Conservative History Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Immortal Dizzy: Benjamin Disraeli 130 Years On

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

More Information: the Estate Office, 01494 755573,

hughenden@nationaltrust.org.uk

Event Number 6 on the London Historians site

KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY TOUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

This comes from Andrew Roberts's magisterial biography of Lord Salisbury. In 1877 Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India became embroiled in the usual row between Viceroy and Secretary of State and as it was all too often the case, it was about Russian expansion in Central Asia and how Britain should respond. Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, was in favour of some action; Salisbury was considerably more cautious and less certain that Russia, despite the speed of her expansion, which he underestimated, was a real threat to India.

Tory Historian has just finished the highly entertaining Shooting Leave by Sir John Ure, a collection of tales of derring-do, espionage and scientific exploration as well as lots of shooting of birds and animals in the Great Game. It is thoroughly to be recommended to anyone who is interested in that subject.

On the secondary Conservative History Journal blog there is now a review of a book published by Biteback and edited by Francis Beckett, called The Prime Ministers Who Never Were. The verdict is so-so. Entertaining essays but counter-factual history, which has its uses, is not the same as total fantasy.

London Historians are organizing what is potentially the first of monthly meetings for those interested in a drink (or two) and a chat at the famous off-Fleet Street tavern, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. As a matter of fact, it is a very pleasant hostelry despite the irritating name. Tory Historian is not sure that Dr Johnson and Boswell actually idled away their hours - Boswell certainly thought that listening to the great sage was worth all the time in the world.

As editor of the Conservative History Journal in all its versions and a tediously tireless promoter of the study of history in Britain, I like the look of this website. Set up by various academic organizations it attempts to bring together as many of the digital resources for the study of British history between 1500 and 1900 as possible. I have to admit I have not yet tried using it for research but shall do so very soon.

Tory Historian wishes Lord Tebbit, possibly the only active Conservative politician who can be called great, a happy 80th birthday.

Searching through second-hand detective stories in Charing Cross Road Tory Historian found a collection of Lillian de la Torre's stories about Dr Johnson, entitled The Detections of Dr. Sam: Johnson.

Tory Historian has always had a soft spot for John Julius Norwich, the extraordinarily prolific yet seemingly relaxed and charming historian of Venice and the Byzantine Empire as well as talented anthologizer. Here is a delightful interview with him on occasion of his new book, the history of the Popes. It is going on TH's list immediately.

Tory Historian has found two blogs that might be of interest to readers and they both seem to be authored by the same person except that both seem to have a number of other bloggers. In fact, one on Georgian London seems to be more of a magazine than a blog with the number of guests writing about their interests.

Tory Historian has been catching up with some important reading and found among the unread pile this article by Nigel Lawson (now Lord Lawson of Blaby), former Chancellor of the Exchequer and present-day campaigner against the intellectual terrorism of some climate scientists.

The title, borrowed from a certain well-known if over-hyped film, is Five Myths and a Menace. The five myths Lord Lawson demolishes are:

Myth number one is that economics is a science.

Myth number two: that policy-makers should be guided by the precautionary principle.

Myth number three is the notion, assiduously peddled by ministers in the present government, as it was by their predecessors, that policies to promote the replacement of carbon-based energy by substantially more expensive renewable energy, notably wind power, will bring great benefit to the British economy and in particular create millions of so-called "green jobs".

Myth number four, that Keynesian (or neo-Keynesian) stabilisation policy makes sense.

The last of my five myths, which is causing considerable angst at the present time — as indeed it did when I was Chancellor in the 1980s — and was one of the preoccupations of November's meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Korea.

This is the view that the very substantial current account imbalances that exist in the world are both unnatural and a threat to global economic health.

It is not entirely clear to Tory Historian why International Women's Day, ignored in Britain since beginnings a century ago, should now be celebrated across the land. It is, however, satisfactory to know that March 8 is also the anniversary of Queen Anne's ascension to the throne after the death of her brother-in-law, William III, after a hunting accident. He was thrown from his horse who had stumbled into a mole's burrow. William's collar bone was broken and the complicating pneumonia carried him off.

The Jacobites now had another toast to drink: not just "the King over the water" but also "the gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat", that is the mole.

Curiously enough, the other William who had conquered England, though somewhat more bloodily, also died as a result of a fall off a horse.

Tory Historian finished The Diary of a Country Parson, the very much shortened version of Parson Woodforde's voluminous diary. The elegant little tome in The World's Classics series of Oxford University Press reminds one of the small eighteenth century volumes that readers carried in their coat pockets or reticules. It is such a pity that financial considerations prevent the publication of long books in several small volumes. It would be a good deal easier to read Andrew Roberts's magisterial biography of Lord Salisbury if it were in five or six small tomes, one of which would be possible to carry around wherever one went.