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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
To celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, we’ve selected an extract from our Oxford Paperback Reference title, The Kings and Queens of Britain, for your enjoyment. – Nicola, blog editor.
With the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee only a few days away, it is perhaps a good moment to look back at some other long-serving monarchs of the British Isles. Inevitably, those who rule for a long time come to the throne early: Queen Victoria was 18 at her accession, and was described by Thomas Carlyle on her Coronation as ‘Poor little Queen! She is at an age when a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid on her from which an archangel might shrink.’ After her reign of 63 years, H. G. Wells thought differently: ‘Queen Victoria was like a great paper-weight that for half a century sat upon men’s minds, and when she was removed their ideas began to blow about all over the place haphazardly’.
How do you write a person’s life story? For contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography this is a familiar question and its answer depends, in large part, on who’s under discussion.
By Lydia Carr
The path of the biographer is littered with terrors. Few, to be fair, match the risks listed on the fieldwork forms put out by various Institutes of Archaeology, those exhaustive documents intended to pinpoint every potential danger (and indemnify the sponsoring department against paying for more than a reasonable number of snakebite treatments). But as I’ve often said, biographic research, at least regarding twentieth-century subjects, resembles nothing as much as the first five minutes of a Doctor Who episode, or the last five pages of a M.R. James story.
This week, Christine Grahame, convenor of the Scottish National Party’s Justice committee, has urged the linkage of the forthcoming Scottish referendum on independence to a referendum on the continuation of monarchy. Her proposal curiously mirrors discussions in the ruling circles of a once-revolutionary England.
On this day in 1496, British doctor Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination to James Phipps, an eight year old boy. To mark the anniversary, we speak with Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA. Dr. Hirsch is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
By Callum Brown
In 1955 Margaret Knight became the most hated woman in Britain. She was vilified and demonised in virtually every British newspaper, and thousands of letters attacking her were sent by ordinary Britons to the BBC, to the papers and to her personally. Parents wrote fearing for the safety of their children, bishops and priests criticised her impudence, whilst well-known authors like Dorothy L Sayers castigated her ignorance. Hounded by journalists and pursued by photographers, the smiling image of Mrs Knight in her ‘Sunday-best hat’ and coat appeared in most newspapers. She was the nation’s number one ‘folk devil’ of 1955.
By Dennis Showalter
April 1940 witnessed the first, arguably the most economical, and one of the broadest-gauged combined-arms operations in modern military history. The Norwegian campaign is usually considered in the contexts of its end-game and its set-pieces: the drawn-out fighting around Narvik, the Royal Navy’s annihilation of a German task force. Neglected in that context is an initial German invasion plan that was daring in its conception, economical in its use of force, and almost successful in paralyzing an entire country in a matter of a few days.
In the 18th century, the world underwent a revolutionary change — in sexual attitudes. Faramerz Dabhoiwala examines how the strict control of sex by the Church, the state, and society eroded in the 1700s based on vast research — from canon law to court cases, novels to pornography, diaries and letters of people great to ordinary. The Enlightenment, the growth of cities, and cultural flowering all contributed to the birth of sex as we know it. In the below videos, Faramerz Dabhoiwala explores the 18th century roots of modern sexuality from gender stereotypes of lust, polygamy, sex tapes, and the sexual obsession of tabloid culture.
The date 23 April 1616 marked the end of two eras in world literature; for on that day, two giants of Renaissance letters died. Poet and playwright William Shakespeare died in his home at Stratford-upon-Avon. Farther south, Spanish poet, playwright, and novelist Miguel de Cervantes also passed away.
At 11:40 pm ship’s time on 14 April 1912, the HMS Titanic hit an iceberg. Just two hours and forty minutes later, the hull broke, taking the ship and over one thousand people still aboard into the sea. It remains one of the greatest disasters in maritime history. In Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, John Welshman gathered 25 pictures of this ill-fated voyage together and we’d like to share a few with you.
By John Welshman
It was Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955) who described the sinking of the Titanic as ‘the last night of a small town’. Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, draws on Lord’s metaphor by focusing on the stories of just 12 people, chosen as a representative cross-section of passengers and crew.
By Sarah Gregson
It is often said of military wars that the first casualty is truth. As we approach the centenary of the sinking of RMS Titanic and the war of ideas that often surrounds this tragedy, it is to be hoped that the truth will at least take a few prisoners. Titanic myths have had extraordinary longevity and, as Cox put it, ‘virtually everything that people know, or think they know … can be traced to the press coverage of April-August 1912’. In the lead up to the centenary, however, perhaps some commentators will read some of the work that has been done to challenge these misconceptions.
This Day in World History
On March 23, 1743, composer George Frideric Handel directed the first London performance of his sacred oratorio, Messiah. While the composition has become revered as a magnificent choral work—and a staple of the Christmas holiday season—it met some controversy when it first appeared.
By Richard Marggraf Turley, Jayne Elisabeth Archer and Howard Thomas
“What if the field in Keats’s ode was (cue drum roll), not an allegorical field, not a cipher for, say, St Peter’s Field in Manchester (the location of the Peterloo Massacre), nor a mythic site of bucolic languor, but an actual Winchester field …
By John Welshman
The latest news for period drama fans is that Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey, has created a four-part ITV mini-series commemorating the centenary of the Titanic sinking. However, what many viewers may not realise is that there was a real Fellowes on board the ship in 1912. But rather than being an ancestor of the popular writer, Alfred J. Fellowes was a humble crew member and one of the estimated 1,514 people to perish in the maritime disaster.