BBC History Magazine 2015-04

ELIZABETH I: A JEALOUS QUEEN? MAGAZINE BRITAIN’S BESTSELLING HISTORY MAGAZINE April 2015 • www.historyextra.com

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King of the Crusaders How Ric mediev finest w PLUS

Leadership secrets of Saladin

Five myths The real reasons for a First World War disaster W

Dan Snow on the “doomed” Spanish Armada

Why the Suffragettes turned to violence

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APRIL 2015

THE BATTLE OF GISORS IN 1197, BATTLE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH (LEAD BY RICHARD I) AND THE FRENCH (LEAD BY KING PHILIP II), FROM VOLUME I OF ‘CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE OU DE SAINT DENIS’, 14TH CENTURY (VELLUM): BRITISH LIBRARY–BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY. ELIZABETH I: BRIDGEMAN. GALLIPOLI: AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL. THIS PAGE: BELINDA LAWLEY/JENI NOTT

WELCOME In February, Barack Obama cited the crusades as evidence of the historic wrongs committed “in the name of Christ”. By doing so he sparked outrage in some quarters and reignited the debate about the morality of the medieval invasion of the Holy Land. It’s a debate that has lasted for centuries, as Europeans and inhabitants of the Middle East have propagated different views of the rights and wrongs of the crusades. This month, we focus on arguably the best-known leaders of the Christian and Islamic forces: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. On page 30, Thomas Asbridge shows how Richard I honed his martial skills in the Holy Land, before returning to Europe as the continent’s greatest warrior. Then, on page 37, Saladin’s latest biographer, John Man, reveals the leadership secrets behind his military victories. More recently, the battle of Gallipoli is another event that attracts contrasting opinions. The attempt to knock the Ottoman empire out of the First World War proved a disaster but is still remembered with pride by Australians and New Zealanders. On the centenary of Gallipoli, we cover both perspectt ives, with Gary Sheffield’s myth-busting piece on pa a ge 54 followed by an interview with Australian autho or Peter FitzSimons. It’s not all about war this month, though. We’rre also exploring the court of Elizabeth I, the travails of suffragettes and the lives of medieval immigrants, among other topics. I hope you will find plenty to interest you in the pages that follow. Rob Attar Editor

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CONTACT US Dan Snow The defeat of the Spanish Armada is one of England’s most well known naval victories, but Philip II’s invasion was doomed to fail from the outset, as I discover in my new BBC series.

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Gary Sheffield With the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign falling this year, it is worth taking a long, hard look at this battle. Was it the great ‘might have been’ of the First World War? Having looked at the evidence, I’m not so sure.

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APRIL 2015

CONTENTS Features

Every month 6 ANNIVERSARIES

11 HISTORY NOW 11 The latest history news 14 Backgrounder: Greek bailout crisis 16 Past notes

18 LETTERS

48 The man whose words shine a light on England during the Civil War

20 MICHAEL WOOD’S VIEW

22 Elizabeth I: jealous queen? The Tudor monarch’s relationships with her courtiers were shaped by politics, not sex, says Susan Doran

28 Dan Snow on the Armada The TV presenter argues that the Spanish attempt to invade England in 1588 was doomed from the outset

30 King of the crusaders Thomas Asbridge traces Richard the Lionheart’s rise from callow commander to Europe’s finest warrior

37 How to lead like Saladin John Man reveals the eight attributes that place the Muslim hero in the pantheon of great rulers

43 Medieval immigrants Did the English welcome Scottish, Welsh and Irish migrants with open arms? Mark Ormrod and Jessica Lutkin investigate

48 An eye for trouble Ruth Scurr explains what John Aubrey’s chronicles can tell us about England’s turbulent 17th century

54 Five myths of Gallipoli Gary Sheffield argues that not everything we think we know about the ill-fated First World War campaign is true

60 Tales of the diggers Peter FitzSimons explains why his fellow Antipodeans show such reverence for the Gallipoli campaign

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52 OUR FIRST WORLD WAR

65 BOOKS Experts review new releases, plus Steven Weinberg discusses his new book on the history of science

77 TV & RADIO The pick of this month’s history programmes

80 OUT & ABOUT 80 History explorer: the fight for women’s votes 84 Ten things to do in April 86 My favourite place: Ethiopia

97 MISCELLANY 97 Q&A and quiz 99 Sam’s recipe corner 100 Prize crossword

106 MY HISTORY HERO John Sergeant chooses Arthur Ransome

62 SUBSCRIBE Save 27% when you subscribe * to the digital edition *All offers, prices and discounts are correct at the time of being published and may be subject to change USPS Identification Statement BBC HISTORY (ISSN 1469-8552) (USPS 024-177) April 2015 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, PO Box 37495, Boone, IA 50037-0495.

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Find out what Elizabeth really wanted from her courtiers, on page 22

43 What kind of challenges confronted Celtic immigrants to medieval England? BBC History Magazine

28 “When the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon on 28 May 1588 it was almost certain to fail” 54 We explode the myths of a Great War debacle

37 Why Saladin’s enemies loved him almost as much as his own men

80 The state’s “disgraceful” treatment of suffragettes

30 “RICHARD WAS THE FOREMOST MILITARY COMMANDER OF HIS GENERATION” BBC History Magazine

Dominic Sandbrook highlights events that took place in April in history

ANNIVERSARIES 24 April 1915

29 April 1429

Armenian killings begin

Joan of Arc arrives at siege of Orléans

t eight o’clock on 24 April 1915, the Ottoman empire’s interior minister, Talaat Pasha, handed down one of the most infamous orders in history. The empire was at war, and for months there had been a swirl of propaganda warning that Constantinople’s Armenian ethnic minority would inevitably betray the Ottomans to their British, French and Russian enemies. As Talaat’s order explained, it was time to move against the Armenians, who were a danger to “the future of the country”. All Armenian political organisations were now banned, and Talaat instructed police to arrest “the leaders and the members of the committees”, and all “the Armenians who are well known by the police forces”. By the following day, about 250 prominent Armenians – intellectuals,

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journalists, teachers, politicians, priests and even doctors – had been rounded up, with hundreds more arrested over the next few weeks. A month later, they were deported to Ottoman-occupied Syria. So began the horrific process that many historians describe as the Armenian genocide. By summer 1915, hundreds of thousands of deportees had effectively been abandoned to die in the Syrian desert. “The roads and the Euphrates,” reported the New York Times that August, “are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.” Many Turks (Turkey is the successor state of the Ottoman empire) vigorously contest that sentence; what is beyond doubt is that this was one of the darkest moments of the 20th century.

Armenian refugees camp out on the deck of a French ship that had rescued them from persecution by the leaders of the Ottoman empire in 1915

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She frees the city in a turning point in the Hundred Years’ War y late April 1429, English forces had been besieging the city of Orléans for almost six months. Many French nobles had given up hope that the city could be relieved. But at least one of Charles VII’s subjects was convinced that they could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. A few weeks earlier, the king had first laid eyes on a teenage peasant girl from Domrémy in north-east France, who was probably called Jehanne Darc – or as we know her today, Joan of Arc. But Joan often preferred a different name. She called herself La Pucelle – the Maid. On 29 April, Joan’s relief convoy, with several hundred soldiers, approached the gates of Orléans. Filled with religious enthusiasm, Joan wanted to take on the English straight away, but wiser heads prevailed. While skirmishers distracted the English besiegers, boats carried Joan, supplies and some 200 men down the Loire towards the city. For the townsfolk, Joan’s arrival seemed like a moment of divine salvation. “At eight o’clock in the evening,” wrote one chronicler, “she entered fully armed, mounted on a white horse; and borne before her, her standard, which was likewise white, and which had two angels holding each a lily flower in her hand; and on the pennon was painted the Annunciation.” Around her clustered the people of Orléans and the mood was one of jubilation. It was an extraordinary scene. They had suffered so much but now, “they felt wholly comforted, and as if freed from siege by the divine virtue which they had been told was in the simple Maid, whom they regarded most affectionately”. On May 8, the siege of Orléans was finally broken, and the English retreated.

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The Ottoman government takes the first step leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its Armenian subjects

BRIDGEMAN

Dominic Sandbrook recently presented Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction on BBC Two

Joan of Arc, depicted in a c1505 manuscript, had her first military victory when she led the forces that broke the English siege of Orléans in 1429, during the Hundred Years’ War

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Anniversaries 1 April 1854 Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words begins its serialisation of his latest novel, the blisteringly antiutilitarian Hard Times.

20 April 1968 In the Midland Hotel, Birmingham, Enoch Powell delivers a controversial speech warning that mass immigration will unleash racial conflict in Britain.

14 April 1205 In Adrianople (in modern-day Turkey), Tsar Kaloyan defeats the army of the Fourth Crusade, capturing Baldwin I, first Latin Emperor of Constantinople.

29 April 1770

Captain Cook lands in Australia The explorer makes landfall in a sheltered bay on the eastern coast – and then deliberates over what to call it n April 1770, the 41-year-old explorer Captain James Cook had been at sea for almost two years. On the instructions of the Royal Society, Cook had sailed south-east to Tahiti to record the transit of Venus across the sun, before opening sealed orders from the Admiralty, which instructed him to search the Pacific for signs of the mysterious southern continent of Terra Australis.

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By the end of April, Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, had not only sailed around New Zealand, diligently mapping its coastline, but had now reached the eastern coast of Australia. On Saturday 28 April he spotted “a bay which appeared to be tolerably well sheltered from all winds”, and the following day he made landfall. When he and his men went ashore, they found “several of the natives and a few huts”, but the

inhabitants scattered when Cook fired his musket. In woods beyond the beach, he wrote, they came across “small huts made of the bark of trees in one of which were four or five small children with whom we left some strings of beads &c”. At first, Cook called the bay Stingray Bay, after “the great quantity of these sort of fish” that he and his men had caught there. But when he thought about it, he was equally impressed by the enormous variety of plants that the Endeavour’s naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander had found on land. So when he wrote his journal, he called it Botanist Bay. Then he had another thought, struck a line through the word Botanist, and wrote instead the word ‘Botany’. And that, of course, is the name that has endured.

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GETTY IMAGES/MARY EVANS

Captain Cook takes possession of the east coast of the Australian continent on behalf of the British crown in 1770. He calls his landing point Botany Bay, after the impressive variety of plants found there

14 April 1865

Lincoln is assassinated American president is targeted after promising the vote to former slaves t was lunchtime on 14 April 1865. In the lobby of Washington’s National Hotel, actor John Wilkes Booth scribbled a last note to his mother. As he later recalled, he had decided that “our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done”. Booth had been born in Maryland, but he always saw himself as a Southerner, sympathised with the slave-owning Confederacy and hated the Union president, Abraham Lincoln. But by April 1865 the American Civil War was all but over. Three days earlier, in a crowd outside the White House, Booth had heard Lincoln promise to give the vote to former slaves. For the actor, that was the final straw. “Now, by God, I’ll put him through,” he declared. “That is the last speech he will ever give.” Just before 10.30 on the evening of the 14th, Booth made his way towards the

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Doctors examine a comatose President Lincoln after he had been shot in the head during a visit to the theatre. He died the following morning

presidential box at Ford’s Theater, where he knew Lincoln and his wife would be enjoying the comedy Our American Cousin. He knew the play, and timed his move for when the laughter would be loudest. On stage, the actor Harry Hawk said: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!” The audience roared. Booth swung open the door of the president’s box,

levelled his pistol, and fired. Lincoln fell immediately. In the confusion, Booth stabbed the president’s friend Major Rathbone in the arm and tried to leap from the box onto the stage, but one of his riding spurs caught in the flag decorating the box and he landed awkwardly. Many of the audience still believed he was something to do with the play. But Booth raised his bloody knife over his head. “Sic semper tyrannis!” he yelled – “thus always to tyrants!”

COMMENT / Professor Richard Carwardine

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“Lincoln’s death crystallised his reputation as a heroic tribune of the people” Booth’s bullet released Lincoln from the burdens of office, sent his wife, Mary, spiralling into inconsolable grief, aroused white-hot feelings of vengeance across the Union, and plunged the Confederate South into paroxysms of fear over the price it might have to pay. Lincoln’s standing in the RepublicanUnion party had never been higher (as a re-elected president who had secured the congressional passage of an emancipation amendment and ended the rebellion). His successor, former Democrat Andrew Johnson, however, had little status among Republicans and lacked Lincoln’s craft and progressive views. His conservative

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reconstruction settlement returned power to Confederate leaders and endorsed their harsh controls over freedmen (the Black Codes). Overturning Johnson’s arrangements, Republicans coalesced around a brief programme of Radical Reconstruction that extended the civil rights of southern blacks, but this shrivelled in the face of the forceful resistance of southern whites. Lincoln’s death prompted an explosion of global public mourning. Even before death, Lincoln had touched the lives of common people. His death crystallised his reputation as the archetypal self-made man and heroic tribune of the people,

winning the acclaim of radicals and nation-builders whose own lives were devoted to the same universal democratic principles.

Professor Richard Carwardine is the author of several books on Abraham Lincoln, including Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (Knopf, 2006) and The Global Lincoln, edited with Jay Sexton (OUP USA, 2011)

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The latest news, plus Backgrounder 14 Past notes 16

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

Uncovered: London’s grim tribute to a medieval martyr A rare metal artefact discovered in the capital tells the story of the final days of a rebellious nobleman – and is one of the finest examples of its kind yet found. Matt Elton reports n a site on the muddy banks of the river Thames in the City of London, archaeologists have been picking their way through a diverse array of historic artefacts: leather shoes, medieval tools, and the remains of timber structures. Among this diverse collection – situated in what is essentially a historical landfill – one item stands out: a rare 14th-century devotional panel, intricately cast from metal. It’s a remarkable find, and the finest example of its kind yet discovered. The panel, likely created in the mid to late 1300s, commemorates the arrest, trial and execution of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, a cousin of King Edward II. Experts from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), which is carrying out the project, think that it may have been mass-produced to sell to pilgrims venerating his death, perhaps at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Lancaster was one of a group of barons who tried to curb Edward’s power and that of the king’s favourites, Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser. He ordered the capture of Gaveston in 1312 and forced Edward to banish Despenser and his son nine years later. However, he found himself increasingly isolated and was defeated by Edward

MOLA (MUSEUM OF LONDON ARCHAEOLOGY)

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Final days This 14th-century devotional panel depicts, clockwise from top left, the capture, trial, public condemnation and execution of the Earl of Lancaster. The artefact became a symbol of popular opposition to Edward II

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HISTORY NEWS IN BRIEF English Heritage to split into two organisations

at the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. The devotional panel tells the story of what happened next in four scenes, running clockwise from top left below a depiction of Christ and the Virgin looking down from heaven ready to receive Lancaster’s soul. In the first scene, the earl is captured (he was then taken to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire). The text, in slightly garbled French beneath the image reads: “Here I am taken prisoner.” The second scene shows him held by an official and set before a judge. Its legend reads: “I am judged.” The third scene depicts the earl condemned and set on a mount before a hostile crowd (“I am under threat”), while the final image shows him being executed with a sword, which initially fails to sever his neck. The final caption states, somewhat tersely: ““La mort.” Following Lancaster’s execution a political and religious cult built up around him and acted as a focal point for popular opposition to Edward II. Within six weeks of his death, miracles had been attributed to his burial place in Pontefract Priory, including the apparent resurrection of a child. Pilgrims began to travel to Pontefract, where a chantry chapel was eventually built. However, a place of veneration also developed in St Paul’s in London, where a tablet had

“Lancaster was not a particularly saintly figure in life, but in death he became a political martyr” 12

been erected in 1311 commemorating Lancaster’s work reforming the royal household. This proved to be such a popular destination for pilgrims that, in 1323, the king ordered the bishop of London to stop people praying there. The panel is also interesting because it represents the increasing tendency within the medieval period for propaganda to venerate political figures. “Lancaster was not a particularly saintly character in life, but in death he became a political martyr,” said Jackie Keily, curator at the Museum of London, which is displaying the panel until September. “He can therefore be seen as belonging to a broader trend of English medieval political propaganda, and viewed alongside figures including Thomas Becket. Edward’s son, Edward III, even went so far as to petition the pope for Lancaster’s canonisation, but this never happened.” Despite the remarkable preservation of the panel due to the wet conditions of the site near the Thames, it’s unclear whether it is complete. The existence of a stylistically inferior version with two side panels, held at the British Museum, suggests that this newly discovered artefact may have formed the central panel of a triptych – although there are no marks indicating where additional panels would have been attached. “Lancaster’s story shows how political martyrs can be elevated to sainthood after death regardless of what they were like when alive,” said Keily. “In the runup to the 2015 UK general election this is, perhaps, a timely reminder of the dangers of political ambition: Thomas sought to control the king’s power, but paid the ultimate price.”

History Hot 100: Who gets your vote? BBC History Magazine wants to know which historical figures you’re most interested in at the moment – whether they’re the subject of a recent book or drama, or someone you’re studying. You can choose up to three people who died before 1985, and give your reasons for your votes. The poll will close on 3 April. We will then compile a list based on how many times each person is chosen, revealing the figure at the top of the history charts for 2015. To take part, visit historyextra.com/historyhot100.

Anglo-Saxon pendant uncovered by student A piece of Anglo-Saxon jewellery described by experts as being of “national significance” has been discovered by a student in Norfolk farmland. The gold pendant, inlaid with garnets, was found along with the skeleton of a woman, coins and jewellery. The coins suggest that the entire haul dates from between 630 and 650 AD. Stay up to date with the latest stories at historyextra.com/news

The 7cm gold pendant, found in Norfolk, is inlaid with garnets

ALAMY/SOUTHWEST NEWS

Holy site? A 17th-century depiction of Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, where Thomas, Earl of Lancaster was held three centuries earlier. His execution made him a martyr figure, with pilgrims travelling to the town to pay their respects

In the most significant change to its running since it was founded in 1983, English Heritage is to be split into two organisations from 1 April. The first, Historic England, will work to protect the nation’s historic environment. The English Heritage Trust will, meanwhile, be an independent charity responsible for protecting the National Heritage Collection, a list of hundreds of sites including Stonehenge and Dover Castle.

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ANCIENT EGYPT

Remains reveal the secrets of the warrior pharaohs A skeleton in Egypt is offering new clues about the role of the country’s ancient rulers, and suggests some were brave, horse-riding fighters. By David Keys attered and scarred, the remains of a 17th-century BC pharaoh are revealing new details about the role that such rulers may have played in ancient Egyptian warfare. The discovery of the body of Senebkay, at Abydos in central Egypt, was made by experts from the University of Pennsylvania and marks the first time that the remains of a pharaoh have been found with such extensive battle trauma. The skeleton features 17 unhealed injuries, which experts are analysing to discover precisely how the pharaoh died. The osteological (bonederived) evidence suggests that he was mounted on a horse when he was surrounded by enemy troops, who used bladed weapons to inflict injuries on his lower legs and slice through his left ankle. It appears that they then succeeded in dragging him off his horse and were consequently able to attack his upper torso and head, probably with short swords and battle-axes. He tried to shield his face with his hands, sustaining serious injuries to his fingers in the process, before receiving three major blows to his skull. The most serious of these – a deep battle-axe cut through his cranium – almost certainly killed him. An examination of the ways in which particular muscles

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM / MIREYA POBLETE ARIAS

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were attached to the pharaoh’s bones has confirmed that he rode a horse, as muscle-induced bone growth on his upper leg bone and pelvis is similar to that of modern horse riders. The find represents the earliest known human osteological evidence for horse-riding in ancient Egypt, and precedes the introduction of the chariot by around a century. The discovery also strongly suggests that ancient Egyptian pharaohs regularly fought in the thick of their battles. Although it is possible that Senebkay was killed in an ambush, the battle theory is strengthened by a substantially healed, but very serious, weapon impact injury sustained between 6 and 12 months earlier. That injury, to the right side of Senebkay’s face, was caused by a powerful blunt weapon, such as a mace. It’s interesting that the only other battle-scarred remains of

“Until now, experts have been unable to conclude whether representations of warrior pharaohs have simply been macho PR”

Face of a fighter The site in Abydos where Senebkay’s bones were found and (left) an artist’s impression of his face. His remains suggest he would have been at the heart of battle

a pharaoh ever discovered – those of a ruler called Seqenenre – also date from the same politically and militarily unstable era of Egyptian history, the so-called Second Intermediate Period, when the country was divided into rival kingdoms and the Nile Delta was occupied by Middle Eastern invaders. The only other evidence for warrior pharaohs comes from wall paintings, public inscriptions and official accounts that portray Egyptian rulers as desperately fighting in the thick of battle. This means that it has, until now, been impossible for scholars to definitively conclude whether such vivid representations were not simply macho pharaonic PR. The forensic examination of Senebkay’s skeleton, carried out by Dr Maria Rosado and Dr Jane Hill of Rowan University, New Jersey, has revealed that his nose was displaced to the right and that he was unusually tall for an

ancient Egyptian, at around 5ft 8ins. This would have been much more imposing than the average adult male height of 5ft 3ins. The pharaoh’s corpse had substantially decomposed by the time it was buried, suggesting that the battle took place a considerable distance from his territory. It’s therefore possible that he was killed in a battle with Middle Eastern occupiers of northern Egypt in a frontier zone somewhere south of modern Cairo. While there is no definitive way of knowing who won the battle, the pharaoh’s troops must have been successful enough to be able to recover Senebkay’s body. The expedition leader, University of Pennsylvania Museum Egyptologist Dr Joe Wegner, told BBC History Magazine: “Forensic analysis has provided new answers about the life and death of this ancient Egyptian king, while raising a host of new questions both about him and the period of which he was part.”

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History now / Backgrounder

The historians’ view…

Why is there such antipathy between Greece and Germany? Negotiations over Germany’s bailout of its troubled southern neighbour have been blighted by decades of mutual distrust. Two historians offer their take on a crisis in the eurozone Interviews by Chris Bowlby, a BBC journalist specialising in history

Many Greeks suspect that Germany is flexing its muscles again, exercising a kind of hegemony in the European Union ARISTOTLE KALLIS There has been a great deal of apprehension in Greece – and not only within Syriza, the victorious party in January’s election – about the new role of Germany in Europe. It’s an idea of Germany flexing its muscles again, exercising a kind of hegemony in the European Union. Some people go further: Iffikratis Amyras, a former candidate for Syriza, has talked about a ‘Fourth Reich’. On the left, there are also historical references that resonate. The movement resisting Nazi occupation in Greece in the 1940s was to a large extent of the left. One of Syriza’s current members of the European parliament is Manolis Glezos, who led a daring raid on the Acropolis in 1941, tearing down the Nazi flag. He’s been critical of recent concessions to the Germans and the EU. So there’s long been a kind of leftwing patriotism, a spirit of independence. That

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goes too with an idea of Greek uniqueness – “because we are small and relatively weak, we have to fight hard to preserve our specificity”. And that has come back strongly as a result of austerity imposed by the EU. There are also more specific grievances, such as compensation claims for wartime massacres. The president of the Greek parliament has announced a new committee looking into war reparations. There’s always been a feeling – often aired by politicians of the left such as Glezos – that Germany was treated leniently after the Second World War, after having occupied Greece and exploited its resources. That resentment lurked under the surface of politics, ready to break out – and the opportunity came as a result of the recent economic crisis. More broadly, it’s believed that Germany has benefited exceptionally from European integration. How deep are Greece’s historical roots in the EU? When it was negotiating entry into the European Community there was an argument that ran: “Regardless of economics, Greece doesn’t really belong culturally, religiously.” However, the idea that it was symbolically important for Greece, with its history and ancient democracy, to join European integration weighed more heavily – as did confirmation of Greece turning its back on the era of civil war and the military junta that ruled in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, Greece joined the community in 1981. For Greeks, part of the European project

Greeks take to the streets of Athens to protest against the imposition of further austerity measures on their country, 15 February 2015

has always been psychological – their nation emerging, if you like, from a vortex of history. In some nationalist arguments it goes back to 1453 and the fall of Constantinople, after which Greece came under Ottoman domination and was removed from ‘Europe’. Joining an elite organisation like the European Community was seen as sending out a message: “We’re back.” There’s always been a feeling in Greece of “we’re not there yet”, in terms of economic development, but we have to hold onto this European membership come what may. Despite this, I would not be surprised if there is a sea-change in Greek attitudes. There is still a lot of goodwill among Greeks towards their European partners. But if the current negotiations go badly, and the Greek government plays it well, making concessions and saying: “We have appealed to the goodwill of our partners but look how we were treated” – support for the European project in Greece could be dealt a grievous blow.

Aristotle Kallis is a professor at the University of Lancaster, specialising in the history of fascism

BBC History Magazine

German soldiers raise the Swastika over the Acropolis in May 1941. Yet they were to face stiff resistance from Greek partisans

Germans believe that, in a federal system, you have to have mechanisms that ensure that one area can’t hold the rest to ransom

BUNDESARCHIV/GETTY

HAROLD JAMES The first thing that strikes anybody on the outside looking at German politicians and public opinion is the extreme sensitivity to inflation – the legacy of hyperinflation after the end of the First World War and another currency devaluation in the 1930s. There was always the feeling that the euro is a possibly dangerous project. When Mario Draghi was appointed head of the European Central Bank in 2011 there were headlines in the German mass-circulation newspaper Bild, saying: “With Italians, inflation is a way of life, like tomato sauce with pasta.” Another point that doesn’t get so much attention but is important in German

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psychology is that it is a country with a tradition of federalism. If you’re a federal country – like Switzerland or the US – you have to have a strong legal framework, mechanisms to ensure that one bit of the country can’t hold the rest of it to ransom. Federalism works very much on rules. Germany had this federal system during the Weimar republic. Then, from 1933, the Nazis eroded all the federal rights. They made it a very centralised state. One of the things done after 1945 was to build in permanent protection for the states, including a constitutional court much admired by Germans. This court has actively commented on the need to make any German participation in fiscal transfers to other countries as part of the eurozone subject to parliamentary consent. Germany had a bad experience in the 1990s in the aftermath of the country’s reunification. There were enormous fiscal transfers from west to east and western Germans are still paying a solidarity tax to support the east. But far from making eastern Germany more competitive it made it less so. Every German can see that Poland and the Baltic states are doing much better. Those countries reformed and became dynamic precisely because they didn’t have the prospect of outside help. That’s an argument that many – not just the

Germans – will use about the dangers of fiscal transfers to Greece. So is this strict German approach to money and economics shared by most northern European nations? In the 1860s and 70s, it looked as if the world was moving towards a single currency. But Walter Bagehot, a famous economic commentator at the time, wrote that there should be “one Teutonic money and one Latin money; the latter mostly confined to the west of Europe, and the former circulating through the world”. However, in the current crisis the division’s not quite like that. The countries that are most hostile to making concessions to Greece are probably those in the south that have already made painful reforms. Would today’s crisis have shocked pioneers of European integration? The original founders had the idea that imperfections would gradually be worked out, but only in crises. There would be upheavals, and in each case the solution would be to move forward with integration. That’s my interpretation of what’s happening at the moment. But there is always a risk that a crisis can be so large that the whole, rather precarious structure will fall apart.

Harold James is a professor at Princeton University and co-author of Making the European Monetary Union (Harvard, 2012) DISCOVER MORE BOOK 왘 The Tyranny of Greece over Germany

by Eliza Butler (Beacon Press, 1958)

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History now / Past notes PAST NOTES INCOME TAX OLD NEWS

Flames give felines a ferocious appetite Illustrated Police News / 22 July 1876 n 1876, the horrors of being a Victorian cat lady were reported in graphic detail by the Illustrated Police News. A lady, described as being “as rich as she is eccentric”, had spent the last four years creating a large menagerie of every species of domestic cat she could find. Recently, she had also started to add to the collection any member of the feline species that took her fancy – domestic in origin or not. In June, her collection was rocked by tragedy, when a sudden fire broke out in her home, which also housed her cats. Two young maid servants were dispatched to the basement, where the lady had decided to place her cat collection in what the paper described as “a sort of shed or cage”. The fire had decimated a large portion of the house and was close to becoming a towering inferno, driving the caged animals into a state of madness and fear. As the maids unlocked the door to rescue the cats they were knocked to the ground by the terrified animals, and then devoured by the remaining collection as the fire raged around them.

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ILLUSTRATION BY BEN JONES

At the beginning of a new financial year, Julian Humphrys investigates the history of income tax When was income tax first levied? Earlier than you might think. Experimental taxes on income were tried in the 15th century. However today’s Income tax has its roots in 1799, when prime minister William Pitt the Younger introduced it as a temporary measure to fund the war against France with the rate set at 10 per cent of incomes over £60. A shortlived peace saw its abolition but it was quickly reintroduced when war broke out again in 1803. Has it ever been abolished since? Yes. Income tax was abolished after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, and parliament dealt with the concern that the tax intruded into people’s privacy by ordering the destruction of the documents connected with it. (Yet they seem to have forgotten that duplicates had already been sent to the King’s Remembrancer.) When was it reintroduced? Although prime minister Robert Peel spoke out against the tax during the 1841 general election, a shortage of government funds led to its surprise return in 1842. For much of the century it was the same story, with prime ministers William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli criticising the

tax (Disraeli called it “unjust, unequal and inquisitorial”) and announcing their intentions to withdraw it – but neither actually doing so. How many people paid the tax? Initially, very few. Indeed in 1874 income tax contributed just £6m to government revenues of £77m. But the 20th century and the two world wars in particular saw a steady increase in the numbers paying the tax and the revenue raised by it. By 1945, 14 million people were paying £1,400m and the PAYE system had been introduced to facilitate collection. In the postwar period, as the state increased its range of responsibilities, income tax became the principal means of public funding, and debates now focus not on whether it should exist but on how much should be paid. When did it become a permanent tax? It never has done. It expires each year on 5 April and parliament has to reapply it by an annual Finance Act. It takes up to four months before the act becomes law but there’s no escape – the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1913 ensures we still have to pay during that period.

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News story sourced from britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and rediscovered by Fern Riddell. Fern regularly appears on Radio 3’s Free Thinking.

In this cartoon from 1798, John Bull scratches his head at prime minister William Pitt the Younger’s introduction of income tax

Over 200 years of history 10 million pages covering all aspects of life

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Princess Elizabeth married Lt. Phillip Mountbatten

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Your views on the magazine and the world of history

LETTERS History for everyone I am a 30-something wife and mum and I love to get out and about with the family and visit places of historical interest. The thing is, I have severe rheumatoid arthritis and I’m a wheelchair user. Some historical places are truly excellent for access. Our favourites are Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and the excellent Hampton Court Palace. Both of these allow back access to much of the houses; they’ve really thought about the perspective of the wheelchair. You get to go round the back and see bits the public don’t see. (The broken window from the chapel at Hampton Court was amazing – still bits of glass in there from Oliver Cromwell’s time!). Some gardens will hire power chairs out, offer sensory support, dog loo areas for assistance dogs. It takes thought and planning but some are doing it and doing it well, whereas others seem to think disabled access adjustment rules do not apply to them. It would be good to see these places raise their game. At the Tudor House in Southampton they’ve really got the idea and done it so well. Our seven-year-old loved going

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Where the barons met I was disappointed that Bury St Edmunds and St Albans were not included in your Magna Carta Trail (March, UK editions). Both of these historic towns feature in the annals of Magna Carta and are both members of the Magna Carta Trust. Bury St Edmunds has always had a tradition that the barons did meet at St Edmund’s shrine in 1214 to swear an oath to compel John to agree to Magna Carta. Recently this was verified as having happened by Professor David Carpenter. Martyn Taylor, Bury St Edmunds Editor replies: We’re sorry that we weren’t able to include all the locations with a connection to Magna Carta in this supplement. The author, Sophie Ambler, did suggest Bury St Edmunds but because of space reasons, and in

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round and exploring with me and finding out things. We could go together as I could get round almost all of it. There’s none of the “here’s something to read about what’s upstairs”, which feels a bit like you’ve entered Bullseyee in 1987 and are hearing about what you “cudda won”! When you do your excellent write-ups about places to visit, holidays, trips and history on home soil, can you please, please tell us what the disabled access is like. Jenni B–L, Hampshire Editor replies: It’s great to see that many

heritage attractions do now have such impressive access facilities. Within the magazine, we focus more on the historical significance of sites than practical visitor information and we would recommend all visitors check relevant details in advance on the locations’ websites or by phone. 쎲 We reward the writer of the letter of the month with our ‘History Choice’ book of the month. This issue it is The Fall of the Ottomans by Eugene Rogan. Read the review on page 69

order to provide a broader geographical range, it didn’t make the cut.

Readers should be warned that some senior academics have an anti-revisionist prejudice in this matter. They tend to regard all ‘revisionism’ as alike, if it threatens to undermine their past certainties, and they readily portray it as amateurish or unprovable. What Professor Vincent should have said is that Warner’s book builds on the fact that it has been proved in the scholarly press that the news that Edward II died in September 1327 was based on a single message that the sender himself later admitted in parliament was a lie. It has also been proved that it was not possible for the veracity of that message to be checked before it was announced. There is nothing “speculative” about these things: in fact it rather puts the boot on the other foot – it is consequently “entirely speculative” that the man died in 1327 – because the basis for believing that has been shown to depend on a self-confessed falsehood. The profession as a whole should step beyond traditional views and look anew at the evidence in a more sophisticated way. Kathryn Warner and myself have both done that, and published our findings in the academic press. Senior academics should hesitate before “warning” readers not to trust those of us who are prepared to go the extra mile to test the veracity of medieval propaganda. Ian Mortimer, Devon

Was Edward really killed?

Rumours of war

In his review of Kathryn Warner’s book on Edward II (Books, February), Professor Nicholas Vincent dismisses the narrative of the king’s survival in 1327 as “entirely speculative”. This is misleading: it is based on contemporary evidence. It is even more disappointing to see his comment that “readers should be warned that this is neither proved nor probable”. In fact, dozens of well-connected men in 1330 considered it “probable”, including the archbishop of York and a lord who had been custodian of the castle where Edward II was lodged. I think such individuals in a far better position than a modern academic to deem whether it was “probable” or not.

I write in response to your article on Britain and Vietnam (February). In the late 1960s I was serving on the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. Crossing the Indian Ocean, supposedly heading for Singapore, the ship was swept by rumours that Harold Wilson was being leaned on by Lyndon Johnson to divert the ship to Vietnam in exchange for a large US

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

The tomb of Edward II. Ian Mortimer believes that he may have lived beyond his traditional date of death

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

@HistoryExtra: The #WolfHall team tried to ensure the show is historically accurate. But does it matter? Mary Schrader Furnish Yes, it does. The only way some people get any knowledge of history is from shows like this. And those who are aware are frustrated with misinformation Jeannine Schenewerk I accept that sometimes, due to time constraints, we’re receiving the ‘condensed’ version of history. But blatant historical inaccuracies are unforgiveable!

Mount Edith Cavell in Canada is named after a British nurse executed in the First World War

loan. With the recent release of the cabinet papers for this period, it seems that ship rumour was essentially correct. The ship did eventually dock in Singapore after all but I’ve wondered ever since whether I might have earned a Purple Heart! James Wells MRINA, Essex

A fitting monument As Kate Mosse writes, regarding Edith Cavell (My History Hero, January): “Numerous memorials were later erected in her [Cavell’s] honour.” But what greater monument can there be than Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada? Simon J Lucy, Winnipeg

ALAMY

Importance of the Holocaust In his letter (March), Bob Britnell rightly draws attention to the need to understand the Second World War in Europe in its totality, but he is wrong to write that the Holocaust was not its defining feature. On the contrary, it is of primary importance for our understanding of the war’s origins and its progress. The war from its onset was of racial and ideological intent. It was Hitler’s aim to create a new Germania, racially pure and enormously engorged by military conquest, and to do so through the subjugation, and later the annihilation, of the conquered peoples of the east, with the Jews as the first of the Untermenschen to be destroyed. However, Hitler was no administrator, and it required many others in the Nazi system to develop and

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operate the means to bring about his dystopia, and it is through the study of their actions that we can best examine how Nazi Germany functioned and how it prosecuted its war. Because it was European Jewry that was the primary target, and because the Jews suffered 6 million dead, it is through the Holocaust that we can best approach the true nature of the Nazi state and the war it brought about. When considered alongside the other crimes of the conflict, we see to the destructive heart of the Nazi regime and its war. We also realise the true horror of the fetishisation of death embodied in the monstrous vision of Adolf Hitler and the conflict he unleashed. The Holocaust is not the Second World War, but it is the catastrophe through which the war can best be understood. David K Warner, Hampshire

Corrections 쎲 In the review of Conquests, Catastrophe and Recovery (Books, March) we stated that Henry I invaded Ireland in 1171, when the king involved was in fact Henry II.

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:

@NerdyBluez It is a disservice to both those who lived it & to future generations to not depict history accurately Chelsea Meckel They are dramas, not historical artefacts. If you want ‘real’, research it. Experience it through historical documents and primary sources for yourself. Don’t take another’s romanticised version as complete fact @Erin_bee All history = subjective, so who writes the ‘facts’ historical fiction is measured against? @Hobbes1218 If you care nothing about history, then it matters little. If you do care, discrepancies jar Virginia Royals Yes, it matters! The accurate representation of history helps people to understand the world they live in. It gives them a life-saving perspective on international events of our times Ollie Maxwell I think as long as a period drama has done its best to get central important things accurate (ie key characters, order of events etc), then small inaccuracies can be allowed You’ve also been saying... @Rushman07 I was very happy to have stumbled upon the @HistoryExtra podcast, an extremely informative and entertaining show #HistoryMatters @Clairabelle1991 I have copies of BBC History Magazine going back to July 2012. I’m not sure if that’s impressive or sad! @kagaaju Your podcasts are the most educative I’ve come across. I always enjoy the discussions.

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

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Comment

Michael Wood on… China at war

Surely we should invite our Chinese friends to the Cenotaph

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

brightening up their camps with Chinese lanterns and ornate artwork. They printed their own newspaper, flew painted kites, held stilt-walking contests and, even though dressed in regulation puttees and khaki, held with dignity onto their Chinese identity. Historians estimate that at least 10,000 died, maybe twice that. Some 2,000 have known graves, including a few in UK cemeteries, in Plymouth, at Shorncliffe near Folkestone and at Anfield in Liverpool. The biggest is that at Noyelles-sur-Mer by the mouth of the Somme, looking over the English Channel, where a Chinese gateway leads to 842 tombstones, in the standard white stone of the War Graves Commission, but carved with Chinese characters and Confucian as well as Christian tags: “A good reputation lasts forever.” The war played an important role in Chinese history too: for it was partly in response to the blatant injustices of the Treaty of Versailles (the Japanese were allowed to hold onto their gains on the Chinese mainland, and were given the confiscated German concessions) that the famous student protest of 4 May 1919 gave expression to the seething discontents of the Chinese people: one of China’s modern moments of destiny. The Second World War (as we often forget) was also of massive import for China: it started two years earlier, and went on longer than ‘our’ war. The Japanese had invaded Manchuria in 1931 (on which the League of Nations, the predecessor of the UN, was shamefully silent). Then in summer 1937 they attacked China itself; massacring the people of Nanjing that December, as one may now see commemorated in a harrowing museum in the city. The Second World War continued in China till the Japanese surrender in September 1945, a huge part of the war in the Pacific (where half of all casualties were Chinese). Few countries suffered more from war, famine and destruction in the 20th century, and the Chinese like to point out that, along with the UK, USA and USSR, China was the ‘Fourth Ally’ against fascism. For that reason, might one hope that the next time we commemorate the war dead who fought in or with the British Army, we invite our Chinese friends and fellow citizens too?

REX FEATURES

We’ve been filming in China on and off for many months now, and still enjoying every minute. It’s nearly 30 years since I spent a lot of time here, and there have been massive changes since Deng Xiaoping’s ‘opening up’ that began in the late 1970s. But some things don’t change, the Chinese people’s habitual hospitality being one of them, as well as their love of family and friends. I have also been struck by their fascination with history. Every site we have visited, from Sun Yat-sen’s memorial to the Terracotta Army, from the Great Wall to the historic cities of the Yangtze valley, has been crammed with visitors: China’s internal history tourism is on a staggering scale. At Shaoxing, a town of great writers from Zhang Dai, the Ming Proust, to the feminist poet Qiu Jin (executed here in 1907) and Lu Xun, China’s great modern radical writer, you could hardly move for the weekend crowds. Hasty vox pops elicited scores of opinions on which was their favourite story, and how Lu Xun had ‘given voice to the nation’. All of which underlines how easy it is to see history from our own point of view, and to not put ourselves in others’ shoes: an essential exercise for historians, as indeed for all of us. Thinking of China, I was reminded of this while watching the commemorations for the First World War at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. It was extraordinarily moving to see veterans of the Second World War marching past, perhaps for the last time; and also to see representatives from Commonwealth countries laying wreaths. But having been working in China over the last couple of years, and trying to see things from the Chinese side, as one must, strange as it may sound I found myself thinking: why aren’t ‘we’ there? After all, 100,000 Chinese worked in the British Army Labour Corps on the western front, a fascinating tale told in a book by Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front (HUP, 2011). Another 40,000 worked for the French. As Xu shows, they didn’t kowtow meekly to their European masters. In often grim conditions they kept up their cultural traditions,

ILLUSTRATION BY FEMKE DE JONG

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Elizabeth I

THE HISTORY ESSAY

Elizabeth I’s courtiers carry her aloft in a c1601 procession. The queen didn’t promote the likes of Robert Dudley and Walter Ralegh because she had a weakness for their sex appeal, says Susan Doran, but because they exuded glamour and political acumen

The Virgin Queen’s possessive treatment of her favourite advisors and maids of honour was driven more by political motives than by petty jealousy By Susan Doran

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BBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN

PERSONAL POLITICS IN ELIZABETH I’S COURT

THE HISTORY ESSAY

PRIVATE COLLECTION PETWORTH HOUSE

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n the summer of 1592, Elizabeth I’s captain of the guard, Sir Walter Ralegh, and her maid of honour, Bess Throckmorton, were committed to the Tower of London after the queen was told of their clandestine marriage and the birth of their baby boy. This was neither the first nor the last time that Elizabeth punished her courtiers for

marrying in secret, but the penalty in their case was among the most severe. Although released after a few months, Ralegh lost his offices, was banished from court, and waited five years before the queen consented to speak to him again. Bess remained imprisoned until the end of the year and was permanently excluded from the court. In October 1599, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, another royal intimate, was placed under house-arrest after storming unannounced into the queen’s bedchamber while she was still in her night clothes, minus her wig, and devoid of heavy make-up. Essex was seeking to explain to her why he had failed to suppress rebellion in Ireland, but Elizabeth was unimpressed, ordered his detention, and refused to see him, despite his many appeals over the next year or so. Stripped of his offices and lucrative royal patents, the desperate earl took to the streets of London in February 1601 with the intention of forcing his presence on the queen, or possibly mounting a palace coup. A second leader of the rising was his friend Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, another courtier who had lost the queen’s favour after marrying a maid of honour. Both earls were charged with treason. Although Southampton was reprieved, Essex died on the scaffold. The queen’s treatment of these men is usually regarded as grossly unfair. In the instances of Ralegh and Southampton, popular media present Elizabeth as guilty of petty spite against male courtiers who failed to give her the sole adoration that she craved, and of sexual jealousy towards the young, pretty maids of honour, who proved successful rivals for her favourites’ attention. As for Essex, he is often portrayed as a tragic figure who for years had been forced to dance attendance on the queen, when he would have much preferred to fight in England’s wars, and who fatally believed that their personal intimacy gave him the right to enter her private apartments without leave. In this narrative, Elizabeth comes off very badly. Writers sympathetic to Essex see her as unreasonable in depriving him of his liberty and offices, while even the earl’s detractors criticise the queen for her absurd infatuation with a man young enough to be her grandson. Her failure to rein him in on many earlier occasions, they claim, left him feeling free

to disregard royal orders in Ireland and break court protocol on his return. The headline in the Daily Mail, advertising AN Wilson’s The Elizabethans, said it all: “Elizabeth I and the men she loved: how the queen gave an Essex toyboy her heart, then lopped off his head.” In all these works, the relationships between Elizabeth and her courtiers – both male and female – are seen in largely personal terms. Whether displaying affection or anger, Elizabeth is characterised as reacting emotionally as a private person rather than a public figure. The same kind of analysis predominates when the queen’s other relationships are described: so, for example, we learn in many histories that Elizabeth was deeply jealous of Mary, Queen of Scots; hated and treated cruelly her cousins Katherine and Mary Grey; and flew into rages when slighted by her councillors. While not denying that Elizabeth experienced strong emotions at times, I believe that the queen had no private life. As she well knew, all her utterances and doings took place on a public stage and, consequently, had a political purpose and were expected to conform to political norms. Only very rarely did Elizabeth behave otherwise, most noticeably when she fell in love with Robert Dudley at the outset of her reign. Customarily, when interacting with her kin, courtiers, or councillors, she operated at a political level, even when her conduct appeared personal. For all 16th-century monarchs – not just Elizabeth – the personal was always political. This can best be appreciated when considering Elizabeth’s relationships with her so-called favourites. Mistakenly, it is often stated that the queen promoted Dudley (later Earl of Leicester), Christopher Hatton, Ralegh and Essex simply because of their good looks, fine physiques, and superficial charm. In these accounts, Elizabeth has a weakness for men with sex appeal. Certainly, her favourites were handsome, dashing and athletic, but such attributes were essential for courtiers who were to act as a master of the horse, a gentleman pensioner, or an esquire of the body, their first positions at court. Even so, their rise to power was not the result of the queen falling for their good looks. Dudley and Essex came from families that the queen wished to promote for political reasons, while Hatton and Ralegh had influential patrons who brought them to the Katherine Grey with her son, Edward Seymour. Her marriage to the Earl of Hertford landed her in the Tower of London

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Elizabeth I THE HISTORY ESSAY

“Despite rumours to the contrary, it is highly unlikely that Elizabeth had a sexual relationship with any of her favourites. She was far too shrewd and cautious to risk discovery or pregnancy” ships with many of her male courtiers, for she and they exploited the language and coded behaviour associated with courtly love and the chivalric discourse of the late 16th century. Elizabeth would exchange personal gifts and share private jokes with favoured courtiers; she addressed them affectionately, often by particular nicknames; she allowed them, or their representatives, easy access into her privy apartments, and would visit their homes or offer them her physician during periods of sickness. Such displays of intimacy signified to the political world that these courtiers were especially close to the queen, and raised their status as men of influence and patronage. On their side, Elizabeth’s courtiers expressed a love and adulation for the queen in letters and poems that to today’s readers appear genuinely romantic or erotic but were, then, understood to be written in the highly stylised language of courtly love. Elizabeth did not demand such declarations to satisfy her personal vanity; their purpose was to create and strengthen the bonds of loyalty and service of elite men to a female monarch without eroding their masculinity.

queen’s notice. All four men later became close to the queen because they were excellent courtiers, entertaining her with their dancing, card playing, jousting, witty exchanges and cultured conversation. They also brought glamour to the court, not only in their own persons but also by hosting magnificent feasts for foreign visitors and arranging exciting entertainments and tournaments that impressed foreigners and English guests alike. In this way, they were instrumental in helping Elizabeth’s court gain international prestige and recognition. In other ways, too, they used their positions and money in the service of the crown, financing and managing spies, privateering expeditions and military campaigns. All four men were intelligent and able. By the time that Dudley, Hatton and Essex were promoted to the privy council, they had already carried out successful political apprenticeships as administrators or soldiers, and as unofficial advisers. It is highly unlikely that Elizabeth had a sexual relationship with any of her favourites; she was too shrewd and cautious to risk discovery or pregnancy. Besides, to safeguard her sexual reputation, Elizabeth always had at least one of her privy chamber women present in her company and sleeping in her bedchamber, and no gossip slandering the queen came from their quarter. Nonetheless, there was a semierotic and flirtatious quality that marked out the queen’s relation-

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hen angered, Elizabeth also performed within the conventions of courtly love by distancing herself from those who had caused offence: expressing her ire, and withdrawing her affection. This often happened when her intimates wed, especially when they did so without her consent. Perhaps it was to avoid the queen’s displeasure that Hatton chose not to marry. In the case of Essex, the queen’s annoyance did not last long, even though she considered his bride – the widow of Sir Philip Sidney and daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham – a socially unsuitable match for a nobleman. But Leicester never fully regained the queen’s trust, after his secret marriage to Lettice Knollys. This, however, was a special circumstance – the earl had long pursued Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, the last time just a few years prior to his secret wedding. He had also kept his marriage to Lettice quiet for as long as he could. Ralegh had gone even further in deceiving the queen. He had denied that he and Bess were married when Sir Robert Cecil, the acting principal secretary, questioned him about their relationship, while his wife had lived in close proximity to the queen, pretending to be still single, hiding her pregnancy, and slipping away to deliver the child. For Elizabeth, their dishonesty came close to sedition; and their punishment was intended as a warning to maids of honour who might follow Bess’s example. Other maids did follow suit, and they were, likewise, severely punished. Two years after the Ralegh scandal, Bridget Manners (daughter of the 4th Earl and Countess of

A c1560 portrait of Robert Dudley who, it seems, was the only man to capture the queen’s heart

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Bess Throckmorton felt Elizabeth I’s full fury after secretly marrying Walter Ralegh. The queen’s maid of honour was thrown into prison and permanently excluded from court

PRIVATE COLLECTION

THE HISTORY ESSAY

Elizabeth is Pax, holding an olive branch and standing on the sword of Justice, in the Wanstead Portrait (c1578–85). Despite this depiction of a conciliatory ruler, Elizabeth demanded absolute loyalty from her courtiers – often at the expense of their family lives

BBC History Magazine

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Elizabeth I THE HISTORY ESSAY

“Essex fell from power not because Elizabeth saw sense and was shaken out of her infatuation with her unreliable ‘toyboy’, but because he badly overplayed his hand in a political power struggle” Rutland) also married without royal permission. Elizabeth had given her a month’s leave from court because the girl was said to have caught the measles and needed to recuperate at home. Bridget, though, did not return, preferring life with her husband. When the queen learned the truth, she was furious with the married couple and “highly offended” with Bridget’s mother, who had connived at the deception. For several months the bride was placed in the keeping of the Countess of Bedford, and her husband languished in the Tower. The queen did not always object to courtiers’ marriages, and when she did deny them permission to marry, she usually had a sound reason for doing so. Most often it was because she considered that the couple seeking marriage were of unequal status; sometimes it was because of their youth; and on a few occasions, objections to a match could be political. The union of a potential heir to the throne (such as Katherine Grey) to a man from a powerful noble family (like the Earl of Hertford) held obvious political dangers. Elizabeth could also be concerned that courtiers would put their responsibilities to their new spouses before their service to their queen. For this reason, she preferred that the wives of certain courtiers were kept away from court.

Those that stayed on were at all times expected to show total dedication to their queen at the expense of their family life. Elizabeth claimed that she always furthered “any honest or honorable purposes of marriage or preferment to any of hers, when without scandal and infamy they have been orderly broken unto her”. And, in general, this was true. When permission to marry had been requested and granted, the queen provided generous gifts to the brides and happily attended their weddings. She ordered a black satin gown as a wedding present for her chamberer, Dorothy Broadbelt, and she gave her maid of honour Margaret Edgecombe a pair of richly embroidered gloves. We do not know what gift another maid of honour, Frances Radcliffe, received, but we do know that the queen attended the nuptial supper, masques and dances. She also attended Anne Russell’s wedding to the Earl of Warwick, which was performed in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall Palace, and the celebratory banquet and tournament that were held afterwards at court. The queen’s anger at the men and women who married without her permission soon abated, if she was especially fond of them and their fault was not judged too great. Elizabeth had delivered “blows and evil words” to her chamberer and cousin Mary Shelton on learning of her secret marriage to the gentleman pensioner John Scudamore – another unequal union. But before long, the queen welcomed both back into her service and showed the couple great favour. Mary was one of her preferred sleeping companions and also acted as a frequent intermediary for the queen, delivering messages and receiving gifts on her mistress’s behalf. John was later knighted and afterwards appointed the standard-bearer of gentlemen pensioners.

Elizabeth I was never in love or infatuated with Essex, seen here in a contemporary portrait, argues Susan Doran

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et’s turn now to Elizabeth’s relationship with Essex. Was she really as besotted with him as is commonly believed? Undoubtedly, during his first decade at court, Elizabeth bestowed upon him all the signifiers of intimacy outlined above, but she was never infatuated or in love with the earl. He was certainly not Elizabeth’s sole male companion and initially had to tolerate the equal favour she showed to Ralegh and Southampton. Furthermore, Essex never enjoyed the full confidence and trust of the queen. She was wary of his advice to pursue an offensive war strategy, suspecting that he was too partial to the French king, Henry IV, and too ready to be reckless with royal funds. She disliked his attempts at self-aggrandisement, as when he tried to take full credit for the successes of a 1596 expedition to Cadiz. She grew irritated by his attempts to badger her into promoting his friends to positions they did not deserve. It is true that she forgave his insubordination and difficult moods too readily, but she was induced to do so by privy councillors who mediated on his behalf because they recognised the earl’s worth to the state and importance to the war effort. However, by 1599, Essex had lost his powerful mediators with the queen. With the deaths of key supporters on the council – Hatton in 1591, Sir Francis Knollys in 1596, even Lord Burghley in 1598 – Essex

THE HISTORY ESSAY

“The queen’s anger at the men and women who married without her permission soon abated, if she was especially fond of them and their fault was not judged too great”

SUPERSTOCK

This sculpture in the grounds of Hatfield House shows Elizabeth with her courtiers. The queen’s “semi-erotic” relationship with her male councillors was designed to “strengthen the bonds of loyalty and service of elite men to a female monarch”

should have built up strong alliances with the new generation of Elizabethan privy councillors. Instead he came to alienate the most influential – Sir Robert Cecil and Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham – by treating them as political enemies. By the late 1590s, Essex was convinced that they and their friends comprised a narrow cabal of evil councillors and corrupt politicians, who were poisoning the queen against him. It was fear that they would present his failure in Ireland in the worst possible light – even as treason – that led the earl to dash to court in 1599 to explain his actions face to face with the queen, even though she had ordered him to stay put in Ireland. When Elizabeth consulted her councillors after her unexpected interview with the earl, unsurprisingly no one close to her spoke up for him. Essex’s political isolation at the heart of government continued until his death. He had many supporters in the army and London, but at court he had to rely on female relatives to plead for his reinstatement with the queen, and inevitably their voices were not enough. Essex fell from power not because Elizabeth saw sense and was shaken out of her infatuation with her unreliable ‘toyboy’ but because he badly overplayed his hand in a political power struggle that should never have happened.

BBC History Magazine

Emphasising the political and public nature of Elizabeth’s relationships makes them no less fascinating. On the contrary, setting them within their cultural and political contexts adds a richness and complexity to our readings of the reign. The stories surrounding the queen’s relationships remain enthralling and also provide important insights into the workings of the court and political life, especially when approached from multiple perspectives: how the queen related to her circle; how her kin, courtiers and councillors viewed and dealt with her; and how these stories were constructed by contemporaries and later historians. Susan Doran is a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and a tutorial fellow at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford DISCOVER MORE BOOK 왘 Elizabeth I and Her Circle by Susan Doran (OUP, 2015) ON THE PODCAST 왘 Listen to historian Lisa Hilton explore the life of Elizabeth I on

our 29 January podcast. Go to historyextra.com/podcasts

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Spanish Armada

All at sea The defeat of the Spanish Armada has long been celebrated as one of England’s greatest naval victories. But was the Spanish campaign doomed to fail from the start? Charlotte Hodgman speaks to Dan Snow, presenter of a three-part BBC series on the attempted invasion, to find out more Accompanies the BBC Two series Armada: 12 Days to Save England

One popular belief is that England’s victory against the Spanish Armada was won against all the odds. Do you agree with that view? Not at all. When the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon on 28 May 1588 it was almost certain to fail. Philip II was a complete control freak who refused to allow his commanders the autonomy to make their own decisions. It was probably the most rigid campaign plan with which any force has ever gone to sea or marched. It was the worst of both worlds for Philip’s commanders – particularly the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who didn’t want to assume command of the fleet in the first place. One of the documents we look at in the new series is a letter written by the duke that makes it clear just how reluctant he was! Aside from Philip’s unwillingness to delegate command, why else was the Spanish campaign doomed to failure? There were huge flaws in the entire invasion plan. It was simply unworkable. The fleet was meant to meet up with the Duke of Parma – who was commanding Spanish forces in the Netherlands – before loading men onto the ships and continuing to England, where the recently boosted army would then launch an invasion. But for various technical reasons – tides, timings and the boats themselves – that plan could never have worked. The Spanish were sailing up the Channel with the utmost guarantee of failure, which is a curious idea. What’s even stranger is that Philip seems to 28

have been undaunted by the military concerns being raised by his commanders. He was convinced God would provide a way of assuring that his army in the Netherlands met his navy, and that they would all somehow get across the Channel. It’s a campaign plan that historians Sam Willis and Saul David try and get to grips with in the series. You mention that the armada itself was a weakness in the Spanish invasion plan. Surely, a fleet comprising some 130 huge warships can’t be classed as a problem? The problem wasn’t so much with numbers – though the Spanish forces were depleted as a result of their failure to meet with the Duke of Parma as planned. Rather, the issue was the design of the ships themselves. England’s ships were built to fight. They were designed to move fast, to sail upwind and pack a big punch, with lots of cannon onboard. The Spanish, on the other hand, had ships that were designed for all sorts of different purposes, but which didn’t fulfil any of these particularly well. Big, bulky and unwieldy, Philip’s ships were designed to pull up alongside English vessels at sea

This late 16th to early 17th-century engraving by Hogenberg depicts the Spanish fleet being dealt a heavy blow. The defeat at Gravelines ended any threat to the English throne, says Dan Snow

and fight as if in a land battle: soldiers would leap aboard the enemy ships and fight hand to hand. There just wasn’t the same emphasis on artillery fire that the English had. If the Spanish had had enough men onboard, the fleet might have been able to land in Cornwall, Devon or Hampshire and march on London, much as William of Orange did a century later. The fact is, though, they just didn’t have that manpower. The invasion was really a watershed moment in naval history as artillery-firing ships began to dominate the maritime battlefield. How aware was Philip of England’s naval strength? After all, he had been married to Mary I of England for four years During his relatively short stay in England, Philip correctly identified that the country’s chief line of defence lay at sea. Ironically, he actually recommended building as many ships as possible for the defence of the English realm. Little did BBC History Magazine

BBC/ALAMY

he know that some of these new ships would later take on his armada! But even Philip couldn’t have anticipated the extraordinary ability of the Tudor state to mobilise as many men and good ships as it did. Elizabeth’s regime was far from perfect but

The Spanish were sailing up the Channel with the utmost guarantee of failure, which is a curious idea BBC History Magazine

it did oversee the building of some very good so-called race-built galleons. And it could mobilise sailors using an almost unique system of conscription. I’ve seen contemporary documents in the British Library that list every ferryman, riverman and fisherman who could be mobilised for naval action. So it’s fair to say England was prepared for an invasion? Yes and no. The story of the Spanish Armada is one of Elizabeth’s penny-pinching as much as anything else. Her ships ran out of ammunition because she failed to provide the necessary funds, and provisioning was also quite poor, to the extent that many sailors became pretty ill. England’s land forces were totally useless and could have been defeated in no time, but the navy was prepared, within the financial constraints under which Elizabeth found herself. England’s navy was designed for coastal defence, perfect for nipping out of port, battering an invading force and then dashing back into port again.

Another popular story is that England owed its victory to the weather... Let’s get one thing straight. The Spanish Armada was catastrophically defeated at the battle of Gravelines. After the battle, the damaged Spanish fleet was driven towards the shallows off the coast of the Netherlands, but a change in wind direction actually enabled it to limp off into the North Sea, away from the English navy. It was only as the remains of the armada sailed around northern Scotland and past the east coast of Ireland that it was battered by the elements. Any strategic threat the Spanish fleet had posed to the English throne had already been destroyed at Gravelines. Dan Snow is a historian and broadcaster DISCOVER MORE TELEVISION 왘 Armada: 12 Days to Save

England, presented by Dan Snow, airs on BBC Two this spring Turn to page 78 for more information

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Richard the Lionheart (right) demonstrated his military acumen during clashes with the French king Philip Augustus at the key strategic stronghold of Gisors in the 1190s

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Richard I knew the business of war from his early experience in Fran the English king honed his military genius. On his return to the wess 30

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nce. But, says Thomas Asbridge, it was in the Third Crusade that st, Richard proved himself the best commander of his generation BBC History Magazine

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Richard the Lionheart

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Richard I and Philip Augustus lead the siege of Acre (1189–91). Of the two men, the English monarch learned more from his experiences during the Third Crusade

by John’s machinations upon his family’s extensive continental lands would take years – the majority of Richard’s remaining life in fact – but the Lionhearted monarch had returned to the west in spectacular fashion. Few could doubt that he was now the warrior-king par excellence; a fearsome opponent, unrivalled among the crowned monarchs of Europe.

Rex bellicosus Richard I’s skills as a warrior and a general have long been recognised, though, for much of the 20th century, it was his supposedly intemperate and bloodthirsty brutality that was emphasised, with one scholar describing him as a “peerless killing machine”. In recent decades a strong case has been made for the Lionheart’s more clinical mastery of the science of medieval warfare, and today he is often portrayed as England’s ‘rex bellicosus’ (warlike king). Current assessments of Richard’s military achievements generally present his early years as Duke of Aquitaine (from 1172) as the decisive and formative phase in his development as a commander. Having acquired and honed his skills, it is argued, the Lionheart

was perfectly placed to make his mark on the Third Crusade, waging a holy war to recover Palestine from the Muslim sultan Saladin. The contest for control of Jerusalem between these two titans of medieval history is presented as the high point of Richard I’s martial career – the moment at which he forged his legend. However, this approach understates some issues, while overplaying others. He embarked upon the crusade on 4 July 1190 as a recently crowned and relatively untested king. Years of intermittent campaigning had given him a solid grounding in the business of war – particularly in the gritty realities of raiding and siege-craft – but to begin with at least, no one would have expected Richard to lead in the holy war. That role naturally fell to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Europe’s elder statesmen and veteran campaigner, and it was only Barbarossa’s unfortunate death through drowning en route to the Levant that opened the door for the Lionheart. Arguably, the extent and significance of Richard’s achievements in the Holy Land also have been exaggerated. True, he brought the crusader siege of Acre to a swift and successBBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN

n 25 March 1194, Richard I, the Lionheart, laid siege to Nottingham Castle. Intent upon reasserting his authority over England, the king directed the full force of his military genius and martial resources against this supposedly impregnable, rebel-held fortress. Eleven days earlier, Richard had landed at Sandwich in Kent, setting foot on English soil for the first time in more than four years. During his prolonged absence – first waging a gruelling crusade in the Holy Land, then enduring imprisonment at the hands of political rivals in Austria and Germany – the Lionheart’s devious younger brother, John, had sought to seize power. Richard thus returned to a realm threatened by insurrection and, though John himself soon scuttled across the Channel, Nottingham remained an outpost of those championing his dubious cause. King Richard I fell upon the stronghold with chilling efficiency. He arrived at the head of a sizeable military force, and possessed the requisite tools to crack Nottingham’s stout defences, having summoned siege machines and stone-throwing trebuchets from Leicester, 22 carpenters from Northampton, and his master engineer, Urric, from London. The castle’s garrison offered stern resistance, but on the first day of fighting the outer battlements fell. As had become his custom, Richard threw himself into the fray wearing only light mail armour and an iron cap, but was protected from a rain of arrows and crossbow bolts by a number of heavy shields borne by his bodyguards. By evening, we are told, many of the defenders were left “wounded and crushed” and a number of prisoners had been taken. Having made a clear statement of intent, the Lionheart sent messengers to the garrison in the morning, instructing them to capitulate to their rightful king. At first they refused, apparently unconvinced that Richard had indeed returned. In response, the Lionheart deployed his trebuchets, then ordered gibbets to be raised and hanged a number of his captives in full sight of the fortress. Surrender followed shortly thereafter. Accounts vary as to the treatment subsequently meted out to the rebels: one chronicler maintained that they were spared by the “compassionate” king because he was “so gentle and full of mercy”, but other sources make it clear that at least two of John’s hated lackeys met their deaths soon after (one being imprisoned and starved, the other flayed alive). With this victory Richard reaffirmed the potent legitimacy of his kingship, and support for John’s cause in England collapsed. The work of repairing the grave damage inflicted

ful conclusion in July 1191, but he did so only in alliance with his sometime-rival King Philip Augustus of France (of the Capetian dynasty). The victory over Saladin’s forces later that year at the battle of Arsuf, on 7 September, appears on closer inspection to have been an unplanned and inconclusive encounter, while Richard’s decision to twice advance to within 12 miles of Jerusalem (only to retreat on both occasions without mounting an assault) suggests that he had failed to grasp, much less harness, the distinctive devotional impulse that drove crusading armies. This is not to suggest that Richard’s expedition should be regarded as a failure, nor to deny that his campaign was punctuated by moments of inspired generalship – most notably in leading his army on a fighting march through Muslim-held territory between Acre and Jaffa. Rather, it is to point out that the Lionheart was still sharpening his skills in Palestine. The Third Crusade ended in stalemate in September 1192, but it was in the fires of this holy war, as Richard and Saladin fought one another to a standstill, that the English king tempered his martial genius. He returned to the west having acquired a new depth of experience and insight, and proved only too capable of putting the lessons learned in the Levant to good use as he strove first to subdue England, and then to reclaim the likes of Normandy and Anjou from Philip of France. It is this period, between 1194 and 1198, which rightly should be recognised as the pinnacle of Richard I’s military career. By the time he reached England in March 1194, the 36-year-old Richard had matured into an exceptionally well-rounded com-

BRIDGEMAN/MAP ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SANDERS – MAPART.CO.UK

The near east on the eve of the Third Crusade

BBC History Magazine

mander. As a meticulous logician and a cool-headed, visionary strategist, the Lionheart could out-think his enemy; but he also loved frontline combat and possessed an exuberant self-confidence and inspirational charisma, allied to a grim, but arguably necessary, streak of ruthlessness. All of these qualities were immediately apparent when Richard marched on rebelheld Nottingham. This veteran of the siege of Acre – one of the hardest-fought investments of the Middle Ages – understood the value of careful planning, the decisive capability of heavy siege machinery and the morale-sapping impact of calculated violence. Though one contemporary claimed Nottingham Castle was “so well fortified by nature and artifice” that it seemed “unconquerable”, Richard brought its garrison to the point of surrender in less than two days. Other striking successes in siege warfare followed, not least when the Lionheart captured the mighty fortress of Loches (in Touraine) in just three hours through a blistering frontal assault.

Sparring with the enemy While campaigning on the continent to recover Angevin territory from Philip Augustus, Richard also demonstrated a remarkably acute appreciation of the precepts governing military manoeuvres and engagements. During the crusade he had sparred with Saladin’s forces on numerous occasions, through fighting marches, exploratory raids and in the course of the first, incremental advance inland towards Jerusalem conducted in the autumn of 1191. This hard-won familiarity with the subtleties of troop movements and martial incursion served the Lionheart well when, in the early summer of 1194, Philip Augustus advanced west towards the town of Vendôme (on the border between the Angevin realm and Capetian territory) and began to threaten the whole of the Loire Valley. Richard responded by marching into the region in early July. Vendôme itself was not fortified, so the Angevin king threw up a defensive camp in front of the town. The two armies, seemingly well-matched in numerical terms, were now separated by only a matter of miles. Though Philip initially remained blissfully unaware, from the moment that the Lionheart took up a position before Vendôme, the Capetians (French) were in grave danger. Should the French king attempt to initiate a frontal assault on the Angevin encampment, he would have to lead his troops south-west down the road to Vendôme, leaving the Capetian host exposed to flanking and encircling manoeuvres. However, any move by the French to retreat from the frontline would be an equally risky proposition, as they

The seal of Richard the Lionheart depicts the ultimate medieval warrior-king, who eagerly threw himself into the heat of battle

“As a meticulous logician and a visionary strategist, the Lionheart could out-think his enemy; but he also loved frontline combat” would be prone to attack from the rear and might easily be routed. At first, King Philip sought to intimidate Richard, dispatching an envoy on 3 July to warn that a French offensive would soon be launched. Displaying a disconcerting confidence, the Lionheart apparently replied that he would happily await the Capetians’ arrival, adding that, should they not appear, he would pay them a visit in the morning. Unsettled by this brazen retort, Philip wavered over his next step. When the Angevins initiated an advance the following day, the French king’s nerve broke and he ordered a hurried withdrawal north-east, along the road to Fréteval (12 miles from Vendôme). Though eager to harry his fleeing opponent, Richard shrewdly recognised that he could ill-afford a headlong pursuit that might leave his own troops in disarray, perilously exposed to counterattack. The Lionheart therefore placed one of his most trusted field lieutenants, William Marshal, in command of a reserve force, with orders to shadow the main advance, yet hold back from the hunt itself and thus be ready to counter any lingering Capetian resistance. Having readied his men, Richard began his chase around midday on 4 July. Towards dusk, Richard caught up with the French rear guard 33

Richard the Lionheart

CRUSADER TO WAR KING 8 September 1157 Richard is born, son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine (right), founders of the Angevin dynasty

June 1172 Invested as Duke of Aquitaine in the abbey church of St Hilary in Poitiers

11 June 1183 His elder brother dies. Richard becomes heir to the English crown and Angevin realm (including Normandy and Anjou)

Autumn 1187 Saladin reconquers Jerusalem. Richard is the first nobleman north of the Alps to take the cross for the Third Crusade

3 September 1189

4 July 1190 Sets out on crusade to the Holy Land, leaving younger brother, John, in Europe

Summer 1191 Richard seizes Acre from Saladin’s forces. He marches to Jaffa, defeating the Muslim army at Arsuf en route

2 September 1192 After abortive attempts on Jerusalem, Richard agrees peace with Saladin

December 1192 Travelling home, Richard is seized by Leopold of Austria, then held by Henry VI of Germany until 1194

26 March 1194 Richard (shown in a Victorian statue) takes Nottingham Castle. His brother John’s cause in England collapses

A manuscript thought to depict Richard I fighting Saladin during the Third Crusade, where the Lionheart honed the military skills for which he became famous

and wagon train near Fréteval, and as the Angevins fell on the broken Capetian ranks, hundreds of routing enemy troops were slain or taken prisoner. All manner of plunder was seized, from “pavilions, all kinds of tents, cloth of scarlet and silk, plate and coin” according to one chronicler, to “horses, palfreys, pack-horses, sumptuous garments and money”. Many of Philip Augustus’s personal possessions were appropriated, including a portion of the Capetian royal archives. It was a desperately humiliating defeat. Richard hunted the fleeing French king through the night, using a string of horses to speed his pursuit, but when Philip pulled off the road to hide in a small church, Richard rode by. It was a shockingly narrow escape for the Capetian. The Angevins returned to Vendôme near midnight, laden with booty and leading a long line of prisoners.

had seized this region in 1193-94, while Richard still remained in captivity, occupying a number of castles, including the stronghold at Gisors. Long regarded as the linchpin of the entire Vexin, this fortress was all-but impregnable. It boasted a fearsome inner-

The contested border zone between Normandy and French lands AKG-IMAGES/GETTY/ MAP ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SANDERS – MAPART.CO.UK

Having rebelled against his father Henry’s authority and hounded the old king to his death, Richard is crowned king

The power of a castle

1196–98 Richard spends £12,000 on ‘Chateau Gaillard’ which helps him reassert Angevin dominance in northern France

6 April 1199 Richard dies during the siege of Chalus

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By the end of 1198, after long years of tireless campaigning and adept diplomacy, Richard had recovered most of the Angevin dynasty’s territorial holdings on the continent. One crucial step in the process of restoration was the battle for dominion over the Norman Vexin – the long-contested border zone between the duchy of Normandy and the Capetian-held Ile-de-France. Philip Augustus BBC History Magazine

Richard’s Chateau Gaillard (meaning ‘Castle of Impudence’) allowed him to neutralise his enemies in the Norman Vexin

REX

“He was the foremost military commander of his generation – a rex bellicosus whose martial gifts were refined in the Holy Land” keep enclosed within an imposing circuit of outer-battlements and, even more importantly, could rely upon swift reinforcement by French troops should it ever be subjected to enemy assault. The Lionheart was uniquely qualified to attempt the Vexin’s reconquest. In the Holy Land, he had painstakingly developed a line of defensible fortifications along the route linking Jaffa and Jerusalem. Later, he dedicated himself to re-establishing the battlements at Ascalon because the port was critical to the balance of power between Palestine and Egypt. Richard might already have possessed a fairly shrewd appreciation of a castle’s use and value before the crusade, but by the time he returned to Europe there can have been few commanders with a better grasp of this dimension of medieval warfare. Drawing upon this expertise, Richard immediately recognised that, in practical terms, Gisors was invulnerable to direct attack. As a result, he formulated an inspired, two-fold strategy, designed to neutralise BBC History Magazine

Gisors and reassert Angevin influence over the Vexin. First, he built a vast new military complex on the Seine at Les Andelys (on the Vexin’s western edge) that included a fortified island, a dock that made the site accessible to shipping from England and a looming fortress christened ‘Chateau Gaillard’ – the ‘Castle of Impudence’ or ‘Cheeky-Castle’. Built in just two years, 1196–98, the project cost an incredible £12,000, far more than Richard spent on fortifications in all of England over the course of his entire reign. Les Andelys protected the approaches to the ducal capital of Rouen, but more importantly it also functioned as a staging post for offensive incursions into the Vexin. For the first time, it allowed large numbers of Angevin troops to be billeted on the fringe of this border zone in relative safety and the Lionheart set about using these forces to dominate the surrounding region. Though the Capetians retained control of Gisors, alongside a number of other strongholds in the Vexin, their emasculated garrisons were virtually unable to venture

beyond their gates, because the Angevins based out of Les Andelys were constantly ranging across the landscape. One chronicler observed that the French were “so pinned down [in their] castles that they could not take anything outside”, and troops in Gisors itself were unable even to draw water from their local spring. By these steps, King Richard reaffirmed Angevin dominance in northern France, shifting the balance of power back in his favour. In the end, Richard’s penchant for siege warfare and frontline skirmishing cost him his life. One of the greatest warrior-kings of the Middle Ages was cut down in 1199 by a crossbow bolt while investing an insignificant Aquitanean fortress. The Lionheart’s death, aged just 41, seemed to contemporaries, as it does today, a shocking and pointless waste. Nonetheless, he was the foremost military commander of his generation – a rex bellicosus whose martial gifts were refined in the Holy Land. Dr Thomas Asbridge is reader in medieval history at Queen Mary, University of London. He is currently writing a new biography of Richard I for the Penguin Monarchs series DISCOVER MORE BOOKS 왘 The Reign of Richard Lionheart by

Ralph Turner and Richard V (Heiser, 2000) 왘 Richard I by John Gillingham (Yale, 1999) 왘 The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones by Thomas Asbridge (Simon & Schuster, 2015) Turn the page for a feature on Saladin’s leadership skills

35

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Reflections on and of Pompeii

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Geology and Geography on the Bay of Naples

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The Rediscovery of Vesuvian Lands

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Etruscan Pompeii—5th Century B.C.

5.

Samnite Pompeii—2nd Century B.C.

6.

Building the Roman Colony—80 B.C.

7.

Villa of the Papyri and Life with Piso

8.

Marriage and Mysteries—Rites of Dionysus

9.

Eumachia, Public Priestess

10. A Female Slave in Pompeii 11. Governing in the 1st Century A.D. 12. Games and Competition for Offices 13. Riot in the Amphitheater—A.D. 59 14. The House of the Tragic Poet 15. Pompeii’s Wool Industry 16. Pompeii’s Wine and Vineyards 17. Earthquake—A.D. 62 18. Rebuilding after the Earthquake 19. Wall Paintings in the House of the Vettii 20. A Pompeian Country Club 21. Worshipping the Emperors at Herculaneum

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HOW TO LEAD LIKE SALADIN You don’t succeed in uniting much of the Muslim world and striking fear into the heart of the Christian west without being a brilliant ruler. John Man reveals the eight qualities that made Saladin one of the greatest leaders of them all Listen to John Man ON THE PODCAST

GETTY

Saladin, seen in a 12th-century portrait, led Muslim opposition to the crusaders and united much of the Middle East BBC History Magazine

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How to lead like Saladin 2 Show no mercy ●

One of the most effective weapons in Saladin’s armoury was the capacity to brutalise

Nur al-Din (right), who wanted to unify Islam, was an inspiration to the young Saladin

1 Learn from ●

the best Saladin’s CV BORN: To a family of Kurdish ancestry, in Tikrit (modern-day Iraq), in c1137/38 BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Defeating a crusader army at the 1187 battle of Hattin (in present-day Israel), and seizing Jerusalem from the crusaders later that year OTHER KEY ACHIEVEMENTS: Establishing a mighty Muslim empire that encompassed today’s Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Yemen REVERED BY: The Muslim world, especially his fellow Sunnis. But he was also greatly respected by his sworn enemies, the crusaders, who, it’s said, regarded him as highly as their own leaders DIED: Of a fever in Damascus in 1193 BURIED: In the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

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An inspirational ruler and a warrior uncle were key to Saladin’s rise One key to Saladin’s leadership skills surely lay in his childhood. This is an assumption, for almost nothing is known about the young Saladin. But something can be deduced from his later success. He was raised in a violent world, yet gained emotional security from religion and family. In Outliers, his 2008 book analysing attributes that distinguish the most successful people from the rest, Malcolm Gladwell points out that a key element in their rise to greatness is a mentor, a guiding light, someone who provides both an example and a helping hand. If his father provided for his emotional security, then Saladin’s two mentors were Shirkuh, his hard-fighting uncle, and Nur al-Din, the inspirational ruler of Aleppo and Mosul – anti-crusader, would-be unifier of Islam, and Saladin’s master and employer. It was Nur al-Din who gave Saladin his big break, sending him off with an army to Egypt, his idea being that Egypt’s wealth would provide a basis for unifying Islam and confronting the crusaders. Without Shirkuh and Nur al-Din – one a campaigner, the other a ruler – Saladin might have remained insignificant.

Leadership is often equated with ruthlessness. One exponent was the Chinese theorist of leadership, Lord Shang, writing when China was torn by rival states in about 400 BC. He advised rulers that human beings are idle, greedy, cowardly, treacherous and foolish, and the only way to deal with them is to entice, terrify, reward and punish. Two thousand years later, Machiavelli, confronted by Italy’s warring mini-states, made the same point: only the ruthless exercise of power can guarantee the continuity of the state, in peace. In some circumstances, Saladin too knew how to use force, even brutality. His new position in Egypt presented problems. Sunni Syrians and Shia Egyptians were old rivals. Each despised the other. Each had a caliph. In Egypt Saladin could rule only by force and duplicity. He collaborated in the murder of the vizier (high-ranking minister) Shawar, built up a formidable army, and bullied the young Egyptian caliph Al-Adid into naming him vizier with power over both government and armed forces. He also engineered plots, arrested and tortured the plotters, and dismissed troublesome members of the Egyptian army and palace guards. Then he ended the Cairo-based caliphate, scattered the caliph’s library, divided Cairo’s palaces among his family, crushed revolts – even crucified two ringleaders in central Cairo – and spread his control to Yemen. Later, after the battle of Hattin, one of his captives was French crusader Raynald of Châtillon, a man he had sworn to kill in revenge for his brutal and treacherous behaviour. In one account, Saladin killed him with one stroke of his sword and beheaded him. Soon afterwards, volunteers executed a further 200 captives, while Saladin looked on approvingly.

Saladin, shown beheading the captive Raynald of Châtillon, was not afraid to use force

GETTY/AKG/BIBLIOTEQUE NATIONALE DU FRANCE

Saladin’s achievements – uniting much of the Middle East under one vast Muslim empire, and crushing a crusader army in 1187 – mark him down as one of the most accomplished rulers in history. Here are the eight secrets behind his incredible success…

“His vision was an Islamic world unified and free from the non-Islamic, anti-Islamic crusaders” 3 Have a cause ●

worth fighting for Saladin’s rallying cry – holy war – proved irresistible to thousands of his followers From his youth, Saladin was in some sense programmed for leadership, which he seized in Egypt. For his next move, he needed to inspire. One vital element for a leader – some say the most vital – is the agenda, the vision. Effective leaders need a noble cause, something bigger than the leader himself. As psychologist Daniel Goleman and his co-authors comment in Primal Leadership (2013), those with vision “exude resonance: They have genuine passion for their mission, and that passion is contagious.” Saladin’s vision was powerful and simple: an Islamic world unified and free from the non-Islamic, anti-Islamic crusaders. He did not even have to originate it. The cause had been in the air for a generation, since the arrival of the crusaders in 1096. His mentor, Nur al-Din, had preached jihad – or holy war – against them. Saladin took up the cry: “Do battle not for my cause, but for God’s cause.”

This 13th-century French manuscript shows Saladin’s troops wreaking devastation on the Holy Land, taking prisoners and stealing cattle

4 Be prepared to negotiate ●

Saladin quickly learned that he couldn’t always bludgeon his way to power But now what? Egypt’s wealth was the key to power, but the door to Islamic unity and jihad was Syria. By about 1170, it was obvious that Saladin was a rival to his master, Nur al-Din. There could have been civil war – except that the two shared the same vision, and both held back from outright confrontation for three years. Then Nur al-Din’s death gave Saladin a chance to claim his former master’s realm. This would not be easy, because major cities – Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Homs, Hama, Baalbek – were held by Nur al-Din’s heirs or allies. It was now that Saladin’s leadership skills came to the fore. He became an expert in what leadership theorists call ‘soft power,’ in which persuasion trumps force. His task was to usurp power, while pretending deference to Nur al-Din’s lineage. There was no point forcing himself on other Muslims, if by doing so he turned them from rivals into enemies. If he besieged a city, he did so with restraint.

In victory, he took care not to pursue, slaughter and pillage. He often wrote to the caliph in Baghdad, asking for his backing. It took 10 years of steps forward, steps back, negotiations, appeals and shows of force followed by displays of magnanimity – but in the end it worked. The caliph granted him a ‘diploma of investiture’, and Saladin became ruler of Syria as well as Egypt. He had the legitimacy he needed to turn his unified army against the crusaders, achieving his stunning victory in the battle of Hattin in 1187 and following this up by seizing Jerusalem. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of his soft leadership was that he applied it in his dealings with his enemies. He probed, retreated, consulted, negotiated, exchanged prisoners, changed his mind with changing circumstances, and dealt courteously with his enemies. He acted like this partly because that was his character, and partly because it worked, saving much fruitless fighting and unnecessary losses.

39

How to lead like Saladin 5 Put your life ●

on the line

To inspire true loyalty, Saladin was prepared to go where only the bravest would follow

6 Live a simple, ●

austere life

The most powerful man in the Muslim world resisted the temptation to amass riches Embracing danger is one way of demonstrating your willingness to share your followers’ pain. Another is to refuse the urge to amass riches. This is a rare quality, because it works best in combination with adversity. Kublai Khan ruled China with a massive display of wealth. However, his grandfather Genghis Khan, from whom Kublai inherited a vision of world rule, made a virtue of austerity, adopting the guise of a simple Daoist sage: “In the clothes I wear or the meats I eat, I have the same rags and the same food as the cowherd or the groom.” Saladin too considered his followers before himself, so much so that in life he was often rebuked by his treasurer, and in death he had nothing to his name but his sword, coat of mail and horse. He built himself no palaces, and wanted only a small mausoleum.

40

Like his contemporary Genghis Khan, Saladin made a virtue of austerity

Saladin could be magnanimous. This image shows him taking Jerusalem in 1187, but not before he had the wife of one of the crusaders escorted to safety

“Despite his commitment to jihad, Saladin retained his respect for individuals”

7 Keep your ●

promises

Trust was the key to building a stable alliance against the crusader armies Saladin kept his word. Lord Shang and Machiavelli were all for duplicity, if it served the leader’s purpose. That was not Saladin’s way. Keeping promises is a fundamental attribute of good leadership, for without it the trust of allies and those further down the chain of command vanishes, morale plummets, and concerted action becomes impossible. This creates what Daniel Goleman (see no 3) refers to as a “toxic organisation”, in which “resonance” gives way to “dissonance”. “If we refuse what we have promised and are not generous with the benefits,” said Saladin, “no one will ever trust us again.”

8 Extend the ●

hand of friendship The great nemesis of the crusaders was capable of surprising acts of generosity towards them Despite his commitment to jihad, Saladin retained his respect for individuals – as is proved in the following incident, which happened in the summer of 1187, between the battle of Hattin in July and the seizure of Jerusalem in October. Balian of Ibelin, head of one of the most eminent of crusader families, escaped from Hattin H tti and d ttook k refuge f iin T Tyre. With S Saladin’s l di ’ army controlling the surrounding territory, Balian’s wife, Maria, was stuck in Jerusalem. Balian sent a message to Saladin, asking to be allowed to get her. Saladin agreed – on the understanding that Balian spent only one night in Jerusalem. But when Balian arrived in the city he found it leaderless. He stayed to lead its defence, sending profuse apologies to Saladin for breaking his promise. Saladin chivalrously accepted the apology, and then sent an escort to convey Maria to Tyre, while her husband set about finishing Jerusalem’s defences. Such actions won Saladin the admiration of his Christian enemies, who came to think of him as more worthy than their own leaders. John Man is a historian and travel writer, whose books include The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China (Bantam Press, 2014) DISCOVER MORE BOOK 왘 Saladin: Life, Legend, Legacy by

John Man is published by Bantam Press this month LISTEN AGAIN 왘 Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the

Third Crusade on In Our Time at bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00547ls ON THE PODCAST 왘 John Man discusses Saladin’s accomplishments on our weekly podcast historyextra.com/podcasts BBC History Magazine

GETTY/BRIDGEMAN

Another element of Saladin’s rule was his readiness to share adversity. The nature of revolutionary leadership demands it. In the words of the American political scientist James MacGregor Burns: “The leaders must be absolutely dedicated to the cause and able to demonstrate that commitment by giving time and effort to it, risking their lives, undergoing imprisonment, exile, persecution and continual hardship.” Saladin risked his life in battle, and at the age of 50 almost died from disease caught while campaigning. Shared suffering does not guarantee success, but a refusal to do so Like Mandela, Saladin may open the door to suffered for his cause failure. Saladin is in good company. Successful revolutionary leaders who suffered for their cause include Alexander, Jesus, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, Mao, Lenin, Castro and Mandela.

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Latest research Medieval immigration

“They’re heavy drinkers, barbarous and full of guile” The residents of medieval England didn’t always roll out the red carpet for Welsh, Scottish and Irish immigrants. Mark Ormrod and Jessica Lutkin describe the challenges and stereotypes confronting Celts trying to carve out a new life in their adopted home ILLUSTRATIONS BY LYNN HATZIUS

BBC History Magazine

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Medieval immigrants

I

n 1413, Henry V’s government offered licences to hundreds of Welsh and Irish residents of England, allowing them to remain in the kingdom under the king’s protection. Those who came forward were a varied and far-flung group. They included the Irishman Thomas Roche, running his drapery business in Oxford; Richard Basset, another Irishman, who worked as a slater in Leicester; three ‘London Welsh’ – John Neuborgh, John Neuton and Thomas Gwyn; and Thomas Phelippes, the Welsh-born priest in charge of the rural parish of Hemingby in Lincolnshire. This set of snapshots – drawn from a major research project on immigration to medieval England in which we’ve been participating – is a reminder of the complicated relationship that existed between the ‘four nations’ of the British Isles in the later Middle Ages. England and Scotland were independent kingdoms, and were usually at war. Ireland had been a lordship of the English crown since the 12th century, though significant parts of the island were beyond its effective control. Colonisation and conquest had also made most of Wales subject to the English crown by the later 13th century, though resistance continued for many years. For those who moved from other parts of the British Isles to England, these distinctions had real consequences. There were no immigration procedures and the land and sea borders remained open to all comers. But this also meant that most of those who migrated to England had no formal guarantees of rights. For the Scots, as enemies, this was a particular challenge. The Welsh and the Irish seemed, on the face of it, to have it easier; and yet they too were subject to discrimination.

A tax on foreigners The licences granted in 1413 were in part a response to the revolt of Owain GlyndŴr in Wales, and the urgent need to provide reassurances to Welsh-born residents in England that they would not be subject to the punishments being meted out against their families and friends back home. Such measures formed part of a wider package of guarantees worked out for foreign residents during the later Middle Ages. In the 13th century, people born outside England began to be admitted as freemen of self-governing towns. And in the late 14th century, the crown devised the process known as denization, whereby aliens could renounce their original allegiance and become what we would now call naturalised citizens. These were valued and sought-after rights. But they also cost money, and tended only to be taken up as a last resort. 44

All this explains the disquiet when, in 1440, the English parliament announced a special tax on those residents born beyond the realm. The main aim was to take a census of the continental Europeans living in England. The Scots were also, inevitably, included on the list. Much more controversial, however, was the decision to include those from the wider dominions of the English crown. Suddenly, the Irish and the Channel Islanders, not to mention those from the Plantagenet duchy of Aquitaine, were being treated as aliens. The only group to escape was the Welsh, whose complex legal status left them in a rare position of privilege. The survey that resulted offers us the most complete picture of the movement of people around the British Isles in the Middle Ages. All told (though excluding the Welsh), about 20,000 people were assessed for the 1440 tax. While the number may seem small, we need to remember that the population of England

“England’s borders were open to all comers. But this meant that most immigrants had no formal guarantees of rights” As this illustration shows, England in the mid-15th century was home to thousands of immigrants from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Channel Islands, many of whom were significantly boosting local manufacturing and agricultural economies ILLUSTRATION BY LYNN HATZIUS

was little over 2 million at this time; those defined as aliens for this purpose therefore comprised around 1 per cent of the total. Only around a quarter of this total – just under 5,000 people – were listed with distinct nationalities, and we have to multiply our figures by a factor of four to understand the likely totals. Among those from the British Isles, by far the largest groups came from Scotland (1,046 named, so probably at least 4,000 in total) and Ireland (773 named, and perhaps 3,000 overall). The Scots, not surprisingly, were concentrated in the north of England, though they were also to be found in small numbers in almost every county from Cornwall to Lincolnshire. The Irish were more widely and thinly spread; the majority lived in the South West, but there was also a significant contingent in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. In the survey, 63 Channel Islanders were also assessed (mainly from Guernsey), all but one of them living in the South West.

Personal lives Beyond these bald numbers, the real fascination of these records lies in the detail they can provide about the personal lives of medieval migrants. Many surnames, presumably acquired in England, denoted the person’s country of origin. Marcus Scot was a fisherman in Whitby (North Riding of Yorkshire), and Nicholas Irissmane was working as a ploughman for St Katherine’s priory, Lincoln. Many other names were occupational: Peter Tailur (Tailor), a Guernseyman living at Leigh in Dorset, was obviously involved in the clothing trade, and had two servants or apprentices, presumably also Channel Islanders, living with him. In other cases, occupations were specified: John Dondre (or Thunder), an Irish priest, had been living in England for at least 10 years and worked as a chaplain at Woodchurch in Kent. The Scottish couple John and Joan Webster kept a residence and workshop in Cambridge, where John worked as a weaver. Joan Webster’s case alerts us to the fact that significant numbers of women were caught in 45

Medieval immigrants

Immigrants at work How aliens from the Celtic nations and Channel Islands earned a living in 15th–century England

£

Andrew Desauger Higher rate taxpayer from Guernsey

The Guernseyman Andrew Desauger had to pay the higher tax rate as a result of the 1440 tax on aliens. He was recorded as living in St Stephens by Saltash in Cornwall, and may have been a mariner or businessman. The Channel Islands had been annexed by the Duchy of Normandy in the 10th century and remained in English possession after Normandy was lost to France. The Channel Islanders were the first group to achieve exemption from the tax on foreigners, and Andrew therefore disappears from later collection records.

Alice, Joan and Joan Iryssh Skilled spinners from across the Irish Sea While many unmarried migrant women were poor and unskilled, others brought their own distinctive trades to England. Three such – Irish women Alice, Joan and another Joan – worked as spinners in Meriden, Allesley and Warwick in Warwickshire. Their trade wasn’t highly paid and they ‘lived in’ with their employers. Yet they probably enjoyed more independence than domestic servants. Most Irish women for whom an occupation was recorded in 1440 were in some form of service, and some English craft masters depended on Irish immigrant labour.

James Ramsey Scottish surgeon enticed to London As a surgeon living in Billingsgate ward, London, in 1483, the Scotsman James Ramsey was a rather unusual individual. Foreign surgeons and other medical practitioners were not uncommon in England, but most came from southern Europe, and Scottish surgeons were rare. In the same year, two other foreign surgeons were recorded in London – from France and Germany. It is possible that a man of Ramsey’s skill was enticed to London for its opportunities to cater for the merchant elite, the aristocracy and the royal court.

46

the 1440 tax net. Agnes Hirde, an Irishwoman living in Kendal (Westmorland), kept her own household and ran her own baking business. More usually, single women appeared as the dependants of English masters. In Bristol, for example, Anastasia Irissche (Irish) was described as a servant and a kempster (wool comber). Not all who moved to England found life easy. A significant number of Scottish women, who were scattered across the villages and smaller towns of the north in 1440, were described as vagabonds, a term that denotes a migrant casual worker. For some, prostitution may have been a final, necessary resort. The insistence of the tax collectors of 1440 that all foreigners should be included in the survey throws up some surprises. At the top end of the social range was the Scottish Earl of Menteith, under house arrest as a hostage of war at Pontefract Castle in the West Riding of Yorkshire. At the other extreme we find the Irishman John Irlond at Milton Abbas in Dorset, described as a beggar. Whether John and others like him were actually capable of paying the tax was of less consequence than the strong desire to ensure that everyone born outside England was included in the census.

Zealous officials All of this was to the considerable frustration of those who claimed to have been born under the jurisdiction of the crown of England. The Channel Islanders and the Irish, along with the Gascons (from Aquitaine), protested that they were loyal subjects of King Henry VI. They had their way, and were allowed exemption in subsequent collections of the tax – though over-zealous officials continued to assess small numbers of Irish people. In London, where the civic authorities were especially keen, there was even an attempt to tax half a dozen Welsh people in 1441. This may explain why in the same year Meredydd Morgan, originally from Carmarthen, secured letters of denization to reside securely in England. The special taxes on aliens continued intermittently for more than 40 years, the last being collected in 1487. Generally speaking, the later taxes were notable mainly for the increasing numbers of exemptions allowed and evasions condoned. In London, however, vigilance prevailed and the level of enumeration remained high. In 1483, the assessors in the capital flushed out 163 Scots. This cross-section of immigrant life included servants and labourers living in multiple-occupation boarding houses, more prosperous men and women keeping their own households and working in the building, brewing and clothing trades, and the occasional professional. The presence of significant numbers of

“Scottish women were often described as vagabonds, denoting migrant casual workers. For some, prostitution may have been a final resort” Scots, Irish and Welsh sometimes created tension. By the 14th century the English had a clear notion of their own cultural superiority over the ‘barbarous’ Celts. Ranulph Higden, a monk of Chester, described the Welsh as heavy drinkers, so lazy that they preferred to steal their food than to grow it. All the Celtic nations were assumed to be deceitful and treacherous: “Watch the Scots,” said the English poet Lawrence Minot, “they’re full of guile.” Language, in particular, was a marker of difference: the English government was constantly vigilant about Anglo-Irish gentry who adopted the Gaelic tongue. Yet none of this rhetoric precludes the real possibility of friendly interaction and effective coexistence. Most Scots, Irish and Welsh arrived in England not as wealthy merchants or prosperous craftspeople but as unskilled labourers. Some made for places where they knew there were others like them: Irish to Bristol, Scots to Newcastle, Welsh to Shrewsbury, and so on. The most striking feature of the 1440 tax survey is the degree to which people also spread themselves across the English rural landscape. At a time of low population, economic migrants were both necessary and welcome to the agricultural and manufacturing economies. If Welsh, Irish and Scottish incomers suffered occasional mistreatment at the hands of their English neighbours, none of this stopped a significant number of them from making a success of their lives in a new and not-so-foreign land. Mark Ormrod is professor of history at the University of York and Jessica Lutkin is a research assistant and impact officer based at the National Archives. Both are participating in the AHRC funded project, England’s Immigrants 1330 1550 DISCOVER MORE WEBSITE 왘 For more on the England’s Immigrants

1330–1550 project please visit englandsimmigrants.com BBC History Magazine

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England in the 17th century

John Aubrey chronicled one of the most turbulent periods in English history. Ruth Scurr reveals what his writings tell us about episodes such as the Civil War, Great Plague and Restoration, and the remarkable characters that shaped them

H

e was a pioneering antiquarian, a fellow of the Royal Society and witnessed the Civil War, the Restoration and the Great Fire of London. But above all John Aubrey was a writer at a time print culture was blossoming. He investigated the past, he recorded the world in which he lived, and in his acclaimed Brief Lives wrotee biographies of eminent people that he knew w. The result is a unique record of his time. n Aubrey, born a gentleman in Wiltshire on 12 March 1626, lived through key events of the 17th century. The Civil War began while he was a student at Oxford and he was 22 when Charles I was executed in 1649. He saw w Oliver Cromwell’s rise to power as lord protector of the Commonwealth, experienced the restoration of Charles II and witnessed the Glorious Revolution that brought William of Orange to the throne. From an early age Aubrey was drawn to antiquities. As a child he loved the stories of older people, whom he saw as “living histories”, and he was pained to see old manuscripts used to cover schoolbooks. Later he took Charles II to see the megalithss at Avebury and campaigned to stop locals using the stones for building. He worked out that Stonehenge was neither Roman nor Danish – as was then thought – and he offered as a ‘probability’ his theory that

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Druids erected it. It is now known to pre-date the Druids by thousands of years, but in his time he was closer to the truth than anyone else. Aubrey became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1663. He participated in the search for scientific knowledge alongside such luminaries as Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, and was conscious of living through a revolution in print culture, bookselling and journalism. Most books then were sold in London at booksellers’ shops or stalls clustered around St Paul’s churchyard, and so the Great Fire of London of 1666 – which Aubrey chronicled – was a catastrophe for the booming book trade. Aubrey undertook surveys of Wiltshire and Surrey. He collected notes on architecture, handwriting, clothing, old place names and folklore. Most importantly of all, he collected notes on his contemporaries and deposited his Brief Lives manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford before he died in 1697. Much of what we know of the lives of the most eminent men of the 17th century – philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, doctors, astrologers, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, dignitaries of the state and the Church of England – we owe to Aubrey. As the examples over the page prove, through him we see the 17th century vividly and intimately…

A portrait of the writer and antiquarian John Aubrey. Like Samuel Pepys, Aubrey’s chronicles offer us a window into the lives of some of the leading figures of his age – men like Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and John Milton

BBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN

BBC History Magazine

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England in the 17th century

John Aubrey reports on… OXFORD IN THE CIVIL WAR John Aubrey was in Oxford in 1643, when Charles I, after the battle of Edgehill (the first pitched battle of the Civil War) entered the city “like Apollo” and took up residence in Christ Church College. Queen Henrietta Maria moved into Merton College, and a special path was laid through the grounds of Corpus Christi College for them to visit each other. Crammed full of court followers, soldiers and horses, Oxford was soon disease-ridden, and Aubrey saw people hungry and dying in the streets. He caught smallpox at this time, but recovered.

THOMAS HOBBES Aubrey first met philosopher Hobbes (above) in 1634 when he was eight – Hobbes had returned to Malmesbury, where he was born, to visit his old school teacher, who was then teaching Aubrey. Hobbes fled to France before the Civil War – fearing he might be called to account for his argument that sovereignty must be absolute. Aubrey records that when the bookseller Mr Crooke at the Green Dragon in St Paul’s churchyard printed Hobbes’s Leviathan in 1651, “it flew forth, passionately attacking those who failed to see that the monarch – not the parliament under him – was the absolute representative of his people”.

DR WILLIAM HARVEY Harvey (above) was the king’s physician and was one of the court followers who came to Oxford with Charles I. Aubrey records that Harvey used to visit a fellow scientist, Ralph Bathurst, in Trinity College to conduct experiments on hens’ eggs. Harvey was hoping to understand how chicks were generated. Aubrey says that after De Motu Cordis, Harvey’s book on the circulation of the blood, came out in 1628, his medical practice declined mightily, since “the vulgar believed that he was crack-brained” and all the physicians were against him and envied him.

THE DEATH OF OLIVER CROMWELL Oliver Cromwell died of quartan ague on 3 September 1658. Aubrey noted that a short while before, Cromwell was “troubled” by a whale that came into the river Thames and was killed at Greenwich. Aubrey recorded that there is a maxim of astrology that a person who has a satellitium, or grouping of several planets, in his ascendant becomes more eminent in his life than other people. He noted that Oliver Cromwell had this, and so did Hobbes.

Aubrey was ‘an auditor’, or listener, at James Harrington’s Rota Club, a coffee club that met in the Turk’s Head, New Palace Yard. The meetings were a forum for republican views – Aubrey said the discourses were “the most ingenious and smart that ever I heard, or expect to hear”. In December 1661, Harrington (left) was arrested, and held in the Tower of London, although later released.

THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I In June 1647, Cromwell’s New Model Army took Charles I prisoner. Aubrey believed his mother had seen a portent of this news when she observed the sun caught between two rainbows in the sky. Aubrey’s kinsman Sir John Danvers served on the committee that tried the king and was one of those who signed the death warrant. Aubrey records that James Harrington and Thomas Herbert, who were appointed to the King’s Bedchamber by parliament, were with Charles at his execution (above) and that, before he died, the king gave them watches.

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JOHN MILTON The republican polemicist Milton (above) was, recorded Aubrey, a man, “of middling stature, scarcely as tall as I am”. He says that when Milton’s The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth was printed in 1660, the people had already turned strongly against republicanism. Under the Restoration, Milton was arrested and his books were burned. BBC History Magazine

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY/ BRIDGEMAN/DREAMSTIME.COM

LEADING REPUBLICANS

THE GREAT PLAGUE In June 1665 the Royal Society suspended its weekly Wednesday meetings because so many of its members had left London fearful of the plague. Aubrey commented that: “In Mr Camden’s Britannia there is a remarkable astrological observation, namely that, when Saturn is in Capricornus, a great plague is a certainty in London. Mr Camden, who died in 1623, observed this in his own time, as had others before him. This year, 1665, Saturn is so positioned, as it was during the London plague of 1625.” Aubrey combined his belief in astrology with an interest in science. He noted that: “It is said that the party who is first infected in a family with smallpox has the disease most mildly. Those that are infected by that person have it more malignly by degrees, and so the more who are infected, the more pestilent the disease becomes, until at last it is a plague.”

CHARLES II’S RESTORATION

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION In November 1688, William Prince of Orange landed at Torbay. A few weeks later, James II fled England. In London, Aubrey recorded that the rabble “demolished popish chapels and the houses of several popish lords, including Wild House, the residence of the Spanish ambassador”. Aubrey was afraid the unrest would spread to Oxford and his papers would be destroyed. Fortunately this did not happen. The papers were deposited in the Ashmolean Museum before he died and transferred to the Bodleian Library, where they are still.

MONMOUTH’S REBELLION

Aubrey wrote of the joy with which the people greeted Charles II’s restoration in 1660: “As the morning grows lighter and lighter and more glorious until it is perfect day, so now does the joy of the people. Maypoles, which were banned in hypocritical times, have been set up again at crossroads. At the Strand… the tallest maypole ever seen was erected with help from seamen.”

THE POPISH PLOT On 20 June 1679 the Jesuit William Barrow (known as Father Harcourt) and four others accused of the ‘Popish Plot’ were executed for conspiring to kill Charles II and subvert the Protestant religion. Aubrey recorded the story that when Father Harcourt’s entrails were tossed into the brazier (a container for burning coals) by the hangman, “a butcher’s boy resolved to have a piece of his kidney, which was broiling in the fire, so burnt his fingers snatching it from the flames”. After the plot, severe penal laws were introduced against Roman Catholics who would not receive the Sacrament according to the Church of England in their parish churches.

Charles II died on 6 February 1685 and was succeeded by his brother James II (and VII). On 11 June 1685, Aubrey was visiting a friend at Chedzoy, Bridgewater, on the night that the Duke of Monmouth, (Charles II’s Protestant bastard son), landed at Lyme Regis to begin his rebellion. Monmouth’s soldiers broke into the house Aubrey was staying in and entered his chamber as he lay in bed. They took away horses and arms. The Duke of Monmouth was proclaimed king at Taunton but his plan to capture Bristol was thwarted. He was captured on Shag Heath, and executed on 15 July 1685.

Dr Ruth Scurr is a historian at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (Vintage, 2007). She will be speaking at the York Festival of Ideas on 15 April yorkfestivalofideas.com DISCOVER MORE

THE MAJESTY OF AVEBURY

ALAMY/BRIDGEMAN/DREAMSTIME.COM

Aubrey thought that: “Avebury excels Stonehenge as a cathedral does a parish church.” He first came across it when hunting in 1648. He took Charles II to see the stones in 1663 and the king issued a Royal Command that Stonehenge and Avebury be investigated. Aubrey says that as they were leaving Avebury, the king cast his eye on Silbury Hill, about a mile away, and asked to see it. Aubrey climbed to the top with him and showed the king his kingdom from a new prospect.

BBC History Magazine

BOOK 왘 John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth

Scurr (Chatto & Windus, 2015)

THE FIRE OF LONDON The Great Fire of 1666 made thousands homeless, but boosted the study of antiquities. Aubrey records that he “visited the apothecary and collector John Conyers, who has premises in Shoe Lane. After the Great Conflagration he collected a world of antique curiosities during the excavations of the ruins of London. There are many Roman antiquities in his collection.” He also noted that, since the fire, many of the inscriptions in the city’s churches were not legible any more. A year after the fire he found that “all the ruins in London are overgrown with herbs, especially one with a yellow flower. On the south side of St Paul’s church it grew as thick as could be, even on the very top of the tower. The herbalists call it Ericolevis Neapolitana, small bank cresses of Naples.”

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WWI eyewitness accounts

PART 11

“Our First World War” In part 11 of his personal testimony series, Peter Hart takes us to April 1915, when the Allies attempted landings at Gallipoli and the Germans unleashed a new weapon. Peter will be tracing the experiences of 20 people who lived through the First World War – via interviews, letters and diary entries – as the conflict’s centenary progresses ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES ALBON

Thomas Louch Thomas was born the son of an archdeacon in Geraldton, Australia in 1894. He worked as a law clerk in Albany, Western Australia until war broke out. As soon as he could, he joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). On the morning of Sunday 25 April 1915, the Allied forces made a daring attempt to land at several beaches on the Gallipoli peninsula. Their aim was to brush aside the Turkish forces and overwhelm the forts that defended the Dardanelles strait. The idea was to allow the British and French naval squadrons to burst through into the Sea of Marmara, from where they could rain down destruction on Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock Turkey out of the war. The British landed at Helles, at the tip of the peninsula, and the French at Kum Kale, on the Asiatic side of the strait. But most famous was the landing by the Australians and New Zealanders at what would become known as Anzac Cove. Corporal Thomas Louch and the 11th (Western Australia) Battalion were part of the first brigade to storm ashore.

A string of lifeboats was then taken in tow by a naval picket boat. There were four naval ratings in each boat to row the last few yards after we had cast off from the tow. Their job was then to row the boat back and pick up more troops. It was just light enough for us to see the

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outline of the land, but our approach was not seen by the Turks until we were two or three hundred yards from the shore. As the first wave approached a yellow flare went up and the Turks opened fire.

Our boat grounded just round the corner of Ari Burnu and came under fire from the direction of the Sphinx [a rocky outcrop that resembled the Egyptian monument]. We leapt out and waded ashore in water up to our waists. Crerar was killed as he reached the shore. As instructed, we shed our packs, lay down and awaited orders. Colonel Johnston, who had come in another boat, flopped down beside me and I asked him what we were to do. He said that we had landed in the wrong place, and there was no organisation. A bullet spattered into the sand just clear of our noses, and I decided that the beach, where there was no cover, was no place for dallying. The Australians charged forward into a chaotic terrain of steep ridges riven by deep chasms. Their battalions fragmented; they were soon bogged down and facing stern

Turkish resistance. Louch was isolated in a series of shallow rifle pits in Wire Gully, just in front of the main Australian line on Second Ridge. Even in desperate circumstances the Australians were capable of an impressive wry humour.

Captain Croly was wounded at about this time. He was some distance away to our left and out of sight – but what he had to say about the Turk could be heard all over the battlefield. In a torrent of invective he traced the ancestry of his assailant through a series of irregular liaisons right back to the time of the Prophet. Captain Arthur Croly’s arm was badly shattered, but he survived his painful injury.

After dark there was a lot of movement in front of us. The Turks were shouting “Allah, Allah!”, blowing bugles like those used by the tram drivers in Cairo. We stood to, expecting an attack, but after a time we fired a few rounds in the direction of the noise and the Turks departed. We were too worked up and tired to get any sleep, and the night wore on. At first light we saw Turks digging in, but they were being covered by snipers. In no time, Clayden, in the next pit, was shot in the head and my rifle was knocked out of my hand by a Turkish bullet – just as I was about to fire. My face was spattered by steel splinters which

drew blood but, though a sorry sight, I was more frightened than hurt. Since the Sunday morning I had had nothing to drink other than the water in our waterbottles, and we had had little sleep. By Wednesday, we were so dazed that we hardly knew what we were doing. It was a brave fight but the landings failed. The Allies had got ashore but were penned far from their objectives. Soon, trenches snaked across the peninsula. There was to be no easy route to victory at Gallipoli. Turn the page to read our feature on the myths of Gallipoli

Australian troops pictured among the dead and wounded on the beach at Anzac Cove, 25 April 1915

BBC History Magazine

APRIL 1915 Jack Dorgan Northumberland-born Jack Dorgan was 21 years old in 1915. He had worked at Ashington Colliery for seven years before the outbreak of war. In April his battalion travelled through France to Flanders.

GETTY IMAGES

The western front remained of prime importance to the Germans, as they demonstrated on 22 April by launching a vicious attack using their terrible new weapon. Greenish-tinged clouds of deadly chlorine gas were unleashed on the French and Canadian troops holding the line on the low ridges in front of Ypres. In the panic that followed, the territorials of the 50th Division were thrust forward. Private Jack Dorgan was with the 1/7th Northumberland Fusiliers as they moved along roads packed with refugees.

Mainly old men, women and children. Never a sound, just mooching along without a word; their spirit seemed to be broken. They carried mostly bedding and personal things. Children were carrying as much as they could.

I don’t know how they managed, struggling along past us, heads down, not a word to each other and not a word to us. We arrived at Ypres in the market place. Across the cobbled square was the cloth hall blazing, all in ruins. The shells were dropping and shrapnel was flying all over. We thought: “Well, this is war.” On arrival, Dorgan and his comrades were thrown straight into the fight with an attack on the village of St Julien on the afternoon of Monday 26 April. These raw soldiers were far from ready for such an ordeal.

As we were going forward, men were being shot down, wounded and killed. Sergeant Pick lay in the middle of a field, swearing and tearing, shouting for help. You could see chaps had gone forward to help

him because there they were lying dead in the field alongside. Yet he still kept shouting for somebody to help him. The stretcher bearers were running around carrying our wounded away, leaving the dead for later. A batch of us lay behind a hedge, resting. We never saw an enemy; never saw anybody to shoot at. A shell dropped right in among us. When I pulled myself together, I found myself lying in a shell hole. There was one other soldier who, like me, was unhurt, but two more were heavily wounded, so we shouted for stretcher-bearers. The other chap says to me: “We’re not all here, Jack.” So I climbed out of the shell hole and found two more of our comrades lying just a few yards away. They had their legs blown off. All I could see was their thigh bones. I will always remember their white thigh bones; the rest of their legs were gone. Private Jackie Oliver was one of them; he never recovered consciousness. But the other, Private Bob Young, was conscious right to the last. I lay alongside of him and said: “Can I do anything for you Bob?” He said: “Straighten my legs, Jack.” But he had no legs. I touched the bones and that satisfied him. Then he said: “Get my wife’s photograph out of my breast pocket.” I took the photograph out and put it in his hands. He couldn’t move – he couldn’t lift a hand, couldn’t lift a finger – but he held his wife’s photograph on his chest. And that’s how Bob Young died.

Today on the Menin Gate memorial, their names are recorded as having no known graves. When I’ve stood and looked at them, I’ve sometimes thought: “How lucky I am to be able to be here, 70 years after.” In his later years, Jack Dorgan took considerable umbrage at the way this terrible incident was written up by his officer.

Captain Watson Armstrong writes about that incident where Bob Young and Jackie Oliver were killed. “Bob Young, I understand, was singing Tipperary when he died.” Which of course was nonsense! I was there when Bob Young died. He had no thoughts of singing Tipperary; his voice was getting fainter and fainter all the time until he pegged out. What the captain was trying to imply was that the morale of the Northumberlands was high – but it didn’t happen that way. There would be many more battles for Dorgan and his comrades. The Germans were held back at Ypres, but it would be a close-run thing. The Germans were the main enemy; the western front was the main front. Gallipoli would prove a mere diversion. Peter Hart is an oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, and the author of several books about the First World War

DISCOVER MORE BOOK 왘 Gallipoli by Peter Hart

(Profile Books, 2013)

“They had their legs blown off. I will always remember their white thigh bones; the rest of their legs were gone”

WEBSITE 왘 You can read previous

instalments of “Our First World War” at historyextra.com/ ourfirstworldwar TV AND RADIO 왘 The BBC’s First World War

coverage is continuing – please check the TV & Radio updates on historyextra.com

NEXT ISSUE: “Bullets were hitting the sand, spraying us; we were spitting it out of our mouths.” BBC History Magazine

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Gallipoli / Myths

THE MYTHS

GALL Bound for failure This image, which appeared in The War Illustrated on 19 June 1915, shows a church service aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth during the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign. The caption for the image ended: “In the distance is seen the heights of the Gallipoli peninsula, where our gallant troops are fighting the empire’s battle against the Turks”

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BBC History Magazine

OF POPPERFOTO–GETTY IMAGES

IPOLI A century after the disastrous campaign in the Dardanelles, Gary Sheffield challenges some commonly held assumptions about this failed attempt to change the course of the First World War Complements the upcoming BBC Two documentary Gallipoli

BBC History Magazine

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Gallipoli / Myths

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Just like on the western front, trench warfare ensued. Conditions were even more primitive, and fighting took place under a burning sun. Over the next few months the Allies and the Turks launched attacks to try to break the deadlock, but all met with bloody failure. On 6 August the British made fresh landings at Suvla Bay and a major effort was made to break out of the Anzac Cove beachhead. Like the earlier pushes, the August offensive was a failure. Deciding not to throw good money after bad, the Allies evacuated Gallipoli in two stages, in December 1915 and the following January. The Dardanelles campaign, which hi h had h d promised i d so much, h ended in disaster. Yet, for all that, it has earned near iconic status. An avalanche of books, films and newspaper articles have given it a colourful afterlife – one in which facts have had to share space with myth and legend. Here, over the following pages, I will attempt to distinguish the former from the latter.

Myth

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“This, it was hoped, would tilt the odds decisively in the favour of the Allies”

Retreat in disarray Soldiers and guns are evacuated from Suvla in December 1915 after the complete failure of the Dardanelles campaign

The campaign was a good idea let down by poor execution Was it really a strategic masterpiece – or just wishful thinking? In 1930 General Sir George MacMunn wrote of Gallipoli that: “Mr Winston Churchill’s conception was magnificent.” However, he went on to say it was also “the most damnable folly that ever amateurs were enticed into”. Today, it is still believed by many that Churchill had produced a strategic masterstroke that was only let down by the poor execution of naval and military commanders. However the weight of recent historical scholarship has come to a very different conclusion: that the concept (for which Churchill was not wholly to blame) was vastly overambitious, that planning and intelligence were defective, that the resilience and fighting ability of the Turks was grossly underestimated, and that the operation was poorly resourced. In short, far from being a brilliant, potentially war-winning strategy, it was a piece of folly that was always likely to fail. Initially, the plan was based on British and French warships forcing their way through the Dardanelles, and eventually arriving off

BBC History Magazine

THE ART ARCHIVE–ALAMY

I

n a decidedly unglamorous war, Gallipoli provides a splash of colour. It was a dramatic strategic stroke, originating in the imagination of Winston Churchill, which sent soldiers and sailors far from the drab trenches of Flanders to a romantic country – familiar, from the pages of Homer, to the classically educated officers who served there. Conceived at a time when Britain’s leaders grappled with the unpalatable reality of deadlock on the western front, the Dardanelles campaign utilised Britain’s major asset, seapower. A British-French fleet would force its way through the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that separate the Gallipoli peninsula in Europe from Asia, and reach Constantinople, capital of Germany’s ally Ottoman Turkey. With Turkey out of the war, this would aid Russia and allow a large army provided by Balkan states such as Romania and Greece to be unleashed in the Balkans. This would tilt the odds decisively in the favour of the Allies. The reality was to be very different. Throwing away strategic surprise by bombarding Turkish coastal defences in February 1915, the fleet suffered heavy losses from mines and shore batteries when on 18 March it attempted to force the straits. The campaign moved into a new phase on 25 April when the British 29th Division landed on the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, at Cape Helles; the untried Australian and New Zealand Corps (ANZAC) landed at what became known as Anzac Cove; and a French force landed, as a diversion, on the Asiatic shore. While the French re-embarked, according to plan, the men of 29th Division were pinned down at the water’s edge on the two main landing beaches. By the end of the day, the 29th had established a precarious toehold, but at the cost of terrible casualties. At Anzac Cove, the Australasians pushed inland only to be counterattacked by the Turks and pushed back almost to the beach – again, losses were heavy.

HULTON N ARCHIVE–GETTY IMAGES

the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. This ‘ships alone’ plan failed. Even if a military force had been sent initially to support the fleet, it would have needed to be significantly larger than the one that was actually deployed, as it would have had to operate on both shores of the straits, to clear the coastal defences. Such a force was simply not available in March 1915. Even if the mines in the straits had been cleared and the battleships had got through (and it was not a given that the fleet would arrive at Constantinople unscathed) the question remains: what would happen next? The foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, admitted it was hoped that the presence of a hostile fleet would bring about a coup d’état that would lead to Turkey dropping out of the war. There is no credible evidence that such a coup would have been triggered. If that didn’t happen, and lacking soldiers to fight a ground campaign, the fleet would have had little choice but to turn tail and retrace its steps, humiliated. The whole concept was founded, to a remarkable degree, on wishful thinking.

“Recent scholarship concludes that planning and intelligence were defective”

BBC History Magazine

Multinational force Many different nationalities from the British and French empires fought in the Dardanelles. Here Indian troops are seen at Cape Helles Myth

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The fighting at Gallipoli was mainly an Anzac affair It may be the Australian casualties that are remembered in popular history, but the conflict was a multinational campaign Largely because of the importance of the campaign in the shaping of Australian and New Zealand identity, the participation of troops of other nationalities has been marginalised in popular memory. An even more extreme view is that it was an Australian campaign: it is worth remembering that the ‘NZ’ in Anzac stands for ‘New Zealand’. In reality, Gallipoli was a multinational operation, involving troops from the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and undivided Ireland), Newfoundland, British India (including Gurkhas from Nepal), France, the French empire (including north Africans and Senegalese), Russian Jews (who wanted to fight the Ottomans as a first step to establishing a homeland in Palestine), as well as Australians and New Zealanders, the latter including Maori. Anzacs formed a relatively modest proportion of the total. The initial landing force on 25 April 1915 consisted of 18,100 men in the ANZAC Corps, 16,800 French, and 27,500 British. The total number of British soldiers that served at Gallipoli far outnumbered Australians. Indeed more French troops fought on the peninsula than did Australians. However, the Australians had the second highest casualties. The

figures for Allied killed and wounded make sobering reading. The British suffered 70,700 casualties (of which 26,000 were killed); Australians, 25,700 (7,800 killed); French, 23,000 (8,000 killed); New Zealanders, 7,100 (2,445 killed) and Indians, 5,500 (including 1,682 killed). Aside from the fighting at Anzac Cove, some actions involved sizeable numbers of troops from particular countries. The landing at V Beach at Cape Helles on 25 April involved two Irish battalions, 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers and 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers. However, two English County regiments, 2nd Hampshires and 4th Worcestershires, fought there too. England, the largest and most populous part of the UK, not surprisingly provided the backbone of the Allied force on the peninsula. The defending forces were commonly referred to as ‘Turks’ but this was not entirely accurate. Formally, they belonged to the army of the Ottoman empire. Like its British and French counterparts, this was a polyglot entity which encompassed many different peoples. Greeks, Turks, Jews, Arabs and Armenian troops, and German officers, served with the Ottoman army. Nonetheless, British empire troops called their adversary ‘Johnny Turk’. 57

Gallipoli / Myths Myth

Myth

3

The fiasco turned Australia from a British colony into a nation Did one event really forge Australia’s identity?

Australia emerged as a nation on 25 April 1915. On this first Anzac Day, nationhood was baptised with the blood of young Australians sacrificed by incompetent British commanders – or so a crude version of the origins of Australian nationalism argues. The reality was more complex. April 1915 was an important moment in the emergence of an Australian identity, in particular in Australians defining themselves in opposition to the English. However, most Australians throughout the First World War, and long after, regarded themselves as in some sense ‘British’. A critical figure in the emergence of Australian identity was Charles Bean. He served as official Australian war correspondent at Gallipoli and on the western front, and after the war wrote influential volumes of official history. Bean celebrated the ordinary ‘digger’ (slang for soldier), highlighting the values of ‘mateship’, courage, ‘larrikinism’ (spirited irreverence) and disrespect for authority, and the fact that Australians were natural soldiers. He drew a clear comparison with English troops, and, in Jenny Macleod’s words (in her book Gallipoli: Making History helped “codify what it was to be an History), Austrralian”. Gallipoli thus became a key po oint in the transformation from British colony to nation. Historians haave critiqued this ‘Anzac Legend’: the supp posedly egalitarian nature of the Au ustralian Imperial Force has been exxaggerated, while larrikinism shaded into racism and criminality. As for the idea of natural soldiers, Anzac forces were poorly trained and badly disciplined, which told against them when faced with deetermined Turks on 25 April. Australian troops in time became A highly effective, but this was largely h the product of experience, training, and tactical and technological improvements common to British empire armies. Nonetheless, a crude version of the Anzac legend has embedded itself in Australian ular culture – Peter Weir’s 1981 film popu Galliipoli is an example – and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries helped fuel Australian nationalism.

“A crude version of the Anzac legend has embedded itself in popular culture”

The August Offensive nearly succeeded in breaking the deadlock on the peninsula In fact the so-called ‘lost victory’ never stood a chance

On the night of 6/7 August 1915 British IX Corps was landed at Suvla Bay as part of a major effort to break the deadlock on the Gallipoli peninsula. Legend has it that it failed by a narrow margin, and that a wonderful opportunity to win the campaign was missed. British troops, despite facing minimal opposition, failed to push on boldly off the beaches. As a result the Ottomans were able to move troops to seal off the potential breakthrough. Worse, while the British were, according to one version, brewing tea on the beaches, Australian soldiers were fighting and dying in a diversion at Lone Pine and a major attack on Sari Bair ridge. The failure at Suvla ensured the Anzac assault would also fail. Thus was lost the chance of the Allies finally breaking through the Turkish trenches, reaching the west bank of the Dardanelles and commencing the clearance of the coastal defences prior to the fleet finally forcing its way through the straits and heading for Constantinople. This ‘lost victory’ view is a fantasy. The main attack was launched from Anzac Cove, not

Suvla. Britain’s IX Corps was put ashore not to carry out some great Napoleonic masterstroke, aiming deep at the Ottoman rear, but to secure the bay as a logistic base for the operations against Sari Bair and beyond. LieutenantGeneral Sir Frederick Stopford was clearly not the most dynamic of commanders, but he cannot be blamed for failing to convert an operation intended to do one thing into something entirely different. What happened at Suvla had no bearing on the bitter struggle for Sari Bair. The attack failed there because the plan was deeply flawed and immediately went awry. Even if Sari Bair had been taken and held, as Australian historian Rhys Crawley has shown in meticulous detail, the obstacles that remained were formidable: punishing terrain to be crossed, insufficient numbers of troops and guns, woefully inadequate logistic support, and a determined and tenacious enemy. These factors meant that, far from the August Offensive failing narrowly, the plan was horribly overambitious and effectively doomed from the beginning.

T war correspondent Charles The Bean celebrated Australian troops’ B values of ‘mateship’ and courage v

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BBC History Magazine

WINDMILL BOOKS–GETTY IMAGES

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It was a heroicromantic campaign

Myth

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IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM HU 57426

Early historians glamorised Gallipoli, but fighting there differed little from the western front The experience of the ordinary British soldier at Gallipoli did not differ in essentials from his counterpart on the western front. However, in contrast to the Somme and Passchendaele, the British have constructed what historian Jenny Macleod has called a “heroic-romantic myth” around the fighting at the Dardanelles. It joins a select band of aspects of the First World War that have received this treatment – the exploits of air aces over the trenches and TE Lawrence’s role in the Arab Revolt are two others. The bloody attritional battles on the western front simply did not lend themselves to being romanticised, although heroic acts by individuals were plentiful. Why Gallipoli was treated this way is a complex question. Some, at least ex-public school officers, were thrilled to be fighting almost within sight of the ruins of Troy, an area which had a glamour absent from, say, the slag heaps and mining cottages of the Loos area of northern France. Perhaps looking back on glorious defeat in an enterprise that apparently came close to shortening the war offered some psychological compensation for veterans of

the campaign and for the bereaved. Certainly some of the key figures in romanticising Gallipoli through their writings, men such as General Sir Ian Hamilton, who commanded the Allied forces, and Winston Churchill, had good reason to rewrite history to defend their reputations. For the ordinary soldier the campaign was bereft of glory and romance. Instead there were primitive trenches that were so close to the beaches that even in rear areas it was impossible ever to be completely free of danger, vermin, dust that got into food and tea, and the ever-present flies: “They were all around your mouth and on any cuts or sores you’d got, which all turned septic through it,” Private Harold Boughton remembered. Above all there was the fear of death and wounding, the strain of combat, and of course the awful sights and sounds produced by 20th-century industrialised warfare. Private Ernest Lye wrote of “the cries of the wounded and see[ing corpses] rotting in the glare of the sun”. These were the aspects of Gallipoli that have been airbrushed out of the potent heroic-romantic myth.

“Corpses rotting in the sun… have been airbrushed out of the heroic-romantic myth”

Little sign of glory At rest in the trenches, Suvla Plain, August 1915. Despite trench warfare conditions similar to those of the western front, the Dardanelles campaign was romanticised afterwards

No lost victory British gunners at Suvla. The purpose of landing troops at Suvla Bay has frequently been misunderstood

Gary Sheffield is professor of war studies at the University of Wolverhampton. His books on the First World War include A Short History of the First World War (Oneworld, 2014) DISCOVER MORE BOOKS 왘 Gallipoli: Making History by

Jenny Macleod, ed, (Routledge, 2014) 왘 Gallipoli: The End of the Myth

by Robin Prior (Yale, 2009) TELEVISION 왘 A BBC Two documentary, Gallipoli,

is due to air in April on BBC Two Turn the page for an interview with Australian writer Peter FitzSimons about his new book on Gallipoli BBC History Magazine

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Galllipoli / Interview

Australian troops (widely known as ‘Diggers’) at Anzac Cove in April 1915. Their exploits at Gallipoli would help to forge a nation, says Peter FitzSimons

Tales of the diggers Australian writer Peter FitzSimons, author of a new history of Gallipoli, talks to Rob Attar about the experiences of his compatriots in the battle and explains why it has become such a defining moment in the country’s history

Listen to Peter FitzSimons ON THE PODCAST

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Why do you think that so many Australians volunteered to fight in the war in Europe? The romantic reason was to fight for Britain – and that was certainly true of many of them. Andrew Fisher, who became Australian prime minister (for a third time) soon after the war began, proclaimed to great acclaim: We will fight for Great Britain to the “last man and the last shilling”. There were lots of patriots who left accounts saying that the mother country had called on her lion cubs to come to her aid and that’s what they were doing. Others joined for adventure and still others joined – and this was not an insignificant reason – for “six shillings a day, mate”. It wasn’t bad pay. The British soldier was getting paid just one shilling a day. In my book I tell the story of the Australians who went absolutely crazy in the red light district of Cairo. Our soldiers were very well known in the city and all the ladies of the night wanted an Australian because they had six shillings in

their pocket every night, so they were the first in line. Tragically a lot of soldiers got venereal disease and were sent home in disgrace. Were the Australian troops surprised by the ferocity of the fighting that they encountered at Gallipoli? I think so. It was certainly hell on earth. At the battle of the Nek [on 7 August] you had Australian soldiers charging about 50 yards across open ground with no bullets in their rifles into open machine gun fire and artillery. And yet the veterans of Gallipoli who then went on to the western front all said: “Look, we thought Gallipoli was bad but we’ve got to the western front and realised we didn’t know anything.” There, the German artillery was so overwhelming and so precise that some Australians almost looked back on Gallipoli with nostalgia. We lost 46,000 killed on the western front, which almost makes the 9,000 lost at Gallipoli pale into insignificance. But still Gallipoli is writ so large in the Australian BBC History Magazine

AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL

Why does the battle of Gallipoli seem to have so much more importance for Australians than for people in Britain? In 1901 all the colonies of Australia came together to become a country but there was a view at the time that you weren’t a serious nation until you had shed blood – both your own and that of your enemies. Our great revered poet, Banjo Paterson, wrote a poem when the news came through of the Gallipoli landings: “…We’re not State children any more/We’re all Australians now…!/The mettle that a race can show/Is proved with shot and steel,/And now we know what nations know/And feel what nations feel…”” There in that poem you have got the exultation that took place in Australia; our diggers (slang for Antipodean soldiers) had fought for the British empire and they had done well. There is a pretty strong argument – which I have come to believe in – that while Australians went to that war as loyal sons of Great Britain, they came back as Australians.

YIE SANDISON

psyche. I think if you tapped most Australians for their military knowledge, 90 per cent of it would start and finish at Gallipoli and 90 per cent of that would centre on the first day. How did the Australians view the Turks they were fighting? Early on they had little respect for them: “Let us at these Turks and we’ll sort them out.” Yet, even though the Ottoman empire was on its knees by this time, it was nevertheless an empire with hundreds of years of martial tradition. These men knew what they were doing; they believed in their cause; they were very courageous and fought very hard. The story I most love in my book concerns an incident on 24 May 1915. After one month of fighting, no man’s land at Anzac Cove was filled with stinking dead bodies, and a truce was arranged. Both sides came up waving flags and the Turks and Australians began to talk to each other. The Turks had one particular question for the Australians, which was: “Who are you?” The Australians would explain: “We’re from Australia.” “Yes, yes we know that,” the Turks would reply, “we looked in the atlas, but why are you here?” And then the Australians would have to explain about being part of the British empire. The Turks had a respect for the Australians because they knew the punishment they had taken and still held on. And the Australians had a respect for the Turks because they saw the way they kept charging onto their guns, which was extremely courageous. From then on there was empathy between the two sides. Three days after that meeting, something thumped in front of the Australian trenches and for the first time it didn’t explode. It was a package with a note that said: “To our heroic enemies.” Inside were Turkish cigarettes, which our blokes smoked and thought were pretty good. They wanted to send something back and all they could find were cans of bully beef – some dating back to the Boer War, reputedly. They threw some over to the Turks and a minute later it came back with a note: “No more bully beef!” Recently I was speaking to our former prime minister Bob Hawke and I asked him what was the most moving time in his period of office. He said that it was the Turkish and Australian troops grew to respect each other, says Peter FitzSimons, pictured here BBC History

‘Invaded’ seemed like such an ugly word, but that is what it was, really. Yet in Australia we didn’t think of it as an invasion 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, in 1990. They flew back 53 diggers – most of whom were 90 or 95 years old – and when they got there, who should pull up, but 100-odd Turkish soldiers of the same vintage? These two groups of very old men walked towards each other across the same no man’s land where they had first met 75 years earlier. Our blokes put out their hands – let bygones be bygones – but that wasn’t good enough for the Turks. They pushed away their hands and gave them bear hugs, kissing them on both cheeks. There was still this extraordinary respect between the Turks and Australians. That’s a remarkable story, considering that the Australians had originally come to invade their country... It’s very interesting you use that phrase. In my introduction, I explain how, like most Australians, I took Gallipoli in with my mother’s milk. I studied it at school and at university. It’s in my bones, part of the Australian birthright. Then, in 1999, I was listening to ABC Radio in the car and a historian said, “when Australia invaded Turkey” and I just about ran off the road! ‘Invaded’ seemed like such an ugly word but then thinking about it that’s what it was, really. But in Australia we just didn’t think of it as an invasion – I dare say similar to the fact that we still don’t think of our dispossession of the indigenous people as an invasion. But what else would you call it if you were an indigenous person and you saw the big ships arrive?

heroic the Australian troops really were at Gallipoli. Have you formed a view about that issue? Cecil Aspinall-Oglander was on the staff of [Gallipoli commander] General Hamilton and became a British war historian afterwards. He wrote that some of the Australians had run away on that first day – which does not fit with our national image – but I imagine that some of it was true. I often wonder what I would have done if I had been in the third wave at the battle of the Nek. The first wave of 150 Australian soldiers was just completely slaughtered, as was the second one. If I would have been in the third wave, would I have given in to civilian sanity and said: “I’m not going to do that. My job is not to give my life for my country, my job is to make some other poor bastard give his life for his country”? Had I landed on the shores of Gallipoli, looked up and seen machine guns firing and shrapnel coming down at me, what would I have done? The numbers are disputed, but certainly some Australians gave in to that and refused to fight – just as I dare say some Brits did at Cape Helles – but the majority went forwards. Against all the accusations of cowardice, when I go to Anzac Cove and see that beach, I look up and think: “God help me, how the hell did those bastards hold on for as long as they did? They never had the higher ground, never had sufficient supplies, never had as many machine gun bullets, or as much artillery, or as many men.” There is no doubt the Australians did very well, as did the Kiwis and the Brits, to hold on against overwhelming numbers. How do you think we should remember the Gallipoli campaign now? I strongly believe that we should commemorate, not celebrate, this centenary. When I wander through the graveyards and see the ages of those who died and read about the circumstances of their deaths, I feel that we need to understand their world, what they did and why it happened. As that great line from Rudyard Kipling says: “Lest we forget.” Peter FitzSimons is an Australian journalist and author whose work includes several history books DISCOVER MORE BOOK  Gallipoli by Peter FitzSimons

(Bantam Press, 2015) ON THE PODCAST

One debate you bring out in the book is the question of how

Listen to more from this interview with Peter FitzSimons on the History Extra podcast this month  www.historyextra.com/podcasts

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king john by William Shakespeare

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A co-production between Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal & Derngate, Northampton

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Experts discuss and review the latest history releases

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Steven Weinberg photographed at the University of Texas. “We build on the past, and that, I think, is one of the reasons why the writing of science is legitimately different from art history or even political history,” he says

Photography by Matt Valentine

MATT VALENTINE

INTERVIEW / STEVEN WEINBERG

“The history of science can prevent us from making the mistakes of the past” Steven Weinberg talks to Matt Elton about his new book which explores thousands of years of scientific discovery, from the ancient Greeks to the present day BBC History Magazine

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Books / Interview PROFILE STEVEN WEINBERG Born in New York City in 1933, Weinberg began his career at the University of California, Berkeley before lecturing at institutions including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work in the field of theoretical physics has won numerous awards, perhaps most notably the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. He is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

IN CONTEXT

The development of scientific thought – broadly, the attempt to make sense of the physical universe – is generally understood to have undergone particularly rapid progress in two periods. The ancient Greek world saw contributions from figures including polymath Ptolemy, while the developments of the 16th and 17th-century scientific revolution were generated by thinkers including physicists and mathematicians Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and philosopher and scientist René Descartes.

What inspired you to write this book? I had been teaching an undergraduate course in the history of physics and astronomy for students who didn’t already know a lot about it. As I taught, I became aware that things in the past were quite different from what I had thought. It’s not true to say that scientists were reaching for the same goals as us and that they were simply not getting as close as we’ve come. In fact, they really had no idea of the kind of things that can be learned about the world and the way to learn it. And I began to see the history of science not as the accumulation of facts and theories, but as the learning of a way of interacting with nature that leads to reliable knowledge. It’s surprised me how far the great natural scientists of the past were from anything like our modern conception of science. Heading to the start of this story, how much do we owe the ancient Greeks? I think the people of the scientific revolution owed them a tremendous amount, particularly the Greeks of the Hellenistic (roughly the third, second and first centuries BC) and Roman periods. For example, Copernicus did not base his theory of the Earth going around the sun on his own observations or those of his contemporaries in Europe, but on the earlier work of the Greeks, particularly Ptolemy. He saw that Ptolemy’s theory could be rectified and made understandable by just changing the point of view from a stationary Earth to a stationary sun with the Earth orbiting it. The peculiarities of Ptolemy’s theory were simply due to the fact that we observe the solar system from a moving platform – the Earth. But Copernicus made no significant observations of his own: he

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was relying on what Ptolemy had already done. There are many similar examples, too. However, while we refer to Isaac Newton’s work to explain the mechanics of motion and gravity in physics courses today, we don’t go back to the Greeks. They are part of our heritage, but their value was mostly in making the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries possible. Why were the ancient Greeks able to produce so much important work? Well, not all of them were. The period that many people think of as the golden age of ancient Greece – the Hellenic period (the fifth and fourth centuries BC), when Athens was at the centre of intellectual life – was not very productive, scientifically. They made some qualitative advances (for example, the philosopher and scientist Aristotle gave a nice argument for why the Earth is a sphere) but the detailed mathematical confrontation of theory and observation we associate with modern physics and astronomy didn’t exist. That began in the Hellenistic period, when the centre of Greek thought moved to Alexandria, and the Greek city-states were absorbed into empires, first the Hellenistic kingdoms and then the Roman empire. I don’t know precisely why the change happened at that point. Greek thought in general took a less aristocratic tone, and people who did science also began to be concerned with its practical application. They also became much less religious: the religiosity you find in the work of Plato, which is largely gone with Aristotle, seems to be completely absent by the time you get to the great Hellenistics leading up to Ptolemy. How far did the Middle Ages set the ground for the scientific revolution? The Middle Ages certainly provided an institutional framework in the form of the great universities. Copernicus was educated at

“The study of the history of science is the best antidote to the philosophy of science”

LISTEN TO MORE FROM THIS INTERVIEW historyextra.com /podcasts

universities in Italy; Galileo taught at Padua and was then a professor at Pisa, although he didn’t teach; Newton was always associated with the University of Cambridge. These universities were offshoots of the cathedral schools that had begun a kind of intellectual revolution in the 11th century in Europe. They kept alive the idea of a rational universe governed by law, and in particular when the teachings of Aristotle became firmly fixed in the academic curriculum, the idea of a rational, understandable world became dominant in European thought. But it wasn’t a scientific world. No one in the Middle Ages really had anything approaching our modern conception of science, and they made very little progress towards actual scientific knowledge. There weree arguments about the possible movement of the Earth, but in the end they didn’t lead to anything like the Copernican theory. The Middle Ages was not an intellectual desert, but it wasn’t a period that resembles either the Hellenistic age that went before or the scientific revolution that came afterwards. What was the contribution of Islamic thinkers in this period? After the decline of the Roman empire in the west, science became, I would say, ineffective and largely absent in the Greek half of the Roman empire. You find no scientific work – at least, I’m not aware of any – during about 1,000 years of the Byzantine empire. During that period, science was kept alive in the world of Islam, first in the form of translations of the great accomplishments of the Greeks, and in original work that built on and improved on what the Hellenistic and Roman Greeks had done. Some of it was very impressive: I think of the work of al-Haytham in optics, who for the first time understood why light is bent when it goes, for example, from air into water. However, although Islamic science in one form or another continued for a few centuries, its golden age was really pretty much over by 1100. If you list the great names of Islamic science, they’re all before that date. Why that’s the case is an endlessly interesting issue. It may have something to do with the appearance of a fiercer version of Islam: for example, Spain was taken over by people from north Africa who formed the Almohad caliphate, which was extremely repressive. There were episodes in which

BBC History Magazine

“It’s surprised me how far the great natural scientists of the past were from anything like our modern conception of science”

MATT VALENTINE

books of scientific or medical technique were burned by Islamic authorities, and the 11th-century philosopher and theologian Al-Ghazali argued explicitly against science because he saw it as a distraction from Islam. So had Islamic science run out of steam, or was it suppressed by changes in Islam? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a similar question to that about Greek science. Did that simply run out of steam around 400 or 500 AD, or was it suppressed by the adoption of Christianity? I think that there are good arguments on both sides of both questions. Are there any characters in this story that particularly stand out for you? If I understand that in the sense of who I’d like to have a beer with, Christiaan Huygens is a strong contender. He was a 17th-century Dutch polymath who did a huge variety of things: he discovered the rings of Saturn and the formula for centrifugal force, he invented the pendulum clock... I could go on! But what stands out for me is that he very explicitly understood the relationship between science and mathematics in a way that had always been muddled. Before him, and perhaps a few other people around at the same sort of time, there had been a large body of thought that felt that science was a branch of mathematics and that its truths

BBC History Magazine

could be determined by purely mathematical reasoning. This goes all the way back to Plato, who thought that it wasn’t necessary to look at the sky in order to do astronomy – that pure reason was all you needed. Huygens specifically said, we can only make our assumptions because we intend to work on their consequences and see if they agree with observation – and if they don’t, we will abandon them. This attitude is one you just don’t find very much before. I also think I’d have liked Ptolemy: he expressed his joy of astronomy in a way that was lovely. In just a few lines he wrote that, when he studied the wheeling motions of the planets, he felt his feet leave the ground and stood with the gods drinking nectar. Are there any misconceptions about science and its history that you’d like this book to change? One misconception that’s been foisted on us by a generation of philosophers of science is the idea of the 20th-century physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn that science undergoes discontinuous changes after which it’s impossible to understand the science of a former age. I think that’s wrong. I think that, even though you can marvel at the importance of every great change in physics, you see the roots of that change in

what went before – and you don’t forget about it. Indeed, you see the new theory as an improvement on the old theory, not an abandonment of it. We build on the past, and that, I think, is one of the reasons why the writing of science is different from art history or even political history. We can’t say that the Impressionists were right to abandon the photographic realism of the Romantic period, or that the Norman conquest was a ‘good’ thing. That kind of judgment is silly. On the other hand, we can certainly say that Newton was right and Descartes was wrong about what keeps the planets going around the sun – there is a definite sense of discovering right and wrong. That’s another important point: science is not just an expression of a cultural milieu, as some historians and sociologists of science have argued. It’s the discovery of truths that are out there to be discovered, and it can help prevent us from making the same mistakes as the past. As I was once crass enough to say, the study of the history of science is the best antidote to the philosophy of science. To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Steven Weinberg (Allen Lane, 432 pages, £20)

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THE UNTOLD STORY

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Image courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy In partnership with the National Maritime Museum and National Museum of the Royal Navy

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REVIEWS encouraged by circling foreign powers. As with his superb The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2011), this book is distinguished by its ambitious scope and use of Turkish and Arabic sources that will be new to most British readers. I learned a huge amount. Central to Rogan’s story is Enver Pasha, leader of political reform movement the Young Turks. Rogan’s description of Enver is vivid; it’s just a shame that those of other characters don’t match it. An over-confident chancer, Enver once removed a prime minister at gunpoint and “contemplated marching through Afghanistan to India”. Enver had wanted to stand back and let the Great Powers destroy one another. But his attempt to do so via secret deals with both Germany and Russia was ruined by the independent-minded German commander who sailed off with two warships and bombarded the Russian port of Sevastopol. The Ottomans were thus dragged into a war that would destroy them. Egged on by the Germans, the sultan, in his role as caliph, declared a jihad against their common enemy. The Germans First World War Ottoman troops shelter in trenches in the Dardanelles. “While most previous hoped that the call would turn millions works have focused on the Allied side, Rogan offers an Ottoman perspective,” says Barr of Muslims into a liability for the British and French empires in which they lived. From then on, “much of the Allied war effort in the Middle East was driven by what proved to be an unwarranted JAMES BARR commends an account of how a historic, but fear of jihad,” says Rogan. Britain’s consequent desire to quickly eliminate the weakened, empire was finished off by the First World War Ottomans explains why Gallipoli was chosen a landing site. “Win the ridge clear, authoritative book, others were and we should win the Narrows,” an The Fall of the Ottomans MAGAZINE less sure. A Lebanese cleric noted in Anzac officer wrote. “Open the Narby Eugene Rogan August 1914 how people in his village CHOICE rows to the navy and Constantinople Allen Lane, 512 pages, £25 feared “the outbreak of a murderous was ours.” In his 1950 book war that would devour the cultivated The British underestimated both the Portrait of a Turkish lands and the dry earth”. Sadly, they geography and their opponents, whom Family, Irfan Orga re- were right. Orga’s grandmother would Russia had just hammered in the Caucalled a family row in lose two sons: one was Orga’s father, casus. “The country is much more dif1914 as war broke out. who died en route to the Dardanelles. ficult than I imagined,” admitted KitchAs the Gallipoli centenary approaches, His father proposed ener, when finally he saw the battlefield this is a new history of the war in the they sell their home Middle East. Whereas most previous and business. “Non“Eugene Rogan’s works have focused on the Allied side sense!” his grandma of individual campaigns, Rogan offers snapped, “Why should a war in Europe book is distinguished an Ottoman perspective, describing make any difference in our lives?” a failing empire beset by secessionists by its ambition” As Eugene Rogan recounts in this

BRIDGEMAN

The end of the Ottomans

BBC History Magazine

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Books / Reviews COMING SOON… “Next issue’s reviews span a huge range of history, from the ancient Greeks to the life of a Cold War scientist (and possible spy). Plus, I’ll be talking to David Starkey about Magna Carta, his look at the story behind the famous charter and its continuing importance today. ” Matt Elton, reviews editor

“The war had profound consequences for the Middle East. The Ottoman empire was carved up” Rogan knits together different fronts, he argues that the surrender was forced on the British by a Turkish general trying to salvage Ottoman prestige after another cataclysmic Caucasus defeat. It was not until late 1916 that British fortunes improved, after the outbreak of the Arab revolt in Mecca. In 1917 the Turks, ground down by disease, famine, pyrrhic victories and still more terrible defeats, lost Baghdad then Jerusalem. More enterprising tactics, including the extensive use of deception, helped secure British victories in Palestine that had eluded the plodding planners of Gallipoli. The irony was that, while the fighting in the Middle East had no impact on the final outcome of the war, the outcome of the war had profound consequences for the Middle East. The Ottoman empire was carved up by its vengeful European rivals, along lines devised secretly in the war, creating the states, and enmities, that we recognise today. James Barr is author of A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle Eastt (Simon & Schuster, 2012)

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Arrogance and atrocity GARY SHEFFIELD admires a fresh interpretation of Germany’s

ambitions of taking Moscow during the Second World War The Battle for Moscow by David Stahel Cambridge University Press, 455 pages, £25

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, rested on flimsy foundations. Axis forces needed to smash the Red Army quickly, in the USSR’s borderlands. Otherwise the Germans, at the end of lengthy supply lines, would be at a huge disadvantage in the fighting. Arguably, by failing to win decisively in June and July 1941, Hitler’s army lost the war in the east, although it took four bloody years before the Soviets sealed the victory. A chance for the Germans to turn the tables when Army Group Centre pushed into the outskirts of Moscow in November failed after a counterattack on 5 December by fresh Red Army forces. The near-success of Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow, was thus one of the great ‘might have beens’ of the war – or so received wisdom has it. David Stahel, in his excellent book, shows that this ‘missed opportunity’ theory has no basis in fact. The effort of getting forces to Moscow gravely weakened the attackers, which put a major assault on the heavily fortified city beyond their capabilities. In military jargon, the advance had ‘culminated’. Marshal Georgi Zhukov was able to say to Stalin with complete confidence: “We will, without fail, hold Moscow.” Soviet high command amassed significant reserves in the Moscow sector, which were unleashed with devastating effect against the attackers slogging forward. Stahel exploits German archives to great effect to tell his story. His tracing of the influence of the experience of the First World War on the German

decision-makers of 1941 is particularly interesting. Tannenberg, the great battle of encirclement against tsarist forces in 1914, was interpreted in cultural and racial terms as an example of Germans using skilful manoeuvre to overcome greater numbers of Russian barbarians. This fed into the ludicrous overconfidence of Barbarossa. Another battle that influenced German thinking in 1941 was the Marne, the turning point on the western front in September 1914. This was viewed (erroneously) as a great missed opportunity; if German commanders had held their nerve and pushed on rather than retreating, things could have been very different. This ‘Marne complex’ shaped the thinking that kept German armies pushing towards Moscow. Stahel writes well. He is particularly good on the war of annihilation waged by German forces, with soberingly graphic descriptions of atrocities. He also provides fascinating detail about the daily life of ordinary German soldiers many miles away from their loved ones. This sensitive handling of such material means this is not just a significant piece of scholarship, but a readable one. Gary Sheffield d is author of A Short History of the First World War (Oneworld, 2014)

German soldiers pictured in Russia, c1941. David Stahel’s book shows how “the effort of getting forces to Moscow gravely weakened the attackers”

TOPFOTO

himself. “I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die,” barked Mustapha Kemal. His tenacious soldiers obeyed, in appalling numbers. Gallipoli casualty figures show that ‘Little Mehmet’ was twice as likely to die once wounded as his Tommy counterpart. Far from bringing the war to an early close, Gallipoli prolonged it. The victory led Bulgaria to join the Central Powers, establishing a direct link between Istanbul and Berlin. The Turks embarked on a massacre of their Armenian subjects, who had rebelled simultaneously. The British tried to put off any emboldened jihadis by throwing themselves at Baghdad. It ended in the humiliating surrender at Kut. In an example of how

Fields of gold FRANK TRENTMANN on a compelling account that traces the growth of the

worldwide cotton industry, and the regional problems caused by its success Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert

BRIDGEMAN

Allen Lane, 640 pages, £30

Cotton was first grown and made into cloth 5,000 years ago in what is today Pakistan. The ancient Greeks admired Indian cotton; it flowered in Mexico and Peru before the European conquest; and, in China, many people were wearing it by 1650. Europeans knew it then as the fruit of the ‘vegetable lamb’ but virtually no one was able to enjoy its soft touch and, instead, dressed in linen or wool. By the 19th century, Europeans had seized control of cotton. In recent years, historians have shown how imported Indian cottons with their bright colours and artistic patterns set in motion major changes in taste, fashion, sociability and technology in 18th-century Britain. Sven Beckert’s interests lie elsewhere. The rise in demand is a backdrop to a larger story of how Europeans came to take over production and connect land and labour in a new European-dominated world order. By the mid-20th century that control had, once again, been lost to Asia. A generation ago, economic historians downgraded the ‘industrial revolution’ to slow and gradual growth, turning their attention away from big industries and factories to smaller trades and workshops. Empire of Cotton returns our attention to the fabric at the heart of industrial capitalism by giving it new relevance to our times. Unlike any other material, cotton linked factories at home with millions of slaves and peasants cultivating the fibre across the world. Britain did not only seize spinning and weaving from India, but worked hard to control cultivation and supply. Capital, land and labour were integrated in a previously unknown and uneven global system. This ambitious and compelling

BBC History Magazine

Workers on a plantation in the US state of Georgia, 1895. Sven Beckert’s history of cotton “returns our attention to the fabric at the heart of industrial capitalism”

book lets us see how the tectonic plates of globalisation were shifting. What emerges is not an older story of Britain’s ‘genius’ for innovation and exchange, but the centrality of war, empire and violence. In the late 18th century, cultivation was extended to the West Indies, and afterwards to Brazil and the United States. The British East India Company used taxes and coercion to make Indian weavers work for them exclusively. When the American Civil War led to the reduction of US cotton exports, British state power again helped, by expanding cultivation in India, redefining contracts and squeezing common land. One of the delights of this book is its geographic range. Profits made by British cotton-masters set off an international race to develop the next generation of factories. Why did such projects succeed in Belgium and Mexico but fail in Egypt?

“Beckert’s book lets us see how the tectonic plates of globalisation were shifting”

‘War capitalism’, to use Beckert’s term, enabled a nation to attract factories but was not enough, on its own, for industrial development. That also needed favourable institutions, such as wage labour and a state capable of protecting its own market while it nursed infant industries to adulthood. Egypt had neither whereas, in Mexico, the state policed the marketplace. In the early 20th century, control of cotton started moving back to where it had been before the industrial revolution: Asia. Rising labour costs priced European cotton textiles out of the world market. Wages in Japan, Beckert reminds us, were even lower than those in India. Spindles also multiplied in China, many owned by Japanese firms. Today, almost half the world’s spindles and looms stand in China. Once again, the state plays a central role in development. So soft on the skin, cotton has a history drenched in violence, enslavement and suffering. Recent deaths in Asian factories are reminders that inhumane working conditions persist, while people in rich and developing countries buy ever cheaper clothes ever more frequently. Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck

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Books / Reviews A roll-call in Dachau concentration camp, c1933. Timothy Ryback’s account is a “fascinating, meticulously researched and elegantly written” study of one man’s bid to uncover the truth behind the site

In search of the truth ROGER MOORHOUSE on an engaging study exploring one

man’s investigation of the early brutality of the Nazi regime

Bodley Head, 288 pages, £16.99

On 13 April 1933, a Munich deputy prosecutor, Josef Hartinger, was called in to investigate an incident at a ‘detention facility’, where four prisoners had been shot, apparently trying to escape. That ‘facility’ was Dachau, one of a rash of so-called ‘wild’ concentration camps set up to intimidate political opponents after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power that year. Its prisoners were among the first of Hitler’s millions of victims. This engaging and illuminating book tells the story of Hartinger’s investigation. In Dachau, under the psychopathic SS-commandant Hilmar Wäckerle, prisoner abuses and even murder were integral to the regime. Most of Dachau’s victims that spring bore horrific wounds

caused by regular, systematic beatings. Clearly Wäckerle and his men considered themselves above the law. To some extent, they were. Hartinger was conservatively-minded, but he believed in the German republic and so, unlike many colleagues, pursued Nazi and communist miscreants with equal vigour. His efforts to uncover the truth would reveal not only Nazi barbarity, but a Bavarian judiciary and political establishment already compromised and slipping into collaboration with the Nazis. Ryback’s is a meticulous micro-history, which, through Hartinger’s brave, abortive efforts to bring the Dachau perpetrators to justice, sheds light on a number of related topics, including the mechanics of the Nazi consolidation of

“This is a fascinating study, meticulously researched and elegantly written”

How to catch your man JOANNA BOURKE learns how to be the ‘perfect 1950s woman’

in a book that evocatively explores the tensions of the decade Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s by Virginia Nicholson Viking, 544 pages, £16.99

An 11-page pamphlet in 1951 told women how to snare a husband. In capital letters, they were told: “NEVER TALK ABOUT YOURSELF” and reminded: “It is often necessary to lose in order to win.” Doe-eyed women were informed:

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“Men are terrified of brainy women” so “Be childlike and feminine at all times.” We have no idea how much they took such advice to heart, but there is no doubt that the 1950s saw confrontations between different conceptions of what it means to be a woman. This book is an erudite reflection on such tensions, but also fun, witty, and irreverent. It may not be to everyone’s taste. I am unsure about Nicholson’s over-arching argument, and by prioritising personal anecdotes over the interpretation of economic facts or political contexts, she risks trivialising

power and the brutal conditions in the early concentration camps. The author steers a confident course, telling his story with considerable flair. There are a few minor caveats. Given the book’s relatively short timeframe, there is some repetition and it sometimes feels a little padded. Also, for all its thoroughness, it would have benefited from a look at Dachau’s later development, particularly as that early phase was influential in the reorganisation and regulation of the entire camp system. More seriously, the extent to which Ryback can legitimately describe those killed at Dachau in April 1933 as the “first victims of the Holocaust” is highly debatable. They were Jewish, but also communist sympathisers, and, marketing

1950s culture. Many will be better served by the histories written by Ina ZweinigerBargielowska and Jane Lewis. However, Nicholson excels at bringing the period to life. Marriage was lauded above all, even among the rebellious Teddy Girls, despite their glam hairdos and knives tucked into their stocking tops. Women worshipped home, sweet home; they “felt like the Queen” when they installed new television sets and pearly-white, purring refrigerators. Yet it was not all domestic bliss. Keeping up with the Joneses caused anxiety levels to soar. Women who fought to go to university found themselves treated as appendages to their husbands as opposed to intellectuals in their own right. It was arguably worse for women who had children out of

BBC History Magazine

TOPFOTO

Hitler’s First Victims and One Man’s Race for Justice by Timothy W Ryback

WANT MORE ? For reviews of hundreds of recent history books, go to our online archive historyextra.com/books

Highs and Lows in India DENIS JUDD meets a colourful cast of characters whose story

illuminates British involvement in India in the 19th century The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India, 1805–1905 by Ferdinand Mount Simon and Schuster, 784 pages, £25

hyperbole aside, it seems sensible to suggest they were murdered for their opposition to Nazi rule rather than solely their race. In 1933, of course, the systematic killing of Jews was some eight years away. But these are minor points. This is a fascinating, meticulously researched and elegantly written study. It illuminates an intriguing period of flux, in which it was just possible that the horrors of Nazi rule could still have been averted, if only more Germans had reacted with the steadfastness, morality and bravery of the man at the heart of the story. Roger Moorhouse is the author of The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941 (Bodley Head, 2014)

ALAMY

wedlock: they were shunned and often forced to hand over their babies for adoption. From 1955, the worldannihilating capabilities of the H-Bomb terrified more and more women. Posters displayed in London’s streets asked: “Mothers, would you let your sons drop this Bomb?” The first Aldermaston march was evidence that many British women were repudiating the advice to “Be childlike and feminine at all times”. Nicholson tells the story through the voices of women. A brilliant storyteller, she makes a significant contribution to our understanding of 1950s Britain, and offers a glimpse into what it must have felt like growing up in that time.

British involvement in India lasted for a little under 350 years, and the literature assessing this undertaking is immense. Among the most valuable of the records of British rule are the memoirs of those who went out as administrators, soldiers, merchants and teachers, and of course as wives and families. Many were born in India and lived and died there. In Ferdinand Mount’s account, one such family – the formidable Lows of Clatto, Fife – are described in minute, often loving, detail. Their lives, conjured up through letters and diaries, and even a book, tell not merely their own stories but also the history of the Raj from the year of Britain’s victory at Trafalgar, via the tumult of the Great Rebellion of 1857, to the tranquility of the Edwardian age when constitutional reform seemed to set India on the road to self self-rule. rule. It It’ss a timely reminder of how vital Scotland’ss contribution was to so Scotland much of Britain’s global success.

Despite Mount’s skilful prose, the material is not always easy to navigate, and the bibliography has some puzzling omissions. The remarkable characters, however, swarm through the pages and carry the day, rather as the British as an imperial power strode to subcontinental supremacy. Pride of place among the literary Lows of India must go to greataunt Ursula: “Not unlike Miss Marple as played by Joan Hickson… she wore tweed in various shades of oatmeal and beige.” More importantly she wrote a book, Fifty Years with John Company: from the Letters of General Sir John Low of Clatto, Fife, 1822-1858. Unread by most of the family, this 434-page volume was crucial in inspiring Mount to write his account. The book is even more intriguing because the Lows were the author’s ancestors – and forebears of current British prime minister David Cameron. Apart from Ursula, there is copious and vivid testimony from the Lows at large. Readable as it is, none of it rewrites our understanding of British rule in India, but it does confirm the intensity, depth, variety and complexity of what was arguably the most extraordinary chapter in Britain’s imperial story. Denis Judd d is the author of Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Presentt (IB Tauris 2011)

Rickshaw transport in 1920s India. Ferdinand Mount’s book features “copious and vivid” accounts of British experiences in the subcontinent

Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London

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Books / Paperbacks

PAPERBACKS Magna Carta Translated with a new commentary by David Carpenter

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Penguin Classics, 624 pages, £10.99

The 750th anniversary of Magna Carta in 1965 was marked by the publication of Magna Carta by JC Holt – for a half-century the essential commentary on the charter. In this new commentary, for the 800th anniversary, David Carpenter tips his hat to Holt, and even includes an anecdote in which he was scolded by the great man for attempting to put him straight on a minor point. Such modesty is becoming but unnecessary. Carpenter’s book matches Holt’s as vital reading. It includes a new translation of Magna Carta 1215: the starting point for a discussion of its origins, a description of events at Runnymede and a valuable treatment of the charter’s spread and legacy in the 13th century, when it was

privately copied and officially reissued many times. Much is new, not least the announcement that the mutilated British Library engrossment (sealed version) of Magna Carta was originally sent to Canterbury Cathedral: we may now call it ‘the Canterbury Magna Carta’ instead of using its less sexy previous name, ‘Ci’. There is deep textual analysis here, but Carpenter also writes passages worthy of any leading narrative historian. His vision of Corfe Castle could be from a Game of Thrones screenplay, yet makes a crucial historical point about John’s paranoia. For obvious reasons, there is no mention of the very latest research: Nicholas Vincent’s discovery of a 1300 edition of the charter at Sandwich, announced in February. Magna Carta scholarship is still moving fast. But it has a new first base for years to come in this learned and very enjoyable work. Dan Jones is the author of Magna Carta (Head of Zeus, 2014)

The sealing of Magna Carta as depicted in a stained glass window at Mansion House, London. David Carpenter’s new commentary on the document “features deep textual analysis”

BBC History Magazine

A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England by Suzannah Lipscomb Ebury Press, 336 pages, £8.99

Thanks to the huge success of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Halll – both in print and in the recent television adaptation – the subject of Tudor history is more popular than ever before. It is perfect timing, then, for the arrival in paperback of a book that claims to enable the reader to experience places, people and events “through Tudor eyes”. Suzannah Lipscomb’s book takes the reader on a tour of some of England’s best-known Tudor sites, such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court, as well as lesser known treasures such as Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire and Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire. The format means that there is some degree of repetition, which makes this more of a book to dip into than to read from cover to cover. Although they are sometimes curiously placed within the flow of the book, the thematic sections – covering subjects including clothing, food and entertainment – have merit. It may lack the lively detail of other books of its genre, but Lipscomb’s study provides a useful gazetteer for all those wishing to explore the physical remains of our Tudor past. Tracy Borman is joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and the author of Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant (Hodder and Stoughton, 2014)

Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Ivor Montagu and the Astonishing Story Behind the Game that Changed the World by Nicholas Griffin Simon and Schuster, 352 pages, £8.99

Glenn Cowan is an unlikely person to have brought about a thawing of Sino-US relations. A dopesmoking hippy who wore purple bell-bottoms, he was also a key member of the United States table tennis team. At the 1971 Japanese world championships, he inadvertently caused a diplomatic sensation. The Chinese were forbidden from talking to their United States rivals, but when Cowan boarded the Chinese team bus, he forced a dramatic rapprochement – one that would help bring the Cold War to an end. Nicholas Griffin’s book tells the extraordinary story of table tennis in international affairs. But the book is about a great deal more than diplomacy. It recounts the game’s history through the eyes of the wealthy aristocrat, Ivor Montagu. He was passionate about ping-pong (as well as being a Soviet spy) and first introduced the game to the Chinese. Griffin’s book is well researched, entertaining and filled with a colourful cast of characters. It’s also a compelling story, one that reminds us that sport and politics are inextricably linked. Giles Milton is the author of Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Global Plot ((Sceptre, 2013)

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Books / Fiction THREE MORE NOVELS STARRING THE NORMANS The Conqueror Georgette Heyer (1931)

FICTION Here come the Normans NICK RENNISON delves into a skilful re-creation of

the world in which William the Conqueror grew up Devil by David Churchill Headline, 480 pages, £14.99

William the Conqueror makes a good subject for fiction. His life is fascinating but there are enough gaps in the historical record to provide room for a novelist’s imagination. Devil, the first of an intended trilogy entitled The Leopards of Normandy, y adroitly combines research and inventiveness. In this opening volume William is a boy. The focus is on his father, Duke Robert of Normandy. Initially Count of Hiémois, and subordinate to his older brother Richard, Robert takes possession of the castle at Falaise and defends it against Richard’s demands that it be returned. While out hunting, Robert chances upon a beautiful young woman named Herleva and is immediately enamoured. Although she is just the daughter of a tanner, he takes her to his bed and their passionate affair produces a child – the future Conqueror. Follow-

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ing his brother’s mysterious death, Robert becomes Normandy’s duke and is forced to forswear Herleva for dynastic reasons. The boy William, however, is declared his heir. At the same time two English princes, Edward and Alfred, exiled in Normandy, plot their return to their native land and a disaffected family of thuggish Norman aristocrats rises up against Robert’s rule. This all makes for a lively, engrossing narrative in which the historical figures come to life and a number of invented characters, most notably a smoothly sinister poisoner named Jarl the Viper, add to its twists and turns. Churchill isn’t entirely comfortable with his story’s love scenes, which tend to veer between the bluntly sexual and medieval Mills & Boon, but he’s very adept at portraying the intrigue and politics surrounding Robert’s court. This is a world in which trust is a scarce commodity and victory usually goes to the strong and the ruthless. It’s the world in which William the Conqueror grew up and Churchill recreates it with some skill. Nick Rennison is the author of Carver’s Questt (Corvus, 2013)

Odo’s Hanging Peter Benson (1993) O is William the Odo Conqueror’s C half-brother, bishop h of Bayeux, and the o ‘‘hanging’ in this clever and unusual c novel is the tapestry n he commissions to h commemorate the Norman victory at Hastings. The tapestry’s designer, the irascible artist Turold, travels to England to oversee its creation and the narrative, told in the words of his apprentice Robert, describes the clash between his ideas of what the work should be and those of his patron.

Sworn Sword James Aitcheson (2011) T Three years have passed since the p Norman invasion and N tthe knight Tancred a Dinant is one of a D ssmall army of William’s followers W tthat marches to Northumbria to crush continuing Saxon opposition. Amid the chaos he stumbles across evidence of a plot that threatens all that the Normans have achieved. In the first novel in an ongoing series, James Aitcheson neatly mixes action and intrigue in equal measure.

BBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN

William the Conqueror, seen in a 12th-century manuscript, is the subject of David Churchill’s “lively and engrossing” novel that explores his early life

G Georgette Heyer is now known primarily n as the author of a Regency romances R but she also wrote a b number of novels set n in the medieval period. First published in the F 1930s but still in print, this is an energetic account of William’s life from his birth to his conquest of England, seen through the eyes of his (fictional) friend Raoul de Harcourt. Like all Heyer’s work, it is both readable and rooted in basic historical facts.

Jonathan Wright previews the pick of upcoming programmes

TV&RADIO Military disaster Gallipoli TV BBC Two, scheduled for April

The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 – the Allied attempt to knock Turkey out of the First World War – is widely remembered as one of the most humbling defeats of the conflict. But how did this military disaster come about? It’s a question explored in a documentary that draws on the accounts of ordinary soldiers and leaders such as Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener. There’s also an interview with Rupert Murdoch, who discusses his father Keith’s role in bringing the campaign to an end. For more on Gallipoli, turn to page 54

Griff Rhys Jones is hosting a quiz in eight venerable British museums

Unknown treasures

Seeing the light How a “massively underweight” maths professor transformed our relationship with computers Codes That Changed the World Radio Radio 4, weekdays from Monday 6 April

t’s easy to see the history of computing as being all about hardware, about how the devices we increasingly rely upon have become smaller and faster. Yet that’s an approach that ignores one of the fundamental questions of the digital age: how do we talk to our machines in order to get them to do useful things? “The software side of things has always been glossed over,” says Peter McManus, producer of a new series (presented by Aleks Krotoski) on the history of computer languages. If that sounds dry, it’s a tale that throws up some remarkable characters, notably Rear Admiral ‘Amazing’ Grace Hopper (1906–92), who pioneered the idea of portable computer programs rather than programs specific to one machine. “[She] came up with this notion that if you could create a list of instructions for a computer in a way that human beings could understand, and then find a way of translating that into the binary ones and zeros the computer could under-

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MAGAZINE

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stand, then you’d have a means by which you could create a program that could run on different machines,” says McManus. This idea may seem obvious to us today, but that in itself is a measure of how profound was Hopper’s insight. She was remarkable in other ways too. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hopper was working as a maths professor. Despite being in her mid-30s and “massively underweight”, she became a naval officer and was sent to Harvard to be part of the team working on the Mark I computer, used for calculations essential to the Manhattan Project (to build the first atomic bomb). Hopper later became a key figure in the development of the computer language COBOL, which showed how computers could be used for such business processes as inventory, payroll and accounting. First developed in 1959, COBOL is still in use today, despite being likened by one contributor to the show as the computer language equivalent of the Vogons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.”

The Quizeum TV BBC Four,

GETTY

scheduled for April

Hosted by comedian Griff Rhys Jones, here’s an eight-part panel series where every episode is recorded at a different museum around the country. Why? “There are spectacular treasures in all of our museums,” says Rhys Jones. “The Quizeum will uncover the stories behind some of the lesser-known ones.” Expect a show where artefacts from the collections of such institutions as the National Maritime Museum and Oxford’s Ashmolean inspire questions. Panellists so far confirmed include Michael Scott, Dan Cruickshank, Janina Ramirez, Kate Williams and Admiral Lord West.

BBC History Magazine

“It’s a tale that throws up some remarkable characters, like Rear Admiral ‘Amazing’ Grace Hopper” Grace Hopper was a determined pioneer of computer programs that weren’t restricted to individual machines

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TV & Radio Members of the WI preserve summer fruit crops by making jam, eastern England, c1940

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Home Fires TV ITV, scheduled for April

On 5 September 1939, shortly after Britain had declared war, Lady Denman, chair of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, wrote to the War Office. She pointed out that a network of 5,600 institutes was potentially a hugely valuable resource. “The WI has three levels – national, county and village,” says historian Julie Summers, author of Jambusters: The Story of the Women’s Institute in the Second World War “Information feeds

Landmark series Wolf Hall DVD (BBC/2entertain, £25.52, Cert: 15) According to Hilary Mantel, when she first saw Wolf Hall, it didn’t just meet her already high expectations, it exceeded them. It seems she’s not alone in thinking this because, as it aired on BBC Two, it rapidly became clear we were seeing a classic series unfold before our eyes, a show we’ll be talking about for years. This is, to a large extent, thanks to Mark Rylance, who plays Henry VIII’s enforcer Thomas Cromwell with a still intensity that’s eerie, mesmerising. Re-watching the series on DVD, his performance

up and down the chain, so with one phone call the government had the ears of 328,000 country women.” The WI went on to play a crucial role on the home front as it helped with such tasks as housing evacuees, and feeding troops and farm workers. This role is celebrated in a new drama based on Summers’ book, and which stars Francesca Annis (Cranford) and Samantha Bond (Bond films) as leading lights in a Cheshire WI. Summers acted as historical consultant. “The first day [I was on set] knocked my socks off,” she says. “The world I have known in black and white, static and old, was suddenly brightly coloured, moving, smelling, making a noise. That was intensely moving.”

loses none of its power, yet there’s somehow also more time to take in the nuances of character conveyed by the supporting cast – witness the way Claire Foy quite brilliantly teeters between needy brattishness and calculating cruelty as Anne Boleyn. A second viewing throws up other surprises too. You may find yourself questioning just how much you sided with Cromwell first time around. For all that he’s portrayed sympathetically, in Mantel’s retelling, this is a man who sets a trap for himself with his own ambition. The two-disc DVD set of the series features more than 30 minutes of extras, including interviews with the stars and key members of the crew, featurettes and deleted scenes.

David Suchet follows in the footsteps of St Peter on BBC One

Having previously charted the life of St Paul by journeying in his wake, David Suchet now turns his attention to another of the Apostles. David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St Peter (BBC One, April) sees the actor travelling to Galilee, Jerusalem, Turkey and Rome as he tries to understand how a lowly fisherman became the first bishop of Rome. (To listen to Suchet discussing St Peter on our weekly podcast, go to historyextra.com/ podcasts) Armada: 12 Days to Save England (BBC Two, date yet to be confirmed) mixes up Dan Snow interviewing experts and viewing historical documents with dramatic reconstructions in order to recall how England fought off Spanish invasion in 1588. (See our feature on page 28 for more.) On Yesterday, Castle Builders (Tuesday 14 April) is a three-part series that looks at the history of castles across Europe, beginning with an episode about those who commissioned and built these structures. For those with satellite, Escape in the Pacific (PBS America, Saturday 4 April) tells the story of the only successful group escape from a Japanese camp, when 10 American PoWs made a break from the Davao Penal Colony on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (PBS America, Sunday 12 April) recalls the last two months of the president’s life, from his second inaugural address to his murder by John Wilkes Booth.

Mark Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell with mesmerising intensity

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BBC History Magazine

BBC/IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

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OUT&ABOUT HISTORY EXPLORER

The fi fight for women’s suffrage Professor June Purvis and Charlotte Hodgman visit the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester to discover more about the remarkable women who risked life and limb for the right to vote

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is a women-only space, offering advice, support and educational services. But, for many visitors, the highlight of a visit is the small parlour where the WSPU was born, now recreated with Edwardianstyle furniture and fittings to give visitors a sense of what it may have looked like when the Pankhursts lived there. The room is a memorial to the suffragette movement, with WSPU sashes from various decades draped over chairs, and quotes from Emmeline Pankhurst’s 1914 autobiography, My Own Storyy. The upright piano, now silent, was once played by Emmeline’s eldest daughter and co-founder of the WSPU, Christabel. Radical roots Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden) was born in 1858, into a family known for its radical views. Her mother, Sophia, was an ardent feminist and Emmeline accompanied her to women’s suffrage meetings from an early age. In 1879 she married barrister and committed socialist Richard Pankhurst – himself an advocate for women’s suffrage – and the pair had five children (one of whom died in infancy). Their three daughters – Christabel, Sylvia and Adela – would all b become iinvvolved in the battle to gain the vote forr women. “Alth hough we might automatically think o of the Pankhursts when discusssing the fight for women’s suffrage, women were campaigning for the right to vote for some 40 years before the WSPU was formed,” saays Professor June Purvis of Portsmouth University. “The

The “fiery, passionate and determined” Emmeline Pankhurst was utterly dedicated to women’s suffrage

BRIDGEMAN/CHARLOTTE HODGMAN

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n 10 October 1903, a group of women gathered in the parlour of 62 Nelson Street, one of a pair of Victorian villas located in Chorlton-onMedlock, a suburb of Manchester. Their host was Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, a widow who had moved to the house – with her four children – in 1898 following the death of her husband. But this was no social gathering. The women were meeting to discuss the creation of a new, militant women-only organisation that would join the 40-year fight to win the parliamentary vote for women. Its name, they decided, would be the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU); its motto, ‘Deeds, not words’. A new chapter in the campaign for women’s suffrage had begun. Tucked away amid the concrete and glass buildings of Manchester Royal Infirmary, 62 Nelson Street – which opened as the Pankhurst Centre in 1987 and now extends into the adjoining villa – isn’t a site one might automatically stumble on during a trip to Manchester. Only a blue plaque on the wall by the front door of the Grade II listed building marks it as thee bi birthplace h l of the suffragette movement. Inside, three downstairs ro ooms are dedicated to the story of women’s suffrage, with artefaacts and information panels relatiing to the cause, and to the Pankhurst family itself. The rest of the centre houses various women’s organisations, and

The parlour at 62 Nelson Street where the Women’s Social and Political Union was formed in 1903. The Pankhursts lived in the house between 1898 and 1906, after the death of Richard Pankhurst

BBC History Magazine

“It was in a climate of disillusionment and frustration that a new breed of suffragist was born” PROFESSOR JUNE PURVIS

BBC History Magazine

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Out & about / History Explorer

VISIT

The Pankhurst Centre

campaign is generally seen as beginning in 1865, when MP John Stuart Mill presented a petition to parliament to bring in a bill for women’s suffrage. Although unsuccessful, his actions encouraged groups of women to form suffrage societies, the largest being the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society (NUWSS) led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.” Known as ‘suffragists’, such groups employed peaceful means to advance their cause. But by 1903, four decades of constitutional, legal methods of campaigning, such as writing to MPs, had failed to achieve the longed-for vote. It was in this climate of disillusionment and frustration that a new breed of suffragist was born – under the leadership of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. Women, declared Christabel, needed to put off their “slave spirit” and start demanding the vote. “The violence so often associated with the suffragettes – a derogatory label first coined by the Daily Maill in 1906 to describe the more radical and militant elements of the suffrage movement – didn’t actually begin until around 1912,” says Purvis. “Initially, the WSPU, too, employed peaceful means of protest, but took care to deploy tactics that would gain them the most public attention.” Such activities included standing on street corners or outside factory gates in an attempt to attract a crowd, persuading people to support the campaign, and delivering petitions to parliament. Huge rallies took place across England and Wales, including in Hyde Park, London, in 1908, an event that attracted crowds of up to 300,000

Change of tactics “By 1912, nine years of relatively peaceful campaigning had failed to yield success,” says Purvis, “and Emmeline – by now living in London – decided the movement needed to be more assertive in its demands.” As a result, more violent tactics began to be employed alongside constitutional methods. The suffragettes employed a range of militant activities to draw attention to their cause, including window smashing, setting fire to postboxes and empty buildings, cutting telephone wires and even burning “votes for women” into golf greens. “It is important to remember that at no point did the suffragettes seek to threaten human life,” argues Purvis. “Their attacks were designed to demonstrate that the government valued property more than it valued women, especially hunger-strikers in prison who were being forcibly fed.” But the move towards violence caused rifts within the WSPU, and even within the

60-62 Nelson Street, Manchester, M13 9WP Open Thursdays, 10–4. Wheelchair accessible 쎲 thepankhurstcentre.org.uk

Pankhurst family itself. Where Emmeline and Christabel were pro-vandalism in the name of women’s suffrage, Sylvia – a socialist and pacifist – and her younger sister Adela disagreed vehemently with the decision. But one belief all four women shared was a complete commitment to the cause. Says Purvis: “Too much emphasis has been placed on the violence carried out by suffragettes and not enough on the disgraceful, and harmful, way these women were treated by the state. Many were punched and kicked by policemen even when protesting peacefully for their democratic rights. And those who were imprisoned were denied the status of political offenders and treated very badly. “By the end of September 1909, force feeding was being deployed in prisons to prevent women from using hunger strikes as a way of protesting against their

“ACC0UNTS OF FORCE FEEDING ARE TRULY HORRIFYING. FOR MANY, THE PROCESS WAS EXPERIENCED AS A FORM OF RAPE” 82

BBC History Magazine

BRIDGEMAN/CHARLOTTE HODGMAN/ALAMY

Sylvia Pankhurst wrote her 1911 book about the suffragettes on this typewriter – now on show at the Pankhurst Centre

people. Rallies were carefully orchestrated to achieve maximum impact. Suffragettes carrying huge banners, clad in white dresses, and wearing purple, white and green WSPU sashes – symbolising dignity, purity and hope – would walk through the streets as a single body, to the beat of marching bands. Rachel Lappin, Pankhurst Centre manager, comments: “One act that gained the attention of press and public – and can perhaps be seen as one of the first acts of suffragette militancy – took place in Manchester in 1905. During a talk by Liberal party MP Sir Edward Grey at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall – now a luxury hotel – Christabel Pankhurst and a friend, Annie Kenney, were forcibly removed from the building after Grey ignored repeated questions about whether votes for women would be granted under a Liberal government. The pair were arrested and, in court the next day, chose a prison sentence (seven days for Christabel; three for Annie) over a fine.” In doing so, they earned the fight for women’s votes more attention than it had ever enjoyed before, and encouraged women across the country to join the WSPU.

LISTEN TO JUNE PURVIS

SUFFRAGETTES: FIVE MORE PLACES TO EXPLORE

historyextra.com /podcasts

1 Hyde Park, London Where thousands of women gathered

CHARLOTTE HODGMAN

Christabel Pankhurst’s piano still sits in the parlour at 62 Nelson Street

treatment. The harrowing accounts of these women are truly horrifying. For many, the process was experienced as a form of rape.” Force feeding involved forcing a tube down the throat, or up the nose – although there are accounts of women being ‘fed’ through the vagina or rectum – into which a greasy mixture was poured. The tubes were often too wide or had not been cleaned properly, and women were physically restrained by prison wardresses. The painful, intrusive procedure was repeated a number of times a day, with little or no nutritional benefit. The mental and physical damage caused by force feeding was particularly prolonged

A meeting of the WSPU in c1907. Christabel (second from left) and Emmeline Pankhurst (second from right) advocated the use of violence to further their cause

BBC History Magazine

after the so-called ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, which allowed ill women to leave prison until they were well enough to return and complete their sentence. “Force feeding was a disaster for the government,” says Purvis. “At first, there was little sympathy for suffragette prisoners, but by the beginning of 1913, the sight of these visibly frail women who were prepared to undergo such a horrific process over and over again shocked many.” The death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison in June 1913 was another turning point for the movement. Her death – a result of injuries sustained after she was struck by George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby – shocked the nation, and her funeral procession drew crowds of over 250,000. “Many believe it was the First World War that finally won the vote for women”, says Purvis. “After all, the 1918 Representation of the People Act granted the vote to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification. But the vast majority of women were still excluded, including many young women war workers, and the campaign for votes for all women continued during and after the conflict. Emmeline encouraged women to engage in war work, believing they would gain enfranchisement as a result, but many felt betrayed by her patriotism, and further rifts appeared in the WSPU and within the Pankhurst family.” A new wave of feminists carried the campaign forward after the war and women were finally granted equal suffrage with men in 1928, just weeks after Emmeline’s death at the age of 69. “Emmeline Pankhurst shaped an idea of assertive womanhood that is quite modern in many ways,” concludes Purvis. “Fiery, passionate and determined, she valued women’s suffrage above anything – including family unity. y But whether the vote could have been won through peaceful means alone is doubtful. A combination of tactics was needed to achieve what, in 1903, must have seemed impossible.” Historical advisor: June Purvis (left), professor of women’s and gender history at Portsmouth University. Words: Charlotte Hodgman

The suffragette rally on 21 June 1908 was the first grand-scale meeting organised by the WSPU and saw the largest number of people gathered in Hyde Park for a political purpose. Specially chartered trains brought women to the venue from all over Britain for marches, banner parades and to listen to 80 speakers. royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde_park

2 Epsom Downs racecourse Surrey Where a suffragette became a martyr On 4 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison suffered a fractured skull after running in front of the king’s horse as it rounded the Tattenham Corner during the Derby, and never regained consciousness. Archive footage of the incident, as well as the return train ticket and writing materials found on her person, indicate that Emily did not intend to commit suicide. epsomderby.co.uk

3 Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd Where Lloyd George was heckled When prime minister Lloyd George arrived in his native village of Llanystumdwy to open their village hall in 1912, he found his speech constantly interrupted by cries of “votes for women” from many in the crowd. The protest turned violent with one woman nearly thrown over the bridge into the river Dwyfor and others physically assaulted. llanystumdwy.com

4 National Gallery, London Where a symbolic act was carried out On 10 March 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery and attacked the Rokeby Venus, by Velázquez, with a meat cleaver. Her desire to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history”, she explained, was in protest against the government’s treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst, “the most beautiful character in modern history”. nationalgallery.org.uk

5 Princes Street, Edinburgh Where Scots took up the gauntlet In a 1909 edition of the suffragette paper, Votes for Women, Scottish women were urged to take up the cause. In October that year some 1,000 women marched down Princes Street to campaign for women’s suffrage. edinburgh.gov.uk

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Out & about

TEN THINGS TO DO IN APRIL

ONLINE SLIDESHOW historyextra.com /lusitania

Liverpool remembers EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY

Lusitania: Life, Loss, Legacy Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool From 27 March 콯 0151 478 4499 쎲 liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime

MAGAZINE

CHOICE

n 7 May 1915, the 32,500-ton Liverpool-based passenger ship RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 as it travelled from New York to Liverpool. The vessel sank in under 20 minutes with the loss of 1,191 lives (four others died later from their injuries). This month, Merseyside Maritime Museum will be marking the 100th anniversary of the disaster with a new exhibition that explores the story of the ship, its role in the First World War, and the lives of those onboard. Eleanor Moffat, curator of the exhibition, says: “The tragic story of the Lusitania is one that continues to resonate strongly with the people of Liverpool, and is an event that still inspires debate today. Most of the ship’s crew came from the city, so the impact of the loss was devastating – some 404 crew

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“The tragic story of the Lusitania is one that still resonates strongly”

members died during the sinking. “We’ve brought together a number of objects for the exhibition that shed light on the lives of many of those lost, and saved, during the sinking. These include a tiny baby shoe carrying the inscription ‘lest we forget’ on its sole – which was given to Able Seaman Joseph Parry by a lady passenger after he saved her and her baby – to a life jacket from the ship that has never been displayed before.” The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first looks at the ship’s relationship with Liverpool and the story of its building. The second puts the loss of the Lusitania into the context of the First World War at sea, while the final section examines the sinking itself. “One particularly moving piece on show is a letter written by a mother to her son before she set sail,” says Moffat. “In it, we see her fear of travelling by sea during wartime. Tragically both she and her husband died during the sinking. “Some of the pieces on show are a result of an appeal by the museum to those with family connections to the Lusitania. We’ve had an overwhelming response but we’d love to have more stories to add to our collection. If you have a story to share, please contact the museum via the website.” Look out for our feature on the sinking of the Lusitania in the May issue

EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

REOPENING

Fully Fashioned: The Pringle of Scotland Story

Love is Enough: William Morris and Andy Warhol

Great British Drawings

Elth ham Palace

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh 10 April–16 August 콯 0300 123 6789 쎲 nms.ac.uk

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 25 April–6 September 콯 0121 348 8000 쎲 birminghammuseums.org.uk

An exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of one of Scotland’s best-known companies, featuring early knitwear and film footage.

View iconic and rarely seen works by two great artists of the 19th and 20th centuries – William Morris and Andy Warhol.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 26 March–31 August 콯 01865 278000 쎲 ashmolean.org

Trace the history of drawing in Britain through more than 100 works by artists such as JMW Turne er.

Gree enwich, London From m 3 April 콯 02 20 8294 2548 쎲 en nglish-heritage.org.uk

The e Grade II listed house reopens folllowing a £1.7m renovation and improvement project, with five ONLINE new rooms.

SLIDESHOW

historyextra.com /drawings

Thomas Alcock k by Samuel Cooper, c1 1650

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BBC History Magazine

Charlotte Hodgman previews some of the latest events and exhibitions

The Sinking of the Lusitania by an unknown 20th-century artist. When a German submarine torpedoed the ship off the coast of Ireland in May 1915, 1,191 passengers and crew lost their lives EXHIBITION

Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation British Museum, London 23 April–2 August 콯 020 7323 8181 (ticket line) 쎲 britishmuseum.org

ONLINE SLIDESHOW historyextra.com /indigenous

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY

Gallipoli: Myth and Memory

Strange Creatures: The Art of Unknown Animals

National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth 28 March–31 January 2016 콯 023 9272 7562 쎲 royalnavalmuseum.org

Exhibits and witness accounts tell the story of the often misunderstood Gallipoli campaign of 1915. Read more about Gallipoli on page 54

BBC Histtory Magazine

Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL Until 27 June 콯 020 3108 2052 쎲 ucl.ac.uk/museums

An exploration of animal representation through history – from medieval accounts to art from the ages of exploration.

PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM/MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY/ ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

The first major exhibition to present a history of indigenous Australia through objects opens at the British Museum this month. Among the pieces on show are works of art such as Uta Uta Tjangala’s 1981 Yumari, which appears on Australian passports; items dating to the early colonial period (1770–1850); and turtle-shell A turtle-shell mask masks used in ceremonies before the from Torres Strait, Queensland, pre-1855 arrival of Christian missionaries. REOPENING

Lincoln Castle Revealed Lincoln From 1 April 콯 01522 852283 쎲 historiclincolntrust.org.uk/lincoln-castle-revealed

The three-year, £22m restoration of Lincoln Castle is revealed this month, as the site opens its doors to the public. For the first time, visitors can walk the battlements around the whole castle, while the Victorian prison, with its ‘separate system’ chapel, has been reinterpreted with films, panels and digital interactive screens. EXHIBITION / FREE ENTRY

The Innovation Race: Manchester’s Makers Join the First World War Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester From 28 March 콯 0161 832 2244 쎲 mosi.org.uk

Manchester’s response to the munitions crisis of 1915 comes under the spotlight this month in an exhibition of artefacts, photographs and documents. Among the pieces on display are a selection of original diaries, company archives, sketches and letters from Oldham factory owner and electrical engineer Sebastian de Ferranti, whose domestic goods factory began producing shells and fuses in wartime.

ONLINE SLIDESHOW historyextra.com /innovation

in the Ferranti Hollinwood factory, 1917/18

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Out & about

MY FAVOURITE PLACE

Northern Ethiopia by Tom Hall This African highlight off rs historic castles, ancient churches hewn from rock and, according to legend, the Ark of the Covenant

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Ethiopia, through reading Graham Hancock’s book The Sign and the Seal, a pseudohistorical page-turner devoted to his search for the ancient relic. His travels round Ethiopia climaxed with an encounter with the enigmatic monk guarding the treasure in Aksum, the northern city where the Ark is said to reside. This adventure inspired my own first visit, which set out to retrace his footsteps. I ended up, as usual, wandering far off course. It was divertingly easy to do so. Though road transport remains slow, internal flights with Ethiopian Airlines are efficient and excellent value. In a fortnight it is easy to explore many of the country’s highlights – just don’t expect two weeks to be any more than an introduction to this fascinating place. Addis Ababa is most people’s

first introduction to Ethiopia, and it is every inch the modern African capital city. The centre of the country since the late 19th century, it was chosen for its climate and beautiful location. Alongside the chaos of everyday life – buzzing minivans plying for trade and one of Africa’s largest open air markets – are a fine selection of museums and galleries and a lively nightlife including a wonderful music scene. Regular calls of ‘ferenji’ (foreigner) leave the overseas visitor in little doubt that they are in an alien land. It is all good-natured and Ethiopians are proud of their heritage, and highly welcoming. It is when leaving Addis, however, that Ethiopia begins to reveal itself, and to take a flight north into green, hilly territory is to step back in time. To the north of the capital are found four main historical centres: Lake Tana’s island monasteries, Gonder’s surreal Arthurian castle, Lalibela’s rock-hewn churches and Aksum’s underrated ancient remains – and that Ark. Everywhere you’ll find traditional and distinctive Ethiopian artwork depicting Ethiopian artwork – like this madonna in the church of Bet Emanuel, Lalibela – is colourful and distinctive

Bet Giorgis is one of 11 late 12th/early 13th-century churches hewn from solid rock at Lalibela, the highlight of a journey around Ethiopia

historical and religious scenes. Much of it is painted in a colourful folk style that’s enjoyable and slightly eccentric. Lalibela is unquestionably the highlight, partly for the incongruity of the place. On arrival you find yourself in an unremarkable highland market town, mainly notable for the beautiful mountains around it. Then you see the 11 churches dating from the late 12th and early 13th century; some plain, others rich in detail, all surrounded by Ethiopian Orthodox hermit monks squirrelled in niches, the smell of incense in the air. The largest and finest

BBC History Magazine

ROBERT HARDING/ALAMY/MAP:MARTIN SANDERS

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have yet to travel to anywhere quite like Ethiopia, and suspect I never will. It is Africa’s historical highlight, home to medieval castles and amazing religious art and architecture, sprinkled with the evocative leftovers of a brief period of Italian colonial rule. It is even, if legend is to be believed (and many locals do), the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. The country may be vast, but it is an easy place to travel around. A journey to Ethiopia inevitably reveals the richness of the country’s history. A skeleton of an early hominid, dubbed Lucy, is on display in the National Museum in Addis Ababa. From here travellers can wander through millennia of little-known heritage: the mysterious stelaee of the Aksumite empire (which flourished from the 2nd to 9th centuries AD), Ethiopian Christianity’s unique legacy and centuries of lively imperial history. Ethiopia was the only African state to have stood alone from European colonisation – until Italian occupation in the 1930s. That brief period also left its mark on the country in the form of a still-discernible Italian architectural influence. It was the Ark legend that first drew me to

The largest and finest church, Bet Giorgis, is surely one of the wonders of the world… It is impossible not to be awed

ADVICE FOR TRAVELLERS

BEST TIME TO GO It’s best to avoid the June to October wet season, but any other time is generally warm and dry. January’s Timkat (epiphany) celebrations are an exciting time to be in Lalibela and Goner.

GETTING THERE Best-value flights are usually via the Arabian peninsula on one of the national carriers. Direct flights through Ethiopian Airlines and British Airways are also available.

WHAT TO PACK Arm and leg-covering clothes are useful as you tour religious sites, as is a sun hat and a pullover for chilly nights at altitude.

WHAT TO BRING BACK Ethiopia’s crafts are as unique and varied as the country itself, and you’ll find fine earthenware art for sale wherever you visit, most notably Addis Ababa’s sprawling Merkato. A simple coffee pot as used in homes across Ethiopia makes for an affordable and distinctive gift.

FURTHER INFORMATION Read up on the UK government’s travel advice before you go at: gov.uk/foreigntravel-advice/ethiopia

church, Bet Giorgis, is surely one of the wonders of the world, and is approached so your feet are level with its roof. It is impossible not to be awed. Beyond Lalibela are more noteworthy ancient churches, rewarding those who trek into surrounding hills and grassy uplands. Ethiopia’s Islamic heritage, which dates back to the earliest decades of the faith, is best understood by heading to

Been there… Have you been to Ethiopia? Do you have a top tip for readers? Contact us via Twitter or Facebook

neighbouring Djibouti. To the south of Djibouti (and in eastern Ethiopia) is Harar, the fourth holiest city in the Islamic world. It’s quite a journey to reach this fascinating walled city but it’s worth the effort. Here tiny, timeless mosques are everywhere – one even built inside a tree. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud lived here in the 1880s, first as a trader and then as a gun-runner, and an excellent museum, in an Indian merchant house, bears his name. Like all the best historical destinations, the visitor to Ethiopia is lured back by what they didn’t have a chance to see

first time around. For me, the remote mountain churches of the Tigray region, 19th-century battlegrounds and the wild Danakil Depression – a vast desert basin that was home to nomadic salt traders for millennia – all remain to be explored. Tom Halll is editorial director for Lonely Planet.com and a regular contributor to BBC History Magazine Read more about Tom’s experiences in northern Ethiopia at historyextra.com/ethiopia

Next month: Vanessa Collingridge visits the Great Wall of China

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With spring here at last, and 2015 being such a big year for historical anniversaries, there really is no better time to explore some of Britain’s fantastic heritage sites for yourself. There are events happening throughout the year, so head out and support Britain’s heritage and enjoy a great day out.

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HYLANDS HOUSE

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Hylands House is a beautiful Grade II* listed neo-classical building, set in just under 600 acres of natural landscaped parkland and formal gardens. The Estate and Stable Visitor Centre is open daily providing refreshments, toilets and gift shop. The House is open on Sundays and Mondays AprilSeptember. Group Visits and Tours welcome.

Hylands Estate has something for everyone to enjoy. Hylands House, Hylands Park, London Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 8WQ 01245 605500 www.chelmsford.gov.uk/ hylands [email protected]

Syon House is the London home of the Duke of Northumberland and has been in the Percy family for over 400 years. Built on the site of a late medieval abbey, Syon boasts one of the finest Robert Adam interiors in the country and has a magnificent collection of paintings and furniture. Set in 200 acres of parkland and Capability

Brown designed gardens, which includes the Great Conservatory, Syon is one of London’s hidden treasures. Brentford, Middlesex TW8 8JF 020 8560 0882 www.syonpark.co.uk [email protected]

ST MARY’S HOUSE & GARDENS

CAERHAYS ESTATE

Bramber, West Sussex BN44 3WE

Gorran, St Austell, Cornwall PL26 6LY

Enchanting medieval timberframed house with five acres of beautiful gardens. Winner of Hudsons Heritage ‘Best Restoration’Award. Features in Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Houses. Fine panelled interiors including unique Elizabethan ‘Painted Room’. Victorian ‘Secret’ Garden, Rural Museum, Jubilee Rose Garden,

Terracotta Garden, King’s Garden, Poetry Garden, woodland walk and Landscape Water Garden. Teas. Gift shop. Car-park. Open May – September, Sundays, Thursdays, B.H. Mondays, 2 – 6pm. (Groups at any other time.) 01903 816205 www.stmarysbramber.co.uk [email protected]

Caerhays Castle and Gardens – History and Beauty on the Cornish Coast. Caerhays Castle, which is owned by the Williams family, is located in a sheltered valley overlooking Porthluney Cove on the South Cornish Coast. The Castle was built by the famous architect, John Nash. Work started in 1807 and was completed by 1810.

The Castle is open for guided tours from the 23rd March – 19th June. The castle gardens are open daily until the 21st June For more information please visit our website 01872 501310 www.caerhays.co.uk

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HERITAGE SITES

VISIT ESSEX Essex

With the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta there’s never been a better time to discover Essex’s connection to this iconic document. Did you know that Hedingham Castle was the ancestral home of Robert de Vere, the 3rd Earl of Oxford and one of the 25 Barons who compelled King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. The Earls of Oxford were among the most

powerful families in England at the time. Today you can visit the castle and if you are lucky you might just meet the direct descendants of de Veres. Throughout the county there are many other important historic sites that are testament to our rich history. Fine examples are the magnificent Jacobean stately home Audley End House, Britain’s tallest

Tudor Gatehouse Layer Marney Tower and Ingatestone Hall, which has been the ancestral home to the Petre family since the reign of Henry VIII. Explore, experience and enjoy a county that has been shaped by varied cultures and played a part in major historical events.

FURTHER INFORMATION Visit these websites for inspirational ideas. www.visitessex.com www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk www.english-heritage.org.uk/ audleyend www.layermarneytower.co.uk www.ingatestonehall.com www.mountfitchetcastle.com

SUDELEY CASTLE & GARDENS Winchcombe, Nr Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL54 5JD

Sudeley Castle & Gardens has played an important role in the turbulent and changing times of England’s past. The castle was a base for Richard III during the Wars of the Roses and saw battle during the Civil War. Four of England’s queens – Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth I visited the castle, and Katherine Parr lived and died here.

Visitors can view her tomb, which is located in St Mary’s Church, as well as the love letters she wrote to Thomas Seymour. While at the castle discover the ’20 treasures of Sudeley’ and visit the extensive exhibitions including the castle’s rare textile collection - which bring to life the rich history of one of England’s most

royally-connected castles. Open daily from 10am to 5pm. A full calendar of events is planned during the year. Visit our website for further details. Quote History2015 for a 10% online discount. Sudeley Castle & Gardens, Winchcombe, Nr Cheltenham GL54 5JD

01242 604 244 www.sudeleycastle.co.uk [email protected]

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HERITAGE SITES

SULGRAVE MANOR

DODDINGTON HALL

Manor Road, Sulgrave, Banbury OX17 2SD

Lincoln, Lincolnshire LN6 4RU

The Birthplace of the United States! This 16th Century Manor House, the ancestral home of George Washington, can lay claim to this remarkable statement. Containing the largest collection of George Washington memorabilia held outside the US, few places in the world have such a significant and unsung history.

Tours are led by guides who tell the story of the house and its status as being a place from which sentiments of friendship between the two countries will forever radiate. 01295 760205 www.sulgravemanor.org.uk enquiries@sulgravemanor. org g.uk

Built in 1595 by Robert Smythson, Doddington Hall has never been sold or cleared out since. An example of a fine late Elizabethan mansion, it is still a lived-in and much loved family home, alive with history and interest. There are seven acres of romantic walled and wild gardens to explore, plus a productive vegetable garden supplying the award-winning

Farm Shop and Restaurant. Hall and Gardens open from 5 April, Wed, Sun, BH Mon from 12- 4pm until 27 September. Groups by special appointment. ‘Voices From The Inside’, 14 June – 31 August on standard opening days. Lincoln LN6 4RU 01522 694308 www.doddingtonhall.com

BURGHLEY HOUSE

MELBOURNE HALL GARDENS

Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 3JY

Melbourne, Derbyshire DE73 8EN

Cecil family for over 400 years is one of England’s Greatest Elizabethan Houses. Burghley was built between 1555 and 1587 byWilliam Cecil,later Lord Burghley,principal adviser and Lord HighTreasurer to Queen Elizabeth I.Burghley contains one of the largest private collections of Italian art,unique examples of Chinese andJapanese porcelain

and superb items of 18th Century furniture. Principal artists and craftsmen of the period are to be found at Burghley, Antonio Verrio,Grinling Gibbons and Louis Laguerre all made major contributions to the beautiful interiors. The House is set in a 300 acre deer park landscaped by‘Capability’Brown. 01780 752451 www.burghley.co.uk

Melbourne hall has a well documented history and all centuries from the 16th to the 21st have left their mark on the fabric. This, combined with the fact that Melbourne remains a family home creates a warm, welcoming atmosphere. It is now the home of Lord and Lady Ralph Kerr, Lord Ralph being a direct descendant of Sir John Coke who made Melbourne his

home in 1629. Melbourne Hall Gardens are widely believed to be England’s best surviving example from the reign of Queen Anne. Open April – September, Weds, Sat & Sun 1.30 – 5.30pm. Hall open in August (every day 1.30 – 5.30pm except Mondays). 01332 862502 www.melbournehallgardens. com

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RAILWAYS

T E F S North Wales

The Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways celebrate the best of Welsh heritage and scenery. Two of the Great Little Trains of Wales, the narrow gauge trains run through some of the most stunning scenery in the Snowdonia National Park. The Welsh Highland runs coast to coast from beside the castle in Caernarfon to Porthmadog Harbour – a run of 25 miles

through farmland and forest across the slopes of Snowdon. The Ffestiniog then runs up from Porthmadog to the famous slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. The tradition of narrow gauge steam is strong in North Wales – The Ffestiniog is celebrating 150 years of passenger services in 2015. Yet in spite of its age, it continues to be a trendsetter

Brecon Beacons

Enjoy the beautiful scenery of the National Park from an ideal position – in a narrow gauge steam train! Travel in one of our all-weather observation carriages behind a vintage steam locomotive to Torpantau high in the Brecon Beacons. Trains run from February to the end of October and at Christmas. Visit‘Shunters’

with modern comfortable carriages being built in its own workshops right alongside Victorian carriages lovingly restored. This really is history on the move. Trains run daily from 21st March until 1st November 2015. There are both enthusiast and family events throughout the year. For information on these and the timetable of services,

please check out the website. The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways are a great excuse to visit some of Wales’ best scenery! 01766 516000 www.festrail.co.uk

Llanberis

licensed restaurant, gift shop, walks, picnic areas, children’s play area, model railway, locomotive workshop, steam museum, special events, free car and coach parking. 01685 722988 www.breconmountainrailway. co.uk [email protected]

Come and ride on our historic steam trains along the shore of Padarn Lake. See magnificent views of the mountains, including mighty Snowdon, from vantage points inaccessible by car. A 60 minute, five mile trip at a low cost: trains run most days from Easter to October. A great day out for all the family!

Llanberis lake Railway, Llanberis, Gwynedd LL55 4TY 01286 870549 www.lake-railways.co.uk [email protected]

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MISCELLANY

Q&A

Q Fictional accounts of the 1914 Christmas truce include volunteers, but I thought they didn’t arrive on the western front until 1916. Which is true? Rosie Vinson, Brighton

A

Volunteers would have been extremely rare on the western front at Christmas 1914. Some 1.1 million men had enlisted into the army since the war’s outbreak in August, but nearly all were still training in home depots. Lord Kitchener’s New Army divisions, in which the majority served, began to arrive in France only from May 1915. In December 1914, volunteers were not yet needed to replace casualties in the regular army on the western front. The army lost 90,000 officers and men in summer and autumn campaigns, but 145,000 ex-soldiers of the Army Reserve had filled gaps in the ranks, though half had already been used to bring to strength regular units at mobilisation in August. The shortfall was covered by the Special Reserve, 64,000 peacetimetrained part-time soldiers. A few volunteers may have reached the western front in time for the truces. The novelist Robert Graves, enlisting in August, had officer training at school and thought only his adjutant’s opinion of him as unsporting prevented his transfer to France in 1914. London Territorial battalions serving with regular divisions in December may have had a few wartime volunteers. Still, fictional accounts notwithstanding, the fraternisation was overwhelmingly initiated and experienced by regular British soldiers and reservists. Dr Alexander Watson, Goldsmiths, University of London

GLEN MCBETH

DID YOU KNOW...?

Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, created a board game eventually marketed as ‘Mark Twain’s Memory Builder’. Twain patented the demanding game of historical trivia, intended to help people remember significant dates in the past, in 1885. Nick Rennison

BBC History Magazine

ILLUSTRATION BY GLEN MCBETH

Q Who was the first English monarch able to speak English fluently? Kenneth Seeskin, Chicago

We don’t know for certain, and we’re assuming you don’t mean any of the Anglo-Saxon crowd before the Norman conquest. Our new masters arrived in 1066 speaking a variety of dialects from northern and western France that a modern French person would find hard to comprehend. What developed from there was a new French dialect, unique to England, known as Anglo-Norman. England’s lively medieval literary culture led to many of the earliest examples of written French being penned here, while all France has from the same period are documents in Latin. Norman and Plantagenet royals and grandees were for several generations far more at home speaking to one another in ‘French’. Of course, they encountered English; it’s said that even William I tried to learn it.

A

The lesser nobility would encounter it in day-to-day dealings with locals, while a fascinating and plausible theory holds that grandees would have picked it up from English servants – particularly nursemaids. Edward I, Edward II and Edward III were probably familiar with English, but we can’t be sure. Henry II and his sons Richard and John are not thought to have used it. Richard II was a patron of Chaucer and other English poets but was a Francophile with no evident interest in Chaucer’s language. The first monarch whom we can say for certain was comfortable with English was King Henry IV, who swore his coronation oath in English, and was the first ruler since the Conquest to do so. Eugene Byrne, author and journalist

97

Miscellany

QUIZ BY JULIAN HUMPHRYS Try your hand at this month’s history quiz, compiled by Julian Humphrys 1. What links the Norman conquest, an attack on London in May 1471 and the rescue of Edmund Howard at the battle of Flodden in September 1513?

These fuel cars bear inscriptions protesting against the dismantling of German industrial plants to help clear the country’s debt following the Second World War

ONLINE QUIZ EVERY FRIDAY historyextra.com /quiz

2. What is the 1888 strike at the Bryant and May factory in Bow, London, better known as? 3. What was the Maltolt?

4

4. IIn October O b 1936 socialite i li Diana Di Mitford (pictured above) married British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley in Berlin. Where? 5. How did Jenny Geddes reputedly demonstrate her disapproval of the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland, in 1637?

Q What happened to the debt of the nations

that fought in the two world wars? Keith Dear, by email

6

6. What links this building with the War of 1812? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. They were all carried out by bastards. William the Bastard of Normandy conquered England; Thomas the Bastard of Fauconberg attacked London; and John the Bastard Heron rescued Edmund Howard. 2. The Match Girls’ Strike. 3. An unpopular English medieval tax on wool exports. 4. In Joseph Goebbels’ living room. 5. When the dean of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh started reading from it, she threw her stool at him. 6. It was built using timbers from USS Chesapeake, which was famously captured off Boston by HMS Shannonn in June 1813. PHOTO CHALLENGE ANSWER: Manya Sklodowski, later known as Marie Curie

98

in 1929 to about £1tn in current values, and payments were not made from 1933 until the end of the 1952. Terms for paying these loans back were generously extended after the Second World War when West Germany became a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union. But what of Britain? Well, the UK government has just announced that it will pay off £218m of its £2bn First World War debt by refinancing bonds originally issued by Winston Churchill. The British have been smart financiers: unlike other governments in Europe, Britain withheld paying these bonds back because the interest rates of 2.5 to 4 per cent were below current market rates for perpetual long-term debt. Dr Eric Golson, department of economics, University of Warwick

BBC History Magazine

GETTY/AKG

Most of the combatant nations have already repaid their debts from this period. Britain’s First War World allies, including the United States and France, took many years to make payments on their bonds. The US loans were some of the first significant debts that the country had incurred, borrowing some $337bn in current money, mostly paid back in the 1920s and 1930s to the banks and businesses it borrowed from. France used moderate inflation in the 1920s to significantly reduce the value of its debts and refinanced most after the Second World War. The largest debtor, Germany, paid off its loans from the two world wars in 2010. Initially worth about 96,000 tonnes of gold after the First World War, the amount Germany owed was reduced

A

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

SAMANTHA’S RECIPE CORNER Every issue, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. This month it’s a rich and tasty fruit cake traditionally eaten at Easter

CURIOUS CHARACTERS

Jemmy Hirst A Yorkshire eccentric who often rode a bull named Jupiter instead of a horse and regularly used pigs instead of pointer dogs when he was out shooting, Jemmy Hirst was born near Goole in 1738. Hirst’s oddities were such that he came to the attention of George III who invited him to London. After first claiming that he was too busy training otters to fish for him, Hirst eventually travelled south and met the king, addressing him (according to some reports) with the unorthodox greeting: “Well, I’m right glad to see thee such a plain owd chap.” Hirst died at the age of 91, leaving £12 in his will for 12 old maids to follow his coffin to the grave. Nick Rennison ILLUSTRATION BY BEN JONES

PICTURE CHALLENGE Name the little girl on the right who became the first female professor at the University of Paris

Simnel cake This delicious fruit cake has been around since medieval times and is often connected to Mothering Sunday, when domestic servants were given the day off to visit family and would take this treat back to their mothers. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Simnel cake became associated with Easter and was decorated with 11 marzipan balls to represent the apostles (minus Judas). INGREDIENTS To make almond paste: • 14oz icing sugar • 9oz ground almonds • 2 eggs, beaten • 1 tsp almond essence To make the cake: • 6oz butter or margarine • 6oz soft brown sugar • 3 eggs, beaten (plus 1 beaten egg for glazing) • 6oz plain flour (I used self raising by mistake and it was fine) • Pinch of salt • ½ tsp ground mixed spice (optional) • 12oz mixed raisins, currants and sultanas • 2oz chopped mixed peel • ½ lemon (grated zest) • 1-2 tbsp apricot jam

GETTY/BEN JONES

METHOD Almond paste: Put icing sugar and ground almonds in a

bowl and add enough egg so you can mix it to a firm consistency. Add almond essence and knead until smooth. Roll a third of the almond into a circle 7 inches in diameter – keep remainder for cake topping. Preheat oven to 140C/gas mark 1. Grease and line a 7 inch cake tin. Cake: Mix butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs slowly and then sift flour, add salt and mixed spice. Add mixed dried fruit, peel and zest. Put half the mixture in the tin, smooth over and add the circle of almond paste. Add the rest of the mixture and smooth over the top. Cover tin in baking paper and place in the oven for 100 mins or until cooked. Brush cooled cake with apricot jam. Place one half of remaining almond paste on top of cake and make 11 balls with the rest. Place balls on top and brush with beaten egg. Place under grill for 1-2 mins or until marzipan starts to go brown. Recipe adapted from bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/ simnelcake_792 Difficulty: 4/10 Time: 2.5 hours

Fruity and filling, Simnel cake makes a tasty Easter treat

BBC History Magazine

99

Miscellany

PRIZE CROSSWORD

From what respiratory illness did Queen Victoria’s daughter Alice (right) suffer? (see 16 down)

CROSSWORD E PRIZE

You may photocopy this crossword

Across

Down 2 Henry, a 19th-century lord chancellor after whom a one-horse, four-wheeled carriage is named (8) 3 In ancient Persia, a member of the priestly class; name often appearing in the (Latin) plural (5)

100

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King John By Marc Morris Discover the story of one of England’s most controversial monarchs – from his hunger for power and the loss of his continental empire, to the sealing of Magna Carta, 800 years ago. Published in hardback by Cornerstone, £25

4 Anglo-Indian term for person of great wealth, originally applied to a European who made a fortune in the east (5) 6 Former name of the east African country of which Menelik II was a great leader from 1889–1913 (9) 7 One of the two rivers that defined the region the ancient Greeks called ‘Mesopotamia’ (9) 8 Middle Eastern capital, damaged by earthquakes in Roman times and ravaged by conflict in modern times (6) 9 Lebanese port, one of oldest continuously inhabited cities in world (6) 15 The seat, since the mid-1840s, of one of the world’s oldest parliaments, the Althing (9) 16 Respiratory illness of which Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria, died in 1878 (9) 18 The last British monarch to be born outside of the United Kingdom (6,2) 20 Alfred, English painter born in Paris, one of the creators of French Impressionism (6) 22 19th-century French neo-Classical style, eg in women’s high-waisted dresses (6)

Menelik II (right) was leader of where? (see 6 down)

24 Australian artist well known for his series of works featuring the bushranger, Ned Kelly (5) 25 Invaders restricted to north, central, and east England by Alfred the Great (5) Compiled by Eddie James

HOW TO ENTER Open to residents of the UK, (inc. Channel Islands). Post entries to BBC History Magazine, April 2015 Crossword, PO Box 501, Leicester LE94 0AA A or email them to [email protected] by 5pm on 22 April 2015. 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 June 2015 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 Magazinee 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.

SOLUTION TO OUR FEBRUARY CROSSWORD Across: 5 Gauden 6/3 Potsdam Conference 9 Ludendorff 10 Cato 11 Philip 13 Aurelius 14 Canning 19 Rousseau 20 Enosis 21 Mini 22 Aphrodite 24 Stanley 25 Stuarts Down: 1 Rubella 2 Mead 4 Pasteur 5 Gaucho 7 Sicily 8 Dreadnought 12 Peacemaker 15 Corinth 16 Ossian 17 Bolivar 18 Liberty 23 Otto FIVE WINNERS OF GREAT MAPS K Foulkes, Lancashire; P Barry, Surrey; D Green, West Midlands; L Goddard, Hampshire; B Petticrew, Northamptonshire

CROSSWORD COMPETITION TERMS & CONDITIONS 쎲 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. 쎲 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) e 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 immediatemedia.co.uk/privacy-policy/ 쎲 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. 쎲 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.

ALAMY/GETTY

1 Remains of early holy city south of Alexandria, named after a Christian martyr, now a World Heritage site (3,4) 5 Robert, leader of 1605 gunpowder plot (7) 10 Nickname for (young) US soldier, particularly in US Expeditionary Forces in First World War (8) 11 A dismissive 1980s term for a type of aspirational, well-to-do young professional (6) 12 See 25 across. 13 Byzantine general, a great military leader, in service of Justinian I (10) 14 Anglo-Saxon king who brought Northumbria under English control (6) 17 Deliberative assembly, often the upper house, originating in ancient Rome (6) 19 Creatures of Greek mythology, eg naiads, dryads and oceanids (6) 21 ___ House, associated with dukes of Wellington, popularly known as ‘Number One, London’ (6) 23 Pioneer of aviation, the first woman to complete a solo flight from England to Australia (3,7) 25/12 across Term once applied to the 5th to 10th centuries AD, now considered inaccurate (4,4) 26 Argentina’s name derives from the Latin word for this (6) 27 Long-serving Swedish PM, during whose tenure many of the country’s social welfare laws were passed (8) 28 District of SE London, once a market garden centre and final stopping point for drovers taking livestock to the capital (7) 29 The Greek shipping magnate who married Jackie Kennedy in 1968 (7)

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Vol 16 No 4 – April 2015 BBC History Magazinee 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 Group advertising manager Tom Drew Senior advertisement manager Steve Grigg Advertisement manager Lucy Moakes 0117 314 7426 [email protected] Classified sales executive Hannah Brown 0117 314 7412 [email protected] 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 Dominic Lobley 020 7150 5015 [email protected] SYNDICATION Head of licensing & syndication Tim Hudson International Partners’ Manager Anna Brown PRODUCTION Production director Sarah Powell Production co-ordinatorr Emily Mounter Ad co-ordinatorr Jade O’Halloran IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY Publisher David Musgrove Publishing director Andy Healy Managing directorr Andy Marshall CEO Tom Bureau Deputy chairman Peter Phippen Chairman Stephen Alexander BBC WORLDWIDE Director of publishing Nicholas Brett Head of publishing Chris Kerwin Publishing co-ordinatorr Eva Abramik [email protected] www.bbcworldwide.com/uk--anz/ ukpublishing.aspx

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Civil War misconceptions Leading historians challenge conventional views of Cromwell, Charles I and the armies that battled to control the British Isles Lusitania Saul David explores the controversial sinking of a great ocean liner in the First World War

Vote winners Dominic Sandbrook explains how the past 25 general elections were won and lost

Magna Carta David Starkey opin nes on the great charte er as its 800th annivers ary approaches

Jul–Dec 2014

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BBC History Magazine

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My history hero “He conjured up what it was like to have this idyllic childhood. He knew children wanted adventure and explained how to do these things in an engaging way”

John Sergeant, broadcaster, chooses

Arthur Ransome 1884–1967 “Ransome’s books were in part a reaction to the horrors he’d witnessed in Russia,” says John Sergeant

A

rthur Ransome is best known for writing the classic Swallows and Amazons series of young people’s novels, set in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Earlier in his career, he worked as a literary writer and as a foreign correspondent, reporting on the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Ransome was also acquainted with Lenin and Trotsky and in 1924 the latter’s former secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, become his second wife.

When did you first hear about Arthur Ransome?

As a child, when I read Swallows and Amazons, and then more importantly when I had a family of my own – and we regarded it not so much as a work of fiction, but as a guide book. We’d visit the Lake District or the Norfolk Broads most years and go sailing or camping, and do all the things that Ransome wrote about. What kind of person was he?

First and foremost, a very good children’s writer – and there was an innocence about him that shone through in his books. He wasn’t at all the sort of person that you’d expect to cover the Russian Revolution. He’d originally gone to Russia to write about its folklore but when war and revolution broke out found himself in the middle of this wild struggle; I think he found himself out of his depth. He was accused of sucking up to the Bolsheviks and on his return to Britain was interviewed by Special Branch and asked if he was a communist sympathiser. When asked what his politics were, he replied “fishing”, and I think he said so without irony.

What was Ransome’s finest hour?

Settling down in the Lake District, which he’d known as a child, with Trotsky’s former secretary – and creating the world of Swallows and Amazons. He put away his journalist’s pen and conjured up what it was like to have this idyllic childhood. He knew children wanted adventure and to widen their experiences, and do all the things he has them doing: be it sailing or fishing. He explained how to do these things in an engaging way, giving his stories a guidebook quality. I think his children’s books were in part a reaction to the horrors he’d witnessed in Russia. Is there anything you don’t particularly admire about him?

He was a bad father to his only daughter and he wasn’t very nice to the real-life children who inspired his fictional characters when they grew up. I also find it rather reprehensible the extent to which he glorified the Russian revolutionaries; he clearly got a bit carried away by them. Are there any parallels between his life and your own?

Well, I too covered wars as a young reporter – and while I don’t want to exaggerate my role, like him I went to a lot of dangerous places. I also have a Russian connection: my maternal grandmother was Russian, and my mother was born in Odessa and always felt Russian in some ways. Moreover, my father spoke Russian – my parents would speak Russian if they didn’t want us to hear what they were saying. Lastly, there’s our shared love of sailing. Unlike Ransome though, I’ve never fancied trying my luck as a children’s writer. It’s a tremendous skill and I just think it’s beyond me!

What made him a hero?

106

If you could meet Ransome, what would you ask him?

I’d ask a series of boating-related questions: the best place in the country to moor a boat, the best boat for young people, the best boat for older people? That sort of thing. John Sergeant was talking to York Membery John Sergeant is a former political editor of ITV and chief political correspondent of the BBC. His ITV series, Barging Round Britain, concludes in April. His accompanying book is published by Michael Joseph

BBC History Magazine

MARY EVANS

He taught us to take childhood seriously. The Victorians thought youngsters should be seen but not heard – that’s a big mistake. Childhood is something that you should put in a bottle, and every now and then take a swig from: there’s a difference between being childish and childlike and I think Ransome subscribed to that. His stories are terrific escapism and bring alive the romance of the Lakes, while never patronising or talking down to young people. I am also fascinated by the fact that he was there at these amazing moments in history, like the Russian Revolution.

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