Conservative History Journal

Having not managed to wish readers of this blog a merry Christmas and not put up any illustrations from Dickens, who, to my knowledge, describes festivities only in A Christmas Carol and in Pickwick Papers (by far preferable), I feel I must express a hope that everyone had a merry or jolly or peaceful Christmas according to their preferences. On to the last week of the year and then the new one.

What with one thing and another this blog has been languishing, which shameful. There have been other projects but that is not a real excuse. Anyway, one of the projects concerns Josephine Tey, who is sometimes described as the fifth Queen of Crime, after Christie, Sayers, Marsh and Allingham. I like Tey's novels but am not altogether sure she is up there with the leaders. My own preference for that fifth queen would Edith Caroline Rivett who wrote as E. C. R. Lorac and Carol Carnac. As they say, discuss.

However, reading about Tey I came across an interesting point. In her first detective novel, The Man in the Queue, published in 1929 under the name she used as a playwright and novelist, Gordon Daviot, part of the problem that faces Inspector Alan Grant is the lack of any identification on the victim. There are, for instance, no laundry marks on his clothes. Not a detail that could be used by detective writers these days: we no longer send our shirts, handkerchiefs or other parts of our apparel to the laundry, using washing machines at home or in the nearest launderette. There are, of course, dry cleaners and some clothes do have to go to them but that is a much less reliable form of identification.

That set me thinking about other details of evidence that can no longer be used by detective story writers but were so very popular in the thirties and even the forties. Monograms, for instance. Who on earth has his or her luggage, handkerchiefs, underwear and, in the case of certain very unreliable characters, both male and female, their specially made cigarettes monogrammed?

Then there are bigger issues: train timetables. Inspector French solved many a case in Freeman Wills Crofts's novels by co-ordinating trains whose arrivals and departures could be predicted with the use of the published time table. Imagine trying to do that nowadays. Imagine being the criminal planning an elaborate heist or murder, using that timetable, only to find that the original train has been cancelled and the one that was running later was so delayed that the connection was missed.

Mind you, there were problems even in those halcyon days. In Murder at the Vicarage (1930) Griselda Clements, the vicar's young and irresponsible wife, tells everyone that she came home from London, it being a day when you could get a cheap daily excursion ticket, with a certain train. Miss Marple, on the other hand, knows that the train was late so if Griselda was seen in the village at the "right" time she must have returned with an earlier trains. Sure enough she had done just that in order to carry out a somewhat dubious though not criminal plan with the vicar's nephew.

Then there is a question of postal delivery. I vividly recall a short story by Margery Allingham where the solution depends entirely on when the evening post is delivered in a certain street. First of all, what is this concept, the evening postal delivery? Is there anyone still alive who remembers it? Secondly, the notion that anyone, let alone the man who runs, as I recall the chemist's on the corner, should be able to tell you for certain, what time the post is delivered on any day, is so weird and wonderful as to belong to another genre, fantasy.

Delivery boys play a big part in various detective stories right up to the fifties. Messages are carried by the boy from the butcher, the fishmonger, the grocer to various houses and behaviour in those houses is noted by those self-same boys. We have delivery vans but I somehow do not think the driver from Waitrose or Tesco's is going to be much use to the detective, whether police or private. Then again, with the absence of those boys how would Miss Marple or even Miss Silver find out all that detailed information the police always misses?

... in 1874, Sir Winston Spencer Leonard Churchill. The current Conservative History Journal has a couple of extremely interesting articles about him that remind us of the fact that he remains a controversial figure as is right and proper.

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent. It was not the war to end all wars and we have had a number since then. But at that time we remember all the dead of all the wars and honour those who survived.

Dorothy L. Sayers, for reasons that are still debated by literary critics and historians, abandoned the writing of detective stories in 1937 though she continued to review other books in he genre and was very active in the Detection Club (here is my review of Martin Edwards's history of that august institution, in case anyone is interested). She became more interested in theological matters, social commentary and, eventually, translation of Dante. With C, S. Lewis and Charles Williams she became during the war a popular commentator from the right-wing perspective (unlike J. B. Priestley whom she greatly admired) and a popular theologian.

The long essay I have just finished reading, Begin Here, was commissioned and written at the end of 1939, during what is known as the "phony war" and published in early 1940. It was reprinted and republished many times during the no longer phony war, despite paper rationing.

In this Sayers tried to sum up what she felt had gone wrong with the country, its society and the its people and proposed some tentative ideas about what might have to be done after the war. It is curious how many people at various points of the political spectrum started thinking about post-war society almost as soon as the war began, there being a general assumption that this war would really change everything.

There are too many things in the book for me to discuss in just one posting but let me refer to something that amused me intensely and made me realize that some annoying aspects of our own society goes back a lot further than we sometimes think.

On pages 116 to 117 (I managed to find a copy of the Second Impression, from February 1940) we find the following, which will sound familiar to many people:

I am perpetually disquieted by the popular appetite for what is (horribly) called the "personal angle" on every question. This irrational obsession pervades the newspapers, makes the lives of public characters a burden to them, distracts public worship from its proper object, and is rapidly destroying the intelligence of the people.

It is as though nobody cred fro what is said, but only for who says it. an unsigned article in a newspaper carries no weight, however sound its arguments; except in those few national organs that are still read by highly educated people, articles on theology, drama, science, sociology, poetry or any other special subject have to be sponsored by "a name" if they are to attract attention - nor does it seem to matter in the least whether "the name" knows anything about the subject or not.

All questions of fact and all judgements calling for specialised experience must be referred to the people who have that special knowledge and experience. But when we have heard what they have to say, we must use our individual judgment as to the action to be taken, bearing always in mind the geral principles by which we have decided that the world should be governed.

We must also remember that an expert in one department is only an amateur in another; a biologist is no more specially qualified to pontificate about theology than a theologian to lay down the law about stage-management.

This, as it happens, came out before the second volume of Charles Moore's magisterial (the only word one can use) biography and concentrates on just two years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership: the first two, before she established her control over the party and laid the foundation for her achievements (or otherwise, if you happen not to like what she managed to do).

I found Kwasi Kwarteng's Thatcher's Trial on the shelves for new books of London Library and took it down immediately.

Thatcher's Trial is a short account of the six months which defined Thatcher as a leader. These six months started with the budget delivered on 10 March 1981 and ended with the reshuffle of her government which took place on 14 September. during this period, Margaret Thatcher showed herself to be inflexible, tough minded and courageous.

Her judgements were clear but often wayward; her self-belief sometimes faltered, although publicly she never let any hesitation blunt her message. She always conveyed an image of utter certainty, even when some of her closest allies openly expressed reservations.

His sacking was a notable scalp for the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer. To Margaret Thatcher, who was not so often as obviously class conscious, Soames gave 'the distinct impression' that he felt the natural order of things was being 'violated' and that he was, in effect, 'being dismissed by his housemaid'.

Soames decided to give Thatcher a piece of his mind as is reported to have 'assailed her for twenty minutes for her various shortcomings'. His irritation was manifest and it was said that his 'thunderous' and booming voice 'could be heard out of the open window halfway across Horseguards Parade.

Christopher Soames reportedly complained to friends that he would have sacked his gamekeeper with more courtesy than Mrs Thatcher had shown him (though why one should expect gamekeepers to be shown less courtesy than Lord Soames in matters of employment was not clear).

I have just finished proof-reading the forthcoming hard copy of the Conservative History Journal and I can tell you that there are lots of good things in it about Wellington, Churchill (several pieces), the First World War, curious nuggets from the party's history and a piece by me about Lady Knightley of Fawsley. (Yes, indeed, you have not heard the end of that subject.)

There is an interesting and entertaining piece by Charles Clarke (yes, that Charles Clarke), entitled 'David Cameron top of the league? You're having a laugh!'. It is based on a talk he gave at a symposium on Conservative Leaders at Queen Mary College in London last December and on work produced in a book he co-edited with Toby James, Tim Bale, Patrick Diamond, British Conservative Leaders.

What Clarke writes about in the article, backed by tables from Rallings and Thrasher's British Electoral Facts 1832 - 2012 is the relative placing of various Conservative Prime Ministers on the basis of how many seats and what proportion of the electoral vote they managed to gain.

So who do you think might be the top three? Well, number one is Sir Robert Peel who fought three elections and who oversaw the acquisition of 192 seats and a cumulative change in 21.5% of the votes in the Conservatives' favour. Number two is the Marquess of Salisbury who fought five elections and acquired 165 seats and 8.3% of the electoral vote for his party. And number three? Ha! I bet you cannot guess who it is. In fact, it is David Cameron with two elections, 133 seats and 4.5% of the vote.

When it comes to electoral changes rather than seats there is a slight confusion as the correlation is not that straightforward. Thatcher, with three elections, comes fourth in the number of seats (99) and in percentage of vote (6.5%) but Baldwin who comes fifth in number of seats (75) comes second in share of votes that changed to the Conservatives (15.8%). So the much despised David Cameron ranks third by seats and fifth by share of votes.

It so happens (she says casually) that I predicted that the Conservative would win the General Election of May 2015 and would be forming a government on their own. So all comments about how surprising the result was leave me cold or, to be precise, cold and disdainful. Not to some of us, it was not. But I had not realized Cameron's achievement as Leader until I read the article and looked at the figures.

Oh and if you are interested, Churchill comes fifteenth in ranking by seats, having cumulatively lost 108 over three elections and twelfth in share of votes, having lost 5.3%. Whatever one may think about him as a politician and a war leader (two very separate things) one thing we can say with certainty: he remained unpopular until he actually retired and was raised to the status of a political demi-god in the ten years between his retirement and his death.

Tomorrow is St Crispin's Day and 600 years ago it was the day upon which the Battle of Agincourt was fought. Here, as you would expect, is the speech made on the eve of the battle in Shakespeare's play by Sir Laurence Olivier:



And here is part of the battle from the same film:



One of the most famous battles in English history, a stupendous achievement by English arms but did it achieve anything? Well, it made the English temporarily victorious in the Hundred Years' War, created a great legend, which, oddly enough was largely true - the English and the Welsh army was considerably smaller than the French, which they defeated - and staved off the war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster.

Here is a useful account and a list of ten reasons why the French were defeated by numerically inferior forces.

in the Gallipoli campaign, bloody as it was, two-thirds of he two hundred thousand Allied casualties were caused by disease rather than enemy action.

Rupert's death would have counted for much less if he had been a conscript. As a volunteer, it mattered little that he had died of illness just before his fellow officers were mowed down by the Turks. He had chosen to face death for his country; his country had not chosen for him. And he had volunteered as a poet, who in his war sonnets had expressed the volunteer's creed of self-sacrifice. Nor did all war poetry need to be of that kind: the poets of disillusion - Sassoon, Graves, Owen - had been volunteers, too.

The 1914 - 15 generation of volunteers had a unique moral authority, sandwiched between the professionals of the British Expeditionary Force and the conscripts of 1916 - 18. No other belligerent country had met its wartime needs for soldiers in the British way; not coincidentally, none of those countries produced a comparable generation of poets. Whatever the excesses of Rupert's war poems, he still had his place in that lyrical flowering, without precedent before or since.

The British are famously indulgent when it comes to elderly politicians, turning them into cuddly national treasures regardless of what they did in their prime, especially if they are on the left. It happened to Tony Benn and Michael Foot, is happening to Shirley Williams and is even going to happen to Neil Kinnock.‎ Having reached the splendid age of 98 it was always going to happen to Denis Healey, but that doesn’t excuse the Sunday Times obituary by the novelist Robert Harris which described Healey’s five years at the Treasury in the 1970s as “bruising” when they were in fact catastrophic and humiliating for a western democracy.

They were the years of going cap in hand to the IMF, of the winter of discontent when the rubbish lay uncollected in the street and the dead went unburied, of the confiscatory 98 percent top rate of income tax when Healey deliberately chose to tax the rich till the pips squeaked (a phrase he unconvincingly afterwards denied using). All of these national humiliations were Healey’s fault, though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the adulatory obits on the BBC and other media.

Today Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes this country's longest serving monarch and she is celebrating that day in Scotland, in many ways a very appropriate thing to do. She is, as all but her most venomous opponents know, half Scottish. Recently I watched another production of Macbeth (a Chinese one by a theatrical company from Hong Kong, since you ask) and was once again amused by the witches' prediction that Banquo's descendants will rule the Kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland. Well, maybe they did for a while. But the Queen Mother was, before she became the Duchess of York, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the daughter of Lord Glamis (later the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the Peerage of Scotland). Elizabeth of Glamis, in other words. And who was the Thane of Glamis before he went on to bigger things and eventually his downfall? Macbeth.

I have selected some random pictures of Her Majesty, some better known than others:

The most appropriate reading matter at the moment is The Tory World, edited by Professor Jeremy Black and published earlier this year. The book's subtitle is Deep History and the Tory Theme in British Foreign Policy, 1679-2014, which speaks for itself. It is a collection of essays by various luminaries (some more than others and none of them female) about Tory and Conservative ideas about foreign policy, not as simple a subject as it might appear to those who think only in terms of Disraeli or Churchill.

In fact, on reading the Introduction by Professor Black himself, I recalled a conversation I had with Professor John Charmley, who has made a few appearances on this blog already, in which he argued forcibly that we  misunderstand Conservative thinking about foreign policy because we concentrate on the adventurous, often imperialist and always pro-active ideas of such people as Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill. In the light of that, I am looking forward to reading Richard Toye's chapter in this collection, entitled Winston Churchill - Conservative or Liberal Imperialist?.

Here is Professor Black's definition of 'deep history' or, at least, an attempt at a definition. Thus, the extent to which there is 'deep history' in Conservative views on the outside world and to which views on this subject provide a 'deep history' and continuity for Conservatism, are central issues. 'Deep history' is the long-term, seemingly inherent assumptions, the emotions of policy that help create teh context for the politics of the shorter term.

Working on an article about the prominent Conservative activist Lady Knightley of Fawsley who has been ignored by feminist historians for far too long I came across an interesting quotation in the first volume of her diaries, edited by Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady) and published in 1915, two years after the diarist's death.

The entry is for July 30, 1860 when the then Miss Louisa Bowater was eighteen years old, well educated (at home), widely read and fascinated by many things: politics, religion, art, literature and social matters as well as day to day gossip and entertainment. From the age of fourteen she had kept a meticulous diary that is not only very well written but is a fascinating source of information about life and political matters of the period.

This is what Miss Bowater wrote that evening:

I was in great luck this evening for my cousins Charles and Harriet Ridley came down for the night, and at dinner I sat between Charles and Mr Hough, the Vicar of our church at Ham, with Harriet on the other side. The two latter had not been together many minutes before they were deep in theology, and presently I contrived to get a word in. We discussed Kingsley first of all. Mr Hough knows him intimately, and says he is a most extraordinary mixture, a rationalist and man of very unsound principles, an inveterate sportsman, greatly in earnest and at the same time undoubtedly attractive.

The word 'earnest' made Mr Hough remark that a great deal of mistaken homage is paid to earnestness without much regard to what the earnestness is about. I said, surely there was more hope of a man who was really in earnest about something, becoming earnest about the best things, than of a trifler. He disagreed, saying that the more firmly a man was wedded to wrong opinions the more difficult it was to turn him from these.

Tory Historian’s own view that a good deal of trouble has come from Sir Isaiah Berlin, who first popularized Herzen and his successors in the West in the twentieth century. This was real popularization. No university course on Russian history managed to get by without studying Russian Radical Thought. And Sir Isaiah’s admiration prevailed. He ignored the nastier aspects of that thought and concentrated on what he saw as the nobility of the struggle. Our perceptions of Russian history are still coloured by that.

It is the Folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the Kingdom. 

He attempts to disarm and persuade with the aid of every cunning literary device. The insidious conjunction of adjectives in his essay on the St Bartholomew Massacre - 'holy deceit'. 'pious dissimulation', 'cruel clemency', 'inhuman mercy' - subtly suggests moral disorientation and reinforces the central thesis of the Counter-Reformation's perversion of religious faith.

In private correspondence, especially, he rarely enters a qualifying clause and the unequivocal assertions harden into ruthless gems. His editors Figgis and Laurence, asserted euphemistically that Acton was not prone to doubts; the more detached Henry Sidgwick observed that he threw off highly questionable assertions as if they were trite commonplaces. Readers of Acton should always beware and be on their guard.

He [Acton, obviously] leaves an uncertain legacy: an unobtainable ideal and a life and writings whose flaws exemplify its impossibility. But perhaps his sublime confidence is a worthwhile corrective to the more prevalent vanity of misguided humility. Acton's historical vocation was shaped from his childhood. He possessed the necessary fascination and respect for facts and for details of the actual.
....
He possessed a highly developed sense of historical continuity and was intensely aware that the unseen past was always present and weighed down upon us. He wished to reimagine and recreate that elusive but significant past, and its physical remains helped to evoke it: the singed volume which Servetus carried with him to the stake that Acton inspected in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the yellowing plumes on Henry IV's armour which he saw in the Venice arsenal, the almost perfectly preserved remains of Tilly, the imperial commander during the Thirty Years' War.

He believed that a study of the past bestowed an extra sense, which enabled the historian, steeped in time and the specific, to step outside it altogether. Why wait for posterity's judgement on Mr Gladstone? Following an earlier conversation, Acton offered it at once: 'shut your eyes to my handwriting,' he wrote to Mary Drew, 'and ... you shall hear the roll of the ages.' By a strange alchemy a contemplation of the unique and particular allowed the historian to escape the temporary and the transient, and to fasten on abiding issues. History redeemed man from time.

The character and achievement of Lord Acton, quondam Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (though he had not been allowed to study there as a Roman Catholic) and editor of the Cambridge Modern History remain fascinating and controversial among historians. On the whole he is now considered to be of greater significance than he was at one time when all his work had been dismissed by such men as G. R. Elton and A. J. P. Taylor. There have been numerous books written about hims and most of his writings, including letters have been published.

I was rather pleased to find a short summary of his life and work by Hugh Tulloch, published in the series Historians on Historians. (In fact, I am now on the look-out for other volumes in the series). Tulloch's attitude, as he says himself, wavers between admiration and dislike, thus making it possible for him to give a more or less objective account of this complex man and his voluminous writings (oh yes, he did write).

This is what he says at the end of the introductory chapter, which charts Acton's reputation during his live and after his death:

For I do not believe that he was whig or naive, innocent or optimistic, and in hoping to rescue him from his detractors I have had to to treat him in a profoundly un-Actonian way. He always insisted that the historian must disappear entirely from his history:  I am unable to separate the two. Despite his many disavowals, the man and the historian were not distinct, nor were his historical writings separate from his personal history.

At each juncture of his life, as combative Catholic, as arch-enemy of ultramontanism, as Gladstonian Liberal, the pressures of his current preoccupations subtly intrude, moulding and distorting his vision. I hope that a study of the historian enmeshed in his time will contribute towards a clearer and more balanced understanding.

This underlines a basic point about the First World War: contrary to the near-universal assumption in the English-speaking world, the war was first and foremost an eastern European conflict. Its immediate origins lat in the murder of the Austrian heir at Sarajevo in southeastern Europe. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, led to a confrontation between Austria and Russia, eastern Europe's two great empires. France and Britain were drawn into what started as a conflict in eastern Europe above all because of fears for their own security: the victory of the Austro-German alliance over Russia would tilt the European balance of power decisively towards Berlin and Vienna.

I hesitated whether this should come in this series of articles or not as it is a short piece, linked to an article by an historian who is most definitely not a Conservative and raises a question about modern politics. However, the article by Linda Colley, the well known historian, links present day arguments to Magna Carta and who am I to disagree with that.

The article is well worth reading in full as it quotes various constitutional historians and thinkers with great verve and knowledge. Essentially, Professor Colley argues that Britain's exceptionalism in that the country with some of the oldest constitutional documents in modern history has no written constitution has to be brought to an end. Britain must have a written constitution, especially as, Professor Colley argues, Scotland is probably about to have one.

There are one or two points on which I disagree with Professor Colley if I may be so bold and, indeed, insolent. In the first place, the idea of an independent Scotland has been put on what might be called a back burner since the referendum in which the Scots voted with a handsome majority in favour of staying in the United Kingdom. In any case, the offer of independence within the EU was a constitutional oxymoron.

Secondly, it is not entirely true that Britain has no written constitution. She does not have a single constitutional document along the lines of the United States Constitution and it might be a very good idea to acquire one. I see no particular need for a Constitution like the French one, which has been re-written on a number of occasions and that applies to most others that are around. But the American one is important, particularly as it and its first ten Amendments, better known as the Bill of Rights, utilized many English ideas.

Britain has a series of constitutional documents, of which Magna Carta is the first (well, more or less) and one of the most important ones. There are many others and the present government is suggesting that we should add to it with a new Bill of Rights. I wonder if Professor Colley agrees with that idea. Somehow I suspect that she might prefer the Human Rights Act and its overarching document the European Charter of Human Rights. But I may be wrong.

That brings me to the most important problem: we do, as it happens have a written Constitution and that is the Consolidated European Treaties, which are the Constitution for the EU and its Member States. For some reason Professor Colley does not refer to it.

Whether we need a single written constitution or not (and that needs to be discussed) there is no point to it while we are in the European Union, while European legislation comes above British Parliamentary legislation, while the ECJ and the ECHR are considered to be superior to British courts and while the Consolidated Treaties remain the overarching constitutional document. Is Professor Colley arguing for Brexit?

Tory Historian's interest in the history of food ought to be well known to readers of this blog though not much has been written about that recently. But a new book on the subject is always good news, especially when that books is by the great Massimo Montanari.

The obscure Middle Ages and the luminous one live side by side today in the collective imagination, which has digested and assimilated both premises, blending them in an unforeseeable manner. But when it comes to food, the Middle Ages are decidedly and exclusively good, for they represent the nostalgic dream of a pure and uncontaminated past that guarantees authenticity and quality.

Things change when the marketing of the Middle Ages introduces theme events, festivals, and rural and municipal feasts - all very common in many European countries - offering historical processions with ladies in costume, knights in noble combat, archery contests, games in the central square along with reconstructions of artisans's shops and markets and all kinds of amenities under the aegis of a Middle Ages filled with warmth and goodness, genuine humanity and profound sentiments. During those festivals, however, even the other Middle Ages are revealed (and later become preponderant), reflecting the obscure and malevolent, with their classic stereotypes of black magic, witches, torture, poisoning and exorcisms of fears and anxieties that are in us but that we prefer to relegate to a finished past.

Even gastronomy enters into this world of festivals when the tenebrous Middle Ages cohabit with the luminous Middle Ages. this would seem to be the "good" side, with its habitual trousseau of platitudes about the healthfulness, tastiness, and purity of medieval food. But beware: here, we are no longer talking about simple products, or products that boasts "medieval origins". Here, we are talking about cuisine and recipes prepared in the medieval manner, or presumed such.