The post University of Northampton’s ‘Leather at lunchtime’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>‘Leather at Lunchtime’ was a series of three lunchtime events at the National Leather Collection. The festival coincided with the opening of their new museum in Northampton’s shopping centre, so it was a great opportunity to celebrate this and to raise awareness about the collection. Each day we had a short guest lecture, craft demonstrations, handling sessions and pop-up exhibitions.
I had made some contacts at the National Leather Collection a few months previously, and was keen to collaborate on some public engagement activities. Together we wanted to raise the profile of the National Leather Collection and add to visitor numbers. We also wanted to engage the public with the academic work in this area done by my university.
It was pitched at all ages, and we drew a diverse crowd. The National Leather Collection was a good venue for this type of event. We hoped that a lunchtime event would allow people to drop in on their lunch break, and holding it during the day also enabled us to build it into the students’ timetable. Attendees seemed to enjoy the event, commenting in feedback that it ‘sparked new interest in the history of leather’ and that a ‘welcoming atmosphere’ meant they engaged with the event.
We produced posters and flyers to advertise the event, and we used our existing networks, but our advertising on social media was also effective. We got a lot of interest before and during the event on Twitter in particular, and we kept the online engagement going afterwards with a series of blogs.
In general the event evaluated very positively and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! The social media engagement was also very successful.
This has been my first experience of organising a public engagement event on this scale, so it has all been very educational for me. In particular I learned about project budgeting, engaging non-academic audiences and event publicity. One challenge we faced was that although the event was located in a busy shopping centre, it was difficult to translate that footfall into attendees. In general, the people who came had heard about it in advance.
The timescales for organising events with museums are necessarily long, so plan ahead!
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]]>The post University of Birmingham’s ‘Babbling Beasts’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>‘Babbling Beasts’ followed the format of a 90 minute workshop (repeated twice) for families with children aged eight and up. We used a combination of creative writing, shared reading, voice recording and the ‘Babbling Beasts’ sound technology to make and record a story-game. The event took place at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where we used the objects in the Ancient Egypt Gallery as the ‘treasure’ to inspire stories about getting lost or losing precious items.
We were keen to reanimate the Ancient Egypt Gallery in a way that was unexpected and to remind participants that the creative process of writing, reading, story- and game- making is fun!
Our event was aimed at children aged 8+ with at least one accompanying adult. With this audience in mind we chose to hold the workshops at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. It is in a city-centre location accessible by public transport, has a good track-record for offering inclusive events and is a well-loved site.
We advertised the event via a digital postcard sent to our professional and social networks. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery kindly circulated the event amongst their mailing list. We also did a short ad on local Facebook sites about the city; as well as general promotion on Twitter to reach our intended audience.
We had a great turn out at both the workshops. We also had some lovely feedback from the children that attended. One said that ‘I learnt today that stories do not always have to be perfect. It’s OK to improvise’, while another told us ‘I learnt what stories you can make by looking at something. Anything can make a story’.
Adults accompanying children also enjoyed the experience, one feeding back that ‘I learned new things that can be of use in educating my children as well as in other aspects of my life’.
We branded the project by designing a logo which we used on badges, a banner and on all the invitations and ads, which proved very successful. We also had a research assistant (paid for by the University of Birmingham) who worked on branding and promotion of the event so that we could fill the workshops.
Visiting the venue twice as part of the planning to figure out logistics and also to make a sample ‘lost and found’ babbling beast recording! The children loved playing back their stories/games in the gallery at the end of the workshop. Also, ensuring that we had three people to support the delivery and evaluation of the workshops – in addition to the three of us who were running them – was very helpful.
We only had tight 90 minute slots for each workshop group. We had to focus on moving people back and forth between the workshop room and the gallery (3 floors apart!). It was also a challenge to get people to complete the evaluation sheets in the small window of time before they left the gallery.
Some participants hit problems with the technology, although we overcame most of these. The workshops have taught us that we need to explain the tech more simply.
Being Human provided us with an opportunity to pilot our workshop model as part of a ‘Research & design’ project that investigates children’s feelings about reading and whether digital game-making can be used as a route into leisure reading as a resource for life. The Being Human funding helped us to secure an Arts Council England grant.
Get as much help (paid and volunteer) as you can with promotion and publicity; then again for delivery (e.g. meeting and greeting; doing any consent forms and evaluation).
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]]>The post University of Westminster’s ‘Found Theatre and Poetry: Disrupting the Everyday’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>For Being Human 2017, my co-curator Guy Osborn and I programmed a series events for the ‘lost’ Soho Poly theatre, a tiny subterranean venue in the centre of London. Between 1972 and 1990 this had been the home of the Soho Theatre, a radical pioneer of ‘lunchtime’ theatre. All our events – live poetry, talks about the history, a newly commissioned piece of ‘digital’ theatre – aimed to honour the venue’s original impulse to disrupt the working day with arts and culture.
The Being Human 2017 theme of ‘Lost and Found’ was pretty irresistible. The Soho Poly venue had been completely neglected since the Soho Theatre moved from the premises in 1990. I’d been doing academic research on it for a book, but here was an opportunity to explore its theatrical properties in a practical way. And that chimed really well with the philosophy behind Being Human: to bring humanities research into the public arena. The University of Westminster has a long history of supporting poetry, and by inviting poet Mike Garry and the collective Live Canon to perform, we were able to reference that history too. Most important to us was the idea that visitors to the festival would feel enriched by experiencing arts and culture in the middle of their day. Rather than seeing the arts as a luxury or leisure activity, we wanted to show how it can be part of the daily fabric of our lives.
We knew that people who remembered the old theatre would be interested in a walk down memory lane. But we also made a particular effort to reach out to the local community. We marketed directly to places like the local Fitzrovia news, and we were delighted that quite a few of our attendees had heard about the events from that source.
We had some fantastic feedback, with people really responding to the venue itself and the chance to have their day (positively) disrupted! Fred Proud, the theatre’s very first artistic director, wrote that: ‘it was clear last week that the same old magic was not so very far away.’ More of our positive testimonials can be found on our University of Westminster page.
The historic nature of the venue provided our events with a great focal point. We also had some wonderful volunteers who brought a real sense of excitement and anticipation to our preparations. In that sense, the whole enterprise felt suitably ‘theatrical’ – almost as if we were gearing up for a show. As is always the case, the experience was also made by the collaborations we formed.
We were lucky at how smoothly things ran, but there were quite a lot of logistical things to sort out. That was particular true with respect to the venue, which had a lot of health and safety bars to clear. And in the end, we probably didn’t quite bank on it being so cold in our tiny basement!
The involvement with Being Human was hugely important. It lifted the profile of the event but also helped to shape the ‘message’ that we wanted to put across – about the creative ways in which (lost) history and new ideas spark off each other. Equally important was the opportunity to feel part of a much largely celebration of the Humanties. And with that, of course, came the chance to make some brilliant new contacts.
Back at Westminster we’re now planning all sorts of new events on the back of the success of Being Human 2017. But just as exciting is the fact that many of our partners and collaborators, who didn’t know each other before the festival, are now independently setting up projects amongst themselves.
1. Collaborate! Guy and I had the initial idea, but things got so much more exciting once we’d invited Hannah Bruce and Company, Mike Garry, Fred Proud and Live Canon to get involved.
2. Keep pushing the marketing until the last minute. Social media in particular really helped us maintain a buzz around the events.
3. Think how a Being Human idea might fit into other plans you’d like to get up and running. We’ve found being involved in Being Human 2017 has given a real boost to other projects.
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]]>The post National Army Museum’s ‘Archives Weekend’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>‘Archives Weekend’ saw a variety of activities take place, including behind-the-scenes tours of the National Army Museum’s archive stores, a talk about the museum’s institutional archives and a family activity called ‘Archive detectives’ where children uncovered the story of Crimean Tom, a stuffed cat on display in the Soldier Gallery.
The aim of our event was to encourage the public to interact on a deeper level with our collections – learning about the fascinating stories they tell, but also understanding and appreciating the work of our archival staff in looking after these precious items.
Our event was aimed at adults and families from the local area. It featured in our own ‘What’s on’ leaflet and we also pushed our event out on our website, through online listings and on social media.
We think the variety of our offer worked well – behind the scenes tours, a talk, and family activities meant that there was something for everyone. In fact, our behind-the-scenes tours were more popular than we had expected, but we couldn’t add more because of limited staff resource that day.
Being Human is a great opportunity for the museum to showcase the research outputs and research potential of its collections. It’s great to be part of a festival which champions research – it opens the door to an audience who might not otherwise visit the museum, as well as giving our existing audiences something new to try. It gives us the chance to ‘think outside the box’ and creatively interpret the themes chosen each year.
It’s also great to be part of the Being Human festival community, especially on social media. On a personal level I have met some great people through Being Human. On an organisational level, the festival offers the museum some great exposure and the chance to be listed alongside many wonderful and prestigious institutions.
1. Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes – if you picked up the Being Human festival brochure, what would make you go to something?
2. Think about the overall visit – it’s not just the specific activity someone is going to, they’ll probably visit your café, shop, toilets etc. Think about offers and deals, and cleanliness!
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]]>The post University of South Wales ‘Recollecting popular music memories in Merthyr Tydfil’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>The project began with a 1 day memory capturing workshop in Dowlais Library, where community members had the opportunity to consider their musical past by engaging with memory boxes (memorabilia associated with the music scene in Merthyr Tydfil between 1955-1975). This was followed by visits into two local schools, where children had the opportunity to learn about their heritage, then reenact it. The project was completed by a public event at Theatre Soar, where children performed the memories of the older community members, followed by a brief talk by myself.
I hoped the project would explore some of the following questions:
1. What are the relationships between local music making and more mainstream histories?
2. How can local music be made sustainable?
3. What are the most appropriate methodologies of capturing local music histories?
4. How can lost local popular music histories be made relevant to the younger generation?
5. And finally, how can lost local musical histories reflect our individual and shared identities?
Targeting the audience was done over a period of time, initially setting up a Facebook page to engage community members in discussion. Other community members were contacted via the project partners – namely Dowlais Library and First Campus (who built a relationship with the schools). We also marketed the event by placing posters throughout the town.
Once community members realised that they were exploring their own history, it was relatively straight forward to facilitate engagement. You can see some of them taking part and responding to the event in these short videos.
I have to say everything worked better than expected. Although there were pressures, the project team worked so hard to turn everything around in 8 days. This included capturing and recording memories, devising scripts and teaching them to the schoolchildren, then organising a final multimedia performance and discussion.
The biggest challenge was doing so many events in a week (5 in total). As each stage of the project (memory capture, school adaptations, and final performance) relied on its predecessor, there was significant pressure to ensure that each stage had clear outputs. This involved factors such as ensuring all recorded material was ready for the final event and most importantly, that the children remembered their lines!
I got involved in the Being Human festival because I have had a long standing interest in making my research of relevance to the local community. Communities such as Merthyr tend to have hidden histories, outside of the mainstream narratives, so the project presented a perfect opportunity for me to explore this. The project provided the perfect opportunity to focus this work over an 8 day period.
The outcomes of the project is discussed in this video. It shows that the project has had significant impact on the local community. The project also received significant media attention, especially from Wales Online and Welsh Connections which has helped spread the research amongst wider audiences.
The event has led into a month long exhibition on memories of popular music in the town hall and it is hoped the exhibition will have a legacy into the future. In addition, I am already in discussions with the schools I worked with to consider how a similar initiative can become part of the school curriculum.
1. Start planning as soon as you have confirmation of your involvement.
2. Engage with community partners you can trust.
3. Be prepared to be flexible.
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]]>The post De Montfort University’s ‘British Wrestling: History and Resurgence’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>‘British Wrestling: History and Resurgence’ took place on Sunday 19th November at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester, exploring the history of British wrestling as an art form. We put on three matches in front of a 100-strong audience, featuring some of the leading contemporary British wrestlers. We finished with a Q&A in the ring with all the wrestlers. As far as we know this is the first time that a humanities festival has included a live wrestling show!
We wanted the audience to be as diverse as possible. We hoped to particularly encourage attendance from two groups: wrestling fans, who had perhaps not engaged with a humanities festival before, and humanities fans who had never seen a wrestling show. The collaboration of partners came about after a series of year-long conversations; all who were involved are wrestling fans and academics/arts practitioners with an interest in the area.
The audience members’ feedback was as diverse as the audience itself. Here are just a handful of the comments we received: ‘It was great to hear from wrestlers about their craft’; ‘it was great to see pro wrestling (I have been a fan for 35 years) treated with such respect’; ‘it made me think about wrestlers as performers and wrestling as performance art’; ‘gave me a greater understanding of performance art’.
Here are a few tips I would give to future event organisers:
1. Be part of a brilliant collaborative team! This event rested firmly on the talents and hard work of the partners. This collaboration organically came out of a year of fairly informal conversation. For future Being Human organisers I’d say start to develop this collaboration really early, involving all contributors at application stage.
2. See your Being Human event as a moment in a bigger project. In the lead up to the event we set up the ‘Wrestling resurgence’ project; this brought clarity to the marketing and gave the event an even stronger identity. This project continues; we have secured funding for two more events in April and May 2018, and have two larger funding bids in preparation. We viewed our participation in the festival as a starting point and were excited to create a sustainable project out of our energising Being Human experience.
3. Take risks! None of us had ever actually run a live wrestling show before. When we submitted the application we didn’t have a ring, any wrestlers to perform, any sense of whether we could attract an audience, or (as a last-minute humorously panicky email will testify) a ring-bell! However, we were amazed at how everything came together. Oftentimes willingly taking risks in public engagement leads to exciting things.
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]]>The post School of Advanced Study’s ‘Finding Mr Hart’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>‘Finding Mr Hart’ was a new play written by Christopher Adams based on my research and performed at Senate House, London, and the Blackburn Cotton Exchange, a disused Victorian building currently undergoing restoration in Blackburn town centre. Oral histories, archival evidence in the form of letters, company records and family photographs were used to construct a narrative about the life of the Edwardian collector, R.E. Hart. Hart (1878-1946) who assembled one of the finest collections of rare books and coins in the UK in Blackburn, Lancashire. His fortune was derived from rope making which was integral to the cotton industry. Upon his death in 1946, Hart bequeathed these collections to ‘the people of the town’. They are currently held by the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery.
I wanted to take my research findings out into the community of Blackburn. Connection with this community was the original intention of R.E. Hart’s magnificent gift. Chris’ skill as a playwright transformed my academic research into an emotive piece that brought the collector and his world to life.
The Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery is visited most often by an older audience. We wanted to expand the age range of those engaging with the Hart Collection by presenting the collection’s history as a dramatic narrative, as opposed to a static tour of the material, guided by information labels. The venue was a great choice with attendees feeding back that ‘It was about a local person in an easily accessible venue, in the middle of town.’
We marketed the events through the Institute of English Studies’ listings and tweets. Chris appeared on Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme and I had slot on BBC Radio Lancashire’s Morning programme in the Blackburn studio. We set up a dedicated Twitter account for the project which was really not incredibly effective. The museum marketed the show through their Friends contacts and through their local arts networks. We approached local arts groups and schools as well.
Working with companies we already had contact with was very useful. The Institute of English Studies has an academic partnership with the museum, and I have been researching Hart and his collections for the past five years. The Blackburn venue of the old Cotton Exchange was suggested by the Museum’s manager, Rebecca Johnson. Essentially the venue was lent free of charge by Re: Source, the current owners. Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery also provided space for the reception afterwards.
The professional cast were sourced by Christopher’s London theatre contacts, and the play’s director, Will Maynard, sourced costumes and a lighting designer. The props and lighting for the Blackburn show were kindly lent by a local Blackburn second hand shop, Rummage Rescuers, and the lighting lent by a local firm, HSL.
Chris produced an outstanding piece of theatre that the director and cast immediately engaged with. Our challenge was largely a sense of uncertainty. The London show sold out quite early on in the marketing process, while the Blackburn event, which was also sold out, did not have attendees buying much in advance of the programme, and many just turned up on the night. We spent lots and lots of time on marketing but we were unsure of the result until the very night itself. This was quite stressful.
I also found it fairly challenging to manage my day to day responsibilities along with the pressures of the performances.
It succeeded in reaching our goals, and I could not have been more pleased with the result. I consider the Blackburn performance to be one of the highlights of my career. To see the disused Cotton Exchange filled with people and light for one night only, and to see the audience moved by the story of Mr Hart, the subject of my research for many years, was truly memorable. It showed that research has a life outside of academia.
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]]>The post Collaborating for the Being Human festival: ‘From Syria With Love’ appeared first on Being Human.
]]>While the Being Human team have their hands full during the festival supporting over 300 events across the country, we often can’t help wanting to put on a few ourselves at Senate House – Being Human HQ. For 2017 we curated a small series of events which explored the festival theme of ‘Lost and Found’, such as an LGBTQ+ scrapbooking workshop led by Queerseum and a pop-up archive display by Festival in a Box on their ‘cultural meals on wheels’ for socially isolated people in Bloomsbury and Camden. These events created a great buzz around Senate House and it was fantastic to watch people interact with our cultural partners.
One of the highlights of our festival series was a pop-up exhibition by From Syria With Love, a charity which aims to raise funds and awareness about the current refugee crisis. The exhibition displayed artwork created by children living in refugee camps who had participated in From Syria With Love workshops. The unique artwork provided a channel for young people to express their emotions and experiences, and for visitors of the exhibition to learn about the trauma and tragedy they have faced.
I had previously seen From Syria With Love’s founder and director Baraa Ehssan Kouja present the artwork during its first international tour. I was therefore very keen to ask Baraa to be part of the 2017 festival with its theme being ‘Lost and Found’ as the exhibition powerfully explored the thoughts and feelings of those who are at threat of becoming a lost generation through war and conflict. Over a period of several months we corresponded about bringing the exhibition to Senate House. As the exhibition already existed it made the process of creating a pop-up event far easier and I would recommend adapting and tailoring works like this to anyone interesting in being part of the festival. It was also amazing that Baraa came and walked visitors through the exhibition on the day, bringing the artworks and the personal stories behind them to life.
We positioned the exhibition at the entrance to Senate House to ensure maximum footfall and unsurprisingly this led to many passers-by stopping and exploring. We also promoted the pop-up via social media, posters in the local area and by contacting administrators in local schools and universities. This resulted in a healthy number of groups coming to visit Baraa for a tour of the exhibition. I was amazed at the impact we were able to achieve on the day with a few display boards and promotional signs. The artwork was incredibly engaging and Baraa was so insightful that this relatively simple format created a very moving event for the festival.
On a personal note, I found working on the pop-up exhibition deeply rewarding. Although challenging to organise in the hectic period of the festival, it was a poignant reminder of why Being Human is so special – facilitating and providing a platform for important topics and creative works to be seen and discussed. It was also great to work with Baraa whose dedication to the event and passion for the charity made the process run smoothly. Here are a few words from him about his experience of being part of the festival and the great work that From Syria With Love continue to do.
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]]>394 years ago today, what was to be the final Parliament of King James I opened at Westminster. Unfortunately, bad weather meant that around half of the members hadn’t yet arrived and so the assembly was adjourned the same day. The 1624 Parliament eventually sat for some 80 days, however, and the History of Parliament is proud to announce today, on the anniversary of its opening, the completion of its project to provide free online access to the Commons’ debates of the entire Parliament. Hosted by British History Online, Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons consists of around 800,000 words of political debate, religious argument, legal wrangling and legislative action from the so-called ‘Happy Parliament’.
Palace of Westminster in the 16th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Set against the European backdrop of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), and situated between the earlier, often rumbustious assemblies of James and the even more turbulent ones of Charles I that followed it, the Parliament is perhaps most notable for two things. The first is the unsuccessful attempt by Charles (as Prince of Wales) and the Duke of Buckingham to promote a war against Spain following Charles’ humiliation by the Spanish in his attempts to woo the Spanish Infanta. The second is that the Parliament saw an incredible seventy-three acts reach the statute book, the most in a single session since the reign of Henry VIII and almost the first notable legislation passed since 1610.
The proceedings themselves bring together for the first time some twenty manuscript sources that are scattered throughout England and America, the vast majority of which have never before been published. While some are fair hand copies of notes, others are certainly more difficult to read in their original form. Both Edward Nicholas and Sir Nathaniel Rich employed ‘speed writing’ techniques – a combination of shorthand symbols, abbreviations and longhand – the Star Chamber lawyer John Hawarde wrote in the Law French of the court system, while the appalling handwriting of John Lowther is a challenge for even experts of the period. Although the diary of the Staffordshire barrister Richard Dyott is in an extremely clear hand, large parts of it are now illegible even under UV light. It was placed in a safe in London during World War II, which did an excellent job of protecting it from the bombs of the Luftwaffe, but was rather less successful in preventing it from becoming seriously water-damaged.
Work on an edition of the proceedings of the 1624 Parliament actually began in America almost a century ago, under the guidance of the great parliamentary historian Wallace Notestein. Further research was undertaken in the US by Robert Ruigh and Mark Kennedy, and the project was subsequently taken over by the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. The 1624 materials were eventually transferred to the History of Parliament, which began working on them in 2012, generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Friends of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History and the Mercers’ Company of the City of London. On this day in 2015, the first in a progressive release of the proceedings appeared online, which culminates today in the release of the proceedings for the final month of the Parliament.
The publication of Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons fills a considerable hole in early modern parliamentary history, as it means that a composite edition of materials on all of the Tudor and early Stuart Parliaments is available for the first time. But used in tandem with the articles already published online from the History’s volumes on The House of Commons, 1604-29 and those forthcoming on The House of Lords, 1604-29, it also offers the prospect of a connected set of electronic resources which will enable scholars to dig more deeply and more easily than ever before into the vexed political world of the early modern Stuarts.
This post was first published at the History of Parliament blog.
]]>We invited five reviewers to contribute to a round table discussion and take up different aspects of the book, with the author then responding to each in turn.
Do let us know what you think, and make sure to send any suggestions for future roundtables to danny.millum@sas.ac.uk.
Read all five reviews here (no. 2224) and Jon Wilson’s response here.
]]>Cotterstock (2) Roman villa, mosaic pavements (from E. T. Artis, The Durobrivae of Antoninus (1828)) from British History Online
To celebrate the IHR Winter Conference 2018 entitled, Home: new histories of living it seems sensible to explore the theme in the Bibliography of British and Irish History.
There is much on Roman villas and their mosaics as well as articles on their interior decoration and layout such as Classical reception rooms in Romano-British houses which argues that by the late antique period the reception facilities and associated social life and conduct were as those found in other parts of the Roman Empire.
Moving to Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain there is coverage of household goods including toys, combs, doors and furniture. A similar pattern is followed in the medieval period with highlights including Beds and chambers in late medieval England : readings, representations and realities which claims to be the first interdisciplinary study of the cultural meanings of beds and chambers. The book uses a range of literary and visual sources, including manuscript illumination, household goods, romances, saints’ lives, plays, wills, probate inventories as well as church and civil court documents. The article Space and gender in the later medieval English house uses “The Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband,” a late fifteenth-century text, that associates men with the outdoors and women with the home and the domestic. The article also draws upon probate inventories as well as archaeological evidence and contrasts peasant and bourgeois society as shown in the physical fabric and furnishings of homes.
Probate records and inventories are a useful source for not only furnishing but also the arrangement and interior decoration of the household. The book Women’s voices in Tudor wills, 1485-1603 : authority, influence and material culture has a chapter The dispersal of assets: undressing the house, undressing the body that looks specifically at the household arrangements including the use of the parlour as a dining room and, as women aged, a bedchamber.
Christopher Dyer’s article, Living in peasant houses in late medieval England also uses probate inventories (mainly of fifteenth-century Yorkshire) revealing the use of furniture in halls, chambers and kitchens. The use of probate records and regional history is carried over in two further works: The material culture of the tradesmen of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1545-1642 : the Durham probate record evidence and From flock to feather and harden to holland : an investigation of the beds of Nottingham through the use of probate inventories 1688-1757 (East Midland Historian, 11, 2001 p. 47-57).
Looking at influences on taste and interior decoration, the long eighteenth-century covers both oriental influence (chinoiserie) and classical influences. The oriental influences include wallpapers, tapestries and, of course, porcelain and highlights include Fashioning bluestocking conversation : Elizabeth Montagu’s Chinese room (contained in Architectural space in eighteenth-century Europe: Constructing identities and interiors) and “Luscious Colors and Glossy Paint” : The taste for China and the consumption of color in eighteenth-century England (in The materiality of color : The production, circulation, and application of dyes and pigments, 1400–1800).
There is much more on classical influences on interior decoration and design. Ranging from articles on Inigo Jones in Representations of Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House : Development of sketches and architectural symbolism and From timber to plaster : Inigo Jones’s ceiling designs and London artisans in the 1630s (London Topographical Record, 31, 2015, p. 50-62) to monographs such as, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart 1713-1788 : the rediscovery of antiquity.
The work of Robert Adam is discussed in Fashion and function : the decoration of the library at Kenwood in context (contained in The country house : material culture and consumption; edited by Jon Stobart and Andrew Hann). The Stobart and Hann book leads us nicely into the Victorian/Edwardian country house era made popular by the Downton Abbey effect.
Taking a slightly different tack, let’s explore the demise of the country house in Lost mansions : essays on the destruction of the country house which covers Ireland, Scotland and the Marks Hall estate in Essex. The effects of World War One are explored in The country house and the Great War : Irish and British experiences. In Ireland the demise of the “big house” was hastened by the continuing wars (the subject even warrants a page on Wikipedia). Examples of articles on the subject include, The burning of country houses in Co. Offaly during the revolutionary period, 1920-3 (in The Irish country house). Big house burnings in County Cork during the Irish Revolution, 1920–21; and The destruction of the country house in Ireland, 1879-1973 (in Lost mansions).
The ruins of Moore Hall, County Mayo, abandoned after being burnt down by the IRA in 1923 (Wikipedia)
Of course not everyone lived in country houses. The growth in philanthropy and social reform led to a concern for the living conditions of the rural and urban poor in slums. Attempts to rectify the situation included the gardens city movement, new towns, local and central government involvement, private charity including the establishment of almshouses, and the work of town planners and architects.
The title of this piece opened with Roman villas and ended with Brutalist architecture – for which we have “Group-cum-Brutalism”? Highgate Spinney, London, 1964–66, discussion of a five-story block of 30 flats designed by John Howard and Bruce Rotherham. Ben Highmore’s The art of Brutalism : rescuing hope from catastrophe in 1950s Britain not only explores the style adopted by painters, sculptors and other artists but also examines the styles influence on consumer culture and the domestic settings including the impact on the Ideal Home Exhibition.
]]>Then we turn to Edward Stourton’s Auntie’s War: The BBC during the Second World War by Edward Stourton. Ross Davies finds this paean to ‘Auntie’ as even-handed as can be expected from a BBC veteran (no. 2222).
Next up is Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 by Judith Pollmann. Sarah Ward praises a book which refutes a number of fairly entrenched historiographical views, and in doing so carves out a thesis of continuity as well as change (no. 2221).
Finally we have Joshua Howe’s Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past. Katrin Kleemann enjoys a book which aims to be ‘a series of starting points, wormholes into historical worlds both familiar and strange’ (no. 2220)
]]>Some of the inventories describe the rich and extraordinarily varied possessions of the grandest families in society, including Lorenzo de’ Medici at home : the inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492, Inventarios reales: Bienes muebles que pertenecieron a Felipe II and Noble households : eighteenth-century inventories of great English houses.
The focus here, though, is on the inventories of middling families in the towns and villages of pre-industrial England, typically probate inventories drawn up in connection with the legal validation of wills. Many are published in local and regional record series, either as general collections from a local probate court or as specialist compilations on particular subjects. For comparative research, the IHR library is a good place to access many editions in one place.
The inventory of Thomas Symonds of Birmingham, yeoman 1567 from Birmingham Wills and Inventories 1512-1603, Publications of the Dugdale Society 49, 2016, pp.198-202.
Inventories often give an idea of the sequence of rooms in a house, using phrases such as ‘the street parlour’ or ‘the chamber over the hall’. It is interesting to see the changes between early and later inventories. The will of William Robinson, linen weaver of Northallerton (1705), details the rooms and layout of his house as he divided it between existing occupants and allowed rights of access through other parts of the house. (Northallerton wills and inventories, 1666-1719, Surtees Society 220, 2016, p.xxxi and pp.146-8).
The probate inventory of Sarah De Morais, widow (1691), a French immigrant in London, lists the contents of ‘the Daughters Roome’ and ‘the widdows Roome’, both with multiple beds. Artisans usually worked from home, and the inventory of Thomas Grafforte, merchant tailor in St Giles Cripplegate, noted ‘4 weavers loomes, one warpe . . . 2 paire of Vices & a few Bobbins with other lumber’ in his ‘workeing roome’. (Probate inventories of French Immigrants in Early Modern London, 2014, pp.97-9 and 37-9)
Turning from towns to the countryside, Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex brings together probate inventories from two rural parishes, accompanied by a useful introduction which discusses the sorts of furniture and other goods mentioned in the inventories.
The inventory of Theophilus Lingard of Writtle in 1744 has a detailed description of the furniture and items in his house, as well as his livestock, farm equipment (including cucumber frames), produce and crops. The total value was £247. Five rooms contained beds: the best room, the little room, the striped bed room, the garrett and the maid’s room.
The best room included
‘a sacking bottom bedstead with blue mohair curtains lined with India Persian, a feather bed, bolster, and two pillows, three blankets, one quilt, a chest of draws, a dressing table and glass, six cane chairs, one elbow ditto, a stove grate, shovel, tongs, poker and holders, a hearth brush, a pair of window curtains and rod, a looking glass, the paper hangings’.
The maid’s room had
‘a corded bedstead with old curtains, a set of yellow ditto not put up, a feather bed, bolster, one pillow, two blankets, one rug, two old hutches (cupboards), four old chairs, an old trunk, a brass kettle, one small ditto, two old water potts, a pair of garden sheers, a pair of cobirons’.
His house also had a best parlour, pantry (with sixteen pewter plates, fifty-five pieces of Delph and earthenware), hall, cellar, buttery and out cellar. (Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, 1635-1749, pp.269-70).
By contrast John Day the elder of Highwood in Writtle, carpenter (1726), lived in a much humbler dwelling, with goods worth only £15. His hall was simply furnished, though he owned a clock. Although he had four beds, one was ‘indeferant’, one ‘sorry’ and two ‘very mean’. (Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, 1635-1749, p.260).
Inventories are complemented by other types of household records, for example building accounts and household accounts. The Russells in Bloomsbury 1669-1771 is based on letters, accounts and household bills. Extraits des comptes du domaine de Bruxelles des XVe et XVIe siècles concernant les artistes de la cour details payments to artists and the type of work they were producing.
The library collection is also strong on guides to sources and bibliographies, and the following are examples that will help with finding and interpreting inventories:
Then we turn to Kate Retford’s The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in 18th-Century Britain. Alexandra MacDonald praises a valuable resource that promises to shift scholarship on the conversation piece by inviting a new generation of scholars to ask innovative questions (no. 2218).
Next up is Out of Oakland: Black Panther Party Internationalism During the Cold War by Sean L. Malloy. Kerry Pimblott enjoys a well-researched and engaging study that successfully conveys the significance of internationalism to the BPP’s evolution (no. 2217).
Finally we have Julianne Nyhan and Andrew Flynn’s Computation and the Humanities: towards an Oral History of Digital Humanities. Christina Kamposiori believes that this book will help us understand not only the history of the field but also aspects of the early era of computing (no. 2216).
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The IHR library collections support a range of study on the subject of architecture, and the new collection guide highlights some of the areas to explore. As well as the obvious parts of the collection, it draws attention to some more hidden sources of information.
Oudt Stathuys from Beschrijvingh der wijdt-vermaarde koop-stadt Amstelredam, 1664
We have many secondary works on individual buildings, building types and localities. There is much on studying and understanding buildings as well as their conservation, public interpretation and display, for example in works on using material culture and digital technologies. An 1897 piece in the journal The Antiquary outlines a lecture given at the Society of Antiquaries on legislation in different countries for the preservation of ancient buildings. The Foreign Office had collated the information following the ‘disastrous’ rebuilding of the west front of Peterborough cathedral. (The Antiquary Vol. 33, 1897)
The library has strong holdings of primary sources across the subject. Travel writing and antiquarian histories include contemporary descriptions and impressions of the built environment. Celia Fiennes, for example, wrote about Ambleside in 1698:
“villages of sad little huts made up of drye walls, only stones piled together and the roofs of same slatt; there seemed to be little or noe tunnells for their chimneys and have no morter or plaister within or without; for the most part I tooke them at first sight for a sort of houses or barns to fodder cattle in. not thinking them to be dwelling houses” (Morris, C., The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, 1949, p.196)
Landowners, tenants, architects, policy makers and commentators are all represented in biographies, prosopographies and personal narratives.
Household and trade records give insights into the building trade. For example in the Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, we learn of the steps taken to dismantle his Colchester house in 1481, store the timbers in a barn and move it to Stoke by Nayland where Richard Tornour, carpenter, “schal rere it and sett yt up there” (Crawford, A., The household books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462-1471, 1481-1483, 1992, Household Book II, p.121).
Records of government highlight social concerns and the resulting legislation. In an appendix to a parliamentary paper of 1864 we find a description of the history and current state of rural housing in a Report by Dr. Henry Julian Hunter on the House-Accommodation had by Rural Laborers in the different parts of England. He wrote:
“One house, called Richardson’s, could hardly be matched in England for original meanness and present badness of condition. Its plaster walls leaned and bulged very like a lady’s dress in a curtsey. One gable end was convex, the other concave, and on this last unfortunately stood the chimney, which was a curved tube of clay and wood resembling an elephant’s trunk. A long stick served as a prop to prevent the chimney from falling. The doorway and window were rhomboidal.”
(Seventh Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, with Appendix, 1864, 19th Century House of Lords Sessional Papers, 1865: section on Bedfordshire, p.148. From Proquest’s UK Parliamentary Papers).
From Dugdale, The history of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, in London, 1818
Alongside the written material there is much accompanying visual material in the form of illustrations and plans. As well as illustrations in mainly textual sources such as government reports and antiquarian histories there are editions of illustrations ranging from monastic plans in The Plan of St Gall, various editions of plans and illustrations of individual architects and places, to The photography of Bedford Lemere & Co.
Find out more by visiting the guide to the History of Architecture in the IHR library.
]]>Then we turn to Katherine Paugh’s The Politics of Reproduction: Race, Medicine and Fertility in the Age of Abolition. Trevor Burnard believes this book to be a valuable addition to a venerable literature on slave reproduction in the Caribbean (no. 2214).
Finally we have Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998 by David Brundage. David Sim appreciates a sharp and well-written book which forces us to appreciate the ways in which nationalism was perceived as a liberating force by many in the 19th century (no. 2213).
]]>Articles:
Simon de Montfort. Image: Wikipedia
Simon de Montfort’s sheriffs, 1264–5. Richard Cassidy
Counties without borders? Religious politics, kinship networks and the formation of Catholic communities. James E. Kelly
‘Round-head Knaves’: the Ballad of Wrexham and the subversive political culture of Interregnum north-east Wales. Sarah Ward Clavier
Venality at court: some preliminary thoughts on the sale of household office, 1660–1800. R. O. Bucholz
War, public debt and Richard Price’s Rational Dissenting radicalism. Anthony Page
Troubling agency: agency and charity in early nineteenth-century London. Megan Clare Webber
The American Association for the Advancement of Science committee on evolution and the Scopes trial: race, eugenics and public science in the U.S.A. Alexander Pavuk
The Socialist International and Italian social democracy (1948–50): cultural differences and the ‘internationalisation of domestic quarrels’ Ettore Costa
The Cheshire Magna Carta: distinctive or derivative? Graeme J. White
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Then we return to The Reformation of the Decalogue: Religious Identity and the Ten Commandments in England, c. 1485-1625 by Jonathan Willis, with a response by the author to last month’s review (response to no. 2208).
Next up is Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages by Thomas A. Fudgé. Kieran Creedon praises a fascinating study from a writer that engages, energises and uses sources to put the very idea of the historical Middle Ages on trial (no. 2211).
Finally Francis Young reviews a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary study of magic, Edward Bever and Randall Styers’ edited collection Magic in the Modern World: Strategies of Repression and Legitimization (no. 2210).
]]>Interior, 2 Willow Road, Hampstead
Goldfinger in Hampstead
The work of the Budapest-born architect Ernö Goldfinger (1902-1987), Willow Road was from the outset a controversial design. Goldfinger’s critics—mindful of his training with Le Corbusier—feared the imposition of an angular concrete block in a part of London celebrated more for its fine Georgian architecture and, with the Heath, proximity to largely untamed countryside.
Goldfinger had initially sought to erect a modernist block of flats on the site, but reverted to three residential properties when permission for his larger scheme was refused. Leading critics of his revised project included the conservationist and future MP for Hampstead, Henry Brooke; and the author Ian Fleming whose opposition to Ernö’s architectural tastes resulted, it’s said, in his use of ‘Goldfinger’ as the name for one of 007’s most megalomaniacal villains.
In response, the architect justified his design for Willow Road in terms of its dominant use of brick, relative unobtrusiveness, and a profile no more angular than the much-loved surrounding terraces. In championing modernism Goldfinger was also supported by Hampstead’s avant-garde for whom structures such as Wells Coates’ Isokon Building demonstrated the potential of new residential forms.
Completed in 1939, Nos 1-3 Willow Road are now as much a feature of Hampstead domestic architecture as the neighbouring Georgian cottages. No. 2 Willow Road, the largest of the three properties, was taken by Goldfinger and remained a family home until the architect’s death there in September 1987. Acquired by the National Trust in 1993, the house been open for public viewings since 1996.
Though relatively modest in scale, Nos. 1-3 Willow Road established Goldfinger’s reputation as a coming, and controversial, architect. Denied the opportunity to build at scale and in concrete in pre-war Hampstead, Goldfinger’s Corbusian training was evident in his later expeditions in Brutalism—Balfron Tower, in Poplar, and Trellick Tower in Kensal Town. Today both towers and Nos. 1-3 Willow Road are Grade II* listed.
Trellick Tower
Willow Road and the IHR Winter Conference
Willow Road’s first appearance at the IHR’s Winter Conference comes on Thursday 8 February in the first of two ‘brown bag’ lunchtime slots. Thursday’s session sees short talks from three curators and archivists who’ll each tell the ‘biography’ or life story of a notable domestic object drawn from his or her collection.
From 2 Willow Road, the house steward Leigh Sneade will bring and speak about an artefact in Goldfinger’s collection, in part to highlight broader themes of mid-century modernism. Leigh will also introduce us to the interior spaces in which Ernö and Ursula Goldfinger lived and entertained, and which also became home to a significant art collection by the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp.
1-3 Willow Road, Hampstead
Our second Goldfinger event of the Winter Conference takes place on Saturday 10 March, and gives delegates the chance to explore 2 Willow Road in greater detail. This takes the form of a guided tour of the house, provided by its National Trust curators, and coming soon after the Willow Road’s reopening following renovation work for the 2018 season. Further details of how to enroll for the 10 March house tour will be made available at the Winter Conference in early February, and then on the IHR website.
For more information on the conference—including details on registration, bursaries for Early Career Researchers, and other extra curriculum activities—please visit the IHR Winter Conference blog.
]]>The post ‘Losing and finding identities in death’: running the epitaphs table at Lost late appeared first on Being Human.
]]>When I was asked to contribute an activity table to the ‘Lost late: night at the museums’ Being Human event run by TORCH, the Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford University Museum of Natural History, I was both wildly excited and vastly stymied. My research is on war cemeteries; it is full of death and grief. How was I supposed to come up with something that was a) not too depressing, b) interactive, c) appropriate for all ages, and d) not flippant or otherwise tonally inappropriate? The latter was particularly important because I work on the First World War, a conflict which still holds a deeply emotional place in collective and individual memory.
I started thinking about what element of my research most encapsulated the idea of what it means to ‘be human’, and epitaphs seemed like a natural fit. Death, and wanting to be remembered, are concepts so universal that absolutely everyone has some kind of connection to them. I decided that capitalising on the relatability of those broader themes would be the key to creating something interactive.
So, that’s the story of how we ended up in the Pitt Rivers Museum during ‘Lost late’, with dozens of examples of types of epitaphs in hand, asking people to think about how they wanted to be remembered. We used headstone photos from my research as category prompts, such as ‘do you want to be remembered with an epitaph…. about those you leave behind? about an achievement you are proud of? about an ideal you believe in?’ People were given small pieces of paper and the opportunity to write their own. With their consent, these were then added to a large backdrop, forming a collective picture as the night went on of the similarities between, and differences within, people’s instinctive desire to be remembered.
My research only covers 1918-1938 rather than contemporary memory, but nevertheless the context it has given me was inextricably influencing how I interacted with members of the public who came up to us during the event. That’s why it was particularly interesting to have Annie as my colleague at our table- specialising in a completely different research field, she was there very kindly to help me out due to the large volume of visitors expected. To her immense credit, she jumped right in and was engaging our visitors with equal confidence to me. I’ll turn it over to her now, to share her thoughts of the experience.
When I volunteered to help with the ‘Lost late’ Being Human event at the Pitt Rivers, I did so with the spirit of friendship, as well as a desire to learn more about the ways scholars can work with museums and share their research interests with a wider community.
At first glance, Hanna’s work on the material history of First World War remembrance seems disconnected from my own research in literature and performance by African-descended authors and artists in the Americas. However, my subject areas, which are inextricably tied to historical enslavement, colonialism, and ongoing racial oppression, lead me to spend considerable time reckoning with the weighty topics of memory, grief, and death. What is more, the question of how a person or community wants to be remembered is particularly poignant when considering literature of the Black Americas. The same events that created and maintained the New World African diaspora also systematically erased and denigrated the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual legacy of African-descended people. In light of all of this, I can certainly relate to Hanna’s desire to communicate the meaning and content of her research without coming off as either too depressing or too flippant.
Because I can relate to these concerns, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to observe Hanna throughout the Being Human event. It was a delight to watch her use her experiences with museum studies, teaching, and community outreach to create an activity that deftly made these topics both accessible and resonant for the heterogeneous crowd of participants at the Pitt Rivers. By using the pictures of First World War epitaphs as anchoring materials, we were able to immediately establish relatable and common examples of our table’s themes without being too overwhelming. That being said, I can understand why some individuals who walked up to the table knew without hesitation that this was not a topic they wanted to engage with on their Friday night outing. For those who did choose to participate, Hanna had created the activity and materials so that there was a clear focus on remembering life. As a result, we were always implicitly talking about the relationship between mortality and life, rather than considering one point at the expense of the other.
It was fascinating, poignant, and very fun to interact with the broad range of visitors, and see the different ways people choose to reflect on memory, death, and life. By the end of the night, Hanna and I were surrounded by paper epitaphs that demonstrated as much variation in tone and content as did our conversations throughout the evening.
The post ‘Losing and finding identities in death’: running the epitaphs table at Lost late appeared first on Being Human.
]]>(This article is a revised version of a paper given at the British History in the Long Eighteenth Century seminar at the Institute of Historical Research on 16 March 2016. It was subsequently jointly awarded the 2016 Pollard Prize.)
Agency is a fashionable concept, particularly among historians of poverty, welfare and charity in Britain in the long eighteenth century, and yet the concept is seldom scrutinized. This article troubles agency, subjecting it to the critical examination that it has largely eluded thus far. The first section outlines the manifold, and occasionally contradictory, ways in which historians characterize human agency. The second examines agency through the lens of charity in early nineteenth-century London (c.1800–c.1837), dissecting how the poor exercised agency in their interactions with charitable organizations and illustrating how philanthropists represented and sought to define the limits of plebeian agency. Case studies from individual charities test the boundaries of agency, proposing new ways of approaching the concept. The article concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of agency as a tool for historical analysis.
Between 1948 and 1950 Comisco, the provisional Socialist International, and the British foreign office intervened in Italian politics to help the social democrats form a united party. The British Labour party came into conflict with the foreign office and the Dutch Labour party, as they disagreed over which Italian faction to support. The episode revealed the difference between the two parties’ political cultures and strategic choices, particularly on the issue of coalition government with centrist parties. The narrative of the intervention is followed by an appraisal of its success, the obstacles which limited it, and its short- and long-term effects.
Instead of viewing racial eugenics, modernist religion and prescriptions for social engineering as discourses tangential to the evolution constructs propounded by top scientists in the build-up to the Scopes trial, this article considers how the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s committee on evolution intertwined all of these threads by the early nineteen-twenties. Committee members aimed their evolution models at broad public audiences even as they tried to fulfill the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to provide a scientifically-sound view of evolution to help combat Protestant fundamentalism in the build-up to the trial. Racialist eugenics was essential to their multi-layered evolution constructs, as were key religious ideas particular to Protestant modernism.
Notes and Documents
The Cheshire Magna Carta: distinctive or derivative? Graeme J. White
Seal of Ranulf de Blondeville. Image: Wikipedia
The so-called Cheshire Magna Carta was granted by Ranulf III earl of Chester to his Cheshire barons, probably in summer 1215. This article offers an accessible text and translation and, drawing largely on the evidence of other comital charters, sets the document in the context of the county’s thirteenth-century administration. It discusses the date of issue, argues that the charter was seen in Cheshire as a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, the king’s Magna Carta, and concludes that most of the concessions were reaffirmations of existing distinctive custom and practice, with safeguards against abuses by comital officials.
]]>Then we turn to The Reformation of the Decalogue: Religious Identity and the Ten Commandments in England, c. 1485-1625 by Jonathan Willis. John Reeks praises a book which puts The Ten Commandments firmly at the centre of post-Reformation scholarship (no. 2208).
Next up is Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss by Erin R. Hochman. Timothy Schmalz enjoys a book which provides new template for examining Austria and Germany during the inter-war period (no. 2207).
Finally we have a response by editors Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese to Ryan Ross’s review last week of Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War and Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After (response to no. 2205).
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Example of miniature in a Book of Hours (Walters Art Gallery, W.269.76R)
1. Chronologically, our first entry is ‘A Gift, a Mirror, a Memorial : The Psalter-Hours of Mary de Bohun’, a book chapter by Jill Havens in Medieval women and their objects. The Psalter-Hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D. 4. 4) is a beautiful fourteenth-century manuscript commissioned for Mary de Bohen (c. 1368-1394) by her mother Joan Fitzalan for her marriage to Henry IV (then Bolingbroke). This manuscript was intended for personal devotion, and is small enough to be easily portable. This book chapter analyses a full-page miniature of the Virgin Mary with Christ on her lap (fol. 181), which also features a young aristocratic woman in the bottom left-hand corner, representing Mary de Bohun. Although donor portraits were not unusual, there is an intimacy between the figures in this miniature that is rare, as they all inhabit the same sacred space. Havens explores the relationship between Mary de Bohun and her mother Joan Fitzalan, and what this manuscript would have represented to them individually. It is a fascinating glimpse into female book ownership and familial bonds in the fourteenth century.
Splendor Solis 1532-35; women washing clothes
2. Moving on to the early modern period, we have the book chapter ‘In praise of clean linen: laundering humours on the early modern stage’ by Natasha Korda and Eleanor Lowe in The Routledge handbook of material culture in early modern Europe. This addresses the issue of changing attitudes towards hygiene, moving away from the sixteenth century trend from immersing the whole body in water, to an emphasis on clean clothes to achieve cleanliness. Drawing on the shifts in cultural norms, when use of communal bathhouses declined due to fears of contagion, this chapter looks at clean linens on the Shakespearean stage, considering the use of ruffs, handkerchiefs, smocks and tablecloths.
3. Going further afield, we have ‘Slavery and inter-imperial leprosy discourse in the Atlantic World‘ an article by Kristen Block in the journal, Atlantic Studies. This article draws attention to the reappearance of leprosy in the colonial world, despite its decline during the early modern period. Following the European discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Block unpicks the anxiety about the links between leprosy and sin, slavery and colonialism, and charts the consensus of racialized medical opinions, aided by the growth of printed publications. Unfounded scientific theories, together with colonial reports from English, Dutch and French plantations, meant that the cause of leprosy remained unclear until well into the nineteenth century.
4. Staying in the same region, ‘The dairymaid and the prince: race, memory, and the story of Benjamin Banneker’s Grandmother’ is an article by Sandra W. Perot in Slavery and Abolition. This tells the story of Molly Welsh Banneker, a dairymaid who was transported to Maryland c. 1683 after allegedly stealing a bucket of milk. After being indentured for seven years to a tobacco farmer, she gained her freedom and went on to became a successful tobacco farmer herself, as well as a property owner. Despite interracial marriage being outlawed, she married an African man called Bannka and they had four daughters. This article considers all the difficulties she would have faced, not only from her relationship with Bannka, but also raising her daughters alone after his death, in a complicated society that forbade interracial relations. The narrative of Molly Welsh has been handed down through oral tradition, and paints a picture of a women determined to live life her own way.
Gasparo Tagliacozzi (1545-1599) illustration of rhinoplasty
5. Next up is ‘“Off dropped the sympathetic snout”: shame, sympathy, and plastic surgery at the beginning of the long eighteenth century’, a book chapter by Emily Cock in Passions, sympathy and print culture: Public opinion and emotional authenticity in eighteenth-century Britain. This looks at the relationship between medical sympathy and moral sentiment, as the medical procedure for grafting skin onto noses damaged by syphilis came under fire, as the transgressor, looking healthy, could then escape the moral judgement from the public. The significance of the nose is explored, and how medical rhinoplasty came to be satirised in poetry, resulting in a shaming of the procedure which ultimately silenced skin graft technology in the early modern period.
6. ‘From the Andes to the Outback: Acclimatising alpacas in the British Empire’ is an article by Helen Cowie in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, charting the introduction of the first alpaca in Britain in 1811 and subsequent attempts to naturalise the animal to reap the benefits for textile manufacture. They were often smuggled out of Peru, and introduced to areas such as the Scottish Highlands and Australia. This article explores the implications of this unsuccessful attempt on naturalisation as an imperialistic act, and brings to the fore the internal politics of Britain, Australia, Peru and Bolivia within the textile and agricultural industry.
Image from Wikipedia
7. Onto more supernatural things now, with ‘“Freaks of furniture”: The useless energy of haunted things’ by Aviva Briefel in the journal Victorian Studies. The craze for séances had reached England from America in the 1850s, and table-turning and rapping had become a standard feature of communicating with the dead. The animation of manufactured objects caused concern among Victorian households, raising anxieties over the production of these items, made by anonymous craftsmen or factory workers. Reports of animated objects also led to discussions on productive labour and ‘the line between efficient and wasted energy’.
8. Back to reality for this next article – ‘Criminal careers of female prisoners in Australia, 1860–1920’ by Alana Jayne Piper and Victoria Nagy in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Examining the criminal records of over six thousand women, the authors have identified flaws in using specific offense categories. In the Victorian system, criminal offenses committed by women generally fell into three groups – property, personal and public-order, and historians have largely examined these categories in isolation to each other, overlooking how some women were involved in multiple forms of offending. By looking at the overlap, greater insight can be shed into the complex criminal sub-cultures that women were involved in.
9. Into the twentieth century now, with ‘An “Insult to soldiers’ wives and mothers”: The Woman’s Dreadnought‘s campaign against surveillance on the home front, 1914–1915’ by Stephanie J. Brown in The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies. The Woman’s Dreadnought was an East London newspaper led by Sylvia Pankhurst, and in 1914-15 it exposed a surveillance operation by the Metropolitan Police that targeted the wives of soldiers and sailors on active duty. By finding evidence of ‘bad behaviour’ while their husbands were absent, the operation aimed to allow the government to suspend the women’s separation allowance. This article highlights Pankhurst’s campaign to uncover these covert tactics and to raise greater awareness of how surveillance made women more vulnerable, particularly to blackmail.
10. And finally, as a contrast to the dark, miserable winter days, we have ‘Beside the seaside. The archaeology of the twentieth-century English seaside holiday experience: A phenomenological context’ by Niall Finneran in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology. Tapping into the affectionate regard that English people hold for seaside resorts, this article examines the experience of the resort holiday in terms of place, space and materiality. Finneran considers the rise of the holiday resort from the Victorian period until its decline in the 1960s, due to the popularity of the package holiday. Looking particularly at Teignmouth in Devon, he discusses the whole holiday experience, from the journey there, to the accommodation and the activities available.
And on that note, the BBIH would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!
]]>Next up is a review of two new collections on the history of trauma, Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War and Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After, both edited by Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese. Ryan Ross believes these reflect the extent and speed of the growth of the trauma industry (no. 2205).
Then we turn to Narratives and Representations: a Collection to Honour Paul Slack, edited by Michael Braddick and Joanna Innes. Naomi Pullin praises a fine scholarly collection that represents the rich and vibrant discussions taking place within early modern history (no. 2204).
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William III. Image: Wikipedia
Telling a tale with the names changed: contemporary comparisons of the Rye House Plot to the 1696 Assassination Plot. Beth Branscome
When a Jacobite plot to assassinate William III was discovered in 1696, supporters of William and his whig-dominated ministry pointed out similarities between this Assassination Plot and the 1683 Rye House Plot against Charles II. Embodying the links between the plots in these accounts was Robert Ferguson, a notorious radical whig who had become a Jacobite active in writing and plotting against King William. Representing the 1683 and 1696 plots as equivalent allowed establishment whigs to distance themselves from pre-revoutionary whig plotting, while portraying the Jacobites as representing a radicalism willing to use rebellion and regicide to achieve its goals.
William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre. Image: Wikipedia
Counties without borders? Religious politics, kinship networks and the formation of Catholic communities. James E. Kelly
This article examines the formation of Catholic communities and the roles played by religious politics and kinship networks within that process. It contributes to historiographical debates about early modern English Catholics’ self-identification in religio-political terms, suggesting that intra-Catholic feuds were not the sole preserve of the Catholic missionary clergy. It uses the Petre family, barons of Writtle in Essex, as a case study by which to argue that these seemingly inward-looking debates were actually about how the community understood itself in relation to the state and, as such, were fundamental in the process of English Catholic community construction.
Ballad Seller: Bodleian Library, 4o Rawl. 566(196)
‘Round-head Knaves’: the Ballad of Wrexham and the subversive political culture of Interregnum north-east Wales. Sarah Ward Clavier
This article broadens ballad studies to encompass a regional perspective and significantly adds to the literature on Welsh royalism. It argues that the ballad author sought to destabilize the newly established parliamentarian government by attacking its members’ honour, religion and personal morality. The article provides a contextualized and detailed textual analysis of a versified manuscript libel, a vitriolic and specific attack on the Wrexham committee of 1647. It considers it in the context of ballad and libel scholarship, Welsh political culture, and contemporary events, using a range of manuscript and printed sources to explain and analyse the ballad in depth.
]]>The print (1730) shows the ‘Great Speaker’ Onslow in the chair (centre), calling prime minister Walpole at his elbow (left) to speak, before a packed House of Commons. [National Trust number = 1441463]
Mary Clayton, who has just published A Portrait of Influence: Life and Letters of Arthur Onslow, the Great Speaker (Parliamentary History Trust, 2017), once declared that the only possible place to launch such a volume would be the Speaker’s House at the Palace of Westminster. But, she said, that was obviously out of the question. On the contrary, replied the organisers of London University’s seminar in British History in the Long Eighteenth-Century. Contact the Speaker; and tell him that we have to celebrate the most hegemonic of all Speakers in appropriate style. And, all credit to John Bercow, he not only lent us the Speaker’s House free of charge but came himself to give a witty speech.
The seminar-cum-launch-party took place on Wednesday 1 November. It was a glittering ‘outreach’ evening. Over 70 people attended, including seminar regulars, MPs, members of the House of Lords, curators, librarians, local history researchers, and the current Earl Onslow. (Arthur Onslow (1691-1768) wanted no other title than that of Speaker – a post he held for over thirty years – but his son was ennobled as a family tribute). The Long Eighteenth-Century seminar warmly thanks all its sponsors, including the Parliamentary History Trust which co-hosted. And the moral: academics can but ask for the use of famous outreach venues at special discounts. Often that tactic doesn’t work. Yet sometimes it does, as it did for Mary Clayton – and the ‘Great Speaker’ Arthur Onslow, whose behind-the-scenes influence obviously lingers ….
]]>Next up is Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England by Catherine Hanley. Tom Horler-Underwood enjoys a book highlighting the exploits in this country of this most fascinating of French princes (no. 2202).
Then we turn to Michael Hughes’s Archbishop Randall Davidson. Peter Webster believes this fresh and convincing rendering of an important figure deserves a wide readership (no. 2201).
]]>The library’s resources and works on the history of Antarctica relate mainly to the expeditions to the continent and the race for the South Pole. Notable works include Sir Clements Markham’s narrative on the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904, the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen, and the journals of Sir Ernest Shackleton during his last expedition to Antarctica from 1914 to 1917. Whilst reading through the library’s volumes, I discovered in The Antarctic Journals of Reginald Skelton, that Skelton’s journal records the first colony of emperor penguins ever to be seen by humans in October 1902.
As a result, to add something a little different to the display I recruited the help of the IHR’s Digital team to create a 3D model of an emperor penguin using the IHR/ICS Digital 3D Printing Lab. As Jonathan Blaney, IHR Digital Projects Manager and Editor of British History Online, explains, “When the IHR Library asked us to 3D-print a penguin for them we were delighted. The idea of the SAS 3D Centre is not that we think of what should be printed, but that we understand what could be printed and then advise (and train) people who come to us with their ideas. We’re not quite at that stage yet, because we are still learning ourselves, but the penguin was an easy request and the Library even sent a link to the file on Thingiverse.
All we had to do was download the file and convert it to the format (called gcode) that our printer uses. We decided to print the penguin using white filament, so that it could more easily be painted later. We set our Ultimaker 3 printing and 30 minutes later … some feet had appeared. It’s a slow process. Although the penguin is only a few inches tall it took about six hours to print the whole thing. While it was printing we put some photos of the lower half on Twitter and asked people to guess what we were printing. A Moomin, a hobbit and Paddington Bear were some of the suggestions.
By the end of the day we handed the white penguin to Siobhan in the IHR Library for painting.”
And so I began the job of painting the model using a combination of acrylic paint, a fine liner paint pen and a highlighter pen. The finished article was then christened ‘Pollard’ by the IHR’s Librarian in homage to the Institute’s founder A. F. Pollard and subsequently installed in the display case situated in the third floor reading room.
More information on resources documenting the discovery and exploration of Antarctica can be found in the library’s Travel Writing collection guide. There are also multiple holdings at the classmark CLE.92.
The exhibition is on display in the third floor reading room until the New Year and is open to all.
]]>The post Being Social: Being Human day 9 appeared first on Being Human.
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The post Being Social: Being Human day 9 appeared first on Being Human.
]]>Next up is Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain by Tracey Loughran. Stefanie Linden largely enjoys a fascinating account of medical discourse in Britain throughout the First World War (no. 2199).
Then we turn to Simon Thurley’s Houses of Power: The Places the Shaped the Tudor World. Audrey Thorstad recommends a refreshing new view into the Tudor dynasty (no. 2198).
Finally we have Women Writing the English Republic 1625-1681 by Katharine Gillespie. Gaby Mahlberg believes this bold and innovative book is an important milestone in challenging the male-dominated republican canon (no. 2197).
]]>On 22 November the IHR hosted an evening of underwater archaeology, sea shanties and Restoration coffee houses. Commemoration of The London now continues into December with an exhibition at the IHR of artefacts recovered from the wreck, including pipes, pots, shoes and musket balls.
IHR Digital’s modest contribution to all things Restoration is the British History Online quiz: 10 questions on the (often wonderful, sometimes bizarre) eating and drinking habits of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), who worked at the Navy Board in 1665. You’ll find all the answers in British History Online (www.british-history.ac.uk), the IHR’s free digital library of medieval and early modern primary sources. Send us your answers by Friday 2 December.
British History Online ‘Being Human’ 2017 Quiz – The Food and Drinke of Samuel Pepys
British History Online (BHO) is a free digital library of 1200 medieval and early modern primary sources volumes, created by IHR Digital. It includes nearly 500 references to Samuel Pepys, including many to his habits during the 1660s. Use BHO to answer the following 10 questions on Samuel’s tastes in food and drinke.
Yemail your answers to danny.millum@sas.ac.uk, marked ‘BHO: Pepys’.
Deadline, Friday 2 December
Winner receives an annual subscription to British History Online.
]]>Next up is The Benefits of Peace: Private Peacemaking in Late Medieval Italy by Glenn Kumhera. Alexandra Lee and the author discuss a book which provides a deeper insight into the complicated practices of private peacemaking in medieval Italy (no. 2195, with response here).
Then we turn to Lindsey Earner-Byrne’s Letters of the Catholic Poor: Poverty in Independent Ireland, 1920-1940. David Kilgannon praises a book which challenges other historians of 20th-century Ireland to ‘people their pasts’ (no. 2194).
Finally we have The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, edited by Elizabeth Lapina and Nicholas Morton. Stephen Spencer recommends a book which adds substantially to our understanding of the sources and the intellectual milieu of their authors (no. 2193).
]]>The University of London is having its Foundation Day which is the annual celebration of the grant by William IV of the University’s first charter in 1836.
The University presented its first honorary degrees in June 1903. Among the recipients were the Prince of Wales (LLD) and the Princess of Wales (DMus), later King George V and Queen Mary.
Since then, this accolade has been bestowed on a wide range of distinguished individuals from both the academic and non-academic worlds. Their names are recorded in the Register of Honorary Degrees and recipients have included Judi Dench, T S Eliot, Margot Fonteyn and Henry Moore. A video newsreel film (1948) of Sir Winston Churchill being awarded a Doctor of Literature honoris causa at the University of London, Senate House can be watched here .
More information can be found here: Foundation Day
Foundation Day 2015
We will reopen on Wednesday 22nd November as usual at 9am – 8.45pm!
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you from The Library Team
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Now trialling: Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War
Ends: Friday 8th December 2017.
This e-resource is available through library PCs only.
Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War: Intelligence, Strategy and Diplomacy provides access to government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 – 1953.
Provides 144,000 pages of British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files sourced from The National Archives U.K. Content which is only available elsewhere by visiting the National Archives in London.
Contains nine file series which span four major Twentieth-Century conflicts – the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the early years of the Cold War and the Korean War. Includes multiple search and filter options and a series of essays written by the resource Editorial Board of academic experts that contextualize the material and highlights key themes.
At the heart of this resource are the files from the Permanent Undersecretary’s Department (PUSD), which was the liaison between the Foreign Office and the British intelligence establishment. These files provide new insights into key moments of the twentieth century.
Another highlight are the original intelligence reports that were intercepted and decoded by the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. These files include reports coming from high-grade cyphers such as ENIGMA. These reports were delivered to Churchill and in a lot of instances include Churchill’s own handwritten annotations in red ink.
Taken together, the nine series included in Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War provide a chance to study the in-depth history of the Second World War – its causes, course and consequences and the early Cold War, from a high level government and secret intelligence perspective.
Secret intelligence has long been regarded as the ‘missing dimension’ of international relations. However, thanks to the Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War project, Britain’s spies, security agents, codebreakers and deceptioneers are no longer missing in action. Denis Smyth, University of Toronto, Canada
Please note: The My Archive and the Document and Citation Download functions are not available on this trial edition of Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War. Documents can be viewed using the image viewer function.
If you have any feedback, please let us know through twitter @IHR_Library, email: ihr.library@sas.ac.uk, or come and see us in the Library Enquiries Office on Floor 1.
]]>Next up is Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate by Stefan Collini. Tim Rogan and the author discuss a collection of pieces which read together for the first time yield a clearer sense of the general preoccupations which unite them (no. 2191, with response here).
Then we turn to Brian Roberts’ Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812-1925. Eran Zelnik highlights the strengths and weaknesses one of the most informative and persuasive recent cultural histories of the 19th century (no. 2190).
Finally we have a response by Amelia Bonea to our previously published review of her book The News of Empire: Telegraphy, Journalism and the Politics of Reporting in Colonial India (response to 2149).
]]>1655 engravure of the islands Amboyna (top) and Nera (bottom). National Maritime Museum, London
British History Online has much more to offer than British history, even though that is naturally the focus. Series like the Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations and the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial (which, despite the title, includes relations with China and Japan!) have an explicitly global reach. There is also the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies. For example, after the 1624 Amboyna Massacre, the bloody outcome of a power struggle over the spice trade between Great Britain and the Netherlands, we can read that the East Indian company agreed to distribute 1,000 copies of its account of the massacre in Dutch “to be sent over”, i.e. to what is now Indonesia, and that “there shall be set upon the front of each book the arms of this Company, in token that they avow them to be true”. Faith in the word of international corporations was clearly greater then than now.
Stamp commemorating Irish monks arriving in Iceland
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) also offers more internationally than its title suggests. It covers the history of British and Irish relations with the rest of the world, including the British Empire and the Commonwealth and the American Colonies. As an example, searching on Iceland brings up early medieval Irish missions there; a range of cultural relations – for instance the influence of the sagas on British and Irish literary tradition; British visitors such as the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks to Iceland; trade relations including the voyage of the “Marigold” in 1654; foreign relations during World War II and the American and British occupation of the island; and the so-called cod wars over fishing rights of the 1970s. The image below shows hotspots for BBIH’s world coverage:
Of course IHR resources are not just global in scope, they are global in audience. This opens up scholarship to the world. Those who cannot attend IHR lectures can enjoy them as videos and podcasts from anywhere in the world. Since 2009 the IHR has produced over 800 podcasts, encompassing not only its acclaimed and unique seminar series, but also one-off talks and conferences. Those who cannot attend training courses can access training online training.
British History Online has received thanks from researchers across the world for providing free access to volumes that are hard to obtain where they live and work. BBIH has subscribers all over the world including the USA, most European countries, Australia, Japan and Taiwan. The reach of IHR is truly global.
]]>Next up is From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France by Sarah Fishman. Charlotte Faucher and the author discuss a clear, convincing account of post-war France (no. 2188, with response here).
Then we turn to Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain, edited by Mark Bevir. Alex Middleton thinks this collection represents a missed opportunity given the presence of so many distinguished historians (no. 2187).
Finally we have William Cavert’s The Smoke of London. Elly Robson enjoys a book that opens up new horizons for rich, multifaceted histories of environmental change (no. 2186).
]]>Researcher awareness and engagement with open access data and sharing is increasing, that is according to a 2017 State of Open Data Report published by Figshare this week. This does not come as a surprise to me and, as a publisher of open access research in a variety of forms, it is something I have witnessed develop first-hand over the last few years. It is fantastic to now see the willingness and endorsement of authors, particularly those outside the sciences, who wholeheartedly support the publication of their research as open access through our own Humanities Digital Library – a place to access and download books published by the School of Advanced Studies, its constituent Institutes and partners within learned societies.
This year’s Open Access Week (23 and 29 October 2017) presents the theme of ‘Open in order to’. From my perspective, we seek to make research open in order to improve discovery and accessibility. As a publisher and member of a research institution, one of my primary objectives is to enable as wide a dissemination of research as possible. I believe it’s critically important for all those who encourage, create and facilitate research to be focused together towards developing open, visible, accessible and adaptable digital infrastructures which will help enable everyone to find and absorb ideas and knowledge. The Humanities Digital Library represents a step forward on our part towards achieving this objective.
Emily Morrell, Publications Officer at the School of Advanced Study, can see the benefits of digital publishing methods as an integral part of established and respected publishing programmes. “Open in order to expand from our traditional hard-copy publishing programme to make the high-quality research we publish available more widely, to a bigger and more international audience, while retaining our high editorial and production standards.”
For Simon Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American History at the University of Glasgow, Vice President of the Royal Historical Society and Convenor for New Historical Perspectives (a new and upcoming books series), this issue extends further with implications for the global research community. “Open in order to reach every researcher and every student with a computer and internet access” says Simon. The tracking of access and downloads of open access books on our platform from locations and institutions around the world reinforces his point. “At present much research remains largely inaccessible to many members of the potential audience, and OA can take, for example, my research into the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Caribbean to students and academics in colleges and universities from Accra and Legon in Ghana to Cave Hill in Barbados and Mona in Jamaica.” Simon believes in the removal of barriers to research. Whilst Research4Life and similar initiatives have been fantastic for taking affordable access to developing countries, truly open access has the possibility to go further. “Knowledge can become truly international,” says Simon, “and new teaching and research collaborations will be fostered by Open Access.”
This is not an impossible ambition but an achievable reality. However, in order to truly embrace these opportunities for access, dissemination and research collaboration we need to make the benefits and potential of open access clear to all. An article published in THE today suggests that many scholars remain unaware of what constitutes copyright infringement and that perhaps a lack of understanding regarding the permissions inherent within the various open access licensing agreements is exasperating the issue. As more research outputs engage with open formats (whether books, articles, data or another form of communication) it is the responsibility of publishers to help scholars, readers and potential partners navigate this changing landscape. For our part, the Institute of Historical Research and School of Advanced Studies hold annual Getting Research Published and Publishing for Historians workshops which aim to help authors and researchers make sense of the editorial and publishing processes as well as licensing and copyright issues – events upcoming in early 2018 are soon to be announced.
I believe in the shared opportunity of open access. Since launch in January of this year, the Humanities Digital Library has grown to contain books from three Institutes within the School of Advanced Study and has several dozen titles upcoming into 2018, including the series New Historical Perspectives which will be published by the Institute of Historical Research in partnership with the Royal Historical Society. Together we aim to continue to delivery open access research with those shared goals of discoverability, quality and accessibility.
Access and download our open access books online at humanities-digital-library.org.
]]>Next up is The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: the Real Story of World War II’s Unknown Tragedy by Hilda Kean. Maggie Andrews and the author discuss a welcome contribution to the ongoing process of chipping away at the pernicious national narrative of the Second World War as a ‘People’s War’ (no. 2184, with response).
Then we turn to Ilya Berkovich’s Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe. Joe Cozens enjoys an impressive first monograph from an extremely adept and promising military historian (no. 2183).
Finally we have Commemoration and Oblivion in Royalist Print Culture, 1658-1667 by Erin Peters. Imogen Peck believes it is a testament to the the originality of this book and the liveliness of the field that it succeeds in raising as many questions as it answers (no. 2182).
]]>Naturally BBIH has lots of material on the occult. The snapshot from the subject tree shows the range of search terms that can be used.
A search on the broader term Occult beliefs and practices brings up over 1500 entries including witchcraft trails, the devil in post-Reformation Scotland and British Intelligence and the occult in the Second World War.
The term Magic (occult), as opposed to entertainment, has nearly 300 entries covering the subject from the Roman period to imperial history with the article amulets from Roman London, the Sophie Page book, Magic in the cloister: pious motives, illicit interests, and occult approaches to the medieval universe, a Tudor necromancer’s manual, and the West Indian obeah belief.
Of course there is much on witches and witchcraft trails, and specific places can be searched for, such as the witches of Pendle Forest as well as the clerk of the court who recorded the proceedings, Thomas Potts.
Witchcraft also features in dramas (and not only by Shakespeare), as in the case of The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford. Of course, witches are often associated with the early modern period, but there are medieval examples, as in the trail of Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester in 1441, as well as more modern examples such as Helen Duncan, the last witch to be prosecuted in Britain and the “wickedest man in the world”, Aleister Crowley.
Other areas of witchcraft to be considered (apart from the usual trials) are the influence of emotions, as explored in Emotions in the history of witchcraft by Laura Kouine and Michael Ostling, which includes the chapter, Tyrannical beasts: Male witchcraft in early modern English culture. Other fruitful subjects of research may be the witches’ familiar discussed in Guardian spirits or demonic pets : the concept of the witch’s familiar in early modern England, 1530-1712 (a chapter in The animal/human boundary: historical perspectives).
Additional related topics are alchemy, as well as its associated personalities such as the mathematician, astrologer, and antiquarian John Dee, and of course spiritualism. Searching on Spiritualism and Photography (prompted by the IHR exhibition Accusations of Witchcraft featuring a photograph of the aforementioned Helen Duncan) brings up a list of useful articles.
The term “Prophecy and prediction” (which includes astrology) naturally covers religious elements, such as mysticism, but also includes dreams, politics, the influence of history, and printed media as well as personalities such as Joanna Southcott and Lady Eleanor Davies.
Whatever your research topic you’re bound to find something of interest in BBIH and at History Day 2017.
Detail of a miniature of a phoenix burning, Harley 4751 f. 45 British Library
On History Day, on 31 October, IHR Digital will demonstrate its new 3D printer and 3D imaging equipment. This will be the first public outing of our new kit which we’ve purchased in conjunction with the School’s Institute of Classical Studies. Together we’re setting up a ‘3D Centre for History and Classics’. From 2018 the Centre will run courses on how and why to use 3D technologies in historical research. At History Day you’ll be able to register you interest for one of these courses at the IHR stand.
The IHR has recently taken possession of a high performance computer on which staff and researchers can practise high quality photogrammetry; that is, the creation of three-dimensional representations derived from digital photographs of 2D images or physical objects.
Today’s photogrammetry software will run well enough on a regular desktop computer, and is able to convert images taken on a standard digital camera. However, the IHR’s hi-spec workstation allows us to create exceptionally high-quality images, as well as complex visualisations that can be experienced through the ‘immersive technology’ of virtual reality (VR). Our purchase of a 3D printer means we can also create physical models from these images, using an additive process by which—layer-by-layer—the printer builds up an exact scale representation.
Photogrammetry, virtual reality and three-dimensional printing may at first seem far removed from historical study as practised at the IHR. But 3D is now an important way to undertake and present research, especially in areas such as architectural, urban and topographical history, or histories of material culture. It similarly creates opportunities for new forms of archival and object-based teaching, which permit otherwise rare artefacts to be viewed closely and remotely ‘in the round’, or handled and used as three-dimensional models.
3D technology also helps us to assemble and explore what was hitherto lost. Examples include the recreation of historical built environments, as depicted in the Virtual St Paul’s website or the recently completed St Stephen’s Chapel project. There’s also the opportunity to reconstruct severely damaged documents, of which a prime example is the Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society: compiled in 1639, destroyed by fire in 1786, and now readable again as a flattened 3D representation.
It’s no surprise that museums and galleries make good use of three-dimensional technology to promote their collections. Notable here are the 3D Petrie Museum, at University College London, and the British Museum, while artefacts from many other institutions appear on digital platforms such as Sketchfab. Within universities, three-dimensional technology (while increasingly compact and affordable) is often reserved for those studying engineering, the medical and physical sciences architecture and archaeology.
Critical engagement with 3D images or printed objects is much less common for undergraduate and graduate historians, often because the equipment remains the preserve of other departments. Now that we’ve acquired this technology for the IHR, we’re looking to establish the Institute as a centre for historical applications of imaging, modelling and virtual reality; one where historians can gain new skills and to which they’ll bring research data to model and share in new ways.
We hope these options will be on display at the IHR’s forthcoming Winter Conference—Home: New Histories of Living—on 8-9 February 2018. In keeping with its focus on new research practices, the conference will include papers from historians using 3D technologies to recreate and experience, for example, the early modern home from data gathered in probate records.
Following the Winter Conference, we’ll invite historians to try out the IHR’s imaging and printing equipment for themselves. In doing so, we hope that a technology of the late 2010s and 2020s will help rekindle a Pollardian ambition fostered in the 1920s: of the Institute as a national ‘historical laboratory’—a place for experimentation and training in new approaches to the past.
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20 October – 12 November 2017
We would really like to hear what you think about the IHR’s journal, Historical Research. Please help by filling in our survey. All information provided will be kept anonymous and used solely for the purpose of improving our services to authors and readers. We would like to hear from past, present (and future) authors, regular and occasional readers and the history community at large. Let us know what you value in a history journal and help us to keep improving!
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Thank you.
]]>Next up is Sara Pennell’s The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850. Rachel Laudan believes this research opens up the possibility of investigating the relationship between changes in the kitchen and the industrial revolution in 18th-century England (no. 2180).
Then we turn to Paying Freedom’s Price: A History of African Americans in the Civil War by Paul D. Escott. Carin Peller-Semmens finds this book fails to paint a historically accurate and suitably complex narrative (no. 2179).
Finally we have Martin Ingram’s Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470–1600. Charmian Mansell reviews a book that the reader will find him or herself returning to time and again (no. 2178).
]]>Alan Pearsall receiving the Imperial Service Order medal for staff of the Civil Service – at Buckingham Palace in 1985, Alan Pearsall Estate (courtesy of Pieter van der Merwe)
As I enter the final stage of my year-long junior fellowship at the IHR I wanted to acknowledge my benefactor Alan Pearsall. Alan’s bequest, and the efforts of Roger Knight in establishing the Pearsall fellowship, have given invaluable academic breathing space to early career researchers like myself since 2008. This extremely generous gesture is made even more impressive due to the fact that Alan himself did not finish his PhD. Indeed, compared to the pressure on scholars to publish today, he wrote comparatively little. Neither did he seek out the limelight or the formal recognition which seem so essential in this competitive profession now.
Alan used his expertise in a less grandiose manner, befitting his personality. Born in Yorkshire, but brought up in Lancashire, he became interested in railways and then all forms of transport at sea. Although shy and not always in good health, his immense knowledge led to a 30-year career at the National Maritime Museum, where he became Historian of the Museum in the early 1970s. Alan was a member of over 30 societies covering rail and maritime transport, naval and maritime interests. He conveyed his expertise across such a wide range of topics through writing articles, reviews, and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries. At conferences, if a question could not be answered, the call would often go up to ‘Ask Alan’. His name can be found in the written acknowledgements of those who benefitted from his knowledge, and Alan is remembered by a global network of close friends.
One such mentee at the National Maritime Museum was Roger Knight, now Senior Research Fellow at the IHR. After a number of email conversations through which Roger very kindly provided me with a copy of this photograph, we met to discuss Alan’s life and legacy.
Reading Alan’s obituaries I was struck by the description of a kind, humorous and unassuming man. I wanted to know more about his life, and his motivations for assisting a future generation of historians whom he would never get to meet.
It turns out that funding a post-doctoral role on any aspect of naval and maritime history had long been a plan of Alan’s. In the early 1990s he started to discuss the idea with Roger, who was able to assist in creating such a position at the IHR two years after Alan’s death. Dealing with Alan’s estate was no mean feat. Those closest to him recall how, as an essentially impracticable and private man, Alan’s professional and personal papers remained uncatalogued. He also suffered from long term health problems, although these did not prevent him from doing National Service in the Navy out in India after the end of the Second World War. The upshot of Roger’s efforts and Alan’s generosity was the Pearsall Fellowship, which they designed to have a broad remit, in terms of both timeframe and topic. He apparently would have been delighted with the breadth of post-doc projects undertaken thus far.
Alan recognised how the period immediately after the PhD award was a crucial time, especially due to the pressure to begin publishing. As such, I was curious whether Alan received the credit he deserved for his own more understated efforts. While he did see his Imperial Service Order medal as recognition for the efforts of his working life, Roger believes Alan’s legacy is more to do with his inestimable ‘personal worth’. When I asked how he would like to have been remembered, Roger replied that it would have been enough for us to be having a conversation about him, 11 years after his death. I hope that future Alan Pearsall Fellows will continue to have similar discussions as a way of recognising his life and legacy. On a more personal note, I aim to uphold some of Alan’s characteristics: a sense of humour, academic kindness, and a northern accent.
Sources
Roger Knight, Obituary: Alan Pearsall (1925-2006), The Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. 92 (August 2006) pp. 260-261.
Roger Knight, Eulogy: Alan Pearsall 27 April 2006, Journal of the Greenwich Historical Society, Vol. 3 (2006) pp. 97-102
Pieter van der Merwe, Obituary: Alan Pearsall: Naval and railway historian, The Independent, 5 June 2006.
Conversation piece, a cabinet maker’s office. Oil Painting, England, c. 1770 (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Image No. 2006BF4151-01).
The Institute of Historical Research and the Furniture History Society are delighted to announce that the BIFMO database is now freely available to view online at https://bifmo.data.history.ac.uk.
The initial phase of the project has seen the construction of the BIFMO database comprising information on English furniture makers drawn from the 1986 guide to the trade, the Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660 – 1840, as well as from the London Joiners’ Company apprenticeship and freedom records, 1640-1720.
The database will contain detailed biographies of British and Irish furniture makers from the sixteenth century to the present day, providing a rich resource for historians of social, economic, political, art, furniture and material culture, as well as to collectors, connoisseurs and the art market. In addition to extending the chronological dates of the database’s biographical data, our aim is to broaden the contents of BIFMO to visual materials, as well as the reproduction of a wide range of primary sources.
The second phase of the project is undertaking new research to explore key historical questions surrounding the furniture making industry, including a case study on the role of British and Irish women in the nineteenth century: where they lived, their occupational roles, how they sold their wares, and their clientele. In addition, ongoing development to the BIFMO website will introduce new ways of engaging with the data as we enhance the information in the Dictionary with new scholarship published since 1986.
BIFMO is an ongoing project, with separate but integrated research, resource-creation, public engagement and training strands. If you would like more information about the project, or the database, or getting involved, please do get in touch: http://bifmo.data.history.ac.uk/contact
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