Roundup: Talking About History

November 1, 2004

Asbestos Threatens British Cold War Records

Ben Fenton, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 25 Oct. 2004 Up to 10 million pages of vital military secrets have been rendered unusable by exposure to asbestos - and experts say the contamination threatens the operation of the Freedom of Information Act. The 63,000 files include many nuclear secrets and the official versions of events such as the sinking of the Belgrano in 1982 and the killing of IRA terrorists in Gibraltar by the SAS in 1988. A decontamination expert said the

November 1, 2004

Heroism Of 'Light Brigade' Still Shines

Julius Strauss, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 25 Oct. 2004 Exactly 150 years after the Charge of the Light Brigade more than 200 British ex-soldiers, enthusiasts and tourists will gather near Balaclava today to mark the Army's most infamous blunder. Led by Prince Philip, who has spent the past two days visiting the Crimean battle sites with retired officers from the Queen's Royal Hussars, the party will hold a service to remember the dead. Among them will be Lord Cardigan,

November 1, 2004

'Cowardice' Jibe By Cossacks Led To Fatal Charge

Tom Leonard, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 25 Oct. 2004 The Light Brigade charged into the"Valley of Death" because its soldiers were desperate to take revenge on the Cossacks sheltering behind the Russian guns, according to claims published today. "Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die" may have been Tennyson's verdict but Hugh Small, an historian and film-maker, asserts that far from the cavalrymen being the victims of their blundering aristocratic officers - as is p

November 1, 2004

Latest Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography Called "Jamboree Of Nonsense"

Elizabeth Day, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 24 Oct. 2004 The latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has been described as"the intellectual equivalent of the Millennium Dome" after the discovery that it is riddled with errors. A number of amateur historians have noticed glaring inaccuracies in several entries and say that the lax editorial process makes a mockery of the pounds 7,500 retail price. The 2004 edition of the 60-volume reference book was publi

November 1, 2004

Why Churchill Considered Negotiating With Germany In 1940

Jonathan Thompson, Independent on Sunday (London), 24 Oct. 2004 Britain's disastrous performance in the early years of the Second World War left Winston Churchill considering peace negotiations with the Nazis, documents unearthed by a Cambridge historian reveal. Correspondence contained in a major new book on the war-time Prime Minister shows he believed Britain faced no alternative by the summer of 1940 - and contradicts his public declaration that he would never negotiate with

November 1, 2004

Religion Fuels Difference Between Canadians And Americans

Randy Boswell, The Gazette (Montreal), 24 Oct. 2004 Every Canadian has heard how momentous events in 1776, 1812 and 1867 put Canada and the United States on profoundly different historical trajectories. But a just-published book by a Simon Fraser University professor has identified an intriguing new turning point in Canadian history: the day in April 1843 when the world didn't come to an end. In Borderland Religion: The Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792-1852, autho

October 24, 2004

The History Scandals ... Cause for Alarm?

Matthew Price, in the Boston Globe (Ot. 24, 2004): WITH FAT BIOGRAPHIES of sundry Founding Fathers appearing every other month and bookstore tables still piled high with odes to the Greatest Generation, the public's appetite for the American past appears as healthy as ever. But according to University of Georgia historian Peter Charles Hoffer, we're being sold a bill of goods.In his new book, &quo

October 23, 2004

Columbia University Needs to Fire Joseph Massad

Editorial in the NY Sun reposted by Daniel Pipes at his blog, Oct. 22, 2004):"I think something extremely important is happening on our campuses. They are now turned into sites for cultivation of critical judgment for responsible citizenship in what we hope will remain a free republic. Even as late as five years ago no one would have dared stand on the steps of the Law Library on Columbia Campus and condemn the mili

October 22, 2004

Paris Conference Examines Issues Raised By Immigration in Europe

Lara Marlowe, in the Irish Times (Oct. 18, 2004): The presence of large numbers of immigrants will continue to pose intractable policy questions for Ireland and Europe, a conference in Paris was told yesterday.The symposium on The Multi-cultural Society, held at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, heard how Muslims in the US today are subject to prejudice and suspicion similar to what the Irish experienced in Britain in the 1970s."The majority of immigrants co

October 22, 2004

Americans Are Indifferent to the Past ... Tear It Down, Look Ahead

Patt Morrison, a reporter for the LAT, in a radio commentary for the BBC series, "State Of The Union: Americans and Their Past" (Oct. 11, 2004): ... Americans in the main do not know whether the guy working in the next cubicle is Armenian or Turkish or Guatemalan, and they do not care. What matters is, can he meet a deadline? Can she make a payroll? Americans believe unswervingly that the future is theirs for

October 22, 2004

Alan Wolfe: The Revival of Religion in America (Historiography)

Alan Wolfe, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Oct. 22, 2004) (subscribers only):Religion is playing a major role in the 2004 campaign for the presidency. Conservative faiths are growing rapidly, in the United States as well as abroad. While a clash of civilizations may not be taking place, religious conflict -- primarily, but not exclusively, in the Middle East -- is a major cause of global instability.All of

October 22, 2004

Diane Ravitch: The Mad Mad World of Textbooks

This editorial was adapted from Diane Ravitch's introduction to The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption. [Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police, is a research professor at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is a member of the boards of trustees of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute.]The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, released t

October 22, 2004

The British Are Stuck in a WW II Time Warp When It Comes to Thinking About Germany

Allan Massie, in the Independent (Oct. 22, 2004):We have all laughed at Basil Fawlty's panicky injunction: "Don't mention the war." And it made some sense when the TV series was shot in the 1970s. There were middle-aged Germans then whose personal experiences between 1939 and 1945 were, one felt, more tactfully left unexamined. But now? Next May it will be 60 yea

October 22, 2004

Discovery Channel's 'Virtual History' To Discuss Plot To Kill Hitler

James Rampton, The Independent (London), 20 Oct. 2004 Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is meticulous in his planning. It is 12.37pm on 20 July 1944, and the Nazi officer makes absolutely sure that his briefcase is placed right under the spot where his leader, Adolf Hitler, is poring over a huge map of Europe in his briefing hut at his Eastern Front headquarters, the Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia. >P> But a few minutes later, another German soldier, Colonel Heinz Brandt, acci

October 22, 2004

A Look At Dizzy Gillespie's 1964 Presidential Run

Sholto Byrnes, The Independent (London), 20 Oct. 2004 From Bill Clinton's use of Fleetwood Mac's"Don't Stop" to Bob Dole's unlikely choice of Gary Glitter's"Rock'n'Roll Part Two", a key feature of every US presidential campaign is the pop or rock tune adopted to gee up supporters. But there's only ever been one candidate who wrote his own tune and had the great bebop vocalist Jon Hendricks create the lyrics:"Your politics oughta be a groovier thing, so get a good president who's willi

October 22, 2004

Styles Of President Bush And Ulysses S. Grant Compared

James P. Gannon, USA TODAY, 19 Oct. 2004 Ulysses S. Grant is widely remembered as a great general and a poor president. In his new biography of the 18th president, historian Josiah Bunting III notes that pundits and historians have tended to write of Grant the president with" condescension." Bunting sums up this view of Grant:"There may be strength in his soul, but no fineness in it, no grace; little culture, small learning . . . meager evidence of the capacity to learn and reflect; n

October 22, 2004

Artifacts Shed Light On Canadian Who Seduced Oscar Wilde

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, 19 Oct. 2004 Letters and photographs recalling the lasting bond between Oscar Wilde and his Canadian patron Robert Ross -- the man believed to have sparked Wilde's embrace of a homosexual life and the eventual saviour of his literary reputation -- are to be auctioned next week in Britain. Ross was a grandson of Robert Baldwin, co-founder of responsible government in Canada, and was born in 1869 into a distinguished Toronto family. He was educ

October 22, 2004

Spain's Aragon Region Confronting Controversial Past

Giles Tremlett, The Guardian (London), 19 Oct. 2004 Authorities in the Spanish region of Aragon, whose kings helped evict the Moors from Spain 500 years ago, has stirred controversy by suggesting that the severed heads of four Moors should be removed from its heraldic shield. The heads have upset the semi-autonomous region's growing population of Muslim immigrants, provoking its socialist administration to propose that the heads be erased from its bottom left-hand quarter. "

October 22, 2004

Skeletons at Paraparaumu 'Probably Maori'

Kay Blundell, The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand), 19 Oct. 2004 At least four skeletons, including a child, were discovered on a 20-hectare block between Mazengarb Rd and the Southwards Complex two weeks ago. The find stopped earthworks at the site. The skeletons were first thought to be European because they were found buried in coffins constructed with nails and there was no iwi knowledge of burials in the area. However, consultant archaeologist Mary O'Keeffe sa

October 20, 2004

The Latest in Film ... Bringing Hitler to Life by Placing His Head on an Actor's Body

John Preston, in the Sunday Telegraph (Oct. 17, 2004): In a dark wood in northern Poland, up near the Russian border, something dreadful is happening: Hitler is being brought back to life. There have been resurrected Hitlers before, of course, on screen and in novels, but nothing remotely like this. Using "the most innovative computer animation techniques ever seen on TV", Hitler's face has in effect been superimposed on to an actor's body.Although this hybrid Hitle