Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i History Extra

“It had taken four long years, but on 6 June 1944 the Allies returned in strength to north-western Europe. Around 150,000 men landed on that day and many more would cross the Channel in subsequent weeks, hammering another nail into the coffin of the Third Reich. D-Day is a subject that we’ve covered numerous times in the magazine before, so for the 80th anniversary we’ve focused on two aspects that perhaps don’t always receive that much attention: the naval campaign in the waters close to Normandy, and the airborne troops who arrived in the early hours to prepare the ground for the infantry that followed. Historians Nick Hewitt and Saul David will guide you through these dramatic events, beginning on page 20. And if you’d like to take the story…

THE CONVERSATION “Gurdip Singh Chaggar’s death shook the community deeply” Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 whose history series include Three Pounds in My Pocket. She is also the author of Partition Voices: Untold British Stories (Bloomsbury, 2019) IN THE LATE SPRING OF 1976 AN 18-YEAR-OLD boy was walking at night in the Southall area of London near the Victory pub, just opposite the popular Dominion Theatre. He never made it home. The following day, Suresh Grover came across a pool of blood outside the pub. He asked the police officer standing by what happened and was told someone had died the night before. The policeman added: “It was just an Asian.” That young man was Gurdip Singh Chaggar. He was stabbed to death. There’s…

17-24 August 1943 The Quebec Conference (codenamed ‘Quadrant’) takes place in Canada. Allied leaders decide that the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe, Operation Overlord, will begin with an assault landing in Normandy. 25 October 1943 Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (right) is appointed Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force. 28 February 1944 Ramsay issues the Naval Operation Plan for Operation Neptune – the initial assault phase of Operation Overlord. 28 April 1944 Nearly 750 men are killed in a German E-boat attack at Slapton Sands, Devon, during Exercise Tiger – one of the final rehearsals for the seaborne invasion. 25 May 1944 Operation Neptune officially begins at 23:30. Ramsay’s sealed orders are opened and military holding camps on the south coast of England are closed off. 6 June 1944 The Allied invasion of…

OPERATION COLOSSUS 10-12 February 1941 X Troop explodes into action The first British airborne operation of the war, Colossus tasked 36 officers and men of X Troop, 11th Special Air Service (later 1st Parachute) Battalion with parachuting into southern Italy and blowing up the Tragino aqueduct that provided water for the whole province of Apulia. They succeeded, though all 36 were captured as they tried to escape (and one, an Italian, was shot as a traitor). While the mission did not achieve its strategic objective of discouraging Italy from fighting a war on two fronts – in Albania and north Africa – it was a tactical and moral victory, and proved the worth of Britain’s fledgling airborne force. OPERATION FRESHMAN 19/20 November 1942 Gliding into trouble Operation Freshman was a…

“Welcome to Catland.” So begins this beautifully illustrated, wide-reaching, surprising and often quite moving exploration of the place of our enigmatic feline companions in the modern world. It is much more than a series of encounters with our whiskered friends. The book centres on a rather tragic figure: Louis Wain. A renowned British artist, his depictions of cats in human-like scenarios featured in adverts, on postcards, on Christmas cards – and much more besides – across the years where the Victorian age gave way to a sparkling new century. Our first encounter, however, with Wain is an unexpected one. We find ourselves in a pauper’s lunatic asylum in the mid-1920s, meeting him once his mind had been lost in the shadows of mental illness. Kathryn Hughes traces Wain’s life from…

DIARY By Jonathan Wright, Danny Bird and Eleanor Barnett EXPLORE Orkney, Scotland TRAVEL Granada, Spain EXHIBITION Fashion icon What’s the first symbol that comes to mind when you think about Japan? Mount Fuji? Cherry blossom? Or, perhaps, it’s that quintessentially Japanese robe: the kimono. V&A Dundee’s latest exhibition traces the evolution of the kimono over the past 400 years, exploring its enduring sartorial and cultural significance in Japan and across the world. Featuring rare 17th-century examples alongside designs by the likes of Alexander McQueen, the exhibition also examines the garment’s role in shaping modern street fashion, revealing how young Japanese creatives are using the kimono to pay homage to their country’s heritage. Other highlights, meanwhile, include a kimono worn by Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, plus a wealth of videos, paintings,…

Aztec imaginings From the power of magical gems to theories about death and the afterlife, the Aztec belief system is a fascinating one, as Camilla Townsend reveals by delving into the civilisation’s myths and legends. Writing on the wall In the 18th century, Britain was shaken up by a radical form of self-expression: graffiti. Madeleine Pelling explains what the boom in scratched missives and scribbled messages can reveal about everyday life in a turbulent age. Battles for recognition In our new five-part series, military historian James Holland answers questions about the most pivotal clashes of the Second World War – and considers what might have happened had things gone differently. This is Sparta Famed for its martial prowess and austere living, Sparta is remembered as one of the ancient world’s…

1. The Norse were coarse Our piece on Viking poetry highlights the great variety of this artform. I was particularly interested to discover that Viking poets sometimes hurled insults at each other through their verse (page 44). 2. Allied armadas Nick Hewitt’s article about the D-Day naval campaign reveals the sheer scale of the operation, including the staggering statistic that more than 7,000 Allied ships participated in it (page 26). 3. Late arrival In our newly expanded Q&A section I learned many fascinating things. I hadn’t known before, for example, that sweet oranges only arrived in Europe in the 16th century (page 36).…

LETTERS LETTER OF THE MONTH Having lived in Cumbria for years, I enjoyed the article on The Forgotten Kingdom (May). I was particularly interested in the comments about William Rufus’s army, because it relates to my favourite place on Earth. As you approach Buttermere, at the head of a valley into the Lake District, the road runs right beside Crummock Water. A fell projects out near to the water, making the road take a sharpish bend out of sight. In front of the fell is Bluebell valley. Legend has it that on hearing about the approach of William’s army in 1092, the local people hastened to destroy the existing road and build a side road in front of the jutting-out fell, in the hope that the army would be diverted into…

7,016 ships and major landing craft participated in Operation Neptune. Approximately 79 per cent of the vessels were either British or Canadian 195,701 naval personnel were involved in Operation Neptune 917 Allied ships and major landing craft were lost or seriously damaged between 6 and 30 June 1944 509 German mines, of all types, were swept in the Allied assault areas between 4 June and 3 July 1944 183,540 vehicles had been landed in the British and US sectors by 4 July 1944 – the day after Operation Neptune officially came to an end…

Accompanies the BBC Radio 4 series Being Roman with Mary Beard Romon emperors and aristocrats were great tourists. They were as keen as we are on visiting the famous sights of the Mediterranean world, and they brought home souvenirs by the bucket-load. The best guide we have to the appearance of the lost statue of the goddess Athena inside the Parthenon at Athens, an extraordinary creation in gold and ivory, comes in the stone copies made for travellers and tourists. These range from pricey, high-quality replicas to the ancient equivalent of fridge magnets. The most sought-after destination was Egypt, and the most alluring method of transport there was, as now, a Nile cruise. Julius Caesar holidayed on the river with Cleopatra. Half a century or so later, in AD 19,…

William Sharp (1855–1905) was a late Victorian author and mystic who wrote under his own name and as his female alter-ego, Fiona Macleod. Born in Paisley, Scotland, Sharp moved to London in his early twenties to pursue a career as a poet and art critic, before moving into magazine publishing. In 1892, he edited a oneoffperiodical called The Pagan Review, calling for the widespread adoption of neo-paganism, which he believed would abolish inequality between men and women. The author’s interest in gender fluidity would become more apparent by 1893, however, when he began writing as the Highlander Fiona Macleod, whose lyrical novels contributed to the birth of Britain’s Celtic Revival movement. Inspired by tales from Scottish folklore, Sharp’s work as Macleod was not only better reviewed than his previous output,…

How much do we know about the real Mary Read? We have the transcript of her crew’s 1720 trial, and she’s named in a proclamation from Nassau’s governor Woodes Rogers. Beyond that we’re in the hands of the (pseudonymous) Captain Charles Johnson, whose A General History of the Pyrates is a gloriously entertaining but fanciful account. All these gaps in the record might be a nightmare for a historian, but they’re a gift to a novelist. What drew you to Mary’s story? I defy anyone to read a summary of her life – raised as a boy, she was then a sailor, soldier and one of only two documented women pirates of piracy’s golden age – and not be entranced. How common was it for a woman to impersonate a…

Honoured with a statue in Westminster Abbey, the Polish Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe has become synonymous with the ideal of self-sacrifice. Imprisoned in Auschwitz during the Second World War, he volunteered to take the place of another man who had been sentenced to die. Less well known are the years he spent as a missionary in Japan, from 1930 to 1936. Here, Naoko Abe combines a telling of that story with Kolbe’s impact on two remarkable Japanese men. Tōmei Ozaki survived the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and went on to become a Franciscan friar. Masatoshi Asari became a revered cherry tree master, uncovering the mistreatment of Korean prisoners in Hokkaido and using his craft to teach children about the importance of nurturing life. Kolbe, Ozaki and Asari never met…

You travel to the Caribbean for your new series. What are the themes you explore? It was very much about trying to tell a little bit of the history of the Caribbean through my own family’s eyes, and bringing in what it means to be a black Briton. So, for instance, my grandfather on my dad’s side, Eugene, worked in Cuba. He probably sailed from Jamaica up to Guantanamo Bay, and initially worked within the American zone because he wouldn’t have spoken Spanish. That’s a direct human connection to me, but also a jumping-off point to tell a bit of the history of Cuba, exploring Castro and communism, food and salsa, and Ernest Hemingway. Did you have a sense of the past playing into the present as you travelled around?…

The islands cluster close to the Scottish mainland, but tourists disembarking in Stromness harbour, or at the airport just outside the island capital of Kirkwall, sense they have arrived somewhere different to other parts of Scotland. Orkney – visitors are politely advised not to refer to ‘the Orkneys’ – has always been a world to itself. For centuries, inhabitants routinely called it ‘the country of Orkney’, and the largest of its 70-odd islands has always simply been known as ‘the Mainland’. Evidence of the past here is inescapable. Over millennia, people farmed the same stretches of fertile coastal land, a lived environment defined by the ubiquity of the sea. The word usually used to describe Orkney is ‘remote’, but remoteness is relative, and ‘centres’ can relocate over time. The earliest…

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones “I don’t think the story of the Cleopatras is one of seduction per se. This is a story about women harnessing their power in a very patriarchal system.” Lloyd discusses his new book on the seven queens who shared the name Cleopatra on page 66 Nicola Clark “Every Tudor queen had ladies-in-waiting. As Henry VIII changed wives, and changed the very fabric of the country’s structure, these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn’t exist before.” Nicola explores what life was like for the ladies-in-waiting to the six wives of Henry VIII on page 54 Saul David “The history of British airborne forces in the Second World War is distorted by the disaster at Arnhem. But there were also many successes such as Operation Tonga,…

“It’s packed with jaw-dropping material you never see in mainstream galleries” Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series. His latest book is In the Footsteps of Du Fu (Simon & Schuster, 2023). You’ll find him on X at MichaelWoodMV A WONDERFUL EXHIBITION HAS JUST CLOSED at the Tate Britain in London: Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990. Exploring British feminism, the show ranges from punk and protest, reproductive rights and the Greenham Common anti-nuclear protests to the Aids epidemic and the formation of the British black arts movement. It offers a wonderfully affecting and wide-ranging portrayal of social history through art, photographs, film, posters, magazines and other material objects. We may enjoy blockbusters on Picasso…

Thunderous success The phrase ‘steal my thunder’, meaning to appropriate someone else’s idea, originates in 18th-century theatre. A 1709 tragedy, Appius and Virginia, by the dramatist John Dennis failed at the box office but his creation of a machine to imitate thunder was a great success. A later production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth used his invention. Dennis was sitting in the audience. He stood up and furiously shouted: “Damn them!… they will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder.” Olympic one-hit wonder The last event in the first modern Olympic Games, in Athens in 1896, was a cycling race that lasted 12 hours, beginning at 5am and ending at 5pm. Seven competitors set out to ride round and round the track at the Neo Phaliron Velodrome but only…

Matt Elton: The fact that there were multiple Cleopatras perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me — but it did. Why do you think the existence of the other Cleopatras is overlooked? Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones: It’s because of the dominance of Cleopatra VII – the Cleopatra, the indigo-eyed, Liz Taylor Cleopatra. That’s who we think of when we think of Cleopatra. The way in which her identity has been constructed has led us to see her as a lone wolf, a unique woman in the ancient world. The idea of one woman stepping out of the patriarchy to achieve amazing things has been very persuasive. But she was not a lone wolf at all. There was a whole family of women behind her who formed the template for what…

In November 1682, bodies pressed into Westminster Hall for the trial of Lord Grey, who stood accused of seducing his teenage sister-in-law Henrietta Berkeley into “whoredom and adultery”. Those hoping for theatrics were not disappointed: she arrived, visibly pregnant, declaring she had eloped of her own volition. Her father, an earl, claimed ownership of her; he was in for a shock. For playwright, sometime spy and milk punch aficionado Aphra Behn – England’s first professional female writer – the affair inspired a bestselling, thinly veiled work of fiction entitled Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. Lisa Hilton uses this momentary collision of lives as the springboard for a sparkling and eye-opening account of their 17th-century world. One small but important quibble, which should be addressed at the start: the…

We are all familiar with nostalgia and its melancholic longing for the halcyon days of yore – and knowing that we’re spinning the past to suit our needs in the present in many ways only heightens the bittersweet taste. In this fascinating book, Agnes Arnold-Forster sets herself two goals: she tracks the changing meanings of nostalgia since the invention of the word by a Swiss doctor named Johannes Hofer in 1688; and she explores the histories of how and why people have become nostalgic ever since. Arnold-Forster guides us through the intriguing ways in which the term increasingly came to refer to a longing for lost time rather than lost place. And she explores the shift from disease to emotion in the ways in which nostalgia was discussed. She introduces…

RECIPE Sowans ELEANOR BARNETT extols the virtues of a traditional Scottish ferment that can be used to make a porridge, a pudding and a probiotic drink Fermented food is a fast-growing industry in the UK. Ever since the pandemic’s risen sourdough loaves, many of us have rediscovered the powers of microbes to preserve food, to add new, exciting flavours to it, and to boost our overall gut health. You will doubtless have heard of Korean kimchi, German sauerkraut and Chinese kombucha, but while undertaking research for my new book, Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation, I came across a less familiar – yet native – ferment called sowans, a traditional Scottish food created by fermenting oats. A way of extracting the most value from every available food source,…

IN PROFILE Eglantyne Jebb was a British social reformer who founded the charity Save the Children with her sister Dorothy Buxton in 1919, initially to raise money for hungry children in Germany and Austria following the First World War. She went on to become one of the world’s most influential champions of children’s rights and drafted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, and adopted in an extended form by the United Nations in 1959. “Jebb selflessly dedicated her life and defied convention, and even the law, to save children’s lives after seeing the effects of famine” When did you first hear about Jebb? I’ve been a Save the Children ambassador for over a decade and have had the…