Astonishing!

I SPENT a recent weekend in York, but failed to take a book with me to read.

I could not find anything I fancied in the bookshops, so I ended up buying the latest issue of History Today, which I formerly subscribed to but gave up because I found the writing rather shallow.

It proved generally quite interesting, but the most interesting thing to me was one of the answers given in the magazine's On The Spot section, where "we ask leading historians why their research matters, what history has taught them, and what we should be reading."

What interested me - astounded, would be a better word - was the answer given by Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski, professor of Polish-Lithuanian history at University College London and historian of Warsaw's Polish History Museum, to the question: "Is there an important historical text you have not read?"

Astonishing content

His reply: "I've been meaning to read Tacitus' Histories for a long time."

I do not know what astounds me more - that a "leading historian" has not read Tacitus, or that a "leading historian" should publicly admit to having not read Tacticus.

History Today July 2020

REPORTS of my subscription to History Today coming to an end were clearly greatly exaggerated as issue 7 of volume 70 arrived through the letterbox last week.
It concentrates on the famous meeting between Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France in June 1520.
This is usually known as The Field Of The Cloth Of Gold, although in History Today it is rendered less smoothly as The Field Of Cloth Of Gold.

(The) Magazine

Rather more interesting to me, because I knew next-to-nothing about it, is an article detailing how children were often able to vote at British general elections.
It only happened in small numbers, and apparently never affected who won a seat in the Commons, but made for amusing reading.

History Today June 2020

I THOUGHT my subscription to History Today had ended, but then issue 6 of volume 70 arrived.
Once again it is dominated by social history, and when one article can headline somewhere as famous as the Greek city of Thebes as "the forgotten city," it is clear the magazine is aimed at a very unlearned readership.

My last History Today?

But I was impressed by Southampton University lecturer Elisabeth Forster's piece on the Chinese government's reaction to Covid-19 in the light of the country's "humiliations of the 19th century."
This type of article often puts most of the blame on the wicked West, but Forster avoids such an easy trap.
Nevertheless, I still have no plans to renew my subscription.

History Today May 2020

ISSUE 5 of volume 20 has articles on the Mayflower, Mao's China, food shortages in WWI .. in short, every piece is social history.
It is as if military history did not exist, but for me it will be as if History Today does not exist, for I believe this is the last issue of my subscription and I have no plans to renew.

History Today ... gone tomorrow

History Today April 2020

HAVE you any idea why there are 360 degrees in a circle, rather than, say, 100 or some other round number?
Issue 4 of volume 70 of History Today has the answer, along with other interesting articles on the Roman Inquisition, the foundation of Liberia and Charles I's early fractured realm.
The cover story is about a female Soviet WW2 sniper with 309 claimed kills - a claim that is not seriously looked at.

Femme fatale .. Soviet sniper

Instead we learn about Lyudmila Pavlichenko's propaganda tour of the West, particularly how the media reacted to her - part of a tendency for the magazine to prioritise social history.
Still, all in all I found this edition of History Today to be a compelling if light read.

History Today March 2020

ISSUE 3 of volume 70 of History Today rather overdoes the social history for me, and it does not help when such articles are written more like propaganda leaflets than objective analysis.
But interesting articles on promoting English saints in Ireland, a crusading history of Acre, how Indian-style shampooing came to Britain, and English stately gardens, certainly compensated for this.

History Today … marching on

History Today February 2020

THIS is the second issue of volume 70 of the popular - but not too-popular - history magazine.
Highlights include articles about slavery among native North Americans before and during the early days of white settlement, the disappearance of democracy in Hitler's Germany, and Anglo-Saxon place names.

History … highs and lows

Lowlights include this selection from a Q&A session with Dan Hicks, "professor of contemporary archaeology" at Oxford University.
What's the most important lesson history has taught you?
That anti-racism is more urgent than class war.
Normans or Anglo-Saxons?
Brummies.
What will future generations judge us most harshly for?
For allowing BP to art-wash their disaster-capitalist project in the 'world culture' galleries of the British Museum.

History Today January 2020

ISSUE 1 of volume 70 of History Today is also the first issue of my new six-for-£12 subscription to the magazine.

I would not say any article stood out for me, but I  at least skimmed though everything, so I got my £2-worth even though signs of political correctness - "With the coming of Christianity, all balance was lost," "[Marie-Antoinette's] initial pleasure-seeking and early attempts at political interference were a kind of 'displacement activity'" - are creeping in again.

History Bargain

I HAVE taken out a six-issue subscription to History Today for the very-hard-to-beat price of £12.
The offer is available at historytoday.com/6for12. It involves committing by direct debit to a follow-on yearly subscription of £54, but this can be cancelled at the appropriate moment.

History Today - September 2019

THE third and final issue of my cheap mini-subscription to History Today proved a very welcome surprise.
I found more-or-less the whole magazine interesting, including features on Himmler's obsession with 'witches', life on the Mississippi, punkahwallahs in British India and a Transylvanian enemy of the Habsburgs.

It's Himm again

It was particularly refreshing to find little of the nanny-ish PC mania that has been prevalent in the magazine recently.

History Today - August 2019

THE August edition (Vol 69 issue 8) of History Today starts off pretty well, if you ignore the twerp at the front who claims "racial divisions" are the "most enduring legacy" of the American Civil War.
Articles on so-called witch marks in limestone caves in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Graham Greene in Havana, thefts of antiquities in Renaissance Italy, military slaves in Islamic states and de Gaulle's righthand man Philippe Leclerc all held my interest.

August's History Today … promising start

But then the right-on brigade gets its turn with reams of space devoted to Peterloo (what a foreigner would think of such detailed coverage beggars belief) and to 18th-century women who did not go to university but were nevertheless scholarly. Perhaps the magazine should be renamed Social History Today.
The final straw, for me, comes at the back with 20 questions to a woman who specialises in "contemporary history," a contradiction in terms to say the least. Asked to name "which history book has had the greatest influence on you," she lists The Handmaid's Tale, The House Of The Spirits and 1984.

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.

History Today

I HAD not read History Today for many years until I recently spotted a copy at WH Smith in a new, eye-catching format.
Having caught my attention, a brief perusal of the contents turned me into a buyer again.
The latest issue, August 2017, has been out for at least a week - I bought it while playing at the Scottish chess championships in Dundee earlier this month.

 

History Today...revised interest

Nearly every article was of interest to me, even if at times there is a tendency to be overly revisionist. The cover, for example, may be clever but the fact is that in any normal usage of the word, it was Columbus who "discovered" indigenous Americans, not the other way around.