Conservative History Journal

The reason Tory Historian was cogitating about this was a book by Giles Hunt, entitled “The Duel – Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry”.

It is rather an odd book in that it follows the career of the two politicians with the focus on their long enmity, which finally resulted in the infamous duel of 1809 that left Canning with a flesh wound (though it could have been very serious, Mr Hunt keeps reminding us) and the reputation of both ministers as well as that of the government in tatters.

Yet, despite the fact that the duel is at the heart of the book, Mr Hunt professes not to understand what happened in the nine days before Castlereagh actually challenged Canning (that is how long he waited after realizing that the latter had led a behind-the-scenes intrigue against him) and during the actual duel.

He ends the central chapter with the words:

The simmering anger behind Castlereagh’s challenge reveals his pent-up feelings, and there is no mystery as to why he challenged Canning to a duel. He felt humiliated and angry, and Canning was the man who had been insisting that the government needed to be changed. The mystery is the delay in issuing his challenge, with a subsidiary mystery about the way he aimed, or failed to aim, his two shots. It is strange.

Tory Historian was caught up in the excitement (well, a slight frisson) that surrounded the European elections, which, in fact, will change very little. It is time to return to books that matter. On the list are two very different volumes.

"Private Views - Voices from the Front Line of British Culture", put together by Peter Whittle, director of The New Culture Forum and published jointly by NCF and the Social Affairs Unit, is not precisely historical except in its background, but an analysis of the state of British culture (a suspect term, admittedly) and the need to wrest control away from the left-wing arts establishment.

A more obvious choice is Andrew Roberts's "Masters and Commanders", which is packed with wonderful stories about four extraordinary people, two politicians and two military leaders.

Time for me to issue a call for articles for the Conservative History Journal or, if people prefer to go about it that way, ideas for articles. Get in touch either through this blog or the e-mail in the Journal.

I am looking for articles or reviews on any subject that might be characterized as having to do with the Conservative Party, its members, MPs, writers and ideologues and the conservative movement as a whole in Britain and other countries. That is a very wide remit.

On the whole I would prefer not to have articles about the post-Thatcher years as we have had far too much on that already. Even on Thatcher herself I would prefer it if somebody came up with something completely new. Otherwise, I await ideas and articles. And they do not have to come from people who live in Britain, especially as I would like to extend the subjects geographically to the Anglosphere at the very least. (Mind you, if somebody feels like writing about French conservatism, all I can say is en avant.)

As ever, Tory Historian is appalled by the paucity of recent postings on this blog. Let us rectify it by reference to two books, at present in the bathroom, to be read in a particularly relaxed mood. Both are about the history of food and drink but approach the subject very differently, not just from a geographical and social point of view but from that of what is important intellectually. (Eeek should one be using words like intellectually if one is a Tory Historian?)

The lighter one is “The Raj at Table” by David Burton, a professional cookery writer from New Zealand, who became interested not just in Indian food but in the whole concept of the food of the British Raj and the social habits that grew up around it.

The introductory history tends to be a little on the accepted and predictable trendy side – all that stuff about the White Man’s Burden, a phrase Kipling coined in very special circumstances: he addressed the poem to the Americans in 1899 after the Spanish-American War when the Philippines were taken. Like the better known Recessional, written for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, the poem is not precisely a hymn to imperialism but an acceptance of duty and a warning against arrogance. One may or may not agree with Kipling sentiments but using that phrase, like “dominion over palm and pine”, in an inappropriate throw-away line is wrong and dishonest.

Mr Burton is not an historian but a food writer. For all of that he is full of every prejudice against Victorians that the world of glamour media supplies, often disproving his statements by his own accounts and quotations.

For instance, he maintains that the “memsahibs” (a word he is inordinately fond of) managed to remove Indian cuisine from British tables, imposing their own view of what food should be, that is either British and heavy or French and inappropriate. Yet, every menu, every description of every meal, breakfast, lunch (tiffin) and even dinner seem to include curries and pilavs. They had not all gone.

Tory Historian suspects that the homes of the numerous traders and businessmen as well as lower rank officials that do not figure in Mr Burton’s accounts had a greater preponderance of Indian food than the Viceroy’s or various Governor-General’s formal dinners.

Another crime the Victorians were apparently guilty of is contempt for all things Indian (Mr Burton clearly does not know about Lord Curzon’s hard work to preserve Indian memorials and architectural works of art) and disregard for Indian notions. Yet he also tells us that “[i]n certain parts of India it was not permitted to eat pea-fowl, however, out of respect for Hindus, who consider the bird sacred”.

Furthermore, it seems that British officers would attend important Hindu and Muslim festivals throughout the year as a mark of respect, as well as invite various high-ranking Indians to Christmas parties. So, errm, what is the truth about that lack of respect? Some and some, as usual? Or, maybe people who attempt to write on any aspect of cultural history should learn more about their subject (including the timing of when service à la Russe, that is course following a course in the now accepted fashion, became the norm in Britain).

Given all that, why does Tory Historian think that this is a pleasant book to read? Because when David Burton manages to overcome his prejudices he produces a delightful set of stories about what the British ate in India. It cannot really be called a history because he hops around so much, demonstrating a story from the early twentieth century by providing an anecdote or a description from the early nineteenth.

A number of his quotations had Tory Historian reaching for library catalogues for further reading. Above all, there are the recipes. How can one resist dishes that are called: Pineapple Beef, Jahl Fry, Sandhurst Curry (one to try on one’s enemies), Navroji Framji’s Mahratha-Mode Meat Curry or desserts such as Pootoo Rice Fritters? Tory Historian intends to try one or two and describe recipes and results.

The other book is a more scholarly one: “Coffee and Coffeehouses” by Ralph S. Hattox.

Professor Hattox, who appears to be an expert on the history of coffee, an excellent thing to be in Tory Historian’s opinion, “The Origin of a Social Beverage in the Mediaeval Near East”. He writes of the early history of coffee, its use in Sufi rituals, the general growth of its consumption and the importance of coffeehouses as social and cultural centres.

The early part of the book is taken up with the ferocious debates and fights around the introduction of coffee, the furious attacks on it and the rituals around it by Islamic scholars and the equally furious defence by other scholars and people who liked coffee.

This proves that in the Near East, just as later in Europe, coffee had and has a magical quality, good or bad. Coffeehouses were always dangerous places as far as the authorities were concerned; the drinking of coffee was often perceived as something akin to black magic (and that is not counting the fortune telling that revolves round coffee sediment).

On the evidence of the first two chapters Professor Hattox’s book, based on Arab and European sources will impart much of interest. Plus there are delightful illustrations of coffee makers, coffee drinkers and coffeehouses.

Tory Historian cannot praise highly enough the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Constable Portraits - the Painter and his Circle. Despite several tragic tales behind the portraits, it is a happy exhibition because of the light in the pictures and in the sitters.

Constable is the compleat English painter. His landscapes seem to be England and many a person who had never seen the country arrived here convinced that everything will look like those pictures of Suffolk or Hampstead. Strangely enough, there is some truth in that. Though much has changed, the essential landscapes are still there.

The portraits, too, present a gallery of English faces - fine-featured and blunt, shrewd and innocent. A particular form of entertainment for those who manage to get to the exhibition is to try to pick some of the portraits for characters in the novels of Jane Austen, Constable's contemporary.

The artist's sisters can fit several heroines, as Miss Austen liked writing about sisters. The young man, Dr Herbert Evans, Constable's family doctor, on the other hand, has a distinct air of Mr Darcy about him, despite the class difference between them. Would Mr Darcy have liked being compared to a mere physician?

Tory Historian is bemused. There are airy references to the Speaker who was expelled in 1695 for taking bribes but no explanation as to the mechanism whereby this was achieved.

The Daily Telegraph gives a swift summary of some of the highlights in the history of that venerable institution. Well, highlights and low lights:

In the years before 1560, seven speakers were beheaded and one was murdered.

The office of speaker was first held by Sir Peter de la Mare, knight for Herefordshire, in 1376's "Good Parliament", so-called because the Commons refused to grant the Crown any new taxes until its grievances had been addressed.

In the dispute with Edward III, Sir Peter acted as spokesman for the Commons and their collective strength prevailed.

But as soon as Parliament was dissolved, Sir Peter was thrown into prison and his successor Sir Thomas Hungerford presided over the "Bad Parliament", which reversed most of the gains of the previous year.

When King Charles I entered the House of Commons on January 4, 1842 1642 (shame!) to arrest five members who had criticized him in what he felt was a treacherous manner, Speaker William Lenthall, not known until then for his particular courage or ability to control the House sat in his Chair, looked around, noted that the "birds" had, indeed, "flown" and said to the King:

May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.

Alistair Cooke, the man who has forgotten more about Conservative and Tory history than most of us ever hope to learn and a frequent contributor to the Conservative History Journal, reviews David Torrance's "We in Scotland: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate". The story is somewhat different from the way it is usually presented in the media but that is not surprising. Oh, by the way, David Torrance is also a contributor ot the CHJ.

… than the detective novels of the so-called Golden Age, that is the twenties and thirties. To be perfectly honest, even Tory Historian finds many of them a tad tedious but they have their virtues. The one under discussion is “Colonel Gore’s Second Case” by Lynn Brock (real name Alexander McAllister but also wrote under the name Anthony Wharton), once a very well known and popular writer of detective stories, now barely remembered.

Willard Huntington Wright (otherwise S. S. Van Dine) thought Colonel Gore to be “ponderous and verbose”. Then again, most readers think that the precious hero of Van Dine’s novels, Philo Vance, needs, as Ogden Nash so aptly put it, “a kick in the pance”.

Dorothy L. Sayers was more charitable in her famous Introduction to the “Great Short Stories of Crime, Mystery and Horror”, published in 1928 and Marjorie Nicolson, the eminent academic and the author of a wholly delightful essay, “The Professor and the Detective”, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1929 says:

There is the amateur Colonel Gore, who began his career by a chance application for a golf secretaryship, and has now opened his private inquiry office – a movement which his admirers greet with pleasure, as promising an indefinite number of cases for the future.

So there is the story away to a good start – Sir Charles’s Body found next morning by a “terrified” maid – all maids are terrified – who “could scarcely give an intelligent account of what she saw” – they never can. Then the local police (Inspector Higginbottom of the Hopshire Constabulary) are called in and announce themselves “baffled”. Every time the reader hears that the local police are called in he smiles an indulgent smile and knows they are just there to be baffled.

Yesterday Tory Historian attended a reception where there were British and American guests. One of the plates of canapes had little tartlets with what the waiter cheerfully explained was coronation chicken. American guest drew back, alarmed by the yellow colouring.

Tory Historian explained equally cheerfully that it was merely cold chicken in mayonnaise, adding as an afterthought, with curry powder. It is, in fact a matter of some wonder to TH why this dish so redolent of the fifties should have survived into the age of far greater choice in spices and Indian food.

There was then a discussion among the British guests as to the origin of the dish, one person opining that it was created for the coronation of either Victoria or Edward VII with ingredients from every member of what was then the Empire.

Tory Historian remained doubtful, having been convinced some time ago that it was created for the coronation of Elizabeth II. It seems that TH was right. The dish was, indeed, created for the Queen's coronation banquet by Constance Spry (not exactly a florist as Wiki has it by a woman who changed the whole concept of flower arranging and formal cooking in this country) and the chef Rosemary Huyme.

It does, indeed, consist of cold chicken, mayonnaise and curry powder or paste with various additions, like raisins and almonds that were, possibly, seen as exotic in post-war Britain. Of course, one can have a rather grand recipe as supplied by Sophie Grigson.

For various reasons Tory Historian is beginning to be immersed in Xenophon's account of the march of 10,000. The English version that is under discussion (for a Roundtable later in the year) is the recent translation by Wayne Ambler. Still, there is no harm in looking at alternatives and when the opportunity of acquiring a copy of Rex Warner's translation, published in Penguin Classics for the vast sum of £1.99, Tory Historian could not resist.

It may be a "pretty sleepy translation" but it does have quite an interesting introduction by George Cawkwell and a map. Hurrah, a map, a map. It is not a particularly good map but it does give an indication of what the original long march covered.

The one above is somewhat better because of the colours.

Tory Historian wandered into the newly opened Mediaeval Gallery of the British Museum (well, partially opened) and was suitably impressed. The rooms have been restored to their pre-wartime incendiary bomb splendour and the exhibits are well displayed with many visible that were not in the past. There is a fine attempt to give an overall picture of life from highest to lowest in mediaeval Europe.

One question remains and Tory Historian is determined to find the answer: what happened to the Hinton St Mary pavement of which only the central head of Christ seems to have remained? Where is the rest of it? A photograph of what it looked like is not enough. Where is the actual pavement?

Tory Historian decided that the best way of celebrating Victory Day is to have a good look at one of David King’s books: “Ordinary Citizens – The Victims of Stalin”. As the Bard said: “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now” (from Julius Caesar, as it happens).

Most of the book consists of the last mugshots taken in the Lubyanka, the Moscow prison that was (and is) the headquarters of the Soviet (Russian) secret police in its various manifestations from Cheka to KGB (and now the FSB), though the book goes up to the death of Stalin only. These are the people who were executed very soon after the pictures were taken.

Mr King, who used to be Art Editor at the Sunday Times, explains in the Introduction that the Soviet method of police photography was different from western in that it used natural light. Therefore, the shutter time was longer and the people in those pictures look more human; they have different reactions – fear, hatred, sadness, panache, resignation; the police photographers unintentionally created a series of tragic and sensitive pictures.

There they are, a tiny proportion of all those shot in the years between 1918 and 1953: men and women, young and old, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Jews; most employed in various positions, others not; some Communist party members, others not; some showing signs of torture, others merely fear and duress.

One or two worked for the NKVD themselves, others were related to important officials. One senior NKVD officer’s son was shot at the ripe old age of 17. There are women who may have simply complained about food shortages; there are students who presumably shot their mouths off as young people do; there are workers and engineers who were executed as wreckers and saboteurs because they could not fulfil the hair-raising plans Stalin insisted on. One cannot list them all, and, as mentioned above, this is a very small proportion of those murdered in the various prisons.

David King is an interesting person. He appears to be a somewhat old-fashioned leftie and in this interview he even manages to look like the man he clearly admires, Leon Trotsky. (Though to be fair, he shows no signs of agreeing with the sub-Marxist rubbish that the interviewer spouts.) His fascination with the pictorial falsehood that is Soviet history has produced three books so far, all of them fascinating, as well as his own personal collection that he clearly opens up to historians and researchers as asked. (Tory Historian is meditating an approach.)

“The Commissar Vanishes” deals with the fascinating story of the altered historic photographs from which people disappeared as they had been purged or their memory expurgated. Some photos started with five or six people and were eventually reduced to two, the only remaining ones being Lenin or Stalin and a. n. other, who was safely dead or, less safely, still in good odour.

Now that the original photographs have been traced the story has become even more fascinating. The picture above shows the disappearance of Yezhov from Stalin's side after his own arrest, torture and execution in 1939.

In 2002 Mr King followed this up with “Ordinary Citizens”, the book under discussion here and this year he produced “Red Star Over Russia”, published amazingly enough by Tate Publications, that traces some iconic Soviet images, the photographs on which they are based but also the changes in those photographs and the images. Again, we have a number of those last mugshots, this time of leading Communists like Zinoviev and Kamenev or important cultural figures like Isaac Babel and Vsevolod Meyerhold (the last two pictures are particularly harrowing - readers can see Meyerhold above).

Given David King’s apparent political stance it is natural for him to try to present the view that it was Stalin who destroyed the great hope of socialism and plunged the country into a bloodbath; given his honesty he cannot avoid making it clear that Stalin inherited the bloodbath, merely making it more intense.

In the Introduction to “Ordinary Citizens” David King is a little too kind to Trotsky, describing him as the “only political figure with a viable alternative to Stalinism”. World Revolution and the continuation of war communism were not only not viable, as Lenin had realized, they were potentially fully as brutal as Stalin’s rule.

As Richard Armour said in his brilliant “It All Started with Marx”: “Some people say that if Trotsky had won, things would have been different. They would, for Trotsky.” Actually, they may have been different for others as well – Trotsky was so brutal and so stubborn that he would not have been able to keep in power and the country and system together as long as Stalin did.

Interestingly, David King never mentions Nikolai Bukharin who really did have somewhat different political and economic ideas, which have fascinated historians ever since. He did not have the basic stamina or cunning to outwit Stalin either.

Nor is the author correct in saying that the Red terror, which he describes accurately as a destruction of all human decency, began with the failed attempt on Lenin’s life in 1918. From the moment the Cheka was formed it was dedicated to revolutionary terror against all and sundry.

But these are political quibbles. David King provides some interesting information and, above all, there are the pictures – those tragic haunting photographs. Tory Historian considers that all those who are convinced that there is no difference between Gordon Brown’s Britain and Communist totalitarianism should spend time studying this book of mugshots.

In actual fact, General Alfred Jodl signed the Instrument of Surrender early on May 7 at Rheims but it was due to come into effect late on May 8, after another Instrument had been signed in Berlin at the Soviet insistence. To this day, the Soviet Union Russia celebrates Victory Day on May 9. Wikipedia gives the timeline here and here.

Although it is the twenties and thirties that are considered to be the golden age of detective story writing, Tory Historian, on the whole, prefers their Victorian and Edwardian predecessors. One reason is the more leisurely and better written style (with some exceptions on both sides).

Then there is the fact that many of the Victorian stories, of whatever length, are about other crimes, not just murder, which is unthinkable either with the golden age writers or the considerably more prolix and slapdash modern ones.

Murder is, after all, a relatively unusual crime while theft, robbery, fraud and other suchlike activities are far more common. Reading about them and the detectives who solve them give an impression of real life disintegrating and being reconstituted. Of course, there are writers like the great Emma Lathen who follow the Victorian pattern and start with some kind of financial shenanigans, which degenerate into an often reluctant murder.

It is also fair to say that the villains of Victorian detective stories are considerably more satisfying than those of subsequent periods. Admittedly, they are not real dyed-in-the-wool villains and there are various occasions when unfortunate or noble-but-walked-into-a-nasty-situation criminals are released by detectives on condition that they go off to the colonies and redeem themselves. Sherlock Holmes was particularly apt to exercise such stern compassion.

These thoughts have been floating in Tory Historian’s head as a result of reading a volume, acquired for £2 in a charity shop, gradually the only remaining second-hand bookshops in London, entitled “Three Victorian Detective Novels” one of the numerous excellent reprints by Dover Publications.

The three novellas are “The Unknown Weapon” by Andrew Forrester, “My Lady’s Money” by Wilkie Collins and “The Big Bow Mystery” by Israel Zangwill. The first of these is one of the earliest modern English detective stories, part of a collection of tales about the exploits of a woman police officer, known only as Mrs G--- (though Katherine Gregory Klein seems to think that she is Mrs Gladden). The whole collection, published in 1846 was called “The Female Detective” (a very hard to find volume).

Wilkie Collins’s relatively late novella, published in 1879, is a disappointment, largely because Collins was a near-genius in his best works. “My Lady’s Money” is beautifully written with highly entertaining characters – an excellent villain and a rather annoying detective who shuffles around doing no detecting but being a character as well as very good female personalities. But the plot is ridiculous. Every reader knows what is going to happen a page or two before it does and once the theft takes place it ought to be clear to the meanest intellect who the criminal is. There is only person with the necessary opportunity, motive and personality, yet that person’s guilt is dismissed as being out of the question.

Undoubtedly the best is the last tale, a classic of its genre, that being the locked room mystery. Israel Zangwill was a writer, journalist and Zionist activist, most of whose novels and plays concerned various social issues, often but exclusively to do with Jewish immigrants to London’s East End and New York’s Lower East Side. “The Big Bow Mystery” is a delightful exception, a tale of crime and detection written to order in the space of a fortnight and published in the same space of time in the daily newspaper Star in 1891.

Locked room mysteries are rather tiresome, in Tory Historian’s opinion, because of the need either to cheat or to produce an extraordinary number of coincidences for the solution. One by Edmund Crispin presupposes the firing of a bullet through several open windows in order to hit the required target with the loud and engrossing music making it impossible for the people in the first room to realize what is going on. Too ridiculous for words.

The "Big Bow Mystery" is just about credible, largely because, as Julian Symons points out in his seminal history of the genre “Bloody Murder” it is really a parody; it is not, on the other hand, parodic enough to make it dull – the story is still there. There is something else there: a thrilling and highly amusing account of the East End at the end of the nineteenth century, seething with meetings, organizations, debates, disputes and manifold ambitions. It is, in a way, a microcosm of the whole Victorian era and, perhaps, that is why those years produced some of the greatest detective stories.

The media and the blogosphere are buzzing with that anniversary. Thirty years ago the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, won the first of four elections and began a government that proved to be the most radical in its reforms than any since Attlee's 1945 one that sealed this country's socialism.

Tory Historian is not going to rehash all the arguments for and against (mostly for as the lady was undoubtedly the greatest prime minister of the 20th century, Churchill being a great war leader and bad politician) but wants to raise a few questions that, perhaps, readers of this blog might discuss.

We can discard the left-wing canard that Mrs Thatcher destroyed this country's economy and political life, both of them, in the minds of these commentators having acquired some kind of a rosy glow that certainly is not present in anybody's real memory. We were poor but we were happy is a stupid mantra. Britain in the 1970s was not a happy country.

A more insiduous myth is propounded by some of the younger Conservatives that in 1979 the country deliberately voted for radical reform. Absolute rubbish. The country rather hesitantly voted for the Conservatives, anyway, and nobody outside the immediate circle around Thatcher knew that she had any ideas beyond the widely shared rather vague assumption that "something needs to be done" with a country that had, apparently, reached rock bottom.

James Callaghan who lost in 1979 also promoted the idea that there was a sea-change in opinion because it suited him to say so. In actual fact, he lost the election because he was perceived to be a bumbling incompetent.

The third question that needs to be asked is whether those radical reforms have really changed the country or were they as Mark Steyn says in a recent article, largely about Obama, just a blip, a slowing down in the collapse?

John O'Sullivan disagrees with Mark Steyn and sees the date as crucial and the effects irreversible.

Tory Historian is looking forward to a vigorous debate.

Well, new to Tory Historian who was directed to it by a reader. Other readers may recall Tory Historian's gushing praise of the Histories performed by the RSC at the Roundhouse (they had been performed over two years at Stratford's Courtyard before that) here and here.

Since then Tory Historian, in company with many of the 250,000 or thereabouts who had seen the Histories, has searched on and off the names of the actors to find out what they are doing now.

Well, no need to search. There is now a blog that deals with just that topic, Beyond the Histories, written by a "self-confessed theatre dork based in the UK". Long may it continue.

... to all the many tens of thousands of words that have been written about the Iron Duke, the general who led the armies to victory at Waterloo, the man whose bon mots most of us can quote: the Duke of Wellington (1769 -1852).

Although there is some doubt about the exact day of his birth and the BBC prefers the old and extremely inexact information of "early in May", historians now tend to agree that it was April 29. So, let us celebrate the great man today.

Let us recall two of his memorable sayings. The first is one that every commander should have inscribed permanently on his brain:

The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.

I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.

Tory Historian missed this anniversary by less than half an hour but it is still worth mentioning as a remarkable event in British history. One hundred years ago yesterday, April 27, 1909, a number of suffragettes chained themselves to the statues in St Stephen's Hall in the Palace of Westminster. (Hmm, those were the days when, despite the fear of Fenian outrages, access to the Palace was unrestricted.)

The documents related to the event and to the detaching of the women from the statues (Lord Falkland's spur was slightly damaged) are in the Parliamentary archives and can be seen on the website together with the transcript. Oh the joys of electronic technology.

Tory Historian walked down the Aldwych today from Bush House towards the Strand and Trafalgar Square (eat you heart out Burlington Bertie) and managed to miss the St George's Day celebrations, which was no great tragedy as Tory Historian dislikes state sponsored jollification.

The route went past the memorial to Eagle Hut, carefully photographed, that is in the wall of Bush House, just next to India House. It is a moving plaque that reminds us of an alliance and friendship sealed at a time of hardship.

This note tells us that Eagle Huts for American servicemen overseas were initiated by a General Order (#26-II-1) by U.S. Commander-in-Chief General John Pershing.

Published on 28 August 1917 it affirmed that the Y.M.C.A. would "provide for the amusement and recreation of the troops by means of its usual programme of social, physical, educational and religious services".

Perhaps the most famous of the servicemen's centres was the so-called Eagle Hut opened in London on 3 September 1917. Operated by the Y.M.C.A. the centre, staffed by some 800 voluntary personnel, offered overnight accommodation and food for American servicemen passing through London.

The centre additionally helped with arrangements for London sightseeing tours and entertainment. Turnover was heavy: in February 1919 alone 134,566 meals were served. The Eagle Hut remained open beyond the armistice, finally closing its doors on 25 August 1919.

This tablet marks the site of EAGLE HUT where services to the men of American and Allied Forces testified to the friendship of the English speaking peoples.

Do not become so obsessed with ideology as to refuse to look at data. Admittedly, this tends to happen on the left, particularly with regards to a certain noxious political system that lasted longer than Fascism and Nazism and killed far more people as well as destroying societies on a grander scale.

Tory Historian has started reading "In Denial" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, which is subtitled "Historians, Communism and Espionage". It is a tale of refusal by American historians (and how one wishes for a similar work in Britain but our libel laws make that impossible) to accept the truth, uncovered by Messrs Haynes and Klehr together with some colleagues about American Communists, open and secret, and their activities, all aimed at undermining their own country.

At the end of the Introduction they say:

Communism as a social fact is dead. But communism as a pleasant figment of the "progressive" worldview lives on, giving a phantom life to the illusions and historical distortions that sustained the murderous and oppressive ideology, The intellectual Cold War, alas, is not over. Academic revisionists who color the history of American communis in benign hues see their teaching and writing as the preparation of a new crop of radicals for the task of overthrowing American
capitalism and its democratic constitutional order in the name of social justice and peace. Continuing to fight the Cold War in history, they intend to reverse the victory of the West and convince the next generation that the wrong side won, and to preoare the way for a new struggle.

Tory Historian is very pleased that one can celebrate on the same day the Patron Saint of England and her greatest playwright, though just as St George is the Patron Saint of many other places and entities so Shakespeare is a playwright for the whole world.

St George, a military saint, though paintings that depict him tend to show him as a very youthful, sometimes even effeminate soldier, is highly venerated in all the Orthodox Churches as well as the Anglican. Moreau's picture above happens to be one of Tory Historian's favourites.

As for Shakespeare, what can one say on this day? He is supposed to have been born on April 23, 1564 but all we know for certain is that he was baptized on April 26. Well why could he not have been born three days previously? His death is recorded definitely for April 23, 1616.

Surely one cannot end this posting without quoting some of the most famous lines from Henry V:

As it is Budget Day, I thought it would be fun to have pictures of successful Conservative Chancellors of yore. Remember when the day was not greeted with absolute terror?


So here we have Nigel Lawson presenting his 1986 budget, Geoffrey Howe working (well, no longer working, one hopes as it is the actual day) on 1981 budget and Norman Lamont about to announce in 1993 that the recession is ebbing and the figures show a slow growth. No, the growth is not predicted as some kind of pie in the sky in the future but actually present.

... since we have had a quotation from Edmund Burke on this blog and the time has come to remedy that. This is a little less well known than some others and comes from Observations on 'The Present State of the Nation', published in 1769 as a response to the Whig politician, George Grenville.

It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Let us turn away from those painful events in the Colonies as mentioned in the previous posting and look at the birthday of a great man, an economist and somebody who, to Tory Historian's amazement, became a Unitarian after he broke with his Sephardic Jewish family that had come over from Portugal via Holland.

Yes, the man is David Ricardo, one of the most influentical political economists, the man who put together the theory of comparative advantage both for individuals and countries. There are too many people who do a great deal of harm, especially to developing countries by denying or, more precisely, not understanding it.

As Wikipedia puts it, quoting an article from August 2003 in the Washington Times:

Ricardo argued that there is mutual benefit from trade (or exchange) even if one party (e.g. resource-rich country, highly-skilled artisan) is more productive in every possible area than its trading counterpart (e.g. resource-poor country, unskilled laborer), as long as each concentrates on the activities where it has relative productivity advantage.

Tory Historian is ambivalent about the War of American Independence. In many ways, given the ideas that were swirling around in the 13 colonies at the time and given that those involved on all sides (including the many loyalists among the colonists) were, strictly speaking, still British, it is reasonable to call the conflict the third civil war that formulated the basic political ideology of the Anglosphere.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the colonists who rose against their rightful King were rebels and many Tories in England and in the Colonies opposed them. Then again (let's not bother with any more hands) the great Earl Chatham, the Elder Pitt, proclaimed on various occasions that the American Colonists would not submit to tyranny and it would be better to come to an agreement with them.

Edmund Burke, too, supported those who proclaimed no taxation without representation (though, really, they meant no taxation tout court and who can blame them.

April 18 and 19 are important dates in that conflict. This was the night in 1775 on which Paul Revere (pictured above), a silversmith with a French Huguenot father and Bostonian mother, togeher with William Dawes famously rode from Boston to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British Army was on the move towards Concorde to seize the arms cache and to arrest the two gentlemen.

The following day saw the battle of Lexington Green or Lexington Common, agreed by all to be the first battle of the War of Independence but, truth to tell, it was something of a skirmish, with both sides claiming victory.

The ghosts of those riders and the minute-men who stood up to the regulars must be watching with some interest the present day tea-parties across the fifty rather than thirteen states.

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.