12th Century Gatehouse

SPENT the weekend in Bristol where, as advertised, the architecture gives strong hints as to how wealthy the city was thanks largely to the profits of 18th century commerce (a main contributor was the slave trade).
My travel each day took me several times through the 12th century Great Gatehouse, also known as Abbot's Gate and Abbey Gatehouse.

Uphill view of the Great Gatehouse

Although the gate is from the 12th century, the top half, which is now cathedral offices, is a 'modern' addition from about 1500.

Bargain History

RECEIVED a flyer via Literary Review, I believe, offering a three-issue subscription to History Today for £5.
The first issue, July 2019, arrived this week and proved an entertaining, if at times frustrating, read.

Striking cover

There are main articles on apocalyptic thinking in the 1500s, women of the Ku Klux Klan, the 1943 Bengali famine, a consensus-inclined Cavalier, German armed operations in the Baltics in 1919, an "undecipherable" manuscript and Thatcherism.
I found every article interesting, but I am not sure what many of them are doing in a history magazine - if people from an event are still alive, I regard that as current affairs, not history.
And there is little attempt to investigate any of the subjects in depth - this is at best "History Lite," and seems to be aimed at a very general readership. This is somewhat confirmed by the magazine's crossword, which includes the clue: "9 _ de Milo, work of ancient Greek sculpture (5)".
Some of the English could be generously described as sloppy, eg "What book in your field should everyone read?" (my emphasis).
Then there is the "undecipherable" manuscript. Leaving aside that the word is more normally written as indecipherable, there is the fact that no manuscript is impossible to decipher any more than any castle is impregnable (despite the number of times a fortress is described as such in popular histories - often a paragraph before the said structure falls to enemy forces).
A sense of political correctness permeates much of the magazine, to comical effect at times, eg racist women in the Ku Klux Klan are described as "progressive" because they supported increased roles for women.
As well as three issues of the magazine, I am due to receive a copy of Mary Beard's SPQR: A History Of Ancient Rome. All in all, despite my criticisms, quite a bargain - as long as I cancel the direct debit before the annual follow-up charge of £84 kicks in.

Lotharingia

SUCCUMBED to temptation and bought in hardback Lotharingia - A Personal History Of Europe's Lost Country, the latest book from travel historian Simon Winder.
By "travel historian" I mean someone who goes through areas, visits points of interest and recounts their past.
His previous two books in this genre, Danubia and Germania, have pretty much self-explanatory titles.
Lotharingia is named after the middle portion of the Emperor Charlemagne's domains, and was somewhat squeezed between East and West Francia, whose borders are recognisable today as the cores of modern Germany and France.
Lotharingia as a single realm was short-lived, but Winder's book at some 500 pages is not a short read.

Lotharingia … short in life, long in the retelling

That should be all to the good if it is up to the standards of Danubia and Germania.
I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but the jacket illustration by Berlin-based Martin Haake did nothing to put me off making a purchase.

Newmarket War Memorial

A GRANITE war memorial in Newmarket, Suffolk, is an interesting example of one of the earlier memorials to WW1.

Newmarket war memorial

You can tell it was one of the earlier ones to be commissioned as the Great War is dated 1914-19, the five-year span representing the fact that Germany only sued for an armistice in November 1918 - peace treaties came later.
According to the Imperial War Museum, it was unveiled in October 1921, and there are 218 WW1 deaths recorded compared with 80, plus 10 civilians, later added for WW2.