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Post by andydecker on Jul 27, 2022 9:08:19 GMT
Rob Attar [ed] - BBC History: September 2021Ellie Cawthorne revisits the Salem witch trials; Peter Higginbotham wonders if "Hellish Workhouses" are deserving of their terrible press; Annika Bautz on the literary genius and enduring influence of Sir Walter Scott; Josephine Wilkinson finally identifies the man behind the iron mask; Katherine Harloe on the far right's enduring fascination with ancient cultures; Freya Gowrley on 'Supersized Georgians.' Gershom Gorenberg on the contemporaneous persecution of Jews across the Middle East during WWII; Alex von Tunzelmann on the rights and wrongs of statue toppling. Also of interest; 'Who was the Greenbrier Ghost?,' September's anniversaries ("Louis XIV succumbs to gangrene", "Two cabinet ministers duel at dawn"— why isn't this compulsory?), Nick Bennison visits an unlikely popular tourist attraction — Stockport's air raid shelters — and, perhaps as a sop to offended pleasantly plump pre-Victorian fatso's - a recipe for roly-poly pudding (from 1901's Manual of Workhouse Cookery). First time I've seen, let alone read the BBC publication, and genuinely impressed. Will try post details of the July & Aug 2021 issues later as the latter is something of a French Revolution special. Seems every country has these kind of magazines. Here is a German one I susbscribed for some years. It is still published, but today I prefer more in-depth studies. I guess the mix is much the same. Essays about different topics, a lot of pictures, book reviews, forthcomig events in museums and on tv. History made popular, an overview. This issue was mostly about the Elizabethan era, the usual topics. A short history of her life, one about the Armada, her relationships, one article about the cultural life, i.e arts and theatre. The rest of the issue is filled with an article about Napoleon III. and some Greek banker from 370 B.C. It is well made. There were other publications which tried to make the topic a bit more sentsational and used a broader approach, this one tries to be respectable. According to gossip they sold better before the advent of private tv channels like Discovery, even the No.1 newsmagazine Der Spiegel lends its name for a tv-channel called "Spiegel-History", broadcasting historical documentaries 24/7.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 27, 2022 11:49:40 GMT
Thanks for that Andreas. Yes, looks to be an identical format. That mag sounds quite cool. I'll have to look up Roly-poly Pudding (which is not, but could be, a descriptive phrase for my waistline, alas). Waite's Tarot book is terrible. But perhaps it has a quaint charm. I hadn't realized that your local LFL must be near Wapping Old Stairs, a London area site that evokes memories of one of my favorite books, Sax Rohmer's The Dream Detective: londonist.com/2010/07/londonists_back_passage_54_wappingH. I haunt those stairs practically every morning; it's especially enchanting in rain and fog - is to me, anyhow - though you have to watch your footing (the going gets slimy). The Town of Ramsgate's famous past-patrons include Judge Jeffreys, Judge Jeffreys' ghost and, incredibly, Cher, who lived next door for two years at close of the 'nineties, sadly way too soon for the Little Free Library box, so she missed out there. Further along the waterfront hangs the ghost of Captain Kidd - note the phantom crows feasting on his eyes. And the green spaces are pretty - lots of graves. Even post redevelopment - for the most part, uniquely sympathetic - Wapping still has much to commend it. #Vault #touristinfo #arts&culture #masteroflocalhistory & so on.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 27, 2022 12:30:04 GMT
Well, if someday I get on a jet plane to take another ramble around London and elsewhere, I'll definitely have to visit Wapping. All those ghosts, and memories of lives I never lived but have seeped secretively into my own existence through all these books over the years.
H.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 27, 2022 12:33:00 GMT
"Cruel Cromwell"--on a tape years ago I had a recording of Peter Pears singing this song:
Oliver Cromwell lay buried and dead, Hee-haw, buried and dead, There grew an old apple-tree over his head, Hee-haw, over his head. The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Hee-haw, ready to fall, There came an old woman to gather them all, Hee-haw, gather them all. Oliver rose and gave her a drop, Hee-haw, gave her a drop, Which made the old woman go hippety hop, Hee-haw, hippety hop. The saddle and bridle, they lie on the shelf, Hee-haw, lie on the shelf, If you want any more you can sing it yourself, Hee-haw, sing it yourself.
It's mocking and silly but I think there were some creepy stories about old Oliver's vindictive ghost.
H.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 27, 2022 13:24:59 GMT
If anyone should have a vindictive ghost, it is Cromwell. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II had Cromwell's body exhumed for "posthumous execution". Cromwell's head was removed and then mounted on a pole and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall, where it could be seen for more than 20 years - it then disappeared. Legend has it that it was blown off the roof in a storm in the 1680s, and picked up by a sentry who took it home with him. It was then apparently bought and sold by various private collectors and museums over the next 250 years or so, before being buried at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (the college that Cromwell attended) in 1960.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 27, 2022 13:59:25 GMT
If anyone should have a vindictive ghost, it is Cromwell. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II had Cromwell's body exhumed for "posthumous execution". Cromwell's head was removed and then mounted on a pole and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall, where it could be seen for more than 20 years - it then disappeared. Legend has it that it was blown off the roof in a storm in the 1680s, and picked up by a sentry who took it home with him. It was then apparently bought and sold by various private collectors and museums over the next 250 years or so, before being buried at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (the college that Cromwell attended) in 1960. I always wondered about this. It seems terrible silly to dug up some mouldering bones just to make a point.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 27, 2022 16:30:42 GMT
Fascinating, Dr Strange. There's an article here with lots of facts, figures and receipts--quite a story. historyinnumbers.com/people/oliver-cromwell/cromwells-head/I wonder if anyone's written a book about Cromwell's posthumous reputation in folklore. A topic ripe for all sorts of odd and perhaps thought-provoking divagations. H.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 27, 2022 18:34:09 GMT
Oddly, there doesn't seem to be much folklore attached to Cromwell. Though there is as lot of myth, e.g. that he abolished Xmas (that was a decision taken by Parliament, not Cromwell personally). In fact, Cromwell was rather moderate in his "puritanism" - he was said to enjoy smoking, drinking sherry and beer, and music (there was even dancing at his daughter's wedding). See: www.britannica.com/biography/Oliver-Cromwell/LegacyI like the 1970 film Cromwell, though I seem to be in the minority on that - and casting Richard Harris as Cromwell was a stroke of perverse genius, given that Cromwell is one of the most hated figures in all of Irish history. I have a bit of a fascination with this period of British history.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 27, 2022 19:17:23 GMT
Interesting, Dr Strange. By one of those odd little coincidences, just before leaving for this little family reunion I'm on this week, I got out my DVD of Cromwell to watch again on my new TV (the first TV I've owned in close to a decade). I remember enjoying the film when it was first out--I saw it when I was only 12. In college I read The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill--with my usual enthusiasm I regarded it as a masterpiece, and it completely changed how I thought of the Civil War period--though at the very least I'd be reluctant now to characterize it as "the English Revolution." Professor Hill just found so much intriguing old pamphlets to root through (found in a trunk in somebody's attic, or something like that, somewhere long after the events). There was lots of Winstanley, Diggers, Levellers (I wrote a very long paper on the Putney Debates) and numerous others but my favorite character was Lady Eleanor Davies, who wrote under the nom de plume of the Prophet Melchizidek and whose name was acronym'd as "Never so mad a lady" by some acid wit of the era.
I have a vague memory of having read a story about Cromwell's ghost at some point a few years ago but as usual, details have completely departed what's left of my mind.
cheers, Hel
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 27, 2022 20:23:54 GMT
I've seen Cromwell about 3 or 4 times, I think - the last time was just a few months ago, when it cropped up on one of the freeview channels over here. I prefer the term "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" to "English Civil War", especially given the prominent role of Scotland in events - the whole thing was really sparked off by "The Bishops Wars" (1639-40), which ended with Charles being forced to give up his attempts to Anglicize the Church of Scotland by imposing bishops and the Book of Common Prayer on it, and ended when Charles surrendered to a Scottish presbyterian army that was besieging Newark in 1646.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 27, 2022 21:21:36 GMT
I am still reading Wedgwood's two part The King's Peace and The King's War bit by bit - with long intervals - and have Fraser's Cromwell bio on the shelf. It is a fascinating topic. It is rather complicated for a foreigner and I don't know if I understand everything. I have a hard time understanding why the wheel was turned back so fast after Cromwell's death.
I also have seen the movie a few times and am bit lukewarm about it. No doubt how difficult it is to do the events justice, but I thought too many things too vague, and it ends so abruptly.
I also wondered why there was no longer tv series about the topic. It seems too a good topic to waste. But after I watched the awful and shallow Gunpowder recently I think it is maybe a small mercy that modern writers didn't got a chance to mutilate this.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 27, 2022 21:47:33 GMT
I remember that my interest in the Civil War was partly triggered by reading the spy novel War Game by Anthony Price in the early 80s. It was about an operation in a battle re-enactment. Fascinating stuff.
The last time I read about it was in all places in Pat Mills' Zombie comic Defoe which made the zombie hunter "Defoe" into a former Leveller. It was the usual incoherent Mills' story, but it gave life to some nearly forgotten topics.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 27, 2022 22:41:30 GMT
I have a hard time understanding why the wheel was turned back so fast after Cromwell's death. I am not sure about this either, but I think it was largely pragmatism and the lack of any viable alternative that wouldn't have in all probability just ended up in another civil war. Oliver Cromwell's son, Richard, inherited the role of Lord Protector on his father's death but wasn't up to the job - the army particularly disliked and distrusted him, and he came close to being deposed by military coup (it is thought that he may have actually been held under house arrest for some time). When Richard eventually stepped down (less than a year after becoming Lord Protector), there weren't many options available apart from the restoration of the Stuart monarchy - which now knew exactly where it stood in terms of political power, i.e. that it had none and that its role in government was purely symbolic. It's odd to me that many people don't seem to appreciate just how "revolutionary" all this really was - and how it genuinely did change things forever in Britain, in terms of where political power actually resided. Compare with the French Revolution, which everyone seems to think was a proper "revolution" - but which fairly quickly reverted back to old-fashioned monarchy with the various Emperors from the House of Bonaparte (Napoleon I, II, and III) and a Bourbon restoration (1814-30).
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Post by helrunar on Jul 27, 2022 23:48:53 GMT
Thanks for those insights, Dr Strange. Maybe the 1640s conflict was more revolutionary in terms of realpolitik than I've been able to think through. It's decades since I thought seriously about this topic. Since the period when I was fascinated by it, I've come to understand just how little I comprehend about politics. Current events in the US are particularly baffling to me, but I'll simply make that statement and not attempt to clarify.
There's a film with a Civil War/ English Revolution/War of 3 Kingdoms setting, A Field in England, from 2013 I haven't seen. It's supposed to be an early example of the "revival of folk horror" phenomenon. Some find the film brilliant and others simply don't.
Given clips I've seen from recent films about the lives of Elizabeth the First and Second as well as a film about Queen Anne that was fascinating as drama but ridiculous as history, I'm inclined to agree with you, Andreas, that it's just as well nobody currently seems inclined to produce media about the 1640s War. But no doubt something will eventually surface. Look for action figures and videogames at a webclick near you.
Steve
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Post by andydecker on Jul 28, 2022 11:17:24 GMT
It's odd to me that many people don't seem to appreciate just how "revolutionary" all this really was - and how it genuinely did change things forever in Britain, in terms of where political power actually resided. Compare with the French Revolution, which everyone seems to think was a proper "revolution" - but which fairly quickly reverted back to old-fashioned monarchy with the various Emperors from the House of Bonaparte (Napoleon I, II, and III) and a Bourbon restoration (1814-30). Absolutely. Before all this strife I guess it would have been impossible that James II. would have been deposed and the Powers That Be choose Wilhelm of Orange as king. I never could understood why the French Revolution got so romanticized instead of being more of a cautionary tale. Nearly every large revolution followed the same vicious circle and ended in mass-murder and dictatorship.
Things that are so fascinating about the times of Cromwell are political movements like the Levellers, however short-lived they were. This has become a footnote - at least from my perspective, I don't know if these things are part of general education in the UK or not - and it deserves to get more attention.
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