Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i History Extra

EYE-OPENER Secrets from the deep The discovery of a Royal Navy warship which sank off the coast of Norfolk in 1682 – complete with a trove of treasures including the jug, bottle, ship’s bell, and spectacles pictured right – has been hailed as Britain’s most important maritime find since the Mary Rose. The wreck of the Gloucester, shown below, was first located by brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell in 2007, but has been kept secret until now in order to protect the site. The ship was on a journey from England to Scotland when, early in the morning of 6 May, it hit a sandbank of Great Yarmouth and sank, leading to the deaths of at least 130 people. The disaster is also remarkable because of one of its most…

8 AUGUST 1942 Mahatma Gandhi launches the Quit India Movement His “Do or Die” speech inspires a nation to end British rule Shortly before midnight on 8 August 1942, the Indian lawyer, activist and international figurehead Mahatma Gandhi stood before as many as 100,000 people to deliver the most famous speech in his nation’s history. As a leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), he called for an end to British rule by launching a protest movement of widespread civil disobedience – to be done peacefully under the principle of “ahimsa” (non-violence). The catalyst for the Quit India Movement was the outbreak of the Second World War. Without consulting Indian officials, Britain had made the decision that India, as part of the empire, was also at war – a move…

The usual quiet and calm of Brighton’s seafront was shattered on a July day in 1905 as racing cars thundered down a newly laid stretch of tarmac, later named Madeira Drive, to the cheers of the long lines of spectators. One of the races in the inaugural outing of the south coast town’s Speed Trials was in its final stages, contested by Algernon Lee Guinness, driving a 100-horsepower Darracq, and a 23-year-old woman called Dorothy Levitt, piloting a green 80-horsepower Napier. Guinness may have hailed from the famous brewing family, but behind the wheel he was no match for Levitt. Reaching 79.75 miles per hour, she set a women’s land speed record on her way to winning her class, as well as the sweepstakes and a trophy. Levitt’s victory made…

“EastEnders added to the familiar mix of soap-opera elements a touch of the ‘Blitz spirit’ and storylines which tackled pressing social issues” One of the most unlikely episodes in British television history unfolded on an isolated Devon hillside one evening in September 1986. It was then that around 60 inmates at Dartmoor prison, who had been spending “free association” watching the BBC’s hit drama serial EastEnders, started rioting. Chairs and tables were broken up, and lightbulbs smashed. Afterwards, officials launched an urgent investigation. Had the poor quality of food just served for supper triggered the outburst? Not, it seemed, in this case. It had been TV – or rather, its temporary absence – that had apparently caused the fracas. On the night in question, EastEnders had featured one of the…

Paul Fischer on the mysterious disappearance of a 19th-century French inventor “In September 1890, Louis Le Prince visited his brother in Dijon, eastern France. As he set out on his return journey north, en route to premiere an invention in America, his family saw him onto the train – but when it pulled into Paris, he was no longer there. There was no evidence of what happened to him, and it took weeks for anyone to realise he had disappeared – never to be seen again.” Emma Smith on the enduring magic of books “Books have been powerful for over two millennia, but what strikes me is how little they have changed in that time. In some ways, an ancient Roman would recognise today’s bestsellers. Books were first produced to…

A History of Delusions: The Glass King, a Substitute Husband and a Walking Corpse by Victoria Shepherd Oneworld, 352 pages, £16.99 Have you ever wondered whether your family had been replaced by doubles? Or if a European monarch was secretly in love with you? Victoria Shepherd’s book explores the stories of people who would have answered with a confident “Yes”. In her new book we meet “Madame M”, a flamboyantly dressed couturière in early 20th-century Paris, who believed that her husband and child were duplicates and that she herself was an abducted heiress whose grandmother owned Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, fellow Parisian “Lea Anna B” became convinced that King George V was courting her through a series of secret emissaries. This absorbing study draws on cases from five centuries of…

FICTION Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott (Fourth Estate, 352 pages, £14.99) Drowned world On an island in the middle of the Thames, sisters Isla and Blue watch for boats heading in from the sea. It’s AD 500 and here, in the shadow of a half-ruined, abandoned Londinium, an untimely death forces them to navigate the currents of submerged secrets and forbidden knowledge. This lyrical, evocative novel follows that journey, as the turmoil leads them to a hidden community of rebel women. SOCIAL Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming by Karen Eva Carr (Reaktion Books, 456 pages, £25) Different strokes Readers coming to this social history of swimming expecting lightweight beach fare might be surprised by both its scope and the depth of its analysis. Drawing on archaeological, documentary and…

“More was prepared to be hanged, drawn and quartered rather than compromise. That is, to put it mildly, unusual in a politician” When did you first hear about More? As a teenager watching the film A Man for All Seasons (1966), which tells the story of his final years. But I really became interested in him as an MP after reading the plaque in Westminster Hall – where he and his father practised as judges – commemorating the place where he was condemned to death. The more I read about him the more I realised how central that building, which I walked through every day, was to his life. What kind of person was he? He was a scholar and spent a lot of time praying, but was also incredibly…

Phil Tinline “The fear of inflation and its terrible consequences has long haunted our politicians – from nightmares of financial chaos, through the ruin of the middle class, to the death of democracy itself.” Phil traces how inflation has shaped British political life over the last century on page 20 Estelle Paranque “Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici were extremely intelligent, extremely powerful women. But what’s very interesting as well is that one woman was going to be remembered and glorified for centuries to come, the other much less so.” Estelle untangles the tumultuous relationship of the two powerhouses on page 74 Nicholas Morton “The Mongol invasions of the 13th century inaugurated a period of rapid change both in the near east and elsewhere. Cultures previously separated by vast distances…

As the news broke of a public consultation on imperial weights and measures and their possible reintroduction in some business settings in the UK, Twitter reflected on how Britain looked set to return to the past. With some political suggestions that this was a “Brexit bonus”, weights and measures inspector Pippa Musgrave (@PippaMusgrave) pointed out that there had been “no EU directive [to change to a metric system]. It was UK domestic law amending the UK Weights and Measures Act 1985 and Prices Act 1974... the legislation to remove [the imperial system] was a UK instrument amending a UK act of parliament. It had nothing to do with the EU.” Steve Analyst (@EmporersNewC) went even further back, noting that “a Select Committee appointed in 1895 recommended that the metric system…

c410 The Roman occupation of Britain ends, according to traditional thought. Evidence from forts along Hadrian’s Wall, however, suggests that soldiers continue to live in the forts and presumably garrison the wall. 633 or 634 King Oswald of Northumbria camps his army beside Hadrian’s Wall. The following day, he defeats Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia at the battle of Heavenfield, and becomes the most prestigious king of early medieval Britain. 1066-1700 Castles, towers, churches, monasteries and farms are built on, beside or near Hadrian’s Wall using stone taken from the Roman ruins. 1751-58 A new military road connecting Newcastle and Carlisle is constructed, with most of the eastern half of the road built directly on top of the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall. This road is the modern B6318.…

How did you research the era? I wanted The Partisan to have a sweep that could take in both policy discussions in the corridors of the Kremlin and the everyday life of a “Forest Brother” fighting Stalin’s forces. That meant working through a pile of books including Juozas Lukša’s account of life as a Lithuanian guerrilla leader, and The World I Left Behind, the memoir by Luba Brezhneva [niece of Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev]. I reacquainted myself with Solzhenitsyn and biographies of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Sergei Korolev, mastermind of Russia’s space programme. Life magazine’s online archive was an invaluable visual reference. A chess tournament is one plot point. Was it inspired by Cold War contests? Everyone remembers Bobby Fischer’s victory over Boris Spassky in 1972, but I wanted to…

Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals by Emma J Wells Apollo, 512 pages, £40 (Publishes on 1 September but available to preorder now) Among the many legacies the Middle Ages left to the modern world, the medieval cathedral must rank as one of the most precious. The cumulative work of generations, products of centuries of ingenuity and imagination, cathedrals carry in their stones the stories of the people and communities who constructed them, as well as the histories of the cities over which they tower. These were buildings designed to offer glimpses of divine glory, to attain a beauty beyond the earthly. As Emma J Wells observes in Heaven on Earth, the medieval cathedral “was intended to be the metaphorical and physical exemplar of…

Three Epic Battles that Saved Democracy by Stephen P Kershaw Robinson, 480 pages, £30 The battle of Marathon, claimed 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, was more important to English history than the battle of Hastings. The idea that great events of the ancient world were directly relevant to the modern has long been a mainstay of European culture. And few such events could compare with the epic struggle between the Greek city-states and Persia, the world’s first superpower. This idea underpins Stephen P Kershaw’s retelling of the expeditions of the Persian king Darius in 490 BC and his son Xerxes a decade later. He has produced a book that is often elegant in style but remains clear, concise and eminently readable. His knowledge of the sources is generally excellent, and…

It was not your usual toilet graffiti. Instead of amorous scribblings or obscenities, the writing in heavy pencil on the whitewashed walls beside the lavatory was a stark one-liner: “Don’t come here to sleep or to slumber.” Below it were the signatures of those who had sat in the tiny cubicle, and a date: August 1914. This graffiti was written in the gardeners’ Thunderbox Room on Cornwall’s Heligan estate, at the outbreak of the First World War. As Heligan’s 13 gardeners signed those walls before marching off to war, little did they know that many would end their days on the battlefields of France and Belgium. Only four returned. With the disappearance of its workforce, Heligan’s prized gardens, like so many across Britain, were “lost” too, sinking into a slumber…

PHONE Subscriptions & back issues 03330 162115 Editorial 0117 300 8699 EMAIL Subscriptions & back issues www.buysubscriptions.com/contactus Editorial historymagazine@historyextra.com POST Subscriptions & back issues BBC History Magazine, PO Box 3320, 3 Queensbridge, Northampton, NN4 7BF. Basic annual subscription rates: UK: £48, Eire/Europe: £67, ROW: £69 In the US/Canada you can contact us at: PO Box 37495, Boone, IA 50037, BHIcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, britsubs.com/history, Toll-free 800-342-3592…

"The voice of this funny polymath can still be heard 1,200 years later" An Irish writer friend of mine stayed with me recently. At the kitchen table, the conversation ranged from rugby to James Joyce (this year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ulysses in book form) and Sally Rooney, bestselling author of Normal People. Then, as the candles burned low, the question arose: who was the greatest Irish person? We talked of playwrights, revolutionaries and poets. But for me (and as a medievalist I’m biased, I confess!) there was one person who stands out above all others – a forgotten thinker from the time when Ireland was the land of saints and scholars. Born c810-815 AD, we know him simply by his adopted name Iohannes Eriugena: John…

“There are other medieval women who we can bring to the foreground” I’m ashamed to say that, until now, I have never once thought of the women who embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry: who they were, what their lives were like, or how it simply would not exist without their skill and creativity. We might, perhaps, never know much about their stories, but there are other women from the Middle Ages we can learn about and bring into the foreground. Indeed, in her forthcoming book Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages through the Women Written Out of It (WH Allen), Oxford lecturer Janina Ramirez shifts the focus on the Middle Ages, adjusting the frame to the female, rather than male, characters. Hildegard, for instance, was a 12th-century nun from…

1 The slave who married her master A second-century tombstone highlights the contradictory nature of relationships in Roman Britain As is so often the case when exploring the past, we have a clearer picture of the lives of men – particularly Roman soldiers – on Hadrian’s Wall than of the women who lived alongside them. Yet artefacts found on the frontier reveal much about the varied experiences and backgrounds of women in the society that emerged in Britain’s military zone. One most intriguing example is an elaborate gravestone of the mid-to-late second century AD, from the cemetery outside the Roman fort of Arbeia (South Shields). It depicts a woman, dressed in all her finery, sitting with her spindle on her lap. The Latin inscription beneath this picture of domestic comfort…

The authors of this piece are collaborating with the Falkland Islands Government to run a competition for British students (aged 16–18 years old) to submit creative stories (in written, audio or visual format) about the islands and what they mean to them in the 21st century. The competition is part of the 40th anniversary commemorations of the Falklands War. Eight winners will receive an all-expenses escorted tour of the Falkland Islands in February 2023. The Falklands Forty Schools Competition is open to young people from all backgrounds, attending different types of schools from across the UK. More information can be found at falklands40comp.co.uk. You’ll also find details on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: @Falklands40Comp. The competition closes on 31 July 2022. Promoter: Falkland Islands Government.…

Rhiannon Davies: Your book Blood, Fire and Gold follows two powerhouses of early modern Europe, Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. Can you briefly introduce us to them? Estelle Paranque: I’ll start with Elizabeth I of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She was declared a bastard before she was three [following Anne’s execution for treason], but by 1543 she was back in the line of succession and, against the odds really, became queen in 1558. Elizabeth was far from perfect. To compete with Spain in the conquest of the New World involved piracy and slavery. But by being such an extraordinary woman – establishing the Church of England, for instance – she serves as an example of feminism. Such a notion did not exist in the 16th…

In this lively, readable, and provocative work, John Foot uses anecdotes and episodes, vignettes and thumbnail portraits to tell the story of Fascism. Unusually, he begins his narrative in June 1914, when popular insurrection broke out in central Italy, only to be met with the full repressive power of the Liberal state. But he really hits his stride when recounting the systematic violence used by the nascent Fascist movement after 1919. I’d thought I was fully aware of Fascist thuggery: the savage beatings and forced castor oil administrations, the kidnap and torture of opponents, the arson and vandalism, the connivance of the police and armed forces. But I had never appreciated its sheer scale or nastiness until I read this book. Foot’s plausible thesis is that it was violence that…

Anyone who confronts the vivid portrait of Sir Henry Wilson (pictured below right) in London’s National Portrait Gallery will probably wonder what he was really like. He himself had reservations about the image, saying it made him look like “an awful blackguard”. And that, of course, is exactly what his enemies – and he made many, some of them deadly, as it turned out – thought he was. Wilson was a political soldier in both the good and the bad senses. He was one of the earliest generals to perfect a way of engaging with politicians (“frocks”, as he dismissively called them), and his liaison skills helped win the First World War by keeping the British and French talking to each other. But he was also a passionately committed partisan…

Janina Ramirez is an Oxford lecturer, BBC broadcaster, author and researcher. She has presented and written more than 30 hours of BBC history documentaries on TV and radio, and her latest book is Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it (WH Allen, 2022). Each session combines an introductory lecture, extensive Q&A, and discussion of a primary source chosen by Janina Ramirez. You can book individual modules or block-book the whole masterclass. Tickets: £15 per module or £39 for all three modules 8, 15 and 22 July 2022 This curated three-part virtual lecture series from historian and broadcaster Janina Ramirez will offer a fresh look at the medieval world through the women usually written out of it. From political power-players to the overlooked…

“There was a feeling after the First World War: how is western civilisation going to recover from that?” How is BBC Radio 3 marking the centenary of The Waste Land? There’s a dramatic performance featuring actors [including Ade Edmondson] playing characters from the poem. Before the performance there will be a Sunday Feature in which I speak to five Eliot experts to introduce the poem, and explain to the audience something of the history and nature of The Waste Land. For example, Professor Mark Ford from University College London talks about the role of London in the poem. For a period, Eliot worked in a little basement room at Lloyds Bank, and the city, its churches and its commuters form a really strong presence in the poem. What is it…