Topical Sketch...

While thrilled by the news that human remains found in the area dating from 780,000 years ago had revised archaeological theories on the subject of prehistoric Britain, Norfolk Tourist Board were beginning to wonder if their new poster might be sending out the wrong impression...

Druids... and The Doctor...

Well, Monday saw the Summer Solstice rung in in the traditional way. A load of hippie types dressing up and heading to sites of historical interest around Britain such as Stonehenge and Avebury. There are just a few minor issues with this.

Most importantly, how on earth did hundreds of thousands of revellers make it to Stonehenge without being vaporised by a collective alliance of Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans et cetera? I mean, The Doctor is still locked in the Pandorica, watched over by this new terrifying Alliance (or, dare I say, 'coalition'), so how did the Druids manage to avoid extermination? Hippie magic trumps cyber technology now, does it?

Actually, allow me to get sidetracked, the opening part of the Doctor Who series finale was an absolutely tremendous high point in a series that has seen the new key talent of Moffat, Smith and Gillan produce some astounding moments. Admittedly, the big twist of the Pandoric being a prison for The Doctor was a touch predictable (although maybe I just spend too much time writing things myself to enjoy the mystery of such things anymore) but there were still a suitable number of questions left unanswered and a few things to make one's brain hurt. Such as, Rory came back as a Roman, but he wasn't really Rory, he was just an Auton programmed to be and think like Rory, but then if he was erased from time and never existed and Amy forgot about him, then how did the Alliance know and... ow, my head.

As well as every star in the universe going supernova and The Doctor being locked in a large cube (maybe Phillip Schofield will appear at some point), we were also left with a dying Amy. Now, I imagine some serious deus ex machina appearing in the next episode and I don't imagine Amy will remain dead any more than I imagine the Doctor will end up imprisoned forever and the writers will leave every star in the universe destroyed. Theories and symposia on possible resolutions that I've read include both The Doctor and River Song being Prisoner Zero, River's vortex manipulator will save the day, that Amy's house is the TARDIS (bigger on inside, blue etc.), some kind of link between Amy POND and RIVER Song. I don't know though, it's all very much nerdy internet ramblings. The long and the short of it is simply wait until Saturday and then we'll all find out.

Anyway, back to the Druids. Flocking to what we now know are in fact the communications towers that are the mysterious lithics of Stonehenge to celebrate what is in fact a festival celebrated possibly as early as the neolithic period, which happily is also the period in which the monoliths were erected in Avebury. So neo-druids flock their to celebrate something not in fact originally worship by Celtic religions at a site that has equally little to do with actual druids.

Now, I don't really have that much of a problem with new-age-y types with beards and robes, however as a historian it does bother me that their research seems to be a little flawed. In the musuem galleries at Avebury there's a child skeleton found on Windmill Hill, a real wonderful archaeological find, but the Druids insist on it being reburied. Now, not only would this set a worrying precedent and possibly end up with a huge number of societies and museums caving in to the demands of a group with little right to force this issue, but in all likelihood the skeleton is that of a neolithic child, given the period of other finds from the same area and again is nothing to do with Druids.

Gah, it just strikes me as misinformed, lobbying for the sake of making it look like you're doing something instead of arsing around in robes. You know it is, it really is.

Edifying Evenings and the Great War...

Right, yesterday in a bid to better myself I attended a talk. Now, I could have stayed in, I could have watched Holby City or some other Wednesday evening nonsense, but instead I went to see Professor Richard Holmes give a talk entitled 'Tommy', loosely based on his acclaimed book of the same name (as opposed to the rock opera by The Who).

Holmes is a hugely respected military historian and many of you will have perhaps seen his programmes on TV (if not look at UKTV History, one of them's bound to be on) and will be aware of his astonishing factual knowledge, but as well as this there's a humility to his tales. He does not feel compelled to rely on the cheap shocks and gory theatrics that many modern historians pepper their programmes with. One of his most enduring series 'War Walks' is available here on Youtube and as one might imagine features a lot of walking, but even then it's simple walking towards the camera (with the cameraman backpeddling furiously) there's very little incessant hand waving, like your Schamas and your Starkeys, instead he offers a few pointed directions, stopping only to converse in French with a munitions expert and then casually carry on the narrative.

Holmes as a speaker is very much the same as Holmes the author- scholarly, equal parts lugubrious and droll, but most of all passionate about history. He spends much of each year in Flanders fields, examing the pockmarked remnants of the Western front and has an extensive, perhaps intimate, knowledge of what I would venture to be his favourite topic, the Great War and it was the objective of his talk (as it was his book) to challenge the popular conceptions about this oft-considered dark chapter in British military history.

He begins with a criticism of most Brits approach to the Great War- poetry. I should make clear that he has nothing but the utmost respect and admiration of these great poets- Owen, Sasoon, Gurney- but he simply feels that impression that one gleans from their work is not an accurate portrayal of the average British Tommy. Over the course of an hour he explains the changing face of the procedure of everyday life over those 4 years of war with a good deal of charm- from the stand-to before first light, to sneaking some food and a 1/16th of a pint of rum at night. 'Breakfast' he explained 'consisted of military order biscuit, bacon and a few drops of tea. The food was carried in hessian sacks, now, hessian has a sort of creosote-y flavour, a little unfortunate. The tea will taste a little of petrol as the petrol cans doubled as water containers. So your tea was a bit petrol-y and your bacon tasted of hessian, but you were generally in good spirits.' He explained that when the men were in reserve the padres would organise a film for them to watch though 'generally a Tommy was more interested in alcohol and women. The padres helped with the former and some of them- God bless them- with the latter.' As one can see, Holmes has a good deal of dry wit in his delivery but in lecturer mode it is appropriately always tempered with a sense of sobriety, seriousness, menace perhaps.

Though his talk is amusing, the underlying sense of melancholy is just as strong, particularly when he is discussing the first-hand accounts and the men joining Kitchener's moustachioed recruitment drive. 'The idea of the British Army is a fallacy.' He explained. 'In real terms, it was a group of tribes working in more or less voluntary collaboration with each other.' (Holmes would know, he achieved the rank of Brigadier in a celebrated military career). He went on to explain how the idea of the battalion was far stronger than that of a 'British Army' and of how these tribes were plucked from already existing groups. The Accrington Pals were raised from the Lancashire town and surrounding villages by its mayor, Glasgow produced 3 brigades: one from the city centre, one from the staff of the tramways (whose CO was the General Manager) and 'one' Holmes announced 'from the shopkeepers of the city, called- and it almost makes me cry- the Glasgow Commercials'.

He explained how the revisionist 'lions led by donkeys' opinion of the 60s did a great injustice to the British officers, more of whom gave their lives in this war than any other. Almost half of the officers by 1918 were raised from the ranks, breaking down the class barriers, however when it came to the end of the war they were left jobless and the social upheaval that they had spurred on in those 4 years had fizzled out. During the Q&A session, Holmes fielded a question on the subject of Haig being the 'Butcher of the Somme'. He sprang to the defence of the much-maligned Field Marshal claiming that, faced with such a green group of soldiers in Kitchener's Army and a lack of decisive methods of breaking the trench stalemates, Haig had to toughen up the country to the horrors of war and that if he had failed to do so, there would have been no victory in 1918. As he closed, he gave a powerful but much underused argument of the war, that Britain did a bloody good job, ordinary Tommies and Officers alike, in almost impossible conditions.

Naturally it's impossible to anatomise the experiences over 4 years of the average British soldier in an hour long lecture, but Holmes gives it a bloody good go and one can't help but be sucked in by his charisma as a speaker. He's intensely knowledgable, witty and, in conversation, a very warm character with a true love of his subject. He spoke for an hour in great detail without so much as one piece of notepaper to aid him and fielded a number of insightful questions with remarkable ease. His final statement was a resounding one and I wholeheartedly agree. While there were terrible losses, we should take great pride in what our brave Tommies, their commanding officers and the soldiers of the Commonwealth achieved against the formidable German army in those 4 long years and though our last remnants of the war passed away with Harry Patch last year, we should never do them the injustice of looking upon it as the darkest hour of 20th century Britain, instead we should venerate those young men with us no more and remember it as the hour in which Britain won a remarkable, hard-fought victory.

Oliver Stone's History Sideshow

This morning I picked up my copy of the Guardian to see Oliver Stone grinning back from the front page. Intrigued by the headline, I delved into the article and learnt of a new 10 hour miniseries from Stone about 20th century history. Now, Stone is used to his fair share of controversy, but for many this appears to have taken the historical biscuit, dropped it and then trampled on it repeatedly, so I figured it would be a shame if I didn't wade into the debate.

What one must do in situations such as these is make the distinction between justifying Hitler (bad) and analysing him in context with a view to the human condition (historically relevant). Seriously, this is GCSE stuff. After two years of reading countless books by Richard Overy, Ian Kershaw and Klaus P Fischer, it seems easy enough to be able to do the latter without a hint of the former. Stone says that he will analyse Hitler as 'the product of a series of actions', which isn't far from the truth, however he qualifies this by saying 'we can't judge people as only "bad" and "good"' and that Hitler 'has been used as a scapegoat'. Now, when it comes to the Nazis and scapegoating, Hitler isn't the man to look to. I'm fairly certain that there are a lot of Jewish families that would wish to take issue with Mr. Stone's comments here. The idea of Hitler and the Nazis coming about because of the impact of the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles, the economic collapse and 'last days of Rome' effect of the Weimar Republic is basic stuff, people, the kind of things I learnt as a 14 year old. By suggesting this, Stone isn't being revolutionary in the slightest. From the sounds of things, this Stone documentary series isn't going to be a patch on the Laurence Rees and Ian Kershaw penned ones that we've had the pleasure of viewing.

One area in which he is approaching sense is by saying that Hitler has been used cheaply throughout history. This is true, Hitler has become some manner of catch-all reference, clutched at by angry people in an argument. Even on this very blog, someone invoked Godwin's Law within two comments (a new record). But the truth of the matter is that there is an extremely good reason for this, Hitler was one man with dangerous right-wing views who was able to harness latent bitterness and hatred and play all manner of rival bureaucracies off against each other, utilising some manner of organised chaos to push forward his despicable individual goals. Naturally there were a handful of other pathological criminals who handed him power along the way, but they don't make his actions any more justifiable, instead it simply serves to make them every bit as contemptible as the man himself. There can be little doubt that he was a terrible man, whether this was as a result of 'a series of actions' as Stone claims is basically irrelevant. We can examine these 'actions' and the elements of the psyche which contributed to him becoming the dangerous megalomaniac that he was, but they still have the same end result. The atrocities that he performed were abstract evil, no bones about it.

Stone justifies his point by claiming- 'I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes, to understand their point of view. You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate.' Now, I took the liberty of strolling a mile or two in Hitler's jackboots and it left a bitter taste in the mouth, I can tell you. The trick is not to empathise with dictators, but to objectively analyse the factors contributing to their actions, something done brilliantly by Kershaw (seriously, read his output, you'll see what I'm getting at). There's a world of difference between empathy/justification and rationalisation and if Stone can stick to the latter of these two, he might just be able to steer himself out of trouble and produce a half-decent history series with something to say (still probably won't trouble World at War and its oil of Olivier for the title of greatest historical series though).

This brings us on to the defense of Stalin by Stone. The claim that he 'fought the German war machine more than any person' is not really in doubt. It's generally accepted that Stalin shook up the Red Army into some semblance of efficiency (though it's lack in the early years of war was his fault anyway) and created a force capable of not only resisting but tearing the heart out of the Wehrmacht. Now, the Russians did a Hell of a lot for the Allies in the war, 3/4 Wehrmacht soldiers were killed on the Eastern Front and the Red Army's losses numbered in the tens of millions, incomparable to the losses endured by the British, Commonwealth and US troops. So again, as far as Stone's claims go, nothing to see here. It's post-war that Stalin's rep begins to suffer with the fall of the iron curtain- details surface about the purges, recent documentaries have shed light on mass murder of Polish generals. Of course the man had to deal with Communism being less popular than Fascism and hampering his political influence in Europe pre-war, it's probably unsurprising that he was tipped over the edge... Here's the nub of the argument: What's more important the end or the means to that end? One for all you philosophers out there (but no Kantian deontological ethics please, I'm strictly utilitarian).

The problem here is that Stone has made a living out of promoting his work through controversy. By portraying Bush in the classic Culshaw/Bremner style in 2008's 'W', he was able to incense every right-wing broadcaster to devote time to the unwitting promotion of the film and lead every sane, intelligent being in the world to think 'finally, a portrayal of the man, matching my opinions of him, from an award-winning American'. Sadly in order to promote this series, he's had to claim that Hitler wasn't really bad, which has done him no favours whatsoever. No doubt it is simply a ploy and the actual series itself will have had the steadying hand of academia to steer it away from being too edgy.

The path of history is fraught with contradiction and unmentionable issues, which creates an atmosphere in which crafting a cogent argument is so impossibly difficult that I marvel that anyone is able to. Philosophy is even more of a bloody minefield and I sense numerous arguments about moral relativity and Socialist vs Nazi vs Communist vs McCarthy nonsense to come. I remember a similar outcry at the release of Der Untergang (Downfall) claiming that humanising Hitler would somehow poison our minds, fooling us into forgetting that he was a monster but you know what, he was human, no matter how little we like to think it. The film managed to portray Hitler as human, while reminding us that there is no justification for what he did and that's the balance required in every analysis of the dictator. It was a great film and at no point did you empathise with Hitler (despite a marvellous performance by Swiss screen-legend Bruno Ganz), it is surely the perfect example for the treatment of such a character, as explained by the marvellous Kershaw in this article from the same newspaper.

So, what have we learned? Well you can get some extra publicity by raising the hackles of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the other Conservative mentalists and you can create a hell of a stir in the 24 hour media (there are well over 300 comments on the article). To be honest, we are all of us clueless until the series actually comes out and then we can judge it for what it is. Likely another all too basic history series with delusions of grandeur that thinks it's far more revelatory and indeed revolutionary than it actually is.

Phew, tomorrow should bring a preview of a new miniseries about controversial Renaissance family, the Borgias (no not the BBC one from the 80s, that was terrible). I know it's a year in advance but it tickled me that it was in the pipeline. Until then, fellow bloggers, journos and angry people, adieu.