History

Wednesday

Byron Rogers

Racists, pigs and hysterics

I cannot remember getting so much pleasure from a book. It is not just its beauty, the handmade paper, the quarter leather, the engraving of the Rhaeadr Falls cut in purple into the cover cloth of something the size of an atlas. These are accidental details (as, I note bemusedly, is the fact that it costs £300 more than the current value of my car). For this, quite simply, is the funniest book I have read in years. Its godfather seems to have been Napoleon, whose wars sealed Europe off to the Romantics. In other words, he deprived them of their fixes of the Sublime, the Picturesque, the Prospects of

Judith Flanders

Not perfect freedom

‘Servants’ and ‘service’ have not always meant ‘servility’. ‘Servants’ and ‘service’ have not always meant ‘servility’. From the Middle Ages right through to the 16th century, everyone was servant to someone: a lord was servant to the king, a lesser lord to a greater. Children likewise served in the households of their parents’ equals: service was what one did before God, and before one’s superiors, in class, or age. And many servants were for display as much as utility: as the consumer durables of their time, their number gave their masters’ prosperity in physical form. Gradually, as the world of family and servants became less closely entwined (by the end

Monday

Giles Foden

Sideshow on the lake

During the night of 9 February 1916, two men were sitting on opposing shores of Lake Tanganyika. The longest lake in the world, it at that time divided German East Africa from the Belgian Congo. One of the men was Herr Kapitänleutnant Gustav von Zimmer, the other was an eccentric British navy officer, Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson. The following morning, Zimmer would launch the Graf von Götzen, a large vessel which floats to this day on the waters of the lake. Spicer-Simson takes a starring role in my narrative non-fiction book, Mimi and Toutou Go Forth (2004). The history of the two British motor launches, Mimi and Toutou, and their vainglorious,

Jonathan Cecil

Squeaks and squawks

How often, when listening to announcers or weather forecasters or politicians on the radio, do I think, ‘That’s an ugly voice’! This seldom applies to speakers with educated regional accents, such as Scottish, Irish or Yorkshire, but all too often to those from London or the Midlands where good standard English is becoming a rarity. This is not a matter of class; ‘Sloane’ voices are as unappealing as ‘Estuary’ ones; indeed the two sometimes hideously cross-fertilise. Good speech is a matter of clarity and the unselfconscious enjoyment of the spoken language. It was an unexpected and nostalgic pleasure to listen to old recordings of or about the Bloomsbury Group. These

Lucinda Lambton

Parsons’ displeasure

Despite its prosaic title, this is a humdinging page-turner of a book, revealing in livid detail the scandal of how the Church of England jettisoned onto the market what the author describes as ‘perhaps the most admirable, desirable and ascetic body of domestic buildings ever built’. Despite its prosaic title, this is a humdinging page-turner of a book, revealing in livid detail the scandal of how the Church of England jettisoned onto the market what the author describes as ‘perhaps the most admirable, desirable and ascetic body of domestic buildings ever built’. Out of his reckoned 50,000 of such buildings that served England’s churches — ‘hallowed stones, if properly used,

Beryl Bainbridge

Enjoyer and endurer

I approached the late David Nokes’s scholarly book with some trepidation, having heard that it had been criticised for its apparent dismissal of James Boswell. I approached the late David Nokes’s scholarly book with some trepidation, having heard that it had been criticised for its apparent dismissal of James Boswell. As I had gained all my previous knowledge of the great Sam from Boswell’s magnificent biography I did not expect to enjoy this new exploration. But I did, very much indeed. Nowhere does he accuse Boswell of falsely creating the character of Johnson; indeed he acknowledges that he portrayed an irritable but very human subject. Nokes’s book, densely academic, provides

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Avoiding the Wide World

The clue comes early on in the book. ‘Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat, ‘And that’s something that doesn’t matter either to you or me. I’ve never been there and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again please.’ In 1903, a shocking incident took place at the Bank of England, where the soon-to-be author of one of the most magical of all children’s books was then Secretary. A man had walked in from the street asking to see the Governor but had to settle for Grahame. He held out a roll of paper

Wednesday

Gilbert Adair

Repeat that, repeat

When the Louvre invited me to organise for the whole of November 2009 a series of conferences, exhibitions, public readings, concerts, film projections and the like on the subject of my choice, I did not hesitate for a second and proposed the list. Thus Umberto Eco on the genesis of this book, published simultaneously in Italian, French and English. Considering those parallel manifestations of the project, it was perhaps to be expected that this, its sole printed version, would be situated at the more ingratiatingly ludic end of the Eco spectrum. The Infinity of Lists is a work less of theory than of taxonomy. Flaunting his extraordinary erudition, but flaunting

Wednesday

Vernon Bogdanor

Disunited from the start

Twice in the 20th century, men have sought to create a new world order. The League of Nations, conceived with high hopes as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, failed catastrophically. At the outbreak of the second world war, it was to be found solemnly engaged in the task of standardising European railway gauges. The United Nations, by contrast, was born in a mood of profound disillusionment in 1945. It was not, so it seemed, only the League that had failed, but also the conception of man that had been embodied in it, a conception that had been torn apart so savagely by the Nazis. Unlike the League, the

Anthony Sattin

The last five hundred years

In the aftermath of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center, an elderly Arab from the Gulf told me that he thought it was the work of American agents. In the aftermath of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center, an elderly Arab from the Gulf told me that he thought it was the work of American agents. The claim, however fantastic, seemed perfectly logical to him, for it gave the US an excuse to intervene in the Middle East and Asia’s oil-rich regions. Eugene Rogan’s book explains why that Arab, and Arabs generally, feel so suspicious of the West. There has been a plethora of books about

Byron Rogers

The myth survived

You may find this book irritating. A complex exposition of 2,000 years of history, it is intended for the general reader, whoever he is (a general reader would surely not attempt it), so its source material is not identified but tidied away into long footnotes, presumably on the principle of pas devant la bonne. Thus the 12th-century historian William of Newburgh is introduced in the main text only as ‘a crusty old scholar’, and the family of Geoffrey of Monmouth as ‘the Monmouths’. All right, so Simon Young thinks he knows his readership. Yet he has this for an epigraph, ‘Ac nyt oed uawr yna y weilgi : y ueis

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Facetious or scandalous?

Very funny guy, John O’Farrell. Very funny guy, John O’Farrell. His columns are a hoot and his excellent memoir, Things Can Only Get Better, turned me temporarily into an insomniac. His latest book, a facetious history of the last 60 years, lacks the cohesion of his memoir and the concentrated force of his columns. Because he feels obliged to cover the whole of the shoreline he finds himself writing about subjects, like Northern Ireland, that don’t engage his emotions, only his knack for mockery. If you tried writing to Bobby Sands MP at the House of Commons about getting your parking ticket rescinded, while he was starving himself to death

Andro Linklater

When words were scarce

Most of us are brought up not badly, but wrongly. Trained to the tenets of Mrs DoAsYou-WouldBeDoneBy, we are easily trampled underfoot by students of the Master DoItMyWay-OrBeDoneOver school. Consider the career of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as an example of the second method of upbringing. Mercilessly whipped and humiliated as a child, he grew up self-obsessed, wilful, arrogant, and it would seem without any redeeming personal qualities. Yet it was largely Monty’s egotistic drive that made him the most effective British general of the second world war, while more sympathetic commanders like Wavell and Alexander were relegated to the sidelines. High among the surprises of this delightful memoir of

Charlotte Moore

Delight and horror

‘Everything that the lovingest of husbands can express to the best of wives, & love to the little ones, not forgetting the kicker in the dark,’ Jack Verney wrote to his pregnant wife in 1683. ‘Everything that the lovingest of husbands can express to the best of wives, & love to the little ones, not forgetting the kicker in the dark,’ Jack Verney wrote to his pregnant wife in 1683. I read this 326 years later with a pleasurable frisson. I don’t know why it is so charming to find that our ancestors felt as we do, but it is. In Louisa Lane Fox’s fascinating anthology, that thrill of recognition

David Crane

Behind the white face

Has there ever been a more compelling period in London’s history than the first years of the 19th century? Has there ever been a more compelling period in London’s history than the first years of the 19th century? There is, I suppose, a case to be made for the London of Shakespeare, but any city that can boast a Byron to look after its poetry, Sheridan its drinking, Hazlitt its journalism, Nash its architecture and Brummell the cut of its coat would certainly edge it for fun. There was admittedly no Lancelot Andrewes to preach it into sobriety — it would have to make do with Sydney Smith — and

James Hamilton

The last man to know everything

Joscelyn Godwin, the author of this vast and beautiful book, admits at the outset that while Athanasius Kircher was held in awe during his lifetime in the 17th century as ‘some rugged headland jutting out to sea’, when he died this had been eroded to the point of collapse: ‘the seas wash over it as if it had never been.’ Kircher’s triumph and tragedy was that his work was the final complete expression of magic, arcana and dogma, and when he died the world was moving into the Age of Reason. Joscelyn Godwin, the author of this vast and beautiful book, admits at the outset that while Athanasius Kircher was

Wednesday

Philip Hensher

Voices of change

Not every writer would begin a history of the 1950s with a vignette in which the young Keith Waterhouse treads on Princess Margaret by mistake. But David Kynaston is an unusual historian, rewardingly imbued with a sense of fun and convinced of the importance of the freakish; he is enamoured of the single incident and the obscure observer. Family Britain is as vivacious and alluring as Sabrina, the Ted’s pin-up, ‘symbol of opulent sex’, real name Norma Sykes, who pops up on page 608 between Peter Maxwell Davies and Sylvia Plath. I suppose she may still be alive. This is the second volume in a projected series, Tales of a

Saul David

Model of resilience

At a time when the British Army is going through something of a crisis — plucked from the frying pan of Iraq only to be plunged into the fire of Afghanistan, with inadequate equipment, a lack of clear objectives, mounting casualties and dwindling public support — it might not appear to be the best moment to publish a history of the Second Service’s achievements since the days of Cromwell.  At a time when the British Army is going through something of a crisis — plucked from the frying pan of Iraq only to be plunged into the fire of Afghanistan, with inadequate equipment, a lack of clear object- ives, mounting

Anne Somerset

A conflict of wills

It might seem odd that Eric Ives, the acclaimed biographer of Anne Boleyn, should turn his attention to another executed Tudor queen, Lady Jane Grey. As he points out, in the past six years alone, seven biographical studies of Lady Jane have appeared, and while this could be said to demonstrate the perennial fascination exerted by Jane’s short life and grim fate, the question inevitably arises as to whether even a scholar of Ives’s standing will be able to add much to what has been written. Yet it soon emerges that Ives is not primarily concerned with Lady Jane’s personal tragedy. Instead he focusses on the events that led to

Jane Ridley

From Madrid with love

In June 1943 the film star Leslie Howard was mysteriously killed when his plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe on a return flight from Spain. This was an unprovoked attack on a commercial airliner, and there seemed to be no motive for it. British intelligence circulated rumours that the Germans had hoped to kill Churchill, whom they mistakenly thought was travelling on the plane. In fact, it now seems that the Germans’ target was Leslie Howard himself. He was returning from a celebrity tour of Spain, following the success of Gone with the Wind, in which he starred as Ashley Wilkes. Howard had been sent to Spain as part