A Contrary View - linked to a TV series...

I seem to remember reading an interview with Alan Bennett where he mentions historians like Niall Ferguson as his inspirations for the character of Irwin in The History Boys.

And now Ferguson has entered the History Wars by opening a new front suggesting that Britain should have stayed out of the war in 1914:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/britain-first-world-war-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

It will be interesting to see what Commander-inChief Gove makes of this.

History's wisdom comes in the form of an oracle

The ongoing history war has continued to produce some excellent writing.

I particularly liked this article by Christopher Clark which argued about the dangers of drawing easy lessons from history:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/1914-conflicts-history-repeating-first-world-war

I think the phrase:

"History's wisdom comes to us not in the form of pre-packaged lessons but of oracles, whose relevance to our current predicaments has to be puzzled over."
  

is a brilliant rejoinder to the many politicians who are bound to use the anniversary to draw too many facile comparisons over the next four years.

I have The Sleepwalkers still on my bookshelf, and hope to use an imminent long flight to make a serious start on it.

Family History

Both The Guardian and Daily Telegraph websites have dedicated sections for all their coverage of the First World War (although the Telegraph refers to it as World War One).  Through a link from here I found a website of forces war records:

http://blog.forces-war-records.co.uk/

I could not resist the opportunity and entered my paternal grandfather's name and within seconds I had found full details of his army career, although this was in the Boer War rather than First World War.  He had some service in WW1 in West Africa, but I don't think he was in the army at the time.

I also had a great aunt whose first husband was killed on the Somme.  I only know her subsequent married name, so will have to do some family history research before i can investigate this any further.

The website had a link to a shop which sells reproduction campaign medals, but i have my grandfather's original medals.

More Counterfactual History

And if you are wondering what would have happened if Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand had made it safely back to Vienna and became emperor then this is the book for you:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/19/archduke-franz-ferdinand-lives-richard-ned-lebow-review

Either I am going to have to increase my reading speed considerably or give up sleep for the next four years...

On the Incompetence of Chauffeurs

The death of Princess Diana in in a chauffeur driven car in the Pont de l'Alma produced (literally) many millions of column inches of comment and speculation. 

But IMHO the wrong turning taken in Sarajevo by the chauffeur of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, despite the subsequent claims by his descendants was to have a far greater effect on world history:


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/archduke-franz-ferdinand-first-world-war?CMP=twt_gu

History Repeats Itself...

As a non-practising historian I’ve been following the developments of Mr Gove’s History Wars with interest.  I’ve also been reading The War That Ended Peace, Margaret MacMillan’s brilliant history of Europe in the run up to the outbreak of war, and was intrigued to find the following comment about Prussian educational policy in the 1890s:

“In 1890, the Prussian Ministry of Education decreed that the history taught in schools show the greatness of the Prussian state and its rulers: ‘One of the most essential purposes of the Volksschule [elementary schools] is to point out to the children the blessings which come to them through the regained national unity, independence, and culture which were restored by the hard and self-sacrificing struggle of the Hohenzollern rulers’. Wilhelm thoroughly approved: ‘We must’, he told a conference of headmasters, ‘bring up nationalistic young Germans, and not young Greeks or Romans’.”

As another historian said about a sequence of events in another European country  “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”.

What did you do in the History War?

This is getting better every day, and now we can see the plan that he was following.

Clearly Michael Gove intended a quick forensic strike against the BBC and the media in general n terms of their portrayal of WW1 before wrapping himself in a Union Flag and opening a second front in time for May 1915 and the forthcoming general election. 

But if History teaches us anything it is wars never run to plan and poor Govey's Old Contemptibles are being pummelled by the Guns of January as masses of historians (who really do know their subject) turn their concentrated fire on him.

In the face of sustained broadsides from Margaret MacMillan, Richard Evans, Tristram Hunt (and even Baldrick) Gove's advance juddered to a halt well before its objectives and troops are now digging in for a sustained war on both sides.

It's going to be a long four years, but hopefully it will give me time to finish The War That Ended Peace (current reading), The Great War in Modern Memory (looking reproachfully at me from the shelf) and The Long Shadow of the Great War (the results of a Christmas Book Token). I've just finished Catastrophe by Max Hastings, but there's no time to rest as publishers will be gearing up for a big push as the anniversaries keep rolling on..

This was in The Observer at the weekend:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/12/michael-gove-blackadder-first-world-war-david-mitchell

January 1914

The papers are full of WW1 related stories at the moment - and it can only get worse  over the next four years.

We're already in the middle of a row between Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt on the political interpretation of the War (my money is on Hunt), but meanwhile The Observer had this fasciniating article on the news for January 1914:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/04/january-1914-no-hint-war

It seems that no one had any idea what was just around the corner.  What a surprise!