Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i History Extra

“One hundred years ago this month, Howard Carter first peered into the tomb of Tutankhamun and saw the “wonderful things” that would inspire a century of fascination with Egypt's golden age. But while there's no doubting the magnificence of the tomb's treasures, the boy king's reign would have seemed far less glittering to those living at the other end of the social spectrum. In this month's cover feature (from page 56), Guy de la Bédoyeère explores the brutal reality of Egypt's 18th Dynasty. We're also reflecting on royalty of a very different kind as our contributors assess the reign and passing of Queen Elizabeth II. On page 38, Anna Whitelock examines the dramatic changes that shook Britain and its empire during the Queen's 70 years on the throne. Meanwhile, both…

Cave finds reveal “earliest evidence of amputation” Remains discovered in Indonesian Borneo appear to bear evidence of surgical amputation carried out 31,000 years ago - more than 24,000 years before the earliest previously recorded amputation. The bones, found in a cave in East Kalimantan, are those of an individual whose left leg had been partially removed during childhood. Experts think they would then have been cared for by their community until they died in their late teens or early twenties. Ancient pottery may point to first known use of opium Archaeologists working at an ancient burial site in Israel have uncovered evidence of what may be the earliest known use of opium. Traces of the narcotic were found in pottery vessels dating from roughly 3,500 years ago and unearthed in…

KAVITA PURI explores lesser-known stories from our past I WAS SHOCKED TO READ RECENTLY THAT THERE are still an estimated 114,000 bodies in unmarked mass graves in Spain. They are victims of the Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939 between Republicans, loyal to the nation's left-leaning government, and Nationalists, led by a military junta among which Francisco Franco played a key role. The sheer extent of the mass graves represents what cultural anthropologist Francisco Ferrandiz has called “an underground landscape of terror”. Some of the bodies were excavated near a place I visit regularly, in one of four close villages in rural southern Spain. In the civil war, two were Republican, two Nationalist. The battlements still exist in the ground. But that time is rarely spoken of, when…

1 SYMBOLS OF SALVATION Catherine of Aragon's choice of necklace and brooch enabled her to make a very public display of her piety The jewels worn by Henry VIII's first wife not only say a great deal about her status but, more significantly, her character and values. In keeping with the fashion for low-cut gowns, Catherine's is lined with pearls and diamonds set in goldsmith's work. But it is her necklace and brooch - shown in this c1525 painting by Lucas Horenbout - that draw the most interest. Attached to the necklace of gold beads and clusters of pearls is an ornate tau cross - a T-shaped cross symbolic of salvation. Interestingly, Catherine's daughter, Mary, was later painted wearing a similar cross, as were Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, reflecting…

The image below shows the final part of a letter written by Marie Antoinette to her friend Axel von Fersen on 4 January 1792, when she was under house arrest with her family in the Tuileries palace in Paris. The missive did not need to be in code as it was delivered to Fersen (then in Brussels) via a trusty intermediary, her secretary Francois Goguelat. He was charged with giving the Swedish aristocrat confidential verbal information regarding the situation. In the letter, the queen tells Fersen about her attempts to send out clandestine messages, and that she is disappointed not to have news from Vienna and Brussels. The curled “d” 1 and slanted tails of the letters are characteristic of Marie Antoinette's handwriting. On the penultimate line of the left-hand…

Devil Dogs William Collins, 624 pages, £25 Television executives take note: this book is a huge achievement that, in my view, is the Pacific version of Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers. A mini-series based on it should be produced without delay. Saul David's book succeeds in capturing the scale and horror of the long trauma of the Pacific War between 1941 and 1945, for both the Allies – mainly the US – and the Japanese. It does so through the ground-level eyes of “Devil Dogs”, the ordinary men of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (K/3/5). The voices of individual enlisted men are significant in this story, primarily because of the very high literary standard of these soldiers. Many were college graduates, and a number left memoirs, diaries and letters,…

The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club Allen Lane, 624 pages, £40 In his new paean to the hand-written text, Christopher de Hamel undertakes a series of journeys, both real and imagined, to encounter 12 collectors who share his fascination with manuscripts. As he observes, every aspect of manuscript production points to human involvement and relationships. These range from initial discussions between illuminators, patrons and authors, to the elaborate copying and decorating of texts, to collectors, connoisseurs, scholars and readers. The collectors de Hamel “meets”, all profoundly different in personality and station in life, are bound together by a shared love of – even obsession with – manuscripts. The book ends with an imaginary soirée at which they are brought together, and one can well imagine their enthusiastic conversations. We…

ENCOUNTERS DIARY DIARY By Jonathan Wright, Rhiannon Davies and Samantha Nott PODCAST The perils of interpreting EXPLORE Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk VISIT Prehistoric parallels Stonehenge is one of Britain's most iconic sites. A complex of monuments begun perhaps 5,000 years ago – for a purpose that we still don't fully understand despite endless study – this cluster of huge standing stones has fascinated scholars and visitors alike for centuries. Curiously, at around the same time, on the other side of the globe in Japan, prehistoric people also created stone circles. Parallels between these disparate traditions are explored in a new English Heritage exhibition at Stonehenge, bringing together more than 80 objects from Japanese and British prehistory. Dogu - finely carved Japanese clay figurines thought to depict earth goddesses or spirits…

Al Murray “One striking aspect of the Second World War is that the Allies got off to a terrible start before completely turning it around. The question is, of course, how?” Al discusses the Allied commanders who helped turn the tide of the Second World War on page 76 Nicola Tallis “By exploring the jewels that they wore in their roles as Henry VIII's consorts, my research shows the famous six wives in a different - and fascinating - light.” Nicola explores how Henry's queens used their jewels to project power on page 31 RJB Bosworth “Given that 28 October 2022 marks the centenary of Fascist 'revolution', there is all the more reason to think hard about what Mussolini actually did in 20 years of the 'Italian dictatorship'.” RJB Bosworth chronicles the…

MICHAEL WOOD ON… THE FUNERAL OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II WATCHING THE DRAMA OF THE QUEEN'S funeral unfold, I had a strong sense that future historians will see this moment as the end of the postwar world. The funeral was an epic piece of theatre. Though its rituals were largely invented in the 20th century, their emotional power came from a still-shared belief in the values and stories dramatised in the ceremony. We commemorated and paid respect to the late monarch - but we also projected an idea of Britain steeped in empire and military history as well as constitutional monarchy. Queen Elizabeth's life linked us directly to the wartime generation, and her reign carried us across the astonishing changes we have seen both in our global power and at home…

23 March 1919 At a rally at Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro, Benito Mussolini founds the Italian Fascist movement. 9 November 1921 The National Fascist Party-the political expression of the movement-is founded with Mussolini as its head. Benito Mussolini in c1922,the year that witnessed his remarkable rise to power 28 October 1922 Mussolini's bid to seize power, the March on Rome, gets under way. By lunchtime, Fascist squads are pushing into the capital. 31 October 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III (below) formally appoints Mussolini prime minister. 16 November 1922 In his first speech to the Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini declares: “I could have shut down parliament and set up a government exclusively of Fascists. I could have. But, at least at this early stage, I have not wanted to.” 14 January…

Ahmose I ruled c1555-1525 BC The dynamo who founded the 18th Dynasty led Egypt's armies in expelling the Hyksos rulers of northern Egypt, reunifying the nation and legitimising his dynasty's hold on power. Ahmose was adaptable and innovative - he modernised Egypt's army by adopting the Hyksos chariot - and set the nation on the path to regional dominance. Hatshepsut ruled c1473-1458 BC Widowed when her husband (and halfbrother) Thutmose II died young, Hatshepsut acted as regent for her nephew, Thutmose III, until she declared herself king, the chosen one of Amun. Today she is best known for her magnificent memorial mortuary temple in western Thebes. Amenhotep II ruled d425-1400 BC Under Amenhotep's rule, the trope of the chariot-borne king firing off arrows at his hapless Asiatic and Nubian foes…

“Thomas Henry Huxley was a bulldog defender of Darwinian evolution who coined neologisms such as ‘agnosticism’” Patricia Fara lauds a novel look at two evolutionary biologists page 82 MIDDLE AGES “This book paints a rich image of the lives of five queens, exploring aspects including fashion, art and architecture” SECOND WORLD WAR “This is principally a story of how men adapt to the rigours of vicious, uncompromising battle” Robert Lyman commends an account of one US Marine company's Pacific War page 83 POLITICAL “Politicians of all parties today can draw lessons from Wilson's successes and failures” Richard Toye is impressed by a biography of former Labour PM Harold Wilson page 84 INTERVIEW Al Murray on how Allied leaders learned to win the Second World War page 76…

How did you research England and its colonies during the late 17th century? The reign of James II suffers from hindsight. Because everyone knows that he was expelled from the throne, many writings about him – including contemporary sources – paint him as a doomed king. It's my task as a writer of fiction to take the reader to the sense of the moment, when everyone was certain that his determined faith would force the entire country to reverse the Reformation and become Roman Catholic. One key character is James II's fascinating second wife, Mary of Modena. There is no modern biography of this young queen, who was faced with the almost impossible task of bringing her faith to a staunchly Protestant country. The would-be usurper James, Duke of Monmouth…

Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain (Allen Lane, 2006) It is hard to find classic texts about the ancient past whose content is not wildly out of date, so fast does our understanding change. We have learned more about early Britain since Homo Britannicus was published, but it remains a stand-out and still-relevant survey, beautifully illustrated and designed. Chris Stringer, a lead researcher at the Natural History Museum, is prominent both in global debates about human origins, and in directing teams of archaeologists and scientists examining the traces of the earliest people in Britain. His book opens with early research and ideas about Britain's first humans, and proceeds to detail the fabulous increase in knowledge that had been achieved up to 2006 by the Leverhulme Trust-funded…

The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome Oneworld, 352 pages, £20 The mad emperor? Aren't there several to choose from? This one, Heliogabalus (today more commonly known as, Elagabalus), was Roman emperor from AD 218 to 222, almost two centuries after that most famous of “mad” emperors, Caligula. Roman sources depict Heliogabalus as a perverted religious fanatic, obsessed with the solar cult of a god of the same name in his home at Emesa, Syria, where he served as high priest. Heliogabalus was the patsy for his domineering grandmother Julia Maesa, sister of the deceased dowager empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus (ruled 193–211). By 217, Domna's vicious son Caracalla had been assassinated and the praetorian prefect Macrinus had become emperor. Maesa saw her preening teenage grandson…

Your new series, SAS Rogue Heroes, explores the formation of the Special Air Service. How did the show come about? I was given Ben MacIntyre's book SAS: Rogue Heroes - an amazing story, but one I didn't know particularly well. One of the reasons I wanted to make the series was that my dad fought in the Eighth Army in north Africa during the Second World War. When I was a kid, he didn't tell me anything. He used to say: “We just were in the sun playing cowboys,” and I always wondered what really went on. The SAS creation story is set in that time, which really drew me to it. How did you research the series? One of the most important parts of the research was meeting [desert…

MY HISTORY HERO Actor and TV presenter Sam Naz chooses IN PROFILE Noor Inayat Khan was a secret agent who worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France. Born in Moscow, she later lived in London and Paris. After the Nazi invasion, Khan escaped to Britain and joined the SOE in 1942. Ayear later she was sent to France to join the Resistance, but in October 1943 she was betrayed to the Gestapo. Imprisoned until September 1944,she was then taken to Dachau concentration camp and executed. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross. “She committed herself to one of the most dangerous jobs in the war - that of a wireless operator, where the life expectancy was just six weeks” When did you first hear about Noor Inayat Khan? My…

A new exhibition. Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination - running at London's Science Museum until 4 May - explores the genre's evolution and power to predict the future. We spoke to one of its contributors, Roger Luckhurst. Sci-fi is about imagining the future, so what can it tell us about the past? Although none of us know what the future will be, you can extrapolate from what's happening in the present and so some people call science fiction “the literature of extrapolation”. It's as much about how people have imagined the future as it is about the future itself. Are there any periods about which sci-fi is particularly revealing? A crucial moment is 1945, because of the first use of the atom bomb. Science fiction authors had…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Cold, hard facts The excellent article by Robert Blackmore (Why We Need to Get Our Facts Straight, November) reminded me of the time I first got interested in debating and politics. In my final year in junior school in 1962 I read a history book on British heroes, and remember vividly how it painted Captain Scott as a brave man in his endeavour to reach the south pole. It was such an engaging story. So I was shocked when, at my secondary modern school two years later, our respected history teacher gave his opinion. Scott had been ill prepared, he said, and wrong to pursue the expedition that cost his life and those of others. I then realised the importance of trying to distinguish between opinion…

Mussolini's rise to power The ghost that hovers in the background of any discussion of Italian Fascism's impact on global politics is always Adolf Hitler. War and genocide are automatically assumed to be the hallmarks of Fascism. Indeed, in October 1922, Hitler, an unusual German rightist in admiring Italy, country of artistic glory, watched events in Rome. When, a year later, he tried to seize power in his Beer Hall putsch, he invoked an Italian model and was delighted when fans called him the “German Mussolini”. According to the historian Ian Kershaw, throughout the next decade, Hitler's workroom in the Brown House at Munich was “adorned with a monumental bust” of the Duce. Across Europe, Mussolini had plenty of other admirers. When, on 13 September 1923, the aristocratic General Miguel…

1 A toolbox for the afterlife Tutankhamun's burial equipment contained a range of ritual and practical tools to assist him in the afterlife. One toolbox contained 16 chisels, each of them made from a nugget or nuggets of meteoric iron weighing no more than four grams. The ancient Egyptians exploited their natural resources, but meteoric iron from the Libyan desert was a rare commodity: their word for “iron” was biayt, which also meant “miracle” or “wonder”. 2 A bed inspired by a god The potency of the cult of Osiris, god of the underworld and fertility, is expressed in one of the oddest grave goods: a nearly 2-metre-long wooden frame shaped to resemble the mummified Osiris with his twin-plumed headdress. Before the king's burial, the frame was filled with moist…

Daily life in ancient Egypt Delve further into the experiences of ordinary Egyptians, from pets to dental care. historyextra.com/daily-life-ancient-egypt Standing on the east bank of the Nile, the city of Akhet-aten (today known as Tell el-Amarna) was one of the jewels of Egypt's late 18th Dynasty. Built in the 14th century BC by the pharaoh Akhenaten as his great capital, where he could give full expression to his devotion to the solar disc, Aten, it was abandoned just a few years after his death in c1336 BC. We now know there was a darker side to this city of temples and palaces. That's because excavations of Akhet-aten's cemeteries in recent years have provided some of the most graphic evidence for the price Egypt's underclass paid for pharaonic indulgences. Malnutrition was…

2 November 1755 Archduchess Maria Antonia (the future Marie Antoinette) is born in Vienna, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and of Empress Maria Theresa. 21 April 1770 Marie Antoinette leaves Vienna for Versailles and married life with the heir to the French throne whom she has never met. 10 May 1774 The death of Louis XV from smallpox means that Marie Antoinette's husband, the dauphin, becomes Louis XVI, king of France (pictured right). 19 December 1778 Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's first child, a daughter, is born in Versailles. Marie Therese Charlotte survives the revolution and lives until 1851. 22 October 1781 Marie Antoinette gives birth to a son, Louis Xavier, the dauphin (heir to the throne). A sickly child, he will die in 1789. The queen's…

“What unites these commanders is self-belief. If they didn't have faith in themselves, no one else would” Spencer Mizen: It's safe to say that when writing a history of the Second World War, you're entering a pretty crowded field. So what does your new book, Command, bring to the party? Al Murray: One of the things that's striking about the Second World War is that the Allies get off to a terrible start. And then, at the end, they won a crushing, total victory. How on Earth did that happen in six years? That's the question I wanted to answer in this book. The answer people often give is: “Well, it's because of industry, and it's a war of engines.” That's basically what Stalin said. And, to an extent, he…

An Intimate History of Evolution: The Huxleys in Nature and Culture Allen Lane, 576 pages, £30 Over 60 years ago, the biologist Julian Huxley declared with alarming prescience that “Man's destiny is to be the sole agent for the future evolution of the planet”. Like his novelist brother Aldous, Julian enjoyed peering into the future. Among the many new terms he coined was “transhumanism”, the concept of enhancing human life artificially. This is currently provoking great controversy as emerging technologies – digital implantation, cryogenic preservation – are converting such visions into reality. Conversely, as a scion of the burgeoning Huxley dynasty, Julian shared his grandfather's fascination with the past. The ancestor he addressed fondly as “Grandpater” was Thomas Henry Huxley, the bulldog defender of Darwinian evolution who confronted Bishop Samuel…

Harold Wilson: The Winner W&N, 544 pages, £25 As the subtitle of this thorough, readable biography reminds us, Harold Wilson was an electoral asset to the Labour Party he led for 13 years, winning four general elections (albeit three of them by very narrow margins). Nick Thomas-Symonds – currently an opposition frontbencher – has previously written books on Aneurin Bevan and Clement Attlee. His mission here is to revise Wilson's reputation upwards, showing the former Labour leader as “a successful strategist, not a lucky tactician”. Born in Huddersfield during the First World War, the son of an industrial chemist and a former schoolteacher, Wilson was a precocious grammar-school boy who won an Oxford scholarship. Influenced by the socialist intellectual GDH Cole, he began an academic career before putting his skills…

VICTORIAN Mr Horniman's Walrus by Clare Paterson (Michael O'Mara Books, 272 pages, £20] Free-spirited family The Horniman family first rose to prominence when its patriarch, John, founded a tea empire in the 1820s. However, his descendants took more eccentric paths: his son, Frederick, bought a giant stuffed walrus to draw curious visitors to his Horniman Museum, and his granddaughter Annie became an occultist leader. In this readable biography, Clare Paterson explores the family's fascinating stories. FICTION Euphoria by Elin Cullhed; translated by Jennifer Hayashida (Canongate, 304 pages, £16.99) A life undone At the start of her compelling new novel, Elin Cullhed explains that she feels a kinship with Sylvia Plath: both are mothers to young children, married to fellow writers, and trying to carve out time for their own creative…

What connects “Bad” King John, Charles Dickens’ first novel and a wolf skulking under a hedgerow? All of them are woven into the history of the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds. Its sloping streets reflect its storied past: grand Georgian houses jostle against whitewashed, woodbeamed buildings, while at the bottom of the hill stands a ruined Norman abbey surrounded by glorious gardens. The town first gained importance during the Middle Ages as the resting place of Saint Edmund. Following a Viking raid, this ninth-century East Anglian king was reputedly shot with arrows then beheaded after he refused to renounce his Christianity. According to legend, his followers found his head under a hedgerow, guarded by a wolf; after they retrieved the head and brought it back to his bloodied body,…