Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian, half-way through Baroness James's last novel "The Private Patient" is once again perplexed why it is impossible to like the lady's late novels. After all, she is a conservative writer (as well as a Conservative peer) and one who is a practitioner of the traditional form of detective story. She has, indeed, been in trouble for expressing views that detective stories can be written only about people who understand the difference between right and wrong. She was accused of snobbery (presumably with violence, to quote Colin Watson).

Her early books about Adam Dalgliesh (a most unlikely police officer who is also a talented poet and the son of a rector) were controlled, well-plotted and extremely likeable. The first book about Private Investigator Cordelia Gray, "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" was, despite its slightly preposterous plot, extremely taut with excellent descriptions of Cambridge, its spoilt denizens and of Ms Gray, the dedicated PI, herself. In the second book, "The Skull Beneath the Skin" the seriously preposterous plot destroys the good qualities. Though Ms Gray is mentioned in one of the Dalgliesh mysteries casually, she has been dropped by Baroness James.

However, several of the more recent Dalgliesh books have been bad. They have all become too long and far too verbose with far too much introspection by all the police officers. Some introspection adds an extra dimension; pages and pages of it merely bore the reader.

Incidentally, only one of her police officers, Inspector Kate Miskin comes from the sort of class most coppers do, though she is actually one of the underclass who makes good. The others all seem to be upper middle class graduates with excellent knowledge of many things. A tad unlikely, Tory Historian thinks, risking accusations of snobbery without violence.

It's the plots that are the problem. From the 1986 "A Taste for Death", published after a longer than usual gap, the plots have steadily become more and more fantastical and less and less logical, achieving a kind of nadir with "Original Sin" (an unconscious re-writing of a far better novel by Nicholas Blake), "A Certain Justice" (where the original plot disappears into a memory hole to reappear in a completely incomprehensible solution) and "Death in Holy Orders" (where a young man commits suicide by pulling a great deal of earth down on himself). These were so poor that even the critics had to admit that.

The last three novels were an improvement. Let's face it, they could not get any worse. But they are still too long, too verbose and too fantastical with far too much introspection.

Ah well, at least they are wonderfully well written and at the end of "The Private Patient" Commander Adam Dalgliesh will finally tie the knot with Cambridge academic Dr Emma Lavenham. Even Lord Peter Wimsey took less time to woo and gain Harriet Vane.

For reasons that will never be explained 2009 is a year of many anniversaries for important composers. One of the greatest, George Frideric Handel, is remembered today as April 14 marks the 250th anniversary of his death.

Somehow it seems appropriate that this celebration or remembrance should happen on the day after Easter Monday for one of Handel’s greatest works is, indisputably, his oratorio, Messiah, which produces new joys on each hearing.

In 1740 Handel, having suffered and, apparently, recovered from a stroke, Handel decided to give up opera management. He had lost a great deal of money on it. Instead he turned to writing oratorios, while continuing with other pieces of music.

Messiah was performed first in Dublin in 1742 (on April 13, as it happens). In 1750 there was a special performance in aid of the Foundling Hospital of which Handel remained a patron and what we would now call a fundraiser. Patrons who came to his annual concerts paid for the privilege and the money went to the charity.

Handel’s influence on the development of music can be discussed at length, though not by Tory Historian who is not qualified to do so. But some of the responses to the date are quite interesting.

Classic FM broadcast the complete oratorio yesterday evening, together with several other pieces of music, the whole programme introduced ably by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. It was a splendidly inspiring ending to the Easter festivities.

Michael White, one of the ever proliferating Daily Telegraph bloggers has produced a clever-clever piece about why Handel is a goodish composer or maybe not and why we should stop paying attention to anniversaries. At least that is what he seems to be saying. Tory Historian finds clever dick journalist bloggers tiresome.

Both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent write about the crowds gathering near the place where the Messiah was first performed to celebrate the Handel anniversary. There is an official festival and, it seems a great deal of unofficial celebration. Perhaps Michael White should go to Dublin. Maybe not. He would curdle the milk.

But the best story, in Tory Historian’s opinion was produced by Peter Day on the BBC website. It would appear that Handel was not only a fine musician and genius as composer, he was also quite a smart financial operator, despite his lack of success with opera management. (But then, did anybody have any success with it?) Apparently, he even managed to get out of the South Sea Company well before it went bust causing a truly horrendous financial crisis, only to find his way back into the market three years later, after the Bank of England had backed the South Sea annuities. Read the whole story. It’s a lot of fun.

There is also an exhibition about Handel’s money-making abilities at the Bank of England. Tory Historian will probably visit it.

Well, some things do change. For instance, the book in Tory Historian’s hands, the 1969 edition of Dorothy L. Sayers’s highly intricate and literate plays about the life of Christ, “The Man Born To Be King” tells one that these plays were written for and performed on Children’s Hour on BBC Radio during the war.

Children’s Hour? We have nothing called that these days but we do have children’s programmes on TV if not on radio and they are unlikely to have complex plays of that kind. These days it appears on BBC 7 the somewhat controversial digital radio station, heard by very few people.

What has not changed much, though, is the media attitude. This is what Dr J. W. Welch, then Director of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC (there not being any other broadcasting in Britain in the forties) wrote in his Foreword:

By December 1941 five plays had been written, and the first, about the Nativity, we planned to broadcast on the Sunday before Christmas 1941. Ten days before the broadcast, at my request, Miss Sayers attended a Press conference, at which she read a statement outlining some of the dramatic difficulties involved in writing the plays and some of the methods she had used; she also read, at the request of a member of the Press, some excerpts from the dialogue in the plays.

Then the storm broke. Almost all the journalists who had attended the conference wrote fairly and sympathetically about the new venture; but a few used the occasion for sensational reporting, and at least one was guilty of misrepresentation. One appearance of these sensational and inaccurate reports, without having heard or read one line of any of the plays, without ever crediting Miss Sayers with any capacity for a reverent handling of such a theme … people condemned the plays as “irreverent”, “blasphemous”, “vulgar” and so on. These correspondents condemned plays they had never seen or heard, and the language applied to Our Lord by his contemporaries was, almost word for word, now applied to Miss Sayers.

Reading Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” – a fascinating book but sometimes repetitive – Tory Historian came across the following rather pithy summary of what classical fascism and present-day left-wing or, as Americans call it, liberal thinking is:

As we’ve seen, ideologically fascist and progressive totalitarianism was never a mere doctrine of statism. Rather, it claimed that the state was the natural brain of the organic body politic. Statism was the route to collectivism. Government was merely the place where the spiritual will of the people would be translated into action. (Marxists liked to use the word “praxis” to describe this unity of theory and action.) One consequence of this view is that institutions and individuals that stand apart from the state or the progressive tide are inherently suspect and labelled selfish, social Darwinist, conservative or, most ironically, fascist.

As mentioned before, Tory Historian is reading Roger Scruton’s fascinating little book, called “Beauty”. It is taking longer than expected because there is rather a lot to digest and several passages need to be read over and over. (And also because time in Prague was taken up with meetings.)

In his chapter on “Natural Beauty” he contrasts our understanding of nature and its beauties with that of art, where there is a deliberation in what is seen and presented. Then he adds:

Although true so far as it goes, that observation ignores two vital features of our encounter with the natural world. The first is the role of nature as raw material for visual art. The great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century, such as William Kent and Capability Brown, were responding to the taste of their patrons. They lived at a time when cultivated people made discrimination between landscapes, argued over what was or was not in good taste, and set out to build, dig, plant and adjust with intentions comparable to that of the painter whom they would later commission to record the outcome.

Indeed, the cult of the ‘picturesque’ arose because our responses to landscape and our responses to painting feed into each other. The eighteenth-century habit of decorating the landscape with ruins began from a love of the Roman Campagna not as it is, but as Poussin and Claude had painted it. Tourists in the eighteenth century would often travel with a ‘Claude Glass’: a small tinted convex mirror, which helped them to appreciate the landscape by compressing and composing it in a manner reminiscent of Claude. And the landscape architects of the day regarded architectural ruins and follies, as well as classical bridges and temples, as continuous with the trees, lakes and artificial mounds of earth which were the raw material of their art.

It is difficult to believe that our attitude to natural beauty is founded completely differently from our attitude to art, when the two are so intimately connected.

Twenty years ago today the people of the Soviet Union went to the polls, for the first free election since that day in January 1918 when the Bolsheviks disbanded the more or less freely elected Constituent Assembly.

As the BBC reported, it became clear early on that many official Communist candidates would lose, that Yeltsin would win handsomely in his own Moscow district and that the anti-corruption prosecutor in Uzbekistan, Telman Gdlyan (himself an Armenian), would get the largest majority in the country.

How hopeful it all seemed at the time and how much has changed since then in most post-Soviet countries.

Tory Historian is off tomorrow for a couple of days to Prague. Sadly, most of the time will be taken up by work and meetings but there will be some time for walks and sitting in cafes without which no visit to Central Europe is complete.

Two books will be in the luggage: Peter Demetz's "Prague in Black and Gold" and Roger Scruton's "Beauty", just received for review.

The picture is of the Jan Hus Memorial, a slightly less well known landmark in that city.

One of Tory Historian’s favourite childhood writer was Jules Verne with “Around the World in Eighty Days” being one of the most cherished and frequently re-read books. However entertaining and glamorous the film was with David Niven in the main part, it could never live up to the splendour of the book.

Imagine Tory Historian’s excitement at finding a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of this wondrous novel in a charity shop. £1.99 was quickly handed over that book brought home to be read with delight.

Ahem, there seems to be something wrong here. When did somebody get hold of the novel and slip in completely idiotic things about English customs?

One of the curious things about Jules Verne is the frequency with which he makes Englishmen (sometimes Scotsmen) or Americans his heroes and, conversely, Frenchmen the entertaining secondary characters. He makes gentle fun of the heroes as well but clearly perceives them as the can-do people that he so admires, who are so in tune with the modern world. (Though Brian Aldiss’s introduction to the Penguin Classics edition insists that M Verne, like H. G. Wells, eventually lost faith in technological advance and, indeed, became horrified by its possibilities. In Tory Historian’s opinion that case remains unproven.)

The hero of “Around the World in Eighty Days”, as every school child knows, is the unflappable and rather mysterious Englishman, Phileas Fogg, whose past is never quite explained but there is some indication that he must have made his money by being master of some merchant vessel. There is double praise there – not only is he completely unflappable but adventurous, he is also a practical man, something that Mr Aldiss does not mention in his introduction, preferring to dwell extensively on the alleged rather distasteful importance of money.

The first three chapters of the novel remained in Tory Historian’s memory as among the most delightful ones – the description of Mr Fogg’s life in Savile Row, the arrival of Passepartout (one of those charming comical Frenchmen, Verne was so fond of) and the time passed in the Reform Club before the fateful card game and bet.

Many of the memories proved to be accurate on re-reading, though Tory Historian had forgotten the detail that Mr Fogg was supposed to live in the house once occupied by the great Sheridan. (Actually, the number is wrong but that is a minor detail.)

The number of steps taken by Phileas Fogg by his right foot (575) and his left foot (576) to reach the steps of the Reform Club may or may not be correct. Verne visited England only once and very briefly so he is unlikely to have counted out those steps, but the image is a delight.

Then we get inside the Club and we have trouble. Tory Historian did vaguely recall that the description of the food was somewhat less than appetizing for when it came to gastronomy, Jules Verne had no opinion of the British or the Americans.

For all of that, the description of Phileas Fogg’s day until he sits down to play whist with his acquaintances (he has no friends, of course) is rum, to put it mildly:

Mr Fogg leaves his house at half past eleven and, we must assume, arrives at the Reform Club around quarter to twelve.

Phileas Fogg went immediately to the dining-room, with its nine windows opening on to an attractive garden with trees that had already turned an autumn brown. There he sat down at his usual table where his place was already set. His lunch consisted of a starter, followed by poached fish served with a first-rate Reading sauce, a blood-red steak accompanied by mushroom ketchup, a rhubarb and gooseberry pie and a slice of Cheshire cheese, all of which was washed down by several cups of tea, an excellent variety that had been specially picked for the
pantry of the Reform Club.

At forty-seven minutes past midday, the gentleman got up and walked over to the main drawing-room a magnificent place decorated with richly framed paintings. There a servant handed him an uncut copy of The Times, which Phileas Fogg proceeded to carefully unfold with a skilfulness that demonstrated a considerable familiarity with this delicate operation. Phileas Fogg continued reading this newspaper until three forty-five, followed it with the Standard, which took him up to dinner. The meal followed the same pattern as lunch, except for the addition of “Royal British
sauce”.

At twenty to six the gentleman appeared again the main drawing-room and engrossed himself in the Morning Chronicle.

... a new, though not apparently revised edition of Kathryn Tidrick's Empire and the English Character - The Illusion of Authority, due out on March 19. Dr Tidrick is a psychologist or, at least, she has a Ph.D. in Psychology from London Univeristy, as the blurb on the book tells us.

This interesting sounding book was written in the late eighties (published in 1990) when, in the author's opinion "hardly anyone regretted the passing of the British empire" but, as she adds, many things have happened since. Tory Historian's recollection is that it was about then that articles and books that argued that the British empire was actually not a bad thing at all started to appear. That, of course, does not mean that its passing was regretted except, maybe, by people who have had a considerably worse time since then.

Still, the book will have to be read before any opinion is to be passed. First impressions are not good: no maps for one thing; no mention of Deepak Lal's In Praise of Empires or of anything by Alan Macfarlane, for another.

The Conservative History Group has received the following e-mail from an obviously keen young member of the party:

To whom it may concern,

I am an 18 year old Conservative Party member and have for some time been lobbying my local authority - Stockton Borough Council - in the hopes of creating some form of commemoration to Harold Macmillan, in recognition for his services to Stockton (which he served as MP 1924-9; 1931-45) and the Country as a whole. Recently the council have accepted and examined my nomination. I was wondering wether you have any information on Harold Macmillan in relation to Stockton that may assist in creating an appropriate form of commemoration e.g. place of residence etc. Any information would be extremely appreciated.

Regards

Marcus Vickers

Anyone with information can send it to the blog or to Marcus directly on elmarko5_at_hotmail.com.

The CHG will be watching developments with interest and reporting on them as and when they happen.

G.K.Chesterton is a difficult person to write about or to assess. He was, in that much overused phrase, larger than life, physically and intellectually, though in the latter he often produced small mean-minded ideas.

The Father Brown stories, possibly the best known of his output, are largely so-so as detective stories though immensely enjoyably for other reasons, not least the protagonist's philosophical and theological musings. Those famous paradoxes, on the other hand, do pall after a while.

Chesterton also wrote about the art of detective fiction and many of his ideas are of great interest. In "A Defence of Detective Stories" published in 1901 in a not very well remembered collection, "The Defender" he had this to say:

There is, however, another good work that is don by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal an automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activiey keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departurres and the most romantic
of rebellions.

By dealing with the unsleeping sentinesl who guard the outsposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates.

When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure, while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and
wolves.

The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knight-errantry.

Tory Historian found an interesting posting on an extremely good American blog. Can we learn from history, asks Neo-neocon and gives a rather depressed answer. There is quite an interesting discussion about it.

For Tory Historian this is the wrong question. First we must learn history and learn it in some detail. (Yes, yes, those dates are still uncollected. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.) Only then can we think of learning from it. Otherwise, even if people do think that they have learnt from history, the chances are that it is the wrong lessons they have drawn.

Discuss.

Tory Historian has written admiringly of George Orwell before (here and here), despite expressing a certain amount of disagreement with some of his pronouncements and writings. But there is nothing more annoying than watching people reduce this hard-headed and strong-minded writer to mush.

The guilty party in this case is the National Film Theatre, an institution Tory Historian is very ambivalent about. It shows many good films from the past and that is good; it also provides notes of unsurpassed silliness that are examples of soggy-left and thoughtless political consensus.

Tory Historian has lost track of the number of times some American producer, director or actor who had a highly successful career in Britain, on the Continent or, even, back in the United States has been described as being a blameless, liberal victim of “McCarthyite witch hunts”, with complete disregard of the difference between the Senate enquiry that was not in the slightest interested in Hollywood and the House Un-American Activity Committee (HUAC) and equally complete disregard of the fact that most of those “innocent” victims were, in fact, Communists who had preferred to lie on orders from the Party.

Now it is Orwell’s turn to be dragged into this morass of half-truths and double-think. (He would have understood it very well and railed against the sogginess and dishonesty.)

In April the NFT will be marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of “1984” with films about Orwell, as well as a showing of the famous 1956 version with Edmond O’Brien, the less well-known 1954 TV play with Peter Cushing and the 1984 film with John Hurt.

Fine. But what do the notes in the recently sent out programme say? [They are not yet on the website.]

2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s classic dystopian vision of Britain.

In Orwell’s re-imagining of British life in the year 1984 the nation has become Airstrip One, a subsidiary of Oceania, one of three global superstates engaged in relentless warfare against one another. London is a fetid, near-derelict metropolis dominated by the monolithic buildings of the ruling Party, its slums battered by rockets fired from enemy states. The collective memory of life before the wars has been all but obliterated by the Party which shapes and monitors the lives of its workers while keeping the disorderly ‘proles’ in a state of controlled ignorance.

Tory Historian went to the Barbican today (on the Circle Line from Westminster and it did not take all that long – what is the world coming to) but found that the Le Corbusier exhibition, much discussed in the media, does not actually open till tomorrow. Bad planning and an unusual misreading of the programme. Never rely on media write-ups, is a good motto and Tory Historian should have remembered it.

So it was off for a cup of tea to the remarkably unpleasant and unattractive old-fashioned canteen-like Waterside Café. The little booklet on the Le Corbusier exhibition and attendant programme says:

The last truly utopian planning project in London and greatly inspired by his [Le Corbusier’s] aesthetic, the Barbican presents the perfect backdrop to discover the man and his legacy.

Tory Historian rather enjoys reading newspapers of many decades ago but finds the exercise a little depressing, comparisons with the present day not being of the happiest.

For reasons too difficult to explain, Tory Historian was reading letters in The Times of March 1939 on the subject of conscription, then much discussed as the Bill was going through Parliament. The letters columns had various arguments for and against, one of the most vociferous and long-winded being the great military historian and theorist, Captain Basil Liddell Hart (later Sir Basil) who was a fervent opponent of the whole idea.

His arguments were two-fold. Firstly, he thought it was impractical. Soldiers, he reasoned, accurately enough, needed to be trained. Numbers were not enough, one needed equipment and, above all, qualified instructors, who had to understand military technique and be able to expound it well. Absent these, the recruitment of large numbers and, especially, conscription of even larger ones, made things considerably worse.

Many would argue that the early campaigning by the British Expeditionary Force proved Liddell Hart’s point, up to and including Dunkirk.

His second argument was based on a simple idea: conscription was alien to a democratic society. There were those who produced counter-arguments, citing other democracies that had conscription. One letter referred to France and the Scandinavian countries adding that these were “countries in every sense more democratic than our own”. I hope the writer meant the Scandinavian ones for France, where women did not get the vote till well after the Second World War, can hardly be called a superior democracy in 1939. Looking back on its army’s collapse within a year of that debate one would be justified in doubting the efficacy of conscription.

Liddell Hart would have none of it.

Whatever the case for compulsory service in an earlier generation, when other democratic nations adopted it, it is inevitably affected now by the fact that we are threatened by nations who have made it not merely a means but and end – a principle of life. The Totalitarian State is the total-compulsion State, to which the individual is enslaved. For us to adopt compulsory service under pressure of their challenge would be a definite surrender of our own vital principles – and admission of spiritual defeat.

Tory Historian recalls this day in 1975 when a major political party elected its first woman leader who went on to become a spectacular (if flawed, naturally enough) Prime Minister. After years of media speculation as to whether Shirley Williams or Barbara Castle were likely to become the first in the woman leadership stakes, it was, inevitably, the genuinely innovative party, as it has been in history, that got there first.

Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party on February 11, 1975 and responded to the question of whether she was going to celebrate in a typically robust fashion: “Good heavens, no. There's far too much work to be done.”

About five years ago Tory Historian happened to be in the lobby of the House of Lords (known as Peers’ Lobby for obvious reasons). Baroness Thatcher walked across the floor and every single head turned to follow her progress. This was not because she is particularly unsteady or because she is gaga (despite all the malicious gossip that swirls round the internet) but because, with the best will in the world nobody can think of anyone in modern politics who can rival her in personality.

Today's anniversary is particularly intriguing. On February 10, 1354 students at Oxford University fought a pitched battle with the townspeople of that fair city. Town and gown, you see, which according to the official account necessitated the creation of some primitive halls of residence that eventually became the first three colleges: University, Merton (the first college with a quad) and Balliol.

Some students fled from Oxford and founded a new university on the river Cam, where the pattern was similar - riots and running battles with townsmen, need for royal protection and for some rules being imposed.

Here is a well-written and entertaining, not to say ferocious account of the St Scholastica Day battle by Mark Edelman Boren, which also gives the date as 1354. This seems to be disputed by other sources, who prefer 1355. Students, eh? Don't know which year they are in.

Wikipedia explains that the townsfolk won the battle if for no other reason than the fact that they killed more students than lost their own people. However, it would appear that the Chancellor got to the King first and the University was declared the winner.

The dispute was eventually settled in favour of the university when a special charter was created. Annually thereafter, on February 10, the town mayor and councillors had to march bareheaded through the streets and pay to the university a fine of one penny for every scholar killed, a total of 5 s 3 d. The penance ended 470 years later, in 1825 when the mayor of the time refused to take part.

'Tis the end of January and the list of dates needs to be compiles. So this is the last call for ideas on which dates in British and world history that are essential to one's understanding of history.

Alistair Cooke, co-author (with Sir Charles Petrie) of The Carlton Club 1832 - 2007 and author of numerous learned articles in the Conservative History Journal, writes about the fall of the first Salisbury government. No point in quoting; read the whole piece.

Tory Historian is reading with great interest Giles Hunt’s “The Duel” the tale of rivalry between Canning and Castlereagh. There will be a review in the series of books of interest to those interested in conservative history but here is a small complaint and there are too many historians about whom it can be made.

There is no need, in Tory Historian’s opinion, to write about the past with a constant nudge to the present. Occasional parallels may enhance our understanding but there has to be an assumption that the reader of a history or a biography is capable of understanding events of the past and, if needs be, grasping the difference between the period under discussion and the here and now.

There is the obligatory reference to “Princess” Diana (really, Mr Hunt ought to know better) in connection with the Duchess of Devonshire, a parallel that is extremely forced as Tory Historian has pointed out before.

But Mr Hunt goes further. He points out that George Canning, while having many advantages in political life, had one serious disadvantage – he was neither a lord nor related to one. As it happens he knew many lords and one, Lord Macartney, was a kind of a patron, but the point is important. To some extent, Canning had to promote himself and survive on his wits. (Thackeray makes a similar point about Becky Sharp in “Vanity Fair”.)

Mr Hunt then says:

The avidity with which peerages were sought, even Irish ones that did not convey a seat in the House of Lords, may seem extraordinary to us, but it was not motivated simply by snobbery or social climbing and a wish to boast of aristocratic lineage – after all, both Castlereagh’s and Jenkinson’s fathers were born commoners [Earl and then Marquess of Londonderry and Earl of Liverpool, respectively] – but being a lord or an heir to a peerage gave weight politically. Eton and Christ Church had given Canning several aristocratic friends such as Lord Henry Spencer, Granville Leveson-Gower, or Morpeth, who accepted him as a social equal, and the fact that he had to earn his living made no difference since many a younger son of a peer had to do the same. But during the course of Canning’s career he was frequently criticized as being an upstart, and what would be considered normal ambition in other politicians was seen to mark out Canning as an adventurer on the make – especially as political opponents could point out that he was the son of an actress and therefore socially outside the pale.

Tory Historian thinks that the dates project (here, here and here) needs to be brought to an end. Therefore, suggestions will be received till the end of this week, which, happily, coincides with the end of the month. Over the following couple of days all the information and suggestions will be processed i.e. read and jotted down on a piece of paper and a more or less final list will be published next week.

However, Tory Historian knows what kind of argumentative folk read this blog and there will be another opportunity to argue with the final list in order to produce a final-final list. Can't say fairer than that, surely.

In the meantime, here is a book that might be of interest to people interested in conservative history. It has been out in the United States for a while and has caused a great deal of ... well, the polite way of putting it is discussion. A vicious argument would be more accurate but all attempts to kill it have failed. Long live American love of freedom.

It is published this week in Britain and was launched by the New Culture Forum yesterday. The books is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism". More on that as time goes on but a couple of quotes from the Introduction, entitled "Everything You Knew About Fascism Is Wrong", may whet our readers' appetite.

The main thesis of the book is that many of what Americans call "liberal" and we call "leftie" ideas have grown out of fascist ones, fascism being a left-wing ideology with Mussolini and even Hitler remaining a hero of the left until they sold their souls to Stalin.

Here Mr Goldberg discusses "totalitarianism".

But what do we mean when we say something is "totalitarian"? The word has certainly taken on an understandably sinister connotation in the last half century. Thanks to work by Hannah Arendt, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others, it's become a catchall for brutal, soul-killing, Orwellian regimes. But that's not how the word was originally used or intended. Mussolini himself coined the term to describe a society where everybody belonged, everyone was taken care of, where everything was inside the state and nothing was outside: where truly no child was left behind.

Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism in many ways. I don't deny this. Indeed, it is central to my point. Fascisms differ from each other because they grow out of different soil. What unites them are their emotional or instinctual imnpulses, such as the quest for community, the urge to "get beyond" politics, a faith in the perfectibility of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetics of youth, the cult of action, and the need for an all-powerful state to coordinate society at the national or global level. Most of all, they share the belief - what I call the totalitarian temptation - that with the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian dream of "creating a better world".

Naturally, the apology is for the silence. Many other problems but also busy reading Giles Hunt's "The Duel". The sub-heading explains the subject: "Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry". And they say politics has never been nastier than today. Hah! More to come.

Tory Historian is ploughing through Michael Burleigh’s “Blood and Rage – a cultural history of terrorism”. It may well become one of those books of interest to all those interested in conservative history but for the moment judgement is not exactly withheld but balanced.

The book is useful in that it traces the history of modern terrorism from the days of the Fenians and the Russian nihilists of the nineteenth century thus showing certain continuing characteristics that are worth studying. There is nothing so annoying than hearing yet another member of the various anti-terrorist organizations complain about the difficulties of dealing with this new lot because they are so unlike the IRA. Well yes, but are they unlike the anarchists of the 1890s and 1900s? Are there no similarities between them and the German and the Italian groups of the seventies?

The details of Burleigh’s book are, however, problematic. His account of what he calls “guilty white kids” – the Italian Brigada Rossa and German Red Army Faction – is precise and accurate, apart from a tendency of describing killings by terrorist with one bullet fired to the head as “executions”. Sloppy, very sloppy.

When it comes to the chapter on the Russians (40 pages devoted to 60 years of complicated history) Burleigh’s account becomes more than sloppy. It is inaccurate and the parallels are often forced. He is shaky on the Anarchist International. Not every strike organizer in the United States was an anarchist. Some were devoted socialists or anarcho-syndicalists.

More as the ploughing through progresses. However, Tory Historian’s attention was caught by an intriguing quote from the critic and literary writer Edward Garnett, husband of translator Constance Garnett. The topic in hand is Joseph Conrad’s superlative novel “The Secret Agent”, whose plot is based on the attempted bombing of the Greenwich Observatory (though, as it happens, the same writer’s “Under Western Eyes” is a better study of the pathological nihilist mind).

Garnett wrote rather superciliously:

It is good for us English to have Mr Conrad in our midst visualising for us aspects of life we are constitutionally unable to perceive.

“You foreigners are so clever,” said a lady to me some years ago. First, thinking of the great amount of foreign idiots and half-wits I had had the honour of meeting, I considered this remark exaggerated but complimentary.

Since then I have learnt that it was far from it. These few words expressed the lady’s contempt and slight disgust for foreigners.

At Tuesday's AGM of the Conservative History Group I was asked to report on the Journal and outlined a plan for a supplement early in the year that would focus on the Anglosphere and related history. There were no dissenting voices apart from one: the treasurer.

In theory it would be good to have that supplement as well as a big issue of the Journal in time for the Party Conference. In practice it is hard to know how to raise the money. I suspect, though, that there are people out there who have ideas as to what one can have in the supplement and how best to finance it.

Of course, we may well have to put everything up on the internet.

Anyway, I welcome all suggestions either on the blog in the usual way or to me at szamuely_at_aol.com.

... here are a couple of recent anniversaries that Tory Historian missed. They can both be added to the list of dates everyone must remember. Indeed, I believe at least one has been suggested in the comments.

On January 5, 1896 an Austrian newspaper reported the discovery of new kinds of radiation. In actual fact Wilhelm Röntgen's break-through experiment was begun on November 8, 1895. The influence his work has had on medical diagnosis and treatment has been more than colossal.

On January 6, 1838 Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of the telegraph.

The next meeting of the Conservative History Group will take place on Tuesday, January 13 at 6.30 in the Thatcher Room of Portcullis House. Lord Fowler (better known as Norman Fowler) will be speaking about his book "A Political Suicide", which is reviewed by Iain Dale, Director of this Group in the latest issue of the Journal.

You are all welcome but, please, remember that there are security checks and getting into Portcullis House may take a little while. Sometimes, of course, one just walks through with no queues in sight.

Iain Dale, Director of the Group, has asked me to inform those readers who are members or would like to be members of it that there will be an AGM immediately after Lord Fowler's talk.

Taking time off discussions about important dates, Tory Historian has been contemplating the problem of truncated Christmas celebrations. It all seems to be centred on Christmas Day with no other celebrations visible for most people, at least not in Britain.

St Nicholas is still welcomed by children all over Central, Northern and Eastern Europe with newly cleaned shoes put out in the window on December 5 with goodies found in it the following morning.

Epiphany, the arrival of the Three Kings or Magi with gifts, is seen as the rightful time to give presents in southern Europe.

Twelfth Night (actually, the evening of January 5 but generally remembered these days on January 6) should be the end of the Christmas celebrations, December 25 being the first day but the festivities starting on Christmas Eve. In Tory Historian's childhood the tree was decorated on December 24 and the family exchanged presents that evening. Christmas Day became a more social event with friends visiting each other. The decorations were dismantled on January 6.

However, with trees going up haphazardly all over December they are discarded soon after New Year's Day, not a day that is in any way part of the Christmas celebrations. Of course, originally decorations stayed up for 40 days till February 2 (the Purification of the Blessed Virgin) but that did not survive the Reformation.

Twelfth Night did, however, with special cakes baked for the occasion and much merry-making with wassail being drunk liberally. Inside the cake there should be three dry beans for the three Magi. (The picture is of a Portuguese cake.)

There are other traditional though now largely forgotten aspects of Twelfth Night, many dating back probably to pre-Christian times. This winter festival was the day of the Lord of Misrule. It was the world turned upside down - the peasant who found one of the beans became the head of festivity until midnight. Sometimes there would also be a pea in the cake and she who received it would be the Queen for the nonce.

Those themes crop up in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night or What You Will", in Tory Historian's estimation one of the Bard's best.

The greatest of all history books, “1066 and All That”, famously maintained that there were only two memorable dates in English history: 55 BC and 1066. This blog is busily proving the authors wrong but we may not be representative.

On the subject of the Gunpowder Plot Sellar and Yeatman said:

There were a great many plots and Parliaments in James I’s reign, and one of the Parliaments was called the Addled Parliament because the plots hatched in it were all such rotten ones. One plot, however, was by far the best plot in History, and the day and month of it (although not, of course, the year) are well known to be utterly and even maddeningly MEMORABLE.

A belated happy new year to all our readers and apologies for not pursuing the subject of historical dates. Fear not: it will be pursued.

In the meantime, Tory Historian is launching another idea, promised before. Books that would be of interest to those interested in conservative history but do not necessarily find space in the published journal.

The first of these is one that has been mentioned on the blog before (here and here), so little else is needed. Richard Pipes’s “Russian Conservatism and Its Critics” is an important contribution to our understanding both of Russian history and to the many varieties of conservative and conservative-liberal thought.

Professor Pipes analyzes the political reality and shows how various theories in different periods, since it is hard to see a real development of theory, supported that reality, which meant supporting autocracy either as a permanent institution or a more temporary one while Russians learn to deal with constitutionalism, liberalism and democracy.

The new Russian autocracy lacks legitimacy and has tried to invent one by producing a new autocratic ideology of “sovereign democracy”, a meaningless term but it avoids the old Russian one. There are many others, listed by Edward Lucas in “The New Cold War”.

There are two questions, one political and one theoretical. In the first place, will the new autocracy be able to create itself a legitimacy that will allow it to overcome bad times as well as good; and in the second place, will it be able to create a coherent theory to back that political legitimacy.

There will be further postings on the subject of dates and, Tory Historian hopes, further discussions before some kind of an agreed list is produced. The suspicion is that we might have to have a list of 100 or, at least, 75. It is obvious that 50 is an inadequate number.

In the meantime, Tory Historian has been reading various books, including Amanda Vickery's fascinating account of a number of Georgian families and their womenfolk in Lancashire. Her study is based on the ladies' diaries and letters, giving the reader a strong feeling of entering those lives.

"The Gentleman's Daughter" refutes the accepted historical argument that women of the middle class lost various freedoms and occupations in the eighteenth century and shows their lives in their full and active reality.

A couple of quotations from the introductory chapter set the theme:

What follows then is a study in seemliness; a reconstruction of penalties and possibilities of lives lived within the bounds of propriety. Yet, as will emerge, even the bounds of propriety were wider than historians have been apt to admit
....
It is hard to imagine them [those gentlemen's daughters, wives, sisters and mothers] ever smiling on the likes of a feminist writer such as Mary Wollstonecraft, a mannish lesbian as Anne Lister or a fashionable adulteress such as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Tory Historian is delighted by the response to the "Dates, dates, dates" posting and is very aware of not having responded to several suggestions. Ça ira, ça ira ... There will be more on dates and other matters. Please keep posting those suggestions.

In the meantime, a happy Christmas to all readers of this blog.

Over on The New Culture Forum Peter Whittle has a posting about the need to learn dates if one is to understand history at all. Readers of this blog know that Tory Historian is very much in favour of dates and marks as many of them as possible. Without knowing when things happened it is impossible to have anything but the most superficial and gooey idea of historical development.

Mr Whittle’s challenge to his readers is to put together a list of 50 dates that would be essential learning for everyone who wants to know anything about history. (And, really, essential learning for school children in their early teens.) There is no indication whether the dates have to do with British or world history but then, as Tory Historian has been told, Britain’s history is world history. Besides certain dates are so important that, no matter where the events happened, we should all know them.

Tory Historian takes up the challenge and passes it on to this blog’s readers. Here are a few ideas: 55BC – Julius Caesar’s invasion, 1066 – Norman Conquest, 1215 – Magna Carta, 1649 – execution of Charles I, 1688 – Glorious Revolution, 1689 – Bill of Rights, 1707 – Act of Union, 1805 – Trafalgar, 1807 – abolition of slave trade, 1815 – final defeat of Napoleon and Britain’s rise to the rank of undisputed world leader, 1832 – First Reform Act, 1867 – Second Reform Act, 1914–1918 – Great War and the start of decline in European hegemony and British power, 1939-1945 – the process completed, 1973 – Britain becomes part of the EEC (later EC and, even later, EU) thus abandoning the idea of sovereign legislation.

Now for some dates in the world that, nevertheless, affected Britain in various ways: 476 – fall of Rome (this is optional), 1453 – fall of Constantinople, 1492 – Columbus reaches America, 1517 – Luther nails 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, 1618-1648 – Thirty Years’ War ending with the Treaty of Westphalia, 1776 – Declaration of Independence, the natural successor event to the signing of Magna Carta and passing of the Bill of Rights, also the end of the first British Empire, 1789 – French Revolution, 1848 – revolutions across Europe, 1861 – Russian serfs freed, 1861-1865 – American Civil War and American slaves freed, 1871 – Unification of Germany, 1917 – Russian revolutions, 1922 – Ireland becomes independent, 1947 – India and Pakistan become independent (these two events herald the end of the British Empire for better or worse), 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall, 1991 – end of the Soviet Union.

Others will think of other dates and will, perhaps, disagree with Tory Historian’s list. Let’s hear from those to whom historical dates matter.

There is nothing so mortifying for an editor as to be told after an issue of the relevant journal has come out that there is a major mistake in it, particularly as said editor has not yet had her copies. (Ahem, hint.) The mistake is in not crediting a co-author.

In the latest issue of the Conservative History Journal (available from the Conservative History Group) there is an article about the now almost forgotten but in his day very important Conservative politician, Ernest Marples.

Its author is given as Professor David Dutton, author of numerous books on political history. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that somewhere in the transference and editing of articles I lost the name of the co-author, Chris Cooper, Professor Dutton's post-graduate student, who, I am reliably informed, did most of the research. I am covered in shame. Ashes and sackcloth are on order.

I hope Mr Cooper will accept my abject apology.

In what might be the last major book-buying spree for some time Tory Historian acquired a review copy of a highly recommended (here and here, for instance, though you have to read a fair way in the second one) book, Kevin Phillips’s “The Cousins’ War”.

The book looks most interesting and is clearly a vital text for all true Anglospherists but what caught Tory Historian’s attention immediately were the maps. Maps, as has been pointed out before, are essential to almost any book that involving different countries, battles, movements of people, explorers' journeys and almost anything that makes history really exciting.

How can one not warm to a book that has such choice items as the distribution of Royalist and Parliamentarian supporters in the American colonies during the English Civil War? Or “Ulster in America – 1775”, a map of Scotch-Irish distribution in the 13 colonies? And many others.

This is going to be a joyful reading experience, to be reported on in due course.

As promised in that editorial, the discussion about conservatism in other countries is about to start. Tory Historian is hoping for many learned contributions. There will be more said about Richard Pipes’s “Russian Conservatism and Its Critics” but this post concentrates on Professor Pipes’s chapter in which he defines and elucidates Russian autocracy and its historic development.

To the frequently asked question “why does it keep going wrong in Russia” there is a partial answer in that chapter.

Russian autocracy grew out of the understanding patrimony or votchina. Under the Tatar rule, the various appanage princes had to plead for the right to rule from the Tatar Khan but, once allowed, owned the realm in the same way as they owned their own private possessions and homes. The idea that even the most absolute ruler had limits to his power and that was private property simply did not exist in Russia. [It did develop subsequently but very slowly and imperfectly.]

There were other factors absent. On pp. 16 – 17 Professor Pipes says:

The Muscovite state administration evolved from the administration of the appanage, the principal task of which had been exploitation. The prikazy, Moscow’s principal executive offices, similarly evolved from the administration of the prince’s household.

As indicated above, such a mentality had also existed in the early mediaeval Europe – for instance, among the Merovingian kings of France, who also treated their kingdom as property. But there an evolution occurred which superimposed the public on the private and produced a notion of the state as a partnership between rulers and ruled. In Russia such an evolution did not occur because of the absence of the factors that had moulded European political theory and practice, such as the influence of Roman law and Catholic theology, feudalism and the commercial culture of the cities.

Part of Tory Historian's reading matter is Alan Ebenstein's biography of Friedrich Hayek, not a Tory, not even a conservative, strictly speaking but one of the greatest and most inspiring thinkers of the twentieth century, inspiring for the right in general.

Almost immediately, TH found an interesting quotation about Hayek's influence on opponents of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, first published in Time Magazine on April 6, 1972:

Tomas Jezek, who became Czech minister of privatization after the collapse of the communist rule, said that if the "ideologists of socialism would single out the one bookd that ought to be locked up at any price and strictly forbidden, its dissemination and lecture [sic] carrying the most severe punishments, they would surely point to The Road to Serfdom".

And with another report from that wonderful institution, the National Portrait Gallery. TH’s interest was caught by the room that had some of the portraits, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, of the Kit-Cat Club, admittedly a Whig institution. The name is particularly attractive as, in Tory Historian’s opinion, Kit is preferable to Chris as the shortened form and the Club’s name comes from the name Christopher Catling (Kit Catling) the owner of the pie house near Temple Bar where the Club originally met.

Kneller’s portraits are 36 by 24 ins, known as the standard “kit-cat” format.

Among the Club members were Sir Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, authors of the original Spectator and Tatler essays. In 1712 Steele wrote in the Spectator:

Face-painting is no where so well performed as in England.

As promised, here is the Editorial of the new Conservative History Journal, which is now with the printer so can be considered to be in existence. It outlines plans for the future and our readers might be interested to read it on the blog as well. When the Journal is actually visible in hard copy the table of contents will go up as well.

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley”. So said Robert Burns and, though he was hardly a conservative in the usual sense of the word, one cannot really argue with him. The plan to produce a larger Conservative History Journal than its predecessors has actually come to fruition; the plan to produce it a little earlier in the year did not. On the other hand, this issue will be the perfect Christmas reading for all those who are interested in various aspects of the Conservative Party’s history.

There are articles about such diverse subjects as Conservative suffragists and the possible Jacobite connections of the early Tory leaders; there are studies of the reputations of Neville Chamberlain and Benjamin Disraeli; a new analysis is presented of Enoch Powell’s famous speech and of the now almost forgotten Ernest Marples; above all, there are articles about various aspects of the Thatcher and post-Thatcher years. Something for everyone, is the editorial hope.

A section had to be dropped from the Journal for lack of space. It was my intention to write about recently published books that could be of interest to conservative historians and historians of conservatism as well as people interested in conservative history. These were not going to be full reviews but a paragraph or so about such books as Jean M. Lucas’s book about Conservative Agents, “Between the Thin Blue Lines” or Giles Hunt’s “The Duel” about that infamous encounter between Canning and Castlereagh. My intention was to expand the Journal’s horizon by discussing briefly Richard Pipes’s “Russian Conservatism and Its Critics”. There was no space for this wonderful idea, so it will have to be transferred to the Conservative History Journal blog (http://conservativehistory.blogspot.com/).

The blog has taken up a certain amount of my time and will take up even more as I try to turn it into the pre-eminent site for all those who are interested in conservative history. Admittedly, my definition of conservative history has been rather wide but that has not stopped hits from growing and many interesting comments from being posted on it (as well as some trollish ones that had to be removed). Among other strands in it will be the proposed “Books of interest … to those interested in conservative history. Anyone who has ideas of publications to be included is encouraged to let me know about them.

Let us now turn to future plans. I have said this before in editorials but this time I say it with real feeling: the Journal will improve in its punctuality and, indeed, diversify. The plan for early 2009 is to produce a supplement that concentrates entirely on what is the most exciting recent historical and political idea: the Anglosphere. I am collecting articles of 2,000 – 3,000 words that look at the subject of economic and political developments that are specific to Britain or to the way those ideas have developed in the Anglospheric countries. Of course, if someone wants to write a knowledgeable piece on why the Anglospheric ideas are completely erroneous, they are welcome to do so. I shall be happy to include it.

Later in the year, there will be a Conservative History Journal of the kind we are more used to (though, perhaps, used to is not quite the right expression, given the editor’s shocking dilatoriness) that will once again have articles about the Conservative Party, its politicians, the debates and ideas that could be found in its vicinity. There is no editorial policy on what conservatism means; Tory history and Tory ideas are as welcome as more liberal and libertarian ones. The Conservative Party has been a “broad church” for a long time and conservative history must be equally broad.

Let us not forget that there are conservative ideas and movements in other countries as well. Some of them will be covered in the Anglosphere supplement; others can be written about in the Journal itself. There is a third outlet. Part of the blog, I hope, will be contributions by other people. So far I have received two very different ones, which were posted within hours of being sent to me. One was a review of a play in London, the other an eye-witness account of the recent American elections. Other contributions will be very welcome and I do credit the authors. Longer pieces may then be reprinted in the forthcoming issue of the Journal.

Plenty of ideas for all of us to get going with. The Conservative History Journal in all its manifestations should have a bright future.

I am looking forward to responses and suggestions.

Proofs of the Conservative History Journal have been signed off and gone to the printer. Further news of their progression will be reported. Meanwhile, normal service (and a bit better) will resume on this blog.