On 6 May 1939 the pioneering archaeologist Dorothy Garrod was elected to the Disney chair of archaeology at Cambridge. She was the first woman to be a professor at either Oxford or Cambridge; women were still not admitted to full degrees at the university – despite having been educated there since 1869. Her election brought... Continue Reading →
From Africa to Canterbury: the first remaking of the English church
Five of the first six archbishops of Canterbury to be consecrated were not native to this country. None came from as far afield as the seventh: Theodore, born in 602, was a Greek-speaking monk from Tarsus – the modern Turkish city of Gözlü Kule – in what was then a Byzantine province. Educated in Antioch... Continue Reading →
BBC History: Henry Fitzroy – the forgotten Tudor prince
Henry Fitzroy was born in the summer of 1519 – almost certainly in June – at the small Augustinian Priory of St Laurence at Blackmore in Essex. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, herself not yet 20, who came from minor Shropshire gentry. Elizabeth had entered service as one of Catherine of Aragon’s maids of honour... Continue Reading →
All About History: The Search for El Dorado
Map of Guiana by Hessel Gerritsz, 1625. El Dorado is at the western end of Lake Parime Not many people have the distinction of putting a non-existent place on the map, but Sir Walter Ralegh was one of them. That place was El Dorado, a legendary city of gold located in what is now Venezuela.... Continue Reading →
BBC History: The 1603 trial of Walter Ralegh
It is a curious fact that when Sir Walter Ralegh was finally executed – on 29 October 1618 – he had been legally dead for 15 years. Even by 17th-century standards, that was unusual. But then, not many people face the death penalty twice in court – particularly when found guilty the first time, as... Continue Reading →
The Chap: Jack Buchanan, Britain’s biggest forgotten star
It’s February 1954 and the Sunday Express has a scoop. Sir Laurence Olivier is learning to dance. More, he is planning to dance with a partner as part of a charity event at the Palladium, organised by Noel Coward. His dancing partner - and teacher - is Jack Buchanan, who the paper finds putting Olivier... Continue Reading →
History Today: Between fact and fiction
This article first appeared in the January 2016 issue of History Today. What does it mean to write history today? What claims can historians make about their work? These are just two of the questions that sprang to mind after listening to Niall Ferguson tussle with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley on Radio 4’s Start... Continue Reading →
History Today: Young academics: the great betrayal
This piece first appeared in the September 2015 issue of History Today. I discussed the issues it raised with Catherine Fletcher in a related podcast which can be heard here. Catherine wrote a THE blog in response to my article and the disagreements it aroused, which can be read here. Supporters of the status quo... Continue Reading →
The decline and fall of Twyford Abbey
This article first appeared in the November 2015 London Historians newsletter. Since I wrote it, the abbey has been sealed away behind high metal fencing, as if to confirm the purposeful neglect of its current owners. I grew up in Kingsbury, North West London. I now live in Ealing. Between those two places lies a... Continue Reading →
Spectator: The LRB, Twitter and Craig Raine’s ‘Gatwick’
June 3rd was a strange day on Twitter. For most of it, a living poet was trending. Unfortunately for Craig Raine, the poet in question, he was trending because a long poem of his entitled ‘Gatwick’ had appeared in the LRB and Twitter didn’t like it. Most comments ranged from amused contempt to, well, just... Continue Reading →
History Today: Taking history out into the world
My eyes were caught the other week by a news story in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, which reported an interview with the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Defending his country against accusations of anti-semitism, Zarif cited, among other things, the role of Cyrus the Great, who led Persia in the mid-sixth century BC, in... Continue Reading →
New Statesman: Heart of darkness: from the time-honoured barbarity of the Tudors in Ireland to Islamic State
The leader of a small military force – perhaps 500 strong – is determined to subdue a province, and to do so quickly. Terror is his explicit policy. Every inroad he makes into enemy territory is followed by indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. Every man, woman and child is killed. Houses, churches, crops – everything is... Continue Reading →
History Today: Charlie Hebdo and the judgement of history
As I write this, millions of people are on the streets of France to protest about the murders of eight writers and artists at Charlie Hebdo, of four Jewish patrons of a kosher food store, and of three police officers. Much comment in the media has identified the slaughter in Manichean terms, reflecting a battle... Continue Reading →
History Today: Herodotus, Camden and the reclamation of history
I have recently been reading Tom Holland’s superb new translation of Herodotus’ Histories. I am by no means an authority on classical writers, but I have always enjoyed Herodotus. He is so irrepressibly inquisitive and, in every sense, a pleasure to read. Holland has always been a fine writer, both in the clarity and subtlety... Continue Reading →
History Today: Shakespeare, the Blackfriars and the theatre of experience
It has always bemused me that there is so little formal – or, for that matter, informal – dialogue and collaboration between historians and literary scholars. Each are aware of the others’ work, certainly; but the intellectual, cultural and administrative inheritances that maintain the academic silos of schools and faculties surely seem increasingly outdated in... Continue Reading →
History Today: Lost in translation
We are all familiar with the opening life of LP Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” Like all elegantly expressed truths it quickly became a cliché. And, as such, like all clichés, it obscures as much as it reveals. It is difficult not to look... Continue Reading →
History Today: All was not feigned
In May Brighton College, an independent fee-paying school, announced its intention to make the study of history compulsory for all pupils through to 18. Whatever one’s view of the decision, the fact that it was considered unusual and innovative enough to make the national newspapers should give us – and anyone interested in the practice... Continue Reading →
History Today: How chances it they travel?
One of the many criticisms leveled at Michael Gove’s revision of the history curriculum was that is would reduce lessons to little more than the recitation and memorializing of facts, to what Sir Philip Sidney called ‘the bare was of history. But the simpler a statement of fact is, the more it deceives us of... Continue Reading →
History Today: In search of lost time
If we think of time at all, it is as a dimension: something we travel through, an abstract and universal measure against which we mark our progress, and against which we are judged – from minute to minute, from hour to hour, from day to day, from birth to death. It dominates our lives; and... Continue Reading →
Review: Elizabeth I and her people – National Portrait Gallery exhibition
Those whose interest lies outside the Tudor era could be forgiven for exasperation at the extent to which the long sixteenth century still dominates our nation’s cultural life. But the new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery – Elizabeth I and Her People, which runs until January 5 2014 – is nevertheless good enough to... Continue Reading →
