The Battle of Hastings

950 years ago today.....the Battle of  Hastings.

In that hilarious book, 1066 and All That, 1066 was selected as one of the only two ‘memorable’ dates in English history. And rightly so. The Battle of Hastings marked one of its cleanest breaks with an entire Anglo-Saxon ruling class removed to be replaced by Normans imported by William the Conqueror.

And yet the battle itself was a desperately close-run thing. The army of the English king Harold was exhausted and depleted, having had to race up north to defeat another claimant to the throne, Harald Hardrada of Norway, and then race back south again.

Even so, the Norman cavalry could at first make little impact on the Saxon shield-wall, and when William was knocked off his horse, a rumour swept through his army that he was dead, and some leading commanders called for a retreat.

William had to win the battle, while a draw would have been good enough for the English, so there followed a race against time to gain a decisive victory before dusk brought an end to the fighting. For the full story, see Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters, the History Press.

* Here's a short video I made on the battle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtIhODt-Wrc

Storm god = top god

When you think of how terrifying and awesome storms can be, it is not too surprising that in ancient religions the top god was often the storm god whether it was Zeus brandishing his thunderbolt, Thor with his magic hammer, or Indra riding his multi-tusked elephant.

My new book Storm: Nature and Culture features some of the fascinating stories surrounding them - such as of how a wicked giant stole Thor’s hammer and demanded the hand of a princess in marriage as the price of its return. Thor disguised himself as the bride, and managed to escape detection at the wedding ceremony in spite of eating an ox and eight salmon. Then he grabbed the hammer and killed the giant.

The Maoris told of how the sky god made love so endlessly to the earth goddess that their children could never get out of her womb. Eventually one of the young gods managed to prise them apart, but this upset the storm god Tawhirimatea who had been quite happy inside his mother, and now became an unruly presence on land and sea.

Some rulers tried to imitate their storm god – such as a pre-Roman king of Alba Longa in Italy who declared he was more powerful than Jupiter. When it thundered, he ordered his soldiers to bang their shields to drown out the noise. He is said to have been struck dead by lightning.

Storms also play an important role in the Bible. A fearful rainstorm generates Noah’s flood, the mother of all hailstorms is one of the plagues of Egypt, Jonah is swallowed by a great fish after a storm at sea, and Christ calms a tempest on the Sea of Galilee. 

For more, see Storm: Nature and Culture published by Reaktion Books.

Brexitwatch: What is Theresa May up to?

During the EU referendum campaign, British Prime Minister Theresa May claimed to be supporting Remain, though her participation was so discreet as to be almost invisible. And yet just three months later, she is supporting the most extreme and damaging form of so-called ‘hard’ Brexit – rejecting the European single market that buys almost half of the UK’s exports.

Why? There are a number of possible explanations:

1. Ms May is a liar. She was always a supporter of hard Brexit and was just pretending to support Remain because she was afraid that backing Leave would damage her ambition to be Prime Minister.

2. Ms May genuinely supported Remain but has been won over to hard Brexit by arguments advanced by the Brexiters since the referendum. As no credible arguments for hard (or any other sort of) Brexit have been put forward, this seems unlikely.

3. Mrs May, like Boris Johnson, is not much interested in arguments about EU membership. She just wants to be Prime Minister, and will say or do whatever she thinks necessary.

4. Mrs May was afraid the Brexiters might ruin her first Tory Party Conference as PM, so she adopted David Cameron’s approach – cowardice and capitulation. In fact, she still believes in Remain, or at least staying in the single market, and at some convenient point in the future, thinks she will somehow pull the Tories back to this position. Good luck with that one. Look how it worked for Cameron.

5. Mrs May is engaged in a softening up exercise, conjuring up the most disastrous picture of Brexit imaginable, so that when she comes up with something that damages the country a bit less, Remainers will be pathetically grateful and go along with it, instead of continuing to argue that the referendum was (as indeed is the case) advisory and not binding, unfair, won on the basis of a pack of lies, indecisive etc

6. Like Boris Johnson, Mrs May believes Britain can have its cake and eat it, remaining in the single market while ripping up the rest of our agreements with the EU on freedom of movement, EU law etc. This is hard to believe as virtually every important person in the EU has made it clear this is a non-starter, and in spite of (presumably) months of looking, the Brexiters have not found anyone of substance who says the opposite, 

7. Mrs May, like the Brexiters, has not the faintest idea what to do. I am far from sure, but I think this is probably the most likely explanation.

The millionaire who made a fortune out of Brexit

Just watched BBC-2’s Brexit; A Very British Coup. The duplicity of the Brexiters is clear to see.

The Tories, like Gove, Johnson and Fox, are under orders to have nothing to do with what their party supposedly sees as Nigel Farage’s irresponsible and incendiary campaign. But in fact, they are in touch with him the whole time, and when a story starts running that if Boris gets to be PM, he’ll offer the UKIP leader a seat in his cabinet, the blonde bombshell does nothing to deny it.

As for Labour Brexiter Gisela Stuart, she says she considers Farage so loathsome, she will never share a platform with him. But when it becomes clear that his anti-immigrant approach can save the Leave campaign, she, er, shares a platform with him.

Another Brexit campaigner is the hedge fund boss, Crispin Odey. The Leave vote sent the pound plummeting – bad news for the rest of us because it cut the value of our homes, savings, pensions, wages etc by 10 per cent or more. But it was good news for Mr Odey. He made £200 million out of sterling’s collapse. Another example of how Brexit was a blow for the rich elite against ordinary people.

But perhaps the most revealing moment in the programme was when disgraced former defence secretary, now leading Brexiter, Liam Fox was asked what would happen after a Leave vote. It was plain he neither knew nor cared. And doesn’t it show?

Brexit: a lesson from literature

Another book I read on my holidays was Snow by the Turkish Nobel prize winning novelist, Orhan Pamuk. 

Published in 2004, it tells the story of a coup in the city of Kars, mounted by a demagogic but rather past-it actor. Pamuk writes about how local people support him because they believe he will stop immigrants coming in, working for low wages and stealing their jobs.

A lot of folk in Kars are disappointed with life, and different people have different views of the land of milk and honey that will follow the coup. Some think it will end immigration, others that the unlicensed slaughter of animals will be stopped; others still that corrupt politicians and business people will be called to account.

They do not understand that those mounting the coup do not have the slightest interest in these things, and just want to stop political parties they dislike from winning an upcoming election. In the end, the coup fails.

* Fact. Leading Brexiter Boris Johnson used to campaign unsuccessfully for Turkey to be admitted to the EU. Then he discovered he was anti-EU, and started to say it would be a very bad thing for Turkey to be let in, claiming this was about to happen, even though he knew it wasn't.

Brexitwatch: Hinkley Point: 'take control' means lose control cont'd

I forecast a month ago (http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/brexitwatch-take-control-means-lose.html) that post-Brexit, Thresea May would find she had no option but to continue with Hinkley Point in spite of fears about national security and the colossal electricity price it will bring:

'Another foreign-owned enterprise is Hinkley Point nuclear power station. It looks as though Theresa May would dearly love to cancel it because of the eye-watering price for electricity it commits us to paying, but, the Chinese are major investors, and they have made it clear that if it does not go ahead, they will be severely displeased.

As the Brexiters’ ‘plan’ involves us cosying up to people like the Chinese to replace the trading partners in Europe we are turning our back on, it will be interesting to see how much ‘control’ they dare exercise over Hinkley Point.' 

And now that we have spat in the face of our European allies, Ms May did indeed decide we dare not upset the Chinese. Here's the story:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/14746666.Tweaks_are_not_enough_to_convince_doubters_over_Hinkley_Point_C/

* A review of my book Flood: Nature and Culture that I have just found - http://geographical.co.uk/reviews/books/item/310-flood-nature-and-culture-by-john-withington

Tristan da Cunha - the volcano that emptied an island

On holiday, I read Hervé Bazin’s Les bienheureux de la desolation (which appeared in English as Tristan) – his novel about the volcanic eruption on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, in 1961 and its aftermath.

It tells of how a violent eruption of Queen Mary’s Peak at the centre of the island forced the entire population of 264 to flee to the UK.

There was a strong collective spirit on Tristan, with a belief that no one should raise himself up above anyone else, but life was hard, and the British authorities thought that once the islanders experienced the greater comforts of life in England, they would want to stay.

In fact, many rejected what they saw as the materialism and emptiness of modern British life, and when the government held a ballot a couple of years later, the islanders voted 148 to 5 to return. Most of them did.

They adopted some of the new things they had seen in England, but live television did not arrive until 2001, and there is still no mobile phone coverage. Tristan’s population has barely grown, now standing at 266.

Bazin’s book appeared in 1970, and is seen by some as a comment on the misgivings about ‘progress’ which had helped to foment the French riots of 1968.