Time magazine has picked up my article on the way storms change the course of history -
http://time.com/4540330/storms-that-made-history/
Thursday 27 October 2016
Saturday 22 October 2016
How storms changed the course of history
See my article on History News Network's website - http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164176
Sunday 16 October 2016
The Great Fire of London + 350: when things go wrong, blame foreigners
350 years ago this autumn….more than 80 per cent of the City of London was
destroyed or damaged by the Great Fire of London, so what has that got to do
with Brexit?
Well, the fire started on
September 1 in a bakery making ship’s biscuit for the Royal Navy, but oddly the
man responsible for burning down most of the city did not want to admit it
was his fault.
So instead the authorities arrested
and hanged a French watchmaker from Rouen. Virtually no one in
government believed he was responsible, but it was easier to execute him than to stand up to popular prejudice.
The London mob also attacked other French people as well as citizens of the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Many people with overseas accents were taken into custody for their own protection.
The London mob also attacked other French people as well as citizens of the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Many people with overseas accents were taken into custody for their own protection.
It was a disturbing example of a
recurrent theme in English history: when things go wrong, blame foreigners.
For the full story see London’s Disasters (The History Press).
Labels:
1666,
baker,
biscuit,
Brexit,
EU,
Frenchman,
Great Fire,
hanged,
London,
London's Disasters,
Pudding Lane,
Royal Navy
Saturday 15 October 2016
Brexitwatch: the 8th possibility
On October 9, I tried to work out why Theresa May (or Theresa Mayhem as she is increasingly called) had morphed from (allegedly) anti-Brexit during the referendum campaign to fanatically pro the most extreme form of Brexit just a few weeks later. I offered seven possible explanations - http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/brexitwatch-what-is-theresa-may-up-to.html
An 8th has now occurred to me. Perhaps she is following the orders that Rupert Murdoch gave her during their secretive meeting in New York in September.
*A mention for my book Historia mundial de los desastres (A Disastrous History of the World) in one of Venezuela's leading periodicals - http://www.el-nacional.com/opinion/piedra-catastrofe_0_930507047.html
Friday 14 October 2016
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
Labels:
1066,
battle,
disaster,
Harald Hardrada,
Harold,
Hastings,
military,
Normandy,
Normans,
William the Conqueror
Monday 10 October 2016
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.
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.
Labels:
Alba Longa,
Egypt,
elephant,
Galilee,
god,
hammer,
Indra,
Jonah,
Jupiter,
Maori,
Nature and culture,
New Zealand,
Noah,
plague,
storm,
Tawhirimatea,
Thor,
Zeus
Sunday 9 October 2016
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.
Labels:
Boris Johnson,
Brexit,
David Cameron,
EU,
hard Brexit,
referendum,
single market,
Theresa May,
Tory,
Tory party conference
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