BBC History Magazine 2014-03

WHEN A NAZI LEADER CAME TO LONDON MAGAZINE

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An insider’s account of the Tudor court

Alternative histories What if Napoleon had won?

The myths of Mao’s Long March

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s a e s e h t d le u r s g n i How thceretsVthiakt allowed them to crush their enemies The naval se

STEP INTO YOUR PAST

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, 2007

A view of a trilithon being re-erected during Lt Col Hawley’s excavations and renovations.

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, 1919-20

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MARCH 2014

ON THE COVER: FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: JANE SEYMOUR – AKG IMAGES. ANNE OF CLEVES – BRIDGEMAN, CATHERINE HOWARD – BRIDGEMAN, CATHERINE PARR – NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, KATHERINE OF ARAGON – ART ARCHIVE, ANNE BOLEYN – NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY. VIKING SHIP: BRIDGEMAN. THIS PAGE: JENI NOTT/HELEN ATKINSON

WELCOME Readers of Wolf Hall will already be familiar with Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador for the Holy Roman Empire, who spent many years in the court of Henry VIII. His privileged position meant that he was able to get to know all six of Henry’s wives, and thankfully for the modern historian he recorded his observations of each of them. Lauren Mackay has been studying these writings and has compiled some fascinating portraits of Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn et al for this issue. You’ll find them on page 43. This month the British Museum launches a major Vikings exhibition, which includes the longest Viking warship ever discovered. Measuring 37 metres, it surpasses even the Mary Rose in length. The ship is a reminder of the Vikings’ maritime prowess, but what was it about the Vikings that made them such formidable seafarers? That’s the question that Gareth Williams, curator of the British Museum’s exhibition, seeks to answer on page 24. Here’s another question: what might Europe have been like if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? Or how about if Franz Ferdinand had survived? These kinds of scenarios are being discussed ever more thanks to the trend for counterfactual histories. Richard J Evans offers his opinions on them in the essay, on page 36. Also this month, we are kicking off our 2014 events programme with two days in Bristol. Themed around the Vikings and the First World War, they promise to be fascinating events. I look forward to seeing many of you there. Rob Attar Editor

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CONTACT US Richard J Evans Recently, I’ve been struck by the increasing numbers of books and essays exploring what might have happened in the past if one small change had altered the timeline. The more I’ve read these ‘what-if’ histories, the more I’ve become convinced that they present many more problems than they seem to at first sight.

P Read Richard’s essay on page 36

Juliet Gardiner To most British people the Blitz still epitomises the Second World War when the home front was in the front line of German attacks. Many towns and cities were devastated by continual aerial bombardment for eight long months P Find out about Juliet’s visit to Chislehurst caves on page 80

Edward Stourton Journeys can bring history alive, and the Long March was both an amazing journey and a hugely significant historical event. The Long March is a phrase we all use, but how many of us really know why it happened or what it was like? I wanted to discover the reality behind modern China’s founding myth. P Edward writes about Mao’s Long March on page 56

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MARCH 2014

CONTENTS Features

Every month 7 HISTORY NOW 7 The latest history news 10 Backgrounder: bad weather 12 Lessons from history 15 Past notes

16 ANNIVERSARIES 20 LETTERS 23 MICHAEL WOOD’S VIEW

63 BOOKS

36 Alternative histories find Britain outside the EU

Experts review new releases, plus Michael Broers discusses his latest book on Napoleon

75 TV & RADIO

24 How the Vikings ruled the seas Gareth Williams on the maritime skills that enabled the Vikings to dominate medieval Europe

30 A land without kings Philip Parker explains how Viking settlers in Iceland created a new form of rule

36 The past that never happened Richard J Evans considers the current vogue for ‘what if?’ histories

43 A Tudor fly on the wall Lauren Mackay offers a different perspective on Henry VIII’s six wives, based on the writings of a court insider

51 When a Nazi leader came to London Julie Gottlieb and Matthew Stibbe describe a 1939 visit from ‘Hitler’s perfect woman’ to the British capital

56 Long March myths Edward Stourton shows how Mao exploited the legend of the communists’ epic trek

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75 The pick of March’s programmes 78 History on film: drones

80 OUT & ABOUT 80 History explorer: Juliet Gardiner on the Second World War home front 84 Ten things to do in March 86 Ye olde travel guide: Amsterdam 1648

89 MISCELLANY 89 Q&A and quiz 92 Prize crossword

TOPFOTO/NPG/AKG/DREAMSTIME

Nazi women’s leader Gertrud ScholtzKlink pictured with Hitler. Discover the story of her 1939 trip to Britain on page 51

98 MY HISTORY HERO David Bailey on Alfred Hitchcock

60 SUBSCRIBE Free one month trial* to the digital edition *The trial period is for 30 days and after your trial period your subscription will continue at £2.99 per month. All offers, prices and discounts are correct at the time of being published and may be subject to change

USPS Identification Statement BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE (ISSN 1469-8552) (USPS 024-177) March 2014 is published 13 times a year under license from BBC Worldwide by Immediate Media Company Bristol Ltd, 9th Floor, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN, UK. Distributed in the US by Circulation Specialists, Inc., 2 Corporate Drive, Suite 945, Shelton CT 06484-6238. Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, CT and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, PO Box 37495, Boone, IA 50037-0495.

43 “Upon meeting Katherine Parr he could not have been more relieved” BBC

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azine

56 How did the reality of the Long March match up to Mao’s version?

30 When Iceland became the scene for a democratic experiment

24 “ONE OF THE MOST ENDURING IMAGES OF THE VIKING AGE IS THE LONGSHIP WITH ITS DRAGON HEAD” BBC History Magazine

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The latest news, plus Backgrounder 10 Lessons from history 12

HISTORY NOW Have a story? Please email Matt Elton at [email protected]

New evidence emerges of the brutal reality of Aztec sacrifice

GETTY IMAGES

A study of remains discovered in Mexico suggests that the Aztecs routinely beheaded, burned and boiled their sacrificial victims. David Keys reports

he often gruesome stories told by European invaders of the sacrificial rituals carried out in Aztec society may have had more basis in truth than previously thought, new research suggests. Experts in Mexico have examined the fragmented skeletal remains of as many as 138 sacrificial victims who were killed between the 14th and early 16th centuries – almost certainly on top of the main pyramid temple in the heart of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. The osteological analysis indicates that their fates may have matched the grisly

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nature of the descriptions that featured in the accounts of Spanish colonists: at least 10 per cent had their flesh removed within the temple’s ceremonial complex. Cut marks caused by this procedure were found on shin bones, upper leg bones, vertebrae, pelvic bones, skulls and jaws. The research also reveals that many of the bones had been subjected to intense heat, either by being burned or boiled. An estimated 20 per cent of the remains at the site showed evidence of burn marks. The study, carried out by archaeologist Gabino Lopéz Arenas, is of particular

Blood rites An Aztec sacrificial ritual at the Temple of Tenochtitlan, as depicted in a 1579 manuscript by Dominican friar Diego Duran. New evidence suggests that such brutality may not have been too far from reality

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History now / News

TECHNOLOGY

Motion capture recreates fighters at Bannockburn he stories of people involved in the battle of Bannockburn are to be recreated in a new 3D video project. The Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre, which is set to open near Stirling on 1 March, will mark the 700th anniversary of the pivotal Scottish victory against the English, fought in June 1314. Set up by the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland, the centre will feature a virtual re-enactment of what the experience may have been like for its combatants. Combining three-dimensional scans of the faces of six modern-day volunteers with motion capture recordings of the movements of actors, experts filmed scenes dramatising the lives of real individuals from the armies of both Robert the Bruce and Edward II. Among the figures whose lives have been traced from contemporary records are Dafydd ap Cynwrig, a Welsh professional archer, and Sir James Douglas, a Scottish knight who held a grudge against Edward I. David McAllister, battle of Bannockburn project director at the National Trust for Scotland, said: “This is the first time that motion capture technology has been used behind the scenes at a visitor attraction. The new centre will immerse visitors in a realistic medieval experience, vividly recreated in 3D, to both educate and engage audiences.” Matt Elton

Mapping Mexico The Aztec altepetl, or city-state, of Tenochtitlan, as shown on a 16th-century map commissioned by Hernán Cortés. Spanish accounts of Aztec life have often been treated with suspicion by later historians

importance because it substantially increases the body of academic knowledge of Aztec rituals associated with human sacrifice. Indeed, the newly released data is likely to prompt archaeologists and historians to re-examine surviving texts, many of which were created by early Spanish invaders. The more lurid claims featured in these records have previously been treated with caution by some scholars, because it is thought that a desire to play up the supposed ‘moral’ dimension of Spanish repression and enslavement made conquistadors and clergy eager to paint the Aztecs in as negative a manner as possible. Key among such documents are the 16th-century accounts of the Fransiscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, most notably in his Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España (‘General History of the Things of New Spain’). According to his version of events, many of the victims were captives, thought to have been prisoners of war seized in battle, as well as women and children. At many of the festivals of the Aztec

“The osteological and other evidence helps us to develop a greater understanding of the Aztec world” 8

ritual calendar, captives were taken to the temple for the sacrificial rituals. According to Sahagún’s accounts, they were then stretched out on their backs on a sacrificial stone at the top of the pyramid. Their chests were cut open with flint knives in order to extract their hearts, which were held aloft by the priests as offerings to the sun god. Other early Spanish colonial sources suggest that, at some stage after being killed, many of the victims were decapitated. This claim appears to be borne out by Lopéz Arenas’s research, which points to the remains of almost all of the victims showing evidence of having had their heads removed. Theories that these would then have been displayed on giant ‘skull racks’ in the temple complex appear to be supported by a series of archaeological investigations in Mexico City, including excavations carried out there over recent months. This latest dig has found three human skulls featuring holes where it is thought they would have been attached to such a rack. A spokesman for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said: “Lopez Arenas’s research sheds remarkable new light on Aztec sacrificial and religious practices by revealing the ways in which the bodies of the victims were treated. The osteological and other evidence is of substantial importance, and helps us to develop a greater understanding of the Aztec world.”

One of the project volunteers with her digitally created counterpart from the battle of Bannockburn

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BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/NATIONAL TRUST FOR SCOTLAND

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WHAT WE’VE LEARNED THIS MONTH…

Mesolithic man had dark skin and blue eyes American troops in the ruins of the town of Bensheim in Hesse, Germany, 1945. New research explores the causes, and consequences, of looting by US soldiers SECOND WORLD WAR

TOPFOTO/CSIC

Revealed: why US soldiers looted Germany in WW2 N ostalgia, profit, revenge: these are just some of the factors that caused American GIs to loot German civilian property in the final months of the Second World War, a new study suggests. In the research, published in the War in History journal, Seth Givens from Ohio University studied memoirs and oral history accounts created by US soldiers to categorise four main reasons that the servicemen gave for taking personal possessions. Firstly, Givens concluded, necessity often led GIs to loot equipment that they hadn’t been issued with, such as clothing or binoculars. Other items were taken home as souvenirs, while more enterprising individuals realised that they could make money by selling property to other soldiers behind the front line. Finally, a desire to punish individual Germans for the collective behaviour of their nation – for example, in uprooting Allied soldiers from their prewar lives – led to instances of so-called ‘revenge looting’. The study also explores the political consequences of the looting. Although no surveys were carried out to assess the exact scale of the looting, Dwight D Eisenhower – then supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force – feared that the poor behaviour of soldiers could

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make the postwar rebuilding of Germany more difficult. Givens told BBC History Magazine: “Looting in enemy territory could have given the German people something to rally around, complicating the democratisation of Nazi Germany and ultimately dragging down the occupation before it even got off the ground. For centuries, soldiers were paid with whatever loot they could carry. The Second World War ended that, for a variety of reasons – none more important than efforts of nations to govern the political aspects of war.” These efforts, Givens’ study suggests, were not entirely successful in 1945. Although Eisenhower’s commanders issued orders that looting was not to be tolerated, they ignored the fact that the officers who were to be enforcing these orders were just as likely to be involved in looting as the men under their control. Gary Sheffield, professor of war studies at the University of Wolverhampton, said: “I find the argument in this article all too credible. Looting had long been part of warfare, and there is plenty of evidence that soldiers of the British 2nd Army were behaving in the same way as their US counterparts as they advanced through Germany in 1945. It seems that sometimes, however, soldiers were blamed for looting carried out by civilians.” ME

A hunter-gatherer who lived 7,000 years ago had blue eyes and dark skin and hair, according to genetic analysis of his remains. The study, led by a team from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona and published in Nature, extracted DNA from the tooth of a skeleton found in Spain in 2006. Its results have caused debate as many experts believed that early inhabitants of Europe had fair complexions.

Pelvic bone may be Alfred the Great’s A bone unearthed from the site of Hyde Abbey in Winchester in 1999 and stored in the city’s museum may be part of the pelvis of Alfred the Great or his son Edward, according to experts. DNA analysis of the fragments, which was not available at the time that the find was made due to a lack of funding, was carried out after remains located at a dig, also in Winchester, were found to date from 400 years after Alfred died.

Japanese WW2 ‘holdout’ officer died aged 91 A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender his post in the Philippines for 29 years after the Second World War ended has died at the age of 91. Hiroo Onoda remained in the jungle on Lubang Island until 1974 because he did not want to accept that the war had ended, only returning as a hero to Japan after an official delegation including his former commander came to relieve him of his duties. Stay up to date with the latest stories at historyextra.com/news

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History now / Backgrounder

The weather

Have politicians always felt the heat when the rain falls? As the government faces criticism for its reaction to this winter’s widespread flooding, Chris Bowlby examines how Britons have coped with extreme weather events in the past

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There was much grumbling, and, says Kynaston, “the freeze did seem to push the popularity of the Attlee government down for a while”. As the snow melted, however, the mood warmed and government popularity “quite quickly reverted to broadly the long-term pattern”. Despite the huge expansion of state activity during and after the Second World War, Kynaston cautions against the idea that everyone was assuming that the new welfare state would protect them in every area of life. When it came to weather, moreover, “fatalism ran very deep”. However Georgina Endfield, historical geographer at Nottingham University, points to the research of the writer Philip Eden and others suggesting that in the last half century or so “people are increasingly looking for somebody to blame, whereas in the past they might have just got on with it, dealt with it and adapted to it accordingly”. New technology and techniques have heightened expectations. There have been, Endfield adds, widespread developments in “buffer systems – flood protection funded by taxpayers’ money”. People have come to assume that “these things should work and protect us. When they don’t, there’s a

“‘People now look for somebody to blame, whereas in the past they might have just got on with it’”

Properties in Shepperton, Middlesex are besieged by flood water from the river Thames, 11 January 2014. Some parts of England have just experienced their wettest January on record

tendency to ask of politicians: ‘what are you doing with our money?’” Professor Endfield notes too the spread of insurance – and assumptions that outside help would “recoup the costs and get everything back to normal”. The growth of insurance also marked the end point of a long mental journey away from a world in which people viewed extreme weather as divine intervention. Even then, though, some kind of ecclesiastical assistance was sought. As Keith Thomas describes in Religion and the Decline of Magic, 16th-century residents of Canterbury ran to the church for holy water to sprinkle on their houses as protection against lightning, while European theologians debated the usefulness of holy bells as a remedy against thunder. That mentality has not been lost entirely. Insurance policies still refer defensively to ‘Acts of God’. And the idea of weather as divine punishment – central to Christian

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REX FEATURES

he storms and floods of recent months have intensified the traditional British obsession with the weather. But they have triggered media and political turbulence too, with politicians pressed to promise people more protection from the consequences, and to debate the extent to which events are part of climate change influenced by human activity. As parts of England suffered their wettest January since records began more than 100 years ago, David Cameron visited flooded areas, and told the House of Commons that “we are seeing more abnormal weather events” which “I very much suspect” are “linked to climate change”. While the prime minister promised investment in flood defences, the government’s critics suggested that cutbacks in specialist staff at the Environment Agency were weakening its ability to respond. Politicians might have been forgiven for thinking that the weather was one of the few things that they couldn’t be held accountable for. So is this tendency to blame them when floods strike something new? The postwar period has certainly not been without its weather dramas. In January 1947, for example, the UK was gripped by the ‘big freeze’. Snow fell and temperatures plunged for weeks on end in what the historian David Kynaston describes as “Britain’s most severe and protracted spell of bad weather during the 20th century”. The population was still affected by postwar austerity, including rationing, and there were power cuts at a time when energy supplies were undergoing major reorganisation, including the nationalisation of the coal industry.

SUPERSTOCK/REX FEATURES

TOP: A 13th-century depiction of Noah’s ark. For centuries, Christians associated extreme weather events with divine punishment ABOVE: A bus is stranded in snow, near Oldham, during 1947’s ‘Big Freeze’. The government’s popularity suffered as temperatures fell

thinking through the biblical story of The Flood – made a surprising return to public debate in January this year when a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire was expelled from the party after he blamed recent flooding on the government’s decision to legalise gay marriage. What has also shaped the political response to UK weather is where it has caused most harm, and who has been affected. In 1953, for example, storms wreaked havoc in eastern England – 133 people drowned when a ferry from Stranraer to Larne sank, and breached sea defences led to more than 300 deaths in places like Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary. David Kynaston notes, however, that these events “failed to achieve a central place in national memory”. They did not fit a “mid-1950s narrative of material progress and increasing optimism”, and most of the victims “were poor people living on low-lying, marginal land”.

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Contrast that with, say, the famous storm of 1987, which caused far fewer deaths but “carved a line across the Home Counties”, destroyed many famous trees, and received intense media and political attention. How the public reacts to events can be hard to predict, says Georgina Endfield, who is leading a major new research project investigating extreme weather histories in the UK. The way the public remembers individual events is not always accurate, but can become “culturally inscribed” through images, painting and folklore. And that in turn shapes responses to current events. Endfield also sees similarities between older reports of dramatic weather – going back as far as the 17th century – and the modern media’s fevered debates over how the weather is affecting our lives. “The language is slightly different but there’s a lot of scaremongering, a lot of apocalyptic predictions, people linking weather events with climate change.”

So the way today’s climate change debate is represented is part of a long-standing concern about how weather may be changing, and how far it is subject to human – and therefore political – control. “It’s in our cultural fabric to want to talk about it,” says Endfield. And politicians and their spin doctors, claiming they can ‘change the political weather’, know that the weather can change politics too. Chris Bowlby is a presenter on BBC radio, specialising in history DISCOVER MORE BOOK E Modernity Britain: A Shake of the

Dice, 1959–62 by David Kynaston (Bloomsbury, later in 2014) WEBSITE E For more on Georgina Endfield’s climate

history project, go to nottingham.ac.uk/ weatherextremes

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History now / Backgrounder

Lessons from history: Beware the politics of remembrance The spat over how we should commemorate the First World War reveals how politicians have used history to serve their own ends, says Ted Vallance

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Boer families pictured in a concentration camp at Eshowe, Zululand in 1900

“The undoubted horrors of the concentration camps were co-opted into an Afrikaaner mythology which resisted critical analysis” deeply political act which can be employed to advance a variety of ideological positions. This is revealed in the controversy over the Royal Mint’s commemorative coin, depicting Lord Kitchener. Public petitions objected to the choice of Kitchener as an endorsement of “war-mongering”. Many of the coin’s critics pointed not only to Kitchener’s record as secretary of state for war from 1914–16 but also his complicity in atrocities in Sudan and South Africa. As many as 26,000 people may have died in the concentration camps created during the Boer War. Yet, as the historian Elizabeth van Heyningen has shown, the undoubted horror of these camps was co-opted into a self-serving Afrikaaner mythology which ignored the suffering of non-whites and resisted critical, historical analysis. The multiple ways in which a figure such as Kitchener has been commemorated

reminds us that history can be manipulated to serve any number of political masters. Michael Gove’s own interpretation, that Britain’s intervention in the war demonstrates our “special tradition of liberty”, connects to a similarly venerable tradition of yoking history to a particular vision of national identity. Mourning the human costs of the war need not prejudice balanced historical evaluation, for, without such a sceptical approach, historians run the risk of being unwittingly conscripted into a political argument.

Ted Vallance is reader in early modern history at Roehampton University and author of A Radical History of Britain (Little, Brown, 2009)

ALAMY

he centenary commemorations of the outbreak of the First World War have prompted the coalition government to earmark £50m to fund centenary events. The education secretary, Michael Gove, has referred to the conflict as a “uniquely horrific war”. Yet, in terms of bloodshed, Britain’s 17th-century civil wars involved proportionally greater loss of life. Exploring why these events were not widely commemorated provides an insight into the present-day politics of memory. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed in 1660, sought not only to heal the wounds of the 1640s but also to “suppress all remembrance” of these traumatic events. Though the date of Charles I’s execution (30 January) became a public fast day, the regicide itself was ‘the elephant in the room’ that most preachers declined to mention. Neither the complexity of the Civil War , nor its internecine nature, explains this relative silence. After all, the Wars of the Roses, a long, complex civil conflict, have been a fixture of the popular historical imagination since Shakespeare’s day. The neglect of the English revolution is instead political: a historical tradition built around a monarchical narrative has long struggled to accommodate its republican ‘interlude’. Public remembrance is not then a direct indicator of historical significance, nor is it simply a natural, emotional response to loss. Commemoration is instead often a

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PAST NOTES HOME OWNERSHIP IN BRITAIN WHAT THE PAPERS SAID As celebrations get under way in honour of Ireland’s patron saint, we look at how St Patrick’s Day has been covered in the press in the past

“In accordance with her usual custom, Queen Alexandra motored to Chelsea Barracks this morning and presented shamrock to the officers and men of the First Battalion Irish Guards” Derby Daily Telegraph / 1920

“New York: St Patrick’s Day was enthusiastically celebrated today” Manchester Times / 1872 “Thomas Ratchford, labourer, was summoned for being drunk and disorderly... but in view of the occasion he was only ordered to pay costs” Blackburn Standard / 1900

“This being St Patrick’s Day, the employees in many of the large manufactories... will enjoy a general holiday” Belfast Newsletter / 1890

GETTY IMAGES/MARY EVANS

“King Edward gave permission for the Royal Munster Fusiliers to lay shamrock upon the Queen’s sarcophagus” Tamworth Herald / 1901

“Fenians in some towns are suspected of an intention to create trouble” The Manchester Courier / 1867 “For the first time on record... St Patrick’s Day was observed in the capital of Ireland as a general holiday” Aberdeen Journal / 1915

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A workman removes a ‘For Sale’ sign in 1967, when the number of Britons choosing to buy their own homes was on the rise

As the proportion of owner-occupied homes in the UK continues to fall, Julian Humphrys looks at the history of home ownership in Britain So is this current fall in house ownership the end of an era? If it is, it’s not as long an era as you might think. Mass home ownership is a relatively recent trend. In 1918 less than a quarter of Britain’s homes were owner-occupied. Mortgages were rare, most people rented their homes privately and new property was mainly built for sale to private landlords. It was only in the 1970s that home owners came to outnumber those who rented. Were early 20th-century homeowners all middle and upper class? No. Before the First World War, for example, just under a third of Oldham’s 33,000 houses were actually owned by ‘artisans’ and a similar proportion owned homes in the Welsh slate-mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. They saved up for their homes by paying into building societies which thrived in areas of full employment and a static population. What led to the rise in home ownership? During the interwar years, falling house prices, rising incomes and

the increased availability of building society mortgages enabled more workers to buy their own homes. By the outbreak of the Second World War a third of Britons were home owners. The rise in home ownership stagnated during the war and the austerity period but picked up again in the late 1950s and 1960s. What did governments think about home ownership? From the 1930s all governments, Labour and Conservative, have seen home ownership as a way of fostering greater equality or social cohesion. Both parties have brought in a range of measures to foster home ownership. The most marked example of this came in the 1980s when the Thatcher government gave council tenants the right to buy their homes, at a discount, and nearly 2m households took up the offer. When did home ownership peak? In 2001 when just under 70 per cent of the homes in England and Wales were privately owned. It has since fallen to 64 per cent, and social and financial factors suggest it will continue to do so, with a rise in private renting.

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Dominic Sandbrook highlights events that took place in March in history

ANNIVERSARIES 26 March 1830

4 March 1918

The Book of Mormon debuts with a whimper

‘Spanish’ flu strikes and kills 100 million

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f you visit the little town of Palmyra in Wayne County, New York, you will see a neat brick building decked with plaques and flags. This was once the printing press and bookshop of a man called Egbert B Grandin, who also published the local newspaper. In the summer of 1829, Grandin announced that he was preparing a major new publication – a sacred text containing hitherto unknown biblical prophecies, as well as the history of the first people to live in the Americas, who had apparently fled from the Tower of Babel. The text, it turned out, had been engraved on gold plates and buried in a New York hillside, before being revealed to a local preacher, Joseph Smith, by an angel called Moroni. Grandin himself thought this was a tall story and had originally turned it down. But when another printer agreed to take on the job, Grandin changed his mind. Smith gave him $3,000 in security – worth perhaps $73,000 today – and Grandin agreed to produce 5,000 copies. Today, with an estimated 15 million Mormons worldwide, original copies of the Book of Mormon change hands for well

The angel Moroni delivers the plates of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith, the driving force behind a book that now changes hands for over $50,000

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over $50,000. But when the book first went on sale on 26 March 1830, sales were disappointing. Many local citizens thought it was blasphemous; another Palmyra paper even called it “the greatest piece of superstition that has come to our knowledge”. Local farmer Martin Harris had mortgaged his property to pay for Smith’s security. Harris lost everything, yet he never lost his faith in the Book of Mormon. It was “no fake,” he said on his deathbed. “I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen and I have heard what I have heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written.”

A deadly influenza preys on a war-weary world

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hen Private Albert Gitchell awoke on Monday 4 March 1918, he felt awful. A company cook at Fort Riley, Kansas, Gitchell was supposed to be serving breakfast to hundreds of young American recruits, who were waiting to be shipped off to the battlefields of France. But when the doctors had a look at him, they realised that, with a temperature of more than 103, Gitchell was in no state to work in the mess. A few hours later, another man, Corporal Lee Drake, appeared at the infirmary with similar symptoms. Then another, Sergeant Adolph Hurby. Still the men kept coming: there were 107 by lunchtime and more than 500 by the end of the week. By the end of the month, no fewer than 1,127 men at Fort Riley had come down with flu – and 46 of them had died. In the next few months, as American soldiers flooded into Europe, they brought the deadly influenza with them. With vast armies surging across an exhausted continent, the conditions were perfect for a pandemic. This was one of history’s deadliest disasters. Across the world, some 500 million people had been struck down by flu by the end of 1920, perhaps 100 million of them fatally. Many governments banned public gatherings or buried the victims in mass graves. Reporting restrictions in the combatant nations meant that the disease’s progress in neutral Spain drew disproportionate attention: hence its nickname, Spanish flu. Only one populated part of the world reported no cases at all: the island of Marajo, at the mouth of the Amazon.

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MARY EVANS

Poor sales give little indication of enormous impact to come

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Dominic Sandbrook’s latest book is Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979 (Allen Lane). He recently presented the series Strange Days: Cold War Britain on BBC Two

Members of the Red Cross motor corps carry a flu victim into an ambulance, St Louis, USA, October 1918

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Anniversaries 9 March 1230 Tsar Ivan Asen II (right) crushes the army of Theodore Komnenos Doukas, so reasserting Bulgaria’s primacy in the southern Balkans.

27 March 1881 In the then violent town of Basingstoke, troops are called to clear the streets after the Salvation Army’s anti-alcohol campaign provokes rioting by local brewery workers.

5 March 1981 Clive Sinclair launches the ZX81 computer, the first British model to sell more than a million units. It cost just £70, and nobody who uses its peculiar keyboard will ever forget it.

2 March 537

Belisarius saves Rome from the Goths Nerveless general defies an army 10 times the size of his own

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n the first days of AD 537, the people of Rome waited nervously for attack. Once the capital of the world’s greatest empire, now a miserable, ruined shadow, the ancient city had long since yielded its role to Constantinople. In the fifth century it had fallen to the Goths, but at the end of 536 it was retaken by Constantinople’s greatest general, Belisarius. But since Belisarius had only a few thousand men, he

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knew he faced a struggle to keep it. At last, on the second day of March, the enemy revealed themselves. From seven great camps overlooking the city’s main gates, the Goths began their siege of Rome. Equipped with vast siege engines, their armies were 10 times bigger than Belisarius’s little band. But even as the city began to starve, Belisarius refused to panic. His secretary, Procopius, even recorded that the

general laughed on seeing the Goths’ great siege towers. He knew that reinforcements were on their way: all he had to do was wait. When peace talks broke down, Belisarius took the initiative, sending his general John to seize the towns in the Goths’ rear. Some 374 days after the siege had begun, word reached the Goths that Rimini had fallen, leaving John barely a day’s march from their capital, Ravenna. As smoke rose from the Goths’ camps, Belisarius knew that his gamble had paid off. He waited until half the retreating Gothic forces were across the Milvian Bridge, and then ordered his troops out of the city. They killed thousands of Goths, and many more were drowned. Belisarius had won. For the time being at least, Rome remained Roman.

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TOPFOTO/REX

Belisarius leads his troops into battle with the Goths, lifting a siege that had forced Rome to the edge of starvation

24 March 1944

The Great Escape arouses Hitler’s fury Audacious plan springs 76 PoWs out of Stalag Luft III

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t was half past 10 when the first Allied prisoner crawled out of the tunnel into the snow, just short of the line of trees around the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III, in Lower Silesia. After months of preparation, the Great Escape was on. Immortalised in the much-loved 1963 film – a fixture in Britain’s Christmas television schedules – this staggeringly audacious escape attempt was the brainchild of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, whose Spitfire had been shot down over Calais. “The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life,” Bushell famously told his fellow prisoners in the spring of 1943, “is so we can make life hell for the Hun. In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise

Steve McQueen’s celebrated performance as Virgil Hilts was inspired by a 1944 break-out

tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug – Tom, Dick and Harry. One will succeed!’ Bushell was right about that. Although the Germans were on the lookout for escape attempts, they never dreamed that the prisoners would dig three tunnels at once. For the rest of the year, work went on, the prisoners disposing of the sand by shaking it from makeshift pouches hidden in their trousers. The ‘Tom’ tunnel was discovered in September, and ‘Dick’s’ planned exit became covered by

a camp expansion, but by the following March, ‘Harry’ was ready. As night fell on the 24th, the men chosen for the escape attempt assembled in Hut 104. By the time the Germans realised the prisoners were getting out, 76 men had crawled to freedom. The snow was so deep that they were forced to use main roads rather than forest paths, as they had planned, and all but three were soon recaptured. Hitler wanted them all shot; in the end, 50 were executed. Among them, sadly, was Roger Bushell.

COMMENT / Ashley Jackson

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“There was nothing ‘boy’s own’ about the murders of those who escaped” Ingenuity, pluck and daring, cut with unalloyed heroism; the enduring fascination of the Great Escape is unsurprising. The story, as portrayed in popular culture at least, stroked a certain national vanity, sheened by a famous film. Described as a “great adventure” on the billboards, it was a ‘boy’s own’ yarn with transatlantic glamour thrown in. But the story’s appeal lies far deeper than its fictionalised cultural presence, and there was nothing boy’s own or glamorous about the chilling murder of two-thirds of the men who managed to break out.

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When the fiction is extracted, the facts that remain are startling, presenting the intense human experience of brave men pitting their wits against terrible odds. It is the wonder of their intrepidity and ingenuity, their capacity to trust and depend on one another, to master their fears, and to plan and execute an almost incredible escape in the most frightening of conditions. Of course, the Great Escape was of no strategic significance. There were plenty of other escape attempts from German and Japanese PoW camps, and many other tunnels dug, at Stalag Luft III (including the ‘wooden horse’ escape the

previous year) and elsewhere. But this escape has become a cipher for the ordeal faced by Allied prisoners of war at the hands of their often brutal and murderous captors. Ashley Jackson is professor of imperial and military history in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. His books include The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2013)

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Your views on the magazine and the world of history

LETTERS Writing his way into history Michael Wood omitted perhaps the most lasting of Charlemagne’s many accomplishments: introducing a clearer form of writing (Michael Wood on…, January). The number of ways to shape the actual letter forms in Charlemagne’s empire had proliferated as the scriptoria (rooms set apart for writing) in each monastery LETTER and governmental outpost grew OF THE more common. Styles such as those MONTH called ‘Luxieul minuscule’ and ‘Beneventan’ became increasingly complex as individual letters were linked together and abbreviations grew more mystifying. Charlemagne concluded that soon no one would be able to understand the reports his secretaries were receiving. In response, Charlemagne commissioned his own scriptorium to create a new, clear form of handwriting. The result:

‘Carolingean Minuscule’ was born. It became the preferred hand in book production for the next 200 years or so. It would be revived during the Renaissance and again in the early 20th century by calligraphers. However, and even more importantly, Carolingean became the model for every seriffed printing font, including those used in this magazine. For that alone, I would say we owe the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire a great deal. Bronwyn Noble, Wisconsin P This issue we’re rewarding the writer of the letter of the month with our ‘History Choice’ book of the month: Goodbye to All That? by Dan Stone (OUP). For more on the book, turn to page 65

The more things change… The pre-First World War world is often depicted as being one in a state of pre-lapsarian innocence, a world completely different to ours today. Your feature (1914: Why War Caught Britain Cold, January) was a valuable corrective to this view. In 1913 and early 1914 we find: sectarian strife in northern Ireland; a well-meaning Liberal prime minister in the UK trying to steer a path through stormy waters; threats to the European union; turmoil in eastern Europe; fears of German domination; France alternately weak and volatile; Russia an enigma; a professorial Democratic US president standing on the sidelines; Japan and China at loggerheads; and the pope appealing for peace. Seldom has Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s dictum, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, been more fitting. Samuel Johnson London

Tim Harris’s assessment of Charles I’s reign (Has History Been Hard on Charles I?, January) ends with the recall of the Long Parliament. However the king’s duplicity was the cause of his fall and execution. While imprisoned on the Isle of Wight in 1648, he was constantly visited by parliamentary commissioners trying to work out an acceptable solution that would allow him to keep his crown. All the while, he was plotting to escape to Ireland to bring about another civil war. Charles never understood the mood or determination of a nation that wanted an end to ‘the divine right of kings’ and to be governed by a democratically elected house. Melvyn Emmett Sittingbourne

Why Charles died Tim Harris wrote an informative essay on Charles I but he covered the key issue in one of the first paragraphs, when he stated: “Defeat in the ensuing civil wars – there were two – resulted in Charles being tried and executed for treason.”

While negotiating with the people who defeated him in the First Civil War over the terms by which he’d continue as the head of state, Charles kicked off a second war in an attempt to regain less-accountable power, involving what was effectively a Scots invasion. The Second Civil War has dropped out of public awareness to an astonishing degree. It didn’t feature in the 1970 film Cromwell (though neither did the Third Civil War, most of the First or the ‘Pacification’ of Ireland) or even in 2003’s To Kill a King, though his starting another conflict was the main grounds for his execution. Instead, Tim Roth portrays Oliver Cromwell in that film as hardly more rational than Bruno Ganz’s Hitler in Downfall, even though it’s hard to think of anyone else in British history who did more to warrant a capital sentence. Bryn Hughes

Wrexham Charles I’s duplicity was the cause of his fall and execution, argues reader Melvyn Emmett

History education under threat The effects of political decisions on how history is taught at schools are far from satisfactory, and the MPs BBC History Magazine spoke to about this, Tristram Hunt and Chris Skidmore, (News, January) are too complacent on the issue. Half of secondary schools are now academies – due to a policy supported by all three major parties – and so do not have to follow the National Curriculum. What the academies are teaching at Key Stage 3 is a mystery as we can only start to track their efforts at GCSE level. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the academies avoid teaching history because of the negative effect it will have on their league table position. In some academies fewer than 20 per cent of pupils take history. This cannot be easily reversed as the history staff have been removed and without trained teachers, history can’t be taught properly. The fact is that the pursuit of higher league table positions is damaging to education. And since many academies were failing schools under pressure to improve rapidly, it has played a malign role in their approach to teaching.

The opinions expressed by our commentators are their own and may not represent the views of BBC History Magazine or the Immediate Media Company

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BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

Charles I’s downfall

SOCIAL MEDIA What you’ve been saying on Twitter and Facebook

British soldiers go over the top during the First World War. For many, the toll the conflict took remains difficult to reconcile with the need to fight

@HistoryExtra: In light of debate about BBC One’s The Musketeers, do you think that historical dramas should accurately represent their period? @UrsulaGlitch I think anything that engages people with history is a good thing. Most people can tell the difference between drama and documentary @agboboes Historical accuracy is everything. Otherwise it detracts from the story

It is impossible to prevent league tables having this effect. Teachers know their jobs will vanish if their school does badly but schools exist to produce more than GCSE results. The politicians in Westminster produced the system, and they should face up to what they’ve done. Trevor Fisher Stafford

No cause for celebration I couldn’t agree more with Niall Ferguson’s ‘controversial’ opinion (It Was the Biggest Error in Modern History, February) that any reason for Britain entering the First World War cannot outweigh the huge loss of life that occurred as a result. Ten million people lost their lives – that is no cause for celebration. And for what? I will certainly be looking back, not with pride, but with pity and sadness. It truly was a case of ‘lions led by donkeys’. Nicola Hutton Glasgow

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An unavoidable conflict I am a great admirer of Niall Ferguson and never miss a series of his on TV. However, I think that he missed some important points in his article on the First World War. For example, Germany was the first country in the 20th century to: engage in genocide (German South-West Africa, 1904–07); wage a calculated terror war against civilians (North Sea raids, 1914); attempt to secure a military objective by attacking civilian targets (Zeppelin, and later Gotha, bombing raids on Great Britain); and deliberately target

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civilians for strategic ends (unrestricted U-boat attacks on merchant shipping without warning). All of these factors changed the nature of war and scarcely allow Wilhelmine Germany to be seen as being on a par with Britain. It was clearly not as bad as the successor National Socialist state, but by no means comparable to contemporary Britain or France. Ferguson claims that we had no land campaign to prevent Revolutionary/ Napoleonic France from dominating the continent until the Peninsular War. But this ignores the campaigns of the 1790s in both the Netherlands and the West Indies as efforts to prevent French Revolutionary dominance across continental Europe. Finally, if you want to see what a German-dictated peace treaty might have looked like in 1914/15, just look at what they imposed on the Russians at Brest-Litovsk in 1917. Ferguson is probably right in his assessment of using naval against military power in 1914, but as far as going to war is concerned, I believe that we had no choice. Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) NJ Ridout Lincolnshire

WRITE TO US We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them. We may publish your letters on our website. Please include a daytime phone number and, if emailing, a postal address (not for publication). Letters should be no longer than 250 words. email: [email protected] Post:

@wendy_uk They should at least make an effort to be accurate, but they are dramas, not documentaries, at the end of the day @Catastrophist73 Ideally yes, but not at the expense of narrative drive, character development and engaging the audience @BeingBryony Total authenticity is for documentary. However, there is no excuse for blatant disregard for the facts! @PAHarper It’s entertainment, not a textbook! If it engages more people with history, it’s a good thing @HistoryExtra: Do you think that new measures should be taken to remember the Holocaust in Britain? And if so, what should they be? Sophie ‘Sherbz’ Turbutt Without question, new measures must be taken to educate the young people of Britain about the Holocaust. There will soon be no survivors left; therefore we must share their stories with new generations Alvin Tsunami None, there is already a day dedicated to it. There have been other tragic events in history that have largely been ignored by western society Cindy Starobin Yes. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it Sian E Evans We should re-emphasise those already in place, such as Holocaust Memorial Day in January. At the moment it seems to be largely ignored Karen Douglas It should be remembered worldwide. It is not about forgetting other victims of atrocious acts, but remembering to stop them from happening again

Letters, BBC History Magazine, Immediate Media Company Bristol Ltd, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN

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Comment

Michael Wood on… Alfred the Great

“His bones may prove elusive but Alfred remains the greatest”

Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. His most recent TV series was King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons

history of Britain might have been radically different: no English state perhaps, no English law, or English ideas about government; maybe no English language as the world’s language. Alfred made peace with Vikings but that didn’t stop further battles, indeed he never stopped fighting. His third war lasted from 892–97. But, by his death in 899, he had saved Wessex, and, as it turned out, England. That story is as exciting as any in our history, but it is not war that sets Alfred apart. He was a man with great practical talents, planning and executing long-term administrative change; refounding cities, and laying out new ones; making provision for coinage, law and trade. Perhaps his greatest achievement was in learning. As a young man Alfred was barely literate. But he was a Christian king, touched by the great cultural revolution in Europe under the Carolingians, when the principles of Christian humanism guided kingship, learning and law. So he gathered together an international team of scholars, several from Mercia, bishop Asser from Wales, John ‘the Old Saxon’ from Germany, and Grimbald from Francia, who brought knowledge of the achievements of the Carolingian renaissance to Alfred’s court. These men set out to translate into the vernacular what Alfred thought were the key books for the times, “the ones it is most needful for people to know”. Some of these survive in manuscript today in the Bodleian and the British Library, and in the Vatican a late ninth-century commentary on The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is covered with marginal notes in a Welsh hand – perhaps a text used by Asser himself. Alfred’s reign, then, was a founding moment in English politics, culture, language and literature. The roots of English law and poetry are Anglo-Saxon, and the continuity of English vernacular prose runs from Alfred to Chaucer and on down to us. So while the dig for Alfred’s bones drew a blank, if it made more people aware of his story, then it served its purpose. If you want one example of why Anglo-Saxons matter to us today, it’s Alfred the Great.

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The recent hunt for the bones of Alfred the Great in Winchester ended in disappointment, but its outcome was entirely to be expected. The family tombs had already been moved twice from their original home in the New Minster, and they had been thoroughly disturbed. Even if the remains were in roughly the right area, they still might not have been Alfred’s – they could have belonged to his sons Edward and Æthelweard, and his grandson, the short-lived King Ælfweard. And one pelvic bone is no match for the skeleton of Richard III! But still, all the brouhaha reminded us of one thing: as Churchill thought, Alfred was not only the greatest Briton, but also one of the greatest rulers of any time and place. His achievement, remember, was conditioned by the Vikings (on whom a terrific exhibition opens this month at the British Museum – see the feature on page 24). From the 860s, England was assailed by large, professional armies. The kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia were destroyed and their royal lines ended. That was the bleak situation when Alfred came to the throne of Wessex in 871. He can never have expected to be king, as the youngest of five brothers, but all of them died young. He was 21, pious and brave, but in poor health, with a crippling hereditary illness, perhaps Crohn’s Disease – the attacks were evidently brought on by stress and must have been agony for someone who spent his life in the saddle. As Alfred himself said, what he achieved was not only through all his external struggles, but the “manifold troubles” of his personal life. He fought three wars with the Vikings. The first in 871 bought him time. Then in the mid-870s Mercia was dismembered when two sections of the ‘Great Heathen Army’ carved up the east Midlands and the north, settled down “and began to plough and make a living”. This was a turning point. From now on England was Anglo-Scandinavian, and whoever wanted to rule all England had to deal with that. But Alfred’s dream of one kingdom of the English was only made possible by his dramatic victory in 878 at Edington. Had he lost, the

ILLUSTRATION BY FEMKE DE JONG

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Vikings at sea

HOW THE

VIKINGS RULED THE WAVES Gareth Williams, who is curating a major new exhibition on the Vikings at the British Museum, unlocks the secrets of the Norsemen’s superlative seamanship

Listen to Gareth Williams ON THE PODCAST

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12AD KAJMIJAY/DREAMSTIME

The bow of the Oseberg ship, which was excavated from a burial mound in Norway. It was the Vikings’ skilled use of vessels such as this – rather than their prowess in battle – that made them such potent raiders

ne of the most enduring images of the Viking Age in the popular imagination is the longship, with its dragonhead, row of shields, and large square sail. Unlike the equally popular horned helmet (a Romantic fabrication of the 19th century), the longship is a fitting symbol for the Norsemen. The 250 years between AD 800 and 1050 saw a remarkable expansion from the Scandinavian homelands of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, involving a combination of raiding, conquest, peaceful settlement and long-distance trade. That same period saw the Vikings develop a remarkable network of international contacts that spread from eastern Canada in the west to central Asia in the east, and north Africa in the south. Many of these contacts were peaceful, and in recent years the Vikings have become known for more than just their established reputation as violent, devious raiders. Having said that, this reputation was far from unfounded, and would have been all-too familiar to contemporaries around the Viking world. The Persian geographer Ibn Rusta’s assessment of the Vikings in Russia is damning: “Treachery is endemic, and a poor man can be envied by a comrade, who will not hesitate to kill him and rob him.” Meanwhile, you can almost feel an anonymous ninthcentury Irish monk’s relief as he notes: “The wind is sharp tonight, It tosses the white hair of the sea, I do not fear the crossing of the Clear Sea [Irish Sea], by the wild warriors of Lothlind [Vikings].” This quotation reminds us of how far the Viking expansion relied on their ships: remarkable vessels that could carry settlers across the Atlantic, trade goods along the river systems of Russia, and be used with devastating effect in raids around Europe. Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard tells us

“Vikings crossed the Atlantic, traded goods along Russian rivers and carried out devastating raids across Europe” 25

Vikings at sea A memorial stone from Gotland, Sweden, depicts a Viking ship. Artwork celebrating Viking seamanship has been found everywhere from Dublin to Istanbul

that the mighty Frankish emperor ordered fortifications to be built in every port and at the mouth of every navigable river to prevent Viking raids. If he did this, it was ineffective, and the ninth century saw repeated coastal raids, such as on Dorestad (in the modern-day Netherlands), and up the great rivers such as the Rhine, Loire and the Seine, with Vikings even attacking Paris. Across the Channel, Vikings were able to sail their ships as far inland as Repton in Derbyshire, about as far from the sea as it is possible to get in Britain. They could do this because their ships were light and fast, with a shallow draft (the distance between the waterline and bottom of the hull). This could have unexpected benefits, as King Alfred the Great discovered to his cost in 896 when Viking and English fleets clashed in the mouth of an estuary in Dorset. During the battle, the ships of both sides ran aground or were beached, but when the tide returned, the less heavy Viking fleet was able to float off and escape Alfred’s clutches.

Vulnerable targets It wasn’t just the nature of the Vikings’ ships that set them apart though. It was also their ability to use their ships strategically – both along coasts and on rivers – that made them so effective as raiders. It was this, rather than any superior skills in battle (which they often avoided, preferring to hit softer, more vulnerable targets) that made them such a potent force in the early medieval world. Not only could Vikings arrive and disappear suddenly, but the carrying capacity of their ships meant that they could be used as mobile supply dumps for provisions or loot, without the need for slow-moving and vulnerable supply trains on land. This enabled Viking forces to remain on campaign in hostile territory for years at a time. The ‘Great Raiding Army’ employed this advantage to devastating effect between 865 and 874, when it conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, and came close to subjugating the last surviving Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Wessex, in 877–78. The Vikings’ skilled use of ships allowed them to be year-round campaigners, unlike some of their contemporaries, even attacking in the bleakest conditions. The notorious attack on Lindisfarne in 793 – in which Viking raiders apparently burned buildings, stole treasures and murdered monks – was

recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as having taken place in January. Later editors found it so hard to believe that they could have launched this attack in the middle of winter and so changed the date to June, assuming that that was what the original had meant. In fact it had been January, a time when their assault would provide the maximum surprise. All the same, Viking ships were vulnerable to bad weather. In 876 a Viking ‘ship army’ from East Anglia on their way to rendezvous with a ‘land army’ near Exeter “met with a great storm at sea, and all their ships were lost”. Even the discovery of America in the late 10th century, often lauded as one of the Vikings’ greatest navigational achievements, occurred when the Icelander Bjarni Herjolfsson was blown off course during a storm on his way to Greenland. According to later saga tradition, he did not land, but managed to work his way back to Greenland, where he sold his ship and never went to sea again. If the Vikings could not control the weather – and Thor, whose hammer created thunder and lightning, seems to have been one of the most widely worshipped gods – they nevertheless had skills in shipbuilding and seamanship that went beyond those of most of their contemporaries. This is not surprising when you consider the landscape of the Viking homelands. With the exception of the Jutland peninsula, Denmark is an archipelago, and Norway is one long coastline, divided inland by the mountains. While Sweden has more in the way of passable land, the 11th-century chronicler Adam of Bremen notes that it was possible to travel by ship from southern Sweden to Sigtuna on Lake Mälaren in eastern Sweden in five days, while the same journey overland would take a month. The Franks and Anglo-Saxons may have relied predominately on land travel, but it was the rivers and seas that kept the Vikings connected with each other and offered the best opportunities for wealth and expansion. As a result, ships played a vital role in Scandinavian society in the Viking Age. Graffiti of Viking ships have been found everywhere from Dublin to Istanbul, and ship designs adorn coins, jewellery and monumental carvings. Even children too young to go on long voyages would be familiar with ships and boats for short journeys, and toy or model ships have been found at

“The Vikings’ superior seamanship enabled them to attack all year round, in the bleakest of conditions” 26

BBC History Magazine

GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP

AKG-IMAGES/REX FEATURES/ALAMY

The importance of boats to Viking burials If ships were important in life for the Vikings, they also had a symbolic importance in death. Ships were used in a variety of funerary practices, although there is some debate among scholars as to whether they simply reflected the wealth of the deceased – ship burials typically feature other expensive grave goods – or whether they represented the voyage to the afterlife. The latter can perhaps be seen in the stones (like the one shown left) from Gotland in the Baltic. Designs vary but a widespread combination of motifs on the stones shows a ship below a mounted figure arriving at a hall, sometimes being greeted by a woman bearing a horn of mead or ale. This is usually interpreted as a representation of the voyage to the afterlife, and the arrival of the deceased at Valhöll, the ‘Hall of the Slain’. There were three separate funerary practices in which ships were directly associated with burial. The first is ship burial itself. Some of these were richly furnished, but others were on a less lavish scale, with smaller boat burials recorded around the Viking world, including examples from Scotland and the Isle of Man. These were the graves of chieftains rather than kings or queens, but still represent significant wealth. Burial in actual ships was not always practicable. An alternative burial practice was to symbolise the ship by erecting stones in the shape of a ship around the grave, sometimes with larger stones representing the stem and stern.

Stones depict the outline of a ship in this Viking burial near Aalborg in Jutland

A final burial rite involving ships is understandably more difficult to substantiate archaeologically, but has captured the popular imagination more than any other. The idea of burning a ship with its owner in it is recorded in a late and mythological account of the funeral of the god Baldr, who was cremated in his ship Hringhorni along with his heartbroken wife, Nanna, and a dwarf who was accidentally kicked into the flames. This story has some parallels with an account by the 10th-century Arab traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlãn, who describes the funeral of a Viking chieftain on the Volga c922. In this account the chieftain was cremated in his ship along with a slave girl, who was sacrificed so that she could accompany her master. This is consistent with the presence in the boat burial of a wealthy man at Balladoole, Isle of Man, of a female skeleton showing signs of a violent death. A longship in flames at an Up Helly Aa festival – marking the end of the Yule season – in Shetland. For many, the image of a burning ship is synonymous with the Vikings

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Vikings at sea

Evidence of the Vikings’ mastery of the seas ONLINE SLIDESHOW historyextra.com /vikings-sea

1 1 The longest longship

3 In prime condition

A section of the bottom of Roskilde 6 during its excavation in Zealand, Denmark in 1997. This is the longest Viking ship yet discovered and boasted 39 or 40 pairs of oars, when anything over 30 was considered large.

The Gokstad ship. Along with the Oseberg ship, this is one of the two best-preserved, and most celebrated, Viking boats in existence. It was built in the mid-890s and buried in c910 in southern Norway.

2 Fit for a queen? The Oseberg ship, widely regarded as one of the finest finds from the Viking Age. The ship was buried in the 830s, and discovered in 1904. The burial contained two women, with a variety of expensive grave goods, suggesting that at least one of the women was of royal status.

4 The face of power Viking ships were often adorned with elaborate carvings, designed to draw attention to the owner’s wealth and status. Contemporary accounts suggest that the finest warships had dragon-head prows. None have survived intact, but they probably resembled this carved post from the Oseberg burial.

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Viking sites in Scandinavia and overseas. The Vikings also celebrated great sailors such as Bjorn Ironside and his brother Hastein, who supposedly led a remarkable raid down the Mediterranean in the mid-ninth century. However, not all ships in the Viking Age matched the stereotypical image of the ‘longship’. As time went on, the Vikings became increasingly specialised as shipbuilders, creating vessels that were well adapted for particular circumstances. Archaeologists have discovered a wide variety of ship forms, including purposebuilt warships (long and narrow) and cargo-ships (deep and broad), as well as others that could have combined the two functions. This last group includes what probably remain the most famous – and certainly the most intact – ships excavated so far: the Oseberg ship (buried 832) and the Gokstad ship (buried c910), both of which hail from southern Norway. Both could carry a large number of men, but also boasted substantial storage space, which could be used for cargo, stores or loot. So were the Vikings raiders or traders? The discovery of the Oseberg and Gokstad ships suggests that they were both. However, although it’s possible to distinguish – from the 10th century onwards, at least – between ships built for war and those built for commerce, raiding and trading were by no means mutually exclusive. This is nowhere more apparent than in the slave trade. Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Frankish sources reveal extensive raiding not just for loot, but for prisoners, who could then be either ransomed or sold as slaves. In 821, Vikings seized “a great number of women” from the Howth peninsula, north of Dublin, and took them into captivity. Fifty years later, in 871, Viking raiders from Dublin returned from the British kingdom of Strathclyde with “a great prey of Angles, Britons and Picts”. The same Vikings might well be pirates or peaceful traders as circumstances demanded. The legitimacy of Viking activity (or the lack of it) probably depended in part on perspective, not least because the Vikings’ activities took them not just across the borders of different kingdoms but across the boundaries of different legal practices and social customs. There are similarities here with Elizabethan sea captains such as Ralegh and Drake – romantic heroes to the English, heretic pirates to the Spanish. There are also echoes of the BBC History Magazine

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RAISED FROM THE DEAD

“Among a people who prized seamanship so highly, ships were a major symbol of wealth and status”

A depiction of Cnut the Great in a 14th-century genealogical roll of the kings and queens of England. Was Roskilde 6 built for this powerful Norse king?

Vikings’ exploits in the China traders of the 19th century, another group of adventurers who trod the line between legal and illegal activity, and whose remarkable seamanship enabled them to develop trading links across the globe.

AKG-BRITISH LIBRARY/BRIDGEMAN

Status symbols If you’re looking for evidence of the sheer geographical scale of the Vikings’ maritime influence, then the discovery of vast numbers of Islamic coins in their hoards – along with whalebone from the North Atlantic and fragments of silk, both found in Viking towns such as Dublin and York – is surely it. Viking ships were not, however, simply functional means of navigating the world’s oceans. Among a people who prized the virtues of seamanship so highly – and who loved to flaunt their riches – they were also a major symbol of wealth and status. Even relatively small boats required a significant investment in labour. But the resources needed for building large ships were massive, including not just a combination of unskilled labour and large quantities of timber, but iron for rivets, wool or linen for sails, horse-hair, hide and flax or lime-bast for cordage. Ships were also routinely decorated with elaborate carvings or ornamented with precious metal, as this passage from the Encomium Emmae Reginae (1041–42) reveals: “Such, also, was the decoration of the ships, that… to those who were looking from afar they seemed [to be made] more of flame than of wood… Here shone the gleam of weapons, but there the flame of hanging shields. Gold burned on the prows, silver also shone on ships of various shapes.” Individual vessels became famous in their BBC History Magazine

These early ninth-century coins depicting Viking longships were probably minted in Hedeby, Denmark

own right, as well as providing a reflection of their owner’s spending power and status. For example, the Long Serpent, boasting 34 rowing benches, was built for King Olaf Tryggvasson of Norway just before AD 1000, and was long remembered as the largest ship ever built. The Icelandic saga compiler Snorri Sturluson, writing around 230 years later, noted that the stocks on which the ship had been built were still visible in his own time. During the building of this ship, the prow-wright Thorberg Shave-stroke had been so disappointed with the design that one night he vandalised it, hacking wedges out of the planks. When King Olaf discovered the damage he threatened to kill the perpetrator. Shave-stroke owned up to the king, explaining that he felt the planking had been executed poorly and requesting the chance to fix it, on pain of death if his work did not please Olaf. In the end the king was so impressed with Shave-stroke’s changes that he was put in charge of completing the Long Serpent and went on to become a ‘celebrity’ shipbuilder. Even more impressive than the Long Serpent was the longship known as Roskilde 6. At over 37 metres, this is the longest Viking ship yet discovered. It was excavated in 1996–97 (along with eight later ships) during the construction, as chance would have it, of an extension of the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde. Anything over 30 pairs of oars was considered large in the Viking Age. With 39 or 40, Roskilde 6 was exceptional, and there is also evidence that the ship was decorated with ornamental carving. Both the size and the ornamentation suggest a very high-status vessel, and possibly one built for a king, or at least for the royal fleet. Intriguingly, analysis of the timbers shows

that the ship was constructed in southern Norway around AD 1025. Cnut the Great conquered England in 1016, and ruled both England and Denmark until his death in 1035. In 1028 he also conquered Norway, driving his rival Olaf Haraldsson (later St Olaf) into exile, and creating a North Sea empire unparalleled before or since. Roskilde 6 may have been built by Olaf in an attempt to resist Cnut’s expansion, but it could also have been made for Cnut to celebrate his conquest of the timber resources around the Oslo Fjord. For the British Museum exhibition (see ‘Discover More’ below) we have reassembled the surviving timbers of Roskilde 6, which is appearing in Britain for the first time. It is a magnificent sight and there can be little better confirmation of the Vikings’ skills in shipbuilding and the importance of the sea to their colourful history. Gareth Williams is the curator of the forthcoming BP Exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend at the British Museum. He will be speaking at the BBC History Magazine Vikings Day at MShed in Bristol on 15 March. historyextra.com/events DISCOVER MORE EXHIBITION E Vikings: Life and Legend is a major

exhibition at the British Museum, running from 6 March–22 June. For more information, go to britishmuseum.org BOOK E The Viking Ship by Gareth Williams

(British Museum Press, 2014) ON THE PODCAST

Gareth Williams will be talking about the Vikings on our weekly podcast E historyextra.com/podcasts

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Vikings in Iceland

A LAND WITHOUT KINGS When Vikings colonised Iceland in the 870s, they established a society in which local chieftains, not distant monarchs, held the reins of power. Philip Parker tells their story

A view of ingvellir National Park in western Iceland. It was here, in AD 930, that Viking settlers established the first pan-Icelandic assembly – possibly the oldest parliamentary body in the world

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bout 50 years after their raids first spread terror along the coastlines of north-western Europe, the Vikings struck westward. This time some of them sailed not in search of treasure or slaves but as land-hungry warriors seeking safe havens in which to found colonies away from increasingly powerful Scandinavian kings. Using the Faroe Islands as a stepping stone, the Vikings could reduce the risks of long voyages across the open waters of the Atlantic. By the 830s a territory in the North Atlantic had been discovered by pioneers including Flóki Vilger arson, who dubbed it Ísland (Iceland), in memory of the chilly winter he spent there. However, these were strictly exploratory voyages. The first successful colonising expedition arrived later, in AD 874, led by the Norwegian Ingólf Arnarson. The following decades saw streams of settlers from Norway and the Viking colonies in the British Isles arrive in a great landnám (‘taking of the land’), and within 60 years almost all of the available territory had been claimed. Free from the direct control of the distant Norwegian monarchs, who were much too preoccupied with their own struggles against rival magnates to interfere with the new colony, the Icelandic Vikings were able to dispense with the authority of kings. Left to their own devices for three centuries, they created a unique form of society that came to be known as the ‘Icelandic Commonwealth’. Much about Iceland was familiar to the settlers: it was indented with fjords, at the heads of which they could establish farms. Yet it was not as fertile as the Scandinavian lands they had left behind. Much of the interior was uninhabitable, studded with volcanoes and covered with great glaciers such as the Vatnajökull, and too cold for much of each

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A statue of Ingólf Arnarson, the Norwegian explorer who led the first successful colonising expedition to Iceland, in AD 874

year to support agriculture. Though there were swathes of woodland, mostly native birch, these were soon felled for firewood and building, resulting in erosion that reduced the soil’s fertility still further. The minimal agriculture possible was, therefore, pastoral, mainly cattle herding, supplemented by fishing and seal hunting. These settlers lived at the edge of subsistence, and a cold or wet summer could lead to famine. Population density was low: Iceland’s first census, taken in 1106, counted 4,560 free farmers, which probably equates to a total population of around 10 times that number. Settlements comprised farms clustered around the longhouses of local chieftains. Farms were constructed largely with turf, and within them families cooked, ate and slept in a single long room. This way of life bred a fierce independence. The Icelandic sagas (see the box on page 32) tell that the original colonisers of Iceland fled the tyranny of the Norwegian king Harald Finehair. Though several of his successors

planned to force the colony’s obedience to the crown, the difficulties of launching such a venture to a far-flung island meant that nothing came of the idea for almost 300 years. With no threat of invasion, there was little need to establish a central tax-raising authority to fund defence, and no Icelandic king arose to challenge his Norwegian counterpart. Instead, power devolved to the level of local chieftains called go ar. There were 39 of these, spread across the four quarters (or várthing) into which Iceland came to be divided. But the go ar did not rule territorial domains in the manner of European feudal aristocrats; rather, their authority rested on the allegiance of retainers (or thingmenn) whose lands often intermingled with those owing loyalty to other go ar. If a thingmann found himself at odds with his chieftain, he could transfer his loyalty to another by declaring himself ‘out of thing’ with the first.

Notable deeds This early period of ‘taking of the land’ is described in the Landnámabók, a 13thcentury compilation of earlier sources, which details the names, ancestry and notable deeds of the first settlers in each district. Once this initial phase of settlement was over, territorial disputes inevitably erupted. The danger of uncontrollable feuds prompted the settlers to formalise what had, until then, been a somewhat haphazard political system – and so, in AD 930, they established the Althing: the first pan-Icelandic assembly. The Althing has a good claim to being the world’s oldest parliament. It was modelled on smaller meetings held in Scandinavia, where all free men had a right of hearing. The settlers chose a suitably spectacular setting for this assembly – a site on the

“Left to their own devices, the Vikings created a unique form of society known as the Icelandic Commonwealth” BBC History Magazine

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Vikings in Iceland The 14th-century manuscript Flateyjarbók shows the exploits of Olaf Tryggvason

What can epic tales of war and exploration tell us about Viking Iceland? Among the key sources for Viking history are the sagas, tales of heroism, feuding and exploration that probably began in oral form before being written down, mainly in Iceland, around the 13th century. Some of the sagas have a historical core, such as the Orkneyinga Saga that tells the history of the earls of Orkney, or the Vinland Sagas recounting Viking voyages of exploration in North America. Even these are distorted by the demands of storytelling and the interest of the authors in glorifying one family or group’s deeds over that of another. So, for example, it is almost impossible to determine from the evidence in the sagas exactly which parts of the Americas were visited by the Vikings. The largest group of sagas are the Íslendingas-

ögur, ‘Icelandic family sagas’ set mainly in the first century of the Viking colony in Iceland. They tell of conflicts between Iceland’s major families, and the often tragic outcome of feuds between larger-than-life personalities over seemingly trivial slights, with the events often unfolding over several generations. Njál’s Saga tells how Njáll Thorgeirsson is

Öxará river in the south-west of the island, fringed by a volcanic cleft. The location was as accessible as it was spectacular, and go ar and their thingmenn journeyed there from across the island when the assembly convened in mid-June each year.

Local courts At the Althing, the chieftains gathered with their retinues, serving as lawmakers – reviewing existing laws and making new ones – and as judges, presiding over cases that could not be decided in local courts. The gathering was overseen by the lögrétta, the legislative council led by a lögsöguma r or lawspeaker who recited one-third of the Commonwealth’s laws from a great rock at the centre of the assembly site each year. It was a very public form of parliament and judiciary. The requirement for all the go ar to attend meant that, though feuds – often bloody – did arise, the Althing acted as a safety valve, a neutral arena where settlements could be negotiated before conflict got out of hand. By the 12th century, Icelandic society had begun to change, swayed by external 32

sucked into the feuds sparked by the murderous behaviour of his friend Gunnar Hámundarson. Njáll was burnt to death in his farmstead by a posse bent on revenge for the murder of one of Gunnar’s cousins by Njáll’s son. The sagas provide a vital source of evidence about the organisation of Viking society, and offer us a unique window on those elements within it that are overlooked by more conventional history. For example, Saga of the Greenlanders documents the story of Freydís, daughter of Erik the Red (discoverer of Greenland), who organised and led a voyage to North America; this gives us an insight into the powerful role some women played in trading missions. The role of Gunnar’s wife, Hallger , in provoking the saga’s central feud also shows that Viking women did not play a purely passive role in the quarrels of their menfolk.

“The Althing acted as a safety valve for often bloody feuds – an arena in which settlements could be negotiated before conflict got out of hand”

influences – most notably Christianity. Missionaries had earlier attempted to preach in Iceland, though with little success until a concerted effort by the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason led Thorgeir Thorkelsson, the lawspeaker of the Althing, to declare in AD 1000 that Iceland should be Christian. As money and land was bequeathed to the church, much of it came under the control of local landowners, and the go ar grew in wealth, consolidating their power. A number of chieftaincies fell into the hands of just a few families or even single individuals so, by about 1220, political power had become the exclusive preserve of just six families. The remaining go ar ruled over what were effectively mini-kingdoms and, as the rewards of power grew, so did the violence the go ar employed to preserve and enlarge their territories. From the late 12th century, Iceland was riven by civil wars, characterised by largescale pitched battles quite unlike earlier feuds. Loose alliances coalesced around two powerful families, the Oddi and the Sturlungar. The latter had close ties with the royal family of Norway, whose authority had grown far stronger in the previous three centuries and now had the resources to meddle in the Icelandic civil wars. The long reign of King Hákon Hákonarson (1217–63) saw the Norwegians gradually increase their influence in Iceland as the Sturlungar and Oddi tore the Commonwealth apart. Among the casualties of the conflict was the great Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson, murdered in 1241 on the orders of King Hákon, reputedly for his part in a conspiracy to depose him. Battle-weary, despairing and seeing in continued independence only continued bloodshed, the Icelandic chieftains pledged their allegiance to the Norwegian king at the Althing in 1262. It was an ignominious end to the Icelandic Commonwealth, and brought to a close the experiment of rule without kings. So it happened that, four centuries after their ancestors had fled Norway to escape the oppression of Harald Finehair, the Icelanders found themselves firmly under the thumb of his royal descendants. Philip Parker is a writer and historian specialising in late antiquity and early medieval Europe. He will be speaking at the BBC History Magazine Vikings Day at MShed in Bristol on 15 March. historyextra.com/events

A Viking amulet in the shape of a cross, now in the National Museum of Iceland

DISCOVER MORE BOOK E The Northmen’s Fury: A History of

the Viking World by Philip Parker (Jonathan Cape, 2014) BBC History Magazine

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The sagas of Iceland

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BBC History Magazine’s

Vikings Day Saturday 15 March 2014, 10am–5.30pm M Shed, Bristol With Judith Jesch, Ryan Lavelle, Philip Parker, Janina Ramirez and Gareth Williams Listen to lectures from five speakers and enjoy a buffet lunch at the venue, plus morning and afternoon teas and coffees Janina Ramirez teaches the

Dr Ryan Lavelle is senior

history of art at the University of Oxford and has presented several BBC series, including Viking Art and Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons on BBC Four. Talk The Vikings as ‘Other’: Are ‘They’ In Fact ‘Us’? Janina will consider what we know about the Vikings from Anglo-Saxon sources, settlement theories and DNA analysis.

lecturer in medieval history at the University of Winchester, and an expert in Anglo-Saxon history. He is author of Alfred’s Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age (Boydell, 2010). Talk Fighting the Vikings: War and Peace in Viking-Age Britain Looking at the experience of war and peace in England and other parts of Britain in the Viking Age, Ryan will address the defensive responses to Viking attacks. He will also consider the ways in which the English conducted warfare aggressively against their neighbours, displaying, in many ways, ‘Viking’ behaviour of their own.

Judith Jesch is professor of Viking studies at the University of Nottingham. She is author of Viking Poetry of Love and War (British Museum Press, 2013) Talk Treasures of the Sword-Trees: Viking Poets and Poetry The Vikings were accomplished poets as well as raiders, traders and settlers. Judith’s talk will explore what Viking poetry tells us about their attitudes to sailing, war, treasure – and love.

Gareth Williams is the curator of the forthcoming British Museum exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend, and author of The Viking Ship (British Museum Press, 2014). Talk Ships and Society in the Viking Age The many achievements of the Vikings were only possible because of their skill as shipbuilders and seamen. Gareth will explore the development of the Viking ship, and its role within Viking society. Turn to page 24 to read Gareth’s feature on the Vikings’ maritime prowess > Visit historyextra.com/events for full details STEVE SAYERS

Philip Parker is a writer and historian specialising in late antiquity and early medieval Europe. He is the author of The Northmen’s Fury: A History of the Viking World (Jonathan Cape, 2014). Talk Ruling without Kings: State and Society in Viking Iceland The Viking discovery and settlement of Iceland around AD 874 led to the creation of a unique society, the Icelandic Commonwealth, which was free for almost four centuries of the rule of kings. Philip will examine how that society evolved and finally collapsed, leading to the imposition of royal rule by the kings of Norway. Turn to page 30 to read Philip’s feature on Viking Iceland

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EVENTS BBC History Magazine’s

First World War Day Sunday 16 March 2014, 10am–5.30pm M Shed, Bristol With Mark Bostridge, Nick Lloyd, Margaret MacMillan and David Reynolds Listen to lectures from four eminent speakers, join in an afternoon debate where the historians will take questions from the floor and enjoy a buffet lunch at the venue, plus morning and afternoon teas and coffees Mark Bostridge is a consultant on the forthcoming feature film of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. His latest book, The Fateful Year, about England in 1914, was published by Viking in January 2014. Talk 1914: England’s Fateful Year War with Germany, so often imagined and predicted, finally broke out when people in Britain least expected it. Mark’s talk will examine the events that shaped the nation in 1914: from striking schoolchildren, warring suffragettes, and the love affair between the prime minister and a woman young enough to be his daughter, to a country transformed by war.

Margaret MacMillan is the warden of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Her latest book is The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War (Profile, 2013). Talk Accidental or Inevitable? The Outbreak of the First World War There is still no consensus on the causes of the war and perhaps never will be. Margaret will look at the world of 1914 and ask why it was that the key decisionmakers had come to think that war was a reasonable and even a desirable option.

Nick Lloyd is senior lecturer at King’s College London. His latest book is Hundred Days (Viking, 2013), which is about the last 100 days of the First World War. Talk Hundred Days: The End of the Great War The story of the last four months of the Great War, and the events that led up to the Armistice on 11 November, remain little-known. Nick’s talk will examine the last days of the war and ask, how did it end?

Venue: M Shed Princes Wharf Wapping Road Bristol BS1 4RN mshed.org

David Reynolds is professor of

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international history and a fellow of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. His latest book is The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century (Simon and Schuster, 2013). Talk The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century David will argue that British views of the First World War have become stuck in the trenches and trapped in Poets’ Corner. He believes we need to raise our sights and look beyond the events of 1914–18, however dramatic, to the larger consequences of the conflict. Our attitudes to democracy and nationalism, empire and capitalism, art and literature, war and peace were all reshaped by the conflict, which cast a long shadow over the century that followed. > Visit historyextra.com/events for full details

or call 0844 871 8819+ BBC History Magazine

Tickets (per day):

£70 non-subscribers How to book: Call 0844 871 8819 or visit historyextra.com/ events TERMS AND CONDITIONS We reserve the right to replace the speakers with alternatives of equal stature in the unlikely event that any of them are unable to attend. Please let us know when booking of any special access requirements. BBC History Magazine subscribers should have their subscriber number to hand when booking. Tickets are non-refundable and places are limited.

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Counterfactual history

THE HISTORY ESSAY

The battle of Waterloo – starting point of many counterfactual histories – as depicted by William Holmes Sullivan in 1898

What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, Franz Ferdinand had survived in Sarajevo or Hitler had never come to power? Counterfactual histories are all the rage – but their historical value is questionable By Richard J Evans

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THE PAST THAT NEVER WAS

THE HISTORY ESSAY

MARY EVANS

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new historical fashion has come to the fore since the mid1990s. Proponents and practitioners call it counterfactual history: alternative versions of the past in which one small alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually happened.

Starting with the pioneering and still unsurpassed Virtual History, a collection of scintillating essays edited by Niall Ferguson in 1997, an unceasing stream of books and essays has appeared. Andrew Roberts, Robert Cowley, Geoffrey Parker and many others have edited further collections. The prolific Jeremy Black has, inevitably, weighed in with a short survey of the genre. Military historians have produced hundreds of essays on what might have happened had this or that general adopted different tactics in this or that battle. Dominic Sandbrook wrote a sequence of 40 counterfactual essays for the New Statesman. Iain Dale and his collaborators at Biteback Publishing produced a string of collections imagining what things might have been like had Michael Portillo, or any one of a number of other politicians, become prime minister instead of the people who actually did. The cascade of books and essays seems never-ending. But how do we account for this trend? Before the mid-1990s such speculations were few and far between. Occasional asides can be found in the works of historians going back to the ancient Greeks, but it took the end of Providentialist history, which viewed all events as part of the working-out of God’s purposes, and the advent of the Romantic view of the past as a succession of epochs, each essentially different from the previous one, before writers began to speculate at greater length on what might have been. The two earliest extended essays in the genre were both French. Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy’s The Apocryphal Napoleon imagined what would have happened if the emperor had conquered Russia in 1812 instead of being defeated at Moscow; he would, in Geoffroy’s alternative version, have gone on to conquer the known world, eventually being crowned by the pope with the hereditary title ‘The All-Powerful’. Later in the 19th century, Charles Renouvier coined the term ‘Uchronia’ (in a novel of the same name) to denote “the rewriting of history not as it was, but as it could have been”. Both writers had axes to grind. Geoffroy was Napoleon’s adopted son; he wrote his essay in the mid-1830s, when Bonapartism was beginning to re-emerge as a political force. Renouvier, for his part, was prompted by Napoleon III’s close alliance with the church to imagine a history of Europe based on the survival of a tolerant, multi-faith

Roman empire. As these fantasies suggested, wishful thinking, along with a clear political purpose, has been a prime constituent of counterfactual history from the outset. At the same time, however, this kind of writing has always coexisted with a view of ‘what-if?’ history as an amusing entertainment – sometimes in the same book or article. In 1931 the first collection of essays in the genre – If It Had Happened Otherwise, edited by Sir John Collings Squire – presented two articles that adopted a procedure opposite to wishful thinking. GM Trevelyan’s piece imagined the grim fate that England would have met had Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, while Monsignor Ronald Knox’s contribution depicted a Soviet-style regime that he posited would have descended upon Britain had the General Strike of 1926 been successful. The political thrust of such dystopian fantasies was obvious enough, but they have always represented a minority strand in the literature. The publication of those essays perhaps reflected the political uncertainties of the early 1930s. But they had no successor for nearly half a century until 1979, when Daniel Snowman edited If I Had Been… Ten Historical Fantasies, in which 10 historians showed how they could have done better than the personalities they discussed – for example, by preventing American independence or avoiding the First World War. These essays were a product, perhaps, of the sentiment spread by Margaret Thatcher and her government – that Britain had taken a wrong turning in 1945, with the retreat from empire and the foundation of the welfare state. Nevertheless, until the 1990s counterfactualism as entertainment remained the dominant theme in the periodic contributions to the genre. Characteristic was the collection edited by John Merriman in 1985 under the title For Want of a Horse, advertised by the publisher as “humorous speculations”. But in the 1990s the landscape changed. The shelf-loads of counterfactual histories that have appeared since then still include essays designed mainly or even purely as entertainment: Dominic Sandbrook’s witty series is probably the best example. Most practitioners of the genre have, however, presented their work as making a serious contribution to our

A poster supporting British membership of the EEC, ahead of the 1975 referendum. Some counterfactual histories have been inspired by a wish that Britain had stayed out of Europe

BBC History Magazine

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Counterfactual history THE HISTORY ESSAY

“One small change in events inevitably leads to a whole further series of changes: the First World War does not happen, Hitler does not rise to power, and the Holocaust is averted”

This image of Guernsey in the Second World War offers a glimpse of a favourite discussion point for counterfactualists: what if Germany had conquered Britain in 1940?

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followers – only ever claimed this in a general sense, and conceded that chance events and personalities could alter the course of history, at least temporarily (“People make their own history, but not under conditions of their own choosing.”) The danger here is that, in attacking the idea that economic and social forces determine the course of history (a view now held by very few serious historians), the proponents of counterfactualism run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water and discounting wider historical contextual factors altogether. Time and again their speculations involve the influence of personalities over the course of events as if they were unfettered free agents who had autonomy to make completely free decisions. But many a tyrant in history, from Hitler to Napoleon and farther back in time, has discovered to his cost that this is not the case at all. nd if we take a closer look at counterfactual scenarios, we can see that far from freeing history from the straitjacket of determinism – in the sense of restoring chance and contingency to the past, and freedom of action to its personalities – they immediately imprison it in a far more confining kind of determinism. In almost all of these scenarios, one small change in events – Archduke Franz Ferdinand is not assassinated at Sarajevo, or Charles Martel does not defeat the Moors at the battle of Tours, or Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo, or the gunpowder plot succeeds in blowing up King James VI & I and the English political elite, to list a few favourite examples – inevitably leads to a whole further series of changes: the First World War does not happen, Hitler does not rise to power and the Holocaust is averted; Europe is ruled by the Moors instead of the Christians; the Napoleonic empire is re-established; England becomes Catholic. If counterfactuals really did restore our belief in the role of chance and contingency in history, of course, we could not draw any conclusions about the long-term consequences of such events. Thousands of other possible chance events might have happened farther along the timeline: the archduke might have been killed somewhere else, the Byzantine empire might have invaded western Europe, Napoleon might have been killed by a stray shot in the heat of battle, there might have been a civil war in England in the early 1600s instead of a few decades later. We simply cannot know. Once you let the genie of chance out of the bottle of history for one particular contingency, you can’t eliminate the possibility of further unforeseen events by trying to put it back. In practice, no historian writes as if history were governed entirely by chance; if we did, we would never be able to explain anything, and history would degenerate into chronicle. The fascination of studying the past lies in weighing up the interaction of context and event, large and small causes, historical situations and individual personalities. All too often, the projection of long-term consequences from

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SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

knowledge and understanding of the past – indeed, they have been rather sniffy about those who would see it as nothing more than harmless entertainment. The most common justification presented for ‘what-if?’ speculations is that they restore openness and indeterminacy to the past, and undermine or even destroy the determinist belief that what happened was inevitable. Their main target here is Marxism – which, ironically, had collapsed as a political and intellectual force immediately before the vogue for counterfactualism began. Already, the German historian of ancient Rome, Alexander Demandt, had in 1984 produced a book designed to demonstrate by means of counterfactual scenarios that things could have turned out differently from the way they did. This then became a mantra repeated endlessly by the new counterfactualists. But does asking what might have happened if, say, the Spanish Armada had triumphed, or the Glorious Revolution had failed, actually undermine Marxist and other kinds of determinism? To say that things might have been different is, in the end, rather banal. Moreover, the counterfactualists seem to operate with a variety of different meanings of the word determinism. One of these is the idea that history is moving towards a predetermined end, so that each event is judged in terms of the contribution it made, or did not make, towards that end (teleology, to use the technical term) – for example, a post-revolutionary communist utopia. In fact, of course, as Karl Popper pointed out long ago, teleologies are not falsifiable because we cannot know the future. More common is the view of determinism to mean that political events are determined by social and economic forces – or, in a more extreme form, that history is governed by immutable laws of development. Of course, Marx and Engels – unlike some of their

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THE HISTORY ESSAY

English ships engage the Spanish Armada in this contemporary painting. Counterfactualists have enjoyed speculating what would have happened if the Armada had prevailed and turned England into a vassal state of Spain

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Counterfactual history THE HISTORY ESSAY

“Counterfactual speculations are almost entirely confined to the history of kings and battles, high politics and diplomacy, reflecting a belief in a ‘great men’ approach” People on the left generally believe that progress is taking history in their direction. Why should they regret what has happened in the past when they feel instinctively that the future is still theirs? Third, and perhaps more interestingly, counterfactual speculations are almost entirely confined to the history of kings and battles, high politics and diplomacy, reflecting a belief – not shared by left-wing historians – in a ‘great men’ approach to the discipline. In these iterations, small alterations in the biography of individuals such as Hitler, Churchill, Napoleon or Archduke Franz Ferdinand, or in the course of a battle or a political confrontation, lead to enormous changes in the general course of events, in relations between states, in the fate of political systems, societies, economies and cultures. Typically, therefore, the counterfactualist is conservative not only in a political sense but in terms of historical methodology, too. This hasn’t stemmed the tide of counterfactuals, but it has ensured that the range of scenarios to which they are applied has been very narrow. The same topics turn up again and again: the battle of Tours, the battle of Waterloo, the First World War and, above all, Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Soldiers patrol the streets of London in a Vickers Medium tank in May 1926 during the General Strike. Ronald Knox suggested that, had the strike been successful, a Soviet-style regime might have taken power in Britain

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BBC History Magazine

MIRRORPIX

single events ends up as little more than wishful thinking: if only the First World War hadn’t happened, if only Napoleon hadn’t been defeated, if only England had become Catholic again. And in many of the counterfactual speculations of the 1990s there was a more immediate political subtext: if only Britain hadn’t become a member of the European Union, portrayed in essays by Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts, John Charmley and others as a German-dominated Fourth Reich that would not have come into being had Britain stayed out of the First World War or, indeed, the Second. This highlights some interesting features of the boom in counterfactual speculations. First, these writings are overwhelmingly British and, to a lesser extent, American. They have not taken off on the continent or in other parts of the world. In Germany, for example, speculating that Hitler might not have come to power looks too much like making excuses. For almost all continental Europeans, imagining what their country might have been like under German rule – a favourite topic of British and American counterfactualists – isn’t necessary: they already know what it was like. Second, almost all counterfactualist historians are on the right of the political spectrum.

THE HISTORY ESSAY

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

“Historians need evidence to back up their arguments; counterfactuals don’t have any evidence, so those who propose them can indulge in whatever fantasy they please” As a result, different counterfactualists come up with movies involving time travel. Indeed, alternate history is strikingly different speculations. For example, a favourite now a recognised sub-genre in the science fiction world. starting point is Britain concluding a separate peace with All of these flourishing fiction and non-fiction works Nazi Germany in 1940 – but this leads in different scenarios share a common background in the postmodern to the preservation of the British empire; the victory of Nazi cultural turn that began towards the end of the last Germany over Stalin’s Russia and then the Germans’ century. The collapse of the great ideologies of the destruction of the British empire; a long stalemate in the 20th century, above all Marxism, banished teleology war on the eastern front; or the Soviet conquest of western and opened up the past to a multiplicity of possible Europe, including Britain. Take your pick. trajectories. The concept of progress also took a What this plethora of rival scenarios highlights is the hard knock as new threats – from religiously essential arbitrariness of the whole procedure. No wonder inspired terrorism to global warming – brought so much of it is politically motivated. Historians need disorientation and anxiety about the future. evidence to back up their arguments; counterfactuals As belief in a knowable future declined, so don’t have any, so those who propose them can speculation about the course of history to date – a indulge in whatever fantasy they please. narrative that had now also began to seem openIn fact, strictly speaking, many of these fantasies ended – became more popular. aren’t counterfactuals at all. A number of them – for Postmodernism encouraged a blurring of the lines example, Dominic Sandbrook’s essays and Niall Richard Cromwell, son of between past and present, truth and fiction; it Ferguson’s Afterword in his Virtual History – have Oliver, lasted less than nine undermined linear concepts of time and introduced a months as lord protector been parallel histories, shadowing the actual strong emphasis on the subjectivity of the historian. – but what if he had been timeline of events we know happened, without The digital revolution has enabled us to manipulate successful in the role? positing a single cause for the divergence in the at will the photographic record of the past. Much of timeline from reality. what we see in the cinema is now computer-generated imagery rather Had Richard Cromwell, on succeeding Oliver, taken seriously his than film of real people or places. In cyberspace, we can no longer be role as lord protector, he would (says Sandbrook) have founded a certain that the people with whom we are communicating are who dynasty including the dissolute George Cromwell (a parallel of they say they are. George IV), the philandering Herbert Henry Cromwell (a parallel Counterfactual history essentially belongs to this new world of of Asquith) and even rival contenders for the Protectorship in 2012, alternative realities, even if its proponents might reject postmodernist Praise-God and Ed Cromwell (parallels to the Miliband brothers). approaches to the past. As history it is, in the end, worth very little. It shouldn’t need pointing out that, if Richard Cromwell had We don’t need counterfactual speculation to do most of the things stayed in politics, the course of events would have been entirely the genre says it does: undermining untenable theories, for example, unpredictable, except for the fact that it would undoubtedly not have or establishing the role of chance and contingency in historical included the emergence of the successors named by Sandbrook. processes and events. Instead, all we need is a careful examination of Many alterations made by military historians to the outcomes of the historical evidence. Counterfactual imaginings can be fun – they battles aren’t really true counterfactuals, either. There are by now often are – but it is time to recognise that, as serious contributions to scores, if not hundreds, of accounts in which armchair generals historical scholarship, they are pretty much a waste of time. show how they could have won this or that battle by deploying the Sir Richard J Evans is regius professor of history and president of troops of one side or the other in a different way to that chosen by Wolfson College, University of Cambridge Wellington, Napoleon, Lee or Grant. However, their interest ends there: they do not draw wider or more long-term conclusions. The same is true of books that claim Hitler and Eva Braun survived DISCOVER MORE the bunker in Berlin (doubles having been incinerated) and escaped BOOKS to South America, or that the Rudolf Hess in Spandau was not really E Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard J Rudolf Hess. Their interest is in making the claim look plausible (not Evans (Little, Brown, 2014) that they do), but they have nothing to say about the consequences. E Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals edited Of course, timelines can be altered in other ways, too. Famously, by Niall Ferguson (republished by Penguin, 2011) Stalin had his erstwhile rival Trotsky airbrushed out of photographs WEBSITE of Lenin and his closest comrades, as if to prove that Trotsky never E Dominic Sandbrook’s What If? columns are available to had any association with the founder of Soviet communism. And read on the New Statesman website: newstatesman.com/ writers/dominic_sandbrook rewriting the past has been a favourite of science-fiction novels and

Next month’s essay: Sir Ian Kershaw explores the enduring fascination with Adolf Hitler

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COVER STORY

A witness to the six wives BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/LAUREN MACKAY & MUSEE DE CHATEAU

As a long-serving ambassador to the Tudor court, Eustace Chapuys was in the rare position of meeting all of Henry VIII’s consorts. Lauren Mackay, author of a new book on Chapuys, reveals what his writings tell us about the queens’ characters

Of all the contemporary accounts of Henry VIII’s wives, perhaps none are more comprehensive – or fascinating – than those left to us by Eustace Chapuys, shown here in a 17th-century painting

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Henry VIII’s wives

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Catherine of Aragon From beautiful warrior-queen to desolate estranged wife

Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of the power couple of Europe, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and aunt to the powerful Holy Roman emperor Charles V. She was reputedly a blue-eyed, red-haired beauty who captured Henry’s heart and the hearts of her subjects, only to be discarded after 20 years of marriage when Henry met the beguiling Anne Boleyn. Catherine vehemently resisted attempts by Henry to replace her with Anne as his wife and queen, but she could not do this alone. Catherine needed a legal mind, someone who possessed diplomatic shrewdness, experience and cool reasoning, someone who could argue her cause before the king and maintain cordial relations between Charles V and Henry. That man was Eustace Chapuys, a gifted lawyer and diplomat at Charles’s imperial court. Following a particularly

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burden of my defence… I consider him deserving of all your favour.” Catherine was cast aside by her husband and the court and eventually neglected by her nephew Charles. And so Chapuys became her counsellor, advisor, advocate, life coach and her window to the world. In 1536, with Catherine clearly ailing after her seven-year battle with Henry, Chapuys rushed to her bedside to once again rally her spirits. He reported on what would be their last meeting: “She was pleased, out of sheer kindness and benevolence, and without any occasion or merit it

on my part, to thank me for the many services which, she said, I had rendered her on former occasions, as well as the trouble I had taken in coming down to visit her, at a time too when, if it should please God to take her to Himself, it would at least be a consolation to die as it were in my arms, and not all alone like a beast.” Catherine died at Kimbolton Caste in Cambridgeshire as Chapuys was returning to London. In his final, intensely personal report he reveals his deep affection for a woman who, in his view, could never be replaced as Queen of England.

“Chapuys reveals his deep affection for a woman who, in his view, could never be replaced as Queen of England”

Anne Boleyn A beguiling combination of intelligence, insecurity and relentless ambition

Anne Boleyn’s elusive personality and contradictory reputation continue to enthrall us, but it is through Chapuys’ dispatches that she emerges as an enticingly unique creature: intelligent, impetuous and ambitious. Chapuys had loyally served some of the most powerful women in Europe: both governesses of the Low Countries – Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary – and Charles V’s wife, the Empress Isabella. He recognised in Anne the same political ingenuity. Anne was a tempest of life. She was rash and bold and often quarrelled violently with Henry. We have Chapuys to

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successful mediation between the royal Hapsburg family and the independent Duchy of Savoy, this accomplished Savoyard from the small town of Annecy in what is now south-east France was appointed imperial ambassador to the Tudor court. While the conflicting accounts of Catherine’s character have been drawn more along the battle lines of the bitter divorce with Henry VIII, it is through Chapuys’ dispatches that she is revealed to us as a fearless warrior queen – who defeated the Scots in battle in 1513 – and a vulnerable, desolate wife. Catherine’s admiration of Chapuys is evident in her correspondence with Charles: “You could not have chosen a better ambassador, his wisdom encourages and comforts me, and when my councillors through fear hesitate to answer the charges against me, he is always ready to undertake the

thank for preserving several of the most quoted and evocative of Anne’s outbursts as he deftly captured her moods, her insecurities and growing frustrations as queen-in-waiting: “I see that some fine morning you [Henry]… will cast me off. I have been waiting long, and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage… but alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.” Chapuys’ support of Catherine of Aragon and opposition to Anne Boleyn has so often been construed as a mark of his opposition to Lutheranism and the English Reformation. However it was

A woodcut showing Anne Boleyn’s coronation on 1 June 1533. Chapuys refused to believe the charges that led to Anne’s death

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Jane Seymour

A master of managing the king – without him realising it

BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/AKG IMAGES/ART ARCHIVE

A portrait of Catherine of Aragon. Chapuys was bowled over by her “sheer kindness and benevolence”

his commission as ambassador to attempt to reconcile Catherine and Henry and restore Catherine to her rightful place on the throne of England. He could therefore hardly have been a supporter of Anne, whatever her religious leanings. Chapuys also offers us an insight into Anne’s downfall, caused by the machinations of Henry and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Chapuys and Cromwell had an intense and complex relationship, a mixture of rivalry and mutual admiration, yet Chapuys could not shake from his mind how instrumental Cromwell had been in engineering Anne’s downfall. Crucially, Chapuys addressed the charge which has long stained Anne’s reputation and that of her brother: the accusation of incest. He refused to believe a word of it, reporting that “no proof of his guilt was produced except that

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of his having once passed many hours in her company, and other little follies”. Whatever he felt about Anne’s treatment of Catherine and her daughter, Chapuys believed that the execution of Anne, and the five men condemned with her, was unconscionable — for him they were innocent of the charges. Although not present at the executions, Chapuys provides one of the vital narratives of the bloody events. His final entry on Anne is a testament to the woman he thought her to be: “No one ever showed more courage or greater readiness to meet death than she did… When orders came from the king to have (her execution) delayed until to-day, she seemed sorry… since she was well disposed and prepared for death, she should be dispatched immediately.” His words are heartfelt in their admiration.

Jane Seymour was a more complex figure than many nowadays believe. Popular perceptions range from either a simple, soft spoken, docile and subservient woman of whom Henry would eventually have tired, or a shrewd and calculating young woman who seized the chance to snare a monarch. Chapuys however recognised her skilfulness in managing Henry without him realising it – the perfect wife. Chapuys’ first impressions of Jane were of a woman “of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise. She is over 25 years old… not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding.” Chapuys’ observations suggest that, while Jane may not have been of great intellect, she may have been more astute than she let on. Though lacking Anne Boleyn’s legendary sensuality, she nevertheless possessed an easy grace and innocence. Chapuys keenly appreciated the mutual affection and loyalty that developed between Jane and Mary, the only surviving child of Henry’s marriage with Catherine of Aragon. Jane was sincere in her desire to restore Mary’s position at court. From Chapuys’ few accounts of Jane, we gain an insight into a quiet, determined woman who could entreat Henry for the lives of Catholic rebels as well as fight to reunite her step-daughter Mary with her father. From Chapuys’ first audience with Jane, his admiration is evident; he had again found a queen he could revere. “I ended by begging her to take care of the princess’s affairs; which she kindly promised to do, saying that she would work in earnest to deserve the honorable name which I had given her of pacificator, that is, ‘preserver and guardian of peace’.” Chapuys provides us with a sympathetic image of Jane: mediator, queen and mother of Henry’s only male heir.

Jane Seymour in c1536. Her easy grace and quiet determination appear to have served her well in Henry’s court

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Henry’s wives

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All she wanted to do was please those around her – but in one critical respect, she failed

Anne of Cleves

Not so dim, ugly and socially inept as Henry would have us believe Chapuys was in Brussels for the first six months of 1540, and missed Henry’s disastrous and brief marriage to Anne of Cleves. Our glimpses of her during this time are few and limited to Henry’s damning observations: dim, ugly and socially inept. Thankfully, the real Anne becomes more illuminated through Chapuys’ constant stream of dispatches following her divorce from Henry. Anne was reported to be a statuesque, slender, woman, “of middling beauty, with determined and resolute countenance”.

Henry’s assessment of Anne, shown in a Hans Holbein the Younger portrait, may not have been strictly accurate

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It was during Christmas 1541 that Chapuys first set eyes on Anne. He wrote that she made a supremely dignified entrance at Hampton Court, where she met her successor as queen, Catherine Howard. “Having entered the room, Lady Anne approached the queen with as much reverence and punctilious ceremony as if she herself were the most insignificant damsel about court.” Chapuys was well aware of Anne’s reformist inclinations. But on a personal level his reports are generous in their admiration, and he was pleased to see the genuine warmth between her and Henry’s daughter Mary. Anne was a true survivor. She would outlive Henry and go on to experience her stepdaughter Mary’s reign.

“Chapuys’ reports of Anne are generous. He was pleased to see the warmth between her and Henry’s daughter Mary”

Of Anne’s successor, Catherine Howard, popular culture has left us an image of a pretty, vapid, ineffectual young woman whose allegedly unbridled sexuality would be her undoing. Chapuys, however, saw her vulnerability and the precarious position into which she was forced. He shifts the focus away from that famous sexuality to more significant aspects of her nature, namely her relationship with Henry, the firm hold her relatives had on her, and her rather endearingly earnest desire to please those around her. Often dismissed as a queen with little power or political sway, she is viewed as more of a trophy wife admired by her considerably older husband. But this is not the Catherine of Chapuys’ letters. He perceived that Henry’s intention was to mould Catherine into the ideal Tudor queen, something that had eluded him for a number of years. From her inauguration festivities Chapuys keenly observed her role: “[She] took occasion and courage to beg and entreat the king for the release of Maistre Huyet (Thomas Wyatt) a prisoner in the said Tower, which petition the king granted.” Catherine won the hearts of her subjects, her predecessor, and to an extent Chapuys himself, but he regretted that she and Mary had a fractious relationship – hardly surprising, as Mary was around five years older than her new stepmother. Within two years Catherine would be executed for adultery with two men, Francis Dereham, with whom she was involved before her marriage to Henry, and Thomas Culpepper, although there is no evidence that the affair went beyond words. Catherine’s last weeks are meticulously recorded by the ambassador, including a peculiar request that the executioner’s block be sent to her room. “In the same evening she asked to see the block, pretending that she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it. This was granted, and the block being brought in, she herself tried and placed her head on it by way of experiment.” Even in death, Catherine had not wanted to disappoint.

Catherine Howard was at the mercy of her ambitious family and a king who wished to mould her into the ideal queen BBC History

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Thomas Cromwell (inset) wrote this letter to Henry VIII in 1539, trying to speed up the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves. The union’s failure would contribute to Cromwell’s execution

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Catherine Howard

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Katherine Parr A shrewd political operator and a calming foil for Henry’s rages

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

By the time Henry married his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, Chapuys and the rest of Europe were almost indifferent to his penchant for weddings. But by then, Chapuys was beginning to feel his age. He worried constantly that Mary would have no one to promote her claim to the Tudor throne after he was gone. He could not have been more relieved then, upon meeting Katherine Parr for the first time, to find her graceful, a good role model for Mary, and a calming foil for Henry’s increasingly bad temper. Chapuys was thrilled to report that she was a firm supporter of Mary’s rehabilitation at court; it seemed that she was to pick up where Jane Seymour had left off.

Katherine also displayed a certain political acumen, which was evident in her efforts to maintain good relations with the Holy Roman emperor (still Charles V). Chapuys trusted that Katherine would do all she could to preserve this alliance. From his first real audience with Katherine, the ambassador had a chance to observe Mary and her new stepmother together. He was gratified to see a genuine affection between the two women and thanked Katherine for the “good offices which she had always exercised towards the preservation of friendship between your majesty and the king; and also thanked her for the favour she showed to the Lady Mary”.

Katherine warmly assured Chapuys that his gracious words were too kind, but that it was her affection for – and duty to – Mary that influenced her; indeed, she wished she could do more. Chapuys was thoroughly conquered by Katherine’s modest response. One of Chapuys’ last dispatches brings to life their touching farewell audience. Despite his crippling gout, Chapuys was determined to show Katherine and Mary his respect and devotion, and remained standing despite the severe pain he was in. Katherine could see his discomfort and anxiously insisted that he be seated in her presence. She was one of the few at Henry’s court who acknowledged Chapuys’ great service to England. Clearly flattered, the ambassador was finally able to leave England (he moved to the now Belgian town of Louvain in 1545, and died 11 years later). At last he felt he had discharged his mission entrusted to him by Catherine of Aragon all those years ago.

“Katherine displayed a certain political acumen, which was evident in her efforts to maintain good relations with Charles V” Lauren Mackay is a historian based at the University of Newcastle in Australia. She is currently researching her PhD on Thomas and George Boleyn DISCOVER MORE BOOKS E Inside the Tudor Court:

Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys by Lauren Mackay (Amberley, 2014) A c1545 painting of Katherine Parr, who was one of the few to acknowledge Chapuys’ contribution to the English court over 15 years

TELEVISION E Amanda Vickery

explores female creativity through the ages in the three-part series The World That Women Made, coming to BBC Two soon

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

SMALL ISLAND, BIG HISTORY The Channel Island of Guernsey has a rich and fascinating history dating back to 8,000 BC. Delve into its past during the Heritage Guernsey Festival this spring.

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ver 35 days jam-packed with daily events makes the Heritage Guernsey Festival a must-do for history lovers. Coastal castles will be brought to life with re-enactments and outdoor plays, doors will be opened on wartime bunkers and historic towers and the island will put the flags out to celebrate its freedom from German Occupation. The Heritage Guernsey Festival is the celebration of a small island with a big history. Evidence of the island’s heritage is everywhere from one of the earliest man-made structures in Europe to its imposing Napoleonic sea defences and the ancient forts and loop-holed towers which have protected the island over the centuries. All these are set in stunning scenery, which has long provided inspiration for artists and writers – Renoir fell in love with the south coast’s Moulin Huet Bay and Les Miserables author Victor Hugo made the

island his home for 15 years. The German Occupation of WW2 was one of the most significant periods in Guernsey’s past and cast a long shadow over the 20th century. It left a lasting legacy and the coastline bears testament, still punctuated with fortifications and bunkers. Find out more during a special series of guided tours and walks by Festung Guernsey, a group dedicated to preserving Guernsey’s German Fortifications. Islanders still celebrate their freedom each year on 9th May – Liberation Day. To understand what wartime island life was really like head to Castle Cornet on 4th May for the Hafenschloss. During the Occupation, the castle was called Hafenschloss, or Harbour Castle, by the German Occupying Forces. Specialist re-enactment teams will be setting up camp within its walls and visitors can experience the gritty reality of occupied life for island residents and soldiers.

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Cavalcade at St Peter Port St Peter Port’s Castle Cornet is one of a number of island heritage sites hosting events during the festival including HistoryFest: Travels in Time, between Friday 18th and Sunday 20th April.

‘I have long had a yearnsy to visit Guernsey for a bit of smuggling and shipwrecking. And now I’m delighted to be getting my chance to visit what looks like a very lively literary festival too.’ LUCY WORSLEY, HISTORIAN AND TELEVISION PRESENTER

‘We are lucky in Guernsey that we have thousands of years of history to pick and choose some extraordinary stories from,’ said Guernsey Museum’s Jo Dowding. She said there was something for everyone, from a knight school for the young ones to Regency dancing lessons. ‘There will be an opportunity to learn the dances from the Pride

and Prejudice era, who knows, visitors could dance with their own Mark Darcy in the grounds of a real castle.’ Celebrations also encompass the Guernsey Literary Festival (Thurs 15th – Sunday 18th May). Highlights of the packed programme include talks and workshops with guest speakers Sir Andrew Motion, Janet StreetPorter, veteran news correspondent Kate Adie and historian and TV presenter Dr Lucy Worsley. Guernsey’s past is woven into its present and its heritage is just one of many reasons to visit this beautiful island situated just a short flight or boat trip from the UK. For more information about the Heritage Guernsey Festival go to: www.visitguernsey.com/ heritagefestival A Discovery Pass, priced £16, offers unlimited entry to Guernsey’s three top heritage sites – Castle Cornet, Fort Grey Shipwreck Museum and Guernsey Museum. Find out more at www.museums.gov.gg

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CONTACT DETAILS ADDRESS Guernsey Information Centre, North Esplanade, St Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 2LQ TELEPHONE +44 (0)1481 723552 EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE www.visitguernsey.com

ORGEL-KÖHNE, DEUTSCHES HISTORISCHES MUSEUM, BERLIN

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink addresses a Nazi rally. When she visited London in 1939, the press speculated that she was passing messages to German spies planted in Britain

When Hitler’s perfect woman came to call A visit by the leader of the women’s wing of the Nazi party to London in 1939 was greeted with suspicion, speculation – and comments on the size of her feet. Julie Gottlieb and Matthew Stibbe report BBC History Magazine

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n 7 March 1939, a plane touched down on the tarmac at Croydon airport to be greeted by a scrum of photographers and reporters, angling for a scoop. The propellers came to a halt, the plane’s doors opened, and out stepped Reichsfrauenführerin Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the National Socialist Women’s League (NS-Frauenschaft) and a figure dubbed by Adolf Hitler as the “perfect Nazi woman”. By refusing to answer any of the reporters’ questions, and immediately ducking into an awaiting car, Scholtz-Klink merely fed an already feverish press’s suspicions about her motives for being in Britain. Indeed, those among the press of a more conspiratorial bent believed the real purpose of Scholtz-Klink’s visit was entirely sinister. One reporter, Richard Baxter, would allege that she was in England to secretly liaise with German and Austrian girls who had been planted in British homes by their spy ringleader, the wife of the former German ambassador, Anna von Ribbentrop. Baxter’s imagination may have been running away with him but he was far from

“Scholtz-Klink arrived in London only days before Hitler sounded the death knell of the Munich Agreement by marching into Prague” alone in wondering aloud what a prominent Nazi leader was doing in London at a moment when relations between Britain and Germany were rapidly taking a turn for the worse. What makes Scholtz-Klink’s visit unusual is that it has attracted any attention at all. As we mark the 75th anniversary of the countdown to the Second World War, it must be said that for too long the story of the Britons who sought to appease the Nazis has been told with the women left out. On 30 September 1938, Neville Chamberlain had also stepped off a plane to be greeted by a posse of reporters – this time at Heston aerodrome in west London. The

prime minister’s announcement that day that he had secured “peace for our time” following his ill-fated Munich Agreement with Hitler has since been debated in infinite detail. Female contributions to appeasement have, however, been largely ignored. But the fact is, in the late 1930s, prominent women in British public life forged links with the Nazi party, and were involved in numerous attempts at reconciliation. And it was these efforts to strike up a dialogue with Germany’s leaders that brought Scholtz-Klink to London in March 1939 – only days before Hitler sounded the death knell of the Munich Agreement by marching into Prague. Ostensibly, the purpose of the visit – at the invitation of Prunella Stack of a British organisation called the Women’s League of Health and Beauty – was to study “social conditions”. Stack was returning the hospitality that Scholtz-Klink had extended to her when she had taken a Women’s League delegation to a physical education congress in Hamburg in the summer of 1938. There was, however, a lot more to ScholtzKlink’s visit than that. The Reichsfrauenführerin had also arrived at the request of the Anglo-German Fellowship, a pro-Conservative and pro-busi-

The hand of friendship Four women who shaped Anglo-German relations Florence Horsbrugh Prominent Scottish MP and arch-appeaser Horsbrugh was first returned as MP for Dundee in 1931, and was re-elected in 1935. She took a keen interest in international affairs, and was a delegate to the League of Nations assembly in 1933, 1934 and 1935. She was also a strong supporter of prime minister Neville Chamberlain, and as such was an ardent critic of the Duchess of Atholl, her fellow Scottish Conservative and Unionist MP, who came out publicly against appeasement. Horsbrugh was appointed to a junior post as secretary to the Ministry of Health from 1939–45.

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Gertrud Scholtz-Klink The Nazi leader whose visit to Britain caused a furore Scholtz-Klink (pictured right, in London) was the Reich Women’s leader in Nazi Germany from February 1934, placed in charge of the pro-Nazi National Socialist Women’s League and the more broadly based umbrella body, the German Women’s Enterprise. In spite of her high profile, Scholtz-Klink was subordinate to male colleagues and lacked real authority. For instance, she was forced to cede control of young women to the Reich youth leader Baldur von Schirach, and of women workers to the German Labour Front leader, Robert Ley. Her first husband died of a heart attack in 1930. She married two more times, dying in 1999 at the age of 97. BBC History Magazine

SZ PHOTOS/TOPFOTO

Hitler’s perfect woman

ness but not overtly pro-Nazi organisation set up in 1935 to host dinners and other events in honour of cultural friendship and commercial ties between the two countries. That the Nazi leadership approved of the visit is beyond doubt: deputy führer Rudolf Hess actively endorsed the decision to accept the invitation. The Reich foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was also informed.

SZ PHOTOS/TOPFOTO

The show goes on In January 1939 a member of Hess’s staff asked one of Ribbentrop’s senior department chiefs if the visit should still go ahead “in view of the changed situation”. This was presumably a reference to worsening Anglo-German relations as it became clear that Hitler wasn’t going to honour the Munich Agreement. However, the German Foreign Office agreed to continue as planned, and in February Scholtz-Klink was formally invited by the ambassador’s wife, Hilda von Dirksen, to use the London embassy as her place of residence during her stay. If Scholtz-Klink was hoping to win over the British press during her visit, she was to be disappointed. Richard Baxter took exception to her lack of sex appeal, remarking that she had the “biggest pair of feet I had ever seen on a woman”, and describing her as “a dour, irritable Hun who could not even sum up sufficient decency to be civil to the authorities

“At a dinner at Claridge’s, ScholtzKlink met some of the most influential women in Britain, including the wife of the foreign secretary” at Croydon, much less the representatives of the press who had come to welcome her”. Others used Scholtz-Klink’s meetings with Stack as an opportunity to compare AngloSaxon and Aryan female types in a duelling atmosphere charged with political, ideological and racial tension. The German press was far less animated by Scholtz-Klink’s visit, reflecting a general view in the Third Reich that diplomacy did not belong in the realm of women. The official party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, carried a report on 9 March noting that Scholtz-Klink’s presence in London had aroused “great interest in the English press”, but there was no mention of any impact on Anglo-German relations. Two days later the same paper carried the briefest and blandest

of notes on her return home, commenting merely that she had “used her trip to London to visit a number of women’s groups and welfare organisations”. It is worth stressing, though, that Scholtz-Klink’s three-day stay in Britain came after several weeks of mounting anti-British rhetoric in the Nazi press, including attacks on Britain’s “unjustified” meddling in internal German matters (a reference to growing criticism of Germany’s persecution of the Jews) and its “hypocrisy” in world affairs. In contrast, her four-day voyage to Italy in late February and early March 1939 had received much more extensive and favourable coverage at home. It was emphasised, for instance, that the Reichsfrauenführerin had met with leading figures in the government in Rome, including the prime minister Benito Mussolini, the crown prince Umberto and the secretary of the Fascist party, Achille Starace. Unlike the Italians, the British didn’t wheel out the prime minister or a high-ranking member of the royal family for ScholtzKlink’s visit, but that didn’t stop the Nazi leader meeting some of the most influential women in the country. The Anglo-German Fellowship leapt at the chance to host a dinner

Nancy Astor She slammed the Nazis’ record on women’s rights

Prunella Stack The fitness pioneer who invited Scholtz-Klink to Britain Stack was known as “the most physically perfect girl in the world” and, from 1936, was head of the League of Health and Beauty, a pioneer in organised women’s physical fitness. In October 1938, just as Chamberlain was in his honeymoon period with the public after signing the Munich Agreement, she married David Douglas-Hamilton, the youngest son of the 13th Duke of Hamilton. The Hamilton family had a tangled relationship with Nazi Germany: in May 1941, when deputy führer Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland on his ill-fated peace mission, he claimed he was coming to see the Duke of Hamilton. Stack died in 2010, aged 96.

BBC History Magazine

Astor was elected to parliament in 1919, and was the first woman to take her seat, serving as an MP until 1945. As a fiery and quick-witted but not always discreet political hostess, she became identified as one of the main protagonists in the so-called Cliveden Set (from 1937), a group of upper class, right-wing individuals, named after Astor’s house at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire. While a staunch supporter of Chamberlain and of appeasement, Astor was also a determined feminist who believed that the Nazis denied the rights of women – except in the home. She was involved in a number of campaigns to free women imprisoned in Nazi Germany. Violet Astor (who, unlike Nancy, did attend Scholtz-Klink’s lunch at Claridge’s), was her sister-in-law.

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Hitler’s perfect woman

in her honour at Claridge’s and filled her table with an impressive list of dignitaries that included Viscountess Halifax, wife of the British foreign secretary; the Dowager Marchioness of Reading, chairman of the Women’s Voluntary Services for Civil Defence; and Lady Violet Astor, controller of the County of London Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Guest of honour Elsewhere in the room sat representatives of over a dozen organisations such as the British Red Cross, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the National Women’s Citizens’ Association, the National Council of Women of Great Britain and the National Council for Maternity and Child Welfare. The guest of honour gave a speech in German about women’s work in the Reich, and Scottish MP Florence Horsbrugh replied by discussing the work of leading women’s organisations in Britain. Scholtz-Klink then spent the next couple of days visiting various ideologically compatible women’s organisations that advocated women’s domesticity, such as the Mothercraft training school at Highgate, the League of Health and Beauty, and the Lapswood training school for girls. It was ironic indeed that the same women’s organisations that rolled out the red carpet for Scholtz-Klink were, all the while, gearing up for war with 54

Nazi Germany by, for example, training women for wartime national service. Yet not everyone welcomed Scholtz-Klink to Britain with open arms. Not surprisingly, her presence in London was met with some feminist anti-fascist protest. For them, this was one Nazi encounter too many, far too close to home, and conspicuous for its poor timing. Twelve members of the Women’s Committee for Peace and Democracy walked in a single line from Tottenham Court Road to the German embassy in Carlton House Terrace, their posters reading “Clear Out Scholtz-Klink”, “Hitler Wants War, We Want Peace”, “No Nazi Klink for British Women”, and in German “Freedom for the Women of Hitler’s Concentration Camps”.

“It was ironic that the same organisations that rolled out the red carpet for Scholtz-Klink were, all the while, gearing up for war with Nazi Germany”

Dr Julie Gottlieb is senior lecturer in history at the University of Sheffield and Matthew Stibbe is professor of modern European history at Sheffield Hallam University DISCOVER MORE BOOKS E Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s

Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 by Julie Gottlieb (IB Taurus, 2001) E Women in the Third Reich by Matthew Stibbe (Hodder Arnold, 2003) ON THE PODCAST

Julie Gottlieb discusses Gertrud ScholtzKlink on our weekly podcast E historyextra.com/podcasts BBC History Magazine

TOPFOTO

ABOVE: Adolf Hitler greets Gertrud ScholtzKlink at the Nuremburg Rally of 1935. On her visit to Britain in 1939, one reporter described Scholtz-Klink as “a dour, irritable hun” LEFT: Scholtz-Klink and Prunella Stack (right) watch members of Stack’s League of Health and Beauty run through their routines, 1939

Scholtz-Klink’s status as the leader of the reactionary NS-Frauenschaft that had risen to displace and then replace the once vibrant German women’s movement meant that the senior female MP Lady Nancy Astor had no interest in making her acquaintance, judging that her activities “give no recognition to the rights of women in any sphere but the home”. Although Lady Astor was herself implicated in appeasement and behind-the-scenes AngloGerman relations as the hostess of the so-called Cliveden Set (see Nancy Astor box, page 53), she was also a staunch feminist, and objected to Nazism on the grounds that the regime represented an assault on working women. So what was the significance of ScholtzKlink’s arrival in London at this most strained moment in the descent to war? If nothing else, her visit highlights the varied roles that women played in shaping AngloGerman relations in the 1930s. While it would be rash to tar as pro-Nazi all the women who extended the hand of friendship to the Reichsfrauenführerin in March 1939, her visit was nonetheless one of many efforts made by women to avert war and to demonstrate their appeasement credentials. Scholtz-Klink was not a diplomat but her trip was certainly intended to foster mutual understanding between British and German women. In this sense it was largely a failure; it did little to alter what historian Richard Overy describes as “the growing public acceptance [in Britain] in 1938 and 1939 of a necessary showdown” with Nazi Germany and associated “forces of darkness”. And yet, what is perhaps most significant is how this event has been almost entirely ignored by historians and thus largely forgotten. It is time that women should be recognised in the history of appeasement.

Self-portrait by William Orpen, 1917 © IWM (IWM ART 2382)

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The rise of China’s communists

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TOP: Mao Zedong inspects troops with his aide Zhou Enlai (right) during the Long March ABOVE: Communist propagandists give Mao and Zhou a makeover in this heroic paintingBBC of the Long March History Magazine

The Legend of the Long March Mao Zedong made great political capital out of the Red Army’s epic trek to escape the clutches of their enemies in China 80 years ago. But, as Edward Stourton explains, the communist leader’s version of the march did not always reflect reality Accompanies the Radio 4 series The Long March

RENE BURRI–MAGNUM PHOTOS/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

“T

he Long March is propaganda,” declared Mao Zedong in a speech in December 1935. “It has announced to some 200 million people in 11 provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation.” We almost always use the word ‘propaganda’ pejoratively, often as shorthand for official lies. For Mao, it meant something much closer to ‘evangelisation’, in the sense that the term is used of the early Christian church. Propaganda was the means by which the good news of his new creed was to be spread across China’s vast territories, and his 1935 speech was a claim of success, not a confession of deceit. It was the first time Mao used the phrase ‘Long March’ and the term has since become familiar all over the world. But the complex historical background to the episode it describes is little understood outside China. Chinese politics in the mid-1930s were chaotic and uncertain. Chiang Kai-shek (pictured), the ‘Generalissimo’ as he was known in the west, was China’s nominal ruler, governing the country through the BBC History Magazine

Guomindang, or Nationalist Party. But much of the country was controlled by local warlords and Chiang faced two powerful threats to his authority: the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria, in northern China, which began in 1931; and the communist rebellion centred in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi. Mao Zedong arrived in Jiangxi in 1929, where he and the Communist Party leadership set about establishing a prototype communist state – the Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China, as they called it. The reality was rather more modest than that ambitious title suggests. While recording my BBC Radio 4 series on the Long March, I visited the Communist Party offices in the Jiangxi city of Yudu. During the ‘Soviet’ period of the early 1930s, the local government was run from a requisitioned salt-merchant’s house, with entire government departments housed in bedrooms the size of those in an average British family home today. Chiang Kai-shek’s forces squeezed the communists in a series of ‘encirclements’ and, by the autumn of 1934, it had become clear that the Jiangxi Soviet could not hold out for much longer. Harrison Salisbury, an

American journalist and historian who wrote an account of the Long March (with official Chinese Communist Party backing) in the mid-1980s, quotes an estimate that the communists lost 60,000 men in the last of the defensive campaigns against the Guomindang. Their only option was to run away. That October, 86,000 Red Army troops crossed the Yudu river on pontoon bridges built from doors, bed boards and even – so they tell you in the city of Yudu today – the odd coffin lid. They marched in straw sandals, hundreds of thousands of which had been woven in the weeks leading up to their departure. The leaders hoped to link up with

“Mao’s forces lost an estimated 60,000 men in their clashes with the nationalists. Their only option was to run” 57

The rise of China’s communists

other Red Army units operating in southcentral China, with a view to establishing a new Soviet Republic on the Jiangxi model. They took everything with them – from a printing press to an x-ray machine – while the ordinary soldiers, many of them local recruits who had never left home, had no idea where they were heading. The first serious battle they fought was a catastrophic defeat. Chiang’s forces caught up with them at the Xiang river in Guangxi Province and ambushed them as they crossed. Estimates of the number of troops they lost range between 15,000 and 40,000. But Mao was an alchemist, with an astonishing ability to turn the base metal of defeat into political gold. When the Long March began, the Communist Party leadership was divided between a pro-Moscow faction (including a German military adviser called Otto Braun, sent by Stalin) and Chinese nationalists like Mao who wanted to build a

“The story has been shaped to provide a lesson in Maoist values – endurance, physical toughness, self-sufficiency…” 58

home-grown revolution. Mao used the Xiang debacle as a stick with which to beat the Moscow loyalists and, at a series of meetings, he cemented his own leadership position and sidelined Braun and his allies (see ‘Mao’s Myths’ box, right). Political propaganda was always central to the military campaign. The Red Army had no outside resources to draw upon and its survival depended on the support of the local population in the areas it marched through. Wherever they went, the communists enforced the policy of ‘land reform’ – a summary form of asset redistribution that often involved the execution of existing landlords.

Brilliant operation? Military victories were few and far between – and when they came, the propaganda teams exploited them to the full. The most famous, the battle of Luding Bridge, has gone down in official history as a brilliant commando operation, but many modern historians have questioned whether it was quite as dramatic or decisive as the communists’ version claims. In May 1935, the Red Army was in danger of being trapped on the banks of the Dadu river in Sichuan. The troops were spooked by a powerful folk-memory: in the mid-19th century, one of the last surviving armies of the Taiping rebellion against the Qing Dynasty had been forced to surrender at the same spot. Its leader, the inspirational Prince Shi Dakai, was subsequently executed by ‘the slicing method’, or ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

In a requisitioned Catholic priest’s house in the mountain town of Moxi, Mao decided on a daring plan to ensure that he and the Red Army did not come to grief in a similar way. It involved the taking and holding of an 18th-century chain suspension bridge across the Dadu in the remote town of Luding. Speed was of the essence; the Red Army detachment charged with taking the bridge made a forced march of 75 miles in 24 hours over unforgiving mountain roads. Towards the end, they found themselves in a straight race with Guomindang reinforcements on the opposite bank of the river. Pung Min Yi, now a 94-year-old farmer who lives just outside Luding, was looking after the family goats that day and witnessed the scene. He still vividly remembers the bullets pinging off the troops’ cooking pots as the Nationalists took shots from across the water. When the Reds reached Luding, they found that the Nationalist defenders had removed most of the planks from the bridge to make it even more difficult to cross. Twenty-two commandoes clambered along the chains; as they swung wildly above the swirling mountain river, they were under constant fire from the bridge house on the opposite bank. The bridge is about 100 metres long, but almost all of them made it across. The defenders fled and the crossing was secured. BBC History Magazine

LONG MARCH SERIES PRODUCER PHIL PEGUM

Last men standing Long March survivors in 1934 after their arrival in Shaanxi. Of the 86,000 who started the march, as few as 4,000 completed it RIGHT: Edward Stourton with 98-year-old Zhong Ming, one of the few Long March veterans still alive

The route of the Long March

Mao’s myths Edward Stourton separates Long March fact from Long March iction

1. The Long March wasn’t quite as long as Mao claimed “By using our two legs, we swept across a distance of 25,000 li,” Mao declared. In the 1930s, the li was understood to equal half a kilometre, or 550 yards, so Mao was claiming a march of 12,500 kilometres or a little over 7,800 miles. Author Ed Jocelyn, who retraced the route 10 years ago, calculated that he had walked less than half that distance – 12,000 li, or 3,750 miles.

2. Mao’s “heroes” routinely beheaded captives The Long March was an incredible undertaking. It started in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi in October 1934 and ended in Shaanxi Province – a year and some 3,750 miles later

That account, based on a memoir by Yang Chengwu, a Red Army commissar who was there that day, has become a staple of the many celebrations of the Long March in song and drama, and was immortalised in the hugely popular film Ten Thousand Rivers and a Thousand Mountains. Whether Yang’s version of the story is entirely accurate is another matter – but no one doubts the dreadful physical suffering the Long Marchers endured.

MAP BY MARTIN SANDERS–MAPART.CO.UK

Scrub and bog The Snow Mountains of Sichuan, rising to 5,500 metres, exacted a terrible toll on troops marching in light clothes with straw sandals. Then came the grasslands, an unforgiving and treacherous plateau of scrub and bog that took nearly a week to cross. Zhong Ming, one of the few Long March veterans still living, told me he watched men die as they were sucked into the mud, too exhausted to resist. It’s said that some soldiers were driven by hunger to sift through the faeces of those who had gone before in search of undigested grain to eat. Chairman Mao declared the Long March over when he reached the province of Shaanxi, which was to serve as the Communist Party’s base for most of the time until its eventual victory in 1949. His Red Army had shrunk to no more than a few thousand troops; some estimates put the figure as low as 4,000. But simply by surviving they had secured a kind of victory. It is often said that history is written by the winners. The Long March narrative that is taught in Chinese schools today closely BBC History Magazine

reflects the way Mao believed it should be understood. It would be wrong to call it a lie; the march did happen and it was an astonishing achievement. It’s rather that the story has been shaped to provide a lesson in Maoist values – physical toughness, self-sufficiency, endurance and a strong bond between the Communist Party and peasantry. And, in a way, the Long March has never ended. In that 1935 speech, Mao called it “a machine for sowing… It has sown many seeds which will sprout, leaf, blossom and bear fruit, and will bear a harvest for the future.” Mao’s own reputation was badly tarnished by the Cultural Revolution, but the legend of the Long March remains as powerful as ever. It is modern China’s founding myth. Anbin Shi, a professor of cultural studies at Tsinghua University, compares it to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. And, as he pointed out to me, you can understand the importance of the exodus without accepting every word of the biblical text. Edward Stourton is a broadcaster and former presenter of Today on BBC Radio 4. His books include Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler Across the Pyrenees (Doubleday, 2013) DISCOVER MORE BOOK E The Long March by Sun Shuyun

(Harper Perennial, 2007) RADIO E Edward Stourton will be telling

the story of the Long March on Radio 4 in a three-part series beginning on 26 February

Mao said that the March “has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes”. Two Protestant missionaries who were taken hostage by the Reds – Rudolph Bosshardt and Arnolis Hayman – painted them in very different colours. Hayman’s diary, unpublished until four years ago, records that “class enemies” were routinely taken hostage and tortured. “The Reds did not seem to hold any of their prisoners for more than three days,” he wrote, “during which time the ransom was either paid by a messenger or the captive’s life is summarily ended.” Beheading was the preferred method of execution. Many of Mao’s “heroes” were little more than child soldiers, some of them as young as 11. Large numbers deserted and faced execution if they were caught. In Shanxi, I interviewed a woman whose mother was effectively kidnapped by the Red Army as a child while she was playing in the street. She was 11 or 12 at the time and never found her home village again.

3. An insignificant event that became a “turning point” The Communist Party meeting at the small town of Zunyi in January 1935 was described in a standard Chinese textbook as “the turning point of life and death in the Chinese Revolution”. It was said to be the climax of Mao’s campaign to sideline the pro-Soviet faction and every Chinese student is taught its significance. But no minutes were kept and there was no mention of the Zunyi Resolution in party documents until after 1949. Even the official dates of the meeting were wrong. “The truth,” explains a local historian, “is that the Zunyi Conference was perhaps not as important at the time as it was made out later.”

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The bow of the Oseberg ship, which was excavated from a burial mound in Norway. It was the Vikings’ skilled use of vessels such as this – rather than their prowess in battle – that made them such potent raiders

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ne of the most enduring images of the Viking Age in the popular imagination is the longship, with its dragonhead, row of shields, and large square sail. Unlike the equally popular horned helmet (a Romantic fabrication of the 19th century), the longship is a fitting symbol for the Norsemen. The 250 years between AD 800 and 1050 saw a remarkable expansion from the Scandinavian homelands of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, involving a combination of raiding, conquest, peaceful settlement and long-distance trade. That same period saw the Vikings develop a remarkable network of international contacts that spread from eastern Canada in the west to central Asia in the east, and north Africa in the south. Many of these contacts were peaceful, and in recent years the Vikings have become known for more than just their established reputation as violent, devious raiders. Having said that, this reputation was far from unfounded, and would have been all-too familiar to contemporaries around the Viking world. The Persian geographer Ibn Rusta’s assessment of the Vikings in Russia is damning: “Treachery is endemic, and a poor man can be envied by a comrade, who will not hesitate to kill him and rob him.” Meanwhile, you can almost feel an anonymous ninthcentury Irish monk’s relief as he notes: “The wind is sharp tonight, It tosses the white hair of the sea, I do not fear the crossing of the Clear Sea [Irish Sea], by the wild warriors of Lothlind [Vikings].” This quotation reminds us of how far the Viking expansion relied on their ships: remarkable vessels that could carry settlers across the Atlantic, trade goods along the river systems of Russia, and be used with devastating effect in raids around Europe. Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard tells us

“Vikings crossed the Atlantic, traded goods along Russian rivers and carried out devastating raids across Europe”

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Michael Broers in his office in Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. “[Napoleon’s] correspondence seemed to offer the first chance to write a conventional life of this great statesman,” he says

Photograph by Geraint Lewis

INTERVIEW / MICHAEL BROERS

GERAINT LEWIS

“You don’t have to make up myths about Napoleon’s youth – just look at his letters to see evidence that he was a great leader” Michael Broers talks to Matt Elton about the first part of his new biography of Napoleon, which covers the years from 1769 to 1805 and draws upon a newly published set of his correspondence BBC History Magazine

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Books MICHAEL BROERS

You’ve written about Napoleon before. What inspired this new book? The main thing was the publication of a new edition of his correspondence by the Fondation Napoléon in Paris, which offers us a completely new source for the man’s life. The first edition of Napoleon’s correspondence was produced in the 1850s and 1860s by his nephew, Napoleon III. So that was an official version, a bit as if Teddy Kennedy had edited the memoirs of John Kennedy: the word ‘Monroe’ wouldn’t crop up once. There’s a real irony here: Napoleon was master of the universe, emperor of the western world, and so obviously had scribes and secretaries working for him around the clock. He was also a prodigious correspondent himself. And yet, because of the ‘official’ nature of the material we’ve had access to, we have had to treat it with great circumspection – so historians have often used memoirs instead. This correspondence seemed to offer the first chance to write a proper, conventional life of this great statesman, using both memoirs and his own words. In your book, you consider Napoleon’s life in light of these letters. What impression do we get of his early life? I think that coming from a certain kind of Corsican family, had a permanent influence on him – but not in the way the stereotypical vision would have it. Corsica’s a complicated place in the sense that it’s actually two places. There’s the Corsica of the mountains, of the interior, that was very much a poor land of isolated villages, shepherds, and a vendetta culture. Too readily Napoleon and his family are associated with that world when they were nothing to do with it: they came from Ajaccio, which is one of four middle-sized towns that cling to the coast of Corsica and were founded mostly by the Genoese in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. They were civilised town dwellers, proud of having a Renaissance, humanist education. Napoleon had a happy childhood. He loved his parents very much: one of the great myths is that he hated his father because his father collaborated with the French. The correspondence shows no trace of that. What forces were particularly influential on the young Napoleon? One influence – because he was a remarkably intelligent man – was the material that he

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read. He was very widely read in the culture of his times, and up to date with scientific discoveries and technology. If Napoleon was alive today he’d be he saying “you want to move on from the iPhone, you want to get the Samsung. Josephine and I both have it”. But the largest single influence was the French army. He started military academy very young and, almost in spite of himself, took to military discipline and the collective barracks life. Nobody had to beat it into him: it was the most natural thing in the world. How did other people regard Napoleon early on in his career? It was a bit of a rollercoaster. His first big posting was at the siege of Toulon during the French Revolution. Toulon was, at the time, held by the British navy and a collection of French rebels. Napoleon was given charge of the artillery batteries and deeply impressed everyone. But then he refused a posting to put down a peasant rebellion in the west of France. He didn’t want to do it: he was in the artillery, which was the elite arm. They were the intelligentsia of the army – the bright boys, the geeks – and he didn’t want to be taken away from that. So his career went into the doldrums. He didn’t really come out of it until 1796 when – still in his late twenties – he was given command of the army of Italy. At that point many people were saying, “who on earth is this skinny, scruffy kid with the funny accent, and where did you get him from?” Napoleon was a political appointment and he knew it. He had to impress many of the older generals – and he did. But he also had a great publicity machine. He built up his victories in Italy, which were spectacular – he basically defeated the Austrians in the north of the country and kicked them out – but he almost lost some of his battles. So although he had a huge reputation within France, inside the Austrian high command there was a sense they had lost their nerve: they didn’t go away thinking

“We get a sense of a man who balanced strong emotions with iron self-discipline”

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that Napoleon was this military genius they had to be afraid of. And, again, his 1798–99 campaign in Egypt and Syria was played up in France as a great success, but the French government, Napoleon, and the men who served with him knew that it was a complete disaster. In my opinion, in many ways it was a less excusable defeat than Russia in 1812. So there are three perceptions of Napoleon. Firstly, that he’s the military genius who conquered Italy. Secondly, from his major opponents – the Russians and the Austrians – that he’s the chap who got lucky in Italy, made a mess of Egypt and who can be beaten. And, thirdly and most importantly, there’s the impression of him among his colleagues, his subordinate commanders, and most of all his men, that he is a good general. What new impression do we get from these letters that you hope readers will take away from the book? That he was very good at delegating. He wasn’t a micromanager, like the Duke of Wellington; he had the ability of saying very clearly: “These are my orders, and I trust you to carry them out.” What also emerges, which I think is rather new, is an ability to apologise. Overall, we get a sense of a highly intelligent man, who balanced very strong emotions with iron self-discipline and prudence. He was, particularly in the period that we’re dealing with, a man with no delusions of grandeur. He knew that he was living on the edge and behaved accordingly, steering a course through very dangerous waters and doing it very well. The last thing I would like readers to take away is something that the new correspondence has given us. When he was a teenager his father died, and Napoleon took the family’s affairs in hand. He wrote to the controller general of France, asking about his father’s pension, and then went to Paris to demand an audience with him. You don’t have to make up the mythological tales that have been told about Napoleon’s youth – about him organising schoolyard snowball fights and so on, which are hokum. You only have to read these letters to see that he was a great leader. Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny by Michael Broers (Faber and Faber, 608 pages, £30).

BBC History Magazine

GERAINT LEWIS

Born in Connecticut, Broers taught at the University of Aberdeen before taking up his current position as professor of western European history at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. His books include Napoleon’s Other War (Peter Lang, 2010) and The Napoleonic Empire in Italy (Palgrave, 2005)

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“Justice for past crimes – the murder of six million Jews – was often obscured”

Children in East Berlin play near a sign indicating that the area is part of the Soviet sector, 1961. An anti-fascist consensus helped Europe to rebuild after the Second World War, Dan Stone argues

Future imperfect? ODD ARNE WESTAD commends a balanced, insightful take on

the challenges faced by Europe following the Second World War Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe Since 1945 by Dan Stone

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Oxford University Press, 416 pages, £25

It is difficult to write the history of Europe in an age of globalisation. Sometimes the topic seems too small; most things that happen in Europe are connected with what goes on elsewhere, and you need a global view to explain them. And at other times it seems too large, since European history is so

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complex just because of the diverse effects that globalisation has had on different parts of the continent. Dan Stone, one of the finest historians of Europe working in Britain today, balances nicely between these two challenges in his new book. By taking Europeans’ own views of their immediate history as his organising principle, he avoids becoming too preoccupied with particular aspects of the period that he covers. He also avoids too close a competition with other accomplished surveys published within the past decade, first and foremost Tony Judt’s masterful Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (William Heinemann, 2005).

In 1945, Stone tells us, the second war in a generation had rendered Europe prostrate. Rebuilding had to happen under the most difficult of circumstances: a global Cold War that split the continent in half. One of the main reasons that this reconstruction was successful and – at least in the core part of Europe – led to the setting up of the most complete welfare state the world has ever seen, was the anti-fascist consensus that came out of the Second World War. Justice for past crimes – such as the murder of six million European Jewish people – was often avoided or obscured. The vast majority of Europeans believed that fascism had led to war and destruction, and that, in order to avoid back-sliding into the conditions of the past, a new society and state had to be built – one that was better organised and more socially inclusive than in the past. To Stone, the amnesia over guilt matters less than the gains that were won. Within three decades, a Europe – east and west – had been built that would have been totally unrecognisable to most people in 1945. Pluralism and democracy were MAGAZINE CHOICE lacking in an eastern Europe under increasingly stale Soviet control, but even there the conditions that produced fascism were gone, and societies that were more equal and more cohesive had come into being. Europe may not have learned all the lessons of social dislocation and war and there was certainly much deliberate forgetfulness about the past, not least at a family and personal level. But overall, by the 1970s, conditions for almost all people in Europe were infinitely better than they had been in the 1930s. Then it all started to come apart. Social-democratic (and for that matter Christian-democratic) concepts of social inclusion, public services and welfare began to disintegrate under the pressure

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Books COMING SOON… “Next issue, our reviewers will be considering books on the creation of the Middle East, British PoWs, and the Nile. Plus, I’ll be talking to Helen Rappaport about Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses, her new look at the dying days of a Russian dynasty.” Matt Elton, books editor

“Have no fear: Dan Stone is too fine a historian to see the past as unilinear and neatly packaged” To those who will be sceptical towards this as a schematic view of Europe’s past: have no fear. Dan Stone is far too fine a historian to see the past as unilinear and neatly packaged. The Cold War was not good for Europe overall, but it happened to provide a shelter under which the continent could move away from fascism. As a historian of ideas, Stone is careful not to mix up material transformations with changes in attitudes. The death f the anti-fascist consensus happened not because of economic progress and the end of the division of Europe, but because people decided to move away from the values that had underpinned it. Even his pointers towards the future are not half as bleak as they seem: there is enough resistance left against the threats to Europe’s future, if only people knew how to mobilise it. And mobilise it they must, because Europe’s immediate past is not a pretty picture to return to. Odd Arne Westad teaches history at the London School of Economics. His most recent book is the sixth edition of The Penguin History of the World (Allen Lane, 2013).

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Gods among us HUGH BOWDEN considers a study tracing the pervasive

influence of Greek deities across centuries of human culture The Gods of Olympus by Barbara Graziosi Profile Books, 288 pages, £18.99

How do you write about the Greek gods? What can you say about these divine powers that can appear sometimes as implacable forces of nature, and sometimes as vindictive, selfish children? It turns out that these questions have been asked since the very beginning of European literature. In this highly readable book, Barbara Graziosi explores how writers and artists have depicted and discussed the Greek gods from the earliest surviving works of European literature to the Renaissance and beyond. Those unfamiliar with the nearly two-and-a-half millennia she covers need have no fear of getting lost. Graziosi is perhaps best in the first of the book’s six parts, ‘Archaic Greece’, in which the poets Homer and Hesiod take centre stage. She demonstrates how they were able to establish those images of the gods that endured forever afterwards. Here we also meet a recurring theme: the debate about the nature of the gods that took place between philosophers and poets and artists. First up, in the former camp, is Xenophanes, whose writings in the sixth century BC questioned the idea

A statue of Apollo. Graziosi “explores how writers and artists have discussed the Greek gods”

that the gods should be depicted as anthropomorphic. Following these early debates, sculptors and playwrights inherited the mantle of the poets, while men such as Euhemerus and Plato acted as challengers, telling alternative stories about the nature and origins of the gods. There are times in later sections of the book when the gods almost slip out of view, as Graziosi gives an overview of Athenian democracy and the career of Alexander the Great. Yet they reemerge,often in strange new places: it was in this period that increased interest in Babylonian astrology led to the identification of the Greek gods with the planets. Southern Italy, meanwhile, was Greek before it became Roman, and in the Republican period Romans were familiar with the Greek gods as subjects for art and for philosophy, with Cicero carrying on the sceptical intellectual tradition. But the Greek gods also had an appeal for the men who brought an end to the Republic to create the Roman empire: Augustus and Julius Caesar. Meanwhile, the poets Vergil and Ovid also retold the stories for a new audience. The gods were effectively put on trial by Christian apologists and condemned as demons. But they did not fade away: they continued, only lightly disguised, to have a place into the Renaissance. Pope Paul II featured Greek gods in his 15th-century pageants; the church commissioned in Rimini by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the same century was rich with sculpture of the Olympians in classical (un)dress. Ironically, the Renaissance was to be the last hurrah for the Greek gods. Reduced to allegories and fantasies in the Enlightenment and represented as exiled spirits by the Romantics, they are now most often found in children’s stories. But books such as Graziosi’s remind us of all that they have been. Hugh Bowden is the author of Alexander the Great: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2014)

BBC History Magazine

CORBIS

of market ideologies and private greed. By the mid 2000s the European Union, this great integrationist project, had stalled because it was increasingly difficult to find common values to build it on. It had gone from an anti-authoritarian union of mutual economic benefit to some strange form of regulatory agency, which almost nobody fully comprehended and most people believed in simply out of habit. And, in the midst of this shift – characterised, in part, by increasing atomisation and widening social differences – the anti-fascist consensus was thrown out the window, raising some frightening prospects for Europe’s future.

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A programme for the 1924 FA Cup final, held at the then newly built Wembley stadium. The venue’s construction marked “the point at which Britain’s empire was at its greatest extent”

Constructing a dynasty DENIS JUDD assesses an exploration of the spread of the

British empire through the physical structures it left behind Buildings of Empire by Ashley Jackson

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Oxford University Press, 336 pages, £30

The residue of the British empire is complex and aweinspiring. It ranges from the position of English as the world’s language of international communication to sports such as rugby, football and cricket; from the Westminster model of government to a bewildering array of infrastructure and buildings to be found on every continent. In his new book, Ashley Jackson devotes his attention to one such aspect: buildings. He is not the first to have done so. For instance, Jan Morris and Simon

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Winchester published Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj in 2005, and before that Mark Crinson wrote Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (Routledge, 1996). Oxford University Press is also set to publish a volume on architecture in their prestigious British empire series. The approach that Jackson has taken here is markedly different from that in the previously published books, however. It is far more comprehensive and inclusive: although inevitably, given the huge legacy of empire building, also selective and particular.

“Some of the buildings were meant to impress imperial subjects with their majesty”

Beginning with Dublin Castle in England’s first colony, the book nears its end with the stadium that opened at Wembley in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition held the following year. This was the point at which the empireCommonwealth was at its greatest extent, and British policymakers were urgently trying to find ways of celebrating imperial achievements and bringing them to the attention of an increasingly consumerist and distracted public. The book is a trifle disappointing in appearance, giving the impression of being produced with an anxious eye on the cost. The black-and-white illustrations are often indistinct and monotone, contrasting sadly with the dozen coloured images. Happily, none of this affects the fine quality of Jackson’s research nor the power and insight of his writing. What is most striking about Jackon’s book is the scale and variety of the buildings and developments he has analysed. They range from the Viceregal Lodge at Simla to the Kuala Lumpur railway station; from the Raffles hotel in Singapore to the HSBC skyscraper in Hong Kong, and many more besides. The purposes of these buildings were just as varied. Some were designed to impress imperial subjects with their majesty while some were transport hubs, and some fortifications. Others were designed for the leisure and delight of local people or – as with the Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum – to honour imperial heroes. While some of the structures required the services of the best architects and armies of skilled and semi-skilled workers, others were – perhaps surprisingly – prefabricated and erected on the cheap. Moreover, the British, more often than not, sought to preserve much indigenous architecture rather than destroy and displace it. In this outstanding and subtle book, Jackson brings vividly to life the complex relationship that the empire’s rulers and ruled alike had with the built environment around them. Denis Judd is the author of Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (IB Tauris, 2011)

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Books Competitors arrive for a flower and vegetable show in Teddington, 1933. Margaret Willes’s book covers “a variety of types of gardening, from home backyards to market gardens and allotments”

Growing pains CLARE HICKMAN on a look at the often contentious role of

gardens and gardening in the lives of Britain’s working classes

Yale University Press, 388 pages, £25

There has been a welcome recent trend of historians exploring the story of gardens from a wide range of perspectives. This means that, happily, the focus is no longer simply on the visual merits and political backgrounds of elite landscape gardens such as Stourhead, Stowe and Blenheim, but also on other places including allotments, hospital gardens and factory gardens. Margaret Willes’s overview of working-class gardens adds to this growing body of literature, and provides a great introduction to an often overlooked history. Willes has taken an ambitious approach to the subject. Her book covers a lengthy

time period – 400 years – and a variety of types of gardening, from home backyards and domestic window boxes to market gardens and allotments. She also explores the lives of people who were employed as gardeners. Her narrative is developed through a rich tapestry of archive records and literary sources, as she attempts to uncover how lower classes experienced these different spaces. The book’s scope necessarily means that it covers some areas in more detail than others. Its chronological structure also proves problematic given the range of material, and a thematic approach may have given Willes the opportunity to explore recurring ideas in some depth. The switch between commercial and domestic gardening, in particular, sometimes feels a bit abrupt, as these are quite different activities with distinct, if related, cultural and social histories. One of the most striking themes – which could perhaps have been drawn out even further – is the apparently constant

First on the throne RYAN LAVELLE has mixed feelings about an attempt

to chronicle the life of a pioneering English queen Elfrida: The First Crowned Queen of England by Elizabeth Norton Amberley Publishing, 236 pages, £20

Ælfthryth (the considerably less tongue-twistery ‘Elfrida’ is a later coinage) was the daughter of a West Country magnate, third wife of King Edgar the Peaceable and mother of King Æthelred the Unready. She was also, infamously, cast as wicked stepmother in

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the death of the saintly King Edward ‘the Martyr’. Dominating later 10th-century England, Ælfthryth was involved in religious reform, pushed at least one son forward for political power and oversaw the upbringing of her grandchildren. Her role in the running of the English kingdom for a time demonstrates the manner in which Anglo-Saxon history can – and should – be viewed from the perspective of a female subject. Here, Elizabeth Norton attempts to tell the life-story of this remarkable figure, if not precisely from the time of her birth, then certainly from a young age, all the way up until her death.

tension between social classes in relation to the role of gardens. For example, Willes mentions the initial concerns expressed by Chartist reformers about the necessity of allotments, which it was thought might distract the lower classes from the central aim of securing political reform. This was in contrast to the upper and middle classes, who felt that allotments were necessary to keep workers away from the alehouse and other disreputable activities. This seems to be part of an

However, writing a biography of a queen who ruled England so long ago can be fraught with difficulty. When the contemporary sources aren’t busy obscuring their subject, they are pigeonholing the behaviour of royal women to fit stereotypes, making it difficult to ascertain any ‘true’ picture of queenship. Unfortunately, much of what is written about Ælfthryth comes from the 12th century, a period in which many writers, such as the Old French poet Geoffrey Gaimar, often embellished the details of the stories where it suited them. Norton seems unsure of whether to discard such details or to embrace them. She sensibly moves away from the traditional narrative of blaming Ælfthryth for the murder of her stepson; however, Gaimar’s record of Ælfthryth’s son by her first marriage is picked up without question. A few lines later, the

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The Gardens of the British Working Class by Margaret Willes

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ongoing divide between, on the one hand, how the upper and middle classes viewed the moral role of gardens for the poor and, on the other, how the lower classes used them. This was played out at Port Sunlight on Merseyside, where the front gardens were managed by the Village Estate Department rather than the residents, and in the 1930s when tenants of London council housing could be faced with eviction if their gardens were not kept up to standard. From the mass of material that Willes has scrupulously collected, fascinating stories emerge: that of the northern lad, for example, who requested gardening help in a newspaper and was sent a rock garden by the influential and prolific Edwardian horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll. Or the fact that, in the 17th century, certain areas of London became known for particular types of vegetables: Barnes for peas, for instance, Battersea for cabbage and Deptford for onions. Thanks to books such as this, historians can no longer ignore the stories of these other gardens, created outside of the estate boundary. Clare Hickman is a research fellow at King’s College London

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son is named and linked with the foundation of a monastery. Treading a tight-rope between trying to construct a historical analysis of the period and a lively narrative romp, the book doesn’t quite satisfy. ‘Would have’ and ‘must have’ abound in the prose; this may be forgivable enough on its own, but instances of both phrases often feature alongside some rather unnecessary imagined narrative scene-setting. Norton seems to be on firmer ground toward the end of Ælfthryth’s life: using some reliable, contemporary charters, she shows a queen mother in her final years evidently remaining active as well as legally and socially influential. It is this picture of Ælfthryth that deserves to endure. Ryan Lavelle is senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Winchester

BBC History Magazine

Into darkness RACHEL DUFFETT praises an engaging account of the social

fissures that shaped Britain’s path into the First World War Peace and War: Britain in 1914 by Nigel Jones Head of Zeus, 224 pages, £25

The shelves are already packed with books on the First World War, and there are many more to come. But Nigel Jones’s terrific account of a nation poised between peace and war makes a strong bid for inclusion in any collection. The book explores the pivotal year of 1914 through a variety of social, cultural and political prisms, ranging from strife on the home front – suffragettes, strikes and the Ulster crisis – to more tranquil topics of sport, dance and poetry. It presents an absorbing picture of a nation standing on a precipice, one that manages to acknowledge key figures and themes while drawing on lesser-known undercurrents and events. We are provided with a pithy distillation of the political and diplomatic challenges that Britain faced in its seemingly inexorable advance towards war. At the same time, we learn of such episodes as a fight in a public toilet between futurist Filippo Marinetti and painter Wyndham Lewis and the story of the Empress of Ireland, which sank in 1914 with the loss of more than 1,000 lives. The range of the narrative, and the sheer diversity of the elements of society that it covers, means that the story is fragmentary: there are tantalising glimpses of characters that leave the reader wanting more. However, that is surely the point: no single study could hope to be definitive but, instead, should aim to spark enthusiasms and pique interests. Jones certainly achieves that.

The design of the book, not least the wonderful images that fill its pages, is central to its appeal. While some of the photographs are familiar – such as a struggling Mrs Pankhurst being bodily carted away from the gates of Buckingham Palace – many are not, and it is these frozen frames of a lost world that are so arresting. Who, for instance, would have expected to see Lord Balfour reclining with tennis player AF ‘Tony’ Wilding and a plate of cakes at Wimbledon in 1914? Jones is excellent at highlighting the fissures that prefigured the defining, dividing event of the war itself. There are no reductive binary oppositions, but the tensions within prewar British society are drawn out through a consideration of the clashes between the old world and the new – not least in the contrast between the young, privileged inhabitants of the decadent world of Edwardian nightclubs and their parents, who were shocked by their offspring’s hedonism and cynicism. The book never lets us forget what was to come, with a sobering reminder that the lives of many ‘bright young things’ would end in the darkness of the battlefield. Jones’s skilful interweaving of familiar themes with original strands throughout makes this an imaginative, insightful study of Britain in 1914. Rachel Duffett is the author of The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War (Manchester University Press, 2012) A 1914 strike by the Association of Cricket Ball Makers. Nigel Jones “is excellent at highlighting the fissures” of prewar Britain

“Jones’s book presents an absorbing picture of a nation standing on a precipice” 69

Books LISTEN TO MORE AUTHORS historyextra.com /podcasts

Information nations AILEEN FYFE on a sweeping effort to unpick the complex

links between data and the development of western societies The Power of Knowledge: How Information and Technology Made the Modern World by Jeremy Black Yale University Press, 448 pages, £30

Can the history of information explain the dominance of western cultures over the rest of the world? And if the control and analysis of information has been key to western economic power, what does it mean for the current situation, in which China and India are catching up? Jeremy Black’s new book is a massive compendium of facts that suggestively interrogates the entanglement between information and western modernity. He follows others in noting that the modern nation state depends upon information about demographics, taxation and industrial output; and that the nation state itself produces huge quantities of

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information. But he also notes that technologies, from printing to the internet, have enabled information to be spread beyond the walls of government with potentially disruptive effects. Rulers throughout world history have used information as a source of authority. Black begins in medieval Europe, but the bulk of his narrative is post-1450. He is particularly fascinated by maps, and chapters are full of examples of the collection of geographical knowledge, from Mercator’s 16th-century cylindrical map projections to the Hubble space telescope. But he’s also concerned with the ways in which information and politics are entangled in the modern world. His impressive survey takes in censuses, literacy rates, medicine, timekeeping, trains, telegraphs and space

“The discussion of state scrutiny includes Stalin’s USSR and modern China”

Dr Aileen Fyfe is a reader in history at the University of St Andrews

BBC History Magazine

ALAMY

A computer-enhanced image of the Hubble telescope. Jeremy Black’s book “is full of examples of the collection and organisation of geographical knowledge”

shuttles, the Holocaust, the Star Wars films, and, of course, the internet. The discussion of state scrutiny and control includes Stalin’s USSR, modern China, and Assad’s Syria, and is dealt with as bare reportage rather than polemic. The answer to the question about western distinctiveness must be comparative, and this book is littered with fascinating details from Black’s extensive reading on China, Japan, Persia, Mughal India and even Lapland. We learn that the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, in the 9th and 10th centuries AD, had a good long-distance postal service and that there were spectacle shops in Japan in the 17th century. And we learn that printing in China was done by engraving whole pages of characters onto blocks of wood, which was cheap and simple enough that printing by moveable metal type seemed to offer few advantages. Yet, for all that, this remains principally a book about Europe. Although Black is impressed by the improvements in the capacity for information gathering and analysis over the past two centuries, he argues that western societies have been distinctive since the early modern period, due to their predilection for trans-oceanic exploration, adventure and exploitation. Other empires had ruled over large distances, and peoples of varied cultures, faiths and languages, but the Mongols, Persians, Chinese and Mughals all ruled by land, not sea, and based their economies on land, not trade. It was the exigencies of long-distance trade, Black argues, that drove westerners to develop the sophisticated information-gathering and analysing techniques, which in turn led to their global dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book’s final part is full of recent examples, pointing out the challenges now that other cultures have developed their own information systems and the latest technologies have the potential to spread information far more widely. But, despite nods to HG Wells and George Orwell, Black wisely refrains from attempting to predict the future.

Books / Paperbacks

PAPERBACKS Inside the Centre: The Life of J Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk

BRIDGEMAN

Vintage, 832 pages, £12.99

Oppenheimer is remembered as the father of the atomic bomb who fell foul of McCarthyite witch-hunting in the early 1950s. His invocation of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita on the occasion of the first successful ‘A-bomb’ test in July 1945 – “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – inaugurated an era of profound doubt both about the purpose of scientific enquiry and the survivability of the human race. Between 1943 and 1945, Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project, a hugely complex endeavour to beat Germany in the race for atomic weapons and, in effect, set the framework for postwar global power relations. Long harassed by the FBI for his supposed prewar communist sympathies, Oppenheimer was finally denied security clearance in 1954. The final phase of his career, until his early death in 1967, involved various public efforts to open paths to global disarmament. This fine biography elucidates Oppenheimer’s career in painstaking and often brilliant detail. Monk assesses his rather uneven record as a physicist, noting his largely unrecognised anticipation of a theory of ‘black holes’ in space. The security debate is considered in depth. Oppenheimer certainly had been a communist fellowtraveller, but his profound patriotism made nonsense of the idea that he would ever betray secrets to Moscow.

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Oppenheimer did, however, betray friends and, at least indirectly, his own brother in order to protect himself. Inside the Centre presents Oppenheimer’s complex personality as a product of self-loathing, a constant search for personal integration and identity, and a drive for power. The inner tensions sometimes manifested themselves in extremes of bizarre behaviour. Monk broadly accepts that Oppenheimer did, as a student in 1925, literally leave a poisoned apple for his tutor to consume. Oppenheimer has already been well served by biographers. However, Monk here takes the scholarship to a new level. John Dumbrell is professor of government at Durham University

Galileo: Watcher of the Skies by David Wootton Yale, 354 pages, £14.99

“And yet it moves”, Galileo Galilei is said to have declared at his trial, defiantly challenging the right of the pope to deny that the Earth rotates around the sun. If you think you understand how Galileo valiantly

defended the cause of science against the reactionary Catholic church, then you should read David Wootton’s latest biography. His Galileo is very different from the familiar ‘martyr to reason’ whose invention of the telescope convinced him that Copernicus was right, or the meticulous experimenter who derived the laws of motion after watching falling weights hit the ground. In this readable, impressively well-informed book, Wootton not only demolishes several myths but also shows how they arose, carefully weighing up the evidence on both sides of debates that have been raging for decades. He demonstrates that Galileo was a Copernican convert long before news of a Dutch telescope reached Italy. Galileo may or may not have used the Tower of Pisa as a lab, Wootton concludes, but by carrying out his own thought experiment – just how could you ensure that a heavy cannonball and a smaller musketball are released at the same time? – he reconciles disparities between Galileo’s claims and the results of modern experiments. Vain and ambitious, Galileo was a brilliant self-promoter, yet as Wootton reveals, towards the end of his life he attracted the adverse publicity that he had The 1633 trial of Galileo as depicted in a 17th-century painting. Wootton’s biography reveals a “vain and ambitious” scientist

spent his professional career seeking to avoid. Patricia Fara is the author of Science: A Four Thousand Year History (OUP, 2009).

The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain by Derek Wilson Quercus, 336 pages, £9.99

Derek Wilson is one of the most prolific historians of the medieval period, with more than 70 books to his name. The Plantagenets was first published in 2011, and its arrival in paperback makes accessible the entire dynasty from 1154 to 1485. Yet, at just 336 pages, this is more of a primer than a tour de force of an age that saw dramatic changes in England’s identity, whether in language (the flourishing of the English tongue formalised by Caxton and the arrival of printing) or the growth of the legal system (“the biggest contribution to national life”, Wilson notes). The author’s mastery of the available evidence is clear from his admirably terse prose, none of which is inaccurate in spite of the remarkable feat of brevity. Yet one can’t help feeling short-changed, for instance, when the entire reign of Richard III is crammed into three pages. This is, nevertheless, a wellgrounded starting point for those wishing to dip their toes into the shallows of this fascinating, transformative period of history. Chris Skidmore is the author of Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013)

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Books / Fiction THREE MORE BOOKS ABOUT TUDOR ESPIONAGE Martyr Rory Clements (2009)

FICTION Treason and plot NICK RENNISON enjoys a novel that plunges Shakespeare’s

fictional brother into the world of Elizabethan espionage The Queen’s Man by Rory Clements Hodder & Stoughton, 352 pages, £17.99

John Shakespeare, brother of the soon-tobe-more-famous Will, is an agent for the Elizabethan secret service run by the spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. Recently recruited from one of the Inns of Court, he is despatched to the small Yorkshire town of Sheffield where Mary, Queen of Scots is being held prisoner in a castle owned by the Earl of Shrewsbury. His job is supposed to be to assess the security of the castle, but he soon hears word of a Catholic conspiracy to free Mary and put her on the throne in the place of Protestant Elizabeth. Attempts to learn more about the plans lead him back to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, which has become a hotbed of religious controversy and potential treason. His own family has been caught up in the turmoil and Anne Hathaway, the woman to whom his younger brother has just been engaged, is dangerously compromised by her

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friendship with local Catholics. Richard Topcliffe, priest-hunter and torturer, is out to destroy all followers of England’s old religion, and another equally ruthless man – the sinister Ruby Hungate – has his own reasons for tracking down some of those involved in the Catholic plot. Shakespeare must steer a difficult path between the two sides, struggling to maintain both his loyalty to his queen and country and the safety of those he loves the most. As the Scottish queen anticipates rescue from her long imprisonment, he is forced unexpectedly into action. John Shakespeare is Clements’s own invention (William had no older brother of that or any other name) but he makes a plausible and likeable hero for tales of Elizabethan espionage. The Queen’s Man is the sixth book to feature him and is set before the others, providing an engaging account of his introduction to the murky underworld of deceit and double-dealing over which Walsingham presides. It mixes a fast-moving plot and credible characterisation with a lively evocation of the dangerous times in which John must strive, in every sense, to keep his head. Nick Rennison is the author of Carver’s Quest (Corvus, 2013)

Sacred Treason James Forrester (2010) The early years of Elizabeth I’s reign are dangerous times for Catholics, and William Harley, a herald in the royal genealogical body, the College of Arms, is placed in even greater peril when he is entrusted with a strange book. What secrets does it hold, and why is spymaster Francis Walsingham so eager to get his hands on it? Written under a pseudonym by the historian Ian Mortimer, this is an absorbing, well-researched thriller.

Sacrilege SJ Parris (2012) Parris has taken the freethinking Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno, who spent some years in Elizabethan England, and cleverly turned him into the hero of a series of historical thrillers. In this, the best of four so far published, Bruno travels to Canterbury where he courts danger when he stumbles upon a Catholic plot to renew the cult of Thomas Becket and a former lover who may be a ruthless killer.

BBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN

An 1871 painting of Mary, Queen of Scots. Rory Clements’ novel features “a Catholic conspiracy to free Mary and put her on the throne in the place of the Protestant Elizabeth”

The first of John Shakespeare’s adventures to be published takes place in 1587. As the year begins, Mary, Queen of Scots is under threat of execution and Spain is gathering an invasion fleet to sail to England. When Walsingham’s spies unearth evidence of a plot to assassinate Sir Francis Drake, the country’s most famous mariner, Shakespeare is despatched to protect him and he is soon embroiled in a complex tangle of murder and intrigue.

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“A fascinating read that grips you from the start and won’t let you go.” Second in the series now available from Amazon in paperback and for Kindle

Jonathan Wright previews the pick of upcoming programmes

TV&RADIO Three women painted in 19th-century France. For a long time women were thought to be less capable of friendship than men

and mental powers to engage in the kind of friendship that someone like Francis Bacon or [philosopher] Michel de Montaigne might write about.” Today, there’s been a “complete reversal”, and it’s widely assumed women are ‘better’ at friendship than men. There have been other profound changes too. Our largely agrarian forebears, for example, lived in “extended family networks” that blurred the line between family and friendship; while the idea of taking on a “companion at marriage”, someone who’s both a sexual partner and friend, has its own rich and evolving story. As to what drives these narratives, that’s the kernel of the series, with episodes touching on such topics as the difference between Catholic and Protestant ideas about friendship; the Quakers, aka the Society of Friends; 19th-century friendly societies; and the blurring of friendships with business relationships during the industrial revolution. There are darker episodes here too. During the First World War, for example, friends were encouraged to join up together, forming so-called pals’ battalions. In a mechanised war with horrific casualty rates, this didn’t just result in friends fighting together, but inevitably dying together. To take one example, of the 720 MAGAZINE CHOICE Accrington pals who attacked at Serre as part of the battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, 584 were killed, wounded or reported missing. Historian Thomas Dixon tells us about his “I don’t doubt the motives of the people behind that movement, the politicians and new series on a key relationship in all our lives the volunteers who thought this would be Five Hundred Years of Friendships a good way to recruit men in what they when you take the longer view of a central RADIO Radio 4, thought was a very good cause,” says Dixon. relationship in our lives. “As with all good scheduled for Monday 24 March “But the results were horrendous.” historical topics, there’s change, and Still, this is by no means a series filled with tradition and constancy as well,” he says. decade after the social media site’s mournful stories. To return to the idea of Many day-to-day social interactions from launch, the idea of having a Facebook Facebook giving rise to “weird virtual 500 years ago, for example, would be ‘friend’ is familiar to all but the staunchest friendships”, for example, it turns out that’s familiar to us today. “There are women technology refuseniks. Yet what does being a gossiping over garden fences, sharing worries not what’s happening. For while many of us Facebook ‘friend’ mean? Can you really be now have a set of digital acquaintances, about childcare, and men going to the pub friends with someone by occasionally recent research suggests that: “By and large, and getting drunk together,” says Dixon. clicking ‘like’ on one of their pictures from a people are friends on Facebook with people Yet this doesn’t mean there hasn’t been boozy night out? If so, friendship appears to they’re really friends with.” real change. “It was taken for granted by have changed profoundly in recent years. educated people 500 years ago that only men In truth, says historian Thomas Dixon, could really engage in the highest form of “Today it’s assumed that director of the Centre for the History of the friendship,” adds Dixon. “Friendship was Emotions at Queen Mary, University of an intellectual and moral commitment that women are ‘better’ at London, and presenter of a new series on it was felt only men could really master friendships than men” friendship, this isn’t quite what’s going on because women didn’t have the seriousness

Like minds

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TV & Radio DON’T MISS Soulpower (Sky Arts 1, Sunday 2 March ) A four-part series traces the history of soul music from 1945 to the present day, charting the careers of artists such as Bo Diddley (left), Beyoncé and Al Green

FIND WEEKLY TV & RADIO UPDATES AT historyextra.com /tv-radio

A charming traitor Ben Macintyre’s latest series investigates the story of one of Britain’s most notorious Cold War spies Kim Philby: A Most Intimate Betrayal TV BBC Two, Scheduled for Monday 3 March

he story of Kim Philby (1912–88) is most usually portrayed in terms of Cold War politics. Philby, depending on your perspective, was either a traitor or a super spy. But is there another angle? In a two-part documentary, journalist Ben Macintyre considers the double agent’s life “through the prism of his closest friendship”, with fellow MI6 operative Nicholas Elliott (1916–94). “For nearly three decades they rose through the ranks, in tandem, sharing everything,” Macintyre tells BBC History Magazine. “But all that time, Philby was secretly sending every secret to Moscow, with a staggering human cost.” It’s “less a story about ideology than personality, character, loyalty and duplicity”. That’s not to say Philby wasn’t motivated by ideology. As a teenager, he was an “early convert” to communism. However, in Macintyre’s assessment, he was also driven by “arrogance, romance and a lifelong addiction to infidelity, in his sex life as well as his political life”. Then there was elitism. “His story is, in some ways, about membership of ever

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more exclusive clubs. Westminster School is a pretty exclusive club. Trinity, Cambridge is even more so; MI6 was one of the most exclusive clubs in Britain; but as a Soviet agent inside British intelligence, Philby was in a club of one.” As to how he maintained this most precarious of memberships, it may have been thanks to his charm. “Years after his death, people he betrayed still speak of him with awe and affection. He was a good father, a generous host, a man of glinting wit. He lit up a room.” Eventually, Philby’s luck ran out and he fled to the USSR, where life was hard. “A few years after reaching Moscow, he tried to commit suicide. His marriage to a Russian woman improved his last few years, but he remained essentially English: waiting for his out-of-date copies of The Times, listening to the BBC, and longing for Marmite and English marmalade.”

“Philby was driven by ‘arrogance, romance and an addiction to infidelity in his sex life and his political life’”

Buzz Aldrin with one of the iconic photos taken on the moon

Picture this Shocking Exposures: Images That Changed Science TV PBS America, scheduled for Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 March

For a measure of the power of imagery in explaining how the universe works, think about Darwin’s sketch of the tree of life, which conveys so much about his ideas on evolution. Shocking Exposures focuses on this and other imagery that embodies advances in science, ranging from the Apollo astronauts’ awe-inspiring photographs from the moon’s surface to Don Eigler’s atomic-sized representation of computer company IBM’s logo.

Salute to a soldier The People’s Portrait TV BBC One,

Ben Macintyre stands in a metro station close to Kim Philby’s Moscow home. Philby’s last years, in the USSR, were not happy ones

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How do we decide who’s to be a lasting part of the national narrative? One way is if someone is deemed worthy of having their picture hang in the National Portrait Gallery. This made a public vote last year to choose a candidate for portraiture particularly intriguing. The winner was Falklands veteran Simon Weston, who suffered 46 per cent burns when RFA Sir Galahad was bombed. Fiona Bruce presents a documentary that shows artist Nicky Philipps at work and ties in with the picture’s unveiling.

BBC History Magazine

ALAMY/BBC–BEN RYDER/PBS AMERICA

scheduled for March

WANT MORE ? We’ll send news of the best history shows direct to your inbox every Friday. Sign up now at historyextra.com/newsletter

Eyewitnesses to history I Was There: The Great War Interviews TV BBC Two, scheduled for March

BFI/ALAMY/BBC-HARRY HOOK

A Turkana man poses for Harry Hook’s camera, Kenya, 1990

Upcoming editions of In Our Time (Radio 4, Thursday 6 March) include a programme devoted to Spartacus and the slave rebellion. Experts for the programme include Mary Beard. On BBC Four, Photographing Africa finds film director Harry Hook, who grew up in the Sudan and Kenya, visiting remote tribal groups to see traditional ceremonies and chart how the lives of isolated groups are changing. On Yesterday, CIA Declassified (Thursday 6 March) continues through the month, with shows about covert operations to bring about the end of the Gaddafi regime in Libya; the investigation into the 2000 Al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole; the 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala; and an alleged attempt at an assassination, carried out against a Lebanese cleric. Yesterday is also planning a Behind the Third Reich season. There are no new shows, but the re-runs include the excellent Nazis: A Warning From History, episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? where family stories touch on the Holocaust, and The Last Nazis, which deals with the hunt for war criminals who have survived into the 21st century. For those with satellite, Rembrandt and I (Sky Arts 2, Monday 17 March) is a four-part drama that traces the life of Rembrandt van Rijn. My Father and the Man in Black (Sky Arts 1, Monday 3 March) traces another life, one sometimes troubled and turbulent, as it explores the relationship between Johnny Cash and his manager, Saul Holiff.

BBC History Magazine

ifty years ago, the BBC made The Great War, a 26-episode series that charted the course of the 1914–18 conflict. During production, both veterans and civilians shared memories of their experiences, but large parts of these interviews were never broadcast. Five decades on in the digital era, Auntie is revisiting this material, with I Was There drawing on these first-hand accounts. The overall aim here is not to tell the history of the conflict, but to shed some light on what it was like to serve in the trenches, a factory, or in a flimsy fighter flying over the front line. Elsewhere in the BBC’s ongoing First World War season, The Machine Gun &

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DVD REVIEW

Steel city The Big Melt (£13.38, BFI)

Of late, the BFI’s film archives have been plundered in ways those who recorded the original images could surely never have imagined. Take this collaboration between director Martin Wallace and Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker. At its heart, it’s a celebration both of Sheffield’s steel industry, and of those who worked in the industry – a film rich in evocative imagery that explores how producing steel shaped the city’s history and character. But what truly lifts an exemplary film is the atmospheric soundtrack put together by Cocker, which features collaborations with the City of Sheffield Brass Band, members of Pulp (plus former member Richard Hawley), harpist Serafina Steer, The Forgemasters, and a youth choir. When the film was premiered, at

Skye’s Band of Brothers (BBC Two Scotland, Tuesday 25 March, to be networked in July) finds Neil Oliver exploring the history of a weapon that, spookily, could fire 666 rounds per minute, the dreaded Maxim gun. Over on Radio 4, 1914 1918 – The Cultural Front (Saturday 8 March) will chart the conflict’s effect on art and artists – from established names such as Thomas Hardy and Edward Elgar through to younger men who served on the front line. I Was There draws on testimonies from those who fought the Great War

Sheffield Doc/Fest in June 2013, this score was performed live. Subsequently, The Big Melt has been shown on TV as part of the BBC’s Storyville strand, but there’s plenty of extra material in this collection to draw those already familiar with the main film, including the Doc/Fest performance at the Crucible, footage of rehearsal, a trailer and an interview with Jarvis Cocker and Martin Wallace. Rounding out the package, there’s an illustrated booklet with newly commissioned essays from Cocker, Wallace and BFI curator Jan Faull. The Big Melt celebrates the Sheffield steel industry

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TV & Radio

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Military personnel carry out final pre-flight checks on an American drone reconnaissance aircraft before its take off in 1955

An early American drone takes to the skies JOANNA BOURKE examines footage from 1955 that shows

a forerunner to today’s unmanned military aircraft oseph Kennedy Jr was a pilot and also the son of leading diplomat Joseph Kennedy and brother of the future president John F Kennedy. On 12 August 1944, Joe Kennedy Jr and crew mate Lt Wilford J Willy boarded a PB4Y-1 navy bomber loaded with 24,000lbs of explosives and headed for Germany’s V3 super-gun site near Calais. They were part of Operation Aphrodite, which involved packing explosives into obsolete bombers that could be crashed into designated targets. Although the planes could be controlled remotely once in the air, they needed human crew for take off. The plan was that, after the bombers were airborne, the crew would bail out over England and let the planes fly on to their targets. In other words, Kennedy and Willy were piloting an early version of a drone. But the explosives accidentally detonated early, turning the plane into a huge fireball while it was still over England. Debris damaged 147 properties, and Kennedy and Willy’s bodies were never recovered.

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Robotic technologies for combat use proved disappointing during the Second World War. In an age of fast-moving warfare, the German Goliath (a small, remote-controlled, caterpillar-tracked vehicle that could carry up to 220lbs of explosives) was too slow. Similarly, the radio-guided Soviet Teletank was too clumsy and expensive, although some were used in Finland in 1939–40. Only Germany’s V1 flying bomb (the doodlebug) proved successful, causing thousands of casualties in Britain and serving as an effective instrument of terror from 1944. It wasn’t until the Cold War that computer technology and military tactics resulted in significant developments in drone warfare.

“The arguments made in the film about the advantages of drones can still be heard today”

Ten years after Joe Kennedy Jr’s death, an American commentator filming for Pathé anticipated this revolution in military affairs in a film entitled Army Has Tiny Drone Plane to Scout Enemy. He can be heard bragging about advances in drone technologies, albeit for reconnaissance rather than slaughter. The film’s narrator notes that the rocketpowered, remote-controlled plane is only 12ft long and, when launching, accelerates from zero to 85mph within one second. In flight, it was capable of 200mph and had a range of about 200 miles. Fitted with both still and “motion picture cameras”, the drone could provide officers on the ground with detailed battle information without endangering human lives (at least not American ones). And it was cheap. The arguments made by the commentator in the 1955 Pathé film about the advantages of drone warfare can still be heard today. The modern Predator drone costs around $4.5m (£2.7m) compared with up to $678m (£410m) for an F-22 Stealth fighter. Drones, or UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) also appeal to a president and nation reluctant to see Americans killed in action. UAVs pose no threat to the lives of the operators (although there is evidence of psychological problems among drone controllers), making it easier to go to war. In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than 50 aerial drones; within a decade it had nearly 7,500. In 1955, military commentators were only beginning to explore uses of drones for offensive purposes. The 12ft drone bragged about in the Pathé film has now been replaced with the 50ft Global Hawk at one extreme and a 36in Raven (which is launched by simply throwing it in the air) at the other. Although reconnaissance remains an important use for drones, since the NATO bombings of the Kosovo campaign, these spy planes have been fitted with missiles and transformed into killers. The murderous potential of Operation Aphrodite has been fully realised. Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of What it Means to Be Human (Virago, 2011) Watch the British Pathé film Army Has Tiny Drone Plane to Scout Enemy at: britishpathe.com/video/new-drone-planeaids-aerial-photography

BBC History Magazine

BRITISH PATHÉ

HISTORY ON FILM

To explore British Pathé’s archive of over 90,000 films from the 1890s to the 1970s go to britishpathe.com

BLAME THE VIKINGS FOR OUR

NORMAN CONQUEST A Novel About The 1066 Curse... Entirely In Verse

From The Quill of Ian Macgill

www.rhymesofhistory.com

ROLLO’S NORSE ARMY suffered such loss that he swapped Thor’s hammer for the Holy Cross, and was then ordered - in defeat - to kneel, and kiss the French king’s feet. But before falling to His Majesty’s palac e floor, Rollo did humbly and proudly implore: ‘Sire, my Norsemen will happily show Odin and Thor the door for ever more. But you must grasp the stinging nettle, and allow us to peacefully settle - along your realm’s northern coast - for the sea is what we love, and need most .’ France’s ruler - Charles the Simple - pressed a ruby ring against his chin ’s dimple. He frowned, and narrowed his eyes , then declared, to everyone’s surprise: ‘Arise! Let us forget all hurtful blows, for as you lift your nose from our royal toes we vow to our late father - Louis the Stam merer - to never again be a Norse Ham merer.’ A treaty was soon agreed, and there was so much joy when people ceased to bleed, that His Majesty decreed his royal fami ly and the Vikings must interbreed. Without a second glance, King Char les honoured the Norseman who had ravaged France - and for years cruelly fought her - by allowing Rollo to marry his daughter. Thus, the Vikings - angry and touchy - won what became known as the Nor man duchy. It meant England had Norse tribes to her head, and feet, which King Haro ld would have to beat - at almost the same time - during the sorry year which will see the end of this rhyme. But that tomorrow - and our sorrow - is far away as Lady Emma comes to stay, leaving behind her little land, which I have earlier said was only a strip of sand. And yet - in this rhyme’s lyrical stor ies - we will often marvel at Norman dy’s glories. Look! As the sky loses all light, Rouen is sparkling bright for our delight. See her shimmering as a ruby gem, with that ribbon of silver embroidering her hem, bearing a name to rhyme with your poetic pen - the River Seine - which has enchanted men, bewitched us all, ever since the barb arous and pagan days of Gaul. Ah, the Normans loved Rouen’s very bones, and so bequeathed her glorious stones - sculpted from their rocky souls - to build churches every saint still patro ls, for they soar so high it is easy to belie ve our dearest dreams can never die, and are etched on jewelled panes abov e, where God looks down with His love, inhaling candle scent, while hearing each whispered, woeful lament, and every song - and sin - of this won derful world we are briefly prisoners in.

OUT&ABOUT HISTORY EXPLORER

The Second World War home front

Listen to Juliet Gardiner ON THE PODCAST

I

n many ways, Kent found itself on the front line throughout the Second World War. The county lay on the direct path of German bombers heading for London, with the planes frequently jettisoning bombs on their return journeys from raids elsewhere in the UK. Aircraft repair sheds and planes on the ground were also subjected to continual attacks as the Luftwaffe attempted to gain air superiority over the RAF. On the ground, meanwhile, evacuees had been sent to ‘safety’– which, of course, turned out to be a relative term – in the Kent countryside upon the outbreak of the war in September 1939. But the war’s effects reached underground, too. Thirty metres beneath an area near a small, leafy, well-to-do Kentish commuter town lay the site of the largest public shelter in Britain equipped for permanent residence. Known as Chislehurst Caves, these tunnels were, in fact, man-made caverns in which chalk and flint had been mined for centuries, creating commodious spaces and some 22 miles of tunnels. They were to prove hugely useful during the conflict: one local family, the Trokes, lived there for five years. The caves were no stranger to the demands of military combat, however. During the Napoleonic wars, flint for muskets had been hewn from their walls, while in the First World War they had been used as an adjunct to the Woolwich Arsenal to store ammunition. The caves also proved useful in peacetime: in the 1930s, for instance, they were used for growing mush-

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rooms, with their dark, damp conditions ideal for cultivating the crop. But when the Second World War broke out, their potential as a capacious air-raid shelter was clear. At first only a trickle of people sheltered in the caves, and, in compliance with local authority civil defence regulations, a trench capable of sheltering 50 people was dug at the entrance. Within weeks of the start of the Blitz on 7 September 1940, this band of locals had swelled to a group of more than 15,000 people fleeing the aerial assault on London. At first the shelterers had only what they could carry, sleeping in deck chairs or on blankets and cushions on the cold earth floor, fortified by a bottle of tea and buns or sandwiches. Oil drums or dustbins containing creosote served as lavatories, while flickering candles or oil lamps provided the majority of the lighting (there were some torches, although batteries proved increasingly hard to buy). Despite all this, the caves proved so popular that special trains from Cannon Street were laid on to bring workers from London in the evening and take them back to the capital the next morning. Soon, largely due to the efforts of a small self-appointed committee – consisting of a clergyman, a mushroom-grower and a retired rubber-planter – a small underground town had emerged, complete with electric light, proper sanitation and ventilation. Bunk beds were provided from January 1941, and hooks were driven into the walls so that curtains or sacking could be hung to create a degree of privacy. A ‘cathedral’, so called because of its domed chalk ceiling,

HELEN ATKINSON

As part of our series in which experts nominate British locations to illustrate historical topics, Juliet Gardiner visits Chislehurst Caves in Kent, home to thousands of people fleeing aerial assault between 1939 and 1945

BBC History Magazine

“The caves were to prove hugely useful during the conflict: one family, the Trokes, lived in them for five years” JULIET GARDINER Historian and broadcaster Juliet Gardiner pictured next to a reproduction of the living conditions experienced by residents of Chislehurst Caves. People returned to the subterranean town every night Photography by Helen Atkinson

BBC History Magazine

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Out & about / History Explorer

was used regularly for religious services, with chairs for the congregation and an altar. The Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) set up a canteen selling tea and buns and hot food, while the Red Cross ran an underground hospital to provide first aid and care for the sick, elderly and pregnant. One baby was born in the caves and, following the suggestions of fellow residents, her parents gave her a middle name reflecting the circumstances of her birth: Rose Cavena Wakeman. It was not until January 1941 that civil defence authorities designated the caves as a public shelter, but by the May of that year the Blitz was effectively over and few people felt the need to shelter underground. However, exactly a week after D-Day, on 13 June 1944, the first of Hitler’s longexpected ‘secret weapons’ – the V1 pilotless missile – launched from the coasts of the Netherlands and France and fell on London. It was followed in September by the deadly ballistic missile, the V2 rocket. The exodus from the capital resumed and, soon, more than 2,000 people sought safety in the caves. One section was reserved for service personnel – particularly members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFs)

“THE CAVES OFFICIALLY CLOSED AS AN AIR RAID SHELTER ON 13 MAY 1945. SOME RESIDENTS LINGERED; THEY NO LONGER HAD ANY OTHER HOME TO GO TO” 82

from nearby Biggin Hill airfield – to ensure that they could get a good night’s sleep before resuming their duties the next day. There had always been rules for shelterers, but these were tightened up in 1944 to cope with the renewed influx. No admission to the dormitory areas of the caves was permitted after 9.30pm, or 10.30pm during ‘double summer time’ – which had been introduced in May 1941 to make it possible for farmers and gardeners to dig and plough for longer during daylight hours, to cut down on the accidents and inconveniences caused by blackout regulations, and to save on electricity. Children were required to be in their pitches by 9.30pm and stay there; all music had to cease by 9pm. The rules on absence were also made more rigorous: while previously a pitch could be left vacant for 20 days before it was reclaimed, it was now presumed that if a site had been left empty for four days it was due to its occupants having been killed or seriously wounded by a V1 or V2 attack. Just five days after VE Day, on 13 May 1945, the caves were officially closed as an air-raid shelter. Some residents lingered: as a result of the bombardment that Britain had suffered, they no longer had any other home to go to. Since the end of the Second World War, Chislehurst Caves have been used for various purposes: as a music venue, a tourist attraction, and the location for various films and television series. They are well worth a visit, with scenes of what life would have been like for the shelterers authentically recreated throughout. The caves remain an important monument to the civilian experience during

A set of medical supplies used by residents

A Second World War-era suitcase, gas mask and tin helmet stored at the caves

the Second World War, and indicate the natural human desire to dive underground when attacks come from above. But resolve and courage would have been needed during those long months of aerial attrition, living in the dark and cold in minimum comfort. While the inhabitants were there, night after night, unaware of what was happening outside, a genuine community sprang up: a piano was brought underground and there were concerts, sing-songs, even dancing. All of this ably demonstrates the courage, and ingenuity, with which the British people sought to ‘take it’ during the relentless bombardment of the Blitz and V attacks. Juliet Gardiner is a social historian, writer and broadcaster. Her most recent books are The Thirties: An Intimate History and The Blitz: The British Under Attack (both HarperPress, 2010). ON THE PODCAST

Listen to Juliet Gardiner discuss what life was like in Chislehurst Caves E historyextra.com/podcasts

BBC History Magazine

HELEN ATKINSON

Juliet Gardiner in one of the caves’ dormitories. Residents “lived in minimum comfort”

SECOND WORLD WAR HOME FRONT SITES: FIVE MORE TO EXPLORE VISIT

Chislehurst Caves

2 Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks

4 Liverpool docks P albertdock.com

P army.mod.uk/chaplains/23369.aspx

A V1 flying bomb – known as a ‘doodlebug’ or ‘buzz bomb’ – hit the Royal Military chapel in St James’s Park during morning service on Sunday 18 June 1944, killing 121 people, both civilians and military personnel, and seriously injuring 141. The Guards Chapel, as it is called, is just round the corner from Buckingham Palace and is the spiritual home of the Household Division.

5

Caveside Close, Old Hill, Chislehurst Kent BR7 5NL P chislehurst-caves.co.uk

5 The Italian chapel, Orkney P orkneycommunities.co.uk/italianchapel

A number of Italian PoWs, captured in the Western Desert, were sent to the Orkneys in 1941 to build barriers against attack by German U-boats. Strictly speaking this was war work, and against the Geneva Convention: prisoners led a hard life, hewing rocks in the bitter cold. To keep up morale, some decided to build their own Roman Catholic chapel: two Nissen huts were joined up and an interned artist, Domenico Chiocchetti, recruited fellow craftsmen to transform the corrugated iron huts into a beautiful place of worship with paintings, a campanile and a carved head of Christ.

1 Coventry Cathedral P coventrycathedral.org.uk

Many places of worship were destroyed or badly damaged during the Blitz, most famously Coventry Cathedral, which was bombed in 1940. Indeed, its devastation was shown in newsreel cinemas around the UK to exemplify the extent of Germany’s barbarism. Basil Spence, the designer of its Grade I-listed modernist replacement, insisted that the ruins of the old cathedral were kept alongside as a symbol of remembrance and reconciliation. Other churches were also left in ruins as a memorial to Britain’s wartime suffering, including the 13th-century Christchurch, Greyfriars, in the City of London and St Luke’s in Liverpool (see above right).

Liverpool was a major port and Britain’s main link with the US, with 90 per cent of all war supplies passing through it. As a result, Merseyside was one of the most heavily bombed areas in Britain. It was first attacked on 28 August 1940 and endured 50 raids in the next three months. The ‘Christmas Blitz’ of 20–22 December killed 365 people, while on 3/4 May 1941 some 300 Luftwaffe bombers converged on Liverpool. The SS Malalkand, carrying 1,000 tonnes of bombs and shells bound for the Middle East, was hit: the explosions lasted for 74 hours. Half the port’s shipping berths were rendered unusable, 57 vessels were destroyed and the dock’s entrance blocked.

4 1 2 3

Chislehurst Caves, Kent

3 Balham tube station, London

HELEN ATKINSON/ALAMY

P ltmuseum.co.uk

Coventry’s ruined original cathedral stands as a memorial to the war

BBC History Magazine

From the start of the Blitz, Londoners swarmed down to London’s underground network when the siren went. At first there were no facilities, but gradually sanitation, bunks and canteens were provided for the 70,000 people who slept on platforms most nights. But even the tube was not safe. The worst incident was at Balham station on 14 October 1940 when 66 people died, most of whom suffocated or drowned when gas, water and sewage pipes fractured. A plaque in the station’s booking hall marks the event.

The interior of the Italian chapel in Orkney, built from two Nissen huts and filled with artwork created by Italian prisoners of war

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Out & about

TEN THINGS TO DO IN MARCH William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain EXHIBITION V&A, London 22 March–13 July S 020 7942 2000 P vam.ac.uk

MAGAZINE

CHOICE

his year sees the 300th anniversary of the ascension of George I and the start of the Hanoverian dynasty in Britain. The period saw huge changes in art and culture, as the styles of the old Stuart regime gave way to new fashions arriving from Italy. One of the leading figures responsible for creating this new-look Georgian Britain was William Kent, a polymath who turned his hand from painting to architecture, interior decoration, landscape gardens, costume and even theatrical design. He is the subject of a new exhibition at the V&A. Julius Bryant, lead curator of the exhibition, says: “Most people usually associate William Kent with country houses, but we want to shift this focus onto his artistic work in London during a period as Britain defined itself as a new nation.”

T

“Kent epitomises the cultural changes that took place during the Georgian period” EXHIBITION

TALK

EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY

EXHIBITION

For King and Country?

Reflections on Captain Cook

Power of Ten: Inventing Logarithms

Jewish Museum London 19 March–10 August S 020 7284 7384 P jewishmuseum.org.uk

National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Falmouth 26 March S 01326 313388 P nmmc.co.uk

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh 28 March–6 July S 0300 123 6789 P nms.ac.uk

Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice

Explore the life, personality and career of James Cook – from his beginnings, to his time as a famous explorer.

See how John Napier’s work on logarithms 400 years ago led to innovations that transformed mathematics, such as the decimal point and slide rule.

Discover the Jewish experience of the First World War through the eyes of some of the 50,000 Jews who fought for Britain during the conflict, and those on the home front.

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The exhibition begins with Italy and the experience of young wealthy Britons on the grand tour. It was nostalgia for these trips that gave Kent many of his first commissions, as the Georgian elite sought to bring Italy home and create luxury worlds for themselves in villas such as Chiswick House in London. “The centrepiece of the exhibition,” says Bryant, “is a magnificent wooden architectural model for a new royal palace, designed by Kent for George II and Queen Caroline and presented to them in 1736. The care that went into making the 2.5m-long model is extraordinary, both inside and out – fireplaces, spiral staircase, kitchens and even toilets are all visible inside, giving visitors to the exhibition a real feel for what this palace could have looked like. Sadly, ONLINE Queen Caroline, the driving force SLIDESHOW behind the project, died in 1737 historyextra.com /williamkent and the palace was never built.” The exhibition brings together nearly 200 examples of Kent’s work, including architectural drawings for the Treasury, as well as paintings, illustrated books and rare pieces of gilded and upholstered furniture. “Kent was one of the finest designers of the age,” concludes Bryant “and, in my opinion, is the most versatile designer in British history. He epitomises the huge cultural changes that took place during the Georgian period.”

James Cook comes under the spotlight in Cornwall this month

National Gallery, London 19 March–15 June S 020 7747 2885 P nationalgallery.org.uk

Explore some 50 works by Paolo Veronese, one of the most influential painters of the Venetian Renaissance, including his series of four works: ‘Allegories of Love’.

BBC History Magazine

Charlotte Hodgman previews some of the latest events and exhibitions EXHIBITION

Ruin Lust

The Gallery, Chiswick House by William Henry Hunt, 1827. William Kent designed much of the house’s interior and you can see examples of its furniture at a new exhibition at the V&A

EVENT

EXHIBITION

The Women Behind Petrie

Vanishing for the Vote

The Petrie Museum, London 8 March S 020 7679 4138 P ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie

Visit the Petrie Museum on International Women’s Day and contribute to new Wikipedia entries on the ladies who helped Egyptologist Flinders Petrie.

BBC History Magazine

People’s History Museum, Manchester 24 February–27 April S 0161 838 9190 P phm.org.uk

Find out how hundreds of women across Britain boycotted the government census of 1911 to raise awareness for the campaign to grant women the vote.

DEVONSHIRE COLLECTION, CHATSWORTH/ JANE AND LOUISE WILSON, COURTESY 303 GALLERY, NEW YORK/ THE HENRY AND ROSE PEARLMAN COLLECTION/CORBIS

Tate Britain, London 4 March–18 May S 020 7887 8888 P tate.org.uk

More than 100 works by artists such as JMW Turner, John Constable and Rachel Whiteread go on display at Tate Britain this month looking at our ongoing fascination Azeville by Jane with architectural ruins. Among Wilson and Louise the themes covered are the Wilson, 2006 18th-century craze that saw artists touring Britain in search of ruins and picturesque landscapes and the modern juxtaposition of historic and modern elements, seen in photography by Keith Arnatt. EVENT

BBC History Magazine’s First World War and Viking days MShed, Bristol 15 and 16 March S 0844 871 8819 P historyextra.com/events

Join a host of eminent historians at Bristol’s harbourside museum for two days of lectures and debates. Our Saturday event will focus on the Vikings, analysing the lives and achievements of the Norse raiders – from poetry, peace and war, to ships and society. On Sunday, the First World War is under the spotlight as Margaret MacMillan, David Reynolds and others discuss different aspects of the conflict and the build up to war in 1914. Tickets to both events include a buffet lunch at the venue plus morning and afternoon teas and coffees. Turn to page 34 to find out how to book your ticket. EXHIBITION

Cézanne and the Modern Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 13 March–22 June S 01865 288185 P ashmolean.org ONLINE SLIDESHOW

A collection of extraordinary masterpieces by some of the most famous artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements will go on show to the public in Oxford this month. Among the pieces on display are paintings and sculptures by artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, as well as 24 works by Paul Cézanne. This is the first time the collection has ever been displayed in Europe.

historyextra.com /cezanne

Self Portrait by ChaÏm Soutine, c1918

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Out & about

YE OLDE TRAVEL GUIDE

Amsterdam 1648 In the latest instalment of our historical holidays series, in which experts imagine they’re writing a travel guide in the past, Russell Shorto recommends a city that, with the threat of invasion lifted, has become the emporium of the world ILLUSTRATION BY JONTY CLARK

WHEN TO GO Any time is good, though high summer is the malaria season along the canals. The tulips for which the city is famous – even after the tulip mania of a decade ago, when the price of bulbs soared and then collapsed – still pop up in the spring. In winter you can skate on the canals. WHAT TO TAKE WITH YOU Layers! The northern winds blow strong here. Look at the locals: they aren’t all fat, just protecting themselves from the elements. If you want to fit in, bring a crisp, white lace collar. COSTS This is the world’s greatest city right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most expensive. The Dutch are great ones for bargains. Haggle with merchants, and you’ll be respected. Amsterdam is the emporium of

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the world. Along its canals you can buy live elephants, stuffed monkeys, Delft tiles and spices from the East Indies. Everything is cheaper here than elsewhere in Europe, because most goods arrive here first before being shipped elsewhere. SIGHTS AND ACTIVITIES Leaders from other European cities come to marvel at the new canal zone, which is about threequarters finished now. Nearly four decades ago the city fathers laid out a massive urban expansion programme, which involved wrapping a horseshoe ring of canals around the medieval city centre, increasing the size of the city fivefold.

Thousands of gable-topped brick houses, miles of road and canal, and dozens of humpbacked bridges later, the result is a place unlike any other. For the first time, a city has been crafted around the needs and comforts of individual residents. The homes themselves are a reflection of this. Think of homes in other European cities. Who lives in them? An extended family, its servants, renters, assorted others. An Amsterdam canal house is smaller, and it is meant to house a man, his wife and their children. What a concept! The city has brought about a new emphasis on this family unit, and so has redefined the meaning of ‘home’. With that comes a new approach to comfort. The Dutch have a word – gezellig – that doesn’t have an English translation. It means something like cosy, comfortable, warm. Go inside a canal house and you’ll find lots of gezelligheid. There are cosy beds tucked into closets, to keep out drafts. The family gathers around the

“ALONG ITS CANALS YOU CAN BUY LIVE ELEPHANTS, STUFFED MONKEYS AND EAST INDIAN SPICES”

fireplace. You’ll see that everyone hangs paintings on their walls. And the paintings will amaze you – for they are not religious subjects. Instead – you won’t believe this – they depict ordinary people. A woman pouring milk into a bowl. An old man selling fish on the street. Imagine making art out of such commonplace material! Yet this is the key to Amsterdam: it’s geared to the individual. One stop you must make, therefore, is at one of the city’s art dealers. Why not see the great man himself: Rembrandt van Rijn? He’s not only one of Europe’s most celebrated artists (his Night Watch painting of the civic guard company on patrol hangs in their headquarters a few steps from his house), but a dealer in his own right. DANGERS AND ANNOYANCES As of the Treaty of Munster, which was signed this year, the threat of a Spanish invasion, which has loomed over the city for 80 years, is over. The Dutch have won their long war of independence. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to watch yourself along the canals. But the threat will be

BBC History Magazine

WWW.JONTYCLARK.COM

A

FTER CENTURIES as a pokey little place famous only as a centre of pilgrimage, Amsterdam has morphed into the global hub of art, commerce and science. And what better way of navigating the city than on its staggeringly efficient waterways

AMSTERDAM TODAY

Art house: Amsterdam’s “stunning” Rijksmuseum

ALAMY

from pickpockets, who prey on the thousands of newcomers hoping to make a go of it in the city where, 40-odd years ago, the stock market and the concept of ‘shares of stock’ were born. SLEEPING AND ACCOMMODATION Most inns are clustered near the harbour. You get off your ship and cross into the city via the New Bridge. In front of you is a canal called the Damrak. It’s lined with cheap places to stay. For something finer, go straight ahead until you come to the Stock Exchange Building. Around it are accommodations for the merchants and traders who flock to Amsterdam.

BBC History Magazine

“WHY NOT HIRE A COACH, AND LAUGH AS COMMONERS DASH TO AVOID BEING RUN OVER” EATING AND DRINKING In two words: herring and beer. You can’t go wrong with either. Beyond that, the national dish is hutspot, a stew of vegetables, meat, ginger and lemon juice. And in winter, pea soup is the thing. For quick bites as you stroll, you can find street stalls hawking cinnamon cakes. GETTING AROUND If you’re coming to Amsterdam from another Dutch city you’ll be astounded by the public

transport boats. They are clean. They ride the waterways that connect cities. They usually depart hourly, and are efficient. You can walk anywhere in the city in 15 minutes. If you’re rich and want to flaunt it, you can hire a coach, and laugh as commoners dash to the sides of the narrow roads to avoid being run down. Russell Shorto is the author of Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City (Little, Brown)

Canals, characterful small houses and art like Rembrandt’s Night Watch remain a powerful draw to the Dutch capital – just as they were in 1648. Though today two-wheeled transport has replaced boats as the most popular way of getting around, the water remains the best way to appreciate the canal ring, now an ancient treasure admired the world over. You can enjoy art all over the city, including the Van Gogh Museum and, most stunning of all, Rijksmuseum, newly opened after a decade-long restoration. Anne Frank’s House does more than nod at the recent history of the city. Most of all, Amsterdam is a thoroughly modern European metropolis which preserves its past while advancing confidently into the future. For all that, brown cafes offering gezelligheid by the glass still abound. As an added bonus, Amsterdam is brilliantly connected with airports all over the UK. There’s little excuse not to go and see it for yourself.

IF YOU LIKE THIS… If you like your canals Dutch, try Leiden, a short train ride from Amsterdam. Another cycle-friendly European capital with a fascinating history is Copenhagen, Denmark. Tom Hall, travel editor, lonelyplanet. com. You can read more of his articles at the website

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MISCELLANY

Q&A

for American forces which stood on the north side of Aldwych, London. On 9 March, three servicemen were arrested outside it for playing dice in the street in contravention of British gambling laws (one is shown below being taken to Bow Street police station). Soon, the station was surrounded by 2,000 of their comrades, protesting against the arrests. After (false) rumours that one man had died, the protest became a riot in which missiles were hurled at the police, who responded with baton charges. More than 20 people were injured during the ‘Battle of Bow Street’, and 11 American soldiers were later tried by court martial for their part in it. Nick Rennison

TOPFOTO/MARY EVANS

Q Who was Denmark Vesey? A Denmark Vesey was a slave who was owned by a West Indies sea captain. Vesey arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, when his master retired there – and, after winning $1,500 in a lottery, was able to buy his freedom and set up as a carpenter and preacher. In 1822, inspired by French Revolutionary ideas and angered by the city government’s closure of the church he had established, Vesey planned what would have been the biggest slave rebellion in US history. As many as 9,000 slaves in and around Charleston were preparing to revolt on 14 July (Bastille Day) but Vesey’s conspiracy was betrayed to the authorities. He was swiftly arrested, put on trial and, on 2 July, hanged with more than 30 of his associates. Nick Rennison

BBC History Magazine

ILLUSTRATION BY GLEN MCBETH

Q What was the ‘Battle of Bow Street’? A In 1919, the ‘Eagle Hut’ was a centre

Q How did 999-year-long leases come about and do we know if any have ever run their full length? O Adamberry, Gibraltar

A

They almost certainly originated in feudal ideas of land ownership following the Norman conquest of England, and no such lease has yet expired (as far as we know!) In the early 1600s the jurist Sir Edward Coke, pondering their origins, speculated that 1,000-year leases had been found fraudulent by the courts because, for all practical purposes, they amounted to freehold, and were thus not leases at all. Perhaps, Coke suggested, the 999-year lease had been a legalistic way of evading the 1,000-year judgment. We can’t find the oldest documented 999-year lease in England – so if anyone knows which land or building it’s attached to, do tell us. There are several old buildings – inns, for example – which were bought on 999-year leases in Tudor or Stuart times, but it’s often difficult to prove who the present owners are. Most of these agreements also included a

Denmark Vesey’s name is listed in a record of 35 men executed for taking part in the 1822 slave revolt

ground rent, which has not now been paid for centuries because its modern value is trivially small and/or because nobody knows who it should be paid to. The 999-year arrangement enjoyed a minor new lease of life in the 19th century. It was sometimes used in Britain’s colonies, while back home the owners of large estates selling land to rail companies, for instance, sometimes used 999-year terms to maintain a degree of control over the land. Some aristocrats fallen on hard times tried to rent homes and farmland to their tenants on 999-year leases so that they would still nominally be landowners. They are still sometimes used by owners of apartments where the owner needs to retain some rights in order to maintain the building, though 99-year leases are more common. Eugene Byrne, author and historian

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Miscellany SAM’S RECIPE CORNER Every issue our picture editor, Sam Nott, brings you a recipe from the past

Fake fish Medieval apple pie for Lent

For more details go to: coquinaria.nl/ english/recipes/03.2histrecept.htm

INGREDIENTS Dough: 500g flour; 125g oil (I used olive oil); 40g ground almonds; 300ml water; 1tsp salt; saffron (optional); whole/sliced almonds to make scales Filling: 3 apples, chopped; 90g cane sugar; 1tsp ginger; tsp cinnamon; tsp saffron; 2 slices gingerbread, lightly toasted and crumbled, or 40 ground almonds METHOD Dough: Mix all the ingredients together, adding more liquid/flour if required, and knead it all until it’s reasonably smooth. Put the dough in the fridge for an hour before you need to use it Filling: Add the ingredients into a blender or mash by hand using a potato masher Preheat the oven to 200°C. Divide the pastry in two. Roll out the first part and cut out an oval shape. Place the fish on a baking tray with toasted breadcrumbs sprinkled on the dough. Put the apple filling on to the oval, roll and cut out a second oval and place over the filling, pressing the top layer to the bottom. Cut out an eye hole and a hole near where the tail will go. Add fins, gills, scales. Bake for 45mins. Difficulty: 3/10

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Time: 90mins

Quebec, c1770, when it was under British rule. Its clashes with American colonists ensured that it was to remain British

Q Why did the British colonies that would later create Canada remain loyal to Britain, rather than support the 13 colonies in declaring independence? Huw Thomas, via email

The colonies that went on to make Canada did not join the American rebellion in 1775 or become part of the United States in 1776, despite the aspirations of the American colonies. Nova Scotia had been British since 1713. The presence of a strong military and naval base at its capital, Halifax, meant that the small Anglophone civilian population, much of which came from New England, had few opportunities for revolt. Quebec remained aloof from the American rebellion, mainly because its population in 1775–76 was still overwhelmingly French-speaking and Catholic. It had been conquered from the French crown in 1760, and formally ceded to Britain at the Peace of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763. The French Canadians, after having been engaged in conflict with the British colonies to the south over many generations, were unlikely to respond favourably to appeals for solidarity with the American colonies. The Americans attempted to forcibly incorporate Quebec by invading the colony. Yet this turned out to be a disastrous mistake. Although at one

A

point American success looked certain, British troops eventually repelled the rebels. When the disgruntled Americans retreated, their undisciplined behaviour removed any possibility of their winning over the local people. Even before this stage, the neutrality, at the very least, of the French Canadians had probably been secured by the Quebec Act of 1774. This piece of legislation, piloted through parliament by the British prime minister Lord North, gave the colony a system of government adapted to French traditions, with security of land-ownership for the French Canadian population, a special status for the Catholic church, and places on a nominated council for Catholics as well as Protestant landowners. By conciliating the French Canadian elite, Lord North was trying to solve a problem of imperial governance that had been troubling successive British ministries since 1760. In the process, he probably helped to ensure that Canada stayed within the British fold. Professor Stephen Conway, University College London

BBC History Magazine

ART ARCHIVE

In the Middle Ages, people were instructed not to eat meat during Lent. Yet the ban didn’t apply to fish – in fact, Dutch gourmets enjoyed serving up ‘fish’ dishes so much that they devised this fish-shaped apple pie. With no animal products, it’s every bit as virtuous as it is delicious.

IF YOUR QUESTION IS PRINTED, WE’LL SEND YOU A RECENTLY PUBLISHED HISTORY BOOK

GOT A QUESTION? Write to BBC History Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN, email: [email protected] or submit via our website: historyextra.com

Q Given that the Irish Republic

Quiz

came into being in 1922, how was it that the English executioners Thomas Pierrepoint and his nephew Albert were carrying out executions in the Republic until the 1950s? Martin Birtle, Birmingham

TOPFOTO/ALAMY

A

Capital punishment was uncommon in the newly independent Irish state. And so the cash-strapped government chose to employ one of His Majesty’s executioners, Thomas Pierrepoint, on a fee-perhanging basis when the occasion arose. Pierrepoint was called on 14 times in the 1920s, five times in the 1930s, and seven times in the 1940s. Towards the end of the Second World War, the Irish authorities briefly considered appointing an Irish hangman. However, the selected candidate proved unsuitable, and so Thomas’s nephew Albert, who had acted as his assistant, performed the last four hangings carried out in Ireland (always in Mountjoy

gaol in Dublin), ending with the execution in 1954 of Michael Manning for the rape and murder of a nun. There was a gender bias in executions. Only one of the Pierrepoints’ Irish victims, 31-year-old Annie Walsh, was a woman: she and an accomplice were hanged for murdering her elderly husband, although the jury had pleaded for clemency. In all other cases involving women, death sentences were commuted. Pierrepoint hanged Walsh and the accomplice for £15 plus expenses, although his usual fee was £10 plus expenses per hanging. Professor Cormac Ó Gráda, University College Dublin

To mark the 250th anniversary on 13 March of the birth of British prime minister and reformer Charles, Earl Grey (left), a quiz on prime ministers 1. What title was first officially given to politician Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905?

describe as “the only safe place in Downing Street”?

2. Which is the odd one out: Sybil, Venetia, Lothair, Coningsby, Savrola? 3. Which future prime minister wrote an information pamphlet on Japan for the Royal Navy? 4. a. Who was Britain’s first Scottish prime minister? b. On what did he introduce an unpopular tax? c. What caused his death? 5. Prime minister Spencer Perceval and Edward ONLINE Drummond, QUIZ personal secretary Play now to prime minister Sir Robert Peel, are both buried in St Luke’s Church, Charlton. What else do they have in common?

7

7. a. What was this house known as until 1779? b. What does the brass plate on the door say?

Answers below 6. What did Margaret Thatcher reputedly

SOLUTIONS SOLUTION TO OUR JANUARY CROSSWORD Across: 1 Teresa 4/26 Octavia Hill 8 Persepolis 10 Goth 11 Glasnost 12 Euclid 13 Cabal 15 Newark 18 Wessex 20 Nasser 22 Oracle 24 Rhodesia 27 Great Seal 28 New York 29 Exodus. Down: 1 The block 2 Roses 3 Sophocles 5 Caste 6 Algeciras 7 Istria 9 Latin 14 Bletchley 16 Window Tax 17 Pericles 19 Xerxes 21 Ermine 23 Edgar 25 Emend

Yorkshireman Albert Pierrepoint, who, in 1954, performed the last execution in the Republic of Ireland

BBC History Magazine

FIVE WINNERS OF GREAT BRITAIN’S GREAT WAR L Sage, Croydon; M Bell, Kent; H Billinge, Cardiff; L Brooks, Gloucestershire; B Formston, Norfolk QUIZ ANSWERS 1. Prime minister 2. Savrola, which is a novel written by Winston Churchill. All the others are novels written by Benjamin Disraeli 3. Jim Callaghan 4. a. John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute b. Cider c. Injuries after falling off a cliff 5. They were both shot and murdered 6. Her handbag 7. a. 5 Downing Street b. First Lord of the Treasury

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Miscellany

PRIZE CROSSWORD

Geronimo was a leader of which Native American people? (see 20 down)

CROSSWORD PRIZE

You may photocopy this crossword

Across

Who painted this mural of members of the Zapotec civilisation? (see 24 across)

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Book worth

£7.99 for 10 winners

The Three Musketeers By Alexandre Dumas Award-winning translator Will Hobson brings a 150-year-old classic alive for a contemporary audience, while maintaining the literary and period integrity of the original text. The book follows the adventures of Gascon d’Artagnan and musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis as they strive to foil the wicked machinations of Cardinal Richelieu and the magnetic Milady de Winter. Published in paperback by BBC Books, £7.99. Available to buy from all good bookstores and online

25/2d One of a number of economic and cultural programmes of the former USSR (4,4,4) 27 A soldier of a renowned British military unit whose recruits were mainly from Nepal (6) 28 The first person to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane (7)

Down 1/16 Governor general of Bengal, who, after his return to Britain, was put on trial for corruption in the 1780s (6,8) 2 See 25 across 3 See 12 across 4 A chief magistrate in the ancient Roman Republic (6) 5 Large, elaborate, cartographical 13th-century document held in Hereford Cathedral (5,5) 8 Historically, gold, gifts etc given by one ruler to another by way of allegiance or acknowledgement of subjection (7) 9 The reputation of this British philosopher, Alfred Jules___, was established with his Language, Truth and Logic (1936) (4) 13 Great actress, made a dame in

1925, who carried on a celebrated correspondence with George Bernard Shaw (5,5) 16 See 1 down 18 Venue for the very first cricket Test Match (against Australia) in England (3,4) 20 Cochise and Geronimo are two famed leaders of this Native American people (6) 21 He is famous for the defensive earthwork constructed along the Welsh border of his kingdom (4) 23 Alexandria was the location of this tower, one of the Seven Wonders of the World (6) 26 Eboracum to the Romans (4) Compiled by Eddie James

HOW TO ENTER Open to residents of the UK, (inc. Channel Islands). Post entries to BBC History Magazine, March 2014 Crossword, PO Box 501, Leicester LE94 0AA or email them to [email protected] by 5pm on 26 March 2014. Entrants must supply name, address and phone number. The winners will be the first correct entries drawn at random after the closing time. Winners’ names will appear in the May 2014 issue. By entering, participants agree to be bound by the terms and conditions shown in full in the box below. Immediate Media Company Limited, publishers of BBC History Magazine, would love to keep you informed by post or telephone of special offers and promotions from the Immediate Media Company Group. Please write ‘Do Not Contact Magazines’ or ‘Do Not Contact IMC’ if you prefer not to receive such information by post, email or phone. Write ‘No Email BBCW’ if you do not wish to receive similar offers via email from BBC Worldwide. Please write your email address and mobile phone number on your entry so that BBC History Magazine can keep you informed of newsletters, special offers and promotions via email or free text messages. You may unsubscribe from receiving these messages at any time. For more about the BBC Privacy Policy see the box below.

CROSSWORD COMPETITION TERMS & CONDITIONS P The crossword competition is open to all residents of the UK (inc. Channel Islands), aged 18 or over, except Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited employees or contractors, and anyone connected with the competition or their direct family members. By entering participants agree to be bound by these terms and conditions and that their name and county may be released if they win. Only one entry permitted per person. P The closing date and time is as shown under How to Enter, above. Entries received after that will not be considered. Entries cannot be returned. Entrants must supply full name, address and daytime phone number. Immediate Media Company (publishers of BBC History Magazine) will only ever use personal details for the purposes of administering this competition, and will not publish them or provide them to anyone without permission. Read more about the Immediate Privacy Policy at www.immediatemedia.co.uk/privacy-policy/ P The winning entrants will be the first correct entries drawn at random after the closing time. The prize and number of winners will be as shown on the Crossword page. There is no cash alternative and the prize will not be transferable. Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited’s decision is final and no correspondence relating to the competition will be entered into. The winners will be notified by post within 20 days of the close of the competition. The name and county of residence of the winners will be published in the magazine within two months of the closing date. If the winner is unable to be contacted within one month of the closing date, Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited reserves the right to offer the prize to a runner-up. P Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions or to cancel, alter or amend the promotion at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, or if circumstances arise outside of its control. The promotion is subject to the laws of England.

BRIDGEMAN/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

6 Term, first applied in Norman England, still in use today, for a minor legal officer (7) 7 Engraver of ‘Gin Lane’, which led to a 1751 act banning the sale of the spirit (7) 10 James, 18th-century British engineer and renowned canal builder (8) 11 Hanoverian electress, mother of the future King George I of Great Britain (6) 12/3d Her marriage to a king of England was not consummated, and after its annulment, she took the title ‘The King’s Sister’ (4,2,6) 14 Town of Roman Britain, sited near to present-day St Albans (10) 15 A means of corporal punishment associated particularly with the British navy of the past (3,4) 17 The Anglo-American journalist and explorer famous for finding the ‘missing’ David Livingstone in 1871 (7) 19 Stamford Raffles established a settlement for the East India Company here in 1819 (9) 22 A regiment of warriors under the Zulu military system (4) 24 Diego___, one of Mexico’s greatest artists, famed for his murals depicting Mexico’s history and social problems (6)

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Visit the Mani in mainland Greece Kardamyli, in the Mani, Southern Peloponnese, is the village where the great author Paddy Leigh Fermor lived and wrote. For centuries, the Mani was wild and Kardamyli a poor rustic town. Today, Kardamyli has lost none of its real-Greece charm but boasts tavernas, cafés and organic shops. Read Leigh Fermor’s Mani and follow in his footsteps - enjoy walking along way-marked donkey tracks in the hills above the stunning coastline, past stone-built Maniot look-out towers and through historic Kardamyli.

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Vol 15 No 3 – March 2014 BBC History Magazine is published by Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited under licence from BBC Worldwide who help fund new BBC programmes. BBC History Magazine was established to publish authoritative history, written by leading experts, in an accessible and attractive format. We seek to maintain the high journalistic standards traditionally associated with the BBC. ADVERTISING & MARKETING Advertising director Caroline Herbert Senior advertising manager Laura Gibbs Advertising manager Hayley Smith 0117 314 8369 Deputy advertisement manager Sam Jones 0117 314 8847 Group direct marketing manager Laurence Robertson 00353 5787 57444 Subscriptions director Jacky Perales-Morris Marketing executive Gemma Burns US representative Kate Buckley [email protected] PRESS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Press officer Carolyn Wray 0117 314 8812 [email protected] SYNDICATION Head of licensing & syndication Joanna Marshall Magazine syndication executive Simon Goodman PRODUCTION Production director Sarah Powell Production co-ordinator Emily Mounter Ad co-ordinator James Croft Ad designer Rachel Shircore Reprographics Tony Hunt and Chris Sutch IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY Publisher David Musgrove Publishing director Andy Healy Managing director Andy Marshall CEO Tom Bureau Deputy chairman Peter Phippen Chairman Stephen Alexander BBC WORLDWIDE Director of publishing Nicholas Brett Head of publishing Chris Kerwin Head of editorial Jenny Potter Publishing co-ordinator Eva Abramik [email protected] http://www.bbcworldwide.com/uk--anz/ ukpublishing.aspx Jan–June 2013

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The Adolf Hitler obsession Sir Ian Kershaw considers why, of all the 20th-century’s monsters, the Nazi leader continues to fascinate us most

ADVISORY PANEL Dr Padma Anagol Cardiff University – Prof Joanna Bourke Birkbeck College, London – Prof Richard Carwardine Oxford University – Dominic Crossley-Holland Executive Producer, Factual, BBC* – Martin Davidson Commissioning Editor, History, BBC* – Prof Clive Emsley Open University – Prof Richard Evans Cambridge University – Prof Sarah Foot Oxford University – Prof Rab Houston St Andrews University – Prof John Hudson St Andrews University – Prof Lisa Jardine Queen Mary, London – Dr Peter Jones formerly Newcastle University – Prof Denis Judd London Metropolitan University – Prof Sir Ian Kershaw formerly Sheffield University – Robert Ketteridge Head of Documentaries, Factual, BBC* – Christopher Lee formerly Cambridge University – Prof John Morrill Cambridge University – Greg Neale Founding editor, BBC History Magazine – Prof Kenneth O Morgan Oxford University – Prof Cormac ó Gráda University College, Dublin – Prof Martin Pugh formerly Newcastle University – Julian Richards archaeologist and broadcaster – Prof Simon Schama Columbia University – Prof Mark Stoyle University of Southampton – Prof Miles Taylor Institute of Historical Research* – Dr Simon Thurley chief executive, English Heritage – Prof Helen Weinstein Director of IPUP, Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past* – Michael Wood historian and broadcaster * member of BBC Editorial Advisory Board © Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited, 2014 – ISSN: 1469 8552 Not for resale. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction in whole or part is prohibited without written permission. Every effort has been made to secure permission for copyright material. In the event of any material being used inadvertently, or where it proved impossible to trace the copyright owner, acknowledgement will be made in a future issue. MSS, photographs and artwork are accepted on the basis that BBC History Magazine and its agents do not accept liability for loss or damage to same. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher. Immediate Media Company is working to ensure that all of its paper is sourced from well-managed forests. This magazine can be recycled, for use in newspapers and packaging. Please remove any gifts, samples or wrapping and dispose of it at your local collection point.

Henry VI: the unlikely saint Henry VI was a king of many failings, so why was he venerated after his death? Desmond Seward investigates

Shakespeare: the big questions Was he happily married? How did he get his money? What did he even look like? Paul Edmondson has the answers

In search of the real Pocahontas Susan Castillo Street debunks some of the myths swirling around the celebrated Native American

97

My history hero “One thing I admire is his persistence. Without persistence, you’re not going to make it, no matter how talented you are. I also rather like the cynical East End humour in his films”

Photographer David Bailey chooses

Alfred Hitchcock 1899–1980 Hitchcock in Hollywood, California, in c1965. “He could tell you more in a moment than many filmmakers can in twice the time,” says David Bailey

A

When did you first hear about Alfred Hitchcock?

As a kid. He was one of the first famous people I knew about, because he too was from London’s East End, and I lived a few streets away from where he’d grown up, albeit 40 years before I was born. But it wasn’t until I was 16 or 17 that I realised exactly why this very distinctive-looking bloke was so famous – namely, for being a great film director. A couple of years later, I saw my first Hitch film, The 39 Steps, which knocked me out. What kind of person was he?

Judging by those two awful films made about him, not very nice! But I don’t think they did justice to the man. He was shaped in part by growing up in Leytonstone, and was obviously incredibly determined to make it in the film business at a time when it would have been a lot harder for someone with his kind of background. He also seems to have been very focused, deciding early on that his future lay in the movies, and let nothing stand in his way. What made him a hero?

I love the way he could tell a story so quickly, as in Strangers on a Train or To Catch a Thief. He grabs your attention from the word go. He could also tell you more about a character in a moment – by catching an action of theirs – than many filmmakers can in twice the time. Part of the affinity that I feel for Hitch is that I can take a picture of someone and find something in them that other photographers might miss, in the same way that he could do with a film character. Another thing I admire is his persistence.

98

Without persistence, you’re not going to make it, no matter how talented you are. I also rather like his cynical East End humour, which I always thought came out in his films. What was Hitchcock’s finest hour?

That’s a tough question because he made so many outstanding films. But for me it would be his 1963 film, The Birds, because I’ve always been mad about Daphne du Maurier, who wrote the story on which it’s based. (For the same reason, I like Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which was also based on one of her books.) The fact that he was able to make The Birds so scary without all the digital tricks they use today is a testament to his genius as a filmmaker. I watched it again recently and I think it looks better than ever! Is there anything you don’t particularly admire about him?

Well, he wasn’t portrayed very flatteringly in those two films I mentioned earlier. Artists like Caravaggio and Picasso also had their failings but that’s no reason not to admire them, is it? Yes, Hitch had a bit of a thing about blondes, but I’ve got a thing about brunettes. What’s wrong with that? Can you see any parallels between his life and yours?

Well, we came from more or less the same background. And he didn’t much like the police, and neither do I. If you could meet Hitchcock what would you ask him?

Unfortunately – or maybe fortunately because sometimes meeting someone you admire from afar can be a let-down – I never got to meet the great man. But if I had, I’d have asked him if I could take his picture. I’m sure we could have also had an interesting conversation on the relative merits of blondes and brunettes… David Bailey was talking to York Membery David Bailey is one of Britain’s leading photographers. The exhibition Bailey’s Stardust is open now and runs until 1 June at the National Portrait Gallery. Visit npg.org.uk to find out more

BBC History Magazine

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lfred Hitchcock was arguably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from the British Isles. Born in London, ‘Hitch’ made his name directing British films like The 39 Steps, pioneering many of the techniques used in modern movies. In 1939 he moved to Hollywood and made a string of acclaimed films including classics like Rear Window, North by Northwest and Psycho. He famously had cameos in most of his films.

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