Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i History Extra

"When we think of the First World War – in Britain at least – the images that come to mind tend to be those of the western front: from the desolate, muddy battlefields to the privations of the trenches. But there was another, equally titanic, campaign taking place in the east. In Nick Lloyd’s cover feature he guides us through the eastern front as Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia vied for supremacy across huge swathes of eastern Europe. That’s on page 22. This issue is published in mid-March, with Women’s History Month in full swing. We’re marking the occasion with two fascinating pieces on different aspects of women’s lives from the past. On page 56 you’ll find Sarah Gristwood’s enlightening survey of female diarists. As well as profiling some of the…

"In our current age of fake news, myths about the past are taking wider hold" IN A FAMOUS AND OFTEN-QUOTED SCENE IN George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith wakes up one day in the Ministry of Truth and realises the fundamental principle of history: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Perhaps less familiar are the words that follow: “Past events… have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it…”. It’s…

1 Ritual killers Only the elite wielded these curved (or ‘Khepesh’) swords – due to the amount of bronze used in their manufacture. The majority may have been reserved for ritual executions and displays of wealth rather than combat. Only a small number survive today. 2 Mobile war The Egyptians did not invent chariots, but adapted the heavier near eastern examples, making them lighter and more manoeuvrable (like the one below, depicted in Tutankhamun’s tomb). Each chariot had a driver and a shield-bearer. 3 Lethal combination By Thutmosis III’s time, the Egyptians used composite bows (like the one wielded by Ramesses II, above), which had been invented in the near east. These were made from different materials laminated together, and were very powerful. 4 Body guard Most Late Bronze Age…

On the evening of 7 May 1945, Lancashire housewife Nella Last and her husband, Will, gathered around the radio with their neighbours. They agreed that if the announcer said the king was to speak, they knew that the big day had come at last. When, instead, the announcer, “said so unemotionally that tomorrow was to be VE Day, and that Churchill was to speak at three o’clock”, the group just gazed at each other. They felt, recalled Last in her diary, “no pulse quicken, no sense of thankfulness or uplift, of any kind”. But despite the sense of an anti-climax, Last still felt that she had to find a way to mark the occasion – no matter how small. “I rose placidly and put on the kettle and went through…

Matt Elton: Your book is based on interviews with a group of men from the London district of Brixton. Who did you speak to, and how did you meet? Jason Okundaye: I was researching rates of HIV among Black gay men in Britain, and part of that involved exploring archive material about Black men who have sex with men. There didn’t turn out to be much of that material, but one name – Marc Thompson – kept coming up, so I knew I had to get in touch with him. We met, and talked about his life in Brixton and the area’s history. And through Marc I met more and more people, until eventually I had a big cast of characters: a group of Black gay men aged between 50…

A remarkable account of the early history of female liberation in Britain, this intricate story weaves together the many luminaries and intellectuals of 18th-century life. We meet Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, Ann Yearsley and Catherine Macaulay, each a woman whose name should be as well-known as Annie Besant and Mary Wollstonecraft in the ongoing fight for female equality. Susannah Gibson argues that learned women – the Bluestockings – were a rarity in the 18th century, when female education was restricted to needlework and the marriage market. Yet they burst out of the pages of her book with unmistakable glee. Aided by Gibson’s use of first-hand accounts from the women themselves, their complexity and individuality shine through. Montagu, the ‘Queen of the Blues’, brings together artists, authors and politicians in salons…

In the red Any mention of debtors’ prisons immediately makes me think of Charles Dickens. His father’s incarceration devastated the family – a humiliation later immortalised by the writer in Little Dorrit. But, as Alexander Wakelam explained on the podcast, Dickens’ experience was far from unusual. In fact, imprisonment for unpaid bills was a common part of life in a society built almost entirely on credit. But was the archaic system actually successful in reclaiming funds and deterring debtors? You’ll have to listen to find out. historyextra.com/debtors-prisons-pod Captured in the castle Not many places can rival Alcatraz’s reputation for escape attempts, but Castle Colditz could certainly give it a run for its money. As author Ben Macintyre told us, this Gothic schloss witnessed more escape attempts than any other WW2…

Novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz chooses IN PROFILE Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins was the first, great architect of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War. After being awarded the Military Cross for his actions at the battle of the Somme in 1916, he participated in British military operations in both Russia and Ireland. He later championed irregular warfare tactics, and took part in a comman-do-style operation in Norway in 1940 before taking the helm at the SOE. "Gubbins realised that warfare had changed, and that you couldn’t really wage war by gentlemanly methods anymore" When did you first hear about Colin Gubbins? When I was writing Foyle’s War I became very interested in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Gubbins was the SOE’s operations and training director, and is said…

1. Ewe must be joking While our piece on Victorian animal cruelty contains many sad tales, it also features some quirkier titbits. I’m desperate to find out more about the “sheep fond of practical jokes” (page 41). 2. Back to Earth with a bump I was intrigued to read, in this month’s Q&A, that following his pioneering space flight, Yuri Gagarin’s subsequent form of transport was a Russian peasant’s horse and cart (page 55). 3. Fertility club An interesting side note in our Explore piece on the memorable Cerne Abbas Giant is that in 2010 the ONS reported that local women had the highest birth rate in the country (page 84).…

THE CONVERSATION "This shows how one individual can change the course of history" I HAVE SPENT A LOT OF TIME OVER THE PAST year interviewing eyewitnesses and reading archival material relating to the 1943 Bengal famine. It has all been part of the research for my new BBC Radio 4 series Three Million, which I wrote about in last month’s issue of BBC History Magazine. The famine – which took place in British India in the middle of the Second World War – was devastating, and through my investigations I told some of the stories of those who helped ensure that the crisis was reported. One of the people I got to know quite well when researching the series was a man named Ian Stephens (1903–84), who served as the…

In June 1849, Tempest Fletcher, a greengrocer from York Street, London, appeared before magistrates charged with “cutting and maiming a dog of the St Bernard breed, the property of Mr Gibbs, a gentleman residing in Plummer’s-row, City-road”. According to Mr Thomas, secretary to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the dog had “stopped in front of the defendant’s shop for the purpose of nature”, whereupon Fletcher, “who was trimming some rhubarb with a knife, rushed up to it and ripped it up from the flank to the tail”. The resulting injury was horrific, occasioning “a sickening sensation, and cries of ‘shame, shame’” when the wounded dog was exhibited in court. Convinced that Fletcher’s conduct had been “very cruel”, magistrate Mr Tywhitt ruled in favour of…

Sei Shōnagon Japanese poet Long before the diary format was familiar in the western world, Heian period Japan (AD 794– 1185) saw an explosion of what was in many ways a form of diary writing. One of its most notable exponents was poet and court attendant Sei Shōnagon (c966–1017/1025), who commented on the manners and mores of the era, as well as the natural world around her. “On the third day of the Third Month I like to see the sun shining bright and calm in the spring sky,” she writes in one entry. “Now is the time when the peach trees come into bloom, and what a sight it is!” Lady Margaret Hoby Protestant writer An Elizabethan gentlewoman reared in the strict Protestant tradition, Lady Margaret Hoby (1571–1633) is…

Was The Ghost Theatre inspired by real-life Elizabethans? It was inspired by a 1602 court case in which nobleman Henry Clifton accused the owner of the Blackfriars Theatre, Henry Evans, of kidnapping his son. The boy was snatched in the street to be a Blackfriars Boy, a child actor at the Blackfriars Theatre. The case intrigued me. Why were children being stolen? What impression of Elizabethan London did you want to create? I loved the sense I got from Elizabethan writers of how modern their London felt to them. It was filthy, crowded and vibrant, a crossroads for the world’s commerce and fashions, and every bit as faddy and eclectic as today’s city. What research did you do to help imagine your characters? I read as much as I could…

The countries you explore in the latest series of Bettany Hughes’ Treasures of the World – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia, Albania and Bulgaria – were all within the Soviet sphere. Do they represent unexplored territory in archaeological terms? There was a lot of archaeology in the Soviet era, but then there was a bit of a break as these countries found their liberty and independence. It’s now a glory period in many ways, because there are currently a lot of digs going on. And I think people in these countries are finding it incredibly nourishing that they’re now discovering their archaeology on their own terms. Estonia is further north than you’ve previously been before for the series. What do you see there? On the island of Saaremaa, off Estonia, we see…

Across 1 Western-most of the three ancient cities of Tripolitania, part of what is now Libya (8) 5 Ancient Egyptian god, representing both fertility and the afterlife (6) 10 Viral illness known to Hippocrates in the fifth century BC, now prevented by the MMRV vaccine (5) 11 Stronghold of the Spanish Republican cause until it fell to Franco’s forces in 1939 (9) 12 Julius and Ethel ___, US civilians executed in 1953 for passing atomic bomb secrets to the USSR (9) 13 RMS ___, the British mail steamer whose interception by the US in 1861 sparked a diplomatic incident (5) 14 ___ of Canterbury (d1109), whose ‘proof’ of God’s existence, still discussed today, is based on reason rather than experience (6) 16 West Sussex location of the castle founded by Roger de Montgomery in 1067 (7) 18 Ancient…

Sarah Gristwood “Exploring women’s diaries was like plunging into a rich sea of struggle, sex, spiky humour, adventure and agony. What struck me was how often the battles of the past echo those we still fight today.” Sarah Gristwood reveals what diaries can tell us about women’s lives on page 56 Jason Okundaye “There are lots of different fascinating complications around the growth of a Black gay nightlife space, but the fact that it began in people’s kitchens and living rooms is, I think, really quite incredible.” Jason Okundaye explores the social, sexual and political history of London’s Black gay community on page 66 Jackie Uí Chionna “When you find a secret letter in a file that says ‘I have been recruited for military intelligence work’, you have to follow…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Sharing the love I wanted to write in to say how moved I was by Hannah Skoda’s article on the history of breastfeeding (An Act of Love, February). I became a mum myself quite recently, and wasn’t ready for how breastfeeding can feel lonely, frustrating, beautiful and painful all at the same time. The tales of communities coming together to care for babies, particularly in times of peril, were wonderful to read, especially as so many people think parents of the past were less emotional or less attached to their children. It’s also heartbreaking knowing that many women were forced into acting as wet nurses to the detriment, or even the loss, of their own babies. We live in a time in which women are still…

1 Elizabeth was certainly no feminist Although she is often hailed as a feminist icon, Elizabeth I was deeply conventional in her views of the female sex. In the most famous of her speeches, delivered as the Armada threatened England’s shores, she regretfully observed: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman.” She made many similar remarks during the course of her long reign and constantly referred to herself in masculine terms to assert her authority. For her contemporaries, this neatly explained the otherwise nonsensical idea that a woman was ruling over them – and doing a damned fine job of it: Elizabeth must have the body of a woman, but the mind of a man. There was even a rumour that she was really a…

An unlikely tail A 19th-century Cornish clergyman once impersonated a mermaid to see whether people could be fooled into believing such a creature existed. The eccentric Robert Hawker donned a wig, covered his legs in oilskin and swam out to a rock in the sea where he sang as he combed his ‘hair’. His performance continued for several nights and crowds gathered on the cliffs to witness it. The hoax was only exposed when the ‘mermaid’ began to sing ‘God Save the King’. The war, on drugs During the early months of the First World War, the department store Harrods sold gift boxes for soldiers which included morphine and a vial of cocaine, together with a syringe and spare needles. Neither drug was illegal at the time and each leather-bound…

"The German government was completely unaware that she’d been breaking its most secret codes for decades" In November 1962, at St John’s Parish Church, I Hampstead, the funeral took place of a 72-yearold retired civil servant named Emily Anderson. An apparently unremarkable, rather shy woman, one neighbour tellingly observed that she was “very self-contained, and very discreet, and not interested in useless chatter”. There were many among the congregation who could testify to the usefulness of those characteristics in the secret double life that this former professor of German had lived since abandoning academia to enter what was euphemistically known as “a division of the Foreign Office”. Yet the evidence was there, hiding in plain sight, for laid side-by-side on her coffin were the two significant awards she received during…

Human beings have existed on this planet for many millennia. But only in the 19th century was the startling truth about the history of the world and our origins gradually uncovered. The story of how these profound changes in our understanding unfolded is sadly not as well known today as it should be. Enter Michael Taylor’s new book, Impossible Monsters. As Taylor sets out, Charles Darwin did not present the theory of evolution to a public that was horrified at the idea that the world was not 6,000 years old and that living things had not been created by God all at once. Educated people already knew this. Geology and palaeontology were the hottest sciences in the early 19th century. The cumulative investigation of the Earth – and an ever…

“I followed paths so familiar that I knew where the puddles would be.” This is Alexandra Harris admitting, midway in her journey through life, that the best path took her back to West Sussex, where she was born and grew up. Harris’s intention in returning to her birthplace was crystal clear: not only to celebrate the beauty of what she calls “a fairly obscure part of rural England”, but also to reawaken its past. And that is exactly what she does in this delightful book, deploying a variety of sources – from local customs and habits to record books and churches – in order to bring to life a cast of known and unknown characters who occupied or visited this area over the centuries. Certainly, William Blake deserves his chapter.…

Across the rolling downs of southern England, a shining, white giant strides over the Dorset hills. The Cerne Abbas Giant is a memorable figure whose fame hides his mysterious origins. Cut into the chalk and measuring 55 metres high, he is best known for his proud and upstanding nature. Couples looking for a fertility boost have been known to climb the hill to have a chat with the giant (and perhaps there is indeed something in the water: back in 2010 the Office for National Statistics reported that local women had the highest birth rates in the country). His image has also inspired artists over the decades, appearing in everything from Eric Ravilious’s watercolours to Grayson Perry’s motorbike leathers. For a giant who famously bears all, he has kept many…

Across 1 Piracy 4 Philippa 10 Lancaster 11 Chirk 12 Danelaw 13 Iceland 14 Nepos 16 Graf Spee 19 Corvette 20 Verdi 21 Linkman 23 Morocco 25 Ducat 26 Elizabeth 27 Space Age 28 Levant Down 1 Paladin 2 Ronin 3 Charles IV 5 Hermitage 6 Locke 7 Privateer 8 Akkad 9 Stow 15 Phoenicia 16 Gutenberg 17 Savernake 18 Pinochet 21 Ludus 22 Motte 23 Meir 24 Cheka Four winners of The Savage Storm by James Holland Jitka Peacock, Tunbridge Wells; Mike Shaw, Nottingham; John Wilkins, Wolverhampton; Penelope Fisher, Wilmslow…