Conservative History Journal

Robin Harris will address the Bruges Group

2012-01-26T14:59:00.001Z

For those readers who will be in or around London on February 1: Robin Harris, author of the monumental new history of the Conservative Party, will be addressing the Bruges Group that evening on the subject of

The Political Class and their Support for the EU.

He ought to know. The other speaker will be Simon Heffer, journalist, polemicist and historian. Tickets: £10 to be paid at the door but that will include drinks afterwards.

Tory Historian's blog: A fascinating source

2012-01-25T01:44:00.000Z

Tory Historian's attention was called to a fascinating source for the study of conservative history. The Duke University Press has set up a site on which you can read Thomas Carlyle's letters on line. The collection is excellently catalogued and the site is easy to navigate. One almost wishes that one was a student of Carlyle. However, this has also reminded TH of the need to visit Carlyle's house in Chelsea. A report from there will follow.

Significant dates

2012-01-24T00:59:00.000Z

It is some time since this site has noted significant dates and it is time to do so again. Yesterday was the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which ended the War of Spanish Succession and gave Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain. As we know, Gibraltar is still British and its population has no desire to be anything else. Next year we shall all be celebrating the 300th anniversary.

Today, on the other hand is an anniversary of greater sadness: the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965. The idea that any readier of this posting might not know a great deal about him is preposterous (though there is no need for all those bogus quotes). The picture is not of him but of his funeral, the cranes of London docks bowing as the Havengore takes his body to Waterloo station, a moving and unforgettable sight.

ADDENDUM: I have just been reminded of something I ought to have remembered anyway. Today is also the anniversary of the death of Lord Randolph Churchill, who died exactly seventy years before his son.

Tory Historian's blog: Burke on good people and bad

2012-01-20T12:40:00.001Z

Like everyone else, Tory Historian has had to put up with many misquotes and near-guesses of what Edmund Burke said about a number of things. It was, therefore, an enormous pleasure for TH to read the following accurate quotation from Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke's own words are, as one would expect, clearer and more sonorous than all the paraphrases other people might produce to further their own arguments.

Can we define conservatism?

2012-01-20T00:54:00.001Z

Robin Harris's history of the Conservative Party is hefty but so well written that it is a pleasure to it. Once finished, there will be a longish piece on it. In the meantime, I was interested to find a quote in the Introduction from the great conservative thinker, Michael Oakeshott.

To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances. With some people this is itself a choice; in others it is a disposition with appears, frequently or less frequently, in their preferences and aversions, and is not itself chosen or specifically cultivated.

This is an attractive philosophy but is not, and cannot be a political ideology, let alone the basis for policy making. After all, there is just the possibility that what is in place is not quite what any true conservative would want to preserve. Then what?

Thoughts on the Diamond Jubilee

2012-01-18T00:53:00.000Z

With the Diamond Jubilee rapidly approaching, Peter Whittle, Director of the New Culture Forum put up an excerpt from his recent book, Monarchy Matters. Here are a few paragraphs:

The monarchy is the embodiment of our history. That history is now woefully under-taught in our state school system (one recent poll showed that a large number of children were under the impression that Churchill was a nodding toy dog in a TV advertisement). Too much of our educational establishment has instead concentrated on forms of social engineering. Pupils are leaving school without the most basic knowledge of key dates and events in our history. Newcomers are given little idea of what they should be integrating into. Could not the jubilee be the perfect inspiration, the ideal moment, for a popular celebration of our national story?

This could be done in simple yet effective ways. For example, could we not see the formation of acting troupes, who would visit schools across the country to present accessible, entertaining and informative shows that depict the great historical personalities and moments in British history? This can work wonders for children’s imaginations: I vividly recall, as a primary-school kid, learning about our maritime history in just such a way. And why not revive the old tradition of presenting each schoolchild with a free jubilee mug? For a modern twist, there could be a competition for the children themselves to design it.

The past decade has seen a boom in public sculpture: more has been erected in our towns and cities in ten years than in the whole of the past century. So much of it is banal – meaningless to the people who live with it and too often the result of entrenched social and political agendas, which are, in any case, fast falling out of fashion. Could not the jubilee see a flowering of new commemorative public art, of the type that has been a feature throughout our history – fountains, obelisks or just simple statues? It could be financed by public and private subscription, which has been the basis for some of our most famous monuments and statues.

Talk of sculpture brings me to a final thought. Would it not be good, one day, to see a likeness of the Queen occupying the now famous fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square? That this might indeed happen has been rumoured in recent times, but so far nothing has been confirmed. Of late that empty platform has been a temporary home to various waifs and strays – nebulous concepts that are literally immaterial, ‘challenging’ ideas that fail to challenge, gimmickry and trivial personal preoccupations. It would be both popular and appropriate to install a permanent, regal statue of our Queen. But perhaps her reign needs to be at an end before that could happen. In which case, the longer we have to wait, the better. Trafalgar Square is the most famous public space in the country, and it is what we show the world when it visits. It is a meeting place, the town square of the capital, which also celebrates our past. But our history carries on. And there could be no better affirmation.'

How could one not agree?

Tory Historian's blog: An interesting new blog

2012-01-17T12:09:00.002Z

Tory Historian came across a potentially very interesting new blog, called 80 Libraries: The Quest. The idea, it would appear is to blog about eight libraries around the world. (One wonders whether Jules Verne ever realized the sheer brilliance of his title.)

It is, in itself, a fascinating idea. Tory Historian wishes the blogger well and will be watching future postings. In addition, the first library is one TH is very fond of, the London Library. The descriptions and pictures are delightful and well worth reading and looking at. There is a slight problem: the links at the bottom do not actually link to anything. Clearly, the author had forgotten to put up the URLs. How different from Tory Historian's efficiency.

For anyone interested here is the link to the London Library blog.

Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797

2012-01-12T16:53:00.001Z

Today is the birthday of one of the greatest of the conservative political thinkers in the Anglosphere, though contrary to what some ignorant people maintain, Edmund Burke was a Whig not a Tory. His ideas on freedom, English enlightened virtues and the role of the state remain as valid and important as when they were first voiced. (Though, to be fair, one must deplore his role in the politically motivated and entirely dishonourable attempt to impeach Warren Hatings.)

History is always repeating itself

2012-01-12T14:58:00.000Z

The two great Russian questions are: Who is at fault and What is to be done.

Кто виноват? is a novel by Alexander Herzen. Based on various personal experiences, it is his only foray into the writing of fiction (one has to assume that his various autobiographical volumes are more or less accurate) and not his best work. However, it is considerably better than Что делать? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, a most appallingly boring novel with no fewer than four dreams by the heroine Vera Pavlovna and one that Dostyevsky mocked and attacked mercilessly. Astonishingly enough, given that it was written and read at a period when Russian literature produced one genius after another, this long and hectoring work was taken up and eagerly adopted as a secular bible by the Russian radical intelligentsia, particularly its younger members. This perverseness may well account for why things went so badly wrong in Russia.

The title was subsequently adopted by V. I. Lenin (the anniversary of whose death is coming soon) and the best one can say for his tract of the need for a revolutionary party to lead the populace to where they do not want to go is that it is shorter than Chernyshevsky's novel.

Both these questions were asked yesterday after a talk given by Luke Harding, the Guardian journalist who has had the distinction of being the first hack to be expelled from post-Soviet Russia for writing things that the authorities were not happy about, in London's Pushkin House. As it happens, he had no answer. Why Russia has gone the way it has in the last twenty years is a question that needs many hours of cogitation and discussion. Many people are at fault and by now it has become quite difficult to work out what can be done to start remedying the situation.

Mr Harding's talk was interesting and centred on his personal experience from which he drew a number of obvious conclusions about Russia and its governing elite. He also mentioned his predecessors as Guardian correspondents in the Soviet Union, Arthur Ransome and Malcolm Muggeridge. He did not go into details but, had he done so, he might have noted that while the first one of those swallowed the Bolshevik line completely, to the point of becoming an agent of the Cheka while the second one (and he did refer to this) famously went as a convinced supporter, became disillusioned and was one of the first writers to tell the truth about Stalin's monstrous regime.

Mr Harding, however, did not mention any journalists who had, like him, been expelled from Russia or the Soviet Union. It is, therefore, worth pointing out that the first of those was D. D. Braham of the Times, who was expelled in 1903 for writing unfavourably about the pogroms and the subversion of the Finnish constitution.

Dickens Museum to be refurbished

2012-01-07T02:32:00.000Z

Tory Historian wrote some while ago about visiting Dickens Museum on a Boxing Day and about George Orwell's essay about the great writer. That led to a very interesting discussion. However, yesterday's London Evening Standard had an item about the museum, wondering why it will be shut for refurbishment for most of the year, which just happens to be one dedicated to Charles Dickens.

The counter-argument was worthy of consideration:

Dr Florian Schweitzer, director of the Charles Dickens Museum, apologised to those upset about the timing of the £3.2 million renovation. "In our opinion this is the best year to do it, because there will be many other Dickens exhibits available," he said. "When everything winds down we'll be back with more facilities and an even stronger offering." The refurbishment includes an expansion into the building next door to make the museum look more like it did when Dickens was alive.

Dr Schweitzer added that the museum would arrange pop-up collections around the country during the six months it is closed.

Somehow pop-up collections do not seem entirely appropriate but the argument that this might be a good time to refurbish the museum has some merit.

Tory Historian could not forebear from laughing at the following, though:

A spokeswoman for the Dickens Fellowship said: "It seems ridiculous that so many people will be coming to London for the Olympics but that they won't be able to enjoy one of the world's most important centres for Dickens lovers."

The idea that people who will be coming for the Olympics are likely to spend time searching for Charles Dickens's one remaining London home and the exhibitions in it is too funny for words.

What better way of wishing a happy new year ...

2012-01-05T13:58:00.001Z

... than a collection of photographs from the early twentieth century. An article in the Daily Mail with some very fine examples of early colour photographs from the collection of the millionaire Albert Kahn (who died in 1940) led Tory Historian to the actual website, which gives an account of M. Kahn's biography, interest in photography and the subsequent fate of the photographs. The BBC is doing something very useful by publishing a selection of them and doing a programme on the subject. One can only hope that the intrepid BBC researchers will be able to come up with some better accounts of where and when the pictures were taken than the Daily Mail has. It is to be assumed, for instance, that the picture above is from 1918 but that is not entirely clear from the description.

Merry Christmas from Tory Historian

2011-12-24T19:16:00.001Z

Tory Historian's blog - Newsreels of the past

2011-12-23T01:33:00.000Z

Tory Historian happens to be what is vulgarly described as a sucker for newsreels of the past. What a joy it is, therefore, to find two videos on the History Today blog, one of people celebrating in the streets in 1918 on hearing that the war is finally over and the other is a longish piece of various dignitaries arriving for the Versailles Conference. There is even a sequence of the documents being signed. One wonders where the Pathé News cameraman is standing as the pictures always seem to be above and behind everybody else.

Prime Minister's Questions

2011-12-21T19:08:00.001Z

Or PMQs as they are known not so affectionately. Tory Historian's Blog mentioned the fiftieth anniversary of this tradition before. Nevertheless, a section on the Parliamentary website seemed like a good opportunity to revive the subject. There are many interesting links in the piece, but it is somewhat unfortunate that it is so badly written and edited.

There is, for example a reference to a Parliamentary Breifing Note. Really, that rule ought to be known by people who work in the House of Commons. And what does the first sentence mean?

"The 24 October 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Prime Minister's Question Time as a permanent parliamentary event." The 24 October 2011? Dear me.

Still, there are many gems of interest to people who find parliamentary history and traditions interesting. Go to it with a will, say I.

Tory Historian's blog - Quotation from James Madison

2011-12-16T14:45:00.004Z

In Federalist 51, James Madison (or it might have been Alexander Hamilton) wrote:‎

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Tory Historian has always though that it is the practical and rational attitude of the Founding Fathers to the people (or the People, if one prefers) which is so attractive about their ideas. Here were no utopian idealists who saw what they wanted to see but hard-headed individuals who knew that there was no such thing as an ideal politician or an ideal voter.

There is a good deal of grievance around

2011-12-15T21:16:00.002Z

Jeremy Black, a conservative historian who is probably a member of the Conservative Party as well, writes in History Today about the grievance industry.

Grievances are a characteristic of post-Cold War history, as various ‘liberated’ peoples have adopted historical claims in the service of their political goals. The end of the Cold War discredited Marxism as an official creed and lessened its influence as a basis for analysis, resulting in a major shift away from the understanding of society linked at an international level to the expression, revival or rise of national grievances, notably within Eastern Europe.

Grievances provide an easy way to mobilise identity and expound policy; and the use of grievance in this fashion by one party encourages its use by another. The copy-cat nature of public history has become very apparent, as in rival Chinese and Japanese accounts such as those inspired by recent territorial disputes in the East China Sea. Grievance becomes a means both to interrogate the past and to deploy the past to justify current actions.

Using the past to justify actions in the present is a very old game, indeed. As old as history itself. It is possible that the number and frequency of grievances aired in the public sphere has multiplied since the end of the Cold War but, on the whole, I think not.

Public grievances seem to multiply in direct relation to the compensation available, either in financial or political terms. Sometimes that compensation is simply the demand that certain, otherwise unpalatable, actions be condoned as the Chinese government expects and receives from numerous commentators.

Sometimes it is a question of simple acknowledgement as, I think and hope, with the Armenians and the 1915 massacre, though the insistence on that insidious word "genocide" makes one wonder. Frequently, however, it is a demand for more direct compensation with money or land. Why I do not think this is a particularly post-Cold War phenomenon is because there is one set of horrors for which precious little compensation has been paid out in any shape or form, and that is horrors imposed by Communist regimes.

Art confiscated by Communist governments has not been restored and there are no signs that it will ever happen; property confiscated is supposed to be restored in theory but in practice it rarely happens, unless some particular national group can be blamed; apologies have been half-hearted and attempts to air those grievances in international bodies have not had much success. There is, indeed, no point in producing those historic grievances if the perpetrators are not listening.

Tory Historian's blog - C. S. Lewis on impulses

2011-12-14T14:40:00.002Z

Tory Historian finds a great deal of C. S. Lewis's writing entertaining and instructive. A copy of Mere Christianity, the published version of Lewis's extremely successful wartime broadcasts on religion and morality has produced many gems.

Lewis says that some people have suggested to him that moral judgement that we all, according to him, have is, perhaps, just an instinct like other instincts. Not so, replies he. Instincts are like the notes in music but it is moral judgement that tells us how to play them. Left to themselves, instincts will not guide us and they never do. Even the best instincts can steer us in the wrong direction.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of these that will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

This is a phenomenon we have all become very familiar.

Tory Historian's blog - Who is to pay for the arts?

2011-12-07T16:07:00.003Z

News comes of two incredibly principled poets, who, one assumes, fight like anything for their various fees and royalties, withdrawing from the T. S. Eliot poetry prize, because ... oh fie ... it is now sponsored by nvestment management firm Aurum Funds. Oh, oh, oh. Smelling salts someone, please.

The Poetry Book Society negotiated the three-year sponsorship deal with Aurum earlier this year. The deal followed the withdrawal of its Arts Council funding – a move protested by over 100 poets including Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage.

Kinsella told the Bookseller that he "fully" understood why the poetry organisation had looked elsewhere for funding, "given the horrendous way they were treated, but as an anticapitalist in full-on form, that is my position".

"Hedge funds are at the very pointy end of capitalism, if I can put it that way," he added.

Oswald, who pulled her collection Memorial from the prize on Tuesday, believes that "poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions".

TH is a little confused. It would appear that when "such institutions" give money voluntarily to sponsor a poetry competition, that is wrong and evil but if money is extracted from them by the state in the form of taxes and then handed over in the form of subsidy, that is good.

All one can say is that it is a good thing that people like Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo did not think along those lines. Neither did T. S. Eliot, as it happens. He spent a good part of his life working in a bank and then running a publishing firm that made profits.

Seventy years ago

2011-12-07T11:02:00.003Z

USS West Virginia:

USS Shaw:

USS Arizona:

Pictures of Pearl Harbor devastation, courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command

Detective stories are essentially conservative

2011-12-05T14:29:00.003Z

Tory Historian has mentioned before (here and here, for instance) that detective stories are the most conservative of literary genres. And here is an article I wrote on it last week for Taki's Magazine.

Consider what happens in a detective story, even a modern one that purports to have a leftward (or “enlightened”) leaning: A crime, probably murder, is committed, possibly followed by similar crimes. The world is turned upside-down as a result. Together with the detective, we cannot rest until the perpetrators are discovered and brought to justice. The perpetrator is at the very least prevented from repeating the crime. Human life is sacrosanct. Murder is wrong, no matter how you look at it. It is the ultimate crime. It destroys nature’s balance, which can be restored only by the culprit’s discovery and his or her punishment. In a century that saw the casual elimination of millions of people, this highly moral attitude became and remained attractive to many people. This has continued into the new century, which has not started off too well.

Do read the article. The more hits it gets the better it is for yours truly.

John O'Sullivan reviews Robin Harris

2011-11-29T01:27:00.003Z

Have not yet read Robin Harris's The Conservatives - A History. In the meantime here is John O'Sullivan's excellent review that makes one want to rush out and get the book immediately.

Anniversary - two important Parliamentary events

2011-11-28T21:41:00.002Z

November 28 is a double anniversary. In 1919 the first woman MP actually to take up her seat in the House of Commons was elected. Nancy Astor contested the seat of Plymouth South after her husband had succeeded to the title and went up to the House of Lords. She beat the Liberal candidate, Isaac Foot and, as the left-wing Spartacus Educational reminds us, her victory annoyed many professed feminists as she was definitely not one of them and a Conservative to boot. Also an American but she had made her home in Britain.

Time went on but left-wing attitudes did not change and similar attacks were directed at the first woman Prime Minister of this country, also a Conservative but in no way American, Margaret Thatcher. November 28, 1990 was the day on which she formally tendered her resignation to the Queen. Many of us can remember the shock of the occasion.

Tory Historian's blog - Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T14:13:00.002Z

There have been previous postings about Thanksgiving and its significance both for the United States and the Anglosphere in general. (here, here and here)

This time Tory Historian brings to the notice of all the First Thanksgiving Proclamation - June 20. 1676. This was not, as it happens, the first celebration of Thanksgiving, which took place in 1621, to celebrate a bountiful harvest. Interestingly, it was not till 1942 that the exact timing of Thanksgiving - last Thursday in November - was fixed by Federal law.

Happy Thanksgiving to all in the Anglosphere.

The teaching of history

2011-11-23T00:50:00.003Z

Another topic that needs to be covered at length on this site (and if any reader wants to pitch in with a few paragraphs, these will be much appreciated). To start with, here are Sir David Cannadine's comments as his new book, The Right Kind of History, is published. It is a history of history teaching in this country and a review copy is on its way to me. So I shall be able to write about the book itself.

In the meantime, what has Sir David to say about the present and the future of history teaching in British schools?

According to the BBC and the Guardian, he is advising the government, who is carrying out a revision of the curriculum to leave the content alone but to make the subject compulsory right until 16.

If we must have a compulsory curriculum then history should most definitely be part of it but is there any point in making it compulsory if the content is so poor. If children learn no dates, no consecutive knowledge of events and acquire no understanding of what happened in this or any other country then making that compulsory will not improve matters. Those of us who are not Princeton professors know that, in this case, Michael Gove happens to be right, when he says that

A generation of children knows virtually nothing about British history and leaves school "woefully under-nourished", Education Secretary Michael Gove warned today.

Even university students studying the subject are failing to recall basic historical facts, he said. Mr Gove said that around half of young people were unaware that Nelson led the British to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, or that the Romans built Hadrian's Wall.

Even if they happen to have heard of those particular facts they rarely have an idea of which of them came first as history is taught, if at all, in bits and unrelated pieces. Time, surely, to take the problem seriously. Perhaps, my idea of setting up a school or college that taught only history to all those who are willing to pay should be thought about more seriously.

Anniversary - November 22, 1963

2011-11-22T13:12:00.003Z

As it happens there were two events of some importance on that day, both deaths, though the immediate reporting for many days, weeks, months and, it sometimes feels, even years, has concentrated on one: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

This blog refuses to go into any conspiracy theories, especially as most of them have been disproved by recent re-examination of the evidence, and would merely like to point out that the way political attitudes seemed to be one year before the election, Kennedy seemed reasonably certain to lose. Of course, many things could have happened.

However, there is no question that the assassination of the American President in broad daylight while he was being driven in an official motorcade, shocked the country and the world. It is fair to say that it was not Kennedy's presidency, which had its ups and downs, mostly downs, but his assassination that changed American politics though one hopes only temporarily.

The other event of that day was the death of C. S. Lewis, one of the best known children's writers, literary critics and popular Christian philosophers in the English-speaking world. His death was not dramatic but the outcome of a long illness and even longer refusal to look after himself properly.

This blog may have some reservations about Lewis's writings and even greater reservations about the sentimentalization of his life but has no doubts whatsoever that of the two men who died forty-eight years ago, he is the one whose name will continue to be honoured by people of all ages.

ADDENDUM: It has been pointed out to me that another important writer died on that day: Aldous Huxley of laryngeal cancer and, possibly, drug abuse in Los Angeles.

Tory Historian's blog - A great institution

2011-11-21T15:33:00.006Z

Tory Historian is a great supporter of the London Library, which is described by Wikipedia, probably accurately, as "the world's largest independent lending library, and the UK's leading literary institution".

Founded in 1841 by various people, but most notably Thomas Carlyle who was dissatisfied (as he so frequently was) with the British Library and did not, it is said, have enough books about the French Revolution, it has been at 14 St James's Square since 1845, always changing yet remaining the same. In the last few years a great deal of new space has been added through the purchase of an adjacent building and much construction and reconstruction the problems of which drove many members quite frantic. None of that work had been possible without the unparalleled generosity of Valerie Eliot, the great poet's widow, who donated £2.5 million. The new building, located behind the main St James's Square one, formerly known as Duchess House, is now called the T. S. Eliot House though TH would have preferred Old Possum House. Ah well, can't have everything.

This is what the Library itself has to say:

1841: As The London Library was founded in 1841 we've been taking a look at other significant literary events that took place in the same year and as well as being busy founding The London Library, Thomas Carlyle published On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History. Another early supporter of the Library, Charles Dickens, published The Old Curiosity Shop. In the same year Punch magazine was founded in London and Horace Greeley began publication of the New York Tribune.

Hmmm.

All one can add is that the library's history collection is magnificent but nothing can beat the Reading Room and its extraordinarily comfortable armchairs. Warning: do not sink into them if you do not wish to fall asleep.

Events - History in the Pub

2011-11-21T15:12:00.002Z

And why not? Pubs, in their many manifestations (yes, inns and public houses have changed over the centuries), are an intrinsic part of British history, different in different parts of the country.

London Historians are organizing a second History in the Pub event [scroll down to fourth item] on November 29, between 7 and 9 at The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, Spitalfields.

Here is an account of the first, highly successful event.

Tory Historian's blog - Duke of Wellington's funeral

2011-11-18T16:34:00.001Z

The Duke of Wellington, one of Tory Historian's heroes was a considerably more important politician (as well as an overwhelmingly important military commander) than TH had been led to believe at school. He was also a man who was admired unstintingly by all except the Radicals (and even they inclined to some admiration).

Sadly, none of that is true and Tory Historian needs to rethink everything read in those textbooks and heard in the lessons. It would appear that the Duke did have a great deal of political aptitude and a very good understanding of European affairs as well as a great fear (like most military men) of another European war. He was central to British politics for many years after Waterloo and went on serving as a public servant almost until the day of his death. Many of his political judgements were considerably more intelligent and penetrating than those of people on the other side who were the heroes of those long-ago school lessons.

His funeral on November 18, 1852 "caused as much of a stir in the mass media of 1852 as did Sir Winston Churchill's in the middle of the twentieth century". This link will lead to a list of references and illustrations in contemporary Illustrated London News. Here is a brief account of the funeral - it was the last heraldic state funeral held in Britain.

Tory Historian's blog - A terrible anniversary

2011-11-15T16:30:00.002Z

A massive 10 hour raid by the Luftwaffe left Coventry devastated on November 15, 1940.

John Bew on a great Conservative politician

2011-11-15T00:46:00.004Z

Viscount Castlereagh has never been given his full due by his own countrymen, argues Professor Bew in this article. There is, he says, an attempt to make him sound entirely relevant to the modern age but that is wrong, too.

The truth is that Castlereagh can be understood only as a product of the time in which he operated, rather than as a bearer of any timeless insights. Nonetheless, as his descendant, the Marchioness of Londonderry, argued in 1904, he was not ‘the old-fashioned Tory that ignorant opinion supposes’. Often presented as the enemy of Enlightenment, he travelled widely in Europe, read a broad range of literature and eschewed the anti-Catholicism of many of his peers in England and Ireland. He was convinced that the only approach that government could take towards religion was one of toleration and that each man had the right to make his peace with God on his own terms. True, he was an enemy of political reform, but this was because of the dangers of mob politics which he saw first-hand in Paris during the French Revolution and Ireland during the rebellion of 1798.

Thus Castlereagh’s mind was conservative and enlightened at the same time – and no less the one for being the other. ‘I think those people who are acquainted with me,’ he told the House of Commons in 1817, ‘will do me justice to believe that I never had a cruel or unkind heart.’

Professor Bew's own book will undoubtedly put the matter right. Well, we hope so, anyway.

Tory Historian's blog - The oldest shop in England

2011-11-14T01:54:00.001Z

Tory Historian was delighted to read this item in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago.

RJ Balson and Sons, a butchers based in Bridport, Dorset, boasts an astonishing history that is almost 500 years old.

Experts have traced the businesses roots back through 25 generations to when founder John Balson opened a stall in the town's market on South Street in 1535.
Since then dozens of family members have worked as butchers in the market town, passing their skills down the generations.

And 476 years later, the shop remains a thriving business and has been named Britain's oldest family run retailer.

The business has expanded and is thriving.

It has been in its present location since 1880, not far from its orginal location.

According to the Institute for Family Business, this makes it the oldest continuously trading family business in Britain.

The firm sells its produce, including 20 varieties of sausages such as els, boar and ostrich,l all over the world, with a large customer base in America.

It also sells exotic fare such as pheasants and guinea fowl but has remained close to its traditional roots.

One can but hope that the account books have been preserved somewhere for all the centuries. What a mine of fascinating information they would be.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

2011-11-11T01:06:00.000Z

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Fifty-five years ago

2011-11-04T00:20:00.000Z

The tanks came back. Budapest, November 4, 1956

P. D. James on the essence of detective fiction

2011-11-03T23:02:00.003Z

I am planning to have a series of articles about detective fiction on this site as it is, in my opinion, the most conservative of all genres, a proposition that I shall argue at a later date. As ever, this is also an appeal to readers: if there is anybody out there who is thinking of writing anything about a detective story or thriller writer or about the genre or any part of it in general, do please send it to me and I shall put it up on this site and publicize it as well as I can.

To start with I should like to quote P. D. James, possibly the best known and most highly regarded writer of detective fiction in Britain and other countries at present. A couple of years ago she wrote a slim volume (unlike her most recent novels, which are not just fat but obese) about the genre as a whole. I intend to write about this book as it is of interest to anyone who is interested in the genre and in conservative ideas. For the moment, however, I should like to quote two paragraphs that appear towards the end and sum up the subject:

And here in the detective story we have a problem at the heart of the novel, and one which is solved, not by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or persona disruption and chaos.

And if it is true, as the evidence suggests, that the detective story flourishes best in the most difficult of times, we may well be at the beginning of a new Golden Age.

One can but hope. We are sadly in need of some sort of a Golden Age.

Exhibitions - Royalist portraits of the Civil War

2011-10-31T17:31:00.006Z

Tucked away in one of the rooms on the second floor of the National Portrait Gallery there is a small exhibition. It takes up no more than half a not very large room and consists of four portraits, four engravings and another, separate engraving of the artist, William Dobson, who was born in 1611 and died in 1646, soon after the collapse of the Royalist cause and his return to London.

He had stayed with the King in Oxford as long as he could, painting portraits of Royalists, officers and politicians, and, back in London was imprisoned briefly for debts and died soon after his release, at the age of 36 and in poverty. It is fair to say that Royalist money was running out by the mid-forties but one wonders exactly how concerned either the King or the Prince of Wales were concerned with the fate of loyal servants.

There is a serious attempt being made to celebrate this talented English portraitist with various exhibitions and art-trails across the country. One can applaud that and we certainly hope that readers of this site will take note of whatever may be happening near them (if they happen to be in England).

His biography shows many gaps. Did he learn from Van Dyck directly or merely was influenced by the man's gemius? It is fair to say that Dobson's portraits eschew Van Dyck's elegance, which is, presumably, the result of conditions. Dobson was not painting the golden court of Charles I but the Royalistss besieged in Oxford, running out of money, support and, in the artist's case, painting supplies.

There is some evidence that after his return to London and release from prison he tried to revive his career. His name, as the brief biography points out, appears in the records of the London painters' guild, which would suggest that either his Royalist links were not known or, more likely, overlooked by the guild.

Another attempt by Royalist artists of various kind to earn money was to publish engravings. Several of Dobson's portraits were engraved by William Faithorne, who had fought in the Royalist army, had been captured at the end of Basing House siege and was actually in prison when he was making the engravements, published by Thomas Rowlett. As the notes for this part of the exhibition say,this may well have been an attempt for Royalists to earn some money after the defeat of the King's army.

Rowlett closed his publishing after the King's execution and the business was sold to Peter Stent who used some of the old plates, including one of Endymion Porter, which he reproduced as the Parliamentarian Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex.

The exhibition may be small but the portraits and engravings on display are very fine (the best one may well be that of Richard Neville, above) and there is a great deal of fascinating information.

Tory Historian's blog - A new Velazquez

2011-10-28T14:48:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian was thrilled to read yesterday in the Evening Standard that a previously unknown portrait by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez has been found among various paintings by a little known British artist, Matthew Shepperson, whose own work, about to be auctioned is unlikely to bring in more than a few hundred pounds apiece.

The BBC has the story as well:art

Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a black tunic and white collar, was previously owned by 19th Century British artist Matthew Shepperson.

It was discovered after a number of artworks by Shepperson were consigned for sale last year.

Further examination and an x-ray confirmed the work to be Velazquez.

The painting first came to attention when the current owner - a descendant of Shepperson - brought the works to Bonhams auction house in Oxford. In-house experts noticed the stylistic similarities to works by the Spanish master Velazquez.

It led to extensive research which was confirmed by Dr Peter Cherry - professor of art history at the University of Dublin and one of the world's foremost authorities on Velazquez - and then by the Prado Museum in Madrid, which carried out the technical analysis.

The portrait will be auctioned in December by Bonhams and is expected to fetch £3 million. As a corollary, there may well be a renewed interest in Matthew Shepperson's work as well, an example of which, the 1828 portrait of John Childs is here.

Tory Historian's blog - PMQs at 50

2011-10-27T00:59:00.002+01:00

Nigel Fletcher, Director of the Conservative History Group and new editor of the Conservative History Journal has an interesting piece about Prime Minister's Questions at the age of 50 (more or less). On the whole, he thinks the experiment has worked as it places the British Prime Minister, uniquely, in a position where he (or she, let us not forget) is bombarded by questions from the Opposition and sometimes his (her) own backbenchers. The fact that many of the questions are put-up jobs remains a minor detail.

Some themes that emerge are familiar: PMQs has become a circus; more heat than light; Punch and Judy… and so on. But there is also the positive view – that there are few if any other countries where the chief executive has to come to Parliament weekly to be questioned by their critics. Some would say this fact on its own – whatever the quality of the questions and answers- is a profound statement of representative democracy. I tend to agree.

We shouldn’t underestimate the symbolism of this political endurance sport. However grand and ‘Presidential’ a Prime Minister may aspire to be, the weekly bear-pit of the Commons reminds them from where they draw their authority. The US President may be obstructed and defeated by Congress, but on the rare occasions he turns up to address them he is treated with the full courtesy, bordering on reverence, due to a Head of State. The fact that the British Prime Minister can have the leader of the main opposition party literally shouting in his face may not be pretty, but it is important.

Hmm. That ignores the fact that the Prime Minister is not the Head of State and, also, that the American system is one of true separation of powers, perhaps a more useful check on Executive power than a weekly question session.

Fifty-five years ago

2011-10-23T02:11:00.002+01:00

It started with this

and went on to this. (And many other things that are less attractive.)

Budapest, October 23, 1956

Events - Pevsner and Victorian Architecture

2011-10-23T01:23:00.003+01:00

Following the publication of the highly praised biography of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner by Susie Harries, the Victorian Society will be holding a one-day seminar on October 29 about Pevsner and Victorian architecture. All details, including fees, place and time to be found through the link above. (Susie Harries's blog about Pevsner is here and very interesting it looks, too.)

Trafalgar Day

2011-10-21T12:55:00.001+01:00

October 21, 1805

Tory Historian's blog - Should historians speak on other matters?

2011-10-20T16:38:00.003+01:00

Tim Stanley, the Contrarian, has a good piece in History Today, which deals with the ridiculous issue of David Starkey's comment about the lootings of this summer, that

a particular sort of nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together'.

The ridiculousness does not come from the rightness or wrongness of that comment. There are good historical reasons for disagreeing with Mr Starkey; it comes from the curious reaction from various members of the pontificating classes, including, apparently and shamefully, historians.

Some people argued that the BBC should stop classing Starkey as a historian. Over a hundred academics signed an open letter that 'the BBC and other broadcasters think carefully before they next invite Starkey to comment as a historian on matters for which his historical training and record of teaching, research and publication have ill-fitted him to speak … We would ask that he is no longer allowed to bring our profession into disrepute by being introduced as "the historian, David Starkey".'

The man is unquestionably and historian though other historians may disagree with what he says. The idea that historians should not be allowed to comment and be described as such on matters that are outside their obvious competence is plainly ridiculous.

Some historians spread their interests more widely than just one period or geographic area. Andrew Roberts springs to mind. He has written about nineteenth century politics, twentieth century warfare, Napoleonic clashes and and update to Churchill's History of the English-Speaking People. He holds strong political opinions and often comments on current affairs. What, actually, is wrong with any of that.

As Tim Stanley points out, both Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper and A. J. P. Taylor were known to comment and to argue about many things outside their wide historic subjects. (It is a pity that one of Professor Trevor-Roper's involvements with modern politics was the Hitler diaries scandal and A. J. P. Taylor tended to talk unmitigated rubbish about current affairs.)

Tory Historian agrees: the notion of pigeon-holing historians according to what they may have studied at the beginning of their careers is not just ridiculous, it is destructive of the study of history and any growth of interest in the subject. Of course, one could argue that the letter probably came from historians who spend much of their time complaining about those of their colleagues who happen to have a popular following.

Tory Historian's blog - The Excitement of Cities

2011-10-18T14:33:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian is reading Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City, an unashamed and sometimes slightly too gung-ho praise of the idea and reality of the city in history. Not that TH disagrees with that; it's just that the language is sometimes immoderately joyful, a mode that is alien to TH. At an early stage, Glaeser says this:

I find studying cities so engrossing because they pose fascinating, important, and often troubling questions. Why do the richest and the poorest people in the world so often live cheek by jowl? How do once-mighty cities fall into disrepair? Why do some stage dramatic comebacks? Why do so many artisitic movement arise so quickly in particular cities at particular moments? Why do so many smart people enact so many foolish urban policies?

The last of those, TH thinks, begs the question of whether those people who enact foolish urban policies really are all that smart.

Tory Historian's blog - Belated Happy Birthday

2011-10-14T10:36:00.002+01:00

Actually it was yesterday but Tory Historian was busy with other non-cyber matters. A belated happy birthday to Baroness Thatcher, three-times Conservative Prime Minister and still an inspiration to many across the world, for yesterday.

Tory Historian's blog - Wyndham Lewis on extremism in art

2011-10-11T18:44:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian is something of a Wyndham Lewis fan, considering him to be one of the most underrated artists and writers of the twentieth century. Leafing through the 1954 collection of essays, first published in The Listener, entitled The Demon of Progress in the Arts, TH found a very fine piece, called The Glamour of the Extreme and was particularly taken by the second paragraph:

I have a friend who is a natural bourgeois. He was the son of a minor Eminence. At the university, during the fellow-travelling decade, he got in the habit of talking big and bloody about social revolution. He was not intelligent or mentally mature enough to udnerstand the guillotine and the firing squad; he had not even read Karl Marx. But for the rest of his life, and he is now over fifty, he has remained a sort of undergraduate communist

Well, thought Tory Historian, more than half a century later we still know people like that. Far too many of them.

An interesting article

2011-10-09T01:53:00.003+01:00

Children's literature, if it is to be successful with children has to tread a fine line between conservatism (which is what most children are most of the time) and subtle rebelliousness (which is what their parents are most of the time). The William Brown stories, written by a true-blue Conservative, Richmal Crompton, manage to tread that line very successfully, though there is the odd exception, as Derek Turner discusses in this highly entertaining and knowledgeable article on the writer and her work. The story of the Outlaws becoming the "Nasties" and deciding to attack Mr Isaacs's sweet shop is rather unpleasant but has a happy ending, but for many modern readers the unpleasantness negates the ending. It is an odd story, for it shows that Richmal Crompton was fully aware as early as 1934 the sheer nastiness of the Nazi regime, yet decided to make something light-hearted of it. This is not quite the same as William's on-off liking for the Communists as there are no details of Stalinist policy involved.

That is an unusual mis-step on Ms Crompton's part. The other stories are a delight, especially the ones of the thirties. Mr Turner does them justice with one exception: there is no mention of the wonderful Violet Elizabeth Bott. If she knew this she would thcream and thcream until she was thick.

And, of course, while we are on the subject of William Brown and the Outlaws, here is a link to a previous posting by Tory Historian.

Anniversary - Battle of Lepanto

2011-10-07T22:01:00.002+01:00

Fought 440 years ago on October 7, 1571 it is also the cause of a great poem by one of the most conservative poets of the twentieth century, G. K. Chesterton, published 100 years ago, in 1911 (well, not to the day).

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Events - A promising exhibition

2011-10-05T13:56:00.002+01:00

The National Portrait Gallery is a wonderful institution and is of great value to anyone who finds history and its players interesting. Its special exhibitions, on the other hand, are variable from that point of view and are too often merely collections of various glamour photographs of recent stars.

This exhibition, about to open, however, will be a collection of glamour portraits of the stars of the past.

The First Actresses presents a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain.

Taking centre stage are the intriguing and notorious female performers of the period whose lives outside of the theatre ranged from royal mistresses to admired writers and businesswomen. The exhibition reveals the many ways in which these early celebrities used portraiture to enhance their reputations, deflect scandal and create their professional identities.

Well, really, who can resist that?

Tory Historian's blog - Russian food and literature

2011-10-04T16:31:00.004+01:00

For various reasons to do with an article to be completed Tory Historian has been reading a fascinating book by Alison K. Smith, called Recipes for Russia, subtitled Food and Nationhood under the Tsars. It deals partly with attempts to discuss and reform agriculture in Russia in the nineteenth century and partly with the late development of cookery books from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, analyzing the links between agriculture or food and national identity.

Quoting others, Professor Smith describes the growth of Russian literature (also from the second half of the eighteenth century)

particularly the art of translating - became the source of a new image of the Russian nation as an imperializing and assimilating one. Incorporating foreign literary works into the Russian canon helped suggest the power of the Russian state, and its ability to borrow from abroad without losing its sense of self.

She then draws a parallel with writing about food:

Something rather similar developed on the tables of Russia's elite. By choosing to eat foods labeled [sic] Russian, even the westernized elite could still think of themselves as tied to the land. Or, alternatively, the persistence of Russian foods even among those whose dress, carriages, and even language had shifted enormously displays a raeal connection between Russians of different social estates. Whether mere façade, the mixture of foreign and native foods struck many foreign visitors as deeply disturbing.

For Russian authors, though, she adds, this was a source of pride as native Russian and foreign influences were combined to create a Russian cuisine beyond the old-fashioned, rather crude Russian cooking.

Tory Historian has read many accounts of Russia by foreign travellers and the number of things that disturbed these people is very high. One cannot really go by that, any more than by the fact that almost every national cuisine consists of many "native" dishes and others that became "native" at various times. However, Russian pride in ability to "borrow" and incorporate is real enough, especially at times when there is yet another drive to build up some kind of an official national identity.

Tory Historian's blog - Independence

2011-09-26T14:11:00.002+01:00

Every now and then one can find some truly useful information on Wikipedia. This list of the world's Independence Days, sent to Tory Historian by a well-wisher, is one of them. It has all the national flags as well, which is an added bonus.

Some countries have several Independence Days. Armenia, for example, celebrated one on September 21 and will be celebrating one on May 28. The first commemorates independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the second from the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

The Baltic States have separate days to commemorate independence from the Russian (and, possibly, German) Empire and the Soviet Union. Naturally, they do not commemorate liberation from Nazi Germany as that involved enslavement by the Soviet Union.

Tory Historian has been unable to find a country with three Independence Days.

Events - Open House week-end

2011-09-16T13:45:00.002+01:00

As usual, Tory Historian will produce the odd blog or two on the subject but it is worth reminding readers in or near London of this wonderful event. If I may make a suggestion, try to buy the whole booklet of what is open in some friendly bookshop (too late to do so on line) rather than try to figure out what to do and where to go from the website. Happy hunting!

Tory Historian's blog- Christie was highly realistic

2011-09-13T20:06:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian has never quite understood why the bien pensants otherwise known as people who never read detective stories, considering them to be inferior, but like pontificating consider Agatha Christie's novels to be particularly unrealistic. It is true that criminals are not always brought to justice (and they are not always in her novels either) but that is the premiss of that most conservative of genres, the detective story.

It is also true that she is often slapdash and cavalier about certain details, in particular dates, time spans, ages. All of that annoys Tory Historian as readers can imagine. This is so different from the silly but precise novels by Georgette Heyer. But when it comes to descriptions of life and social mores she is far more realistic and accurate than her contemporaries Ngaio Marsh or Margery Allingham.

The accusations that she wrote about large country houses and aristocratic families and parties is completely untrue. Her milieu was the middle class, her people almost entirely professionals, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, the occasional businessman, maybe members of the squierarchy like Colonel Bantry. That is why she managed to write well about changes in social life. The village in A Murder is Announced is very different from the village of Murder in the Vicarage. The people who may have had a couple of servants before the Second World War have maybe a foreign refugee, a cleaning woman or an au pair after it. The large households either disappear or are reinvented to suit some Hollywood star. All very realistic.

People who consider Raymond Chandler to be more realistic have, one assumes, read neither author but have dimly heard the expression about the man in the mean streets. Murder happens in mean streets and in well-appointed homes or flats shared by three middle-class girls. Are those convoluted, incomprehensible plots of Chandler's, full of wisecracking people truly realistic? Hardly.

So we come to Tory Historian's reading matter of the day and that is John Curran's Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks. Some interesting stuff about the way Christie developed her plots though after a while one loses interest in the minutiae of literary invention. There are also two stories that have never been published before, one called The Incident of the Dog's Ball, which, Mr Curran works out, was probably written in 1933 but never offered to Christie's agent. Readers of her novels will instantly recall one of her best, Dumb Witness, published in 1937. Mr Curran thinks the story was withheld because the author decided almost immediately to turn it into a novel. That seems a little odd. After all, Yellow Iris, which became Sparkling Cyanide, was published and Mr Curran lists several others. On the whole, Christie's novels are better than her short stories, entertaining though these often are. In that respect she is the opposite of Conan Doyle.

The Incident of the Dog's Ball is not bad but Dumb Witness is excellent if one forgets about the peculiar incident of Captain Hastings and the dog. At the beginning of the novel Hastings explains that he has just come back from Argentina, leaving his wife "Cinderella" Dulcie to manage the ranch while he deals with business matters in England. By the end of the novel he seems to have acquired a dog, settled back into English life an forgotten all about his wife, his ranch and Argentina. (Yet we know from later novels that he does go back. Most mysterious.)

The story does, however, show village life of the period in brisk and amusing fashion as is Christie's wont. In particular she destroys the myth of the wonderful food one could have in country inns and pubs back in the good old days, whenever these might have been. This is what Captain Hastings says:

Little Hemel we found to be a charming village, untouched in the miraculous way that villages can be when they are two miles from a main road. There was a hostelry called The George, and there we had lunch - a bad lunch I regret to say, as is the way at country inns.

What wealth of suffering and realism lies in that last phrase.

Book review - The greatest popular political organization

2011-09-13T12:53:00.005+01:00

Here are a few questions to mull over: Which was the largest popular political organization in this country? Which political organization first ensured that membership was open to all classes and people of all incomes? Which political organization involved public activity by women of all classes and in large numbers? Which political organization first had events, both social and educational, for children and young people? [The picture below is of a group of Headington Buds.] Which political organization set up co-operative funds to help those of their members who were less well off?

Do not bother to search through your knowledge of various self-aggrandizing left-wing organizations. The answer, as many readers will know, to all those questions is the Primrose League, founded in 1883 at the Carlton Club by Lord Randolph Churchill for his own political purposes and nurtured into a powerful organization by his own family or, rather, its female members and others.

Yet, how little do we know about this extraordinary phenomenon. The assumption that all ideas to do with popular politics, women's political activity, social welfare and children's organization come from the left has become a given for most historians and political thinkers. As Alistair Cooke (now Lord Lexden), the Conservative Party's official historian, says in his elegantly written little volume, A Gift from the Churchills, published appropriately enough by the Carlton Club, the Primrose League is barely mentioned in some of the standard histories and biographies.

There have been a few accounts of it in the past, notably Martin Pugh's The Tories and the People and Janet Robb's The Primrose League, but its importance is rarely acknowledged either by more or less left-wing historians, for understandable reasons, or by conservative ones. As for the party, it prefers not to talk about the much more popular rival organization of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, whom it eventually supplanted. Since then, it is fair to say, the Conservative Party managed to destroy much of the popular support that was first built up by the Primrose League.

A Gift from the Churchills is a labour of love and that shows. Lord Lexden clearly finds the League, its history and its members, some illustrious some not, fascinating. He wears his knowledge lightly and tells his story with great enjoyment. I would suggest that the Carlton Club looks a little more carefully at its printers but that is a minor, technical problem. I can think of no better introduction to the Primrose League, an unjustly forgotten organization, than this little volume. For those who know the history it will be an enjoyable recapitulation.

Here is an interesting article by Charles Moore, which purports to be a review of Lord Lexden's book but is really a summary of it.

A look back on past educational debates

2011-09-13T01:39:00.003+01:00

As the debate about education and its failings rages and as new attempts are made to counter what is seen as the pernicious influence of various educational theories, it is useful to look back on what was said in the past. David Linden, a Ph.D. student at King's College, London, whose interests lie in the modern day Conservative Party looks at a previous educational debate in the sixties and seventies, when the authors of the Black Papers on Education clashed with the educational establishment.

Tory Historian's blog - Defiance September 2001

2011-09-11T00:14:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian's blog - Two links from History Today

2011-09-08T16:38:00.003+01:00

There is always something interesting in History Today. Sometimes it is very little but always something. Today's e-mail brought two links that were worth following up.

One is to blog posting by Lulu Ramsey, which analyses the history of the term "terrorism" from its first use in the Revolutionary France of the late eighteenth century where the government used terror to control the country to the present usage, taking into account the evolution of perception of the Gunpowder Plot and anarchist terrorist outrages of the late nineteenth century. There are links to previous postings.

However, TH is finding it hard to take any article that does not even mention the use of terror by Russian radicals hard to take seriously.

The second link is highly entertaining. It is to an interactive map of international conflict in history. Not only it is a map, it has a dateline AND you can play with it by looking up various regions and periods. There are problems and missing parts. Where, for instance is the Battle of Mohács of 1526? The defeat of the Hungarian King Louis II opened Central Europe to the Ottomans. Come to think of it where is the second Battle of Mohács of 1687 that drove the self-same Ottomans out of Central Europe? Or the Siege of Vienna a.k.a. Battle of Vienna of 1683? Why exactly do the compilers of this map not think the war between the western allies and the Ottoman Empire was so unimportant (it is mentioned but only just)?

A friend of TH's points out that while the Great Arab Uprising of 1936 - 1939, there is nothing "nothing for Iraq in 1941, although it does cover British and Soviet operations in Iran/Persia in 1941. British troops (including some Arab Legion, and British cavalry (mechanized - incl. Yeomanry) had to rush from Palestine and elsewhere to relieve the RAF bases in Iraq (mainly Habbanyiah) which were defended against the Iraqi 'rebel' forces by the RAF and the RAF Iraq Levies - ground defence troops mainly recruited from the 'Assyrians' (Iraqi Christians) - from memory."

Readers of this blog might like to find some more omissions.

Tory Historian's blog - Cyril Hare

2011-09-04T21:50:00.002+01:00

If ever there was a conservative writer of detective stories it was Cyril Hare, a.k.a. Alfred Alexander Clark, a County Court judge, even if an aunt of his seems to have been a socialist politician. (Well, a Labour politician, at least, one of the large group of wealthy non-working class socialists, ever present in the Labour Party.)

Cyril Hare's novels are based on his own experiences in various parts of the legal system and, even, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, a fascinating bit of wartime bureaucracy, which figures in the novel With a Bare Bodkin.

The detective novels and stories are highly amusing but are, quintessentially English in their depiction of a changing society and country. Oddly enough, the least successful of the novels, in Tory Historian's opinion is called An English Murder but that might be caused by the absence of Hare's two serial detectives, Inspector Mallett, the jovial police officer with a Gargantuan appetite and Francis Pettigrew, who first appears in the best of the books, Tragedy at Law and is shown to be an unhappy and unsuccessful barrister, somewhat in the Sidney Carton mode. Happily, Mr Pettigrew is not executed. Instead, he develops a flair for solving difficult criminal puzzles and turns up again in several short stories and novels, even managing to marry a young lady at the end of With a Bare Bodkin. Contrary to his own and our expectations, the marriage is a happy one, as we see in subsequent books.

Today, as The Bunburyist notes, is Cyril Hare's birthday. And let us not forget that Cyril Hare's works have been reprinted in the last few years by Faber and Faber.

The man who defined Whig history

2011-09-01T12:58:00.003+01:00

Many people know what the Whig interpretation of history is, if only in the hilariously parodic version of 1066 And All That, a book I always recommend to anyone who wants a quick summary of English history. (Here is a link to the text but, really, one needs the book in front of one because of the illustrations and because it is easier to shed tears of laughter over a book than in front of a screen.)

The man who first analyzed and defined that school of history, showing that it was not simply the right and inevitable way of looking at the subject, was Sir Herbert Butterfield, a man well known and highly regarded for most of his career, forgotten and dismissed by the "cognoscenti" after his death and one who is obviously due for a revival that may well begin with a new biography by Michael Bentley, recently reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.

In "The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield," Michael Bentley draws on a range of private letters and papers to sharpen our appreciation of Butterfield's actual accomplishments, particularly "The Whig Interpretation of History," the 1931 book that made his reputation by forcing historians to reconsider their discipline. Butterfield argued forcefully against the then-common practice of honing a historical narrative so that it neatly progresses, seemingly inevitably, to the enlightened present or tailoring descriptions of the past to reflect contemporary concerns.

While it seems sensible not to stick to the view of history, especially that of England and Britain, being a more or less clearly ascending line towards a sensible and progressive society, it cannot be said that the alternative teaching that has developed since the Whig theory has been abandoned, has been an improvement.

By discarding the apparent linear progression of history schools, teachers and, above all, creators of the national curriculum and examination topics, have discarded all narrative. That, in turn, has meant a loss of understanding as it is impossible to grasp what certain events might mean if the background to them is unknown; and a loss of interest for most pupils. How can one be interested in history if it consists of disconnected topics of varying interest and importance? Ironically, while Butterfield's name is all but unknown these days, Our Island Story, the pre-eminent children's book that was so ably parodied by 1066 And All That, was, on its reprinting, a huge success. As a matter of fact, it is not a very good book and its over-reliance on Shakespeare's plays for information is regrettable. But it gives what many children need: a story in an attractive format with many exciting illustrations.

The review does make one want to read the biography itself, which, clearly deals with the difficult aspects of Butterfield's life while presenting the argument for a reappraisal of his work.

Events - The Immortal Dizzy

2011-08-31T00:36:00.003+01:00

This was advertised in the Conservative History Journal but it is really a National Trust Event though a lecture about Disraeli at Hughenden Manor must be of interest to anyone who is interested in conservative history with either a capital or a small c.

The Immortal Dizzy: Benjamin Disraeli 130 Years On

A special Disraeli celebration lunch to mark the 130th anniversary of his death at which Lord Lexden, the official historian of the Conservative Party and author of a history of the Primrose League, will speak

More Information: the Estate Office, 01494 755573,

hughenden@nationaltrust.org.uk

Well, actually I do have some more information: tickets cost £40 each but this will include lunch, a copy of Lord Lexden's history of the Primrose League and a "lavishly" illustrated booklet on which his address at the lunch will be based. All that makes it rather good value, especially if I add the information that Lord Lexden is really Alistair Cooke, who knows more about Conservative Party history than any other man alive.

Events - Kensal Green Cemetery Tour

2011-08-31T00:25:00.003+01:00

Event Number 6 on the London Historians site

KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY TOUR

Sunday 18 September 2011, 2pm – 5pm (approx)
Meet at the Anglican Chapel. Nearest Tube: Kensal Green or Ladbroke Grove.

Kensal Green Cemetery is one of the so-called Magnificent Seven – cemeteries which were established in London’s suburbs during the Victorian period in the interests of public health. Notable “residents” include the Brunels (pere and fils), Charles Babbage, Anthony Trollope and many others. We have 12 places booked on the official tour run by the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. This means that we’ll have access to the fine chapel and also the catacomb, both of which are normally closed to the public. An extra treat for us is that LH member Sue Bailey, who runs the London Cemeteries blog, will be giving her personal tour after FKGC. There are some very good pubs nearby – we’ll repair to one of these afterwards for drinks.

£7, to include tea and biscuits, pay on the day.

To book your place, please send email to admin@londonhistorians.org with “Kensal Green” in the subject line. Preference will be given to London Historians members in the first instance.

I have been round a part of that very large cemetery and can thoroughly recommend the tour.

Tory Historian's blog - Vorticists

2011-08-25T19:55:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian spent the morning at the Tate Gallery or Tate Britain as it is now known and saw The Vorticists exhibition. By no stretch of imagination were the Vorticists conservative but the movement was genuinely exciting and innovative in Britain with real links to Continental art movements (though they refused to be associated with Marinetti and the Futurists). It is, Tory Historian thinks, their refusal to fit in with the rather cosy, attractive and unthreatening modernism of the Bloomsbury Group and surrounding artists together with the soi-disant leader, Wyndham Lewis's hatred for the British Left, the Soviet Union and the Communist fellow travellers that has ensured a certain disdain for him and the group among art critics and historians.

As a matter of fact, Wyndham Lewis was probably the best British portraitist of the twentieth century and, according to T.S.Eliot, a true-blue cultural conservative, the best prose writer of his generation. It is, Tory Historian thinks, time that his star rose again despite the left-wing cultural propaganda that has relegated him to a secondary position for so long.

Some time ago The New Culture Forum had a posting about Wyndham Lewis.

So there is the charge sheet: Wyndham Lewis dismissed the Bloomsbury Group, opposed the Soviet Union, despised the Communist fellow travellers in the West, was pro-American and was an early supporter of Anglospherist ideas. Definitely a fascist, m’lud. The widespread undermining of Wyndham Lewis’s reputation shows the extent to which the Left has managed to control cultural understanding in Britain.

The Vorticists, however, is more than just Lewis. The exhibition tells the story of this short-lived movement together with the various personal friendships, alliances and enmities; it also gives scope to the other artists, some of whom, especially the women (unlike some of the more famous artistic groups, the Vorticists had women members from the beginning) are less well known.

Tory Historian's blog - The Condensed Wealth of Nations

2011-08-24T13:47:00.004+01:00

For those who are interested in the extraordinarily important ideas that Adam Smith expressed and detailed in The Wealth of Nations but find it a little hard to get through the lengthy original, Tory Historian can recommend the latest publication by the Adam Smith Institute. It is a condensed version of the great work, with a few original quotations as well as some comments and additions that refer to the more modern period by Dr Eamonn Butler.

As a special bonus there is also the Incredibly Condensed Theory of Moral Sentiments. It really is incredibly condensed - only seven pages. In many ways Tory Historian finds this work of greater interest and value than the better known one.

For the times they are a'changin'

2011-08-19T15:35:00.003+01:00

That is an odd title for a posting on the Conservative History blog but, let us not forget, that song is now history, though fairly recent, and Bob Dylan is seen as something of a conservative by many.

Anyway, to our muttons: despite my previous postings about the printed version of the Conservative History Journal, its appearance (and a very fine appearance it is, too) has little to do with me. For various reasons of convenience the editorship has passed on to Nigel Fletcher, who is also Director of the Conservative History Group.

The new issue has articles about Peel, Disraeli, Sir Stafford Northcote, Churchill and Macmillan. If some of those names sound familiar to readers of the journal, that is not surprising. They are some of the most important names in the history of the Conservative Party.

People who have sent me articles will not be short-change, though. For another big change will be taking place almost immediately. This blog (with its secondary cousin, the blog of long articles) is undergoing an important reconstruction and is being turned into a much better and richer site. Thus there will be two outlets of conservative history, which can only be a good thing. We hope that the relationship between the two will be friendlier than that between Peel and Disraeli or Heath and Thatcher.

Tory Historian will still be running the blog but there will be other articles posted by various people, including and especially the articles that are already in my folder marked CHJ 2011. I shall also start a more ferocious campaign to make the site better known in conservative and historical circles in this and other countries. Militant conservatism is a formidable thing to behold.

Forward to the sunny heights.

Satire used to be a good deal nastier

2011-08-16T13:48:00.003+01:00

It is surely no secret to anyone who is interested in the politics and satire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that both used to be a good deal nastier and politicians did not complain when they were accused of all sorts of highly unpleasant, anti-social, disgraceful and, sometimes, illegal activity in the most outspoken fashion. The same went for members of society as a whole.

One of the funniest and nastiest of cartoonists was James Gillray and the news that the Victoria and Albert Museum has acquired an album of forty "suppressed" cartoons by that master of invective and satire is very good, indeed.

An album of 40 ‘suppressed’ cartoons by leading British caricaturist James Gillray (1756-1815) has recently come to light in the Criminal Law Policy Unit of the Ministry of Justice. It features material judged socially unacceptable in the 19th century - including explicitly sexual, scatological and politically outrageous subject matter. The album was probably seized by police more than a century ago as ‘pornographic material’ and handed to Government officials. This slim volume of ‘Curiosa’ has now been transferred to the print collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A.

Having seen what was acceptable in those far-off days, Tory Historian is perplexed as to what might have been "unacceptable" enough to have been suppressed and hidden. One can but hope that these "unacceptable" cartoons will be on show though not, perhaps, to politicians who will find them rather unpleasant.

And talking of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tory Historian has also found a note about an exhibition that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago: cartoons and covers from Private Eye on its fiftieth anniversary that is due this autumn. To think that of that naughty satirical magazine that was, for many years, not stocked by W. H. Smith because of fears of libel becoming part of the establishment to the point of being honoured by one of our major museums. How are the mighty fallen. Here is an article in Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens.

VJ Day

2011-08-15T13:24:00.005+01:00

VJ Day was yesterday but Tory Historian was a little busy. Celebration is, therefore, today. That is what Times Square looked like on August 14, 1945.

Fifty years ago

2011-08-13T14:12:00.004+01:00

August 13, 1961

Berlin Wall, symbol of division between Western and Eastern Europe goes up.

The Wimsey saga completed (or not)

2011-08-12T16:48:00.002+01:00

This is a long piece and is, therefore, on the secondary blog, about the latest in the Wimsey saga, The Attenbury Emeralds, written by Jill Paton Walsh, about the characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers. She is no longer using any Sayers material except hints and references from the novels and the lesser known short stories. Here is the link.

Property and Freedom

2011-07-28T16:00:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian has started reading Richard Pipes's Property and Freedom and found an interesting paragraph in its Introduction, where Professor Pipes explains his thoughts and presuppositions:

My starting hypothesis held that there is an intimate connection between public guarangees of owndership and individual liberty: that while property in some form is possible without liberty, the contrary is inconceivable.

As he explains further, testing this hypothesis in full proved to be impossible because of the many varieties of possession, ownership and property, not mention the difficulties of obtaining material and developing understanding of widely differing societies. Professor Pipes decided to sacrifice breadth for depth in order "to demonstrate through a few historical examples the relationship between economic and political power".

Tory Historian has not read far enough to be able to review the book or even comment on it but while that state of affairs is achieved, here is an article on the Mises Review site - the author approves of the book with some reservations. Can't say fairer than that.

St Swithin's Day

2011-07-15T16:59:00.002+01:00

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithun’s day if thou be fair

For forty days ’twill rain no more

And the day is today, July 15. In Tory Historian's part of the world the sun is shining so the prediction is good, though, apparently, the weather is not too good in Scotland.

This is rather a charming and informative piece for young children on the subject that even explains how the legend came about.

A legend says that as the Bishop [St Swithun, Saxon Bishop of Winchester] lay on his deathbed, he asked to be buried out of doors, where he would be trodden on and rained on. For nine years, his wishes were followed, but then, the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral on 15 July 971. According to legend there was a heavy rain storm either during the ceremony or on its anniversary.

Served those monks right, says Tory Historian.

And 600 years later

2011-07-15T00:15:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian is always keen on news stories that have an important historical content (and not just the usual complaint of politicians never change). Here is a fascinating story from the Guardian.

Almost six centuries after most of them converted to Christianity, a rabbinical court has declared that descendants of a "lost tribe" from the Spanish island of Mallorca can once more be considered Jews.

A decision by the ultra-orthodox rabbi Nissim Karelitz recognises that the Chuetas of Mallorca, who were persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition and remained a distinct group within Mallorcan society until the 1970s, had the right to call themselves Jews.

It seems that some of the Chuetas continued to be observant Jews at great personal risk to themselves. But the real reason why they have been recognized appears to be genetic - they mostly married within their community throughout all these centuries.

Happy Birthday, George Gilbert Scott

2011-07-13T23:43:00.002+01:00

Today (just in time) is the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of those men, without whom this country would definitely look completely different. Sir George Gilbert Scott is the architect who created our vision of Victorianism, whether his designs were of public buildings, domestic buildings or poorhouses. One wonders what he would make of this "elegant brasserie and bar" in the new St Pancras Hotel.

The picture above is one of Scott's iconic designs without which London is unthinkable.

A Whig historian speaks

2011-07-12T23:44:00.001+01:00

Tory Historian cannot help remembering what Lord Macaulay (a Whig or a Liberal, depending on one's point of view) said in his essay on Moore's Life of Byron.‎

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

Its relevance to the present day is all too obvious.

Whittaker Chambers 1901 - 1961

2011-07-09T23:29:00.002+01:00

Fifty years ago today came the death of one of the most important people in twentieth century American history and, in particular, in the development of American conservative thought: Whittaker Chambers.

This is a fascinating piece by David Chambers, Whittaker's grandson, about ghosts and memories and the world since the great man's death. While looking for other material, Tory Historian (a great admirer of Whittaker Chambers, one of the few people who really understood Communism) came across this posting on Flopping Aces about Chambers's Witness. There are, the blogger thinks, many lessons to be learnt for Americans now. Tory Historian cannot argue except to add that there are many lessons to be learnt for all of us in the West.

A deserved prize

2011-07-08T01:07:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian was delighted to read in History Today that the Samuel Johnson Prize (named after a truly great Tory) was awarded this year to Frank Dikötter’s Mao's Great Famine, a book TH has not yet read right through, so devastating it is. There is also the new biography of Bismarck, short-listed for the prize, to read. Jonathan Steinberg's book is described as "a genuine game-changer whose influence will be enormous and sustained".

Together with the author of the blog on the subject Tory Historian is stunned by the comment reportedly made by the biographer Brenda Maddox, who was on the jury, about the Mao book.

I was puzzled by the comments of one of the judges, though, the biographer Brenda Maddox, who is reported to have said: ‘Why didn’t I know about this? We feel we know who the villains of the 20th century are – Stalin and Hitler [I could add a few more to that]. But here, fully 50 years after the event, is something we did not know about. It’s testament to the power of non-fiction that it can rock you back on your heels.’ Well, she’s right on the last point, but her comments only serve to reinforce my view that the literati should get out more. Has Maddox not read, or even read a review of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, for example? Or does her knowledge of Maoism derive from the films of Jean-Luc Godard and the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir? Dikötter gives us much valuable and fascinating new detail, but he does not alter the thrust of what has been known for some time now about the nature of Mao’s appalling regime.

There is none so blind as those who do not want to see.

Reagan in Grosvenor Square

2011-07-08T00:56:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian finally went to Grosvenor Square and took this picture of the new statue of President Reagan which has now joined statues of Presidents Eisenhower and Roosevelt (that's Franklin, not Teddy) and the memorial to the Eagle Squadron.

Caught up at last

2011-07-06T23:17:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian finally managed to catch up with London historians or historians of London at the monthly meeting organized by .... yes, London Historians at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. It was, indeed, very good to meet the author of Caroline's Miscellany, one of the people who runs The Londonist and the musician and singer Andrew Maginley, whose knowledge of Renaissance and Baroque music seems unbounded.

Slightly sad

2011-07-04T21:40:00.001+01:00

The death of Otto von Habsburg, the oldest son of the last Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary and King of Croatia, Charles, was announced today. He was 98 so there is no tragedy involved and has led a good life - fought both Nazism and Communism. A true European unlike some other people who claim the title.

Ronald Reagan statue

2011-07-04T21:34:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian must admit to chickening out of attending the unveiling ceremony this morning, though invited. The excuse: far too many people, far too much security and unlikely to be able to see anything, not even Condoleezza Rice. However, a visit to Grosvenor Square is due soon and an own photograph will be posted. In the meantime, here are two stories with pictures: Fox News and the Independent.

July 4, 1776

2011-07-03T20:47:00.002+01:00

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Happy Birthday Canada

2011-07-01T21:20:00.002+01:00

The flag that flew at D-day.

Brotherton Library

2011-06-22T14:12:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian has many pleasant and not so pleasant memories of the great Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The latest Alumni magazine does, indeed, have an article on the subject complete with a time line but neither appears to be on the website.

Suffice it to say that the library grew out of a private collection of books, formed by Sir Edward Allen Brotherton, later Lord Brotherton of Wakefield and could not have existed without his munificent gift. Thereafter, many other private collections were added. One example is the extensive Russian archive; then there is the Cookery collection; but, it seems, no detective story collection. How sad.

The main reading room was based on the British Museum Reading Room, which, alas, is no longer used for anything to do with books. But the Brotherton one is still there. Perhaps, Tory Historian will be welcomed back there one day. Hmm. A thought to be considered.

Seventy years ago

2011-06-22T14:09:00.003+01:00

June 22, 1941 - Germany invades the Soviet Union, disregarding the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. Of course, it is important to recall that what was actually being invaded in those first days was eastern Poland that had been the USSR's portion of the deal.

A great lexicographic achievement

2011-06-15T23:00:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian, being the offspring of a lexicographer, finds dictionaries almost as exciting as maps. (see previous postings passim) Therefore, the news that the grand project of creating a dictionary of the Akkadian language, last spoken in Mesopotamia a couple of millennia ago, has been completed.

The dictionary was put together by studying texts written on clay and stone tablets uncovered in ancient Mesopotamia, which sat between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers - the heartland of which was in modern-day Iraq, and also included parts of Syria and Turkey.

And there were rich pickings for them to pore over, with 2,500 years worth of texts ranging from scientific, medical and legal documents, to love letters, epic literature and messages to the gods.

It took ninety years but that is hardly a problem, considering the language and its dialects, Assyrian and Babylonian have been out of use.

A book to read

2011-06-13T16:00:00.003+01:00

Tom Fort reviews an interesting new book, When in Rome, the story of the Eternal City through the eyes of visitors who wrote about it. Few visitors can rival the historian Edward Gibbon, who spent 18 weeks in Rome and wrote later in his Memoirs:

It was at Rome, on the [fifteenth] of October[,] 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare[-]footed fryars were singing [V]espers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the [C]ity first started to my mind.

Though there is some doubt as to the precise date, the very idea of conceiving such an undertaking while sitting in the ruins of the Capitol is astonishing.

There is, Tory Historian can assert, something extraordinarily exhilearating about the moment one can say for the first time: I am walking in the Forum Romanum.

To descend from the sublime though not to the ridiculous, one of Tory Historian's favourites among the Ngaio Marsh novels is also called When in Rome.

Happy Belated Birthday to the Duke of Edinburgh

2011-06-13T15:38:00.004+01:00

Tory Historian managed to miss the Duke of Edinburgh's 90th birthday but can do no better than to link to an article by that excellent journalist, Ruth Dudley Edwards. It is mostly about the difference between the Duchess of Cambridge, a seemingly sensible, balanced individual on the one hand and the Princess of Wales (Princess Di, as she is known to the media) and the Duchess of York (Fergy, as she is known to the media). Both of these, as the article points out, were "vulnerable, ill-educated and rather dim young women" with Diana possessing more than her fair share of manipulativeness.

There is, however, a very telling paragraph about the Duke of Edinburgh, who has had to put up with media attacks throughout most of his life and has managed to ignore them or, at least, not to let them affect his life and his work.

So affected was Oprah by Sarah's despair at having appeared on television drunkenly offering access to ex-husband Prince Andrew for vast sums of money and subsequently at her exclusion from the royal wedding, that she decided to help her rebuild her life. So Oprah has financed Finding Sarah, a reality-TV series in which experts ("We're here to help") advise Sarah on how to make a real beginning to her new journey. This requires that along with the watching millions she learns "why I kept self-sabotaging all these years". She's "moving on with strength and positivity". Sarah speaks fluent American gobbledygook.

One can imagine the gritted teeth at Buckingham Palace, where the Duke of Edinburgh has celebrated his 90th birthday by holding a charity reception and chairing a conference of military colonels. While he's been reducing his more demanding commitments on the grounds that "it's better to get out before you reach the sell-by date", he works on. And as his erstwhile daughter-in-law shares newly remembered childhood hurts, Prince Philip remains tight-lipped about what it was like to grow up rootless and virtually parentless and to have to abandon the promising naval career he adored in order to be a consort. His generation believes in duty and doesn't whinge, which is why he and the Queen found the behaviour of soul-barers Sarah and Princess Diana bewildering.

This blog wishes the Duke Edinburgh a very happy, if somewhat belated, birthday and hopes for many more.

D-Day

2011-06-06T17:06:00.002+01:00

June 6, 1944

All those exhibitions

2011-05-31T00:11:00.001+01:00

History Today has a new corner on it site, dedicated to various historical exhibitions. Tory Historian is making lists of those that must be seen as soon as possible.

Article about Charles II and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy

2011-05-30T01:33:00.003+01:00

Yesterday was the anniversary of both Charles II's birth and, more importantly, his astonishingly peacerful entry into London in 1660 at the start of his own long and rather controversial reign. Well, it has attracted a great deal of controversy then and since.

Through London Historians Tory Historian can link to an excellent article on the subject by Tom Sykes.

Francesco Giavarina [Venetian Ambassador to England] was not alone in waking up on the 30th May with a hangover and the creeping realisation that someone would have to pay for the party. On Tuesday 29 May 1660, his thirtieth birthday, Charles Stuart returned to London for the first time since he left as a boy at the start of his father’s long and bloody civil war. He rode into a city which a decade previously had looked on unblinking as Parliament severed his father’s head from his body and the nation from its monarchy. He had attempted to return before, but many plans and plots came to nothing. Even his invasion at the head of a Scottish army had failed. It had taken the death of Oliver Cromwell two years earlier, the crumbling of Parliamentary authority, and a distinct lack of options for his time to come.

And as every schoolchild used to know, he was determined never to go on his wanderings again, if it meand accepting a pension from the King of France.

Conservative playwrights

2011-05-28T00:33:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian maintains that most of the best writers and playwrights are conservative in their outlook. So the news that David Mamet the best present-day American playwright has moved from left to right did not come as a surprise - the man is talented, after all - but was very good to hear anyway.

This review of The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture points out the obvious:

With all the talk of Hollywood liberalism — the endless leftist blather from Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, the cozying up to Castro and Chavez by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover, the jejune Iranian peace-making by Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard, etc., etc — it’s fascinating that the two leading playwrights in the English language (the smart guys) — Tom Stoppard and David Mamet — identify as conservative/libertarians.

And why not? After all, Shakespeare was deeply conservative in his outlook and much afraid of political change for the sake of it.

One of the best Watsons

2011-05-19T20:48:00.004+01:00

It is a curious feature of this blog that the most likely postings that other blogs might link to are those about detective stories. One posting about the clerical mysteries of D. M. Greenwood has elicited at least two links from widely differing blogs. One from the very fine Clerical Detectives and another from the slightly more dulalee Mystery Mile, whose author a soi-disant atheist who is fascinated by theology, socialist and anarchist (which two are incompatible) shows some lack of understanding of conservative thinking. Still, his own writing is interesting and a link is a link is a link.

It would be good to think that people have also linked to the posting about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his creations but, so far, no evidence of that has surfaced. We return to that subject after the sad news of the death of Edward Hardwicke, one of the best Dr Watsons to the best Holmes, played by Jeremy Brett.

One of the oddest things about Watson is how misunderstood he is by so many people. This obituary in the Telegraph, for instance, describes him as "the bumbling foil" to Holmes. As a number of comments point out, this is far from the truth. (A much better obituary in the Guardian.)

The Watson of the stories is steady, decent, intelligent though not a genius, courageous, a successful doctor, a man anyone would want to have around and one whom Holmes appreciates though when in a bad mood he does make derogatory comments. Holmes's appreciation of his friend and colleague is not the affectionate sarcasm of Poirot towards his genuinely stupid friend, Captain Arthur Hastings.

Where on earth did the myth of the stupid, bumbling Watson come from? Partly, one suspects, it is the influence of Agatha Christie's Hastings; partly it is the fault of Nigel Bruce in those execrable films with Basil Rathbone (such as The Hound of the Baskervilles).

All that began to change with Nigel Stock, in TH's opinion the best Watson, played to both Douglas Wilmer and Peter Cushing (an excellent Holmes). Jeremy Brett had two Watsons, David Burke and Edward Hardwicke who restored the original character of the sturdy, steady, perfectly presentable Watson. The most interesting interpretation was Michael Williams's on radio with Clive Merrison. Tory Historian possesses tapes of several episodes and enjoys listening to them. There seems to have been a clear decision made by the producers to make Watson's role bigger and more important - in a number of episodes he is an almost equal partner. A long way from Nigel Bruce's genuinely bumbling idiot but not too far from Edward Hardwicke's interpretation.

Another interesting "contrarian" point of view

2011-05-19T12:22:00.003+01:00

Tory Historian seems to have overcome problems with Blogger but considers modern technology to be somewhat less than it is cracked up to be. In the meantime, History Today's June issue has come out and it has an excellent "contrarian" article by Tim Stanley on the subject of apologies for historic events and actions.

Not a good idea, opines Mr Stanley, as it over-simplifies historic events (dumbs history down, would be TH's comment) and he proves it by giving a brief account of the different aspects of the Mau-Mau rebellion and the British suppression of it.

Serious problems

2011-05-18T21:42:00.001+01:00

Blogger seems to be playing up in different ways at the moment, which makes it impossible for Tory Historian to post. We all hope the problems will be solved.

Jewel Mysteries and other matters

2011-05-09T12:11:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian had long intended to read Max Pemberton's Jewel Mysteries I Have Known, as it contained the splendid Ripening Rubies, a tale first disinterred by Sir Hugh Greene in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. As this blog describes, the collection, the TV plays made from the stories and the particular tale of dastardly deeds in upper class London are a joy. TH did not manage to purchase the volume referred to but borrowed it from London Library. It does, indeed, give tactile pleasure to anyone who reads it. The illustrations are delightful.

As ever, TH decided to find out more about the author and came face to face with another terrifyingly busy and successful man of letters, journalist and editor. Indeed, he was even knighted for his various achievements. There are several portraits in the National Portrait Gallery - a sure sign of achievement. The cartoon above is the most attractive.

VE Day

2011-05-08T20:59:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian has chosen a sober and accurate front page rather than one of the somewhat over-the-top ones. After all, no matter what some newspapers said, it was not over, not till the boys (and the girls) came home from the Pacific

Imagine hearing this for the first time

2011-05-07T15:26:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian was reminded today by Radio 3 (one can still listen to that from time to time) that today is the anniversary of the very first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The Ninth Symphony was premiered on May 7, 1824 in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, along with the Consecration of the House Overture and the first three parts of the Missa Solemnis. This was the composer's first on-stage appearance in 12 years; the hall was packed. The soprano and alto parts were interpreted by two famous young singers: Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger.

Concert goers had more stamina in those days.

Accounts of the performance differ but they all seem to involve Beethoven's presence on the stage, though he could no longer conduct, having gone deaf, and the need to turn him round to see rather than hear the audience's reaction, though whether the great applause came after the Scherzo of the last movement or after the whole of the performance remains doubtful.

Which performance to choose? TH has decided to go with Herbert von Karajan:

St Pancras Hotel opens

2011-05-05T23:43:00.003+01:00

It is always a pleasure to see a gorgeous building that could have been demolished but for the wise intervention of the great Sir John Betjeman renovated and re-opened. The former Midlands Hotel, now St Pancras Renaissance Hotel is a joy to behold. Tory Historian has spent a great deal of time watching its gradual emergence from what was more little more than rubble within a fine frame and will be visiting it very soon. In the meantime, here is Mark Easton's glowing account.

The ghost of Sir John Betjeman will be grinning from ear to ear tonight as it hovers among the guests at the grand opening of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in North London.

Not only does the event mark the climax of a project to rescue and resurrect a building the poet personally sought to protect from the bulldozer barbarians of the sixties, it also glorifies an extraordinary monument to the skills of the ordinary English working man.

And what could be greater praise?

Books, books, books

2011-05-05T00:50:00.005+01:00

Tory Historian has been reading three different books at different rates. Firstly a collection of Victorian detective stories, edited by Michael Cox, consisting of some very well known works, some not so well known and some quite obscure, which is always a joy to find. Even the least well known and the weakest of the writers (not always the same thing) display an ability to manipulate style that is seen only among the best nowadays. And, as ever, it is astonishing how many of the stories are not about murder but fraud or robbery, all too often of jewels but sometimes of money, which comes in both paper and gold.

Then there is Philip Guedalla's collection of literary essays, A Gallery, found, like the previous book in one of the remaining second hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road. Guedalla, a politician (though not terribly successful), barrister, well thought-of historian and man of letters is someone whom it is hard to imagine these days. Possibly John Julius Norwich comes close though he is not a barrister or a politician.

Tory Historian possesses a slightly battered copy of If It Had Happened Otherwise, a book of counterfactuals, published in 1931, in which the best essay is undoubtedly by Mr Guedalla who envisages European history after a Moorish victory at Granada.

And finally, Monarchy Matters by the Director of the New Culture Forum, Peter Whittle. This one has only just been started so little can be reported apart from that it is enormously interesting. TH cannot help quoting a paragraph or two, found by random leafing through, on the Royal Family and the general thirst for celebrity:

Diana had always understood the need for visibility - the need to be seen to be doing what you were doing. Even though she died before the celebrity age took proper hold, it was obvious that she had a well-developed instinct for the headline or the arresting photograph. There can be nobody left in the country who does not know of the attention she paid to Aids sufferers or the victims of landmines. Her friendship with fashion and showbiz stars epitomized by the image of her comforting Elton John at the funeral of the fashion designer Gianni Versace, added to her lustre as a sort of international celebrity. In this kind of atmosphere, those who went about their duties without the aid of stardust simply could not compete. The hundreds of public engagements carried out by Princess Anne every year, and her decades of work for theSave the Children Fund, now go largely unremarked and uncovered by the media. Even the Prince's Truyst - which, since it was first established by Prince Charles, has gone on to become one of the most important and successful public endeavours of its kind ever to be initiated by a member of the royal family - has still not been accorded the recognition it is due.

Yet, whose work will survive longer?

Naturally, Tory Historian is a monarchist

2011-04-29T01:03:00.005+01:00

This blog wishes Prince William and Kate Middleton, soon to be Princess William (not Princess Kate) every happiness in their difficult future. Below is a picture taken by TH in the Mall yesterday afternoon.

Victorians and religion

2011-04-26T16:01:00.002+01:00

Tory Historian has maintained for some time that there is a good deal of similarity between present-day Americans and Victorian British though their ideas of international influence are somewhat different in that Americans dislike the idea of an empire.

One thing that does seem to be similar is how widespread religious ideas, as social and political underpinning, are in the United States now and were in Britain in the nineteenth century. This article in History Today says something very similar:

British secularism is a 20th-century innovation, produced by the psychological shocks of war and social change. The Victorians would be bemused by the secularism of muscular liberalism and scandalised by the vague ‘births, deaths and marriages’ Anglicanism of much of the present government. Yet they were capable of a surprising degree of multiculturalism. Albeit with much debate, Unitarianism and Islam were legalised in 1812 and Catholics were given the vote in 1829. Muscular liberalism is a project rooted in false historical consciousness that seeks to drive religion out of the public sphere. In contrast, Victorian society revelled in difference and debate. Its unifying principle was not the absence of belief but its permeation. Given the part that faith has played in shaping the British constitution and state – from the right of Parliament to dismiss a heretical monarch, to the abolition of slavery – it is ahistorical to try to proscribe or eliminate its role today.

Some interesting points in a short article.

ANZAC Day

2011-04-25T23:37:00.003+01:00

Just made it, though it has gone in those parts of the world where it is remembered. But it is still worth recalling. Nothing annoys Tory Historian more than self-righteous comments about Britain "standing alone" when the country was supported by millions of Australians, New Zealanders as well as South Africans, Canadians, Indians and many many others from the Empire and Commonwealth. So let us honour the ANZACs for their courage in both world wars.

Happy Birthday, Your Majesty

2011-04-21T12:29:00.005+01:00

It would be wrong of Tory Historian to ignore Her Majesty the Queen's 85th birthday today. As ever she is working, handing out Maundy money at Westminster Abbey.

Here is another, much earlier picture of the Princess Elizabeth and the Princess Margaret broadcasting to the children of Britain and the Commonwealth from Windsor in 1940 at the height of the Blitz.