Conservative History Journal

The story of the Staute of Liberty, a gift from France to the United States of America for the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, is long and complicated. Wikipedia gives a good summary as does the National Park Service.

Tory Historian's first sight of it in real life, as opposed to pictures, newsreeels and the unforgettable sequence in Hitchcock's 1942 film "Saboteur" (not to be confused with the earlier "Sabotage", a rather poor version of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent") was a couple of years after 9/11. A walk along the river bank from Ground Zero was the right preparation for the sight of that statue rising, apparently, from the sea. It was the correct sequence - from despair to hope.

As far as this blog is concerned, what we are noting here is that today is the anniversary of the statue's actual arrival in New York Harbour in 1885 on board the French frigate Isère. Any reader who has not yet seen it is in for a tremendous experience, especially if he or she will include a trip to Ellis Island and a long visit to the museum there, which gives an engrossing account of those arrivals from the Old World.

After an hour or two one can look up and across to the Manhattan skyline and think - this is what those people built when they were no longer tired, poor or huddled masses.

Here is a less frequently seen picture of the D-Day invasion. Paras on their way.

Well, to be quite precise, time for another quote from the great Lord Acton. This one is extraordinarily apt for all ages:

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

Ronald Porter is a regular contributor to the Conservative History Journal and I am delighted to be able to put his review of Brenton's play about Harold Macmillan on the blog. I hope this might become a new departure for other contributors as well.

NEVER SO GOOD [By Howard Brenton ]

Lyttelton Theatre

Reviewed by Ronald Porter.

It has taken a little time to recover from the trip back in time but Tory Historian has now returned to the twenty-first century, ready to discuss both the production and the history as presented in the plays, which is very different from the history as it happened though, curiously, the overall pattern is not inaccurate.

(Tory Historian has finally worked out that Prince John, Henry V’s younger brother and later the Duke of Bedford, was not murdered spectacularly and bloodily by Joan La Pucelle but was actually the man who had her tried and executed. Furthermore, he died in his bed, which is quite an extraordinary idea, and was the founder of the University of Caen and a man who commissioned some of the finest illuminated manuscripts of the period. This is not a side of the man that is made at all clear in the Histories. One wonders whether the stylized appearance of Olivier’s Henry V, based largely on the “Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry”, did not also take some ideas from the “Bedford Book of Hours”.)

Anyway, back to the Histories as written by Old Will and performed by the renewed Royal Shakespeare Company. First things first: the series was superlative. The whole ensemble performed extraordinarily well, doubling, tripling and quadrupling parts, as it is usually the case with the long sequence that has several hundred characters. Some of the actors are heading into the great Shakespearian league in Tory Historian’s opinion. Jonathan Slinger (Richard II and Richard III, as well as other parts), Geoffrey Streatfeild (Hal, Henry V, Suffolk and smaller parts), Chuk Iwuji (Henry VI, Montjoy and others), Patrice Naiambana (a superlative Warwick and other characters) are stars to be watched. They are not the only ones.

The use of vertical and horizontal space, the speed of action and movement on and off the stage, the fantastic acrobatics on ladders and ropes and the imaginative use of very limited scenery – mostly a couple of large gates, one above the other, and the occasional bed for carousing or dying – made those long, complicated plays engrossing.

Let us hope the RSC has thought of filming the sequence and the DVDs will be available though they will be no substitute for the excitement of being there.

The plays, while they follow events as they happened after a fashion, do play fast and loose with dates, ages of characters and, above all, time lags. It is hard to work out from Henry VI that the Wars of the Roses took up something like thirty years, depending on what you consider to be the end.

But, of course, they are not really history, despite the fact that so many people think them to be just that. The general pattern of what happened is there but, more importantly several themes are worked out, more obviously in the first tetralogy or Richard II to Henry V, which was written some years after the Henry VI and Richard III sequence.

The questions are about the inevitable tension between legitimacy, loyalty and fitness to govern. In what circumstances can one rebel against an anointed monarch? When he is unfit to wear the crown? When he is a usurper?

There is also the overriding concept of England and Englishness, whether in John of Gaunt’s famous speech, Mowbray’s despair at having to leave his country and forget his language, Bolingbroke’s return from exile, Henry V’s battle cry or poor Henry VI’s unaffected pleasure at being back in his own land, despite the danger that surrounds him.

England is special, being an English king is a terrible responsibility and the tensions are never fully sorted out, not even in the character of the hero, Henry V. The notion is that they will be reconciled in Henry VII but that is Tudor propaganda. There was no legitimacy in Henry’s claim and his army of French invaders supported by rebels against the anointed king triumphed through force and treachery against a ruler who then had to be shown to be unfit to rule retrospectively.

Shakespeare takes no real sides though he seems to have been antagonistic to high churchmen, most of whom are villainous intriguers. How much of the trouble in Henry VI might have been avoided if the Bishop of Winchester (a scheming Beaufort), later a cardinal, had not been so intent on establishing his power over the young king and thwarting his uncles?

One of the best scenes in this production is the death of Cardinal Beaufort in Henry VI Part II, where his prayers for God’s mercy are silenced by the ghost of the murdered Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle. With those two powerful personalities out of the way the fun between the Yorkists and Lancastrians begins.

Which side is Old Will on? An interesting question, given the circumstances in which the plays were written and given the final one with the fantastically evil, hunchbacked Richard at the heart of it. The problem is that Richard the Monster is an inexplicable and unusual character, who suddenly morphs from Richard the loyal son of the Duke of York, member of a warm and affectionate family, brave and talented soldier. Towards the end of Henry VI Part III and in Richard III the clever, complex plays become crude propaganda.

Even then Shakespeare’s genius shines through. Richard is a favourite part for actors, most of whom seem to be able to find much that is human and, if not admirable, then attractive. After all, even according to the text, the hunchbacked, crippled monster excites loyalty in men and love in women. Famously, Richard wonders about that himself while spurring himself on to greater nastiness.

It’s not as if the series was particularly pro-Lancastrian. Quite clearly, they are usurpers who have cheerfully executed everyone who stood in their way and who supported the rightful king or his heir, imprisoning said heir, Mortimer, for life; when the Duke of York explains his claim to the throne, Warwick and Salisbury easily accept them and Henry VI finds them hard to refute.

Nor are the Yorkists particularly unpleasant in their behaviour except the boys to Lord Clifford who had tormented their father and, worst of all, murdered their much loved younger brother, a child who would have been spared by anyone except a man demented by his father’s death in battle years before that.

The Rutland episode in Henry VI Part III is very peculiar. Easily the most brutal and revolting in the whole sequence, it trumps the infamous murder of the young princes in the Tower. Presumably, it is not so well known because the three parts of Henry VI are performed rarely whereas Richard III is fairly frequently.

Lord Clifford maddened by the death of his father in battle finds the Duke of York’s youngest son, a child who is hiding with his tutor after what is presumably the Battle of Wakefield, and cuts his throat. Subsequently, the Duke is captured (in fact, he was killed in battle) and tormented by Clifford and other Lancastrians before being murdered. Part of the torment is Queen Margaret producing a napkin, which she had dipped in Rutland’s blood, and rubbing it into York’s face.

Before his death the Duke, naturally enough, curses the She-Wolf of France and expresses the hope that she would experience a torment that equals his on learning of Rutland’s death. Unusually, she does not remember this curse when her own son is killed after the Battle of Tewkesbury.

When the three brothers learn of this monstrous behaviour they, particularly Richard, go into a frenzy of rage. The deliberate murder of a child is horrific.

The general effect is to turn the audience into Yorkists, even if they were not that before. In fact, one wonders whether there is not an academic dissertation to be written that would prove Shakespeare, the Warwickshire man, to have been a secret supporter of the Yorkist cause. (Just joking.)

The point is that the episode never happened. It did not simply happen otherwise; nor is there a question mark over it as there is one over the unexplained disappearance of the two princes. There simply was no such event and could not have been.

Edmund, Earl of Rutland was not the youngest son of the Duke of York – that was Richard. He did take part in the Battle of Wakefield and seems to have been killed afterwards by Lord Clifford but he was seventeen, old enough to be a soldier. His head went up on the gates of York together with those of his father and his uncle, the Earl of Salisbury. It was George and Richard who were little boys and had to be sent away to safety after the battle, which temporarily put paid to Yorkist hopes and ambitions.

Why did Shakespeare invent something so utterly nasty against the Lancastrians? There seems no explanation.

While we are on the subject of unexplained matters, one cannot help wondering about the fascination usurpers and usurpation exerted over Shakespeare. Of course, there is plenty of dramatic tension in the subject but there was also plenty of danger in writing about it in Tudor times. What, one wonders, did Queen Elizabeth and her various courtiers make of these discussions about legitimacy?

What did they make of a later play, also about usurpation and legitimacy, the very popular Hamlet? And what did King Jamie make of yet another play on that theme, Macbeth, with its uncanny description of what we would now call a totalitarian state?

Or were rulers then, as they are now, so thick-skinned that nothing short of a rebels’ standard, a sword or an axe brought their attention to these matters? One can believe that about James but Elizabeth? Surely not.

Tory Historian is taking a trip into the fifteenth century this week-end. It is very conveniently to be found at the Roundhouse in North London. Tonight it is Shakespeare's "Richard II" (well, all right, parts of the fourteenth as well) and tomorrow the two parts of "Henry IV".

As described earlier, "Henry V" had to be seen out of sequence, as tickets for tomorrow evening's performance had already been sold out. That means a break tomorrow evening and the three parts of "Henry VI" on Saturday.

"Richard III" will be given a miss. It is not a particularly good play - far less subtle than the others, being straightforward Tudor propaganda, as Tory Historian has discussed once before. It is a historical travesty and a terrible calumny on a king who was reasonably successful and reasonably popular.

Instead, a re-reading of Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time" is called for as well as, possibly, some of the new and more accurate books on the subject. If only there were time to read all that is needed.

Incidentally, Richard II ascends the throne as a child though not as a baby, which is the fate of Henry VI. Much trouble comes from these unhappy inheritances. Setting aside the question of who murdered the princes in the Tower and the problem of their legitimacy, it is quite clear that Richard III is right in thinking that a child ruling England at that time was a recipe for a disaster.

Further reports from the late Plantagenet reign will follow.

Two separate events in my life in the last week or so have coalesced in one theme. Things happen like that sometimes. The first was a double book launch at the Social Affairs Unit of Peter Whittle’s “Look At Me – Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain” and of Lincoln Allison’s “Disrespect – or how the wrong kind of niceness is making us weak and unhappy”.

Both books are about the modern world and of the many ills that have befallen it, thus being slightly outside this blog’s scope (though not totally so) but another interesting event was a visit to the exhibition, now closed, at the Courtauld Galleries that was about Renoir’s painting “La Loge” and various social and artistic matters surrounding it.

There are many interesting and debatable subjects in Mr Whittle’s book – too many for this posting. (There might be a return engagement at a later stage.) He builds up structures around five people, who, he thinks, are typical of modern Britain in its self-obsession: Kayleigh, Harriet, Sue and Marc, and Jason. They are, in various ways, narcissistic, anti-social, self-centred, shallow and, without acknowledging this to themselves, unhappy.

Two questions arise inevitably: are they really typical of Britain or of the British of certain generation and are they particularly new with no antecedents. I would say not really to the first and definitely no to the second. However, the phenomenon may be more widely spread these days than before.

Mr Whittle mentions the appalling habit people have of not switching their mobiles off in places like theatres, cinemas and, I would add, exhibitions. I suspect that is thoughtlessness rather than anything sinister but there may be an element of exhibitionism there: look at me, I am so important, people want me even when I am out with my friends or family.

In that connection there is the point that a number of people go to the theatre and the opera to display themselves rather than watch the performance. Now that is definitely not new as a reading of eighteenth and nineteenth (and twentieth, for that matter) century would make it clear.

Renoir’s “La Loge” is about going to the theatre to display oneself to advantage and to see who else is present. Apparently when the painting was exhibited there were discussions as to whether the lady in it was from good society or a social climber. Unless the latter is a euphemism I’d say that she is neither but a lady of the demi-monde, who is already sizing up the next patron while the present one is also surveying the scene.

Much of the excellent exhibition is about the growth in importance, socially, of the theatre in late nineteenth century France, the people who went there and the many uses visits could be put.

There is Renoir’s other painting, “At the theatre”, sometimes known as “The first outing” which shows a young girl in a box with an older female companion, perhaps her mother or sister. The rest of the audience is a blur but there is one gentleman who is more distinct. He is quite clearly eyeing the young girl for his own purposes. Despite the prettiness of the picture, it is quite disturbing.

There are the various caricatures, sometimes directed at the aristocracy, but mostly at the middle classes, whose rather innocent attempts at entertainment that is not too expensive, are presumed to be a matter for satirical laughter.

Renoir, having painted several socially dubious pictures of the theatre also produced at least two enchanting small oil paintings of middle class couples, contentedly and companionably absorbed in the performance. They are not in the theatre to show themselves off but to watch the play.

Among other artists Mary Cassatt is represented with two pictures: one of a lady in mourning, probably a widow, who, while being watched by a gentleman in another box, is herself surveying the audience with absorptions. But the most fascinating one is “Woman with a pearl necklace” that shows a completely different female attitude.

It was assumed that the lady in question was an American visitor and there are good grounds for this assumption. She is dressed and coiffed differently from the others but above all she looks at the world differently. Neither demure nor calculating, she surveys her companions openly, as an equal. A painting like that makes one realize that the American invasion of Europe and Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century must have been quite electrifying.

This week-end Tory Historian has fulfilled a long-standing ambition and visited Benjamin Franklin’s House in Craven Street, near Charing Cross Station. Well, worth a visit if you have a couple of hours to spare.

The house is as it was in the days when Franklin lived in London, trying to negotiate an agreement between the British government and the Colonies on matters to do with taxation as well as conducting scientific research, writing many things, including his Autobiography and leading and intensely busy social life.

However, there is next to no furniture. Instead of filling the house up with contemporary artefacts, the people who run it have opted for an alternative solution. They have used voices from different parts of the room, films and the presence of one actress who plays the daughter of Franklin’s landlady and the wife of the anatomist who conducted classes in the house to give a very fair idea of the great man, his many friends and interests and of the busy life of the household at the time.

Occasionally we see and hear of riots both in America and in London with the implication that in 1775 Franklin barely escaped with his life.

All in all a praiseworthy enterprise and a fascinating slice of history. Tory Historian went with a Canadian friend who was visiting London and is, like TH, something of a Franklin admirer. Sad to say, all the other people in the group were American visitors. Not that Tory Historian has any objections to American visitors, especially if they are interested in Benjamin Franklin’s stay in London but it would have been nice to see some British students of eighteenth century history. The word “students” here is used in the widest possible sense.

Franklin is as much part of our history as of America’s. He was described as a Citizen of the World, who was also a great patriot. He was, to use our own terminology, a great Anglospherist. He was desperate to avoid war between Britain and her colonies and desperately sad and angry when it became impossible. But, when the time came, he signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Tory Historian is a confirmed Anglospherist, as any reader, however cursory, of this blog will know. Therefore, discussions about conservatism in other parts of the Anglosphere are of particular joy, though discussions about conservatism in other parts of the world are also of interest.

Firstly, Tory Historian would like to call the readers’ attention to an obituary by the great Claudio Véliz, author, among other things, of “The New World of the Gothic Fox – Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America” and of a superlative article in Quadrant that compares Gough Whitlam with General Perón, which explains why the wrecking of Argentina’s economic and political structure was not replicated in Australia.

The obituary is that of William F. Buckley, whose death was noted on this blog as well. The whole piece is worth reading but of particular interest are the last couple of paragraphs.

Professor Véliz suggests that Buckley’s fascination with sailing may well have given him a clearer understanding of natural rhythms in nature and society and reminds us of Edmund Burke’s comments on similar subjects:

Few activities establish a more intimate relationship between man and nature than sailing the high seas. Few contemporaries have been more happily and efficiently attuned to the rhythms, harmonies and dissonance of nature and the language of the sea than Bill Buckley, and few would have understood better what Edmund Burke had in mind when, in Reflections on the Revolution in France, he explained that:

“working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down, to us and from us, in the same course and order. [This] political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a ermanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein … the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression … thus in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.”

Such an understanding furnishes “a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission: without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires.”

Of course, Bill Buckley could have penned this if Edmund Burke had not done it before him. William F. Buckley Jr was a Burke for our times.

April 25 is Anzac Day, something all Anglospherists should remember. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, Tory Historian did not get round to posting this till after the celebrations finished in the countries concerned, though it is still Friday in western Australia though only just.

Nevertheless, we must not forget the role of the Anzacs in the two world wars and subsequent battles. They have even forgiven Britain for her behaviour in the seventies when Australia's and New Zealand's economies were ruthlessly undermined to get us into the Common Market.

At least, we all hope they have forgiven us.

This is not a topic that is often covered on this blog but Tory Historian feels strongly (as do all historians) that there is a tendency around to forget that some things we experience have happened before.

A look at the BBC On This Day website will remind us that today is the anniversary of the massive IRA bomb in the City that devastated a large section of it, killing one person and injuring more than 40.

We hear a lot from the anti-terrorist squad in the police and elsewhere that it is very difficult to deal with the people who are threatening us now because they are not like the IRA in their intentions or structural set-up. Indeed, not, but then the IRA was quite unusual in both. They had a definite aim and they were organized like the army they thought themselves to be.

Other terrorist organizations in the seventies were very different, much nearer to the ones around now with many of them trained by the same people. Today is also the anniversary of the explosion in the West German embassy in Stockholm where three people were killed before and during it. Many were injured.

The embassy's staff had been taken hostage by off-shoots of the Baader-Meinhof gang, 26 of whose members were at this time imprisoned and awaiting trial. The demands for their release were not met by the West German government who had, in fact, been humiliated by this band of terrorists before. The result was the killing of two attaches and the explosion.

Eventually, members of the Baader-Meinhof gang were imprisoned and many of them committed suicide in gaol. There were so many of such gangs at the time. It would pay people to study their operation and how they were dealt with, what were the successes and failures. Above all, it is worth recalling that nihilistic, destructive, apparently aimless because the aims are so general terrorist groups are not new. It's jsut the IRA is not one of them.

Tory Historian is finding it very difficult to understand why politicians, the media and the educational establishment should suddenly start fussing about St George’s Day, when it has been little more than a source of gentle entertainment in a very typical English way in the past.

Some American bloggers are incensed that parades that have never existed before should now be cancelled not to provoke Muslim attacks. Muslims in Bradford are saying that they don’t really care and a nice parade would be just the ticket to cheer everyone up.

Radio 3 is playing English music, which is a good idea, though less well known pieces would be an even better idea but one cannot help asking why the BBC should suddenly decide to become involved with St George.

Politicians are sending round e-mails with St George’s flag, which must be the ultimate insult for that unfortunate saint.

St George is not only England’s patron saint. Here is the full list (probably):

Amersfoort, Netherlands; Aragon; agricultural workers; archers; armourers; Beirut, Lebanon; Scouts; butchers; Cappadocia; Catalonia; cavalry; chivalry; Constantinople; Corinthians (Brazilian football team); Crusaders; England; equestrians; Ethiopia; farmers; Ferrara; field workers; Genoa; Geogia; Gozo; Bulgaria; Greece; Gozo, Haldern, Germany; Heide; herpes; horsemen; horses; husbandmen; knights; lepers and leprosy; Lithuania; Lod; Malta; Modica,
Sicily; Moscow; Order of the Garter; Palestine; Palestinian Christians; plague; Portugal; Piran; Ptuj, Slovenia; Reggio Calabira; riders; saddle makers; sheep; shepherds; skin diseases; soldiers; syphilis; Teutonic Knights

Once again, Tory Historian is not travelling physically, but mentally. Reading matter for today (and the previous week or so) is Sam Tanenhous’s biography of one of the most important and enigmatic characters of the twentieth century, Whittaker Chambers.

The book that was published in the United States in 1998 finally made its way to this country last year, complete with an introduction by Mr Tanenhous that invokes some spurious parallels between events of the forties and the present. The introduction proves that Mr Tanenhous learnt nothing from his research into Chambers’s life.

One also wonders why it had to be retitled for the British reader. Instead of “Whittaker Chambers: A Biography”, it is now called “An Un-American Life: The Case of Whittaker Chambers”. Why “the case”? Do we in this country still believe that there is any doubt as to who spoke the truth in the famous Hiss-Chambers case? Or do we still credit those fraudulent charlatans who came up with ridiculous psychological explanations for Chambers’s behaviour that he explained very cogently?

Reading the biography naturally led Tory Historian back to “Witness”, that most elegiac of memoirs and discussions of the real twentieth century and a book that is indispensable reading for all who want to understand American conservatism, so much more sinewy than our own, “Odyssey of a friend”, Chambers’s letters to Bill Buckley, published by the latter in 1969.

Whittaker Chambers’s influence on Buckley and through him on the American conservative movement cannot be overestimated. This is not to say that Buckley did not have strongly held views, which he could probably argue through much better than Chambers could.

There were many disagreements between the two but they shared an almost apocalyptic vision of the struggle they felt they had to wage with Buckley, the optimist, often out in front gleefully attacking everyone in sight.

Chambers was a pessimist as all those who served the Communist cause well until they became so disillusioned that they broke their lives to escape thraldom. Other examples of this trend are Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone and Manés Sperber. The leading British anti-Communists had not been so strongly involved. Their opposition was more intellectual, less apocalyptic.

The battles of the late forties and early fifties; HUAC and the Senatorial hearings; the revelations of the widespread Communist conspiracy (since then proved by Soviet documents); and, most of all, the Hiss-Chambers case have all provided American conservatives with a toughness that has since weathered and triumphed over the set-backs of the sixties and seventies.

The future cannot be predicted but my guess is that Whittaker Chambers would have sounded Cassandra-like warnings during the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall and would not have been surprised by the battles we have to fight now.

No, this is not Tory Historian reporting from abroad, at least not physically so, but Tory Historian writing about conservative thinking in other countries’ history. Among these, possibly the most interesting is the case of Russia and its conservative thinkers, who have ranged from extreme theocrats to liberal conservatives like the legislator Mikhail Speransky (1772 – 1839) or the historian Boris Chicherin (1828 – 1904).

Both these gentlemen advocated as kind of rechsstaat for Russia. Their view was, and they were almost a century apart, that western-style liberal democracy was not appropriate for that country but the existing autocracy was undesirable.

The aim was a structure that was not parliamentarian but in which the rulers were subject to the law of the land. As Professor Richard Pipes, the pre-eminent historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, said in a recent talk he gave at the GB-Russia Society, that structure has not yet been achieved in Russia and was still highly desirable. He did not think we would see it in the immediate future.

Professor Pipes has maintained for some time that the West has a skewed idea of Russian intellectual development because it has concentrated on the liberals and the radicals – possibly a more glamorous cohort and one that has managed to install its views into Western consciousness since the 1870s.

Most recently, this fascination turned up in Tom Stoppard’s brilliant and tragic trilogy, “The Coast of Utopia”.

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

There is more, says Professor Pipes.

In the West it is thought that Russia is a radical country. When I was at Harvard in 1948 we heard Isaiah Berlin lecture on Russian intellectual history; in time, Isaiah Berlin became a good friend of mine. Of course, his principal hero was Alexander Herzen, but others were Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and people like that.

He never lectured on the conservatives, and now we have a new play by Tom Stoppard called “The Coast of Utopia” which deals entirely with these people. But these people had minimal influence on the course of Russian history; if they did, it was in a very negative way by frightening the government and causing it to repress.

The course of Russian history for hundreds of years was determined by conservatives and there is virtually no one who deals with that subject, which is why I have made it my job to study Russian conservative thought and see how it influenced Russian thinking.

Tory Historian has not had much time recently to blog but this will be rectified from now on. And the first thing to be written about is the RSC’s production of “Henry V”, seen at the Roundhouse on Saturday.

The RSC’s sequence of the Histories or Chronicles, from Richard to Richard, comes with high praise from two seasons in Stratford and the Roundhouse, nowadays a venue mostly for rock concerts, has been turned into a copy of the Courtyard Theatre. The tickets have been flying out of the box office.

Tory Historian was intending to see the whole series in order in May but found that the “Henry V” of that week-end had sold out. So it had to be seen out of order, which does not matter so much for this play as it is a stand-alone one, despite the tiresome Chorus, who comes in at the end to mute the celebrations of victory and Henry’s marriage to the French Princes Katharine by reminding the audience that in “Henry VI” they will see all that our hero has achieved being frittered away and the country descending into chaos.

If one compares the play with the glorious Olivier film it is the Chorus that makes it much duller. Sadly, he is there in the original and was largely cut out of the film. A tiresome theatrical business and one that is not entirely comprehensible. So far as Tory Historian recalls, “Henry V” is the only play in which Shakespeare used this convention.

Otherwise, the play stands up well to the comparison, not least because of the acting. Geoffrey Streatfield, as Henry, is excellent. We may well be seeing one of the great Shakespearian actors of the generation here and one does not say that lightly.

He is a much more tense Henry than Olivier was, less broody but quicker to give in to his temper, which is only imperfectly controlled. He is also more aware of the reality behind his throne. Made during the war, Olivier’s film could not allow such doubts to be voiced, so the prayer before the battle had to be shortened. The words about not wishing to meet his Maker yet to answer for his father’s and his own crimes against the true King of England were cut out. (After all, a three and a half hour long play cannot be translated into a film easily without extensive cuts.)

Streatfield’s Henry is always aware of how his father came by the crown, which has descended to him. He is reluctant to wear it, leaves it behind several times and when it is brought to him, shies away. When wooing Katharine he very deliberately takes it off and gives it to the lady-in-waiting to hold. This is a strong and heroic character that is, nevertheless, full of worry and doubt. The knowledge that he will die young and not fulfil his potential is so much more poignant.

There is much more to say about the play and the comparisons one can make with that superb film but it will have to be left to another posting. Perhaps, as once before, it will be possible to draw together several strands through several pieces on this blog; and, perhaps, there will be contributions on the subject from our readers.

Details of the next two CHG meetings have been confirmed.



MONDAY 21 APRIL 6.30pm
Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood Speech 40 Years On
Speakers: Simon Heffer & Nicholas Hillman
Venue: Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons

TUESDAY 17 JUNE, 6.30pm
Lloyd George & His Women
Speaker: Ffion Hague
Venue: Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons



As a special inducement, there will be a new edition of the Conservative History Journal available by the June meeting.

There is no need to be upset by the death of an 84 year old man who has achieved much in his life, was greatly respected by millions of people around the world and who has given great pleasure to many millions.

For all of that Tory Historian was sad to hear a few days ago that the great Charlton Heston had entered into the last stages of Alzheimer's and even sadder to find this morning news of his death. Dirty Harry at Libertas gives a wonderful obituary so we need to add nothing more except to say that Heston was a true conservative - a believer in freedom and the constitution. He was also a man who was prepared to fight for what he believed in even if it threatened his career or made him a pariah in Hollywood. What a difference between that stand and that of people who prance around calling themselves courageous while repeating trendy slogans.

Tory Historian is not the first person to note that there is something peculiarly and enchantingly English and conservative about Sir Edward Lutyens, whose birthday is March 29, 1869. That is not to say that there is only a conservative cultural tradition in England. There is a very separate radical one, though it, too, in many ways, is conservative in its outlook. But that is, perhaps, for another posting or for comments by readers.

He designed country houses, London houses, grandiose buildings in New Delhi and several war memorials including the Cenotaph in Whitehall. The one reproduced here is the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, a structure that combines grandness of design with comfort of feeling. Could that be a definition of conservatism in culture?

There is something ineffably English about Sir Edward’s family life – the five children, born despite a less than happy marriage; the dottiness of his wife, Lady Emily Lutyens (later Lady Lutyens), who had actually proposed to him and insisted on the marriage and who later became fascinated by theosophy, Eastern religions (only some of them, one presumes) and Juddu Krishnamurti; the children, some of whom turned out to be completely conventional, some less so.

Mary Lutyens became a writer of biographies, including that of Krishnamurti. Elisabeth Lutyens is the most interesting offspring. A prolific and highly regarded composer, though something of a maverick, she has been lost to the general public through a double prejudice – against English and against women composers.

Tory Historian is going off the beaten track today to spend the day in preparation for a talk this evening on the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Properly speaking, it should have been delivered last year, for the anniversary but not nearly enough people were interested.

For some reason, the anniversary of the Entente Cordiale of 1904 seemed of greater import. Yet the two are inextricably linked - both agreements negotiated in secret against popular opinion (especially the Anglo-Russian one) by a Foreign Office that was turning away from traditional ideas of international politics.

Both were supposed to put an end to centuries of rivalry and enmity but together they resulted in Britain becoming involved in the First World War. In fact, one could argue that these agreements made that war all but inevitable. Or did they? Tory Historian is looking forward to some trenchant opinions from readers of this blog.

The next event hosted by the Conservative History Group will take place on April 21 in the House of Commons. The journalist and author Simon Heffer, Enoch Powell's biographer, will be speaking about Powell's "rivers of blood" speech and its consequences on the fortieth anniversary.

Further information about time and exact place to follow.

This may be St Patrick's Day but Tory Historian refuses to pander to the general consensus, despite the word tory being from the Irish tóraí, which means a robber. So no stories of St Patrick and no words of "Danny Boy".

Instead here is a quotation from Mark Twain, who never disappoints:

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.

The launch of Jeremy Black's "The Curse of History" was a good deal of fun with an interesting exchange between the author and the dedicatee, Peter Lilley MP.

Professor Black said in his speech that while individual shame was the cornerstone of our culture and development - without shame there can be no atonement and no change - collective guilt was meaningless and harmful to society.

Mr Lilley agreed with it broadly but added an interesting caveat. As he is proud of his country and its history, he said, so he feels it possible and necessary to feel ashamed of some of the less salubrious episodes of the past.

This would indicate that there might be such a thing as individual shame for the collective past or, even, collective shame. That, of course, is not the same thing as collective guilt, let alone any need to apologize or excuse for perpetual victimhood.

Jeremy Black, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, nominally an expert on eighteenth century history but in reality on everything, a conservative (possibly even one with a capital C) must be the most productive historian around.

This evening will see the launch of yet another book by him, published by the Social Affairs Unit. The title is "The Curse of History" and Professor Black will be returning to a favoured theme: the wrongness of treating history as a basis for collective grief and constant need to apologize.

Tory Historian intends to be there and is hoping to review the book on this blog very very soon.

Tory Historian is full of remorse at being late with the obituary of Francis Pym, Baron Pym of Sandy and a descendant of the great Parliamentarian, John Pym. Whether his ancestor would have been quite as impressed by our Pym as the many obituarists seem to have been is a moot point. Then again, Francis Pym did put up a fight against his leader and Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in the name of old-fashioned, paternalistic, one-nation Tory politics.

One of the great advantages of writing this obituary so late is that everything has really been said from every side from the exhaustive Daily Telegraph piece to the more intriguing article in MercoPress about Francis Pym’s role in the Falklands conflict.

The latter is written by a British writer but the dateline is Montevideo, so the article may be said to be something of an in-between effort. It is not what one might call complimentary about Lord Pym, though the comment that he opposed the war because of his own experience in World War II is a valid one. (Curiously, nobody makes that allowance for the people who had gone through World War I and were anxious not to have another one in the late thirties.)

The Telegraph obituarist, clearly and admirer takes a slightly different view and does not think that Pym’s negotiations with Alexander Haig and desire to have peace with Argentina showed weakness.

Pym became Foreign Secretary in the most taxing of circumstances, with Lord Carrington’s resignation after Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands. Passed over for the job three years earlier, Pym now found himself summoned in the hour of need. He brought to the office calm, precision, shrewdness and diplomacy, and, working closely with US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, secured valuable international support as Britain’s Task Force recaptured the islands. With Mrs Thatcher determined not to be thwarted by the United Nations or by well-meaning third-party initiatives such as the “Peruvian peace plan”, Pym delivered her the time and the diplomatic space to achieve conclusive military success.

Francis Pym will be remembered as a brave, honest, highly competent and gifted man whose politics were old-fashioned and impeccably conducted. That he never achieved the highest office may have been a reflection of the times rather than of the man.

My teenage years were dominated by newsprint. Literally. The house was filled with newspapers and magazines, which my mother periodically threw out. My father, on the other hand, was a true news and newspaper junkie. The day on which he could not get his fix was a bad day.

He subscribed to the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Daily Mail, the three heavy Sunday newspapers and the News of the World, the New Statesman and the Spectator as well as the Russian rags, necessary to his work as a leading commentator on the Soviet Union. Over and above that he (or quite often I on his instructions) bought Time Magazine and Private Eye. And then there came an addition: the National Review, the only exciting right-wing publication in the English language.

By this stage Bill Buckley (yes, I know his name was William F. Buckley but somehow even a teenage admirer in another country thought of him as Bill) had become a legend. He went on being a legend up to and beyond his recent death as this moving tribute by Peggy Noonan shows.

The facts of his life – his precocious entry into the world of political thought; his determination, brilliance and love of ideas and language; his hyperactive lifestyle – have all been told in numerous obituaries. I want to add several related points.

First is that Buckley, like Reagan and like Thatcher in some ways, was, as an American friend described him, a happy warrior. He took great joy in life and politics in whatever order that happened to come up. Buckley made conservative politics attractive through the joy he projected, the excitement with which he imbued all his activities: writing, broadcasting, entertaining, just living.

Whole new generations, mainly in the United States, but some in other parts of the Anglosphere, went to that side of the political spectrum, partly because what Buckley said was so absolutely right, in every sense of the word and partly because of his personality.

The obviousness of this is shown by the fact that until recently the Republican Party dominated politics and the right dominated political discourse in the US despite the stranglehold the liberal consensus acquired over the academia (as Buckley wrote as long ago as 1951 in his seminal “God and Man at Yale”) and the media.

Ronald Reagan and his presidency embodied in themselves these ideas and he showed them to be successful. Things change and different people come to the fore. The jury is still out on the Bush presidency, naturally enough since it will not be over till January of next year. It also looks as if the right has lost its appeal in the US. That, I suspect, is deceptive. Come November there may be a few surprises, especially for the British media, which managed to call the last presidential election wrong.

Even if the Democrats sweep into power, conservative ideas and conservative thinking will not be extinguished in that country – they may even become stronger.

What of Britain, which had a highly successful Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher? How much influence has Buckley really had?

On certain individuals his influence has undoubtedly been enormous. They are, however, the exception, the ones who look to America for ideas and think that Britain should be part of an Anglosphere instead of being stuck in an embarrassingly inward looking European project or try to revive the ideas of the Commonwealth.

What, however, the conservative movement has not taken on board is the sheer pleasure of proclaiming ideas that one considers to be right. There is too much hiding behind shibboleths, too much embarrassment, too much coughing and whispering, too many assumptions that one must not go beyond a certain point and that one must be “balanced” in what one says, writes or broadcasts.

Let us emulate the happy warrior as so many do in the US, in good times and bad: let us proclaim what we believe in without fear and without embarrassment. Only that way can conservatism be a mainstream ideology, which is what Bill Buckley made it in the fifty-odd years of his working life.

Tory Historian is always happy to learn something new. For instance, casual survey of the internet informs one that today is the anniversary of the last French invasion of Britain. Well, no, it is not the anniversary of the last successful invasion - that remains the Norman one of 1066 (though whether the Normans were actually French is debatable).

This is a wonderful story of French ships arriving at Fishguard, being scared off by the canons and landing troops and ammunition nearby.

On Wednesday, February 22, the French warships sailed into Fishguard Bay, to be greeted by canon fire from the local fort. Unbeknown to the French the cannon was being fired as an alarm to the local townsfolk, nervously the ships withdrew and sailed on until they reached a small sandy beach near the village of Llanwnda. Men, arms and gunpowder were unloaded and by 2 am on the morning of Thursday, February 23rd, the last invasion of Britain was completed. The ships returned to France with a special despatch being sent to the Directory in Paris informing them of the successful landing.

L. P. Hartley, not one of Tory Historian’s favourite writers, started his best-known book (mostly because of the film with Julie Christie and Alan Bates) with the words: “The past is another country; they do things differently there”.

As it happens, Tory Historian disagrees with that and feels that, maybe, novelists should not make comments about history (unless we are talking about Georgette Heyer). In essence, whatever the details may be, people do not do things differently in the past from the present.

While there is nothing attractive in rose-coloured glasses or, to be precise, in people looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses, the sneering proclamation of the superiority of everything in the present is no better.

These random thoughts appeared during the reading of Anita Desai’s introduction to the Virago edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “Turkish Embassy Letters”.

Lady Mary, one of the most attractive letter writers of a period that boasted many such individuals, is patted on the head for “her ability to study and alien culture according to its own values” and for “a rare ability to see herself through the eyes of others”. If only Ms Desai shared these abilities.

She is so horrified by the fact that Lady Mary’s father conducted financial negotiations with her suitor, Edward Wortley Montagu, that she quite forgets to explain why those negotiations came to nothing. Or to tell us how and when were the young people reconciled with the Earl of Kingston, later Marquess of Dorchester.

Altogether Ms Desai is horrified by many things and seems unable to study what she sees as an alien culture, England of the eighteenth century, according to its own values.

All those people, my dear, Alexander Pope, Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey and Lady Mary herself, are so nasty. Oh my smelling salts! Or a lavender-sprinkled handkerchief!

That talent to enjoy was poisoned and distorted by the society in which she moved, what Dervla Murphy calls not the Age of Reason but the Age of Savagery. The attacks made on her by Pope would have dragged him into a court of law for libel nowadays, and Horace Walpole’s insinuation that she suffered from venereal disease (‘the half she yet retains of nose’) would have got him a ruinous fine. In the eighteenth century these jibes were permissible, and Lady Mary’s record as an adversary in the field is not negligible. Her caricature of the hunchbacked Pope could only be acceptable amongst hardened cynics.

Tory Historian was delighted to hear that there are moves afoot to erect a permanent memorial in Edinburgh to one of the great heroes of the Second World War, Woytek the bear. A campaign is afoot (yes, OK, but I shall refrain from the obvious pun) to erect a statue to the ursine war hero near Edinburgh, his adopted city.

In 1942 Polish soldiers who had not so long ago been released from Siberia and whose general had insisted that they fight on the western front (their officers had been killed in Katyn and other camps) were in Iran where they acquired a honey-coloured bear cub.

They fed him milk out of an old vodka bottle, reared him and treated him not as pet, but as a fellow soldier as they made their way across the Middle East to the Lebanese front.

Tory Historian is once again recommending a rival and, sadly, much more successful publication to readers of this blog. The New Criterion, as mentioned before, has a collection of articles about the future of conservatism. They are well worth reading though, inevitably, it is a motley collection.

The problem that few of the articles manage to solve is the crucial one of conservatism and change. Strictly speaking, conservatism means conserving what there is and not moving forward at all but what happens if what there is, is not palatable to conservatism.

Tory Historian’s own favoured view is that great conservatives of the past have found that the principles of conservatism were more important than the need not to change. Among the essays, John O’Sullivan’s call for action against the unaccountable bureaucrats, particularly the international and transnational ones is, therefore, the essay that is most in tune with Tory Historian’s views.

Mr O’Sullivan’s article can be read freely on the internet, others require subscription, which takes no time at all. Readers of this blog may well find them interesting and might want to have a discussion on the subject here. Oh yes, ignore the piece on the Lisbon Treaty. Not because the treaty is not a ghastly shambles but because the article seems not to know that it is one in a long process of Britain being subsumed in an integrated “Europe” that began more than thirty years ago.

PS This ties in very well with the discussion currently developing on ConservativeHome blog on whether the Conservative Party should imitate a hare or a tortoise.

Curiously enough, Tory Historian found a follow-up to the previous posting in the latest editions of The New Criterion, which, among other articles carries papers from a symposium organized jointly by the magazine and our own Social Affairs Unit. Apart from the symposium, which Tory Historian has not read yet, there are other articles and book reviews.

One is a characteristically caustic piece by Mark Steyn on Noel Coward’s letters but the best one is by David Pryce-Jones, entitled “Enough Said” [registration needed]. The book is by Ibn Warraq and is called “Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism”.

It has to be said (oh dear!) that Edward Said’s moment is fast disappearing thanks to historians like Ibn Warraq, Justus Reid Weiner, Robert Irwin and David Pryce-Jones himself.

From the point of view of this blog, though, the really interesting paragraph is the following one:

As common sense suggests and Ibn Warraq substantiates, the interest of Westerners in the East from classical antiquity onwards was motivated by intellectual curiosity; they wanted to find out about the other human beings with whom they were sharing the world. To seek knowledge for its own sake is the special and wholly beneficial the West has made to mankind.

Tory Historian has started the new year by reading two books almost simultaneously (not to mention the odd detective story or Georgette Heyer historical romance). One is R. J. Q. Adams’s biography of Balfour, subtitled “The Last Grandee” about which there will be postings later on.

The other book is a completely entrancing history of the Persian Wars by Tom Holland. Entitled “Persian Fire”, it is subtitled “The First World Empire and the Battle for the West”.

There has been a mention of the Battle of Thermopylae on this blog before as well as a speculation about different views of how significant those battles on the borders of the Persian Empire were.

Naturally enough, Tom Holland speculates on the significance, especially, his underlying thesis is that the division between the West and the East or the rest began in the 5th century BC though he also believes that the divisions have never been as clear-cut as one might assume.

What is it that has excited many generations of people about those wars?

Any account of odds heroically defied is exciting – but how much more tense it becomes when the odds are incalculably, incomparably high. There was much more at stake during the course of the Persian attempts to subdue the Greek mainland than the independence of what Xerxes had regarded as a ragbag of terrorist states.

As subjects of a foreign king, the Athenians would never have had the opportunity to develop their unique democratic culture. Much that made Greek civilisation distinctive would have been aborted. The legacy inherited by Rome and passed on to modern Europe would have been immeasurably impoverished.

Not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely, had the Greeks succumbed to Xerxes’ invasion, that there would ever have been such an entity as “the West” at all.

Tory Historian is not much given to new year resolutions, being one of those who forgets them within a week or so, never mind trying to keep to them. But (there is always a but after a statement like that) one resolution that is worth making is a more assiduous upkeep of this blog.

In the meantime, let me leave you all with a picture and a link to one of the most wonderful new year tradition the Vienna concert that includes music from the Strauss family and contemporaneous composers.

Happy new year to all who read the Conservative History blog, the Journal and may the Conservative History Group flourish in 2008.