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1 month ago
Each man's death diminishes me. John Donne's words echo in my mind as I think of the death, first heard of late last night, of Professor Ken Minogue (whoever called him Kenneth except as a joke?), a towering intellectual and writer, a man who thought deeply about our society, our basic ideas and our political structures, and expressed his ideas lucidly and entertainingly. He was also a friend of whom I was very fond and with whom I spent many hours, eating, drinking, talking, laughing and joking. His death definitely diminishes me.
With his permission I shall quote Ed Feulner's account of Ken's last hours:
Last night Ken Minogue and I shared the duties of the chair. I did the thanks, and Ken the introduction of Allan Meltzer, who spoke to us via teleconference. Over dinner, Ken was in great humour, telling us about the next book he was working on, etc. Earlier in the week he had given a fine paper, and yesterday afternoon he chaired a session with that fine, delicate and yet steady hand that made him so beloved to all.Sad though it is to think of the book that will not be finished, there is some pleasure in the description of Ken working, talking, being on top of the world to the last. And there is pleasure in knowing that his other books and articles, essays and recordings are with us. RIP Ken.
This morning 8 of us were on a bus tour looking at iguanas, sea lions, birds, etc, and enjoying ourselves immensely. Then we went back to the town of San Cristobal, had sandwiches and an hour later left for the airport. Westholms, Lals, Feulners, Fr. Sirico and Ken Minogue.
After our lunch, we went to the Galapagos airport, where the group was split between two flights to Guayaquil, an easy hour-long flight back to the mainland (on an Airbus, not a small plane.) Ken and many of the others were on the other flight.
Our flight landed first at Guayaquil. The other plane ten minutes later. We were collecting our luggage when we heard the horrible news that Ken had been stricken on the plane (a heart attack, we assume). There were four MD s on the plane, including two from the MPS meeting. They tried everything, but to no avail.
It is not, therefore, entirely wrong to write a blog about Nicolson, especially as I have just finished reading Derek Drinkwater's Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations - the Practitioner as Theorist, a book that has doctoral thesis written all over it. It is, nevertheless interesting though convincing only intermittently about the importance of Nicolson's contribution to the theory of international relations. A good deal of the time Nicolson, lucid, knowledgeable and passionate, still wavered as to what he really believed in, thus annoying and frustrating friends and allies (as well as opponents).
Nevertheless, the book is a useful study and analysis of all Nicolson's pronouncements in print, in manuscript (the unpublished parts of his diary) and on the radio and many interesting conclusions can be drawn from it. (Let us not forget that the Marginal Comments that he wrote for many years in the Spectator are all available on line now.)
In an early chapter of the book there is discussion of Nicolson's view of "old" (pre-First World War) and "new" (post-First World War) diplomacy and he found both wanting as we have all done ever since. Indeed, this discussion raises the issue whether diplomacy and democracy, particularly in the age of mass communication that can whip up emotions very quickly, are compatible.
Expanding Nicolson's ideas about the two kinds of traditional diplomacy, Drinkwater writes:
He [Nicolson] identified two contrasting conceptions of diplomacy and argued that a compromise between them constituted the soundest approach to diplomatic intercourse. The first was the German "warrior or heroic" theory, whose exponents perceived diplomacy as war by other means. The second was the British "mercantile or shop-keeper" theory, whereby diplomacy is seen as an aid to peaceful commerce based on the assumption that there exists a middle point at which the negotiators can reconcile their conflicting interests.Of course, it could be argued that this is just a long-winded way of saying "speak softly and carry a big stick".
In his book Diplomacy, which remains a classic on the subject, Nicolson compiled a list of sixteen qualities of both the ideal diplomat and the ideal diplomacy. It is, apparently, known in diplomatic theory as the "Nicolson test". Here is the list:
truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty, loyalty, intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage, and tact.Hmm. Those of us who have met diplomats and have studied the outcome of some of their activity would be hard put to acknowledge that few of them have even half of those qualities. It remains a very useful list.
However TH can fully agree with one point that Professor Colls makes: George Orwell, despite his loudly proclaimed preference for socialism, was in reality a conservative. Indeed, this has been mentioned in a previous blog on Dickens and Orwell who shared certain attitudes.
Here is a list of other buildings in the City and along the Strand that survived the Great Fire. TH thinks that a Sunday will have to be spent investigating them very soon.
Yes, it is that day again. We celebrate the Battle of Waterloo.
On June 14 as the defences of Port Stanley faltered and Mount Tumbledown was captured, a ceasefire was declared in the Falklands. On the same day the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Brigade General Mario Menéndez surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore.
During the night, Major General Moore sent back the following signal:
Major General Menendez surrendered to to me all the Argentine armed forces in East and West Falkland together with their impedimenta ... The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired by their inhabitants. God Save the Queen.The casualties were: 255 British deaths, 649 Argentinian (though there is some debate about that) and 3 Falkland Islanders. 11,000 Argentinians surrendered in, apparently, bad state of health and nutrition, giving the British commanders some extra headaches.
It so happens, that I was reading this two days ago as I was finishing Charles Moore's monumental first volume of Margaret Thatcher - the Authorized Biography. A long review will be posted very soon.
Guildhall Library will be holding an Open Day on Saturday, July 20 with a number of interesting talks listed, all of which are related to their collection. There is not one event on that list that I would not recommend or want to attend. Better start planning my visit now.
This is wonderful news for all historians: the Spectator has "scanned and digitised copies of the magazine from July 1828 to December 2008 can be browsed online using the beta Spectator Archive. Everything in the last five years can of course be found on spectator.co.uk".
I have just tried looking up articles from the late sixties and the system works. The articles and letters in question appeared on my screen both as text and as scanned pages. Of course, the archive in the basement of the building in Old Queen Street is a great deal more interesting to peruse. Digitisation is all very well and very useful but I trust the Spectator will never even consider getting rid of that.
The British Museum was established by an Act of Parliament on June 7, 1753. As a frequent visitor to that splendid place, Tory Historian can feel nothing but gratitude to the long-living Sir Hans Sloane (1660 - 1753) , physician, collector, naturalist and the man whose will led to the establishment to what must be the finest museum in the world. (TH is prepared to fight all comers on that subject.) Gratitude is also due to the Parliament of the day whose far-sightedness enabled the museum to come into existence.
Incidentally, Sir Hans seems to have been an excellent doctor as well:
An innovative doctor, Sloane promoted inoculation against smallpox, the use of quinine (a treatment for malaria) and the health-giving properties of drinking chocolate mixed with milk.By the time he died in Chelsea
his collection amounted to more than 71,000 objects. Chiefly natural history specimens, the collection also included:
23,000 coins and medals 50,000 books, prints and manuscripts a herbarium (a collection of dried plants) 1,125 'things relating to the customs of ancient times'.
That became the nucleus of the new museum.The British Museum opened to the public on 15 January 1759 . It was first housed in a seventeenth-century mansion, Montagu House, in Bloomsbury on the site of today's building. Entry was free and given to ‘all studious and curious Persons’.
With the exception of two World Wars, the Museum has remained open ever since, gradually increasing its opening hours and moving from an attendance of 5,000 per year to today's 6 million.
Indeed, that is likely to grow. 
Historical myths are hard to understand. Why is Jack the Ripper so fascinating? We have had far worse cases of serial murders since yet none to excite quite so much interest. Why is Watergate seen as the epitome of political corruption in the United States when there have been far worse developments in the last two or three years alone? Actually, we probably know the answer to that and it has something to do with the political make-up of the American media.
In Britain the acme of political scandal remains the Profumo affair of 1963, which did not, as it happens, bring down a government, no matter what some hacks say. It led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan and contributed to the feeling that the Labour Party was bound to win in 1964. In fact, despite the long Conservative dominance, the many scandals and difficulties, the Conservative Party under Sir Alec Douglas-Home very nearly won that election.
Looking back on the events, sordid though they were, one can say that the actual scandal did not amount to much: the Secretary of State for War, the glamorous Jack Profumo married to the beautiful actress Valerie Hobson, slept a few times with a young call girl, Christine Keeler, who had associates in the seedy underworld, and who might have also slept with the Soviet Defence Attaché. Of course, there was more to it than that. The Profumos may have been glamorous but their life style was distinctly louche, as was that of their various friends, such as the Viscount Astor at whose home Profumo met Keeler. The circle around Christine Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies was full of criminals and there was the dubious role played by the "society osteopath" and many other things, Stephen Ward, who was charged with living off immoral earnings and committed suicide as the trial came to an end.
Numerous books have been written on the subject, this, by Richard Davenport-Hines, which has some controversial comments in it, being the latest. There were summaries of the scandal in the various obituaries in 2006 when Profumo died. (Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and New York Times)
Fifty years ago today, Jack Profumo was finally forced to admit that he lied to Parliament and to his immediate associates about his affair (if one can call it that) with Christine Keeler and he resigned. On the one hand, he, like many other politicians, hung on in there for three months, hoping that the storm will pass; on the other hand, he made no attempts to come back into politics but devoted the rest of his life to charitable work in Toynbee Hall.
When the TLS asked various people in 1977 to name the most under-rated writer of the twentieth century, two respondents, Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil named Barbara Pym, born 100 years today. This revived and enhanced the publishers' and the literary world's influence in her clever, witty and rather low-key writing, which reminds one a great deal of Jane Austen's.
Barbara Pym wrote about women of the mid-twentieth century, who had varied lives, often careers though equally often not, an interest in the Church of England and its parish doings and a penchant for unsuitable men (a characteristic they shared with their creator). Though they are not strong on plot, they are beautifully crafted (an old-fashioned virtue in writing, one sometimes feels) and alternately very funny and sadly wistful. They also provide a fascinating picture of certain parts of English life in the two decades after the Second World War.
The DNB entry on her does Miss Pym (she was never a Ms) full justice.
Coronation Day. On History Today's website the redoubtable Lord Wakehurst's short film about the day Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. You can also watch this one and many other videos of the Royal Family on the The Royal Channel.
Tim Stanley's article in History Today says what we all think: a good funeral creates and propagates myths. He tries to lay to rest some of the myths that surround Margaret Thatcher on both sides but one cannot help feeling that it is a lost cause. At least, in her case, there are arguments, discussions and books that are more or less objective being written now. Not so with Churchill or not so for a good long time after his funeral.
As Tim Stanley rightly says, Churchill's funeral produced no discussions, no debates, only a general mourning across the country as people were saying goodbye to their own youth but also to a certain period in the country's history whose end, ironically, Churchill had helped to bring about.
It took a little time for some historians to start recalling that in his lifetime and during his active period as a politician Churchill was very unpopular in his party and in the country. Even after the war during which he had led the country to victory against many odds he managed to lose two of the three elections he fought as leader of the Conservative Party and barely won the third one.
Churchill's overwhelming popularity that amounts to secular sainthood for many people emerged and flourished in the decade between his enforced retirement and his death. It is interesting that there were no discussions about his political legacy while Thatcher's legacy remains a matter of furious debate.
Tory Historian finds it extraordinary that those in the culture industry (and it has become an industry though not all of it creates anything) should have such a sneering attitude to the businessmen and women who have made the money that made much of our cultural heritage possible. According to many of them the proper person to subsidize their activities is the taxpayer whose opinion is never asked and who contributes the money involuntarily. The alternative, they so often pronounce, money contributed voluntarily by the person who made or earned it, makes that lucre somehow tainted.
One has to admit that with government cuts, though they do not go far enough in TH's opinion, this attitude is changing. Even the BBC, usually the leading apostle of the ideology of sneering at people who actually make money, has put up a fascinating article about Sir William Burrell,
celebrated as an art lover and philanthropist. He left a wealth of objects to the people of Scotland in the magnificent Burrell Collection.The reason who could collect and then leave that wealth of objects was because he had been a highly successful shipping merchant.
"It was often said he was ruthless, but that's not the right word," says maritime historian Martin Bellamy, Head of Research at Glasgow Museums. "He was an innovative business operator with an inspired commercial mind.The rest of this fascinating article tells of the business Sir William built up and of the art collection he amassed. One cannot help wondering at the naiveté of the people who work in the BBC who seem to be astonished and feel the need to repeat several times that Burrell's activities as an art collector and philanthropist would not have been possible without his activities as a ruthless and imaginative businessman.
"He was a typical Victorian entrepreneur. He exploited the world of opportunities that the British Empire created.
"Burrell took over a modestly successful family business and expanded it enormously."
Burrell's secret was his ground-breaking operation of a type of trade called 'tramp shipping'.
Unlike liners which followed a set route of destinations, tramp ships did not have scheduled deliveries. They sailed to whatever port their cargo took them.
While a ship was unloading, the captain would make arrangements to find the next job. This led to delays and meant ships often sailed only part full. But Burrell had a solution.
"He travelled the world and set up a network of agents," says Bellamy. "They would do the work of the captains and secure the next cargo before his ships arrived.
BBC2 will be showing a programme on this great man this evening at 9 but only in Scotland. However, it will be available across the UK for seven days on iPlayer.
History Today blog informs us that the two winners of the 2012 Wolfson History Prize are Christopher Duggan for Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy and Susan Brigden for Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest. Both sound very interesting and are hereby added to the notional pile of books to be read.
Self-explanatory, I think.
The biggest criticism is that too many of the exhibits are modern and unexciting paperbacks even though the British Library must have original copies of first editions of all crime books, which are of greater interest.
The entrance to the exhibition (just above the escalator) has a quotation from Monsignor Knox and his famous Decalogue, which laid down all the rules that good detective writers (especially Agatha Christie) proceeded to break.
The rest of this long posting is on the secondary blog (for long postings)
The rest of this long posting is on the secondary blog (for long postings)
A real-life paper copy of the West Midlands History Magazine that analyzes Enlightenment, its people and organizations in that part of the country. The article on Industrial Enlightenment is fascinating. More goodies to read.
Also a gem of a book: The Odd Thing About the Colonel, a collection of articles and essays by one of the greatest of conservative journalists of the twentieth century, Colin Welch, sent to me, very kindly by his daughter, Frances Welch, herself a formidable historian.
Last year Tory Historian wrote an angry and scathing posting about the mess that Tate Britain (the Tate to many of us, harrumph) had become. Well, there was some good news in the Evening Standard today. According to the Director, Penelope Curtis,
A complete rehang of the collection at Millbank will give visitors a chronological history of British art, says director Penelope Curtis — and throw up some exciting juxtapositions.One worries a little (well, TH does) about those "exciting juxtapositions" but displaying the British art collection and in a chronological order (just like they used to do in the dear old days gone by) sounds like an excellent idea. On the other hand, it does not sound like a particularly radical one. Is that not what Tate Britain is for?
Tory Historian was reading some of the essays in H. R. F. Keating's splendid collection, Agatha Christie - First Lady of Crime and found a highly entertaining one by Emma Lathen (really two formidable ladies, Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Hennisart). Entitled Cornwallis's Revenge, it analyzes Christie's technique and her extraordinary popularity, especially in the United States. In fact, posits Ms Lathen, it is the return battle of the War of Independence and it has made the outcome somewhat doubtful.
In 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown and, for all practical purposes, the Revolutionary War was over. The viscount went on to a distinguished career in India, the rebels became preoccupied with the problems of forging a new political state, and the world assumed that British domination over the colonies was at an end. There the matter rested until 1920 which saw the publication of the first American edition of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Now, fifty-six years later, any detached observer on these shores would have to admit that the second British Expeditionary Force had been considerably more successful than the first.Heh! That would be the force led by General Hercule Poirot, ably assisted by Brigadier Jane Marple and Lieutenant-Colonels Battle and Race. I think we might forget about the Beresfords for the time being.
