December 21st, 2009

Canterbury, NY

I have subscribed to the New Yorker for a few years now. (Friday afternoons, I usually take that and the Speccie to the pub. They’re good reading partners, despite the difference in political outlook and tone.)

There’s not a whole lot of good stuff on medieval history covered in the New Yorker, so this week it was with some delight I read this piece by Joan Acocella about Geoffrey Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. Well worth a look, although I’m afraid the link I’ve provided only directs to an abstract of the much-longer article. You’ll have to subscribe to get the full thing. (Or maybe wait awhile? Sometimes they put stuff up after a delay of a few weeks.)

Poor old Peter Ackroyd, a writer I very much admire, takes a bit of a kicking from Acocella for his free-handed retelling of the Tales. I doubt he minds very much. If he does, he shouldn’t. Granted, the combination of a prose rendition and Ackroyd’s pottymouthed generosity with modern profanity gives his version of the tales a very different feel to the original. The poetry is literally lost in translation. But then, isn’t all poetry? If you want to inhale the spirit of Chaucer, just read the original. Middle English ain’t that hard, and every decent verse edition out there has extensive footnotes to help you along the way.

Ackroyd’s book, as it says quite pointedly in the title, is a retelling. It’s a spirited modern take, and a good introduction both to Ackroyd and to Chaucer.

Anyway, subscribe to the New Yorker, read the piece and have a very Merry Christmas.

December 2nd, 2009

Beyond brilliant

There were still men on ladders in the V&A museum in South Kensington, London, this morning, as the public were allowed into the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries for the first time. They are still putting the finishing touches to one of the most important medieval collections on display in the country, perhaps in Europe.

The reviews have been exceptional - both the Times and the Telegraph have lauded the galleries with 5* ratings. I visited for an hour and half or so (stolen from writing time) this morning. It was enough to get a flavour of the collection there; I will be back tomorrow for a more in-depth viewing.

First impressions are that the press hype is justified. The Galleries are not just enormous and magnificently stocked, they are also stunningly beautiful. The bulk of the pieces I saw today are Italian C15th/C16th, and there is a clear story to be read among the collection of the relationship between the High Middle Ages and the art and culture of late Latin antiquity.

Individual highlights seen today:

- a stunning silver reliquary of the martyrdom of St Sebastian, by Hans Holbein the Elder, from 1497. A glass panel on the back shows the relic intact within, wrapped in silk. Likely to be shafts of the arrows that did for poor old Seb.

- a processional cross in gold and silver from around 1350, northern Italy.

- a tiny Leonardo da Vinci notebook, with an interactive flick-through terminal next to it.

- a mock 14th-century knightly brass in the floor for kids to take rubbings from

These are just a few of the pieces that caught my eye. I also had a lovely conversation with a lady who lectures in history of art and illuminated manuscripts in the Dorset area. We swapped opinions on the strange beasties of medieval marginalia, and their place in the medieval mind.

Utterly mesmerising. I cannot recommend these galleries highly enough. I will Twitpic a few snaps taken on my Blackberry, and put some better pics up tomorrow.

December 2nd, 2009

Books of the Year 2009

There have been plenty of brilliant history books this year, despite the general gloom. Do click through here to read my round-up of the best of them, from The Times.

November 23rd, 2009

Popular vs Academic

Hat-tip to my friend Paul Wilson for sending this link to a marvellous piece by Simon Heffer at the Telegraph. Heffer has leapt to defend his friend Andrew Roberts against a withering review in the TLS of his latest book, ‘The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War’. The review was written by Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge.

Heffer’s review of the review is worth noting here because it raises some interesting points about the relationship between some ‘academic’ historians and some ‘popular’ historians. I use the qualifying quotation marks here because - of course - there are many historians working in universities who have wide popular readerships, just as there are many historians on the outside who write specialist, difficult works which are not, in the literal sense of the word, popular.

I don’t intend to make any remarks about either Professor Evans or Andrew Roberts, other than to say that I enjoyed Roberts’ book immensely. I am not an expert on the history of the Second World War, whereas Evans has written exhaustively about it. Indeed, a decade or so ago he was called as an expert witness at a libel trial which hinged on his expertise in that field. But as an intelligent non-specialist reader, I found ‘The Storm of War’ to be an absorbing, lucid and gripping account of an immense subject.

What Heffer is suggesting is that Evans’ review captures the bitterness felt in a few pockets of the academic community towards historians who a) sell lots of books, b) get invited to exciting dinner parties and c) don’t have to sit through dull faculty meetings. There’s something in that, I think.

November 17th, 2009

Marginalia, CA

Having thought I had no excuse to visit Los Angeles since January this year, I am ticked off to have overlooked a golden opportunity. The Getty Center has just finished showing an exhibition called ‘Out of Bounds: Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts’. How infuriating to have missed it. Still, the interactive guide (click the link) is a neat little taster. (Although it only shows the work of a couple of the artists on display.) Thankfully, a book is available. Maybe a quick hop over to LAX to pick up a copy is in order after all.

Update: I am researching designs for a medieval tattoo, drawing on the spirit and style of fourteenth-century marginalia at the moment. Having trouble finding an artist. If anyone knows of one (UK or US based), please get in touch via the contact page.

Update 2: Apparently the book is not for sale outside the US and Canada. American site visitors: please get in touch if you are able to get a copy on my behalf!

November 5th, 2009

An attack of general feebleness

David Cameron’s letter to The Sun today hasn’t cut much mustard with hardline Eurosceptic Tory MEPs. Nor, one suspects, has the foggy repositioning of Tory policy on Europe in the light of the Lisbon Treaty’s ratification done much to endear Cameron to those in the party base who are suspicious of his preference for power over idoelogical purity. (Guido has a good statement of the position).

But what of the electorate at large? We were promised a referendum on Europe by Labour. They lied to us. Whether you are a Europhile or Eurosceptic, that should make you angry. But on this, as with so much else, we are all possessed of a general feebleness as the Government does with our lives what they please.

August 28th, 2009

Climate change camp v proper rebellion

Here’s an exercise in (un)historical imagination. It is June 1381. You are Wat Tyler, leading a ragtag army of villagers from Kent and Essex on a righteous crusade of justice against corrupt government, punitive taxation and social injustice.

You are on the way to Blackheath, where you intend to set up camp. But on the way there, you step through a wormhole in the fabric of space-time and end up in August 2009.

When you arrive at your destination, you are startled to find that the whole place has been taken over by a load of Hampstead hippies, with foldaway Brompton bicycles, buck-teeth and deferred places to study PPE at Oxford.

Several of them are strumming guitars and a working group is pitching a wigwam, using the camp-building skills they picked up doing their Duke of Edinburgh bronze award.

Tell me seriously that you do not feel your hand tighten around the handle of your pitchfork.

August 3rd, 2009

Riding through the glen, etc

Last month I reviewed a couple of new books about Robin Hood for The Times. (You can read the piece here.) I signed off with a slightly cheap shot at Russell Crowe, who has been cast to play Robin in Ridley Scott’s new film, due next summer and currently filming in Wales.

Robin Hood is an essential part of the tradition of popular English literature, and has worn a thousand different faces and causes since he first appeared (probably) in the thirteenth century. But the tendency has been for him to become softer, slushier (and more socialist) with each passing age. The two big films that have been made about him in my lifetime have been the appallingly cheesy ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ and the Disney version in which Robin was played, as I recall, by a rather gay little fox.

None of this is really true to the original Hood tradition. The medieval tales were violent. Robin was uncompromising and fairly unlikeable at times. So in fact, I do think Crowe is a decent pick to play Robin. He’s rough around the edges. He’s grumpy. He’s good with a sword.

The question is whether the script, which has apparently been through a number of rewrites, has stayed true to the original suggestion that Crowe’s Robin will be a dark and morally ambiguous creation, probably related to Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale’s gruff and bothered Batman. I do hope it has.

June 11th, 2009

‘What Price Liberty?’ by Ben Wilson

liberty

An excellent new book by a fellow Cambridge historian was released this week. I reviewed it for The Spectator - you can read my thoughts here.

Wilson, as I wrote, has been accused of pandering to the Cameroons with his most overtly political book to date. Of course, he is doing no such thing, but his book reads as an intelligent historical case against Nu-Labour’s baleful neglect for traditional British rights and freedom.

June 9th, 2009

The Today programme (redux)

It was interesting to hear it reported twice on this morning’s Today programme that the group of Labour rebels mustering forces for a fatal attack on Gordon Brown have dubbed themselves members of ‘the peasants’ revolt’. In terms of sheer upheaval - ‘the world turned upside down’ - the analogy between the (literally) bloody summer of 1381 and the (metaphorically) bloody summer of 2009 seems less and less fanciful by the day.

Of course, what was notable about the 1381 revolt was that it was a genuine expression of popular anger, led in the most part by community leaders from the localities and aimed against the political classes as a whole. What we are seeing in parliament today is factional infighting as an incumbent political party tries to save itself from precisely that fate.

Indeed, there is an argument to say that Labour MPs claiming to be the inheritors of Wat Tyler are actually as crass as the bunkered Brownites. The MPs aiming to oust their leader are doing so in order to limit the damage done to their party when the country finally goes to the polls in a general election. In other words, they wish to dampen as far as possible the electorate’s inclination to wreak full revenge on the government - at the ballot box, rather than the chopping block.

The Author

Dan Jones

Dan Jones was born in 1981 and graduated from Cambridge with a First in History in 2002.

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The Book

Summer of Blood

Summer of Blood:
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 Available to buy now from Amazon.co uk