Results for English History

What on Earth is Guy Fawkes Night?

November 05, 2013
Randall Stephens

I've only been in the UK once during Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night.  I saw plenty of fireworks and bonfires lighting up night skies and scratched my head in wonder about the whole thing. What an interesting, historically odd celebration.

The BBC has this short summary and a video interview (see below) about the fiery fest:

Guy Fawkes night is the annual commemoration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot - when 14 individuals planned to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605.

The BBC's Carol Kirkwood asked bonfire night organiser Graham Callister why we celebrate Guy Fawkes night when it was in fact a plot to maim and kill.

See also this entertaining slide show at ABC News.

Is the celebration in danger of being extinguished?  The worry this year is that the fest has lost its, um, spark.  Halloween may be eclipsing Guy Fawkes Day.  Some down under are saying its time to let go on an "old English grudge." 

What about that grudge and the religious dimension?  Here's a very short report from the Beeb. 

What on Earth is Guy Fawkes Night? What on Earth is Guy Fawkes Night? Reviewed by Joseph Landis on November 05, 2013 Rating: 5

"What the devil are they doing"? English Authors Writing about America

September 24, 2013
Randall Stephens 

Oh, my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it's my autumn almanac.

I like my football on a Saturday,
Roast beef on Sundays, all right.
I go to Blackpool for my holidays,
Sit in the open sunlight.

- Ray Davies, The Kinks, "Autumn Almanac" (1967)

An American version, "Fall Almanac," just wouldn't have cut it.  Ray Davies has long been an observer of the differences--linguistic, cultural, and otherwise--of the American and English scenes.  Sure, The Kinks were as English as clotted cream, cricket, Yorkshire pudding, and bad weather.  But Ray and brother Dave spent quite a bit of time living or touring in both countries. 

I've spent my share of time in both countries, too. I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne. (Which, in itself, is almost like another country compared with the Kinks North London stomping ground.)  So I look forward to getting my hands on a copy of Ray Davies new book Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, the Road: The Story (October, 2013).  Here, so says the promo material, the famous mod rocker and 60s icon "tries to make sense of his long love-hate relationship with the country that both inspired and frustrated him." The book promises to take "us on a very personal road trip through his life and storied career as a rock star, and reveals what music, fame, and America really mean to him." 

These kinds of travelogues have long been bestsellers.  Authors of them have included helpings of criticism along with a dash of admiration.  Maybe the sheer number of these volumes has something to do with the cultural and political special relationship between the two nations, the shared language, or just a general curiosity.  Think of the Americans who write about Britain--humorist Bill Bryson or former ambassador Raymond Seitz.  Or the English who write about life in the U.S.--academic Terry Eagleton and, most obviously, Alistair Cooke.

This is a literary trail that winds all the way back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when many of those who lived in America were becoming more than just relocated English people. I'm most interested in the English who made their way to the colonies or the U.S., pen in hand,
The "British despot" beaten again, 1897.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
ready to comment on American bragging and tobacco chewing.  They asked: What accounted for the growing distance between the Mother Country and the New World? Was there such a thing as an American character?  Or, as G. K. Chesterton put it in his What I Saw in America (1922): "We say that the Americans are doing something heroic, or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing" (7).  Many of us natives wonder the same thing. A great collection of these accounts--spanning the centuries--is Allan Nevins' America through British Eyes. (Published in 1948, it's now a difficult volume to come by).   

If you're endlessly fascinated by such romps through America's teeming cities, pig-choked streets, and highways and byways then check out these gems:

Douglas S. Robertson, ed., An Englishman in America in 1785 being the Diary of Joseph Hadfield (1933)

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)

Harriet Martineau, Society in America (1837)

Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (1842) 
 
John Benwell, An Englishman's Travels in America: His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States (1853) 

Anthony Trollope, North America (1862)

William Archer, Through Afro-America: An English Reading of the Race Problem (1910)
"What the devil are they doing"? English Authors Writing about America "What the devil are they doing"? English Authors Writing about America Reviewed by Joseph Landis on September 24, 2013 Rating: 5

Remembering World War I in the Northeast of England

September 15, 2013
Randall Stephens

The Response by Sir William
Goscombe John. Unveiled by
the Prince of Wales in 1923.
Ernest Hemingway didn't mince words.  The author of A Farewell to Arms claimed that World War I "was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied. So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought."  Seeing the ravages of war up close, he served with distinction as an ambulance driver in Italy.  Gertrude Stein coined the phrase "lost generation," which applied to Hemingway and other wayward souls like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

What accounts for the gap between Hemingway's tone and the gallant, heroic one of war memorials?  Did region have a role to play in war remembrance?  How do we make sense of the conflict now that the last veterans have passed away?

As we near the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I Don Yerxa has been conducting a series of interviews on the subject in the pages of Historically Speaking.  Watch for other essays, forums, and interviews in the coming months.

Here at Northumbria University my colleague in the History Programme, James McConnel has put together a stellar series of lectures to commemorate the war in the northeast of England.  This region responded in greater numbers, per capita, than any other.  So, the memories of the war take on a special meaning here.  Below is the full list of the lectures and the dates.

Tynemouth World War I Commemoration Project. (Lectures to be held at 6pm at Northumbria University, Sutherland Building, Northumberland Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8JF).

9 October 2013
Professor Sir Hew Strachan, All Souls College Oxford
"The Ideas of War, 1914"

12 November 2013
Emeritus Professor Martin Pugh, Newcastle University
"Women and the First World War: Emancipation or Domesticity?"

3 December 2013
John Lewis-Stempel
"Six Weeks: The Life and Death of Junior Officers on the Western Front"

British Empire Union poster, 1918.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
21 January 2014
Emeritus Professor John Derry, Newcastle University
"Hindenberg and Luddendorf: A Brilliant Parnership?"

18 February 2014
Dr Edward Madigan, CWGC
"The Better Part of Valour: British Understandings of Courage during the First World War"

4 March 2014
Professor Gary Sheffield, University of Birmingham
"Douglas Haig, the First World War, and the British People"

8 April 2014
Professor Andrew Lambert, King’s College London
"The War at Sea from the July Crisis to the eve of Jutland"

8 May 2014
Professor Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck College London
"'Sharp Shooting Pains that Make Me Shout Out': A History of Disability and the First World War"

For more, click here.
Remembering World War I in the Northeast of England Remembering World War I in the Northeast of England Reviewed by Joseph Landis on September 15, 2013 Rating: 5
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )
ads 728x90 B
Powered by Blogger.