UKIP View of History: "It's Just One Fucking Thing After Another"

This is not really linked to WW1, but it definitely relates to History.  As the General Election approaches the media is sending its brave hacks to some pretty way-out places - and today Marina Hyde reports on the time she spent at a meeting with Ukip:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2015/apr/23/ukip-st-georges-day-bank-holiday-flags

The whole article paints a nightmare picture of Ukip’s vision for this country, but it was the following that made me flinch most:

"...let’s while away the hours listening to Ukip’s culture spokesman, Peter Whittle, who shared a platform with O’Flynn this morning and advanced policies that sounded as though they were dreamed up by some Rotarian dullard shortly after falling off his attic ladder. For instance: all history will be taught only chronologically, because “values … emerge through learning these things in chronological order”.

I'm still trying to work out when Ukip's view of history begins. 1066 - with the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons by upstart Normans?  Or in 1688 - when a Dutch protestant booted out the last of the Scottish Stuarts, who happened to be a Catholic?  1918 - when the UK (with a little help from its friends) defeater the Germany of the Kaiser?  On reflection it will probably start in the Summer of 1940 when Churchill became PM.

 The quote in the title seems to sum up this Little Englander view of history - and inevitably it comes from The History Boys.

The Truth about the Christmas Day Truce

Forget the advert from Sainsburys and even the video from Paul McCartney, this is a first hand account of the Christmas Day Truce a hundred years ago tomorrow:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/24/-sp-letter-extraordinary-sights-christmas-day-first-world-war-truce

Amazing photographs

As a student of history I thought I'd seen many of the best photographs that were taken in WW1.  but ocasionally you see something new that makes you stop and look again.

These are stereoscopic images to be looked at through a viewer.  Although some look a little posed, it is good to see some different perspectives (literally) of the War:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/nov/08/photographs-from-the-front-line

Testament of Youth

I came to Testament of Youth by way of the classic BBC TV serialisation: Cheryl Campbell gave an outstanding performance as Vera Brittain.  I read the book shortly afterwards, and I've even seen a one-woman stage version.

The reviews for the new film version look good and I'll definitely see it- even though the film makers seem to have moved Somerville to Radcliffe Square and rebadged BNC:

The BBC filmed in Somerville, and there was some brilliant editing to make sure that the tracking shots did not pick up any of the new buildings.

An Amazing Memorial

I found this quite astonishing: a family in France has kept the bedroom of their son who was killed in WW1 exactly how it was since he died:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11162640/First-World-War-memorial-bedroom-to-fallen-French-soldier.html

This is just so much more personal than lists of names carved into stone memorials across Europe.

In Birdsong one of the most poignant sections s when one of the soldiers turns up again as a shell-shocked eteran in a care home, and to me this seems similar: the impact of the eventys ogf 1914-1918 do not end.

 

In Flanders Field

I  read this review at the weekend and immediately ordered the CD:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/26/in-flanders-fields-review-first-world-war-michael-morpurgo

The CD features Coope, Boyes and Simpson, ie is Morpugo-less, but nonetheless it is brilliant.  It arrived just over an hour ago and I'm currently listening to it.

I know some of the music, especially the songs that feature in Oh What A Lovely War, but these performances are stripped back and much rougher.  Brilliant!

 

MCMXIV

I wanted to post something today because of the date, and after much deliberation there was only choice:

MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin

Inevitably Alan Bennett quotes from it in The History Boys.