History Today 03-2015

March 2015
Vol 65 Issue 3
Retail
Revolution
Shopping with
the Georgians
Violent Women
Terror and the suffragettes
The Sons of Mars
Mercenaries of the ancient world
Publisher Andy Patterson

Editor Paul Lay
Digital Manager Dean Nicholas
Picture Research Mel Haselden
Reviews Editor Philippa Joseph
Contributing Editors Fern Riddell, Kate Wiles
Publishing Assistant Rhys Griffiths
Art Director Gary Cook
Subscriptions Manager Cheryl Deflorimonte
Subscriptions Assistant Ava Bushell
Accounts Sharon Harris
Board of Directors
Simon Biltcliffe (Chairman), Tim Preston
CONTACTS
History Today is published monthly by
History Today Ltd, 2nd Floor, 9/10 Staple Inn,
London WC1V 7QH. Tel: 020 3219 7810
enquiries@historytoday.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Tel: 020 3219 7813/4
subscribe@historytoday.com
ADVERTISING
Lisa Martin, Portman Media
Tel: 020 7079 9361
lisamartin@portmanmedia.co.uk
Print managed by Webmart Ltd. 01869 321321.
Printed at W. Gibbons & Sons Ltd, Willenhall, UK.
Distributed by MarketForce 020 3148 3539 (UK &
RoW) and Disticor 905 619 6565 (North America).
History Today (ISSN No: 0018-2753, USPS No: 246580) is published monthly by History Today Ltd,
GBR and distributed in the USA by Asendia USA,
17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals
postage paid New Brunswick, NJ and additional
mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes
to History Today, 701C Ashland Avenue, Folcroft
PA 19032. Subscription records are maintained
at History Today Ltd, 2nd Floor, 9/10 Staple Inn,
London WC1V 7QH, UK.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dr Simon Adams University of Strathclyde
Dr John Adamson Peterhouse, Cambridge
Professor Richard Bessel University of York
Professor Jeremy Black University of Exeter
Lord Briggs Formerly Chancellor
of the Open University
Professor Paul Dukes University of Aberdeen
Professor Martin Evans University of Sussex
Juliet Gardiner Historian and author
Gordon Marsden MP for Blackpool South
Dr Roger Mettam Queen Mary,
University of London
Professor Geoffrey Parker
Ohio State University
Professor Paul Preston
London School of Economics
Professor M.C. Ricklefs
The Australian National University
Professor Nigel Saul Royal Holloway,
University of London
Dr David Starkey
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Professor T.P. Wiseman University of Exeter
Professor Chris Wrigley
University of Nottingham
All written material, unless otherwise stated,
is the copyright of History Today
Total Average Net Circulation

19,551 Jan-Dec 2013
2 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Foes forever: More (left) and Cromwell.
FROM THE EDITOR

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE places in the world is the Living Hall of the Frick Collection
in Manhattans Upper East Side. Either side of its fireplace, crowned by a St Jerome of
El Greco, hang two portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger of Henry VIIIs two great
statesmen: on the left, Thomas More, to the right, Thomas Cromwell. The portraits,
though contemporary, already suggest the stereotypes that More and Cromwell
would come to represent, in historical fiction, if not in history. More, luxuriant,
confident, born to the purple, is every bit the Renaissance Man. Cromwell, jowly
and clad in black, looks furtive, anxious and insecure, a man who by birth, though
certainly not intellect and cunning, is out of position. Judging by reactions to the
BBCs six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantels novels, Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the
Bodies, the contest over the legacies of More and Cromwell is as bitter as ever and
damaging to serious widespread engagement with this crucial period of history.
Though this binary representation of More and Cromwell has a long pedigree
the Protestant propagandist John Foxe thought Cromwell a valiant captain of
Christ, while More, a saint no less since 1935, has a special place in the hearts
of English Catholics it is Robert Bolts play of 1960, A Man for All Seasons and,
even more so, the film adaptation of 1966 which revived this Manichean duel.
More, beautifully played by Paul Schofield, was the elegant and erudite idealist, a
saintly figure unconcerned with the trappings of a world with which his antagonist,
Cromwell, in a wonderfully paranoid performance by Leo McKern, was all too
smitten. It was a seductive but ludicrously hagiographical portrait of More, who, for
all his brilliance, was a hairshirt-wearing, heretic hunter.
Now, with Wolf Hall, we appear to have gone to the other extreme. Mantels
sympathy for Cromwell appears to stem from her rejection of a Catholic upbringing
and Cromwell, brilliant like More, but in reality cruel and scheming, is portrayed as
a gentle family man, while the Lord Chancellor, in the form of Anton Lesser, is a vile
and despicable tormentor of the blacksmiths boy made good.
However entertaining historical fiction may be, and sometimes incisive (there is
a wonderfully illuminating performance by Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey: Lent
to Orson Welless over-stuffed carnival in A Man for All Seasons, according to Simon
Schama) we see its problem. It needs heroes. History doesnt. And history will have to
wait for Diarmaid MacCullochs major biography of Thomas Cromwell to get the full
picture, like that of the other Cromwell, warts n all.
Paul Lay
HistoryMatters
Anglo-Saxon Schools John Lilburne Longman-History Today Awards
The Legacy
of 1815
Are we in danger of
neglecting the true
importance of one of
historys epochal years?
Jeremy Black
WATERLOO holds our attention, but
there were other episodes in British
military history that year which were
also important in framing the long
19th century.
The most obvious was the defeat
in January of Wellingtons brother-inlaw, Sir Edward Pakenham, outside
New Orleans, which underlined the
extent to which war between Britain
and the US would end in compromise.
Indeed, a peace had already been
negotiated at Ghent, although it had
not yet been ratified. As the campaigns
of 1812, 1813 and 1814 demonstrated,
Britain could hold Canada against US
invasion. Moreover, the Americans
were not strong enough at sea to
inflict fatal damage on the British
maritime blockade. Equally, British
attempts to co-operate with Native
Americans had little success and
British invasions of America struggled
to achieve lasting results.
One legacy of 1815 was, therefore,
a North America in which Britain
was going to have to accommodate a
rapidly expanding new state. The implications were realised mid-century,
when the US extended its rule to the
Pacific and overcame secession.
The year also delivered an effective
demonstration of British strength in
the western hemisphere. Overshadowed by Waterloo, the British capture
of the French colonies in the West
Indies indicated that Britains capacity
for power projection was unrivalled,
a situation that continued until the
landed on June 5th, occupying all key positions. In

Guadeloupe, the situation
proved more difficult. An
insurrection, mounted
on June 18th, ironically
the same day as Waterloo,
succeeded with the support
of the local authorities and
Napoleon was proclaimed
emperor the next day. In
response, Leith landed his
men on August 8th. His
forces advanced rapidly
and, two days later, the
French surrendered. Leith
had been helped in his
task by bringing news of
Waterloo.
British naval strength
was also displayed in
French waters in 1815.
France was blockaded by
the British fleet and, under
the command of MajorGeneral Hudson Lowe,
later Napoleons custodian on St Helena, British
forces at Genoa co-operated
with a squadron under
Edward, Lord Exmouth, the
commander-in-chief in the
Mediterranean, to occupy
Marseille. In conjunction
with local royalists, they
then advanced on Toulon,
restoring it to Bourbon
control.
The Royal Navy also
denied Napoleon his own freedom.
Napoleon planned to go to America,
but found himself trapped at Rochefort, from where he boarded HMS
Bellerophon on July 15th, throwing
himself on the generosity of the
Prince Regent. Instead, he was taken
to Torbay, where he was not allowed
to land, transhipped and taken to
imprisonment on St Helena, a South
Atlantic outcrop made secure by Royal
Navy dominance.
Overshadowed by Waterloo, the British

capture of the French colonies in the West
Indies indicated that Britains capacity
for power projection was unrivalled
Second World War. The sugar islands of
Guadeloupe and Martinique had been
returned to French control as part of
the peace settlement in 1814, having
been seized by British amphibious
forces in 1810 and 1809 respectively.
They were attacked anew in 1815.
Against Martinique, LieutenantGeneral Sir James Leith, governor of
the Leeward Islands and commanderin-chief in the West Indies, sent
troops from nearby St Lucia. They
All at sea: The Last

Leap of a Great Man
(Napoleon).
French engraving,
early 19th century.
MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 3
HISTORYMATTERS
Another aspect of British strength

was apparent in 1815, notably the
budget presented to the Commons on
June 14th, at a time when the likely
duration of the war with Napoleon
was uncertain. This budget made
provision for the expenditure of
79,893,300, which was to be met by
the renewal of the war taxes, as well
as by new loans. In South Asia, the
British continued to demonstrate their
strength, conquering that year the
kingdom of Kandy, which had earlier
defied the Portuguese, Dutch and,
indeed, in 1803, the British.
In the longer term, these elements
proved more significant than Wellingtons triumph at Waterloo. The limited
size of its peacetime army affected
what Britain could do on the Continent after 1815. British forces were
sent there, notably to Portugal, but
there was, as for Wellington in Portugal, Spain and at Waterloo, a reliance
on coalition warfare for anything more
than peripheral operations, a reliance
repeated in the Crimean War (1854-6).
At sea the situation was very different. Britain was by far the leading
naval power and was to maintain this
position despite the disruption and
cost arising from repeated changes in
naval technology, notably to steam
and iron. The development of countervailing weapons and techniques, such
as shell guns by the French in the
1830s, did not lead to the overthrow of
the British position.
Naval dominance ensured that
Britain was best placed to take advantage of an integrating world. It was
the British character of globalisation
that proved so significant to the world
in the 19th century, helping ensure
that British influence was not simply
a matter of Empire, whether formal or
informal.
In part, the British world was
grounded on force, but its purpose
was peaceful, notably as an agent of
economic growth. Maritime trade
appeared to the British to be their
destiny and a means of global good,
and free trade acquired totemic significance. The charting of the oceans
combined the search for information,
its accumulation, depiction and
use. Britains global commitments
and opportunities, both naval and
The British world was

grounded on force,
but its purpose was
peaceful, notably as
an agent of economic
growth
commercial, made it easiest and most
necessary for it to be Britain that was
acquiring and using the information.
Veterans of the Napoleonic war played
a major role in the early surveying.
In addition, tide prediction tables
expanded dramatically from the 1830s.
Improvements in equipment and representation played a role, notably the
development of the self-registering
tide gauge, which was able, by tracing
all tidal irregularities, to provide the
accurate data necessary for a dynamic
theory of the tides.
William Whewell, a major member
of the British scientific lite, who
played a key part in the work on tides,
also applied himself to creating
a self-registering anemometer to
record the velocity and direction of
the wind. Despite the development of
steam power, knowledge of the wind
remained significant for navigation.
All this information was integrated,
so that the world was increasingly understood in terms of a western matrix
of knowledge in which Britain played
the key role.
Alternative Histories by Rob Murray
The advantage offered to British

power by technological developments,
by information systems, especially
the accurate charting and mapping
of coastal waters, and by organisational methods, notably naval supply
depots, gave Britain an unsurpassed
global reach. It became possible to
envisage the construction of a global
system, with the British Empire as its
framework.
The range of knowledge acquired
was shown in careers such as that of
Clements Markham (1830-1916). He
became a naval cadet before being sent
to Peru by the India Office in 1859 to
collect seeds and young specimens of
varieties of the cinchona tree (from
which quinine is made). Once established in southern India, this production resulted in a marked fall in the
price of quinine, which encouraged its
use by Britain. Malaria rates fell. Appointed to the Geographical Department of the India Office in 1868, the
year in which he served as geographer
on the military expedition to Ethiopia,
Markham served as President of the
Royal Geographical Society from 1893
until 1905.
Britains position was under challenge before the Great War. In January
1904, after hearing a lecture by
Halford Mackinder to the Royal Geographical Society on rail links across
Eurasia, Leo Amery, later a Conservative politician, emphasised the onward
rush of technology and the resulting
need to reconceptualise space. He told
the society that sea and rail links and
the subsequent global distribution of
power would be supplemented by air,
leading to a new world order.
Amerys assumptions were not
vindicated for a while: Britain, despite
the rise of the US, was a stronger
power in relative terms in the 1920s
than it appeared to be in the 1900s,
though that was soon to change. But
the legacy of 1815 was real and, thanks
to the character of British power, the
Western-dominated world of the 19th
century was more liberal, politically
and economically, than it would otherwise have been.
Jeremy Blacks books include The Power of
Knowledge: How Information and Technology
Made the Modern World (Yale, 2014).
HISTORYMATTERS
School tools:
whale-bone
writing-tablet
and styluses
from the middle
Anglo-Saxon
period.
Making Men of Letters

Schoolboys forget their books, lose their pens and laugh
at dirty jokes. This was true even in the rigorous atmosphere
of the Anglo-Saxon classroom.
Kate Wiles
AS WITH ALL THINGS relating to
Anglo-Saxon England, evidence of what
happened in the classroom is scant,
but what does survive paints a familiar
picture. Education in that period came in
many shapes and forms: some students
took apprenticeships and learned practical skills, while others went into monasteries and learned to read and write.
King Alfred believed that all the youth in
England should be taught to read and
write in English and those continuing
into the monasteries should learn Latin.
The teaching of Latin saw a revival in the
10th century, amid worries that the state
of learning in England had declined until
it seemed as though not a single priest in
England was able to compose in Latin or
indeed, read it.
No books survive which are definitively known to have been used in the
classroom, but we have some idea of
the types of texts used. The curriculum
used for teaching Latin had its roots
in classical teaching models. It used
three main methods: glossaries taught
vocabulary, grammars taught syntax and
morphology (the structure of language)
and colloquies scripted conversations
gave conversational practice, in which
students could put their vocabulary and
structural learning to use. This combination is still recognisable to anyone who

has taken a modern language course.
The works of two of the greatest
teachers from the late 10th century give
us the best insight into the Anglo-Saxon
classroom and curriculum. lfric of
Eynsham (also known as Grammaticus
or the Homilist) wrote a glossary, a
grammar and a colloquy for the teaching of Latin with a parallel text in Old
English, an innovation that made it more
accessible for students yet to learn Latin.
The only student we can confidently
say to have come from lfrics school is
lfric Bata (Bata seemingly a nickname
from the Hebrew for barrel, either being
a reference to his size, or to his love
of drink). Bata wrote a colloquy which
followed his teachers model but in a different style. Where lfrics work upheld
the monastic lifestyle and ideals, Batas
was raucous and dramatic.
Batas colloquies are intended for
students to learn Latin through the use
of dramatic scenes in which aspects of
daily life in the classroom are played
out: in a normal day, the master or his
helper would give each pupil a passage
of about 40 lines to memorise and recite
back the following day, with the threat
of a beating if this was not performed
satisfactorily.
As well as allowing students to play

out the roles of teacher and student,
or farmer or tradesman, Bata writes of
monks throwing alcohol-fuelled parties,
negotiating kisses from women, riding
into town to get more beer and going to
the privy with younger pupils, unaccompanied. His scenes often directly break
the Benedictine rules to which Bata
and his pupils were expected to adhere.
In one colloquy, he sets out a dialogue
between master and pupil in which they
exchange a vast array of scatological
insults, including the memorable May
a beshitting follow you ever. Certainly,
his pupils were not going to forget the
relevant vocabulary.
In addition to learning to read and
speak Latin, students were also expected
to learn to write and shape their letters
to a high calligraphic standard in order
to produce manuscripts. At the earliest
stages, they learned to form the shapes
of letters by copying examples from their
master, writing on wax tablets with a
stylus and a knife to scrape it clean, or on
scraps of parchment or vellum left over
from the production of full manuscripts.
Because these early stages were informal
and the scraps probably meant to be
discarded, none have survived, although
tablets have been found in Ireland and
styluses at Whitby. Examples of the work
of more advanced students can be seen
in manuscripts made at the scriptorium
of St Mary Magdalene in Frankenthal.
Here, the master starts at the top of
the page to demonstrate the style,
layout and script of the page and the
pupil takes over, shakily at first. The two
hands then alternate in sections down
the page, as the pupil improves. When
students were deemed good enough,
they would be asked to produce manuscripts for their monastery, or they could
work for their own benefit. In one scene
from Batas colloquies, an older student
barters and gains a commission to copy
a manuscript for a fee of 12 silver coins.
Education was highly valued among
Anglo-Saxons. Yet, despite its serious
purpose, schoolboy humour remains
evident throughout. In that sense at
least, the classroom has changed very
little in the last thousand years.
Kate Wiles is a contributing editor at History

Today and an expert on scribes and manuscripts.
HISTORYMATTERS
Enduring
Liberty
The legacy of Free Born

John Lilburne still resonates
400 years after his birth.
John Rees
This year marks the 400th anniversary
of the birth of Leveller leader John
Lilburne, who did more than most to
make religious and political liberty part
of the English social landscape.
We hear much these days to the
effect that freedom of speech means
secularism. Yet freedom of speech
entered the world in the first modern
revolution not as a secular ideology
but as the inseparable counterpart of
freedom for religious dissent from the
state church. And Lilburnes life bears
witness to that fact.
Lilburne first became famous in the
1630s as a supporter of John Bastwick,
William Prynne and Henry Burton, the
Puritan martyrs who railed against
the state church of Charles I and his
Archbishop, William Laud. Lilburne
secretly imported seditious tracts from
Holland. When he was captured in
1637 he was jailed. He was then hauled
before the Star Chamber, a prerogative
court in which the main evidence was
the defendants confession (a procedure
creeping back into English law in secret
trials). It is from his defiance of this
courts right to try him that he became
Freeborn John.
His eventual punishment was to be
tied to the back of a cart and whipped
in the London streets from the Fleet
to Whitehall. There he was put in the
stocks, the welts on his back swelled
almost as big as a penny loafe with
the bruses of the knotted Cords, still
throwing radical pamphlets from his
coat pocket. Lilburne was then, and remained all his life, part of the dissenting
gathered churches that met in the back
alleys and taverns of the City of London
and in the unruly suburbs outside the
walls in Tower Hamlets and Southwark.
Lilburnes early career allowed him
to develop his capacity to use the court
and the prison as a political platform.
He had need of this skill. In the two
decades between 1637 and 1657 there
Honest John:
Lilburne in an
engraving by
Richard Cooper,
late 18th century.
were only four years in which Lilburne

did not spend some time behind bars.
Lilburne most often wrote either
from jail or under immediate threat of
arrest and imprisonment. His bravery
commended him to many who were
not wholly sympathetic to his cause
and Lilburne was mindful of the need to
present his suffering as an example of
wider social injustice.
In the 17th century it was almost
impossible not to combine religious
and political radicalism. But, in an age
where the church performed some of
the combined functions of the modern
civil service, education system and mass
media, to be against the church was
likely to mean being against the state.
It was Charles Is father, James I, who
coined the adage No Bishop, No King.
Lilburnes rhetoric never lost the
dimension of religiously inspired resistance to persecution. But, as the experience of participation in the Civil Wars
and the revolutionary mass movement
gathered pace, other themes emerged.
The notion of freedom and equality
under and in the law quickly became
a central concern. Joined to this was
the matter of legal precedent and,
to demonstrate this, Lilburne relied
on copious citation of Edward Cokes

Institutes. Then there was the historical
argument that this notion of freedom
had been lost under the Norman yoke.
As experience accumulated, there was
an increasing reliance on citing the
Long Parliaments and the Parliamentary armys previous acts and engagements as a precedent for Leveller
actions. All these influences flowed in
The Agreement of the People (1647), the
Levellers radical attempt at a written
constitution. In the 1650s Lilburne even
began to show an interest in classical
Republican thought.
But the religious and political
freedom, for which Lilburne fought
were never absolutes. Royalists and
Catholics were not always included,
though Lilburne went further than
most in defending their rights, too. And
freedom was always a question that
Lilburne directed to those in power,
not those with whom he passionately disagreed but had little power. As
he wrote in The Innocent Mans Second
Proffer (1649), his pamphlets fell into
categories depending on who had the
power to jail him: first the bishops and
the king, then the Presbyterian parliamentary moderates, then the Cromwellian state.
When his old models, the Puritan
martyrs, became defenders of the
Presbyterian moderates in Parliament,
they attacked Lilburne and he gave as
good as he got. Cromwells first speech
in Parliament had been in defence of
Lilburne at the time of his initial imprisonment, but when Lilburne saw Cromwells rise to power as a threat to liberty
he fired the paper bullets of his pamphlets at his old defender. Cromwell
tried Lilburne twice for treason. Both
attempts failed and Lilburnes acquittals
were met with loud and long rejoicing
in the London streets, as Honest John
lived to fight another day.
Lilburnes notion of freedom always
involved asking the questions: freedom
for whom? To say what? And for what
purpose? The questions Lilburne asked
are still at the heart of the modern
debate on liberty.
John Rees is organiser of the John Lilburne 400th

anniversary conference to be held at the Bishopsgate Institute, London on March 14th. For further
information visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk
HISTORYMATTERS
LongmanHistory Today
Awards 2015
The Commonwealth War
Graves Commission and
a study of the BBC World
Service were among this
years winners.
THE Longman-History Today Trustees
Award for 2015 was given to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
(CWGC). From its beginnings in the
wake of the Great War, the CWGC
has maintained the simple dignity and
true equality of the 1.7 million graves
and memorials it tends, in 23,000 locations across 153 countries, visited by
around 1.6 million people a year. It has
employed some of the 20th centurys
greatest architects, such as Reginald
Blomfield, creator of the first great
memorial at Ypres, the Menin Gate,
and Edwin Lutyens, whose Thiepval
memorial on the Somme commemorates 72,000 dead. Among its early
advisers, when it was the Imperial
War Graves Commission, was Rudyard
Kipling, who knew the tragedy of war
all too well and whose magnificent
short story, The Gardener, remains so
evocative of such places. The CWGC
still employs 850 gardeners. In 1949,
its regrettable but necessary task
began again with the completion of
the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery.
After last years commemoration of the
outbreak of the First World War and
this years remembrance of the end
of the Second, it seemed an especially
appropriate and deserving recipient.
The CWGC performs three crucial
tasks: it remembers with eloquence
the events of the past; it acknowledges
the relationship of one generation to
another the debts owed, the continuing bonds, the similarities, the differences, the common humanity and it
demonstrates a serious commitment
to public history.
The Trustees Award was presented
to Victoria Wallace, director general
of the CWGC, by the editor of History
Top: Victoria Wallace, director general of the Commonwealth

War Graves Commission, receives the Longman-History Today
Trustees Award from Paul Lay. Above: historians assemble.
Today, Paul Lay, at a reception held at

the Old Hall of Lincolns Inn, London, the
inspiration and setting for the opening
scene of Dickens Bleak House. Wallace,
accepting the award, called on historians
to keep telling the stories of those lives
the CWGC commemorates.
The Longman-History Today Book
Prize, awarded to a first or second work
of scholarship deserving of a wider
audience, with a prize of 2,000, went to
Alban Webb for London Calling: the BBC
World Service and the Cold War (Bloomsbury). It was described by the judges
Professor Jeremy Black of Exeter

University, Professor Miri Rubin of
Queen Mary University of London, Taylor
Downing, author and film-maker, and
Paul Lay as scholarly and accessible, a
resonant, brilliantly researched tale that
grows more pertinent by the day. It is
reviewed by Taylor Downing on page 59.
The Longman-History Today Historical
Picture Researcher of the Year prize is
given to a researcher who has done
outstanding work to enhance a text with
a creative, imaginative and wide-ranging
selection of images. This year the prize
and a cheque for 500 was awarded to
Laura Canter for her work on the Folio
Society edition of Paul Fussells 1975
classic, The Great War and Modern Memory.
The judges, Mel Haselden, picture
researcher of History Today, and Paul Lay,
thought Canter had produced a breathtakingly original array of images, which
enhanced an already outstanding work.
The History Today Digital Award and
a cheque for 250 was given to Eleanor
Parker for her website A Clerk of Oxford
(http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk),
a wonderful, scholarly and accessible
evocation of the enchanted world of
11th- and 12th-century England, the time
of the Danish Conquest, with a particular
focus on the reign of Cnut.
The Undergraduate Dissertation
Prize, worth 250, is given by History
Today in association with the Royal
Historical Society. As has been the case
in recent years, the shortlist of six entries
was very strong. Paul Lay, presenting
the award, commended the dissertation
of Patrick Hoffman of the University of
Cambridge, De Administrando Imperio in
the Context of 10th-century Byzantine Diplomatic, Political and Literary Culture. But
the winner was Rebecca Pyne-Edwards
Banks of the University of Derby for
Cutting Through the Gordian Knot: The
British Military Service Tribunals During
the Great War. The judges Professor
David Feldman of Birkbeck, University
of London and Director of the Pears
Institute for the Study of Antisemitism;
Dr Alan Thacker, Reader and Executive
Editor of the Victoria County History at
the Institute of Historical Research; and
Paul Lay thought it a rich, rigorously
researched panorama of attitudes of and
towards conscientious objectors, both in
Derbyshire and nationally.
MonthsPast
MARCH
By Richard Cavendish
March 5th 1815
Franz Anton
Mesmer dies in
Germany
The German physician who inspired
the modern practice of hypnotism
came from a Roman Catholic family in
Swabia, near the Swiss border. They lived
at a place called Iznang on an arm of
Lake Constance and the father, Anton
Mesmer, was gamekeeper to the Bishop
of Constance. Born in 1734, the third of
their nine children was named Franz
Anton, but was usually known as Anton.
His Catholic education by monks and at
two Jesuit universities left him with no
zeal for the Church and in his twenties in
1759 he went to study first law and then
medicine at the University of Vienna.
By the time he wrote his doctoral
dissertation in the 1760s Mesmer was
deeply interested in the possible influence of the planets on disease. Drawing
on the work of a distinguished English
physician, Richard Mead, he suggested
that an invisible fluid in the human body
is influenced by the planets, just as the
moon affects the tides. He later invented
the term animal magnetism for this
phenomenon.
In 1768 Mesmer married a rich
widow, ten years older than himself,
Anna Maria von Posch. They lived in
style in Vienna on her money and he set
up in medical practice. He believed that
diseases were caused by blockages in
the bodys invisible fluid which could be
broken by putting a patient into a trance
state that would restore the fluids
normal healthy flow. He experimented
with using magnets, but dropped them
as he concluded that it was his own personal magnetism he was a dramatic
and commanding character that
brought about the desired result.
Mesmer had an appetite for publicity.
He gave lectures and demonstrations
and staged cures in a way that upset
more conventional Viennese doctors. In
1778 he left Vienna for Paris. Anna Maria
Hypnotic: Franz
Anton Mesmer in
a contemporary
engraving.
apparently did not go with him. He had

complained about her extravagance and
stupidity and it seems they now parted
company. He took an apartment in a
fashionable area and opened a clinic in
the Place Vendme.
He soon attracted attention from
those who thought him a brilliant innovator, but the French medical establishment largely regarded him as a charlatan. He would sit in front of a patient
with his knees touching theirs and then
make passes with his hands over the
patients shoulders and down the arms.
Many of his patients felt strange sensations and some went into convulsions.
So many came flocking to the clinic that
he sometimes treated them in groups,
who touched their bodies with iron bars
protruding from a tub of fluid while they
were linked together by holding a rope.
An English observer said that Mesmer
could cause convulsions by moving his
hands without touching the patient.

Mesmer became the talk of Paris.
He wrote little himself, but he gained
disciples who wrote admiringly about
him and his technique began to be called
mesmerism. It spread across France
to such an extent that in 1784 Louis XVI
set up a commission of enquiry, whose
members included the chemist AntoineLaurent Lavoisier, the astronomer
Jean-Sylvain Bailly and Joseph-Ignace
Guillotin, the doctor who gave his name
to the guillotine. The chairman was the
US ambassador Benjamin Franklin. The
commission did not talk to Mesmer
or any of his patients, but focussed on
whether mesmerisms invisible bodily
fluid actually existed. It reported that
there was no evidence for any such
invisible fluid and that mesmerisms
effects on a patient must be attributed
to the patients imagination and could
well be harmful.
The commissions report had a
shattering effect on Mesmer. He had
discovered something important, but he
had never properly understood how it
worked. He now began a slow retreat
into himself. He closed his Paris clinic,
returned to Vienna for a time to sort
out financial matters after the death of
his wife and then travelled in Europe
before retiring to the area near Lake
Constance where he had grown up. He
lived quietly for many years at Frauenfeld
in Switzerland on the lakes southern
shore before settling finally at Meersburg
in Swabia. He did not marry again and
he had no children. He suffered agonies
with bladder problems before dying at
the age of 80 at Meersburg.
Mesmer had gone and his theory of
an invisible fluid in the body had gone,
too, but as the 19th century wore on a
more scientific approach developed. The
most important single figure was James
Braid, a Scottish physician in Manchester
who coined the terms hypnotism and
hypnosis from Hypnos, the Greek god
of sleep, after experiments in the 1840s.
There is no doubt now that hypnotism
works, for good or sometimes for ill, but
it is still not fully understood.
March 22nd 1765
The Stamp Act
The act never went properly into

effect, but it had greater consequences than many which did. Passed
through Parliament against little
opposition and signed into law by
George III, the Stamp Act imposed on
the British colonies in North America
a tax on printed documents, including
legal papers, contracts, bills of sale,
licenses, wills, ships papers, advertisements, newspapers and magazines.
Books were not affected, but playing
cards and dice were. The items had
to carry revenue stamps, sent from
Britain. The act was to come into
effect from the beginning of November and the money would pay for
troops stationed in the colonies to
defend them against attack.
The British government, struggling
with mountainous debts, considered
this entirely reasonable, but the
colonists did not. The colonies had
their own democratic assemblies, but
they had no Members of Parliament
at Westminster and the old

principle of no taxation
without representation
was increasingly invoked.
In May the Massachussetts politician Samuel
Adams told the Boston
Town Meeting that: If
taxes are laid upon us
in any shape without
our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we
not reduced from the character of
free subjects to the miserable state
of tributary slaves? In Virginia a
lawyer and member of the House of
Burgesses, Patrick Henry, reminded
the House that Julius Caesar had his
Brutus and Charles I his Cromwell
and said that no doubt some good
American would stand up in favour of
his country. He proposed resolutions
to the effect that only Virginia had
the right to tax Virginians and the
resolutions were passed.
Other colonial assemblies came
out against the new tax and when
the first revenue stamps arrived they
March 8th 415
Hypatia of Alexandria
murdered
In the company of
men: Hypatia (or
possibly the artist)
in white robe, from
Raphaels The School
of Athens (1509-11).
O! the Fatal
Stamp: a response
to the Stamp
Act published in
the Pennsylvania
Journal, 1765.
The city of Alexandria in the late fourth

century ad was inhabited by pagans,
Jews and Christians. There was mounting tension between them and the
Christians themselves were divided by
theological disputes, mainly centred on
the doctrine of the Trinity as declared
at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The
Emperor Theodosius I, the last ruler of
both the western and the eastern halves
of the Roman Empire, issued decrees in
the 380s and 390s that banned all pagan
religious ceremonies and made Nicene
Christianity the state religion of the
whole empire. This put Christian bishops
in positions of political power.
Hypatia of Alexandria has been called
the first notable female in the history of
mathematics. She wrote commentaries
on various earlier works on mathematics
and astronomy, but they have not
survived, nor have any original writings
of her own. Herself a pagan, she was an
exponent of the Neoplatonist philosophy, which appealed to many Christian
intellectuals, and she had numerous
admiring pagan and Christian pupils.
were often seized and destroyed.

Protest turned to violence. The
official responsible for distributing the stamps in Massachusetts
was hanged in effigy on Boston
Common from what was called
the Liberty Tree, a mob wrecked
part of his house and he resigned.
A mob threatened to lynch the
official in Connecticut unless he
resigned, which he did. The
official in Maryland had to run for
his life. Many other distributors were
pressured into resigning and the tax
was never effectively collected. The
strength of feeling surprised many
of the colonial upper class, but there
was no stemming it and it seemed to
offer a justification for violence.
There were not remotely enough
British troops to enforce the act,
colonists were boycotting British
exports with damaging effects on
British business and opinion across
the Atlantic shifted. In March 1766 the
Stamp Act was repealed, but it had
been a key link in the chain of events
that led to an independent US.
In 412 a new Christian bishop was

installed in the city. Cyril of Alexandria
(later St Cyril) was a formidable theologian who recruited a private army
hundreds strong, persecuted Christians
who did not accept his religious views
and demanded that all the Jews be
expelled from the city. The dispute with
the Jews broke out into a minor civil war
in Alexandria, which brought Cyril into
conflict with the pagan governor of
Egypt, Orestes, who was himself physically attacked.
The details are extremely unclear, but
Hypatia was considered an influential
supporter of Orestes and paganism and
a mob of monks and other Christians
halted her chariot in the street, seized
her, stripped her naked and either tore
her to pieces with oyster shells or beat
her to death with roof tiles before
burning her corpse on a bonfire. To
what extent Bishop Cyril himself was
involved in the murder is uncertain, but
he never seems to have denounced it. A
later Christian writer labelled Hypatia a
devil-worshipper.
SONS OF MARS
The
Rise
of the
Sons of
Mars
The struggle for control of the straits

dividing Sicily from southern Italy
brought the two great empires of the
Mediterranean, Carthage and Rome,
head to head. It was a world in which
ruthless mercenaries prospered, as
Erich B. Anderson reveals.
H
Statue of Mars, or
Pyrrhus, Capitoline
Museum, Rome, first
century ad.
IERO II, the ruling general of the Greek citystate of Syracuse, led a campaign in 265 bc north
towards a coastal Sicilian city, Messana, held by a
group of Campanian mercenaries known as the
Mamertines. The Campanians were part of a vast Oscan
tribal group originally from the Apennine mountains, who
had now settled in the southern Italian region of Campania. By the end of the fifth century bc the hill tribes had
invaded the nearby plains, displacing the Etruscan and
Greek inhabitants of the region, taking control of nearly
all of the land between Salerno and Cumae. As the decades
passed, the mountain dwellers gradually let go of their old
way of life and adopted the civic lifestyle of the people they
had conquered. The newly sedentary Campanians appealed
to the Romans for their help against their aggressive neighbours, the Samnites. In 343 bc Rome came to their aid and,
in turn, the Campanians became subjects of the Republic.
From then on the Campanians were considered civites sine
suffragio, meaning they had all of the privileges of Roman
citizens but without the right to vote in Rome.
SONS OF MARS
Locations of the
major battles
fought by the
Sons of Mars.
EGARDLESS OF THEIR new status as subjects

under Roman hegemony, the Campanians, and
in particular the Mamertines, never relinquished
their martial skills. In fact, the two major powers
in Sicily, the Carthaginians and the islands Greek citystates, had relied on southern Italy as a plentiful source
of mercenaries ever since the Oscan peoples seized the
Campanian plain. They continued to do so in the centuries
that followed, as they continuously fought each other over
domination of the island. For decades, the foreign soldiers
had raided and pillaged the entire region both by land and
sea. As the ruler of the most powerful city of eastern Sicily,
Syracuse, Hiero II would not tolerate the mercenaries any
longer and, by the middle of the third century, had the
necessary resources to end their constant piracy. When he
confronted the Mamertines near
the River Longanus, his forces
crushed them. The few surviving
Mamertines fled to safety and
debated what to do next. The fear
of future attacks had caused so
much panic that they turned to
the most powerful empire of the
western Mediterranean, Carthage,
as well as the Roman Republic to
save them from Hiero.
In doing so, the Mamertines
sparked one of the most significant
wars of the ancient Mediterranean,
the First Punic War (264-241 bc),
becoming some of the most notorious and renowned mercenaries of
the classical world.
Near the end of the fourth
century bc, Agathocles, the new
tyrant of Syracuse and a Sicilian warlord, had recruited a
substantial number of Campanian mercenaries. From
the moment Agathocles had seized power in 317 bc, the
former soldier had employed mercenaries and continued
to do so throughout his entire reign, as he established a
powerful empire in eastern Sicily. As Agathocles warred
with the Carthaginians and rival Greek city-states to take
control of the entire eastern half of the island, he had
added the city of Messana to his possessions some time
between 315 and 312 bc.
WHEN AGATHOCLES was 72, in 289 bc, the self-proclaimed king of Syracuse and Sicily was assassinated by
members of his own family, following arguments surrounding his succession. After his death, the large group of
Campanian mercenaries he had hired clashed with the Syracusan citizenry. To convince the Italian soldiers to leave, the
Syracusans offered them the conquered city of Messana,
which they quickly accepted. A year later, in 288 bc, the
citizens of Messana allowed the mercenaries to enter their
city only to regret their decision shortly after. Once inside,
the foreign troops slaughtered the men, enslaved the
women and seized the city. From then on, the mercenaries
called themselves the Mamertines, or the sons of Mamers,
the name for the war-god Mars in the Oscan language of the
Campanians.
Due to the near constant influx of Campanian mercenaries into Sicily for over a century, this was not the first
time that foreign soldiers had seized a city on the island.
For instance, Campanians took the western Sicilian city
of Entella in 404 bc. However, the degree to which the Mamertines devoted themselves to violence and warfare, as
they either intimidated their neighbours into giving them
tribute or took their possessions by force, quickly made
them notorious throughout the region. By the end of the
third century bc, the self-styled Sons of Mars had sacked
and pillaged as far as Gela and Camarina along the southern
coast of Sicily.
While the Sons of Mars were a terrible irritation,
many of the Greek city-states of Sicily still considered the
Carthaginian Empire as their main threat, especially the
people of Syracuse. Therefore, after a large Carthaginian
army had besieged the city once again, Syracuse and the
Hellenistic community of Sicily chose
a new champion to defend them: King
Pyrrhus of Epirus. At the time, the general
was fighting a war with the Romans on
behalf of a Greek city in southern Italy,
Tarentum. Even though he had achieved
two victories over the armies of the Republic, the loss of his soldiers had been so great
that the ambitious king decided to abandon
the Tarentines and heed the call of the Sicilian Greeks, believing that the Carthaginians would be an easier foe to overcome.
Pyrrhus arrived in Sicily in 278 bc and
began his conquest of the island. However,
only two years later, he had failed to accomplish this goal, as he could not capture the
formidable Carthaginian stronghold of
Lilybaeum. His failure was mostly due to
the fact that the Sicilian Greeks had turned
against him for his increasingly autocratic
conduct towards them. Throughout Pyrrhus Sicilian campaign, the Mamertines had been allied with the Carthaginians against the Hellenistic general. So, even though the
king of Epirus attacked and defeated the mercenaries, the
Sons of Mars managed to retain Messana and their independence. When the Greeks of Sicily had completely risen
against their denounced, prior saviour, many of them even
wanted the Carthaginians or the Mamertines to then save
them from Pyrrhus. The aspiring king of Sicily withdrew
from the island in the autumn of 276 bc and returned to
Hiero II, ruler of

Syracuse, would
not tolerate the
mercenaries any
longer and, by the
middle of the third
century, had the
resources to end
their constant
piracy
Coins depicting the

head of Hiero II,
struck c.240-218 bc,
and that of his wife,
Philistis, struck
218-215 bc.
Italy to fight Rome for Tarentum once again. Pyrrhus lost

the Battle of Benevento in 275 bc, putting an end to all of
his campaigns west of Epirus. This final withdrawal from
Italy of the Hellenistic commander greatly benefited the
Romans, who were then free to conquer Tarentum in 272
bc, along with the rest of the Italian south, previously
controlled by the Greeks.
HILE THE ROMANS were preoccupied with

Pyrrhus and Tarentum, they were unable
to deal with a volatile situation for which
they were partly to blame concerning the
actions of another group of dangerous Campanian soldiers.
When Pyrrhus invaded Italy for Tarentum, the citizens
of Rhegium panicked and, because of their alliance with

the Roman Republic, immediately called for Rome to
send sufficient aid for a proper defence of the city. For its
strategic location on the south-western tip of Italy, with
only the narrow Straits of Messana separating it from Sicily,
Rhegium was a pivotal ally and the Romans quickly obliged.
Under the command of an officer named Decius, the
Romans sent a garrison of 4,000 Campanian soldiers to
the city. Just as the Sons of Mars had done a decade before,
these Campanian troops also attacked the citizenry after
the city gates were opened freely to them. But this time
the Campanians did not massacre all of the male citizens;
those who were not killed were instead forced into exile.
Furious over their soldiers treatment of one of their
Pyrrhus abandons his

fight in Tarentum against
the Romans to aid the
Sicilian Greeks, 19thcentury engraving.
SONS OF MARS
Coin depicting head
of Agathocles, Tyrant
of Syracuse, struck
317 bc.
allies, the Republic took action. After the capture of Tarentum, Roman soldiers besieged Rhegium in 271 bc. A year
later, the Roman army broke through the citys defences
and the remaining 300 Campanians left alive were taken
captive. In the heart of the capital, the Roman Forum, the
treasonous soldiers were flogged and decapitated.
WITH THE THREAT OF Pyrrhus gone, the mercenaries returned to marauding. The Sons of Mars managed to conquer
a substantial portion of north-eastern Sicily, creating an
empire whose territory stretched from Mount Etna in the
south and as far west as Halaesa on the north coast. The
foreign pirates had now become too great a threat for Syracuse to ignore. After the next tyrant
took control of the city and reorganised the army to include a new native
militia force alongside the conventional contingent of mercenaries, a truce
was established with the Carthaginian
Empire to deal with the Mamertines.
Hiero II was one of the most loyal supporters of Pyrrhus
within Syracuse and managed to retain his high position in
the city even after the king had retreated from the island.
At first, his position in the city was limited for he was only
acknowledged as Strategus, the overall commander of the
army. It was only after the general confronted the Mamertines for the first time at the victorious battle of the River
Cyamosorus in 269 bc, that he was able to secure complete
control of Syracuse and, the following year, take the title of
Strategus Autocrator.
competely and Hiero could not definitively defeat them

either. Then in the spring of 264 bc the two forces met on
the plains of Mylae near the River Longanus. On the battlefield the blessing of the war god was kept from his devoted
followers and bestowed instead on their enemies, as Hieros
Syracusan army annihilated the Sons of Mars.
Once the remnants of the Mamertine army reached
Syracuse, a fierce debate began over whether or not they
should send appeals for help to either Carthage or Rome.
The Carthaginian Empire had been a faithful ally during the
years of Pyrrhus Sicilian campaign, but the link between
the mercenaries and the Roman Republic had grown stronger. As Campanians, not only were the Mamertines fellow
Italians but they were also still technically non-voting
Roman citizens. In the end, the two factions were unable
to agree on one ally so they sent a plea for help to both of
them. Sending appeals to both states may also have been a
logical decision for the Mamertines, since the Romans and
Carthaginians had been allies for centuries, with the first
of three treaties between the two agreed at the founding
of the Republic in 508-7 bc. The most recent alliance was
formed in 279-8 bc, forged of the mutual hostility they felt
towards Pyrrhus and the various Hellenistic city-states of
southern Italy and Sicily. Although the Romans never aided
the Carthaginians against Pyrrhus in Sicily, the agreement
between both of them meant that the Romans were
allowed to conquer the Magna Graecia region of southern
Italy without any intervention from Carthage.
HE CARTHAGINIANS answered the call immediately and sent troops. Carthage was much more
content with Messana being occupied by themselves or the Mamertines than with it being controlled by Syracuse once again, so the decision was an easy
one. Carthaginian ships harboured at the Aeolian Islands
were so close to Messana that they were able to place a
garrison within the city before Hiero reached its defensive
Carthage only needed to subdue Syracuse

to control Sicily, giving them the ideal
base from which to attack southern Italy
S AN AUTOCRATIC ruler with full powers, Hiero

primarily focused on stabilising the city in the
anarchic period following the assassination of
Agathocles. The tyrant was then free to focus on
striking his fatal blow against the Mamertines. With fewer
than 12,000 soldiers, Hiero invaded north-eastern Sicily
in 265 bc. As the campaign progressed a stalemate ensued.
The Sons of Mars were unable to drive off the invaders
Image of Pegasus,
struck in Carthage,
260 bc.
walls. Unwilling to assault the Carthaginians, Hiero led

his army back to Syracuse. Upon his return the citizenry
rewarded him for his crushing victory over the Mamertines
at the battle of the River Longanus by proclaiming him as
their king, even though he had ultimately failed in finishing
the mercenary pirates off. After the Mamertine embassy addressed the Roman Senate to plead their case, by the middle
of May the Romans were well aware of the Carthaginian
garrison already stationed in Messana. The ruling body of
the Republic was much less decisive than its alleged allies,
taking over a month before a resolution was reached. The
majority of the senators wanted to aid the Campanian
mercenaries but not because of the need to help fellow
Italians. To many Romans, war with Carthage was not only
a necessary step to nullify a future threat; it was also a very
profitable prospect. The Carthaginian Empire was the most
powerful in the western Mediterranean, mostly due to the
wealth it had amassed through its dominance of trade in
The First Punic War,

fresco from the
Conservatories
Palace, Rome,
Jacopo Ripanda,
c.1510.
the region and the strength of its navy. With its powerful
fleet, Carthage had already conquered much of North
Africa, portions of Spain, mostly along the southern and
eastern coasts, as well as Sardinia and the smaller islands of
the region. Since the Romans had conquered the southern
part of the Italian peninsula, the Carthaginian occupation
of Messana meant that the imposing empire was then right
on their border with only a narrow stretch of sea separating
the two states across the straits. The Carthaginians only
needed to subdue Syracuse to control all of Sicily, giving
them the ideal base from which to launch an invasion of
southern Italy. Yet the armies of the Republic had proven
that Rome was not weak and vulnerable: quite the opposite.
The Romans had just extended their hegemony over the
entire Italian peninsula, so even though Carthage was
viewed as a threat it was one that the people of Rome
were confident of overcoming; victory would lead to vast
amounts of booty and plunder.
SONS OF MARS
N THE other hand, an influential group of Roman

senators, comprised of
ex-consuls and other
leading politicians, rejected the
motion for war. The most obvious
reason was the blatant hypocrisy of
aiding the Mamertines when the
Romans had just executed their
Campanian kinsmen for the seizure
of Rhegium in the same way as the
Sons of Mars had taken Messana.
Furthermore, war in general did not
always end in victory and these powerful individuals may have felt that
the overconfidence of many senators
might lead to the ruin of the Republic. Carthage had long been an ally
and had shown no signs of hostility
or aggression; and, as an enemy, it
would be an extremely dangerous adversary. Initially, the smaller faction
prevailed, for the Roman Senate did
not ratify the motion to send aid to
the Sons of Mars. However, the war
hawks of the Senate would not give
in so easily. The most prominent
politician to support the war was
one of the Roman consuls, Appius
Claudius Caudex. Like most
consuls of the Roman Republic, Claudius wanted to lead
a glorious campaign during
his consulship to raise his,
and his familys, prestige. So
the opportunity to become
the first Roman general
to lead the legions beyond
the confines of the Italian
peninsula was too great to
pass up. Claudius brought the
motion before an assembly
of the people, most likely the
Comitia Centuriata, which
included many of the wealthiest members of the population. It took very little to
convince these merchants of
the equestrian class, for they
would profit greatly from government contracts providing
military supplies or by taking part in the lucrative slave
industry bolstered by numerous prisoners of war. Thus,
with the people voting in favour, the Senate announced
a formal declaration of war in late June, with Claudius in
command of the troops sent to aid the Sons of Mars. By
late August, Claudius had raised his roughly 20,000-strong
consular army, consisting of two legions with contingents
of Italian auxiliaries, and gathered a small fleet of triremes
and transports from Tarentum, Naples, Elea and Locri and
reached Rhegium.
Once the Mamertine embassy returned to Messana to
report what the Romans had decided, the Sons of Mars
adopted their new allies fresh aggression towards the
Carthaginians and expelled their

entire garrison within the city.
Carthage was outraged over the
treatment of its soldiers; so much so
that they crucified the commander
of the garrison for allowing it to
happen. Carthage immediately besieged Messana with its army, blockaded the port with its navy and sent
ships to Cape Pelorias to keep watch
over the straits between Messana
and the Romans at Rhegium in
southern Italy. The Carthaginians
also brought Hiero and his Syracusan army back into the fray, for a
new alliance was made between the
two former enemies to prevent the
intervention of the Romans into
the affairs of Sicily. The fact that
Syracuse and Carthage were able so
quickly to set aside a centuries-long
feud shows how threatened the
two were by the Romans. With
both of the major powers of the
island poised against him, Claudius
desperately needed to reach the
Mamertines but was thwarted in his
attempt to cross the straits with his
army by the powerful Carthaginian
navy. Yet fortune was on the
Roman consuls side, for he not
only eventually managed to
make the crossing at night, but
the Romans also were able to
secure the capture of an overly
ambitious Carthaginian vessel
that had ran aground in its
attempts to attack the Roman
ships. For a rising power in the
Mediterranean that lacked a
navy, the vessel was an incredibly valuable prize that later
served as a blueprint for the
ships of the Roman fleet that
was created a few years later.
Top: Punic
Demeter mask,
third-second
century, Muse
National de
Carthage, Tunisia.
Above: Roman
galley from the
First Punic War,
Jacques Grasset
de Saint-Sauveur,
c. 1825
SHORTLY AFTER THE Romans

had reached Messana, Hiero
combined his Syracusan forces
with the Carthaginians besieging the city. At first, Claudius
attempted to resolve the conflict with diplomacy. The
consul appealed to both sides stating that his only desire
was to protect his new allies from further aggression. If
both of the armies of Carthage and Syracuse put an end
to their assaults on the Sons of Mars, Claudius promised
to withdraw to the Italian mainland. Understandably,
neither of the Sicilian powers fell for the ploy. Not only
did they accuse the Romans of acting in their own interests to exploit the situation, but they also refused to let
the treacherous pirates get off so easily. Since both the
Carthaginians and Syracusans had over 10,000 soldiers
each, Claudius knew he could overwhelm one of them,
but would be outnumbered if they combined forces. Thus,
realising the futility of negotiations, the consul took the

initiative and assaulted the Syracusan camp, leaving a
small force augmented by the Mamertines in the north
to prevent Carthage from intervening. In response, Hiero
mustered his army and ordered his cavalry to attack the
small force of horsemen the Romans had brought across
the sea. The vastly superior Syracusan cavalry successfully
drove off their Roman counterpart but were not so lucky
against the legionaries. Unable to break through the enemy
lines with his cavalry, Hiero watched as the Roman infantry crushed his own hoplites (citizen-soldiers), forcing
the king to retreat with the remainder of his army back to
Syracuse, from where he later pleaded for peace with Rome
in 263 bc.
ITH HIERO GONE, Claudius was free to

attack the camp of the Carthaginian commander Hanno with the help of the Sons
of Mars. At first, Hanno managed to drive
the Roman army out and advanced on the battered Italians.
Yet the relentless forces of Rome eventually pushed the
Carthaginians back behind their defences and defeated
them. As Roman allies, the Sons of Mars were secure in
their captured city, but after the First Punic War they could
no longer act as pirates and faded from history. However,
Pyrrhus, King
of Epirus, faces
defeat at the
Battle of
Benevento,
19th-century
engraving.
for their pivotal role in the beginning of the great wars with
Carthage, the legend of the Mamertines lived on in Rome
and morphed over the centuries. By the Augustan age, in
the first century bc, Roman propaganda held that the Sons
of Mars had aided the citizens of Messana to receive land
as a reward, instead of taking the city by force. Ultimately,
popular folklore has failed to eradicate the behaviour of the
notorious mercenaries from the historical record and the
true nature of the Sons of Mars has prevailed.
Erich B. Anderson is an historian specialising in warfare of the ancient and
medieval world.
FURTHER READING
Nigel Bagnall, The Punic Wars 264-146 bc (Osprey, 2002).
M.I. Finley, Ancient Sicily (Chatto & Windus, 1979).
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (Cassell, 2000).
B.D. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars: The Origins of the First and
Second Punic Wars (Walter de Gruyter, 1998).
John Lazenby, The First Punic War (Stanford, 1996).
Christopher Smith, John Serrati (eds), Sicily from Aeneas
to Augustus (Edinburgh University Press, 2000).
SUFFRAGETTES
N THE EARLY HOURS of a mild November morning in 1913, a threeinch pipe was primed to explode later and destroy the multiple panels
and ornate metal work that made the Glass House one of the chief
attractions of Alexandra Park in Manchester. A smouldering mass of
twisted metal and broken glass was discovered and quickly attributed by
the popular press to the wave of suffragette outrages being committed
across the country by the militant branch of the womens rights movement. Kew Gardens had already suffered two attacks, on an orchid house
and pavilion, and the campaign of arson and intimidation conducted by
the militant wing of the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU)
and their supporters was reaching its height.
Although no one was ever convicted of the Alexandra Park attack,
its perpetrator is believed to have revealed herself in a later unpublished
autobiography. Dedicated to the Political, Economic, Religious and Sex
Freedom of Women, it was the work of Kitty Marion, music hall artist
and militant suffragette. Her anger at the treatment of women on the
stage, an industry where she was expected to trade sex in return for
leading roles and allow patrons of the music halls to assault her in cabs and
hotels without complaint, led her to become a bomber, an arsonist and
a public campaigner for the suffragette movement. Her autobiography
Why have historians failed to

fully engage with the issue of
suffragette violence?
Police survey
Saunderton
Railway Station
after a suffragette
arson attack,
March 9th, 1913.
The
Weaker
Sex?
Fern Riddell investigates the campaign of

terror orchestrated by the Edwardian suffragette
movement before the First World War and asks
why it has been neglected by historians.
is a testament to her importance as a militant

Above: Surveillance
photograph set
advocate for womens rights, yet the majoriissued by the police
ty of historians of the womens movement
to public galleries,
have disregarded this source. Only recently
identifying dangerous
has it begun to be referenced as an important
militant suffragettes,
narrative, containing eyewitness accounts
including Kitty
Marion (13), 1914.
of the clandestine operations of the militant
suffragette movement in Edwardian England.
Few personal accounts of the actions of these suffragettes survive and
its history was written by the figureheads of the WSPU the Pankhurst
family in particular. It is their legacy, and the protectors of that legacy,
which have shaped memories of the actions of this group of determined, dangerous women, whose campaign methods ranged from
window-breaking to arson attacks, bombings, even suicide attempts.
So why have historians failed to fully engage with the issue of suffragette violence? The work of the 1926 Suffragette Fellowship, which collected and recorded for posterity memories and artifacts from militant
suffragettes, was dominated by the argument of the broken pane. This
single phrase has come to define authentic militancy and, at the same
time, marginalise any act that falls outside this image. Acts of militancy
are thus reduced to the story of no more than a few broken windows,
while the historical focus shifts to the bodily violations forced on the
suffragettes, especially those imprisoned for political violence: denial
of political rights and, later, force feedings. The actions of women such
as Kitty Marion are largely forgotten.
While the majority of historians would baulk at describing any suffragette as a terrorist, most would accept that the actions of the militants
could be viewed as a form of political extremism. The press used the
SUFFRAGETTES
Kitty Marion is arrested

after heckling Lloyd
George at the Royal
National Eisteddfod,
Wrexham, September
5th, 1912.
Above: The Tea Pavilion in Kew Gardens, after an

arson attack by suffragettes Olive Wharry and
Lillian Lenton, February 20th, 1913.
Right: One of two bombs discovered in Lloyd
Georges cottage, February 20th, 1913.
At the more extreme

end, bombs and
incendiary devices
were placed in and
outside of banks,
churches and even
Westminster Abbey
same language to describe the actions of
Irish Republicans in the late 19th century
as they did for the suffragette attacks of
the early 20th. Both were referred to as
Outrages, actions that disturbed and terrorised their own societies. If contemporary
society judged the actions of the militant
suffragettes to be equal to those of groups
such as Irish Republicans, whose historical
identity has become central to discussions
of terrorism, why should we continue to
ignore or lessen the nature of their violence? All violent acts of militant suffrage
can be viewed as acts of terror. They were
specifically designed to influence the government and the wider public
to change their opinions on womens suffrage, not by reason, but by
threats of violence. These threats were then carried out and ranged
from window breaking to the destruction of communications (post-box
burning, telegraph and telephone wires being cut); the damage of culturally significant objects (paintings in national galleries, statues covered
in tar, glass boxes smashed in the Jewel House of the Tower of London);
and arson attacks on theatres, MPs houses and sporting pavilions. At
the more extreme end, bombs and incendiary devices were placed in
and outside of banks, churches and even Westminster Abbey. All of
these acts were carried out against the backdrop of women chaining
themselves to railings, rushing the doors of Parliament, refusing to pay
taxes and marching in their thousands against a government which had
refused to listen to their petitions or to take them seriously.
O WHAT CONSTITUTED a Suffragette Outrage? One of the

earliest recordings of this term came from the Morpeth Herald,
of November 20th, 1909, when Therese Gurnell attacked a young
Winston Churchill with a horse whip on the platform of Bristol
railway station. In the same month Selina Martin and Leslie Hall disguised themselves as orange sellers and, armed with a catapult and
missiles, attacked the Prime Minster Herbert Asquiths car in Liverpool.
The following year, one of the first instances of a suffragette causing
physical harm to a member of the public is recorded in Battersea: a clerk
suffered burns as he attempted to stop a suffragette from throwing an
undefined liquid over the papers of a Member of Parliament. Risk or
injury to the public has been vehemently denied by those who would
safeguard the memory of the suffragettes, but the newspapers (and
even the accounts of the militant suffragettes themselves) prove that
there were numerous instances where injuries occurred and in which
personal risk, even the possibility of death, was great. One of the most
horrifying suffragette attacks occurred in Dublin in 1912. Mary Leigh,
Gladys Evans, Lizzie Baker and Mabel Capper attempted to set fire to the
Theatre Royal during a packed lunchtime matinee attended by Asquith.
They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage and hurled petrol
and lit matches into the projection booth, which contained highly
Top: St Catherines Church, Hatcham, engulfed in

flames after a suffragette arson attack, May 14th, 1913.
Above: satirical postcard showing a suffragette in
costume, c.1913.
SUFFRAGETTES
combustible film reels. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh had hurled a
hatchet towards Asquith, which narrowly missed him and instead cut
the Irish Nationalist MP John Redmond on the ear. Redmonds focus
on the campaign for Home Rule had led to his refusal to insert a clause
giving women the vote, assuring his status as a target.
THE YEAR 1912 saw an ever increasing escalation of violence among
militant suffragettes. Glasgow Art Gallery had its glass cases smashed;
bank and post office windows were smashed from Kew to Gateshead;
in September, 23 trunk telegraph wires were cut on the London Road
at Potters Bar and on November 28th simultaneous attacks on post
boxes occurred across the entire country. By the end of the year, 240
people had been sent to prison for militant suffragette activities. The
newspapers began to carry weekly round-ups of the attacks, with the
Gloucester Journal and the Liverpool Echo
running dedicated columns to report
Illustrated London News,
on the latest outrages. In early 1913 a
March 14th, 1914: details
of the cuts made by Mary
suffragette attacked the glass cabinets
Richardson to The Toilet of
in the Tower of Londons Jewel House,
Venus, or Rokeby Venus,
while in Dundee, four postmen were
by Velzquez, while on
severely injured by phosphorus chemidisplay in the National
Gallery, March 10th, 1914.
cals left in post boxes. In Dumbarton 20
telegraph wires were cut; Kew Gardens
orchid house was attacked and its tea
house burnt down. In Ilford, three
streets had their fire alarm wires broken
and in Saunderton the railway station
was destroyed, while placards entitled
Votes for Women and Burning For the
Vote were left in prominent positions.
Croxley Station near Watford also suffered a similar fate, although the attack
was initially not attributed to the militants until a suffragette newspaper was
delivered to the station master with the
scribbled inscription: Afraid copy left
got burnt. Kitty Marion was also continuing her own attacks, such as the one
which saw a train, left standing between
Hampton Wick and Teddington, almost
totally destroyed by fire in the early
hours of Saturday April 26th:
knit militant activists? A recent study from the sociology department at

the University of Manchester has uncovered some surprising evidence.
During the period 1906-14 there were 1,214 court appearances by suffragette activists, yet the majority of those had only ever appeared before
the judge for suffrage related crimes once before. This would suggest that
the theory of large-scale militant activity carried out by only a handful
of dedicated women is unlikely.
ET THERE IS also evidence that multiple attacks were carried

out by single perpetrators. Kitty Marions hand is evident in
attacks from Manchester to Portsmouth; the scope of her
attacks overlays neatly into areas she had become well acquainted with during her music hall and theatrical days, which afforded her
the luxury of an already established network of lodging houses and local
knowledge, allowing her to visit areas and conduct militant activity.
Women operating in local areas could also become sources of serious
violence. Olive Hocken appeared before magistrates on March 28th,
1913, charged with an arson attack on Roehampton Golf Clubs Pavilion,
Kew Gardens Orchid House, the cutting of telegraph and telephone
wires and the destruction of letters. Her notoriety reached the United
States, with the Boston Herald carrying a report of her trial and claiming
her home in Kensington was a depot where people foregathered, armed
The train was afterwards driven into

Teddington Station, where an examination resulted in the discovery of
inflammable materials in almost every
set of coaches. Among the articles found
in the train were partly-burnt candles, four cans of petroleum, three of
which had been emptied of their contents, a ladys dressing case containing a quantity of cotton wool, and packages of literature dealing with
the woman suffrage movement. Newspaper cuttings of recent suffragette
outrages were also found scattered about the train The method adopted
was very simple. First the cushions were saturated with petroleum, and
then small pieces of candle were lighted immediately under the seats.
Marions personal scrapbook contains references to the burning of these
railway carriages and, if we believe that she kept this as record of her
own attacks, it would indicate she had a hand in the destruction. Her
cross-country knowledge, brought about by her lifestyle as a touring
music hall artist, allowed her to locate sites of cultural importance that
could be used as targets by the militant suffragettes.
Were these attacks carried out by a large and disjointed group of
suffrage supporters operating individually or by a small group of close22 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
Emily Wilding Davison throws

herself under the kings horse at the
Epsom Derby, June 4th, 1913.
Kitty Marion on
stage as a German
maid, 1914.
subsequent arrest and imprisonment. Kitty now became a martyr to

the cause: church services were disturbed by shouts in support of her
freedom and a bomb discovered at the Lyceum Theatre, Taunton, was revealed in the press to have the words Votes for Women, Judges Beware,
Martyrs of the law and Release our Sisters painted on its sides.
and prepared for any particular marauding outrage on hand.

Suffragette violence reached its height in the spring and summer of
1913. In May a bomb had been found outside the Bank of England and
bowling greens and racecourses were targets for arson and destruction.
When the Mens League for Womens Suffrage met in Hyde Park it was
heckled by a crowd shouting go home and make bombs and who put
the bomb in St Pauls?. In retaliation to the violence, the government
targeted the one organisation that it believed to be responsible for encouraging the violent women. The WSPU was banned from holding
open-air meetings, as letters from the leadership were often found
among the belongings of those on trial. The militants hit back and a
number of prominent society members who opposed suffrage saw their
homes destroyed by fire and incendiary devices. Statues were disfigured
and museums, churches and stately homes were forced to close to the
public for fear that they may become the latest target. The methods of
attack also seem to have evolved, as shown by the reports surrounding
a bomb left on May 21st at the Royal Astronomical Observatory on
Blackford Hill, Edinburgh:
N 1914 the continued destruction of homes, pavilions and churches

abated a little, though it still saw Mary Richardson slash Velzquezs
Rokeby Venus in Londons National Gallery, amid other examples of
cultural violence: the British Museum had mummy cases damaged
and bombs were discovered in Westminster Abbey and the Metropolitan
Tabernacle; in the latter a postcard was placed bearing the words Put
your religion into practice and give the women freedom.
Although attacks on buildings and communication or travel networks saw limited risks to the British public, there were some attacks
that would have caused severe individual harm, if they had been successful. In 1913 the plot to kidnap the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna,
was discussed both in the press and in the House of Commons, as the
suffragettes were reported to be contemplating kidnapping one or more
Cabinet ministers and subjecting them to force-feeding. The threat was
taken so seriously that, for their own protection, private detectives
began to shadow the ministers.
The women involved were given many different names in the press
from wreckers to wild women and professional petroleuse, a language which conjures up images of women resembling the daughters
of the French Revolution: a subjugated social group bent on political
representation, brandishing the colours of the WSPU and shouting out
an anglicised war cry reminiscent of Libert, Unit, galit. The suffragettes were, in many ways, an evolution of the social revolutionary
spirit that had been sweeping Europe since the 18th century and their
use of the public, masculine language of war, combined with violent
actions is worthy of greater historical analysis.
The scheme had been well thought-out. On gaining an entrance the perpetrators had taken the bomb to the top of the spiral stairway under the
dome and carried a fuse thirty feet long down into the chronograph-room,
where it was fired by means of a lighted candle, the remains of which were
found. The quantity of gunpowder used must have been considerable, as
fragments of the earthen jar which held it were embedded in the wall and
woodwork, and the glass of two windows was blown out and carried
a considerable distance. A bag, some biscuits, and Suffragette literature
were left behind.
The following month, on June 4th, Emily Wilding Davison died after
falling under the hooves of the kings horse at the Epsom Derby. Her
death triggered responses from all sides of the suffragette movement,
but the most violent reaction came from Kitty Marion, who, along
with her companion Clara Givens, burned down the pavilion at Hurst
Park Racecourse after learning of this Supreme Sacrifice. It led to her
Daily Mirror cartoonist W.K. Haselden comments on

the early violence of suffragettes, July 2nd, 1909.
SUFFRAGETTES
Th Daily Mirror
reports on the
attempt by
suffragettes to
rush Parliament
on November
18th, 1910.
Far right: Mrs
Flora Drummond,
The General of
Mrs Pankhursts
Womens Army.
When a bomb was discovered in the home of Lloyd George, Mrs

Pankhurst quickly claimed the moral responsibility for it as one of
the leaders who are preaching the suffrage war. Her daughter, recovering from illness in France at the time of the reports, proclaimed:
Perhaps the Government will realise now that we mean to fight to the bitter
end If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war,
and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as
a glorious and heroic deed. Why should a woman not make use of the same
weapons as men. It is not only war we have declared. We are fighting for
a revolution.
UCH WORDS demonstrate that the WSPU was publically pronouncing in favour of violence. Reading Christabel Pankhurst, it
is difficult to understand why it is that the powers of these words,
and their influence on readers, have been forgotten. Why has
their impact been diminished by time? If the speaker had been a male
protagonist, would historians have hesitated to describe the militants
as terrorists?
The use of imagery and rhetoric from the uniforms adopted by
the WSPU, to the language used to discuss militancy suggest that
the women fully recognised that their actions in pursuit of political
change were illegal, dangerous and life-threatening. This is certainly
evident with the formation in 1913 of what became known as Mrs
Pankhursts Army:
A meeting was held at Bow, London, last night, for the purposes of inaugurating the projected suffragette army, to be known as the Peoples Training
Corps. About 300 persons assembled, mostly young girls and women Miss
Emerson, in an address, said that their intention was to train the corps that
they could proceed in force to Downing Street, and there imprison Ministers
until they conceded womens suffrage. They had all heard of bloody Sidney
Street, but the bloody scenes that might be expected at Downing Street
would be worse.
The identification of the women as warriors or soldiers engaged in domestic warfare was not a new one. Since the early 1900s Mrs Flora
Drummond was known to both the press and the WSPU as the General
and on one occasion was seen riding on horseback ahead of a proces24 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015
From the Archive

More on the
suffragettes
www.historytoday.com/
suffragettes
The WPSU had become a beacon of

militancy, with a clearly defined
brand of female empowerment,
employing the rhetoric of war
sion of over 2,000 suffragists, while the marching song The Womens
Marseillaise played behind her. The WSPU had become a beacon of militancy, with a clearly defined brand of female empowerment, employing
the rhetoric of war and danger. The violent women of the militant movement occupied the same space as men, they demanded equality and
used codes previously attributed to masculine identification; honour,
war, duty, respect. But the violent women of the militant movement
have been largely forgotten. In the aftermath of the horrors of the First
World War the suffragette movement as a whole sought to distance
itself from the actions of its most dedicated agents. These have been
marginalised, ignored and dismissed for decades.
Turning to the autobiography of Kitty Marion we find her justification for her actions and those of others:
I was becoming more and more disgusted with the struggle for existence
on commercial terms of sex I gritted my teeth and determined that
somehow I would fight this vile, economic and sex domination over
women which had no right to be, and which no man or woman worthy
of the term should tolerate.
Fern Riddell is a contributing editor at History Today.
FURTHER READING
June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: a Biography (Routledge, 2002).
Elizabeth Crawford, The Womens Suffrage Movement: A Reference
Guide, 1866-1928 (Routledge, 2000).
C.J. Bearman, An Examination of Suffragette Violence, English
Historical Review (April 2005).
Antonia Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes (Michael Joseph, 1973).
InFocus
Sheep Safely Graze: Iraq 1960
N ARAB SHEPHERD minds his flock against the

backdrop of a Kirkuk oil refinery in 1960, gifting
the photographer with the kind of arresting
juxtaposition editors love. But there are hidden
depths and symbolism to this scene which will only become
apparent in the following decades. As Iraq had emerged
from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after 1918, there had
been much argument over whether Kurdish lands to the
north, and to the east of the Tigris should be part of it. It
was not until 1926 that the League of Nations finally ruled
in favour of their inclusion. But then in 1927 oil was discovered near Kirkuk and the chances of this becoming a permanent settlement immediately took a turn for the worse. At
30 million, the Kurds are the worlds largest ethnic group
without a country of its own, spread out through Iran, Iraq,
Syria and Turkey. Kirkuks oil for them was potentially a
powerful lever, but also it was an asset Iraq would want to
keep in a close embrace, though it was not until the 1960s
and 1970s that it really came into contention.
At that time Kirkuks population was made up of 59
per cent Kurds, 20 per cent Turkmen and less than 25 per
cent Arabs. In 1970 the Autonomy Agreement was signed
by Iraqs new socialist Baath Party rulers and the Kurds.
This allowed for a census in 1977, intended to be the basis
on which the extent of the Kurdistan region within Iraq
was to be arrived at. But Mustafa Barzani, the Kurds leader,
who had been in armed revolt from 1961 to 1970, mistrusted the Iraqis and in 1973 claimed the oil fields for his people.
Initially he had support from the CIA, Israel and the Shah
of Iran when he renewed the revolt, but in 1975 the Shah
withdrew and was soon followed by the other two backers.
At 30 million, the Kurds are the

worlds largest ethnic group
without a country of its own,
spread out through Iran, Iraq,
Syria and Turkey
Barzani was defeated by Saddam Hussein and by 1979 he

was dead, of cancer.
By 1987 4,000 Kurdish villages had been erased and in
1988 there was the notorious chemical weapons attack on
Halabja. It is reckoned that 180,000 Kurds were killed in
that decade in what has been labelled the Anfal Campaign
of genocide. George Bush Sr may have saved the Kurds from
further wholesale massacre by declaring a No Fly Zone in
1991, as Saddam sought revenge after the First Gulf War,
but between that time and the beginning of the Second
Gulf War in 2003, 500,000 Kurds were systematically expelled and replaced by Arab families. Since then thousands
of Kurds have returned to Kirkuk, which until 2012 was
under the control of a combination of Kurdish Peshmerga
militia, the Iraqi army and US forces. The Kurds encouraged western oil companies to explore further and they
are now, it seems, sitting on 55 billion barrels, a quarter of
Iraqs total reserves. In 2013, frustrated by the corruption
and delays of the Maliki regime in Baghdad, they opened a
pipeline to Turkey and in February 2014 Baghdad retaliated
by cutting off all payments to the Kurds. In June a virulent
ingredient was added to the brew when fundamentalist
Islamist ISIS forces seized Iraqs second city Mosul and
seemed set to take Kirkuk, as six Iraqi divisions melted
away. With the blessing of Nuri al-Maliki, the Kurdish Peshmerga moved into the city and saved the day.
In December 2014 the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider
al-Abadi, and the Kurdistan region leader, Massoud Barzani,
son of Mustafa, signed a pact, allowing the Kurds to send
300,000 barrels a day to Turkey from Kirkuk, plus another
250,000 from other fields, with all selling to remain under
Iraqi control. In return Iraq has resumed payment of the
17 per cent of the national budget that is the Kurds share
and found one billion dollars for the Peshmerga, the only
effective forces confronting ISIS. But how long will the
question of independence for largely democratic, secular
and prosperous Kurdistan remain in abeyance and will
the Peshmerga be interested in carrying the fight into
non-Kurdish areas of Iraq?
ROGER HUDSON
| JOHN AUBREY
A Diary Imagined
John Aubrey, best known for his concise and incisive pen portraits of his
17th-century contemporaries, left no diary of his own. Ruth Scurr set
herself the challenge of imagining one from the remnants of his life.
Sole surviving
portrait: John
Aubrey, 1666.
JOHN AUBREY (1626-97), the author of Brief Lives, a collection of short, informal biographies on luminaries such
as Shakespeare, John Dee and Francis Bacon, saw himself
more as collector than writer. He lived through times of
great turmoil: he was 22 when Charles I was executed; he
saw Oliver Cromwells rise to power as Lord Protector of the
Commonwealth of England and his son Richard Cromwells
brief succession; he experienced the Restoration of Charles
II, the short reign of James II and the Glorious Revolution
of 1688 that brought William of Orange and his wife Mary
(daughter of James II) to the throne. Aubrey died in 1697,
ten years before England and Scotland joined their parliaments to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
From an early age he saw his England slipping away
and committed himself to preserving for posterity what
remained of it, in stories, books, monuments and buildings.
He compiled natural and antiquarian remarks in notebooks,

or on scraps of paper, cross-referenced, revised and corrected over time. He was concerned with accuracy like a scrupulous modern investigative journalist, so his notes are full of
gaps and question marks where it has not been possible to
remember or find a particular piece of information.
Towards the end of his life, Aubrey began to panic, not
about pain or death, but about the future of his precious collections. What should he do with all the piles of paper it had
been his lifes work to assemble? Fortunately for him and
for us he was a friend of Elias Ashmole, who had promised
to give his own important collection of antiquarian artifacts
to Oxford University on the condition that it erected a new
building to house his donation. The Ashmolean Museum
opened in 1683 and at the end of his life Aubrey decided
there was no better place for his paper collections.
The record of Aubreys life is no less chaotic and

fragmentary than his work. Among the manuscripts and
letters he deposited in the Ashmolean were some scant
autobiographical jottings, to be interponed as a sheet of
wast-paper only in the binding of a booke. Aubreys idea
that his record of his life might serve as end-pages to a book
about something or someone else is typically self-effacing.
Nevertheless, he hoped that his name would live on after
his death and that posterity would benefit from the paper
collections he had assembled. Most of these were preserved
in the Ashmolean and then moved to the Bodleian Library
in 1860. Except for the recent attention to Brief Lives, none
of Aubreys manuscripts, which fill over 20 boxes, have been
adequately edited and many are in need of conservation.
Aside from his few pages of autobiographical notes, the
main sources for Aubreys life are the remains of his correspondence, which are uneven and often oblique: there are
over 800 letters to or from him in the Bodleian. Sometimes
it is possible to tell exactly where Aubrey was and what
he was doing on a particular date. Sometimes weeks, even
months, go by where he cannot be traced.
His relationships, especially the most
intimate, flash past, illuminated only for
an instance, like a dark landscape beneath
a clouded sky when the moon breaks
through fleetingly. Unlike Pepys, John
Evelyn and other celebrated men of the
17th century, Aubrey did not leave a diary.
In constructing
Aubreys diary
I have used as
many of his
own words as
possible
Scholar's sensibility
When I was searching for a biographical
form that would suit the remnants of
Aubreys life I realised that he would
disappear inside a conventional biography, crowded out
by his friends, acquaintances and their multitudinous
interests. Aubrey lived through fascinating times and has
long been valued for what can be seen through him; there
is no shortage of scholars who appreciate the use that can
be made of him. But the biographer has other purposes: to
get as close to her subject and his sensibility as possible; to
produce a portrait that captures at least something of what
that person was like. In the contemporaneous pencil portrait of Aubrey that survives he looks like an unremarkable
17th-century gentleman, his bland face square between the
curtains of a heavy wig. A portrait in words, one that does
him more justice, is what I determined to write. Inspired
by the vivid sense of self that emerges from the diaries of
Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and Robert Hooke, I thought:
if only we had Aubreys diary, his modesty, self-effacement
and attention to others would not be such a problem. No
one gets crowded out of his or her own diary.
In constructing Aubreys diary I have used as many of his
own words as possible. It is a diary based on the historical
evidence; a diary that shows him living vividly, day by day,
month by month, year by year, but with necessary gaps
when nothing is known about where he was or what he
was doing. I have not invented scenes or relationships as a
novelist would, but nor have I followed the conventions of
traditional biography. When he is silent I do not speculate
about where he was or what he was doing or thinking.
When he speaks I have modernised his words and spellings
and indicated the original sources in endnotes. I have

added words of my own to explain events or interactions
that would otherwise be obscure and to frame or offset
the charm of Aubreys own turns of phrase. When the year
but not the precise month or day of a piece of evidence is
known, I have arranged it with other entries, sometimes
clustering themes or events that fit together.
From chaos to narrative
There are three distinct kinds of entry in the diary: discursive descriptions of events and conversations within specific months or years based on his writing and correspondence; shorter notes about personal events that occurred
on particular days; and entries providing brief accounts of
public events which begin on this day. My work has been
to weave Aubreys chaotic notes into a biographical narrative. For example, here is his note on smallpox:
Of periodicall small-poxes. Small-pox in Sherborne dureing
the year 1626, and dureing the yeare 1634; from Michaelmas 1642 to Michaelmas 1643; from Michaelmas 1649 to
Michaelmas 1650; etc. Small-pox in Taunton all the year
1658; likewise in the yeare 1670, etc. I would I had the like
observations made in great townes in Wiltshire; but few care
for these things 1638 was a sickly and feaverish autumne;
there were three graves open at one time in the churchyard of
Broad Chalke.
This note dates from 1686, when Aubrey studied the register books of half a dozen parishes in South Wiltshire and
sent extracts to Sir William Petty. I have created two diary
entries based on this material, the first for 1638 when
Aubrey, living at Broad Chalke aged 12, saw the graves:
This autumn, Broad Chalke is sickly and feverish; I walked
through the churchyard earlier today and saw three open
graves. And a second entry for 1643, the year Aubrey
caught smallpox when he was an undergraduate in Oxford:
Smallpox is periodical. There was smallpox in Sherborne
during 1626 (the year of my birth), and during the year 1634,
and it has been back again since Michaelmas last year. Such
facts and observations in the great towns should be recorded,
but few care for these things.
By backdating the information Aubrey gives us I have
shown his sensibility developing, from childhood, through
youth, to middle and old age. He believed that antiquaries, like poets, are born not made. By the time he was an
undergraduate he was already an active antiquary, aware
of the need to record small details that others would overlook. Aubreys approach to his own life and other lives was
imaginative and empirical in equal measure. In imagining
his diary by collating the evidence I have echoed the idea
of antiquities the searching after remnants that meant
so much to Aubrey. I have collected the fragmentary
remains of his life, from manuscripts, letters and books,
his own and other peoples, and arranged them carefully in
chronological order. I have done so playingly (a word he
used of his own writing) but with purpose. Ultimately, my
aim has been to write a book in which he is still alive.
Ruth Scurr is a fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. Her book
John Aubrey: My Own Life is published by Chatto & Windus in March 2015.
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
Shopping,
Spectacle &
the Senses
Georgian London offered an array of retail experiences
for women in pursuit of the ultimate in fashionable
clothing, every bit as sophisticated as those open to the
21st-century shopper, as Serena Dyer explains.
HE LONDON TRADESMAN in 1747 described a milliner as

a retailer who would furnish everything to the ladies that
can contribute to set off their beauty, increase their vanity
or render them ridiculous. The milliner worked alongside
the mantua-maker, the haberdasher, the draper and the stay-maker
to provide elite and middling rank women with the tools of sartorial
fashion. Drapers and haberdashers provided fabrics, notions and readymade goods; mantua-makers provided a design and construction service
for gowns; and the milliners role bridged the two. From buttons and
trims to ornate concoctions of headwear, this array of retailers provided
a vital resource for women who aspired to be la mode.
The experience of shopping for fashionable clothing in the 18th
century was more than a simple commercial exchange. How a woman
shopped, as well as what she bought, were important social and cultural
indicators. Just as the modern shopper can choose to shop on the Internet, by catalogue, by television, by phone or in store, the 18th-century
shopper had a similar range of choices: the shopper could choose to
visit a variety of shops on a trip into a local town or city, on foot or as
part of the carriage trade. Alternatively, many retailers were willing to
call upon their more favoured clients at home and bring goods along
with them; if neither of these was possible, a proxy-shopper, usually a
close friend or relative, could be commissioned to purchase items and
send them on, or shoppers could correspond directly with the retailer,
requesting samples and placing orders for goods. Each of these methods
had its own social and cultural indicators, as well as practical advantages
and drawbacks.
Clockwise from top left: pastel of a young woman by Francis Cotes, c.1760;
silk gown, 1740s, updated 1760s; detail of a mantua of embroidered silk; pair of
indoor shoes made with brocaded silk and leather, Spitalfields, c.1735; girl in a
grey satin dress, painting by Bartholomew Dandridge, c.1740s; Harding Howell
& Cos fabric shop, Pall Mall, London, from Ackermanns Repository, 1809.
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
Each of these different ways of shopping is characterised
by two types of experience: the sensory and the social. The
ability to discern quality and suitability through touch and
sight was essential for a good shopper whether shopping
for oneself or acting as a proxy as clothing was the second
largest expenditure in the 18th-century home, second only
to food. The experience of wearing clothing involves constant
sensory interaction with the fabrics, materials, shapes and
cut. Following the modern predominance of online retailing, the development of sensory-enabling technology for
the fashion industry is being researched and many clothing
websites now include video to convey the characteristics of,
for example, garment movement. This development reflects
an inherent need for consumers to experiment with touch,
light and movement as they shop. While static images, such
as the modern photograph or the 18th-century fashion plate
and ink sketch, can convey an inanimate representation of a
style, they lack the interactivity necessary to appreciate how
a garment fits and moves.
HOPPING WAS ALSO seen as central to the idea of

polite sociability. The shopping process provided a platform for public display, spectacle, pleasure and entertainment. Through the act of visiting the shop space,
consumers could not only interact with the product but also
participate in public social interaction and cultural exchange:
shoppers were often more concerned about social display
and the exclusivity of the venue than with the shopping opportunities it provided. It was about seeing and being seen.
Sociability was also important for the retailer: A General Description of All Trades, published in 1747, stated that a good set
of acquaintance was as important for the ambitious mantuamaker as a clever knack at cutting out and fitting. Although
the branding of the modern fashion industry was in its infancy,
the need to be seen at the fashionable shops, or wearing the
latest hat, was still crucial.
Shopping in town was immensely popular. The novelist
Fanny Burney recorded gossipping [sic], shopping and dressing as the main activities of a fashionable womans morning
in town. The milliners shop was a social hub in which details
of who was in town, what was being worn and who dined
with whom were quickly disseminated. It was impossible to
pick out and purchase an item without talking to staff and
fellow customers: all goods were kept behind the counter,
which became a platform for the inspection and comparison
of goods, with the attendant watching constantly.
Above: a sackback gown with

wired rosettes,
characteristic of
the 1770s.
Right: haberdashers trade
card, first half of
18th century.
HOW OBJECTS WERE VIEWED was also carefully controlled by the

shop staff. In Burneys comedy The Witlings (1778-80), the milliner,
Mrs Wheedle, laments that a tippet (a shoulder scarf) made by one
of her shop girls will be fit for nothing but the window, and there the
Miss Notables who work for themselves may look at it for a pattern.
Milliners provided the raw materials fabric, thread and ribbons as
well as the finished articles meaning the completed articles on display
could act as aspirational models, which could be emulated. This would
then encourage the purchase of more materials. In addition, while the
displays helped to draw in passing shoppers, their positioning in the
window also prevented any tactile interaction with the goods, which
might make any flaws in construction evident.
This practical and educative approach did not detract from the perception of shopping as a pleasurable recreation. Through examining
items, shoppers could gain an awareness of the market and the options
A Morning Ramble, or the

Milliners Shop, after Robert
Dighton, London, c.1782.
Felix MDonogh in his The Hermit in London; or, Sketches of English

Manners (1821) recalled sardonically a similar scene in which the habitual shopper would examine a whole Magasin de Mode, or a Gallery
of Fashion, occupy half a dozen attendants in running about for her,
change her mind a dozen times and abuse a score of articles,
then turn upon her heel with a proud toss of the head and thus
quit the shop.
Although this piece is satirical, its depiction of shopping
without buying seems in line with other sources. Using shops
in this way offered an opportunity to view goods and fashion
magazines with no commitment to buy, to make comparisons
between the stock of different retailers and to satisfy curiosity
about the latest fashionable products.
If the customer was unable or unwilling to make the journey
to their chosen retailers premises, it was not uncommon for
the mercer to visit the customers home. Through these visits,
the retailer gained privileged access to the body and home of the
client. Contemporaries feared that the close relationships that
necessarily emerged from this interaction between women of the
clothing trade and ladies of the middling and upper ranks would
result in the erosion of proper social distinctions.
UTSIDE THE ESTABLISHED and dedicated space of

the shop, the tactics of the mercer and the priorities
of the customer changed. The client was removed
from the influence of her companions tastes, opinions and preferences but she was also left without their guidance. Even if customers did not visit a shop personally, they
may still have had access to social venues and, by observing the
fashions there, they would have pre-existing ideas of current
fashions and of what they desired when a retailer visited their
house. Retailers were similarly restricted: while they obtained
personal and private access to their client, they were only able
to have a limited selection of goods to hand. This meant that
the goods had to be carefully chosen based on requests from
the client, previous purchases and an estimation of what the
customer could afford. Although similar considerations did have
to be made when interacting within the shop, the restrictions
of transporting goods called for an even greater accuracy in predicting a customers desires.
Lady Mary Coke regularly requested that tradespeople visit
her in order for her to make purchases. In 1767, when organising
the manufacture of her birthday gown, she wrote the weather
as severe as ever, sent for the lace man & chose some silver lace
to trim my gown and that she also sent for the mercer to bring
the silk for my Birthday Gown. Visits from tradespeople allowed
her to remain indoors in inclement weather but, more than that,
sending for multiple tradespeople also allowed her to compare
trims and fabrics from different retailers, which were destined
for one garment. This method had all the convenience of a street
of shops and the comfort of staying at home. Viewing items from different retailers together at her convenience gave her freedom, creativity
and inventiveness. Lady Mary Coke could buy a lace trim after directly
comparing it to the fabric on which it would be sewn and, in the process,
could assess further goods against things she already owned without the
influences and distractions of a public shopping environment.
In the 1780s, while staying with Hester and Henry Thrale, Frances
Burney recorded the visit of a milliner to her hosts house:
Within the shops of the clothing trade,

retailers produced item after item that
might interest the client and provide a
platform for tactile interaction
available, which helped both informed consumption and leisurely
enjoyment. The industrialist Josiah Wedgwood was a master at creating
exhibitions of his pottery, charging a fee for people to view items that
had already been made to commission for his famous or wealthy customers. These items were used as marketing samples, which allowed
potential future clients to view and feel a range of products.
Similarly, within the shops of the fashionable clothing trade, retailers would produce item after item that might interest the client and
provide a platform for tactile interaction with the goods. A writer in the
periodical the Weekly Visitor lamented in 1811 that the practice of the
female shopper was to enter shops, call for several articles, discomposing
the goods, and at length take her leave without buying a single thing.
This morning a milliner was ordered to bring whatever she had to recommend, I believe, to our habitation, and Mr Thrale bid his wife and daughter
take what they wanted, and send him the account.
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
From top: the Haberdasher

Dandy by Thomas Tegg and
C. Williams, 1818; a mercers
trade card, c.1760; womans
stockings, c.1750, machineknit, coral-pink silk.
Having relative financial freedom and the opportunity to view goods

within the comfort of their own home encouraged the Thrales to buy
freely; even Burney was tempted into purchasing a complete suit of
gauze lino. Being able to touch any fabrics or goods suggested by the milliner, in combination with previous shopping experience and knowledge
of quality and suitability, would be essential factors when selecting from
an array of goods from which to choose. These skills of discrimination,
which were practised through routine visits to shops, were put to use
within the private space of the home.
F A CUSTOMER was unable to visit the shop they wanted, an alternative to sending for tradespeople was shopping by proxy. This method
had long been established as a way of obtaining fashion news and
products when personal access was not possible. By commissioning
a friend or relative, elite and middling ranking women were able to
maintain access to fashionable, quality goods. Local retailers, though
numerous, tended to be aimed at a less cosmopolitan and sophisticated
clientele. When their services were called upon by elite women, the
selection they were able to offer was often poor in comparison with
their London rivals. The capital provided a hub for both imported and
domestically manufactured goods: high-quality fabric and expertly constructed clothing was only available from the skilled and trained urban
mantua-makers of London or larger fashionable resorts such as Bath.
The proxy shopping method entrusted friends and relatives with
the task of employing their skills of visual and tactile discrimination
on the consumers behalf. A reliable and skilled proxy shopper was a
valuable connection and formed a central part of social networks. Men
and women of varying degrees of wealth participated in this network,
drawing upon familial and business links.
The proxy shopping system was already well established in the late
17th century. In 1678 Ursula Venner, sister of the politician Edward
Clarke, wrote to him to commission her sister-in law to purchase a gown
for her: I desire my sister will doe ye kindness to by me a serviceable &
grave morning gown to be worn every day, wch I leave to her discretion.
This request contains specific directions, but is vague in regards to the
particulars and reveals a dichotomy between trust and the need to be
specific about the garment desired. Furthermore, while Venners choice
of gown which was explicitly intended to be practical and plain did
not necessarily need to be fashionable, she demonstrated a preference
for the superior products available in London shops.
The proxy shopper would transfer

a portion of the responsibility of
decision-making by sending fabric
samples to the absent customer
It was not always finished garments that were requested. Often it
was only quality Continental and London silks that were desired, leaving
the garments construction to be managed by the end consumer. Even
when feeling that she had superfluous wealth, Jane Austen sent only
fabric to her sister Cassandra rather than sending made up gowns. In
1801 she wrote to her sister about some fabrics: buy two brown [lengths
of fabric] but the kind of brown is left to your own choice. Similarly, in
1723, Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote to her sister that:
I had rather the money was laid out in plain lutestring, if you could send me
eight yards at a time of different colours ... but if this scheme is impracticable,
send me a night-gown -la-mode.
There was a significant amount of trust in this open request. While a
Fabric advertisement from the magazine The Repository of Arts,

published by R. Ackermann, 1809.
lutestring a certain weight and finish of silk was specified, the choice
of colours was left to her sister. The directions regarding the night-gown
are also vague, simply requesting that the garment was fashionable.
The lack of specific direction in Lady Marys request indicates the trust
she had in her proxy shopper.
The role of the proxy shopper carried great responsibility. Mistakes
could be expensive and could cause disputes between friends. In 1724
Mary Delany wrote to Ann Granville sending some sprigs for working a
gown, which I will send you, though my fancy is not a good one. Delany
clearly felt the weight and burden of responsibility and was self-deprecating about her skills as a proxy shopper. In April 1739 Frances Egerton
replied to a friend who had commissioned her to act as her proxy. She
apologetically wrote that she could not stay in Town to receive your
commands about your Gown, but I have had a return of my old disorder
for which Im obliged to go to Bath ... we hope youll aprove [sic] of what
we have done.
SOMETIMES THE PROXY SHOPPER would transfer a portion of the responsibility of decision-making by sending fabric samples to the absent
consumer. In 1785 Lady Grantham requested some fabric samples from
Lady Robinson, who was in London for the season. No further order
was placed, implying either that none of the samples were suitable or
that they had only been requested by her in order to remain aware of
current trends and favoured colours and patterns.
While shopping by proxy had become well established, many women
chose to order directly from favoured shops. Trusted retailers were
provided with orders and requests via letter, enabling direct access to
metropolitan fashions by the provincial elite. The April 1834 edition
GEORGIAN SHOPPING
of the World of Fashion contained an advertisement for the fashionable
dressmaker and milliner Mrs Bell, in which she invited her provincial
clientele to order items from her directly:
Fashion plate of
ladies morning
dress, 1796.
Ladies residing in the country are respectfully solicited to favour her with
orders for any description of dress or corsets, which they may rely upon
having strictly fashionable, on the most reasonable terms and their tastes
and wishes attended to, precisely as if they were present in London to give
their orders.
Ladies residing in the country are

instructed to send their measures so
as to be fitted with the same facility
as if in London
Without direct access to the goods, shoppers corresponding with retailers often requested fabric, trim and ribbon samples. These samples made
it possible for close inspection of the goods prior to purchase, even when
the customer was unable to meet with the retailer and so unsolicited
samples were sometimes sent out to encourage repeat sales. However,
samples were also often requested by the consumer so they could assess
the touch, feel and look of different fabric types. Samples of sets of
similar materials were requested, probably with a specific project in
mind. For example, in the letters between Lady Sabine Winn and her milliner, Ann Charlton, sets of samples were sent, divided between gauzes,
ribbons and silk fabrics. Similarly, the samples Lady Winn received from
the Faulding Brothers, a London haberdasher, were all cotton chintz.
ROM 1809, the ladies magazine Ackermanns Repository of Art

began to include fabric samples alongside fashion news and visual
plates, a resource that proved useful to both retailer and consumer as it allowed customers to engage with goods. Although a relatively new format, the womens periodical had become very successful
for feminine education both in moral and fashionable matters. These
periodicals were dedicated to the polite improvement of their readers,
providing a forum in which leisure and instruction could be combined.
Purchasing at a distance created problems when an item did not suit
a clients requirements. Information cards were developed in the latter
part of the 18th and early 19th centuries to improve the communication
of sizing. Before this, many mantua-makers would use a pattern from
an old gown to gauge sizing. Mary Peers, a provincial mantua-maker,
advertised that Ladies in the Country may be fitted with the greatest
exactness by sending a Gown as a Pattern. Her advertisements advised
that ladies residing in the country are instructed to send their measures,
so as to be fitted with the same facility as if in London. However neither
of these methods would have been successful in producing the fit that
was possible through fittings. Mistakes were still easily made with such
restricted interaction. When Lady King ordered some gloves from Mr
Senior, a London haberdasher with whom she maintained a correspondence, she found that they were a trifle too small in all ways. Shopping
by correspondence and being unable to try on and compare goods easily
led to simple sizing mistakes. On some occasions when the goods delivered were not suitable, the retailer would write off the loss and ask
the customer simply to dispose of the items she does not like as she
wishes. In 1783 the milliner Ann Charlton wrote to Lady Sabine Winn:
I am sorry the handkerchief was not what you meant but I assure you
that the handkerchief with 3 tapes to tie under the chin is quite old &
what we made last year & that I sent you was quite a new shape & what
we sold so many of.
In such cases, the clients lack of fashionable sociability had to be compensated for by trusting in the retailers knowledge and skill. Distanced
from the visual spectacle of fashionable London, the consumer was
susceptible to being misled by the retailer. Ann Charltons vindication
of her goods could have been motivated by sending older fashions which
would no longer sell in London. While this may not have been the case
with the handkerchief, the fact that Ann Charlton had no desire to have
the unwanted goods returned and that there was no system in place for
that to happen implies that these goods cannot have had much value.
In 1783 she wrote: Please do let me know the price of the watch chains
you keep, I should take it as a favour if it quite suits your Ladyship if you
could dispose of the other. Clearly the effort and expense of arranging
a return of unwanted items outweighed the potential possibility of
profit and resale.
The relationship between fashion retailer and shopper was a complex
one, involving both trust and commercial scheming. Shoppers would
browse, inspect and visually dissect both the goods and their peers in
order to train themselves as good shoppers and to maintain an awareness
of fashion. Across each of the methods of shopping for fashionable dress
that have been outlined here, the importance of careful sensory browsing and sociable interaction were maintained. Shopping was necessary
in order to obtain the material tools of fashionability, and versatility in
being able to shop was vital to how a woman presented herself to society.
Serena Dyer was an Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and is currently
completing her PhD at the University of Warwick.
FURTHER READING
Jennie Batchelor, Women and Material Culture, 1660-1830 (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007).
Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women,
Shopping and Business in the Eighteenth Century (Columbia UP, 1997).
Mark Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and
Touching in History (University of California Press, 2007).
| LABOUR'S ROOTS
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL said that the Labour Party
didnt do God but the truth is that until very
recently it did. The flood of obituaries that followed
Tony Benns death last year reminded us of Labours
religious roots. To those who understand this tradition,
it is no surprise that E.P. Thompson began his classic
Marxist history, The Making of the English Working
Class (1963), in a pre-industrial landscape of dissenting,
self-governing chapels and that miners union banners
are rich in religious allegory. It did come as a surprise
to some of Benns obituarists, however, that for over
30 years the leader of the Labour Left was a committed
Christian, while others barely registered the fact. As
Peter Wilby remarked in the Guardian of March 22nd,
2014, the driving force of Benns life was Christian
Socialism something few contemporaries, least of all
journalists, fully understood. On the eve of the most
important UK General Election in a generation, I want
to mark the significance of this great but neglected political tradition by reflecting upon one of the hundreds of
thousands of Christians who gave their lives to the Left.
A priest with a
secular vision:
Richard Ellis in
the 1960s.
Christian socialism can be seen

as a late 19th-century form of
Protestant liberation theology
born of English Puritanism
Liberation theology is usually associated with Roman
Catholicism and the struggles of the Latin American
poor. Christian Socialism, in comparison, can be seen as a
late 19th-century form of Protestant liberation theology,
which sprang out of English Puritanism but found its
defining causes in American republicanism: in 18th-century Revolutionary Independence, in the 19th-century
Abolition of Slavery and in the 20th-century struggle
for Civil Rights. In Victorian England, meanwhile, the
liberation movement found its voice in a thin black line
of young Anglican priests and activists, who found themselves exposed to the near impossibility of urban mission
and, in the Nonconformist Conscience, an old clustering of religious and political opposition, which found
new life in the astonishing rise and reach of Methodism.
Poorest strand
Primitive Methodism was Methodisms poorest and
most proletarian strand. Founded in the time of the
Luddites as a splinter from the original Wesleyan body,
the Primitives knew all about breaking things. Just
about every 19th-century popular struggle to break free
radicalism, trade unionism, co-operation, liberalism,
workers education, teetotalism and various socialist
associations that morphed into what eventually became
the Labour Party had Methodist support and, in many
cases, Methodist inspiration. Four of the original six
Tolpuddle Martyrs were Primitive Methodists. Before
them, in Durham and Northumberland, Primitive Methodists had already led Thomas Hepburns miners union
to victory in 1831 and would lead it again in 1844.
The
Forgotten
World of
Christian
Socialism
Robert Colls offers a personal reflection upon

the religious roots of the Labour Party.
| LABOUR'S ROOTS
Factory workers were familiar with slavery
in the Bible and made comparisons between
their own lives and the lives of African-Americans south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Old
Testament book of Exodus served as the foundation narrative for both parties. Until only a
generation ago, chapel was a natural feature of
working-class life in these islands.
Richard, more commonly Dick, Ellis was
born in industrial Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in
1921. His father had been saved from an unhappy
home by the Primitive Methodists who ran his
local Sunday school. His mothers great uncle,
Reverend Thomas Auty, went to prison in 1906
for refusing to pay the school rate. Her uncle,
Reverend Thomas Richard Auty, ministering in
the Staveley circuit in north Derbyshire, sold all
he possessed in 1926 in order to stand with the
miners during the General Strike.
Dick knew these men but there was no overwhelming sense of family obligation to follow
them. He left school at 14 to work in the mills.
At 19 he was called up and, like his father before
him, refused to serve. This was not the first time
his father or his church had shown him the way. In
1932 the Primitives had united with the Wesleyans
and United Methodists to form the Methodist
Church. Nineteenth-century Methodists of all
types had tended towards the Liberal Party. Christian activists of Dicks generation tended towards
Labour and, for the theologically inclined, groups
like Tawneys Socialist Christian League. Many activists
also took with them older church alignments towards
the peace party (the Primitive Methodist Conference
of 1914 had condemned arms manufacturers as direct
foes of the Gospel); towards teetotalism (Hugh Bourne,
founder of Primitive Methodism, had committed from
early days); and towards a form of Christian guild socialism, inspired in Dicks case by his ministers at Dewsbury
Zion, Hugh Davison and John Spoor, and by the memory
of how his fathers own tiny pen repair business had been
eaten up by the expansion of Woolworths in the 1920s.
Conscientious objectors
Eventually, Dick was installed with around 30 other conscientious objectors in Selby, North Yorkshire. Willing
to serve in the Merchant Navy but not willing to man the
deck guns, farming it had to be. He liked the work and he
and his comrades turned the hostel into a little university
of the pacifist Left. After the war Dick went to ministerial
training college in Richmond and, on ordination, married
Joan Boyes, also of Dewsbury.
For the next 40 years the Ellises served in the northeast of England, starting out in Bishop Auckland (where
daughter Catherine was born in 1950, Ruth in 1952), then
on to Stockton-on-Tees (1953-59), South Shields (195969), Roker, in Sunderland (1969-77), and Gateshead and
Jarrow (1977-85). Dicks ministry was part of the great
liberationist tradition and he never wavered in that, but
deep down he believed not in politics as such, but in what
In the north
country: Richard
Ellis, c.1980.
Like Archbishop William Temple, Ellis spent his

life arguing that all secular policy should be
founded on Christian truth
he called the love and suffering of Jesus Christ.
What did he mean? His Jesus was not, it has to be said,
the rather wispy Holman Hunt type who caught your
eye from the study wall. Nor was his Christian Socialism
the same as that of F.D. Maurice, or Charles Kingsley, or
John Ruskin or any of the movements 19th-century high
thinkers. Like them, he believed in the transformative
power of fellowship. Like them, he saw the home as the
model for how we all should live and, like Archbishop
William Temple, he spent his life arguing that all secular
policy should be founded on Christian truth. Unlike the
great Christian Socialist patriarchs, however, he came out
of an avowedly working-class sect, not a public school, and
he was not sentimental about the people. His Jesus was a
tender hearted fellow who showed you how to feel, not a
socialist proposition. As for everlasting redemption, it was a
condition which Dick never espoused and, as far as I know,
never experienced.
Man or redeemer?
As with so many secular-minded Christians it was difficult
to know just where his Jesus the man bowed out and his
Christ the Redeemer crept in. Far more interested in social
equality than human nature, he never talked (to me at

least) about Good or Evil. He did admire Alan Richardsons
Christian Apologetics (1948), however, and Stanley Evans
Social Hope of the Christian Church (1965), though he was
unaware of the latters pro-Soviet sympathies. More interested in Barth and Tillich than the Second Nicean Council,
Dick believed (believed was an over-worked word in these
discussions), that our best hope lay in the example of a man
who died on the cross in love because we are all members
one of another and in suffering because we must take
responsibility no matter where it leads. One part of Richard
Ellis Christian Socialism was confident of Gods love in the
world and glad to be in it, while the other part was embattled: the legacy of a darker West Yorkshire Puritanism.
He put his faith in the Labour party. At 90, he voted
for Ed Miliband as leader. As for the Conservative Party,
although no one ever actually heard Dick say that Tories
could not get through the eye of a needle ...
Loaded guns
He arrived in my home town of South Shields in 1959 to
close a youth club, which he said had no Christian purpose.
Then he opened another sort of club and in no time at all
teenagers were turning up: for each other and the 1960s
zeitgeist, no doubt, but also for him and the challenge that
Religious
radical: Tony
Benn outside
the House of
Commons, 1961.
he threw down. I would not say with Emily Dickinson

that we were loaded guns at that moment, but we felt as if
we were. It is true Dick did not always see that he did not
always see. He listened though. A formidable intellectual,
with charm and fun, he got hold of us and opened us up to
an existentialist Left-Christianity that was not much on
offer then and, as far as I can see, not much on offer now.
In 2009, in retirement in South Shields, Joan suffered
a stroke. The following year Dick lost a leg, which made
his role as carer almost impossible. No longer capable of
walking, they sat by the fire and talked politics and poyetry and family, of course, with a bit of cricket thrown in.
They could hardly stand up, but you left them feeling lifted.
In recent years they had both taken a liking for the liberal
Anglican priest Giles Fraser, although for some reason they
seemed to think that the Guardian, for whom Fraser

writes, wanted the same sort of society that they did.
Reading Benns obituaries, I was minded how alike
the two men were. Forget trivial differences of celebrity
and less trivial differences of wealth and privilege, as
they would have done. Forget that one was a Primitive Methodist at heart and the other, in the end, was
commended to Gods mercy by a dean of the Church of
England. Forget, too, that they were both pipe-smoking
teetotallers. Note instead how both men based their politics on justice and their justice on the Bible, especially
the Sermon on the Mount. Neither man took much
notice of Marx; Benn did not read Marx till he was 55
and Dick, who was far better read than the politician,
saw Marx as an eschatological prophet, not a scientific
socialist. Both knew their R.H. Tawney, were admirers
of Donald Soper and Colin Morris and saw the Labour
Party as a visionary movement rather than a vote bank.
Somewhat austere, they paid little attention to focus
groups. (It is hard to see how Roman focus groups, had
they existed, would have seen the Crucifixion as anything but a bad thing for the spread of Christianity.)
Above all, both men were humble in that they tried
to bend who they were to their faith, not the other
way. Working all hours, counting all hours and, in the
end, believing all hours as the kingdom of God on earth
slipped from their grasp, they had to face the fact that
after a lifetime striving, society had not turned socialist
and the people had not turned Christian. Christian Socialism? These days the movement is called Christians
on the Left and it does well, but you might as well want
the moon. It has to be said, the language of love and
suffering sounds very old, not to say manful. My students simply would not understand it. And the idea of a
Christian Socialist society sounds a little bit intolerant,
not diverse, possibly illegal, certainly not on message.
God continues to elicit deep commitment, but which
God and what sort of commitment?
Not that middle-class metro-secularism solves any of
Labours current problems. A party that hardly knows
what it is allowed to believe and only looks to its own
careers to believe it, is not going to flourish. And all
parties, not just Labour, would do well to remember the
Primitive Methodists and re-think ways of restoring
religion as a local force capable of re-building the poor
and sustaining them.
Reverend Richard Hiram Ellis died on February
24th, 2014 in Jarrow three weeks before Tony Benn.
How do you weigh the achievements of a priest? Dick
was an emotional man who, in addition to his passion
for justice in this world, stretched out for something
in another, which complicated everything else. As a
young probationer he would visit an old woman called
Mrs Jeffrey in the village of Upend in Suffolk. She would
give him tea and say grace on her knees. He told me he
saw this as a sacrament. I told him he was getting soppy.
He told me I didnt get it. Now that he has gone, I get it:
earthen floor, highest hope, the sacred all in each other.
Robert Colls is Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University,
Leicester..
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
A Mutual Fascination
The people of Brighton offered a warm
welcome to the Indian soldiers sent
to convalesce at the Sussex resort in
the First World War. But the military
authorities found much to be nervous
about, writes Suzanne Bardgett.
E
A wounded Indian
soldier dictates his
letter home to a
scribe, Brighton,
c 1915.
IGHT MONTHS AFTER the outbreak of war the

Brighton Herald of January 16th, 1915, reported an
encounter between a small group of Indian soldiers
and the people of the town. It took place outside the
York Place secondary school, which had been converted
into a hospital for wounded Indians, newly arrived from
the First Battle of Ypres. The Heralds reporter was covering a visit by two members of the royal family: Princess
Beatrice, who had lost a son in the same battle just months
before, and her sister, Princess Louise, who had recently
lost her husband, the former Governor-General of Canada,

John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll. The recently bereaved
pair, daughters of Queen Victoria and thus a direct link to
the first Empress of India, would have been thought highly
suitable ambassadors to the Indian troops. But it was an
impromptu incident that day which caught the reporters
attention:
On the outskirts of the crowd were three Indians, one of whom,
possibly in honour of the Royal visit, had adorned his khaki
turban with a spray of ivy. To the small children, as well as
to the elders, the Indians were a centre of the keenest interest.
And the Indians were as much interested in the children as
the children were in them. At length the inspiration seized a
small boy to hand a baby brother up to one of the Indians to
be held in his arms. The Indian took the child with eagerness.
That set the fashion. The next minute girls and mothers, too,
were handing up their small children freely, either to shake
hands with the Indians or to be takenin their arms ... [One
soldier patted a babys] woollen covered toes with a joy that
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
Wounded Indian
troops are
prominent in a
recruiting rally
held in Brighton
in 1915.
would have done credit to a proud young father handling his

first-born. What stories there will be to tell these babies when
they grow up how they had been fondled by wounded Indian
soldiers who had come over to fight for Britain in the Great
European War.
There seems no doubt of the mutual captivation that
existed between the Indian soldiers sent to Brighton to
convalesce from their war injuries and the people of that
town. The encounters would be short-lived, however. In
late February 1915 the military authorities took the highly
unpopular step of locking the soldiers into the hospitals
and guarding them with military police. What had gone on
and why did the military react in this way?
ACHETAR SINGH, a soldier recovering in Brighton,

wrote to a friend in India on March 15th, 1915:
How can I describe this war? It is like a furnace in
which everything becomes ashes on both sides. For
Singh and hundreds of other recovering soldiers, contact
with civilians in Brighton had been relaxed for the first
two months of 1915 and it had been a source of fascination
and pleasure. We know this from the letters the Indians
wrote home, which were read and translated by the British
censor: These people love us from the bottom of their
heart, reported one, and, according to another: The people
of this place pay us great honour & attention & keep on
saying How do you do? & treat us with great respect.
Three large buildings in Brighton had been converted
into hospitals for the Indian wounded: the York Place
School, the Royal Pavilion and the Brighton Workhouse,

which became the largest of the hospitals and was known
as the Kitchener Hospital. The Royal Pavilion was thought
to provide a particularly appropriate setting for the convalescing soldiers. Its exotic interior filled with hospital
beds and recovering soldiers was to become the subject
of several paintings. Local newspaper reports showed compassion and empathy for the Indians. When a train bearing
a large contingent of wounded Indian soldiers arrived at
Brighton railway station from a hospital ship in Southampton, the Heralds reporter was there to describe the scene:
It is a moving sight to see stretcher after stretcher shifted
from the train to the ambulance vans, each stretcher with its
motionless figure, some with their faces covered, others looking
out upon their unaccustomed surroundings with expressions
of patient endurance and with that aspect of mystery and
melancholy which lurks in the eyes and feature of so many
Indians ... in some cases where both legs were wounded the
Indians were carried by their English comrades.
LANGUAGE COULD BE A BARRIER, but not always, for
there were some Brightonians who had lived in India. A
Sikh soldier was able to converse with a Hindi-speaking
reporter on the Herald, telling him, for example, about the
recent fighting, with its constant machine-gun fire and
exploding hand grenades. A Brighton policeman, who had
spent several years in India was immediately the centre of
a group who recounted their experiences.
The seafront presented a host of entertainments. These
Clockwise from
top left: photographic records
of Indian soldiers
convalescing at
Brightons Dome
and Kitchener
hospitals and of
the Kitcheners
X-ray room.
The English they were meeting in

Brighton behaved altogether better than
those they had met back in India
included now-forgotten diversions, such as rides in carriages drawn by goats. The two piers had booths with gaming
machines, including recently installed ones that allowed
the public to fire rifles at German soldiers. There were the
trappings of commerce: a monster soda bottle on the roof
of a house to advertise the drink was another singular
sight that we know the Indian soldiers found amusing. The
Indians noticed straightaway the warmth of the Brighton
people. In a letter from February 1915, a Mahratta medical
subordinate wrote:
The people are so very good & kind that they make no difference between black & white. Everyone seeks every opportunity
of becoming fast friends with us & of serving us in any way in
their power.
In the evening we always go for a walk. The people treat us
very well indeed. Men and women alike greet us with smiling
faces and take great pleasure in talking with us.
One thing that struck the Indians was that the English
they were meeting behaved altogether better than those
they had met back in India. Sub-Assistant Surgeon J. N.
Godbole wrote to his friend in Poona:
We do not hear the words damn and bloody at all frequently
as in India. But this only applies to those who have not seen
India. Those who have gnash their teeth at us, some laugh and
some make fun, but there are not many who do this. The people
here are charming. It is impossible to ask why they become so
bad on reaching India.
From the pages of the Herald we learn of a spontaneous
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
act by a young Brightonian. The Indian
soldiers were out on parade and quite a few
small boys had joined in:
One boy rather older than the rest marched
all the way by the side of a good-looking
young Indian in the rear. They could not
speak a word to each other, but the boy
marched along with all the mingled pride and
solicitude of the big brother. He had clearly
taken the Indian under his care. And the last
thing one saw before the great gates of the Pavilion closed upon the party was the boy and
the Indian shaking hands in farewell. India
and Britain will be closer than ever before.
Troops in a
charabanc in front
of the statue of
Queen Victoria on
Brightons Grand
Avenue, c.1915.
HERE WE HAVE a moment of connection:

one young man singling out another and
showing his brotherly concern. Brighton
was full of families who each weekend
greeted thousands of visitors: publicans,
shop-keepers, hotel and caf-owners and a
host of other individuals who made their
living through providing entertainments or selling icecreams on the seafront. In short, people were used to welcoming strangers. Some families had Indian troops staying
in their homes. One Parsee medical subordinate wrote to
his friend in Bombay on January 26th, 1915:
Tomorrow we proceed to Bournemouth to take our HQ there.
We are very sorry to leave Brighton & especially our
billeting place and such comfort and motherly & fatherly
feelings as we received from Mr and Mrs ____ who so
proudly sheltered us for 14 days.
RIGHTONIANS LEARNED to say salaam on

meeting the Indians. This was easy enough, but
a feature in the Herald in March 1915 introduced
readers to Hinduism and its rituals, explaining how
the morning bath was a daily baptism and quoting from
the Rigveda. Efforts at cultural understanding would grow
as the hospitals became better established.
That January, snow had fallen on Brighton and the
Herald published a photo of the Indians making a snowball
on the Pavilion lawn. The report described how the Indians
looked out upon the captivating scene spread before them
with wonderment and delight. The tone may seem condescending today. In 1915 it would not have.
Another report that same January caught a moment of
real sympathy for a group of Indians being taken on a drive
on an especially cold day:
They came with bandaged hands, with arm in a sling, or with
hurts to feet and legs that had left them unable to walk save
with the support of the Red Cross soldiers. Careful handling
indeed was needed to get these maimed warriors into the seats
of the covered-in car. To the keen interest of the group of onlookers the delicate task was at length accomplished. As the car
moved away up the London road, the crowd, unable quite to
muster up the cheer that they felt in their hearts, waved their
hands in token of good wishes. Smilingly the Indians, who
ever manifest the most friendly disposition, acknowledged the
salutation.
These soldiers were evidently too badly wounded for such
a journey, which must have jolted them for a full three
Civilians and
wounded Indian
soldiers pose for
the camera at
the Kitchener
Hospital, 1915.
hours. The crowd of onlookers seems to have sensed this

and felt it was too much.
Inevitably it was encounters with the women of the
town which produced the most complex set of responses:
The women here have no hesitation in walking with us.
They do so hand in hand. The men so far from objecting,
encourage them. The fact is that this is the custom here,
wrote Sub-Assistant Surgeon M.M. Pandit to a friend in
Sholapur. One Sikh wrote to his father of afternoon encounters with English women, who gave them fruit and of
one woman who said to him:
We have never seen such men. Only have we heard of them
that they are the Sikhs of India who once fought against
England. Now do we see them with our own eyes as we see
our son.
Who once fought against England is presumably a
reference to the Anglo-Sikh wars of the 1840s. Here is an
unknown Englishwoman, seemingly wanting to push aside
past prejudice. But the easy relations of early 1915 came to
an abrupt end. Writing home in the spring of 1915, Dhunjibhoy Chinoy reported that new restrictions were in place:
We are not allowed to go anywhere and are hard pressed and
we do not like it ... At first the salas allowed us more freedom
Seton later defended his action:

It was evident, from the very first,
that drink and that the sex problem
were factors which would have to be
reckoned with. A large proportion of
the followers, the sweepings of Bombay
city, were found to be habitual drunkards; and the ill-advised conduct of the
women of the town, although partly
innocent in intention, was bound to
result in the gravest of scandals.
ALCOHOL MAY HAVE been partly
to blame: there was a court case
against a contractor who had
brought strong liquor into the
hospital. But the prospect of liaisons
with local Brighton women was the
main reason. In February 1915 the
Brighton Womens Co-Operative
Guild asked that something be done
to prevent the nuisance in connection with the Indians in Pelham
Street and asked that the garden in
nearby Trafalgar Street be immediately boarded up. The gardens were
close to the entrance to the York
Place hospital and it seems that
Brighton women with whatever
motive were congregating there to
meet the Indians.
The military in fact knew a
lot more about the Indian troops
relations with civilians than they
were letting on and what they read
gave them much to worry about.
Marseilles in particular, where the
Indian troops had disembarked,
was mentioned a good deal by the
censor:
and we acted according to our pleasure and stayed out sometimes all night. We were even placed outside in billets; but
some men abused the privilege and it was entirely stopped ...
N LATE FEBRUARY 1915 Sir Bruce Seton, commanding

officer of the Kitchener hospital, took the decision to
clamp down on the Indian soldiers freedoms by locking
them into his hospital. He went to the very top and
wrote to Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, voicing his concerns about the too frequent intercourse with Indian attendants and patients. Sir Walter Lawrence, the Commissioner in Charge of the Welfare of Indian Troops, thought
it was unfair, although his objections were not particularly
strenuous: The Indians are behaving like gentlemen and it
is rather a pity that Bruce Seton should have alarmed Lord
Hardinge needlessly. There was some discussion of the
Coronation in 1911, when around 700 Indian soldiers had
been billeted at Hampton Court. That had not been a town
however: it was the urban environment which gave the
military concern. Barbed wire was put on top of the walls
surrounding the hospital and a band of military police
formed from among the patients to enforce the new rules.
The interior of the

Dome hospital,
painting by
Douglas Fox-Pitt,
c.1919.
It would appear from the tenor of certain letters passing

between the Base Camp at Marseilles, where the scum of
the Army has naturally tended to collect, and the front, that
the Indian soldiers in camp at Marseilles have been able in
some cases to obtain access to the women of the neighbourhood
and that a certain amount of illicit intercourse with them is
going on.
Letters to the Indians intercepted from Marseilles offered
tantalising evidence of liaisons, but the precise nature of
them was rarely clear. The prospect of a similar situation
developing in Brighton was alarming. There were just too
many opportunities for sexual adventure.
There was very likely a class aspect to this concern. In
his 1909 history of Brighton, Lewis Melville bemoaned the
social decline of the town. The arrival of the railway had
changed things for the worse. Brighton had become the
Cockneys paradise, the Mecca of the stock-broker and the
chorus girl. Unlike nearby Brockenhurst and Barton-on-Sea,
also the sites of hospitals, Brighton was associated with
pleasure-seeking Londoners and, for the British Indian Army
officers, would have seemed to harbour all kinds of lowMARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 45
INDIANS IN BRIGHTON
life. The idea of the Indians consorting with barmaids and

other lower-class women touched a particular nerve. The
issue of European prostitutes and barmaids operating in
India had produced a major scandal in the 1880s and, like
all scandals, it cast a long shadow in the military mind.
There was also irritation at the apparent affection that
white women felt towards the Indians. A Liverpool journalist, reporting from Paris in 1914, observed:
The Cult of the Asiatic, always strong in France, is now,
thanks to the added sentiment for the brave ally, almost
an obsession. A young princeling in my hotel is embarrassed
by many kind smiles and glances. A motor-car will drive
up and disgorge a bevy of heavily-furred ladies in the lounge
where he is sitting. All through dejeuner their eyes will wander
to him. The interest of course is half military and
patriotic, and half due to the romance that dwells in
everything remote.
English women were also criticised for their behaviour
when encountering Indians. A British Indian Army medical
official wrote to his wife that Brighton was covered with
girls who make a lot of the natives. They are seen to go arm
in arm with ward servants and are very fond
of coloured people. I have been able to find
just one example of a letter from an English
woman to an Indian soldier in the censored
correspondence at the British Library. It was
sent by a Londoner to a Muslim clerk in
France. It starts Dear Gummie and thanks
him for sending her money. A few lines later
the writer says that there are not many soldiers in London now. One wonders whether
this is a woman who had come to rely on
payment for sex from soldiers on leave in
London, but it is impossible to know. Perhaps
Gummie had sent the money on behalf
of his superior. The letter ended love and
kisses for the Captain and yourself . We can
imagine how the censors office must have
reacted. Here was proof to the censors that
some kind of relationship had developed and
it can only have fuelled their concerns. There
was evidence in the Indian soldiers letters,
too. Writing home to a fellow-soldier in
January 1915, a Muslim sub-assistant surgeon
reported I have been to the theatre. Enough,
dont you ask me anything. I am not tied up
[by scruples] as you are. I go about to enjoy
myself .
With whom was this enjoyment being
had? For the military a host of possible
scenarios presented themselves. The war was
starting to give more freedom to women and this posed all
kinds of risks. So-called khaki-fever and war babies were
discussed in the press around this time and women police
patrols were formed across the country to curb unruly
behaviour. The prospect of mixed-race babies being born
was disturbing but, more than that, the notion of sexual
relations between Indians and British women challenged
the very foundations of the British imperial edifice. Behind
Setons concerns and those of other senior military
officers was the fact that, by this time the Indian presence in the UK had become a highly polished project.
Brightonians pass
Indian soldiers
at the gates of
the Kitchener
hospital, 1915.
HE TONE OF MUCH of what was written in the

newspaper reports was both possessive (references to our Indian troops) and condescending
(phrases such as gallant warriors). The newspapers of the day helped reinforce a notion of the Indians
that placed them firmly in the imperial hierarchy. They
made much of the colour of Indian skins and far less of the
terrible fighting they had been part of just weeks before. As
reporters wrestled with describing the mass of men with
whom they could not converse, they drew on appearance
to speculate on the Indians characters and the physical
attributes of the different racial groups. Not infrequently
this gave rise to comparisons with children: Filled with a
child-like faith in their own religion, they seem as innocent as children, but in reality they have the hearts of lions
for bravery. Every opportunity was taken to promote the
notion of the Indians loyalty and dependability. Conducted visits to London a regular activity for the convalescing
soldiers took them to Madame Tussauds and to West End
stores. But they were also made to give formal salutes to
the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace
and were photographed doing so.
A British Indian Army medical wrote to his

wife that Brighton was covered with girls
who make a lot of the natives
There was a degree of self-satisfaction at Britains

largesse in treating the Indians so well and an expectation
of gratitude. In A Short History in English, Gurmukhi & Urdu
of the Royal Pavilion Brighton (1915) there is a description
of it as a hospital for Indian soldiers. The author imagined
the Indians recalling their time there after the war: Their
faces will then glow with pride as they tell of that day
when they were lying wounded in a Royal Palace and the
king and queen came to their bedsides and spoke to them
words of tender sympathy and cheer. Willcocks later
remembered how obsessed the senior military and political
In the following month an unnamed Indian soldier wrote

home to Ahmedabad:
elite were with the Indians. If we look at the records of

the Indian Soldiers Fund, set up in October 1914, we get
some sense of this enthusiasm. The Funds organising
committee comprised a long list of aristocratic men and
women. Infinite care was poured into the scheme, with
large quantities of tobacco, spices, chutney, pagri covers,
balaclavas, coconut oil and sweets purchased to be sent
to the front. The effort was well meant, but the rush to
support and the determination to be listed on committees
and lists of donors spoke of an almost fanatical interest.
This ambitious campaign, now inextricably linked to the
influential and highly inter-connected British elite, had to
be guarded against any scandal or taint.
Brighton is a large city but I am ignorant of its contents.

To have curbed relations in the way the British military
had was not surprising, but it was heartless. The French
authorities tended to be much more lenient. There were
even some marriages between Indians and French women.
We know from the letters written about encounters with
French families, moreover, just how much these interactions were generally appreciated. We know also from
the thousands of letters and diaries in the Imperial War
Museum archives how much soldiers
throughout the 20th century took
comfort from chance meetings with
civilians in wartime. It was mothers,
sisters and grandmothers who were
missed, not just wives. Many of the
Indian soldiers in any case had their
own taboos about sexual liaisons with
women not of their caste. The opportunity to get to know the people of
Brighton with all the healing benefits it would have brought was lost.
Fraternisation threatened the very
cornerstone on which the Empire
was built: a presumption of the
supremacy of the British over the
Indian. Within this construct stood
an ideal of British womanhood. In
his memoir Willcocks recalled the
example of Lady Minto, the wife of
an earlier viceroy, who had crossed
the Malakand Pass into tribal districts, rarely visited by white women:
EING A CAUSE CLBRE

was not easy for the recovering soldiers and produced its
own pressures. With so much
adulation and fussing, the Indians
had to be circumspect about anything
that might provoke criticism from
the locals. Gambling had helped pass
the time in the hospitals, but it was
officially forbidden. A Hindu soldier
reported to his friend in India: We only
have a game on the sly now and then,
so that the Officers may not know. You
see we are held in great respect here.
But if they were to know what we do,
what would become of the respect?
There was an incident in which
a 15-year-old local errand boy stole
money from a Sikh soldier. At the court
hearing that followed, the soldier
despite needing the money was at
pains not to make a fuss. The relationship between Indians and their hosts
had become strained. The Indians were
under intense pressure to conform to
expectations. The British were anxious that the Indian
soldiers presence was packaged and presented to the best
effect.
It became apparent that the main reason for devoting
so much effort to nursing the Indians back to health was
to return them to the fighting fronts. The letters home
began to show resentment that Indian soldiers were being
seen as cannon fodder. Ragbir Singh of the 59th Rifles
wrote:
I have been wounded twice, and now this is the third time
that I am being sent to the trenches. The English say it is all
right. How can it be all right?
For the Indians to have been locked in, after a period
of freedom in Brighton and in contrast to conditions
in France, seemed undeserved. Soon the soldiers were
writing with real bitterness of the frustration they felt.
Writing home in June, Pirzada, a sepoy, warned,
Our people are very angry. They do not allow us out to the
bazaars etc. They do not let the French or the English talk
to us nor do they let us talk to them. The English have now
become very bad. They have become dogs. Our Indian soldiers
are very much oppressed, but they can do nothing.
A British soldier
photographed
with wounded
Indians at the
Dome hospital,
1915.
She spoke to all the Indian officers and

men of the wild transborder chiefs,
and years afterwards the memory of
her visit was still a theme of conversation amongst the Maliks
beyond Chakdara and en route to distant Chitral. You can
do much in the East by personal example, you can do little
without it.
This was the preferred image of British womanhood: brave,
aloof, untouchable. The encounters in Brightons Pelham
Street gardens presented a very different scenario one
best avoided.
Suzanne Bardgett is Head of Research at Imperial War Museums.
FURTHER READING
Gajendra Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and
the Two World Wars (Bloomsbury, 2014).
E M Collingham, Imperial Bodies: the physical experience
of the Raj, c 1800-1947 (Polity, 2001).
David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: soldiers
letters, 1914-1918 (MacMillan, 1999).
General Sir James Willcocks, With the Indians in France
(Constable, 1920).
MakingHistory
How much are actions especially extreme ones the result of impersonal historical forces and
how much are they dependent upon the impulses of individual actors, asks Mathew Lyons?
Charlie Hebdo and the judgement of history

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE took to the
streets of France in January to protest
about the murders of eight satirists at
the magazine Charlie Hebdo, of four
Jewish patrons of a kosher food store
and of three police officers.
Many in the media have identified
the slaughter in Manichean terms,
reflecting a battle between religious
sensibilities and free speech, between
the forces of reaction and modernity,
between Islam and the West.
Historians have to judge such
claims, both in the present and where
they arise in the past. Discerning
motive is perhaps the hardest task we
face. It is an intellectual challenge but
also a narrative one. How far to use
the individual act to explain wider
societal, cultural and intellectual
forces? How far to claim those forces
diminish the role of the individual
and the extent to which his or her
uniquely personal experiences shaped
and defined their choices?
Journalists and politicians on
both left and right have been happier
discussing the murders in Paris in
terms of cultural wars than in terms
of individual actors. For some, they
arose out of racism, Islamophobia
and varieties of economic and political
imperialism. For others, they were
another bloody skirmish in the Wests
war with Islamofascism.
It might be glib to suggest the
attraction of such responses lay in
their simplicity. Yet few people like to
let events redefine their world views;
editorial writers and politicians like it
less than most. Historians are made of
sterner if more supple stuff.
One of my first thoughts on
hearing of the killings at Charlie Hebdo
was Miltons dictum in Areopagitica:
As good almost kill a man as kill a good
book; who kills a man kills a reasonable
For all this waste of wealth and

loss of blood.
creature, Gods image; but he who

destroys a good book kills reason itself,
the image of God.
Miltons language is emotive, powerful: massacre, homicide, martyrdom. Censorship is a kind of murder.
However, the concept of murder as a
kind of censorship does not seem to be
in his vocabulary.
Frontispiece to
John Milton's
Areopagitica, 1644.
Miltons language is emotive,

powerful: massacre, homicide,
martyrdom. Censorship is a
kind of murder
Not that Milton would have
approved of Charlie Hebdo. Far from it.
His lines
Licence they mean when they
cry Liberty;
For who loves that must first be
wise and good:
But from that mark how far
they rove we see,
could almost have been written with

the events in Paris in mind. For Milton
as for some of those who would
import rigid Islamic standards of blasphemy into Europe a free press was
intended to enable Gods Englishmen
and women to find a truer path to revealed wisdom. He did not understand
why the people, in their wisdom, had
thought to use it otherwise.
There have always been people like
those at Charlie Hebdo who, wherever
the boundaries of free speech are,
can be found pushing against them.
Causing offence is almost a raison
dtre and the magazines savage glee
at doing so places it in the arc between
South Park and Jonathan Swift.
Given the magazines provocations,
were the forces of history such that
the killings were inevitable? Or should
we allow more for the role of contingency and chance in what happens in
the present as much as in the past?
As historians, we try to make
patterns out of encounters and events,
to sift for meaning beyond the oddities
and quirks of the human actor. But
surely we must resist the temptation
to fit each of us wholly and neatly into
a wider ideology or identity, to make
coherent rational wholes of humans
who are rarely less than contradictory
and impulsive at the best of times.
Perhaps, the true definition of
civilisation is the absence of a demand
for too much intellectual clarity and
precision in each other. As individuals
and as societies, the more tolerant we
are of both our own contradictions and
those of our fellow humans, the more
civilised we shall be.
Mathew Lyons is author of The Favourite: Ralegh
and His Queen (Constable & Robinson, 2011).
WALLADA
Portrait of
Wallada by the
contemporary
artist Jos Luis
Munoz at the
Sepharad House
Museum in
Crdobas Jewish
Quarter.
Islamic
poet of love
Eleventh-century Crdoba was at the heart of the
rich culture of Muslim Andalusia. Among its greatest
creative figures was Wallada, princess, patron and poet.
Leigh Cuen rediscovers one of the most influential
women writers in European history.
ALLADA BINT-AL MUSTAKFI may be the

most influential writer that historians ever
forgot. Wallada became a legend in Crdoba,
more myth than history, said the Spanish
journalist Matilde Cabello. I heard about Wallada from my
father as a child. But I didnt know she was a real person.
Wallada ran a literary salon in the 11th century, during
Crdobas last years as the literary hub of the western
world. Many contemporary scholars, such as Dr Abdulwahid Lulua and Mara Rosa Menocal, believe this generation influenced the birth of Europes courtly love lyrics.
Masterpieces like Tristan and Iseult, Chaucers Canterbury

Tales, Dantes Divine Comedy and most legends of King
Arthurs court that readers know today are all indebted
to Andalusian women such as Wallada. In his 1977 essay
Wallada, the Andalusian lyric, and the question of influence, James Mansfield Nichols even suggests that Wallada
and her sister poets could be the missing link between
ancient Arabic poetry and the European romance lyrics that
emerged in the Middle Ages. But, in the following centuries,
European institutions usually dismissed and discarded
works written by women, especially Muslim women.
Cabello spent five years researching for her book,
Wallada: La Ultima Luna, the first in-depth biography of
Wallada. There were small pieces of information scattered
around, said Cabello. Wallada was only mentioned as a side
note in texts about Andalusia or her lover, Ibn Zaydun. So
Cabello published a second edition in 2005, in both Spanish
and Italian, which used fiction to fill in the gaps. In less
than two months the book sold more than 2,000 copies
WALLADA
in Crdoba alone. Over the past decade Spanish writers
have published new novels, poetry, anthologies and essays
that celebrate Wallada. But Cabello says most professors
and writers still focus exclusively on her sexuality, treating
her like an aristocratic prostitute.
For almost a thousand years Andalusians and Arabicspeakers around the world told the tragic love story of
the Spanish poet-philosopher Ibn Zaydun and his muse,
Wallada, daughter of Muhammad III, one
of the last caliphs of Crdoba. The torrid
affair between Ibn Zaydun and Wallada
is as significant to Arabic literature as
Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet is to
the English canon. However, Crdobas
romance was not just a fairy tale. Cabello
wanted to meet the people behind these
myths: Ibn Zaydun was portrayed as a
great thinker, while Wallada was briefly
mentioned as this typical bad woman,
said Cabello. I wrote the biography to
rescue Wallada from the shadow of a
patriarchal literary tradition.
The greatest Moorish writers of the
day praised Walladas eloquence and provincial influence. There are whole books
of poetry written for her, yet less than
ten fragments of Walladas own writings
have survived: a few scant lines from her
letters to Ibn Zaydun and the trademark
verses she stitched into her clothes.
Below: the
Mosque-Cathedral
at Crdoba.
Bottom: the
garden of Alczar
de los Reyes
Cristianos in
Crdoba.
running water, funneled through pipes from the Sierra

Morena mountains.
The streets were lined with long rows of booksellers;
literature was central to Crdoban society and only a small
minority was illiterate. Meanwhile, in Christian Europe,
just a few privileged clergymen were as educated as the
average citizen of Crdoba. Scholars came from all over
the world to visit its celebrated libraries and Greek envoys
were astonished by the citys wealth and
beauty. Inside the local mosque stood a
pulpit constructed from 36,000 pieces
of ivory and timbers studded with gold
nails. Red and white stripes painted
on the ceiling arches gave worshippers
the feeling of riding a rising wave. The
10th-century German poetess Hroswitha
described Crdoba as the ornament of
the world.
ALLADA was a woman

who embodied feminism
before the word existed.
She embroidered poetry
across her robe. One sleeve read: I am,
by Gods will, fit for high positions! And I
walk with pride along my own road. The
other sleeve read: I let my lover touch my
cheek, and gladly bestow my kiss on him
who craves it.
Today, a new generation of writers
are claiming Wallada as their inspiration,
including Syrian poets such as Mohja
Kahf and Maram al-Masri, who publish
revolutionary poems against violence,
patriarchy and Islamic extremists.
For me, Wallada is a role model, said
al-Masri:
Crdoba was a bustling

cultural centre,
overflowing with palaces,
a university, gardens and
hundreds of public baths
She is very relevant today, when many

Muslim women are attracted to fundamentalist tradition.
I wrote Le retour de Wallada because I thought it was very
urgent. Wallada remains an archetype of freedom. She
conquered through words, the graces of poetry and love. Now
women around the world are claiming Walladas legacy, reviving the genius that history overlooked.
Wallada was born in 994, during Islamic Spains Golden
Age. Her hometown, Crdoba, was the Umayyad capital,
built along the banks of the River Guadalquivir. Crdoba
was a bustling cultural centre, overflowing with palaces, a
university, lush gardens and hundreds of public baths with
WALLADAS MOTHER WAS a Christian

slave in the royal harem and her father
Muhammad III, was a caliph who rose
to power after a violent revolt. Wallada
inherited her mothers pale eyes and fair
complexion and her fathers fiery personality. As a young woman she lived in a
royal palace with marble pillars and a roof
covered in gold tiles, but her adolescence
was anything but idyllic: plague ravaged
Crdoba in 1011 and Wallada became a
woman during the bloodiest years of the
capitals history. Her father was murdered
in 1025.
After her fathers murder, Wallada
used her familys wealth to gain unprecedented independence. She sold
her property rights, dispensed of male
guardianship and opened the capitals
most influential literary salon in her own
mansion. According to the chronicler
Ibn Bassam:
Wallada was the first among her literati
peers ... her circle was the most illustrious
meeting in Crdoba ... the doors of her
busy mansion were always open,
frequented by the highest nobility and
the generous of mind.
Wallada lived during the final generation

of Crdobas glory days. The collapse
of the Islamic Caliphate marked the zenith of Crdobas
literary innovation. As political turmoil swept the countryside, the elites turned to fierce poetry competitions to
express their longing and frustration. This was no longer
the bookish poetry of academia. As Wallada entered her
thirties, Crdobas poetry scene grew passionate and
fearless. The Andalusian scholar Ibn Bashkuwal wrote that
Wallada competed with diverse writers and surpassed the
best of them.
Walladas literary salon also became an unofficial school
for women of all backgrounds, from royalty to slaves.
Women came to Wallada to learn how to read, write and
compose music. When local officials accused her of lacking

modesty and propriety, she ignored them.
Her salon had a great influence on the writer Ibn Hazm,
author of The Ring of the Dove. Ibn Hazm publicly defended
Walladas honour and refuted accusations made against her.
There is no evidence of a love affair between them, but there
is evidence of an intimate, long-term friendship. Ibn Hazm
admired Walladas writing and praised her character. He had
always been a political supporter of the Umayyads, who shared
Walladas lineage, with one exception: he hated Walladas
father, the deceased caliph, who he called a drunkard. Political
violence forced Ibn Hazm to leave the capital for several years.
When he returned and became Walladas trusted companion,
he started to write philosophy about love.
The interior
of the Great
Mosque at
Crdoba.
OME SCHOLARS believe Ibn Hazms book became

the troubadours manual of courtly love. Ancient
Islamic poetry styles, such as the Arabian raqib
and washi, have their French and Spanish counterparts in the later guardador and lauzenjaire, the archetypal
jealous lover in troubadour lyrics. Ibn Hazms rules of
love included: True love is rooted in the spiritual soul and
union is the ultimate bliss and were infamous.
Modern writers such as Ezra Pound and A.R. Nykl
claimed Andalusian lyrics were the fountainhead of modern
romantic poetry. In the Middle Ages female slaves had an
especially important role in the art of storytelling: they performed across borders, from Islamic states to the Christian
courts of neighbouring kingdoms. Female slaves were Ibn
WALLADA
A Group of
Troubadours, an
illustration from
the Cantigas de
Santa Maria, made
under the
direction of
Alfonso X, the
Wise, 1221-84.
Hazms first poetry teachers, before his years of exile. Afterwards, it was the headstrong Princess Wallada who dared
to open her home in Crdoba to slaves and nobles alike. In
her home, Jews, Christians, Muslims, men and women, all
explored poetry together without distinction.
Wallada probably met the ambitious politician Ibn
Zaydun at her own salon. He was not yet a renowned poet,
but encounters with the articulate princess would soon
inspire his groundbreaking works. Wallada wrote to him:
Wait for darkness, then visit me, for I believe that night
is the best keeper of secrets. When the moon rose, they
wandered together into the garden and drank sweet wine.
According to Ibn Zaydun, they spent the night picking
flowers from each others lips. He wrote: Though I may

afterward complain of long nights without you, how much
do I now complain of this nights shortness with you!
IKE SHAKESPEARES lovers, Wallada and Ibn Zaydun

came from rival families. Ibn Zaydun had supported
the Umayyads enemies before Walladas father was
murdered and afterwards was appointed ambassador
of the Jahwarid petty state. So the couple met secretly, only
at night and wrote long love letters whenever Ibn Zaydun
travelled on diplomatic missions. A new form of poetry
emerged in their letters, one that later generations would
consider the pinnacle of Andalusian literature. Under the
Historians usually refer to Wallada as the brash Andalusian Sappho, citing sexuality as her most salient characteristic. The real Wallada refused to be defined by her gender.
She never married, did not wear a veil and rarely wrote
erotic literature. Rather, she used sensual wordplay to emphasise irony instead of literal sexuality. She used gender as
metaphor rather than a subject; her poetic narrator often
switches genders when the speaker changes roles. Most
criticism of Walladas writings reveals more about modern
stereotypes than about Wallada herself.
BN ZAYDUN FELT HUMBLED by Walladas devotion,

given her royal lineage and higher social status. He wrote
that it was as if God made her out of musk, while the rest
of mankind was merely made from clay. Their correspondence is marked by a radically new tone, one where the
gallant male humbles himself before his lover. Some scholars, such as Dr Abu-Haidar, even believe Ibn Zaydun had an
inferiority complex vis--vis Wallada. Meanwhile, Wallada
kept busy with her salon, despite her strong affections. In
one six-verse poem, Ibn Zaydun complains of weakness
and insomnia because of Walladas avoidance. In another
three-verse poem, he reproaches Wallada for having
allowed her world to forget a slave whose world she is.
Walladas salon had a deep impact on the writers
around her, even figures from opposing political backgrounds. In A.R. Nykls study, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its
Relations with the Old Provencal Troubadours, he noted:
If we compare Ibn Zayduns life to that of his famous contemporary, Ibn Hazm, we find that in their initial formation they
passed through a very similar process in Crdoba. Despite all
the disorders that were reigning in the city they acquired a
most thorough education in literary art.
veil of silver moonlight, Ibn Zaydun claimed Wallada as

sovereign over his political allegiances.
Walladas letters were filled with long poems, in which
nature reflects her inner emotional state in a way reminiscent of later Renaissance poetry. She awaited liberation
from the slavery of desire and wrote that, if the heavens
felt her love, it would immobilise the sun, moon and stars.
Walladas letters show firm control over multiple traditions
of rhythmic metre and her verses reveal her own unique
style: a tone of self-irony. In one line she describes her
sincere emotional longing, while the next mocks her
own obsession as insignificant within the vast, mystical
nature of time.
Top: facsimilie
of an ivory box
originally made for
Princess Wallada,
c.966 ad. Commissioned by The
Conjunto Arqueolgico Madinat
al-Zahra, produced
by Factum Arte,
2010. Above: a
scene of music and
courtship from
Les Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles, 1462.
Centuries later, C.S. Lewis wrote that courtly love,

popularised in the generation after Wallada, was the
most radical change in the history of European literature. Compared with this revolution, Lewis wrote, the
Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.
Although Lewis never specifically mentioned Wallada
or her compatriots, he defined this new attitude of male
writers towards their female lovers through the following traits: humility, courtesy, adultery and the religion of
love, i.e. spiritual ecstasy in worshipping the lover. These
themes may have been new to Christian Europe, but they
already had a long legacy in ancient Sufi literature. When
Ibn Zaydun betrayed his beloved princess, their correspondence would elevate these traditional motifs with
fresh, candid emotion.
Some scholars say that Ibn Zaydun seduced Walladas
favourite African slave. Others believe he merely critiqued
Walladas writing, then lavishly praised her slave at a public
poetry reading. Whatever the offence, Walladas letters
delivered scathing insults in perfect metre. If you had
been fair to our love, you would not have taken an interest
in my slave girl [] I am the moon of the heavens, Wallada
proclaimed, yet you preferred a darker planet.
Ibn Zaydun spouted dozens of pages begging for her forgiveness. His poems expressed extreme humility and courtesy along with spiritual metaphors that likened Wallada
to divinity. Remove your mask of anger, he pleaded,
so that I may be the first to bow down and worship. But
Wallada was not moved; imagine her rolling her eyes at
WALLADA
Walladas themes may

have been new to Christian
Europe but they already had
a long legacy in ancient Sufi
literature
his melodramatic promises. Instead, she penned a series

of melodic quips, literally saying that Ibn Zaydun has an
ass that loves the cocks of Persian breeches, including the
verse:
You are a pansy, a bugger, a fornicator, a cuckold,
a swine and a thief.
If a phallus could become a palm tree, you would
turn into a woodpecker.
Generations of critics have used these verses to claim
Wallada was vulgar, lewd and, more recently, homophobic.
She certainly had a bold and arrogant personality. However,
considering how popular and common homoerotic verses
were at this time in Crdoba, it would be peculiar for her
to use homosexual comparisons as insults. Modern critics
overlook her poetrys key characteristics: Walladas visceral
humour foils Ibn Zayduns dramatic pandering. She casts
his lust as ridiculous, describing him as animalistic and sexually passive, the exact opposite of the chivalrous lover he
claims to be. He claims to worship her as his goddess-lover.
She casts his passion as pure testosterone, without balance
or romance.
ALLADAS METAPHORS shocked her peers

because of her innovative style, not their
sexual content. Crdoba was a liberal, open
society. In years to come, the lyrics of early
French troubadours in the 12th century, including Marcabru,
Bernart Marti, Peire dAlvernha, Raimbaut dAurenga and
Giraut de Borneil, were also laced with irony and sexual
innuendo. Later literary giants, from Dante to Shakespeare,
wrote similarly graphic insults in cultured, poetic forms to
Above: The
Meeting of Dante
and Beatrice,
illustration on
vellum, Italian,
13th century.
Right: Cervantes
The History of Don
Quixote, Blounte
edition, London,
1620.
enhance the images ironic contrast. Yet none of them are

considered crude.
In centuries to come, Miguel deCervantes novel Don
Quixote would be credited with pioneering artistic satire
in romantic literature. Yet in Walladas letters it is clear to
see such satire derived from the same hand that first forged
courtly love lyrics. Heavenly prose and ironic critique
arrived as inseparable twins. Despite centuries of legends
about this affair, the true love story from Crdoba is not a
romance between a poet and his muse; Walladas story is
about a woman who loved herself.
Ibn Zayduns fiercest political rival, the Caliphs vizir,
Ibn Abdus, began attending Walladas salon. When the
princess and Ibn Abdus grew closer, Ibn Zaydun lashed out
in a jealous rage. He wrote a slanderous epistle about the
vizir and signed Walladas name. But the spurned lover did
not fool anyone and the outburst only hurt his standing in
the court. When Ibn Zaydun wrote that Wallada was just a
piece of sweet meat that he took a bite of then threw away
to be gnawed on by a rat (the vizir), Ibn Abdus had his rival
thrown in prison. Ibn Zaydun eventually escaped and fled
today women poets experience the same demonisation that

Wallada did for her self-possessed sexuality. Ive had many
experiences where I was judged harshly for my poetry and
personally insulted, said al-Masri. When women write
about love, it makes a revolution against those who devalue
her emotions and think they possess her. Poetry is also a
form of resistance. Al-Masri was shocked and confused
when a reviewer in London described her social and political poetry as erotic. We write freely because we are not
free, she said. In their minds, people trap us in boxes.
Crdoba and it was then that he wrote his most famous

love poems, fraught with longing, nostalgia and overtones
of delusion. Ibn Zaydun continued describing his love for
Wallada as the true religion and accusing his enemies and
cruel fate for keeping them apart. One such Nuniyya (a
poem where every line rhymes with the Arabic letter Nun)
became one of the most famous love poems in the history
of Arabic literature and immortalised Ibn Zaydun, while
Walladas canon was lost to history.
Wallada lived to be almost 100 years old. When she
retired from the literary scene, she moved in with Ibn
Abdus. She never married and was believed to have had a
romantic relationship with her protg, a slave turned
poetess named Muhja. All historians know for certain about
their emotional connection is that Muhja wrote satiric
poems dedicated to Wallada, including sensual lines laced
with possessive jealousy. Again, we see that Wallada left
a new theme of love poetry in her wake: verses that used
religious language to revel in
the sweet pain of adultery and
of loving a woman who cannot
be possessed. Wallada died in
1091, on the same day that the
Almoravids invaded Crdoba.
Her death marked the end of
Crdobas literary epoch.
WALLADA FADED into the
footnotes of history, mentioned
only in reference to Ibn Zaydun
or in local legends of Crdobas
former greatness. Then, in the
1980s, a group of Andalusian
women started publishing
their poetic experiments in a
small magazine for friends and
family. They considered poetry
a hobby, not a political statement. Their verses followed
traditional styles and subjects, including flowers and love
songs. They called their magazine Wallada. Andalusian
women grew up hearing this strange name and faint myths
about a princess that once held sway over the philosophers
and politicians of al-Andalus.
A few generations after feminism renewed academic interest in women writers, this infrequent magazine took on
a more potent significance in 2003, when another Spanish
poet, Magdalena Lasala, published her own fantasy novel
about Wallada. The 2006 edition of Wallada, published in
Mlaga, featured some of Spains best up-and-coming female
poets. Over the past decade, feminist writers around the
world have adopted Wallada as their own inspirational hero.
In the introduction to al-Masris bilingual French-Arabic
book inspired by Wallada, Le retour de Wallada (The Return
of Wallada), the French writer Jean-Pierre Faye noted:
Detail from the

Monument to
Princess Wallada
and Ibn Zaydun in
Crdoba.
IKE WALLADA, who wrote during a time of upheaval in Crdoba, al-Masri and her colleagues also write
on the crossroads between overlapping conflicts.
When I wrote about Wallada, I imagined she travelled through time and arrived today, said al-Masri. What
freedoms would she see? What would she notice? We still
have a silent war between men and women, each side is
trying to feel more important
and less vulnerable than the
other. Al-Masri is currently
working on a new book, an
anthology of poems about
love written by Syrians caught
between feuding armies,
which explores how people experience love in a time of revolution. According to al-Masri,
many of the writers are afraid
that publishing these poems
may endanger their lives:
Even in modern society, she
said, writing about love is
dangerous.
Muslim women are still
using poetry as a bridge
between cultural influences,
between the Islamic world and
the proverbial West. Thanks
to the work of modern women writers around the world,
Wallada is now recognised as an influential artist in her
own right, not only as a muse.
Today, an unassuming white gazebo is tucked in a back
corner of Crdobas historic Jewish Quarter. It shelters a
sculpture of two caressing hands reaching towards each
other. Their touch appears gentle and tender. These metal
hands sit on top of a marble rectangle, which is engraved
with a dedication in both Arabic and Spanish. This statue
was erected in honour of Ibn Zaydun and Princess Wallada,
Crdobas legendary lovers.
Leigh Cuen is a freelance writer based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
FURTHER READING
The centuries are coming together in a new song. Every page

here is a mocking stanza. Walladas weariness traverses time,
carrying into our age a brief overload of dazzling anachronism
and tender vengeance.
Anne Klinck, and Anne Marie Rasmussen, Medieval

Womens Song (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
Le retour de Wallada features poems with al-Masris

trademark colloquial lyricism and intimate descriptions of
nature, delivered with Walladas playful lilt. However, even
S.M. Imamuddin, Muslim Spain, 711-1492 ad

(E.J. Brill, 1981).
James Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student

Anthology (University of California Press, 1974).
REVIEWS
Taylor Downing reviews the 2015 Longman-History Today Book Prize Winner
Claire Jowitt praises pirates Andrew Hussey jives with Johnny Hallyday
The tombs of Eleanor of

Aquitaine and Henry II at
Fontevraud Abbey, France.
SIGNPOSTS
Historical Fiction
With characteristic pace and purpose, Jerome de Groot highlights some
recent historical fiction, en-route encountering Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Johannes Gutenberg, Simn Bolvar and the spirit of Marcel Proust.
AS I WRITE THIS I am waiting
to watch the first episode of the
BBCs adaptation of Wolf Hall.
The anticipation for the series is
high. It is another demonstration
of the importance of the Tudors
to the contemporary historical
imagination and of the influence
of the historical novel on popular
culture. The series seems set to
demonstrate the complex ways
that a novel can render the past.
In this round up, two books by

major figures show that the
Tudors are not the only game in
town and, in their particular approaches, demonstrate a particular division of historical writing
essentially between combat
kingly fiction and matrilineal
queenly fiction that Mantels
treatment of Henry VIII, Anne
Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell
seeks in some way to traverse.
Conn Iggulden gave the

keynote address at the Historical Novel Society conference
last autumn and demonstrated
a fierce intelligence and great
insight about the ways that
historical fiction works (see:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=s4y1kuGIYlY). Iggulden
is hardly a well-kept secret, but
his new book, Trinity (Penguin,
18.99), marks the moment
that he becomes significant as a

writer. It is a masterful, vigorous,
gloriously entertaining dash
through the craziness of the
Wars of the Roses. The second
part of a trilogy, it promises
a grand climax to come while
rendering impressive scenes and
characters. Iggulden carefully
uses his spymaster character,
Derry Brewer, to weave a path
from duke to monk, from street
to kings chamber. The action
shifts easily and with authority.
Iggulden keeps the complex factional politics in order and writes
the combat scenes with a clarity
that recalls the work of Cornwell,
among others. The battle of St
Albans is handled with dexterity
and is a fitting centrepiece to a
novel about how fortunes in war
(and politics) can turn on a sixpence. There is a fantastic scene
between York and Henry VI in
St Albans Abbey that conveys the
importance of personality to this
national contention. The style
is sharp and muscular, without
being overwhelmed by the blood
and gore of the period.
Elizabeth Chadwicks The
Winter Crown (Sphere, 16.99),
while still about faction and
contention, concentrates on the
female perspective. The opening
scene, with Alienor (Eleanor)
of Aquitaine feeling the baby in
her womb kick as she is anointed
Queen of England, marks out the
different territory of interiors,
emotion and different types
of body. It is the first of several
childbirth or pregnancy scenes
and children are generally important to the book. In this way
Chadwick makes her point about

the status of a woman even of
Alienors level, but also enables
a narrative full of heroism. The
Winter Crown is concerned with
court politics, with the relationships between people, but has a
wider perspective onto the troubling events of Alienors reign. It
is rich and complex.
Scholars of print culture have
for decades pointed out the collaborative nature of publishing
books. Alix Christies Gutenbergs
Apprentice (Headline, 13.99)
continues in this vein, seeking
to bring various figures key to
the development of printing
out from under Gutenbergs
long shadow and to paint a
fuller picture of this historic
collaboration. In particular, this
is the story of Peter Schoeffer
and Johann Fust, Gutenbergs
sometime partners and decisive
actors in the development of this
Knausgaard ... asks

the same questions
that Marcel Proust
did a century ago.
Can we understand
our past?
new and terrifying technology.
Christie renders Mainz in the
early 1450s in sharp detail and
it is a fascinating account of the
torrid birth of printing. He is particularly good on the minutiae
of early print, the way in which
type would wear or how paper
feels. He subscribes to the sense
that the event was a moment
of genius that transformed the
world, while also pointing out
the drudgery and sheer hard
work it involved.
In direct contrast with
the preceding books is Evlio
Roseros strange and entertaining Feast of the Innocents (trans.
Anne McLean and Anna Milsom,
Quercus, 18.99). Roseros
beguiling novel concerns the
attempt of Doctor Justo Pastor
Proceso Lpez to besmirch and
change the reputation of one of
historys great heroic figures.
The novel concerns the myth
of Simn Bolvar, the Liberator,

and how his story true or not,
but generally passively accepted
is ingrained into Colombian
national identity. There are
sections of historical lectures
and discussion, but also carnival
excess and folk memory. Rosero
meditates upon how history can
become fact and how certain
inconvenient truths are forgotten. It is a kaleidoscopic book
that takes in a deal of Colombian
culture and society and is, at
points, very funny (as well as
poignant and terrifying).
We finish with two important
European writers. The fourth of
Karl Ove Knausgaards My Struggle series of six books is to be
published in English in the spring
of 2015. His previous three books
A Death in the Family, A Man in
Love, Boyhood Island redefined
contemporary writing about
the past. Knausgaard turns his
life into his subject and transforms the category of creative
memoir. His need to understand
himself and his world through
forensic analysis of his own life
asks the same questions that
Marcel Proust did a century ago.
How do we know ourselves? Can
we understand our past? How
does memory work? What does
it mean to bring something from
the past into the present? What
does it mean to write something
that happened? He is an exciting
talent and worth seeking out.
At the other end of an eminent
career, Patrick Modiano received
the Nobel Prize for Literature
in late 2014. Unlike some of the
recent Nobel laureates he is very
approachable as a writer. Three
novellas published as Suspended
Sentences (trans. Mark Polizotti,
Yale University Press, 12.99)
are terrific, uncanny, strange
pieces of work about experiencing the past and how to make
sense of events. Missing Person
(trans. Daniel Weissbort, Godine,
12.99) is a detective story about
discovering the self. The books
convey a kind of fearfulness
about pastness and remind the
reader of the work of W.G. Sebald
in their interrogation of memory
and postwar European identity.
Jerome de Groot
Inventing Eleanor
The Medieval and

Post-Medieval Image of
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Michael R. Evans
Bloomsbury Academic 228pp 60
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE (11241204) has stood in the spotlight

for eight centuries, but paradoxically the real Eleanor remains
a shadowy figure. Duchess of
Aquitaine, Queen of France and
England, mother of two English
kings, her achievements have
been overlaid by successive
washes of notoriety, glamour
and spin, until separating fact
from fiction has become a Herculean task.
In Inventing Eleanor, Michael
Evans attempts that untanglement with panache. Examining
the ideas, myths and legends
surrounding Eleanor, he focuses
on the historians and artists who
have constructed an Eleanor
very different from the 12thcentury queen and sets out to
discover how and why. The work
considers the medieval primary
sources before tracing the
post-medieval development of
Eleanors image to the present.
Inventing Eleanor is a fine
addition to the Eleanor oeuvre.
It has a scholarly focus, but
it is written in a winning and
readable style. Evans argues
convincingly that Eleanor was
far from unique among 12th
century royal and noble women
and seeks to unravel how she
acquired her false reputation
for exceptionalism. He opines
that her modern biographers
must take a lot of the blame and
that we, the public, would often
rather believe colourful myth
above prosaic truth. He explores

the way in which Eleanors
reputation has been distorted to
suit the ideologies of particular
historical periods and historians.
The feminist movement of the
late 20th century, for example,
has spawned an interest in
Eleanor as a female hero, exaggerating her influence, reinforcing her fabled exceptionalism.
Evans questions facets
of Eleanor that are taken
for granted. For instance, he
disputes the idea of Eleanor as
a heroine of southern France.
Eleanor, he states, can in no
way be considered a southern
figure in an alien and hostile
northern world. Further, the
power centres of her duchy
were closer to Paris than to the
Mediterranean.
As Evans pursues Eleanors
reputation through the centuries, it is fascinating to watch
the layers of detritus build up, as
each era adds its own perceptions to the pile, Shakespeare
and purveyors of scurrilous
17th-century ballads among
them. Evans explores Eleanor
in drama and historical fiction
post-1900, particularly James
Goldmans Lion in Winter, as
responsible for more than its
share of creating inaccurate
public perceptions regarding
Eleanor and Henry II.
The section on the visual arts
including medieval images was
particularly interesting for me
because Evans discusses a mural
at Chinon, frequently depicted as
Eleanor and Henry out hunting
with their offspring. Evans
points out that the expert art
historian Ursula Nielgen identified all the figures as male more
than ten years ago, but recent
works continue to insist that it is
a representation of Eleanor.
Professor Evans concludes
(with good reason) that finding
the real Eleanor remains an
uphill struggle. However, he is
optimistic that, with continuing
scholarship that doesnt pander
to myths and stereotypes, a
more nuanced Eleanor may
gradually begin to emerge from
the mist. I certainly hope so.
Elizabeth Chadwick
REVIEWS
British Pirates and

Society, 1680-1730
Margarette Lincoln
Ashgate and Royal Museums Greenwich

284pp 70
WE THINK we know all about

pirates. As a group their ambiguous
status is perfectly encapsulated by
the phrase one persons terrorist
is anothers freedom fighter and
pirates wear ridiculous clothes,
sport a swearing parrot on the
shoulder and say ahaa! all the
time. Pirates are thus serious and
silly, dangerous and threatening
on the one hand and, on the other,
they provide children with a favourite dressing-up identity.
Margarette Lincolns engaging
new book confronts this conundrum head-on. She shows how
Golden Age Atlantic and Indian
Ocean piracy is historically constructed and contextually defined,
as the British government used
seaborne crime and its suppression
first to build and then consolidate
power across oceans into colonies.
This was a serious business. The
rise and fall of the figure of the
pirate neatly maps onto the British
governments desire to benefit
economically and ideologically
from, and then neutralise, these
unruly and disruptive elements,
thus establishing global maritime supremacy and an Empire
on which the sun never set. But,
at the same time British Pirates
and Society, 1680-1730 charts the
effects of piracy domestically and
culturally as, in popular writing and
entertainment, previously alluring
or seductive pirate figures became
increasingly vilified, exaggerated
and even ridiculous. From here it
becomes easy to see how, newly
depoliticised and sanitised, pirate

identities have become lucratively marketable as the fodder of
childrens dressing-up boxes, pulp
fiction and multi-million pound
film franchises.
But Lincolns 18th-century
pirates arent quite emptied
of either their political bite or
physical savagery. Lincoln draws
some intriguing parallels between
historical piracy and the ways it
has been translated and emulated
by modern gang culture, as well as
comparing past piratical behaviours and images with the ways
Somali piracy is understood and
represented today. Western desires
to eradicate Somali piracy are also
resource-driven: The discovery of
oil reserves on the arid planes of
Puntland [] seems to have made
the international community much
more interested in helping with
reconstruction of this failed state.
The brilliant thing about this
book is its easy-to-read quality. It
tells a ripping good yarn of political
and personal greed and ambition
from a period of the British Isles
history centrally concerned with
national identity and imperial
destiny. Another highlight is
Lincolns fascinating exploration of
the ways a different island locale,
Madagascar off the coast of Africa,
was subject to competing and
conflicting interests and ideologies,
including the politically visionary
and socially experimental utopia
Libertalia.
There are lots of nice touches
as the book gestures more broadly
to what is at stake in social and
political terms, as well as in relation to gender and racial identities.
Lincolns book will be read with
enjoyment and should reach a
broad audience interested in this
popular topic. It makes a good
counterpoint to recent books by
Neil Rennie (Treasure Neverland:
Real and Imaginary Pirates) and John
C. Appleby (Women and English
Piracy, 1540-1720: Partners and
Victims of Crime). The impressive
range of illustrations included,
numbering 14 black and white
illustrations and 8 colour plates,
some rarely reproduced, also
considerably enhance the books
attractiveness.
Claire Jowitt
Between Two Worlds

How the English Became
Americans
Malcolm Gaskill
Oxford University Press 512pp 20
MALCOLM GASKILL offers us

hints about what compelled him
to write this book. He mentions
the astonishing intensity of
faith, forbearance and courage
of colonists, declaring it was the
quality of that courage above
all which inspired him. At the
close of his long note on further
reading, he confesses that the
four-volume tome by Charles
Andrews, The Colonial Period of
American History, published in the
1930s, was seminally important
for him. It argued the case that
there was an English world in
America in 1607 to 1692 with
little in it that can strictly be
called American. How odd then
that he pursues, as a binding
notion which he should focus
upon, how the English became
Americans. What he calls unique
environmental conditions
blasted any chance of a close
modelling of one country upon
the other.
The title of Gaskills book is a
truism. As we proceed through
eight chapters about Planters,
men leaving England in the
reigns of James I and Charles I,
we absorb the familiar story
of bold adventurers seeking
to flee poverty or persecution.
Gaskills chapter headings are as
colourful as his prose, which is
also taut, direct and orderly: The
Vast and Furious Ocean, Full
of Wild Beasts and Wild Men,
In Darkness and the Shadow of
Death. His narrative is relentless
but, as a mass of footnotes to

British and Colonial accounts
and manuscripts make clear,
it comes steadily from a huge
archival effort, with only a dash
of his own imaginative insight.
One thing he makes plain: these
planters were so preoccupied
with survival and toil that they
did not so much ponder how
they were becoming Americans as simply whether or not,
if the chance came, they should
go home. Mentally, Indians, as
friends or foes, harried them,
too, constantly.
At the start of section two,
about the Puritan drive to
convert as well as organise
their New Jerusalem, Gaskill
pauses. If original colonists were
preoccupied by the adventure,
its hazards and its disasters,
he suggests, second generation ones had to decide what
being English meant and what
it meant to belong physically
and spiritually to America. As
if to prove how problematic his
own question is, Gaskill launches
Malcolm Gaskills
Between Two
Worlds ... may
appeal most to
those who want
a rollicking
adventure story,
told with pace and
much detail
into an account of two men
in retreat in the 1640s from
the New England experiment,
Thomas Larkham, who returned
to become a New Model Army
chaplain, and Thomas Leckford,
who was appalled by the dark
and uncertain interpretations
of scripture he encountered at
New Haven. Remaking England
in the New World and the retention of Englishness were neverending exhausting endeavours, sighs Gaskill, at the start
of a chapter called Marching
Hopefully On. He accepts that in
the 1640s and 1650s rancour was
REVIEWS
dividing English people on two
Atlantic shores. By the 1660s,
it was perhaps inevitable that
one side of the Atlantic defined
itself against the other, with
the issue of the Quakers encapsulating divergent paths of
development, with witchcraft a
dominant Colonial obsession.
One of Gaskills difficulties is
binding together the complex
narrative histories of New
England, the Middle Colonies,
the Chesapeake and the West
Indies. He is well aware how
different from each other their
paths of development were
during the century. When
he travels from the 1670s
to the 1690s, Gaskills focus
moves away from the ocean
in between, to the colonists as
warriors, men seeking to grasp
and preserve their own destinies colony by colony. His hold
on overlapping narratives
remains impressive and confident. In fact the book may
appeal most to those who want
a rollicking adventure story,
told with pace and much detail.
Gaskill ends by suggesting
that the two countries drew
culturally and perhaps emotionally somewhat closer together,
before moving later in the 18th
century to war and a broken
relationship. He becomes
more argumentative, but his
final big statements do not so
much cohere as jar with each
other. For a reader wanting
to understand and probe the
issues of coming over and
then maybe going back, more
analytical works by historians
such as David Cressy and Susan
Hardman Moore will surely
provide greater satisfaction.
Gaskill reminds us on his
final page that the extraordinary courage of the Pilgrim
Fathers must never be ignored
or denigrated. Point taken:
some will just enjoy the way he
tells the story. But we are left
puzzling about what he can
have intended to do, in setting
out to explain how the English
who crossed the Atlantic Ocean
in the 17th century became
Americans.
Anthony Fletcher
THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY BOOK PRIZE 2015

one insider put it: less on camping in Cornwall
IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR the BBC broadand more on what is relevant to our audience.
cast in 43 languages and won respect around
The BBC jumped through endless hoops to
the world for its objective news reporting.
try to be more assertive while maintaining its
The External Services as they were called
editorial independence. But it became increasuntil renamed the World Service in 1965 of
ingly clear that in paying the piper the FO
the postwar era were shaped by this wartime
wanted to call the tune. However, it was never
experience. However, there was an underlyeasy to demonstrate that the government was
ing problem in that (until 2014) the External
getting its message across. Audience research
Services were funded directly by government
was blissfully primitive. Even though the Soviets
through the Foreign Office (FO); and the FO and
tried to jam some of the Russian language
the BBC would be unhappy bedfellows. Alban
broadcasts, no one really knew who, if anyone,
Webb relates the fascinating story by which the
was listening.
BBC tried to preserve its reputation for editorial
The situation went from bad to worse when
independence while accepting direct funding
the FO decided it was not
from government.
getting value for money
At first it all seemed as
from the BBC and wanted a
though nothing could go
more centralised control over
wrong. Major General Ian
output. The climax came not
Jacob was appointed Conover relations with the Soviet
troller and at first performed
Union but in the Middle
a brilliant balancing act of
East. When President Nasser
preserving both government
nationalised the Suez Canal
interests and BBC integrity.
in July 1956, the government
Throughout the war, Jacob
wanted the BBC to counter
had been Military Assistant
the virulent propaganda of
Secretary to the War Cabinet,
Cairo Radio and to prepare
at the heart of Britains milithe region for British military
tary, diplomatic, political and
action. The BBC refused to
intelligence establishment.
toe the line and took the
He would later rise to be BBC
London Calling
view that, while the Labour
Director-General, building
Britain, the BBC World Service
Party was hostile to a military
a close link between that
and the Cold War
solution, it was legitimate
organisation and the military
Alban Webb
to broadcast an opposition
and intelligence spheres that
Bloomsbury 2014 253pp
view as well as the governlasted well into the 1960s.
ments position. Eden and
The government agreed
the Cabinet saw this as treachery, believing the
that the BBC should project a positive image of
BBC was hostile to the government at a time of
Britain as a political and social democracy and as
war. Even such an establishment figure as Ian
the greatest experiment in a planned economy
Jacob was stunned when he was called to the
in a free society that the world has ever known.
FO in October and told that the government
At the same time it would report news neutrally
was cutting BBC funding by 20 per cent and was
without trying to influence or interfere in the
taking direct control over many of the external
domestic affairs of any other nation. As time
information services. The Suez crisis brought to
a head the inevitable clash between the interests
of the BBC and FO and raised questions about
what it meant to broadcast in the national
interest.
Webb guides the reader through the intricacies of FO and BBC politics with great verve. He
uses the BBC Written Archives (which are rarely
consulted by historians) to tremendous effect.
The climax of his story, the account of the Suez
went by the FO felt this brief was too passive and crisis, is a real page-turner. The book provides a
new take on Britains position in the first decade
when Cold War tensions mounted it demanded
the BBC promote a more active pro-western line. of the Cold War. Scholarly and accessible, London
Calling is a fine read and a worthy winner of the
In 1948 there was a decision to broadcast less
Longman-History Today Book Prize.
on the British way of life and to take a more
Taylor Downing
aggressive stance towards the Eastern Bloc. As
... how the BBC tried to

preserve its reputation for
editorial independence,
while accepting direct
funding from government
REVIEWS
In These Times
Living in Britain through

Napoleons Wars, 1793-1815
Jenny Uglow
Faber & Faber 740pp 25
THE STRESSES and strains of

the British home front during the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars are the subject of Jenny
Uglows new book. Fascination
with the French Revolution and
Napoleon remains to this day, but
the enormous pressures upon, and
the social impact of, these wars
have been somewhat eclipsed
by the world wars of the 20th
century. Yet until 1914 the conflicts
of 1793 to 1815 were often referred
to in Britain as the great war that
brought a conclusion to a century
of wars between Britain and
France. Their cost in men, money
and material was colossal.
Battles, campaigns and diplomatic discussions are carefully
sketched, alongside admirals,
generals and politicians, but these
are peripheral to Uglows main
theme, the British people who
lived through the wars: men and
women, bankers and weavers,
relatively well-to-do farmers,
factory workers and labourers. She
has mined a wealth of academic
monographs on dockyards, finance,
mutinies and riots over both recruitment and soaring food prices.
She has drawn on a large number
of personal memoirs and letters
to give us portraits of private
individuals and their families. Some
of these are relatively well-known,
such as Jane Austen, who had
two brothers serving in Nelsons
navy. However, many more of her
cast of characters and families are
largely unknown. Such as James
Badenach, a progressive farmer

from near Aberdeen, who kept a
diary in which he noted the effects,
sometimes good, sometimes bad,
of the war on his opportunities and
his sales. William Rowbotham, a
hand-loom weaver from Oldham,
kept an account of local events and
people; his careful record reveals
both a fascination with statistics
births, marriages, deaths, food
prices as well as his concerns
about what he considered to be
a disastrous war. Some left no
personal record, but their lives
can be reconstructed from other
sources. The entrepreneur James
Trotter is one example. He made
a fortune as an army contractor,
never knowingly charging a reasonable price when he could get
an unreasonable one. His brother,
Alexander, used navy funds for
his personal transactions. How
the fictional Del Boy and Rodney
would have enjoyed the success
of their namesakes. Fortunately,
other contractors behaved far
better, such as Samuel Paget, who
organised the victualing of Royal
Navy ships in Yarmouth Roads and
provisioned Admiral Duncans fleet
in just five days in July 1797. At a
dinner celebrating the subsequent
victory of Camperdown, Duncan
pointed to Paget saying: Thats the
man that won the battle.
Although chronological in
structure, each of the books
relatively short chapters is largely
thematic focussing on a cluster
of individuals and/or a particular
experience, such as the terrible
food shortage of 1795-96, the
abolition of the Slave Trade, or
the initial impact of Sir Arthur
Wellesleys landing in Portugal. The
final chapter assesses the human
and financial costs of the war,
the benefits for British imperial
and economic power and charts
the postwar lives of some of the
characters: some who did well
and those, generally the poorer
members of society but who had
often seen the wars at the sharp
end, who returned to poverty,
perhaps as a battle scarred,
limb-missing match seller. Uglows
book is an exemplar of popular
history; well-researched, colourful
and a delight to read.
Clive Emsley
Englishness
Politics and Culture 1880-1920

second edition
Robert Colls and Philip Dodd (eds)
Bloomsbury 424pp 21.99
The English and Their

History
Robert Tombs
Allen Lane 1,024pp 35
IT IS IRONIC that one consequence of the failed Scottish

referendum on independence is
that the English, who have dominated the British Isles for centuries, are demanding greater
devolution. Building nations
and national identities demands
history, so the publication of
these books is timely.
Englishness has travelled
through a prolonged period
of crisis in the last 50 years, as
much of what it meant to be
English in a more stable time has
been undermined by the UKs
loss of Empire and global power,
European integration, immigration and the desire of many
Scots, Welsh and (Northern) Irish
to take a different path through
the worlds uncertainties. Both
books are stimulating attempts
to understand such uncertainties, but their purposes are very
different.
Colls and Dodd preside over a
negative act an act of dispossession in which a series of academic authors interrogate the
meanings of Englishness in what
they consider its formative years
in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. They contemplate the
complexities of national identity
in the English-dominated United
Kingdom, reflecting on culture
and countryside, language

and literature, music and the
margins (of Ireland and women).
Englishness is shown to have
presented political problems
to British socialists (the Labour
Party was formed in 1900) and
the Conservatives alike, who
could not guarantee electoral
success simply by flying the flag.
While the Tories won patriotic
elections in 1900 and 1918, they
lost in 1906, 1910 and 1923 when
their opponents trumpeted an
alternative England. Originally,
the Colls and Dodd volume was
written in response to the Falk-
Building nations
and national
identities demands
history, so the
publication of these
books is timely
lands War and Margaret Thatchers patriotism. Englishness was
designed to unpick patriotism,
to understand it as constructed
and imposed. It was a radical
project aimed at rethinking
Englishness by presenting it as
complex and difficult.
Robert Tombs can not do
other than outline the complexities of English history. His
hefty tome provides a narrative of the English since their
dreamtime, when they can
be considered to have become
English 1,300 years ago. The
birth of the nation, he argues,
was in the Dark Ages before the
Norman Conquest, the English
were unleashed in the middle
ages, to be divided in the 16th
REVIEWS
and 17th centuries, making a
new world from the 1660s to
the start of the 19th century, or
The English century as he calls
it. The two world wars were a
new dark age, but he questions
Englands place in the postwar
world, probing whether it was
really an age of decline. To ask
is to doubt. Tombs considers the
end of Empire and other losses
of power but concludes that
Declinism has been our national
narrative for several generations, a chorus of lamentation
in a lucky country where life is
safer, longer and more comfortable than ever in history.
Tombs argues that English
history is devolving rather than
dissolving, able to live with its
past and develop its future, so
that Rita Ora, Dizzie Rascal,
Jessica Ennis and Rio Ferdinand
are as English as anyone else
today. It is a nation that can
live with its past, because, he
argues, it is not a dark history.
There is an element of comparison throughout the book and,
for Tombs, England compares
favourably with any against
whom he measures it. It has not
seen prolonged state collapse,
nor as vicious a civil war as
that in Syria, nor revolutionary
terror as in France, Russia, China
and Cambodia. That is not to
say that Tombs ignores Englands atrocities and catastrophes 12th-century anarchy,
17th-century civil wars, Peterloo,
Amritsar, Kenya, Cyprus, Bloody
Sunday are all here but he considers that We who have lived
in England since 1945 have been
among the luckiest people in
the existence of Homo sapiens,
rich, peaceful and healthy.
He accepts that the lot of the
whole Western world has been
comparable ... But, for that too,
the people of England over the
last 400 years can take a share
of the credit. Tombs has written
a history book to buttress
English patriotism, to renovate
the oldest nation in the world
for post-imperial and post-devolution times but its My country,
right or wrong patriotism itself
seems rather outdated.
Paul Ward
Ireland and the Irish

in Interwar England
Mo Moulton
Cambridge University Press 388pp 60
MO MOULTONs survey of the

political and social aftermath of
the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21 asks
challenging questions about how
this conflict continued to resonate
in subsequent decades. The Irish
Question represented a powerful
accumulation of political grievance,
and social adjustment to the mass
migrations of the 19th century that
brought tens of thousands of Irish
workers to England, Scotland and
Wales. Yet Moulton argues that
the apparent resolution of 1921 was
a chimera. The settlement caused
the bloody divides of the Irish Civil
War and failed to resolve Northern
Irish concerns, creating a violent,
tragic legacy that persisted down
to the 20th century. It also failed
to provide ways to manage the
ongoing political and social interweaving of Ireland and the United
Kingdom, through the back and
forth of migration, political controversy over the standing of the Irish
Free State as a Commonwealth
member and continuing debates
about Catholicism in public life.
Ireland was a problem, Moulton
convincingly argues, that required a
continual effort of repression.
Irishness was a strong presence
within interwar English cities,
where the Irish-born represented
one per cent of the population by
the mid 1930s. In Scotland three
per cent of the population were
Irish-born and many more could
trace an Irish ancestry. An Irish
subculture developed: Migrants
built schools and marched in
St Patricks day parades and Gaelic
sports and dances, Irish bookshops

and separate Catholic schools,
ensured the persistence of what
Moulton terms a privatised ethnic
identification. Key institutions
reflected Irish concerns, yet tended
to do so in a muted fashion.
Moulton notes the unusual
gender profile of Irish migration
as many Irish women came
as men, seeking jobs as domestic servants, in industry and in
agriculture. Their experiences were
mediated by the Catholic Church,
which feared for their morals
and tried to regulate their lives
through Catholic womens and
girls associations. Politically, the
Church preferred to repress Irish
nationalism, removing Irish history
from the curriculum in its schools
and stressing a personal rather
than political version of Irishness.
The Labour Party captured many
Irish votes, but preferred to see
them as working class, not as an
ethnic or religious minority. Major
trade unions feared that Irish
workers were undercutting their
more skilled English counterparts;
the Transport and General Union
in 1929 called for quotas of Irish
workers to be imposed.
Interwar Britain prided itself
on its extremely low immigration.
The extension of wartime controls
on the movement and entry of
aliens into subsequent decades
helped support a vision of national
identity centred on quiet domesticity. The Irish were understood as
racially or politically at odds with
this, with their perceived tendency
to emotionality and attraction
to mystical religion. Moulton
concludes, however, that this was a
gentle racial discourse, occupying
a blurred space where religious
difference met ethnic otherness.
Despite occasional extreme voices
from Fascists or hardline Protestants, the Irish in England were
quietly, pragmatically different.
Other groups Jews, coloured
seamen received harsher treatment, while the politically disruptive Irish question was repressed.
Moulton traces the bittersweet
story of a kind of multiculturalism,
which provided Britain with stability, but at the price of stigma and
uneasy assimilation.
Lucy Delap
A Free-Spirited Woman
The London Diaries of

Gladys Langford 1938-1940
Patricia and Robert Malcolmson
London Record Society and The Boydell Press
197pp 25
DIARIES CAN BE A holy grail

for the historian: written with
the immediacy of the moment,
capturing the authentic atmosphere of an event, idiosyncratic
almost by definition, a singular viewpoint that wriggles
through official versions of the
past, colourful, often irreverent and joyfully quotable. But
Diaries can be
a holy grail for
the historian ... a
singular viewpoint
that wriggles
through official
versions of the past,
colourful, often
irreverent and
joyfully quotable
of course this is not always,
indeed is not usually, the case.
Lay aside the great published
(edited and often expurgated)
diaries of Samuel Pepys, Virginia
Woolf, Harold Nicolson, Chips
Channon, Richard Crossman
and Tony Benn and often what
is left in local record offices is
collections of leather-bound
pocket diaries which, if the
handwriting is legible, reveal
that, It rained again, vicar
called.
REVIEWS
But that is not always the
case: there are deposits of
compelling diaries in many archives, some local I have found
treasures in Oxford, Glasgow,
Wandsworth, Birmingham,
Lambeth Palace. Others, such as
the Imperial War Museum, the
London Metropolitan Archives,
Mass-Observation Archive
housed at the University of
Sussex, are national.
The growth of interest in
so-called ordinary lives, in the
experiences of people without
power or position, has meant
that a number of such diaries
are being edited and packaged
to reach a wider audience. The
most notable relatively recent
success was the republication of
Nella Lasts wartime diaries,
The value of Gladys

Langfords diaries
is the melange that
they provide of a
life-as-lived picture
of Britain with
concerns about
world events, about
which she has a
sharp intelligence
and an acerbic wit
kept for Mass-Observation,
which were subsequently
adapted as a television play
written by and starring Victoria
Wood as Housewife 49 (the
identification used by Mass-Observation, since the anonymity
of all diarists was guaranteed
unless they gave their express
permission).
Now Patricia and Robert
Malcolmson, who have already
published extracts from two
other Mass-Observation diaries,
have turned their attention to
the writings of Gladys Langford,
who had kept a diary for several
years before she came across
Mass-Observation, an organisation, which, since its inception
in 1937, had been fulfilling its
objective of compiling a science
of ourselves, the British people,

to match the work done by the
increasingly popular anthropology of peoples of more far flung
areas of the world, by listening,
questioning and, since the outbreak of war in 1939, encouraging people to keep daily diaries
of how the momentous events
were affecting them and their
communities.
Mass-Observations project
was a perfect match for Langford, who considered herself
something of a sociologist,
though in fact she worked as a
primary school teacher, a job
she disliked, sometimes intensely, in Hoxton in East London,
then a slum area. The value of
Langfords diaries is that they
provide a life-as-it-is lived
picture of Britain, in this volume
on the eve of the Second World
War, a mlange of concerns
about world events, about
which she had a sharp intelligence and an acerbic and critical
pen, juxtaposed with a general
discontent with her own life,
fuelled by her frustrated sex
drive and her social and cultural
snobbishness. The idea of being
evacuated with her generally
disliked snotty pupils horrified
Langford so much that I carry
a razor blade about with me;
jostled in a crowd to hear the
proclamation of George VI as
king, her overpowering impression was the smell of brilliantine
and bloaters.
Since, apart from comments about politicians, Bay
and Edith and darling Charles
and others who people Gladys
Langfords world will be
unknown to readers, the editors
have decided that lengthy
footnotes are required. While
helpful, it is rather daunting to
the general reader, who may
decide the scholarly apparatus
overwhelms the freshness of
Langfords prose. It is a conundrum with the publication of
all diaries of the unknown and
the uncelebrated, but it will be
a shame if such diarists fail to
reach the wider audience who
would enjoy their often quirky
writing.
Juliet Gardiner
Family Politics
Domestic Life, Devastation

and Survival 1900-1950
Paul Ginsborg
Yale University Press 520pp 25
PAUL GINSBORG is well known as

a political activist in, and historian
of, modern Italy. Now he has
essayed a massive comparative
exploration of the fate of families
under five interventionist and
non-liberal democratic regimes.
He begins with the Soviet Union,
before returning to that regimes
bloody fate in a short final chapter
on Stalinism. In between, Ginsborgs attention is drawn to Kemalist Turkey, Fascist Italy, Republican and Francoist Spain and Nazi
Germany. The general commentary
is initiated by a close analysis of
an individual and his or her family,
ideas and practice. These lead
figures are the Bolshevik feminist,
Aleksandra Kollantai, the female
journalist and nationalist, Halide
Edib, the Futurist, Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, the independent socialist
and feminist, Margarita Nelken
and, finally, Josef Goebbels. They
constitute an idiosyncratic band.
Each writes about the family, is of
elite origin or rises to high position.
None is ordinary.
Perhaps jolted by the deployment of these unrepresentative
figures, the book proceeds in shortish segments. These sub-sections
range widely in chronology and in
social, gender (and ethnic) focus.
When illuminating the empires
of the Russias and the Turkeys or
when scrutinising the Italy and
Spain that were still characterised
by massive regional difference,
Ginsborg is alert to the twists that
place gave to the family story. His
commentary therefore extends to
the effect of revolution in Moscow

on the Turkic peoples of Soviet
Central Asia or in Istanbul on the
Armenians and Kurds. Nearer the
mainstream, those who lived in the
various metropolises or constituted
more straightforward national
peasantries have their everyday
experiences brought to light.
The terrain is so vast and the
need for background so compelling
that domestic life on occasion
seems lost in the political and
social narrative or through Ginsborgs fondness for psychologising
about his lead characters and their
dictatorial masters, Lenin, Atatrk,
Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Stalin.
Often the book drifts into being a
total history of its focus states and
societies, but this is valuable. Ginsborg also amplifies his description
with telling comparison when, for
example, he maintains that Stalin
and Atatrk bowed to history as
they uneasily sought to locate a
normalisation of family life.
In the short conclusion, Ginsborg underlines his key points. He
argues that the embattled word
totalitarian will merely obscure
these dictatorships engagement
with the everyday. What was
planned from above was by no
means necessarily what happened
below. Moreover, none of these
tyrannies stood against families per
se. Confronted with their power,
A massive
comparative
exploration
of the fate of
families under five
interventionist,
non-liberal regimes
ordinary men and women retained
strategies in surviving the horror
that infringed their lives. Ginsborg
concludes with a glimmer of hope;
evidence can always be found of
fragile and innovative associationism, individual testimonies, [and]
micro-histories of resistance to the
dominant powers. Like the Earl of
Gloucester in Lear, families knew
that, in bleak times, men [and
women] must endure.
Richard Bosworth
REVIEWS
FILM
Massacre
Shoah and four films after Shoah

A Visitor of the Living (1997), Sobibr, October 14,
1943 4pm (2001), The Karski Report (2010),
The Last of the Unjust (2013)
Yale University Press 336pp 20
Eureka! Entertainment 1,006 minutes 69.99
IN 1871 Paris revolted against the

French state. Many Parisians
did not accept Frances defeat
in the Franco-Prussian War. Nor
did they trust the head of the
recently proclaimed Republic, Adolphe Thiers, to defend
democracy. When Thiers tried
to disarm the National Guard
(a citizens militia but also the
main source of income for many
families) on March 18th, 1871,
working-class Parisians refused
to obey. For two months a revolutionary council, or Commune,
made up of all shades of leftwing opinion, took charge of the
self-declared autonomous city.
The Communes flag was red
and it was seen at the time and
since as a harbinger of socialist
revolution. In fact the Communes leadership was more
middle class than working class
and its rule was not that radical.
There was no serious appropriation of property, no mass reallocation of wealth. The moments
of Communard violence were
usually directed against symbols
of monarchy and the Church.
Most Parisians could go about
their business. The city continued to function thanks to a loan
from the Bank of France. The
one thing that the Commune
proved unable to manage was its
own defence.
John Merrimans sympathies
are with the working-class
Communards, who, having been
physically and politically excluded under the Empire, were able
TO COINCIDE with the 70th anniversary of the

liberation of Auschwitz, a Blue-Ray version of
Claude Lanzmanns monumental documentary
Shoah has been released. Shoah is a Hebrew word
now used by the French as an alternative to the
English word Holocaust. Lanzmann spent 12
years making the film, locating not only Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust but also German perpetrators and Polish eyewitnesses. He recorded
over 350 hours of interviews, which eventually
became a film of over nine hours. When premiered in 1985, it was hailed as an instant classic
and garlanded with awards. Lanzmann himself
calls Shoah an allegory, presumably of mans
inhumanity to man, and one critic has described
it as a meditation on the
genocide of European Jews.
It is not a comprehensive nor
a chronological account of
the Holocaust and contains
no archive film and little
historical documentation.
It is a mosaic of memories
elicited from a succession of
witnesses, usually shot in
close-up, the better to observe
the play of emotions upon
their features. The context is
provided by Lanzmann and his team visiting the
sites of the extermination camps of Auschwitz,
Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, all unremittingly
bleak and eerily silent. Trains rattle ominously
and ceaselessly through the film, a recurrent
reminder of the one-way traffic of the death
transports. The film is constructed thematically,
covering in exhaustive detail the transportation
of the Jews, the design and implementation of
the extermination policy the production line
of death as one ex-SS man describes it the
experiences at Auschwitz of the Czech Jews from
the Nazis model ghetto at Theresienstadt and
conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Life and Death of the Paris

Commune of 1871
John Merriman
Sequence after sequence of Shoah becomes

seared into the memory of the viewer. There
are accounts of horrific conditions in the
overcrowded cattle trucks conveying the Jews
to the extermination camps, the manhunts for
escaped prisoners from Sobibor and the tricks
used by SS men to get the Jews to enter the gas
chambers. There are descriptions of the design
and operation of gas chambers and gas vans, of
the sounds, smells and the cold in the camps, of
the special arrangements to dispose of the sick,
the elderly and the children, of the mass burning
of bodies lighting up the sky with flames. One
barber gives a matter-of-fact account of the
cutting of the hair of naked women prisoners as
they prepare to enter the gas chamber. There are
apparently conscience-free and shiftily evasive
accounts of their involvement in the Holocaust
by elderly Nazi functionaries. There is evidence
of the enduring antisemitism of the Poles as they
describe the throat-slitting gestures they made
as the death trains passed through their stations.
Witnesses break down as particular memories
become too hard to recall. One of the only two
survivors of the 400,000 Jews exterminated at
Chelmno weeps as he recalls recognising the
bodies of his wife and children as he shovelled
corpses onto lorries. Another, who had been
part of a special Jewish detail responsible for
cleaning up after the gassings, is overcome as he
recalls the Theresienstadt Jews singing the Czech
national anthem as they are driven into the gas
chambers with whips and
clubs (a few illustrations by
victims at the camp have survived, as shown in the inset).
One criticism of the film is
that it is just too long. But
the length is essential to the
design. It is the sheer accumulation of detailed testimony
that evokes the scale and the
depth of the horror. It should
be made compulsory viewing
for all Holocaust-deniers.
Shoah is accompanied by four more documentaries created from unused interviews shot for
the original film. They cover Red Cross visits to
the camps, the Sobibor uprising and the Warsaw
Ghetto. The most remarkable is The Last of the
Unjust, a 218-minute rehabilitation of Rabbi
Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish Elder of
Theresienstadt, a man denounced as a collaborator postwar. Murmelstein, who organised
the work programme, repaired the ghetto and cooperated with a Nazi documentary showing how
well the Jews were treated, defends himself as a
realist seeking to save the lives of inmates.
Jeffrey Richards
Claude Lanzmann
himself calls Shoah
an allegory,
presumably of
mans inhumanity
to man
REVIEWS
to enjoy their city. Working-class
women experienced a moment
of emancipation; they would be
among the most visible defenders of the Commune. However,
Merrimans focus is less on this
experiment in democratic and
social government than on its
death. From early April Thiers
bombarded the city; on May
21st Versaillais troops crossed
an undefended part of the citys
western walls. During Bloody
... an epic story ...

told here with verve
and sympathy
... written in
the context of a
contemporary
climate of fear
Week they fought through barricades towards the heartlands
of Communard support.
Thousands of Parisians died
fighting, thousands more were
killed by firing squads. Drawing
on memoirs by surviving Communards, foreign correspondents and Parisian supporters of
the Versaillais, Merriman details
this savagery street-by-street.
By the time the troops crushed
resistance in the 19th and 20th
arrondissements, readers will
understand the title Massacre.
However, just how bloody
was Bloody Week? Robert
Tombs, a leading historian of the
Commune, has radically revised
down the numbers of deaths
from 30,000 to about 7,500.
But Merrimans is basically a
narrative history and does not
engage directly with Tombs. The
sources are difficult: memoirists
were often writing years after
the event and they had their
own reasons to inflate, or not,
the numbers of dead. The voices
of working-class Communards
are the most difficult to recover,
not least because this was unequivocally a class war: Versaillais
singled out those who dressed or
spoke like workers for execution.
Many troops, and the residents
in the posh western suburbs
who egged them on, considered
prisoners as subhumans. Why?

Merriman mentions several
factors pious rural recruits
shocked by anticlericalism; the
desire of the army to expiate
their recent dishonour; the role
of a politicised officer class; the
influence of Versaillais propaganda but none quite explains
the brutality.
The Commune is an epic
story, told here with verve and
sympathy. But why do we need
a new history? Merrimans study
is written in the context of a
contemporary climate of fear;
its implication is that states are
the main purveyors of terror
in the modern period. The
Communards, obsessed with
legalism and traditions of the
first French Revolution, seem
oddly old-fashioned. It was the
military and paramilitary death
squads that were the true harbingers of the future.
David Hopkin
The Americanization
of France
Searching for Happiness After

the Algerian War
Barnett Singer
Rowman and Littlefield 283pp 39.95
ONE OF THE mysteries of Frances

postwar cultural history is the
enduring popularity of the singer
Johnny Hallyday. It is not that
Johnny Hallyday is bad - though,
arguably, hes not that good! - but
that, having started his career
in the early 1960s, he continues
to attract tens of thousands to
his concerts, sells CDs by the
bucketload and has become a
cornerstone of the French cultural
establishment. All of this is based

on an act in which the growly
rocker grunts loudly in imitation
of American rock and blues, all too
often comically asserting himself
as a bluesman in the tradition of
the Mississippi Delta. All a long
way from the poverty and austerity
of postwar Paris where Hallyday
real name Jean-Phillippe Smet
was raised.
At last, in this engaging and
sometimes brilliant book, Barnett
Singer unlocks the mystery and
provides some very important clues
about who Johnny Hallyday is and
why he is so important in the story
of postwar France. The serious
case that Singer argues is that the
loss of Algeria was such a profound
trauma in France and, indeed, on
the other side of the Mediterranean, that ordinary French people,
consciously and unconsciously,
started to pull towards America as
a new model for pleasure and happiness. This new generation turned
their back on French traditions of
the Chanson Franaise of Brassens,
Brel and all that crowd and sought
visceral thrills in the Frenchified
pop and rock n roll called Y-Y
(a transliteration of the Beatles
yeah, yeahs). Hence Hallyday, Eddy
Barclay and a whole generationof
French rockers who aped Elvis, but
could not have been more French.
Singer writes with a light and
deft touch, but he is an impressively forensic researcher and
his arguments are serious and
sometimes groundbreaking. More
to the point, he mourns the loss of
Frenchness as a category in global
thinking, a pulling away from specifically French forms of creativity
in cooking, music and philosophy. He is even brave enough
to wonder whether the world is
poorer without La Grande France,
by which he refers to the French
colonial Empire. Certainly he is
clear that France suffered a loss
of confidence in the wake of the
catastrophe of Algeria. As Singer
admits, this is not the definitive
study of the subject, but he does
take forward the insights of the
likes of Kristin Ross, whose own
work in this field was pioneering.
A few years ago, while making
a documentary on French punk
for BBC Radio 4, I interviewed
Marc Zermati, who had brought

the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls to
Paris. The most interesting part of
the interview was when Zermati,
a Jew and a Pied-Noir in Algiers at
the height of the Algerian War,
recounted a long since disappeared
underground culture in Algiers of
jazz clubs, girls and drugs all very
French, as he put it. It is to the great
credit of a historian like Singer that
he has started the work of excavating what it meant to be young
and French at one of the crucial
turning-points in the 20th century.
Andrew Hussey
Hi Hitler!
How the Nazi Past is Being

Normalized in Contemporary
Culture
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Cambridge University Press 476pp 50
THE PAST is another country

because we do things differently
here. Even before the witnesses
die out, the historians, novelists
and filmmakers take over. A past
as exceptional and traumatic as
the Nazi era becomes banal and
entertaining. Historians call this
normalisation; or, in German,
Vergangenheitsbewltigung,
coming to terms with the past.
Gavriel D. Rosenfelds Hi
Hitler! is a report from the
frontlines of popular memory.
Normalisation is integral to
memory: without it, the past
becomes incomprehensible and
loses all value. Yet normalisation
can devalue the past, too. Today,
Rosenfeld argues, normalisation
threatens to annul our ethical
memory of the Nazi past and the
Second World War.
REVIEWS
Rosenfeld identifies three
types of normalisation. The
relativisers want to diminish
the moralistic aura that endows
exceptionality, the taint of
particularly appalling actions.
Nationalist politicians are crude
relativisers; opportunist writers
are sophisticated ones. In Air War
and Literature (1999), W.G. Sebald
described the Allied bombing of
Germany with a Nazi term for
the mass execution of Jews: a
Vernichtungsaktion, an act of extermination. This relativises the
Holocaust by moral inversion.
Meanwhile, the universalisers, want to inflate that aura
of exceptionality as a license for
present ambitions, notably fighting the good war of humanitarian intervention. In her 1999 essay
To Suffer By Comparison, Samantha
Power, now the American ambassador to the UN, suggested
that Holocaust analogies had
helped stir the conscience of
American politicians during the
atrocities in the Balkans and
Rwanda, but not enough to do
much about it. Power argued
that Holocaustising might be
counter-productive and encourage passivity: compared with the
Holocaust, every humanitarian
crisis looks not so bad after all.
Rosenfelds third type,
the aestheticisers, are more
influential, because they are
entertainers. In the western
tradition, history has clear moral
underpinnings. To preserve the
historical record, events are narrated from a realistic perspective. When the past is shorn of
reality, it sheds that tradition and
its ethical demand on the living.
The aestheticisers do not always
intend to neutralise the past.
Often, as with Chaplin or Mel
Brooks, their aesthetic strategies
pursue deeper moral agendas.
Mostly, though, they just want to
laugh at cats that look like Hitler.
The shallows of the Internet
are unreal spaces, as, too, are
the deeper pools of counterfactual history. Both foster an
amoral urge to extract maximal
value from the past, rather than
the harder lessons of historical
responsibility. Counterfactuals,
Rosenfeld writes, replace facts
with speculations. Yet counterfactuals can also express the

ethical import of history, by
freeing us from determinism,
which diminishes individual
responsibility. Certainly, if not
all pasts are created equal, then
not all forms of memory should
be equal. But it is no bad thing
to remind ourselves that, while
inevitability is the name we
give to what happened, what
happens is not always inevitable.
This, though, is less a criticism
than a response of the kind
demanded by Rosenfelds conscientious, scholarly and often
alarming report.
Dominic Green
Infinitesimal
How a Dangerous
Mathematical Theory Shaped
the Modern World
Amir Alexander
Scientific American/Oneworld 352pp 20
MATHEMATICS and numbers are

not really part of what we think
about when we think about the
past, by and large. So it is nice to
see Amir Alexanders new book, in
which he continues his mission to
fill a significant gap by writing the
history of mathematics as culture.
Infinitesimal deals with the
17th-century debate about
whether space can be infinitely
subdivided or not basically, the
debates that preceded the calculus
and provided the groundwork on
which Newton would build new
mathematical techniques for understanding the physical world in
the 1680s. The Newtonian edifice
remained one of the pillars of physical science for over 200 years.
For Alexander, the big idea

of his book is that talk about the
infinitesimal or indivisible small
parts of mathematical space
was dangerous, threatening the
belief that the world is a perfectly
rational place, governed by strict
mathematical rules. Acceptance
of the infinitesimal was a badge
of those who believed in a more
pluralistic and flexible order, one
that might accommodate a range
of views and diverse centres of
power. On that basis, committee rulings about mathematics
curricula and obscure writings by
English geometricians can be read
as part of a wide-ranging debate
about the nature and existence of
mathematical order.
It is a well-spun yarn, a cracking
read. We get brief histories of the
Reformation, of the Jesuits, of the
Gregorian reform of the calendar,
all within the orbit of mathematical order. There is plenty of
period detail and crowd-pleasing
scenes (Jesuits in flowing black
robes) almost worthy of Walter
Scott. The prose rips along without
losing any of its momentum: the
trial of Galileo, the genesis of the
Royal Society, Thomas Hobbes
attempts to do geometry. A few
serious tastes of mathematical and
geometrical argument should not
deter maths-phobes from reading
the book.
What really happened between
maths and science in the 17th
century is a complicated puzzle
and readers will have to make up
their own minds whether Alexander has put together his selection
of mainly English and Italian
pieces in a convincing order. His
story stops in the late 17th century,
but surely that was just the beginning: Newton was just starting to
show that calculus could produce
practical results, while the doubts
about its logical foundations would
generate heat for another century
and more. And his story puts battle
lines in some unexpected places,
with Galileo, Wallis and Newton as
opponents of, in some sense, strict
mathematical rules of nature. That
paradox is part of his storys excitement and Alexanders engaging
dexterity in handling it gives this
book its unique flavour.
Benjamin Wardhaugh
CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Bosworths most
recent book is Italian Venice: A
History (Yale, 2014).
Elizabeth Chadwick is an
author of historical fiction. Her
recent novels include The Winter
Crown (Sphere, 2014).
Taylor Downing is co-author
of Cold War (Abacus, 2008) and
a judge of the Longman-History
Today Book Prize.
Jerome de Groots books
include The Historical Novel
(Routledge, 2010).
Lucy Delap is the author of
Knowing Their Place: Domestic
Service in Twentieth-Century
Britain (Oxford, 2011).
Clive Emsleys books include
Napoleon: Conquest, Reform,
Reorganisation (Routledge, 2013).
Anthony Fletcher is the author
of Life, Death, and Growing
Up on the Western Front (Yale
University Press, 2013).
Juliet Gardiners reflections
on British womens lives from
1945-1979 will be published by
William Collins in 2016.
Dominic Green is the author
of The Double Life of Dr. Lopez
(Century, 2003) and Armies of
God (Random House, 2008).
David Hopkins most recent
book is Voices of the People
in Nineteenth-Century France
(Cambridge, 2012).
Andrew Hussey is Director of
the Centre for Post-Colonial
Studies, University of London
in Paris.
Claire Jowitt is author of The
Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630:
English Literature and Seaborne
Crime (Ashgate, 2010).
Jeffrey Richards is Emeritus
Professor of Cultural History at
Lancaster University.
Paul Ward is Professor of
Modern British History at the
University of Huddersfield.
Benjamin Wardhaugh is
the author of Poor Robins
Prophecies: A Curious Almanac
and the Everyday Mathematics of
Georgian Britain (OUP, 2012).
HAVE YOUR SAY
Letters
Modern History
In How Recent is History (February 2015) Suzannah Lipscomb
touches upon an old debate:
when do events change from
being classified as current affairs
to become history, referring to
those uncomfortable bedfellows,
academia and the media.
On the media side of things,
Lipscomb makes a powerful
case with regard to an apparent
preference for the modern, with
its greater access to footage and
sources, a preference particularly
pronounced among those sitting
on awards panels. Moving to the
print and academic side of things,
Lipscomb notes that many
Modern History degrees seem to
end at the turn of the century, or
even before. She goes on to raise
the case of the well-received
works of the journalist Jack Fairweather on recent wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. She notes that
his books have been rejected for
review by leading history journals and she asks why this might
be. It is a fair point, given, as she
points out, that Fairweather uses
the same scholarly methodology
one would hope to find in a work
of history. Lipscomb ends with
a cri de Coeur from Fairweather,
asking why historians are writing
about Lawrence of Arabia when
there is urgent stitching to be
done in the tapestry of history
post-1945, or even 1997.
However, I would like to offer
an alternative perspective on the
back of a personal confession.
At roughly the same time as Lipscomb was embarking upon her
Modern History degree, I was at
a different university beginning
a degree in International Politics
and Strategic Studies. A large part
of what I learned involved the
same scholarly methodology one
would hope to find in a work of
history. One of the main courses
was titled International History
from 1945, the same year at
which, Lipscomb notes, her
Email p.lay@historytoday.com
Post to History Today, 2nd Floor,
9 Staple Inn, London WC1V 7QH
degree cut off. My dissertation

was on the first Gulf War. Many
of the books and articles I read
looked like histories, though
they were seldom published
in what would be classified as
history journals. Indeed, the
separation between the disciplines was a matter for debate
in seminars and was further
brought home to me following
my postgraduate defection to
history.
So what to make of Fairweathers rallying call? Is anyone
analysing those 10,000 government memos from diplomats in
Iraq and Afghanistan? Are people
writing works that use methods
recognisable to the historian,
telling us something fascinating
about the evolution of how we
fight wars, government institutions adapting, military tactics
evolving and anthropological interactions between cultures? The
short answer is yes: quite a lot of
people, in fact. Their output is
considerable in both its volume
and quality and many have been
writing speeded up history for a
very long time. They just happen
to work in academic departments
with names like War Studies
or International Relations (IR);
for organisations such as the
Royal United Services Institute
or International Institute for
Strategic Studies; and publish in
journals called Foreign Affairs or
the Journal of Strategic Studies. As
a note of caution, this is not to
suggest that these disciplines are
entirely indistinguishable from
history. They are not. Nevertheless, the crossover is significant.
Distinguished scholars, such as
Professor Michael Cox, publish
works such as The Rise and Fall
of the American Empire (2012),
a historical analysis of the Bush
era, including the decision to go
to war in Iraq in 2003. Lawrence
Freedman, Professor of War
Studies at Kings College London
is author of The Cold War: A
Connect with us on Twitter

twitter.com/historytoday
Military History (2001) and the

official history of the Falklands
War (1988).
From this perspective it does
seem that a great deal of what
is being called for in Lipscombs
piece is already going on, albeit
most frequently classified under
headings other than history.
Intellectual cross-fertilisation
and interdisciplinarity should be
encouraged. History has much
to offer War Studies, International Relations and so on, and
vice versa. Better co-ordination
between those teaching Modern
History and those teaching
IR, etc, might help reduce the
numbers of students for whom
the world either stops or starts at
1945. History is one of the foundation stones of human culture
and society. We need the likes of
Lipscomb, who apply their great
talents to matters of the more
distant past, just as much as we
need Freedman and his ilk on
matters closer to the present. The
health and vibrancy of both their
disciplines is vital to us all.
Philip Weir
via email
Mosleys Antisemitism
Daniel Tilles argument that Sir
Oswald Mosley was antiJewish all along is simplistic.
Far from obvious socially or
ideologically from 1918 to 1931,
this description arose only after
his economic proposals developed into fully fledged imperial
autarky, designed to supersede
the existing import-export
practices conducted by global
finance, while also providing an
alternative to Soviet revolution.
Douglas Jerrolds assertion
in his Georgian Adventure (1938)
that Mosley preached in the East
End not because he dislikes
Jews, but because Jews dislike
him is more than a superficial
quip, but a shrewd insight into
the pugnacity of a Leader,
who combined an irresistible
response to opposition with an

impatient adventurism.
In 1961 Mosley published a
clear condemnation of antisemitism and welcomed co-operation
with Jews. What rarely emerges
from the usual selective focus
on prewar events, from heckling at Olympia to the battle
in Cable Street, is the fact that
Jewish issues occupied a very
minor part of his writings and
speeches, which were all largely
devoted to economics. Now he
is safely dead, some of his suggestions for recovery, updated
and unattributed, might yet
be worth consideration, given
the present abject state of the
nation.
John Tanner
London
Churchillian Oversight
Why did Chris Wrigley not
include the three-volume
William Manchester/Paul Read
biography of Winston Churchill
in his Signposts (January 2015)?
The Last Lion (1988-2012) is a
readable and scholarly insight
into Churchills actions during
the Second World War and
contains riveting pen portraits
of those surrounding him, warts
and all. It far surpasses Boris
Johnsons recent hagiography,
which I am afraid I found unreadable.
Pippa Bly
Molesey, Surrey
More Brummie Banter

I am sure Ken Clayton is right
about the Brummie preference for jokey local nicknames
(Letters, February). The old
College of Food, in the citys
Jewellery Quarter, is now a part
of UCB (University College
Birmingham). Except, in the
Jewellery Quarter at least, it has
another name: the University of
Cakes & Biscuits.
Councillor Philip Davis
Birmingham
CLASSIFIEDS For further information about advertising in our classifieds section: advertising@portmanmedia.co.uk
Genealogy
Books & Publishing
Gifts
space
Travel
Services
AUTHORS
Wanted
Please submit synopsis

plus 3 sample chapters
for consideration to:
Olympia Publishers
60 Cannon St, London EC4N 6NP
editors@olympiapublishers.com
www.olympiapublishers.com
LONDON STUDIO
Female, artistic, youthful

wrinklie seeks unfurnished
studio or large room. Central
London. Simple washing/
cooking facilities, for spring
07717 564 609
CLASSIFIEDS For further information about advertising in our classifieds section: advertising@portmanmedia.co.uk
Travel
Reassuringly intelligent.
Comfortingly rational.
Coming Next Month

The First World Wars
Medieval History
Following the outbreak of

the First World War in 1914,
western Europes medieval
architecture was destroyed
at a rate unprecedented
in the modern era. Initially
exploited for strategic benefit,
the ruination of a nations
cultural assets soon became a
standard feature of the newly
established template for Total
War. James G. Clark explains
how the conflicts legacy
prompted a change in public
attitudes towards historical
landmarks and led to the rise
of heritage tourism.
White Rhodesias French Backers
Subscribe
www.historytoday.com/subscribe
Januarys Prize Crossword
When Rhodesias white Prime Minister Ian Smith announced the

controversial Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain in
1965, the official French response was condemnation. However, as
Joanna Warson explains, covert support from a range of French actors
many of whom held links to the state provided the Rhodesian
government with the economic lifelines that enabled it to defy trade
embargos and helped the French to retain a privileged position in Africa.
Norse Literatures Prominent Women
Common perceptions of the Viking Age consider its myths, sagas and
legends to be dominated by male protagonists, reflecting its warrior
culture. Yet, assessing the literature that survives from Scandinavia and
its outposts dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, Rosalind Kerven
finds a wealth of richly wrought female characters adopting a variety of
roles, from goddesses and giantesses to explorers and entrepreneurs.
Plus Months Past, Making History, Signposts, Reviews, In Focus, From the
Archive, Pastimes and much more.
The April issue of History Today will be on sale throughout the UK

on March 19th. Ask your newsagent to reserve you a copy.
PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EDITORS LETTER: 2 Images National Portrait Gallery, London; HISTORY MATTERS: 3 Bridgeman Images/
Bibliothque Nationale; 5 British Museum Images; 6 Alamy; 7 Photographs by Dean Nicholas. MONTHS PAST:
8 Getty Images; 9 top Alamy; 9 bottom Mary Evans Picture Library. THE RISE OF THE SONS OF MARS: 11
Jean-Pol Grandmont/Creative Commons; 12 Tim Aspden; 13 top Classical Numismatic Group, Inc./cngcoins.
com; 13 bottom Mary Evans Picture Library; 14 top and bottom Bridgeman Images; 14-15 Scala Archives; 16
top Carthage National Museum, Tunisia/Bridgeman Images; 16 bottom Bridgeman Images; 17 Mary Evans
Picture Library. THE WEAKER SEX? 18 Press Association Images; 19 National Portrait Gallery, London; 20 top
Museum of London; 20 bottom left Press Association Images; 20 bottom right Mirrorpix; 21 top Press
Association Images; 21 bottom and 22 top Mary Evans Picture Library; 22 bottom TopFoto; 23 top National
Portrait Gallery, London; 23 bottom by W.K Haselden, Daily Mirror 2nd July, 1909 courtesy the British Cartoon Archive
Mirrorpix; 24 top left Mirropix; 24 top right Bridgeman Images/Museum of London. INFOCUS: 26-27 Getty
Images. A DIARY IMAGINED: 28 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford/Bridgeman Images. SHOPPING, SPECTACLE &
THE SENSES: 30 top left and right V&A images; 30 bottom courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University;
31 top and bottom right V&A Images; 31 bottom left Bridgeman Images; 32 top V&A Images; 32 bottom Mary
Evans Picture Library; 33 and 34 top courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University; 34 bottom left Mary
Evans Picture Library; 34 bottom right Philadelphia Museum of Art/Bridgeman Images; 35 courtesy Serena Dyer; 36
Bridgeman Images. THE FORGOTTEN WORLD OR CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM: 37 and 38 Courtesy Private Family
Collection; 39 Corbis Images. A MUTUAL FASCINATION: 41 Imperial War Museum, London; 42 TopFoto; 43
Photos Alamy; 44 top and bottom Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove; 45 Imperial War Museum;
46 and 47 Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove. CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE JUDGEMENT OF HISTORY:
48 Alamy. ISLAMIC POET OF LOVE: 49 Portrait by Jos Luis Muo. Photograph by Leigh Cuen; 50 photographs
by Leigh Cuen; 51 Bridgeman Images; 52 Bridgeman Images; 53 top Factum Arte/Alicia Guirao; 53 bottom
Glasgow University Library/Bridgeman Images; 54 left and right Bridgeman Images; 55 Photograph by Leigh Cuen.
REVIEWS: 56 Alamy; 63 top right contemporary illustration of Theresienstadt by unknown artist. Courtesy Eureka
Entertainment Ltd. COMING NEXT MONTH 69 Popperfoto/Getty Images. PASTIMES: Images Wikimedia/
Creative Commons. SIX DEGREES: 71 Lebrecht Photo Library/Alamy. We have made every effort to contact all
copyright holders but if in any case we have been unsuccessful, please get in touch with us directly.
The winner for January is Peter Taylor, Wrexham.
Pastimes
Amusement & Enlightenment
The Quiz
1 Referring to one of the most
severe dust storms to strike the
US Dust Bowl, on which date did
Black Sunday occur?
22 Where did Gottlieb Wilhelm

Daimler invent the high-speed
petrol engine in 1885?
23 In which year was the GDRs
State Secretariat for Church Affairs
established?
2 What did the German nationalist

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852)
first establish in 1811?
24 Which Mughal Emperor was

responsible for building the Taj
Mahal?
3 In which year and with which Act

was badger-baiting outlawed in
the United Kingdom?
9 Lollards was a derisive term

applied to the followers of which
English theologian?
10 Which secret Calvinist organisation was founded in South Africa in
1918 to promote Afrikaner political
ambitions?
11 At which battle of 1547 was
the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League
destroyed?
12 The Yosemite Grant was passed
in the 19th century to protect the
area now recognised as a national
park from development. Which US
president signed it?
6 The mythological Irish warrior

and protagonist of the Fenian Cycle,
Fionn mac Cumhaill appears in
which Flann OBrien novel of 1939?
7 In which year did Gdask (then
Danzig) pass from German to
Polish control following the Peace
of Thorn?
13 Which Persian king founded the

Achaemenid Empire (550-330 bc)?
14 Which French revolutionary
founded the radical newspaper
LAmi du people in 1789?
15 The short-lived republic of Gran
Colombia (1819-1831) was made
up of territory in which seven

present-day countries?
25 How many days elapsed

between Anne Boleyns execution
and Henry VIIIs marriage to Jane
Seymour?
16 Which pope excommunicated

King John in 1209?
17 Which well-known author of
ghost stories was director of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
from 1893-1908?
18 Who was the last native
Welshman to be Prince of Wales?
19 Who was Elizabeth Is Secretary
of State between 1573 and 1590?
20 Which Emperor unified modern
Vietnam in 1802?
21 Founded in 1967, which US
political party is represented by the
flag below?
ANSWERS
5 The reign of which 11th-century

Earl of Orkney oversaw the
establishment of a bishopric on the
island?
8 Which Native American nations

comprised the so-called Five
Civilised Tribes?
1. April 14th, 1935.

2. The Turnplatz, a proto-gymnasium.
3. 1835, the Cruelty to Animals Act.
4. Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556).
5. Thorfinn the Mighty (c.1020-65).
6. At Swim-Two-Birds.
7. 1466.
8. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek
and Seminole.
9. John Wycliffe (c.1330-84).
10. Jong Zuid Afrika, later Afrikaner
Broederbond.
11. The Battle of Mhlberg.
12. Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
13. Cyrus the Great (c. 576-520 bc).
14. Jean Paul Marat (1743-93).
15. Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador,
Panama, Peru, Guyana and Brazil.
16. Innocent III (1160-1216).
17. Montague Rhodes (MR) James
(1862-1936).
18. Owain Glyndr (c. 1349-c.1416).
19. Sir Francis Walsingham (c.1530-90).
20. Gia Long (1762-1820).
21. The Youth International Party
(Yippies).
22. Stuttgart, Germany.
23. 1957.
24. Shah Jahan (1594-1666).
25. 11.
4 Who was appointed Archbishop

of Canterbury in 1533?
Prize Crossword
Set by Richard Smyth

DOWN
1 1997 historical drama, winner of 11
Academy Awards (7)
2 British publisher (1902-70), founder
of Penguin Books (5,4)
3 Adrian ___ (c.1520-98), French
lutenist and composer (2,3)
4 In Greek legend, a herald in the
Trojan War, noted for his powerful
voice (7)
6 Michelangelo ___ (1912-2007),
Italian director of films including
Blow-up (1966) (9)
7 Archaic term for the lands of the far
north (5)
8 Shackleton, Rutherford or Bevin,
perhaps (6)
11 St ___, coastal village in Cumbria,
site of a Norman priory (4)
15 Greek muse of tragedy (9)
17 Italian name for the Slovenian city
of Kobarid, scene of a 1917 battle (9)
19 See 20
20/19 Name given to fortification
near Temple Mount in Jerusalem (7,4)
21 Suburb of Stoke-on-Trent associated with the pottery works of Josiah
Wedgwood (1730-95) (7)
22 Edna ___ (b.1930), Irish author
of The Country Girls (1962) and other
works (6)
24 Peter Mark ___ (1779-1869),
physician, lexicographer and
thesaurus compiler (5)
25 Carlo Francesco ___ (1670-1759),
Bolognese Baroque architect (5)
ACROSS
1/5 The ___, name given to a Spartan
victory over the Arcadians in 368 bc
(8,6)
9 King of the Picts, d.657 (8)
10 Skye village close to the Iron Age
broch Dun Beag (6)
12 French city, site of a serious
mutiny in August 1790 (5)
13 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling
away ambition: By that sin fell ___
Henry VIII, Act 3, Scene 2 (3,6)
14 Thomas ___ (1489-1556),
Archbishop of Canterbury (7)
16 Followers of Zeno of Citium (6)
18 Saul ___ (1915-2005), Canadaborn novelist and Nobel laureate (6)
20 George Mathews ___ (1842-93),
physicist and superintendent of the
Kew observatory (7)
23 Daniel ___ (1700-82), Swiss
mathematician (9)
25 Albrecht ___ (1471-1528),
Nuremberg-born artist (5)
26 Jean-Auguste-Dominique ___
(1780-1867), portrait painter (6)
27 The Great ___, 1940 satire by
Charlie Chaplin (8)
28 Name of a family central to the
Pendle witch trials of 1612 (6)
29 Roman governor of Britain in the
first century ad (8)
The winner of this

months prize
crossword will receive
a selection of recent
history books
Entries to: Crossword, History Today, 2nd Floor, 9 Staple Inn, London
WC1V 7QH by March 31st or www.historytoday.com/crossword
Six degrees of Separation

Guglielmo Marconi
(1874-1937)
Guglielmo Marconi
Italian radio pioneer and

electrical engineer, was the
great grandson of
English socialite and Nazi

sympathiser, who survived
a suicide attempt by shooting,
as did the wife of .
John Jameson
(1740-1823)
Claude Debussy
(1862-1918)
founder of Jameson Irish whiskey

distillery, whose family motto
is sine Metu, meaning without
fear, which was also the nickname given to ...
French composer who in 1911 wrote

the music for the mystery play
Le Martyre de Saint Sbastien by
Gabriele DAnnunzio
(1863-1938)
John the Fearless

(1371-1419)
Duke of Burgundy, victor at
the battle of Nicopolis (1396),
who died on May 28th, as did
Unity Valkyrie Mitford

(1914-48)
By Stephanie Pollard and Justin Pollard
Italian writer and soldier, who

was president of the Royal
Academy of Italy, as was
WOMEN IN THE 1950S
FromtheArchive
Virginia Nicholson acknowledges the debt she owes as a popular historian to academics such as
Roland Quinault, whose 2001 essay on Britain in the 1950s remains a rich source of information.
The Particular and the Personal

BRITAIN IN 1950 was different,
in many ways, from Britain today.
In his 2001 essay, Roland Quinault
guides his readers rapidly through a
catalogue of the essentials of postwar
social history, taking in rationing,
the housing shortage, immigration
and education along the way. My new
book, Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The
Story of Women in the 1950s, attempts
to flesh out factual history through
interviews, archival and published testimony, so it is important
to have a strong skeleton.
Had I been aware of this
essay when I was doing
the research I would have
gratefully snapped up some
of the nuggets it provides.
For example, I wish I
had known that in 1950
Leicester was the most prosperous city
per capita in Europe, since it would
have deepened my understanding
of Valerie Gisborns life. Gisborn,
a factory girl, wrote a short series
of memoirs about her early life in
Leicester, which I mined for her vivid
reminiscences. Similarly, the article
reminded me that in 1950 the largest
immigrant group in Britain was the
Irish. Like the pretty nurse from Kilkenny, Eileen Hawe, whose story I also
tell, who spent five years in London
between 1946 and 1951. Eileens
plight as a young married woman with
a small baby becomes all the more
resonant when you realise that, as
Dr Quinault tells us, nearly half the
population lived in private rented accommodation, often in dingy rooms or
bedsits with little privacy, warmth or
comfort. I need historians like Roland
Quinault more than they need me.
The relationship between his
fact-based history and my kind of
social history, which prioritises the
particular over the comprehensive, is
an amiable one. My research database

bulges with Quinault-style statistics,
tabulated survey results, weighty
evidence from many such impeccable
sources. This is the essential blackand-white bedrock of history. But
it is largely uninviting and it lacks
colour; after a few pages reading this
kind of research material you may feel
swamped. Luckily, I read it, so that
others do not have to.
I am not an academic. I love narra-
Nearly half the population

lived in private rented
accommodation, often in
dingy rooms or bedsits
tive, emotion and true life stories. My
own work draws largely on matter-offact documentation, but this is the
underwater part of the iceberg, largely
invisible. I wanted my account of the
1950s to be rich with holiday camps,
debs delights, Kensitas cigarettes,
Rock around the Clock, home perms
and perambulators. And I want my
readers to get an inviting, engrossing
insight not just into the everyday lives
of our mothers and grandmothers, but
also into their hopes and fears.
Valerie Gisborn was just one of
thousands of workers in the Leicester garment factories, but when we
hear her voice it is that of a frustrated
20-year-old, whose ambitions and
dreams felt shackled by her monotonous everyday life.
Eileen Hawes isolation and her
struggle to make ends meet as a
young mum also speak to us across
the intervening years. Eileen did not
want to get married at 23; she wanted
adventure and a career. But when you
are a Catholic and pregnant outside
marriage in 1954, there is no way out.

Listen, too, to the voice of Leila,
the reluctant 1957 beauty queen; to
Anthea, agonised by sexual doubt
in 1956; to Vilma, from Jamaica,
trying to find her feet in staid 1950s
Eastbourne, experiencing freedom
and homesickness in equal measure;
or to Lorna, the single mother with a
brilliant diplomatic career behind her,
supporting her children by working in
a biscuit factory in 1953. These voices
are typical of countless women in the
1950s.
Quinault refers specifically to
the female population of Britain in a
single paragraph, in which we learn
that they were not expected to have
proper careers. All too true, sadly, and
yet it seems that, not having careers
has, till now, also disqualified them
from having their voices heard. Yet,
for me, theirs is the kind of colourful,
engrossing, moving history I want
to read. Which is why I try to write
it. And thanks to the likes of Roland
Quinault, I can.
Virginia Nicholsons Perfect Wives in Ideal
Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s is
published by Viking in March 2015.
VOLUME 51 ISSUE 4 APRIL 2001

Read the original piece
at historytoday.com/fta

History Today 03-2015

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

History Today 03-2015

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

March 2015

Terror and the suffragettes

The Sons of Mars

Mercenaries of the ancient world

Publisher Andy Patterson

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Total Average Net Circulation

2 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015

Foes forever: More (left) and Cromwell.

FROM THE EDITOR

Anglo-Saxon Schools John Lilburne Longman-History Today Awards

landed on June 5th, occupying all key positions. In

Overshadowed by Waterloo, the British

All at sea: The Last

MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 3

Another aspect of British strength

The British world was

The advantage offered to British

Making Men of Letters

structural learning to use. This combination is still recognisable to anyone who

As well as allowing students to play

Kate Wiles is a contributing editor at History

The legacy of Free Born

were only four years in which Lilburne

on copious citation of Edward Cokes

John Rees is organiser of the John Lilburne 400th

Top: Victoria Wallace, director general of the Commonwealth

Today, Paul Lay, at a reception held at

Professor Jeremy Black of Exeter

March 5th 1815

apparently did not go with him. He had

hands without touching the patient.

March 22nd 1765

The Stamp Act

The act never went properly into

at Westminster and the old

March 8th 415

The city of Alexandria in the late fourth

were often seized and destroyed.

In 412 a new Christian bishop was

The struggle for control of the straits

EGARDLESS OF THEIR new status as subjects

Hiero II, ruler of

12 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015

Coins depicting the

Italy to fight Rome for Tarentum once again. Pyrrhus lost

HILE THE ROMANS were preoccupied with

of Rhegium panicked and, because of their alliance with

Pyrrhus abandons his

MARCH 2015 HISTORY TODAY 13

competely and Hiero could not definitively defeat them

Carthage only needed to subdue Syracuse

S AN AUTOCRATIC ruler with full powers, Hiero

walls. Unwilling to assault the Carthaginians, Hiero led

The First Punic War,

N THE other hand, an influential group of Roman

16 HISTORY TODAY MARCH 2015

Carthaginians and expelled their

SHORTLY AFTER THE Romans

realising the futility of negotiations, the consul took the

ITH HIERO GONE, Claudius was free to

Why have historians failed to

Fern Riddell investigates the campaign of

is a testament to her importance as a militant