women leant on the expertise of experienced professionals Childbirth in the Middle Ages was a community effort. Family members, parish priests and local experts all lent a hand – and when midwives were called in to assist, they often worked in teams. A late 12th-century English account describes the presence of seven midwives at the labour of Eliza of Middleton. Such a large team could pool their knowledge and share the demanding tasks involved in assisting the delivery. These women could find their services called upon in all kinds of circumstances. In 1259 in the French village of Saint-Saëns, two local midwives attended the nun Nicola of Rouen, who gave birth inside her nunnery. Nicola’s child was baptised, probably by…

Ruin and Renewal: Civilising Europe After World War II by Paul Betts Profile, 544 pages, £25 What is civilisation? Is it the glorious summit of our climb out of the primeval swamp? Is it the triumph of culture and manners over the forces of barbarism? Or is it simply an excuse to proclaim ourselves better than our neighbours, and justify our attempts to dominate them? For those who were tasked with rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, these were not just theoretical questions. They cut right to the heart of who Europeans thought they were, at a time when they were trying to create a new world out of the ashes of the old. The war had inspired hope and despair in equal measure. On the one hand, it…

The Last Assassin by Peter Stothard Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 288 pages, £20 “When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” So wrote Shakespeare of the “Julian star” that marked Caesar’s death and – at least, according to his adopted heir, Octavian – his ascent into the heavens. In this stimulating book, Peter Stothard focuses on the less-heralded players in the aftermath of Caesar’s murder, tracing the period through the varied ends of his killers – in battle, by suicide or at the executioner’s hand. From the plotters’ first moves to the bloody consequences of their actions on the battlefields of the 40s and 30s BC and the quiet elimination of the last survivors, Stothard frames the narrative as one of violent…

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A study of the lives of the Aztecs that draws on their own records has been announced as the winner of this year’s Cundill History Prize. Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs was revealed as the recipient of the $75,000 award in an online event in December. The distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University triumphed ahead of fellow finalists William Dalrymple, for The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, and Vincent Brown, for Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War. The decision was made by chair of the jury Peter Frankopan and jurors Anne Applebaum, Lyse Doucet, Eliga Gould and Sujit Sivasundaram. Fifth Sun explores more than 300 years of history, from the years before 1299 to the changes that…

“Behind the debate hovered one question: what is it to be human?” I’m reading Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun, which won the 2020 Cundill Prize, the biggest literary prize anywhere for history. A boldly imaginative attempt to tell the story of the Aztecs from indigenous sources, it raises fascinating issues. The Spanish conquest of the Americas opened up the world, marking the beginnings of a globalisation that was not only commercial, but also ideological and philosophical. For the first time in history, there was one world, whose peoples were now seen as subject to the same natural laws, the same processes of history. And in that light the Conquista raised profound moral dilemmas for Europeans in general. Was the conquest of the New World in any sense just? Did the “Indians”…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Love and rockets I’m looking forward to reading Robert Harris’s latest book, V2, which was highlighted in your December issue (Fact to Fiction). My late father was a London fireman from 1939 to 1944. He survived the worst of the Blitz and witnessed some horrific catastrophes. In December 1944 he was demobbed from the service. His discharge letter, from the chief of the National Fire Service, thanked him for his service but said he was no longer required as the danger to London was now over and the enemy were facing defeat. Within weeks of returning to civilian life he was one of many victims of one of the first V2 rockets to hit London. At the same time as the rocket hit Bethnal Green, I…

“In one week I’m a Tudor scribe, Florence Nightingale, the wife of a Roman legate, and a Stuart seamstress” I have a degree in history from Cardiff University and a PGCE in secondary-level history from the University of Cambridge. Now I work as a teacher for History Off the Page. This company brings history to life for primary-aged children, by developing and delivering immersive in-school days using a mixture of storytelling, craft activities, role play, investigation tasks and drama activities. Our days are educational, fun and memorable, covering a wide range of topics. In one week I might be a Tudor scribe, an ancient Greek, Florence Nightingale, the wife of a Roman legate, and a Stuart seamstress! Without my PGCE I could not have applied to work as a teacher…

Susan Cohen on the early years of the NHS “The whole notion of this medical care being free was astonishing, but it had very different effects on different people. There were some who were actually embarrassed about going to the doctor and having free medical care or a free prescription. One student of radiology said she couldn’t believe that whatever it was she needed was going to be given free of charge. Some people were worried about what their neighbours would think if they went to the doctor and got something for free.” Rosie Whitehouse on Holocaust survivors who sailed to Palestine “In popular culture, I think we have a view of Holocaust survivors as people who were victims, people who were weak and unable to help themselves. As my…

Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism by Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher (First published in 1961) This classic text has been a fixture of university reading lists for six decades. It’s a masterful exposition of how events on the ground in Africa were viewed from Whitehall by those responsible for formulating imperial policy, sanctioning annexations or military expeditions, and engaging in the politics of “the Scramble” alongside governments across Europe. The authors brilliantly dissect the “push” and “pull” factors leading to the continent’s rapid late 19th-century colonisation. “Push” factors propelling the British forward included the chartered companies and missionary societies, and the government’s own interests in Africa, born especially of strategic imperatives such as the need to maintain the “watch on the Nile” and the Suez Canal,…

Why did the Black Death intrigue you as the backdrop for a story? I wrote the novel pre-Covid but, sensing a dismal turn in world events, the Black Death seemed to resonate with that gloom. Here was a tragedy of human suffering, and a comedy of human ignorance. Medieval culture was clever, curious and analytic but it lacked the intellectual tools to see, understand or combat the natural force – the tiny bug – that was destroying it. The plague was seen as a miasma of foul airs, probably God’s punishment on a wicked world. Medicine didn’t help. The church couldn’t intercede. Power proved impotent. It was a perfect catastrophe. Tell us about your young protagonist. Diggory is a teenage novice monk. The brothers treat the sick, so he’s thrown…

The writer CLAIRE PRENTICE tells us about her new documentary charting how lobotomy became a commonplace treatment in the mid-20th century – and what the story reveals about attitudes to mental health How and why did you first become interested in the history of lobotomy? I’ve long been interested in the history of mental illness and in the various treatments that have been used over the years. We need to break the taboos surrounding mental health and learn from the past, and from the mistakes we made in terms of how people with mental health problems were treated, by science and medicine but also by society as a whole. Why did medics think the procedure was a good idea? To understand why lobotomies became a part of the medical mainstream…