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This Week’s TV Including Dogs, Evolution of Mammals, Greek Drama, Indian Railways, Roman Britain & the 20th Century

The Wonder of Dogs

The last episode of the dogs series was about dog personalities & dogs as pets. It made the point that although breeds have tendencies towards personality traits each dog is an individual. And that the first few weeks/months of a dog’s life are critical for enabling it to bond with people. They also talked about how it’s not that particular breeds are particularly prone to attacking people, but more the differences in what the dog does if it is badly trained/badly behaved – a labrador will tend to bite hands & arms and to bite & release. That’s much more survivable than the way a pit bull will go for face & neck and bite & hold on. So pit bulls have a reputation for being vicious when the average pit bull isn’t – the badly trained ones cause more problems tho.

They talked about the top 10 breeds kept as pets in the UK, and what about dogs makes them such good pets. Which basically boils down to the fact that we’ve bred them into forming close bonds with their owners. They showed us the classic owner-leaves-the-room experiments where the dog is visibly concerned until their person comes back. There was also demonstration of the fact that dogs generally want to comfort people – a researcher who hadn’t met the dogs before was faking crying, and each dog they tested went over to her to try & lick her face & cheer her up.

It was a good series, although I think it’s a little unfair that dogs got a three part series & cats got a programme & a half on Horizon for a similar thing! 😉

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David Attenborough’s Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates

The second & last part of the recent David Attenborough series about evolution of the vertebrates concentrated on the mammals. As with the first episode I have reservations about the language used – too much of a sense of purpose & direction to what’s a much more random process than was implied. However it was still a neat programme – I liked the mix of CGI and fossils. In particular the shrew-like early mammal skull that they showed turning into a little skeleton walking around on David Attenborough’s fingers. This episode had fewer surprises for me than the previous one – it name checked all the critical mammalian features (fur, warm-blooded, live young, milk) and took in the monotremes & marsupials on the way to placental mammals and eventually apes & humans.

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Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth

The second part of Michael Scott’s series about Greek drama & Greek history talk about how when democracy & Athenian supremacy wobbled drama managed to broaden its appeal & go from strength to strength. One of the changes was the rise to prominence of actors, and the restaging of old plays – when drama first started it was the playwright who was the only named individual involved (in terms of records that come down to us) and the plays performed were the new ones for the festival that year. But over the 4th Century BC there begin to be awards for actors at the festival, and often the old classics are staged after the new plays. And this is really why we have copies of the surviving plays – the old classics were copied out many times, and so managed to survive intact.

Comedy also shifted in form – at the start of the period they were bawdy and pointedly aimed at current personages & situations whilst being nominally about myths. Whereas by the end of the period the bawdiness was toned down (no more strap on phalluses, as Scott put it) and the tone had shifted to being about ordinary people and stock character types. Much closer to modern comedy, in fact. This was part of how drama’s appeal was broadening as Athens and its democracy ceased to be the centre of the Greek world. Drama was becoming entertainment rather than a part of the political process. And that increased popularity across the Greek world meant that when the Macedonians (under first Philip & then Alexander) were taking over much of the known world they also spread theatres and drama throughout the empire.

The next part promises to be about the Romans, and their reaction to/inheritance of Greek drama.

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John Sergeant on Tracks of Empire

This is a two part series about the railways in India. The premise is that John Sergeant travels the length and breadth of India on the train, and talks about the history both of the railroad and of India during and post British Empire. In this episode he travelled from Calcutta west & north-west towards the Pakistan border. Along the way he talked about the railway towns that grew up to house the men who worked on the railway. He met some of the modern day railworkers, who are devoted to the job of keeping the network running – regarding it as a vital service to their country. He also talked about modern disruption to the rail network by violent protests (blowing up bits of track etc) and about past violence. This included visiting a house besieged during the “Indian Mutiny”. He’s more pro-Empire than is currently fashionable, and this segment made me wince a bit because he was playing up the clueless Englishman abroad thing with “but don’t you think the British soldiers were heroic” while talking to a group of Indians who regarded the leader of the siege as the true hero – the start of the fight for independence. And I felt it came across as a bit patronising, particularly in the context of “paternalistic” attitudes from the British Empire back in its heyday.

The programme finished at the India/Pakistan border. He talked to some people who’d lived through the appalling violence after the partition of India post-independence, which was particularly disturbing to watch. And the next & last segment was filmed at the border itself – the two armies in their fancy uniforms prancing around like something out of a Monty Python sketch, while citizens of each country chanted encouragement like they were at a football match. For all it was funny to see, it was sobering too – keeping the tribalism going and the wounds open.

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Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited

The premise of this series is Julian Richards revisiting the finds from some archaeological digs he’d been part of over a decade ago – ones that were filmed as part of a series called Meet the Ancestors. The episodes are interspersing the original footage with new work that’s been done on the finds. The first episode was about two Roman burials dating from the 4th Century AD. He’d been discovered in a lead coffin, and was buried in a way that showed he had (or his family had) pagan beliefs. More recent analysis of his teeth has shown that he was definitely a local man. A survey off all the Roman era bodies that’ve been found in Winchester showed that about 30% of them weren’t local – and who was who didn’t always match the theories that had been based on grave goods. Then, as now, some immigrants assimilated and some families kept their “home” traditions generations after they arrived.

The second burial was of a high status woman found in a lead coffin & stone sarcophagus in Spitalfields, London. We’d actually seen the coffin etc in the London Museum when we visited earlier this year, so kinda neat to see that (and a reminder I’ve not yet sorted out my photos from that trip!). When discovered she’d been thought to be Christian, but more recently it’s been suggested she was a member of a mystery cult possibly dedicated to Bacchus. Very recently analysis of her teeth has shown she grew up in Rome itself – which makes her the first (only?) Rome born Roman to be found buried in Britain. Quite exciting, and Richards was speculating that perhaps she was involved with bringing the cult of Bacchus to Britain.

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A Hundred Years of Us

This series was originally aired in 2011 just after the census, and it’s a retrospective of how life has changed over the last hundred years. The format is Michael Aspell in a studio talking to guests, interspersed with bits of video about various topics. The primary guest in the first episode was Pete Waterman, which I initially rolled my eyes at, but he was actually pretty interesting. They also have a family of four generations, the eldest of which have been on every census back to the 1911 one – and so we got some reminiscences of WWI and the 20s & 30s in this episode. The programme started by talking about the 11 plus – using a pair of twins as examples of how passing or failing could change your life. There was also a segment about food and how that’s changed – in particular the influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and our national love affair with curry. Somebody (Phil Tufnell? who wikipedia tells me is a cricketer) went down a mine to see how coal mining was done in the early 20th Century – backbreaking labour, and the 75 year old man who had worked in mining since he was 13 was not impressed by the ability of this “young” man 😉 Oh, and a bit about tea, and how we love to drink it.

It’s a pretty fluffy programme but it is entertaining, we’re going to finish watching the series.

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In Our Time: The Mamluks

The Mamluks were a slave army that went on to rule Egypt (and Egypt’s empire) for around 300 years between the mid 13th Century & the early 16th Century AD. Although we call it a dynasty the position of sultan was generally not hereditary during this period, and before one could be a sultan one needed to have been a slave. The three experts who discussed it on In Our Time were Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge), Robert Irwin (SOAS, University of London) and Doris Behrens-Abouseif (SOAS, University of London).

The Mamluk army was founded under the Ayyubid Dynasty, and soldiers were “recruited” i.e. bought as boys from Kipchak Turks who lived on the steppes, or from Circassians from the Caucasus. These peoples fought as a horse archers, and this was the skill they were purchased for. Once enslaved they were brought to Egypt where they were given a good education, and they were instructed in & converted to Islam. Bennison was keen to stress that this slavery was different to the US model that we are more familiar with – the Mamluks had high status, even as slaves, and in later times in particular were often freed once their education was finished.

When the last of the Ayyubid Sultans died, and his heir shortly after, his widow ruled in her own name for a while. She allied herself with the Mamluks, and subsequently married one of the Mamluk generals who became Sultan in her place. The experts were saying that the Mamluks used this to legitimise their rule – a sense of continuity with the old dynasty. They also did this by reinstating the Caliphate – the last Caliph had died in Baghdad when the Mongols sacked the city & when a relative of his turned up the Mamluk Sultans installed him as Caliph in Egypt. He was a figurehead, but one that meant they were seen as the legitimate Islamic rulers of Egypt & the surrounding area.

Even after they took power the Mamluks were “recruited” in the same way, from the same places. They were mostly a meritocracy – at the end of their education the best & brightest became Emirs and other members of the elite (not just leading the army but leading the country). The position of Sultan was also filled from the Mamluk ranks, and the experts said it was generally not hereditary although sometimes sons did succeed fathers. There was also a lot of assassination as a means of succession – which apparently was also the way in their original cultures, if you killed the King you were fit to be the King. I thought it was fascinating that for so long the Egyptians & surrounding areas were ruled by outsiders.

The “Sons of Mamluks” were generally born to Egyptian mothers, and the experts said they didn’t often enter the army. Instead they were privileged & pampered, and well educated – they tended to serve the country as the civilian bureaucracy. And these men are why the Mamluk era is so well documented by contemporaries – they wrote biographies & histories of their nation.

During the Mamluk era the borders of their empire were fairly static, they had no expansionist goals. They worked to oust the Christians from Syria, and even fought off the Mongols. Perhaps a bit of luck involved in the timing of that latter, as the leader of the Mongol army threatening them was actually back in Mongolia at the time to elect the new Great Khan. But another important factor was that for the first time the Mongols were facing an enemy who fought using their own tactics. Their rule didn’t crumble or collapse towards then end, instead they were conquered in one fell swoop by the Ottoman Empire who took advantage of the distraction of part of the Mamluk army by the Portuguese presence in the Red Sea.

The Mamluk era was generally peaceful & stable, and the experts said that the primary legacies of the Mamluks are in literature (including new poetic forms) and architecture. A lot of the classic buildings of Old Cairo were built by the Mamluk Sultans or their Emirs, and they were responsible for a lot of the infrastructure as well.

King’s College, Cambridge

A few weeks ago when we went to the Fish gig (post) we spent a little bit of time in Cambridge beforehand. The original plan had been to go to the Fitzwilliam Museum, but it’s shut on Mondays so we decided to visit King’s College Chapel – first time we’d been, which seems faintly ludicrous given we actually lived in Cambridge for a while!

I didn’t have my big camera with me (coz we were going to a gig) but we did have the Lumix so got a decent number of pics 🙂 J took some of them – like the one above obviously – but I don’t think we can remember who had the camera when. This post is mostly going to be pictures – click through to flickr for bigger versions (and the whole set, not all are in this post).

The chapel was started by Henry VI – for all his failures as a King (and his mental illness) he was a deeply pious man, and his plan for the chapel was a monument to the glory of God. In his time it only got as far as the foundations & a few feet of wall. The chapel was finished off by Henry VII & Henry VIII, and is far more a monument to the glory of the Tudors than God 😉

It’s not just Tudor though, there have been additions since. I did think some of the more modern bits & pieces looked a little incongruous though – like the lights at the side near the altar. And I thought the altar looked a little sparse after the over-the-top decoration of the rest of the chapel.

(That sign is modified to say “no flash photography” I wasn’t being a dreadful person & taking photos where I wasn’t allowed, despite how it looks!)

Outside we got to walk around a little of the grounds of the college – firmly kept away from the insides of the rest though. It’s a lovely setting – sightly unbelievable that this is right in the middle of Cambridge, the views across the river look like there’s nothing else around.

So finally seen more than just the college bar at King’s! 🙂

This Week’s TV Including Dogs, Shakespeare, Evolutionary Vertebrates, Greek Drama & Jewish History

The Wonder of Dogs

More about dogs – this episode concentrated on their senses & intelligence. This included demonstrations of how good their hearing, smell & eyesight is (in particular that a dog’s field of view is much wider than a human’s). They also talked about the sorts of behaviours that dogs have been bred for – using gun dogs as the primary example. The desired behaviour has changed over time, as gun tech & hunting styles changed. So at first it was pointers (who found and pointed to the game) then spaniels (to bounce around and flush the game out) and finally retrievers like labradors (to bring the game back to the hunter). And they demonstrated how training is needed as well as the innate behaviour using one of Kate Humble’s dogs – who is a herding breed, but who wasn’t a very useful sheepdog after only one lesson (although very enthusiastic).

They also had a bit on how intelligent dogs are, including a German group who are studying dog intelligence by getting them to push pictures to get treats. They’re offered a choice of a dog picture & a landscape picture each time, and they learn that dog pictures get treats. Which is quite an abstract level of thought – it’s not one dog v. one landscape, it’s a variety of pictures of a variety of scenes & dogs. I wanted to know if dogs could tell the difference between, say, cats & dogs for getting treats.

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Shakespeare in Italy

This is a two part series about Shakespeare’s connections with Italy that we’ve had on the PVR for ages. It’s languished there in part because I find the presenter, Francesco da Mosto, irritating (irrational on my part, I’m sure, his style just sets my teeth on edge). But despite that it was still interesting enough to watch the second part.

This episode was about Shakespeare using Italian places (and stories) to tell stories about love. The plays he talked about were Taming of the Shrew (marriage for money not love), Romeo & Juliet (obviously, tragic love), Much Ado About Nothing (rom com) and Othello (love turned to jealousy). Along the way he visited various places mentioned in the plays, and talked about the Italian stories they were based on. He also discussed how Shakespeare might’ve visited Italy – there’s no record of him doing so but there’s also 7 years where he’s missing from any records. So perhaps. Of note, tho, is that the British Museum Shakespeare exhibition that we went to last year (post) was sure that Shakespeare didn’t visit Italy but instead talked to people who had. And there was also a somewhat nutty theory put forward by a town in Sicily that Shakespeare was actually Sicilian – some playwright or poet whose name translates to Shake Spear who goes to London. I’m not sure if or how they tried to reconcile this with the Shakespeare who exists in records prior to this Italian’s arrival …

The second part was looking at how Shakespeare set plays in Italy to give himself a layer of plausible deniability when writing about politically sensitive subjects. So he talked about The Merchant of Venice as being (among other things) about law & the rule of law. And Julius Caesar, set not just in Rome but in long ago Rome, is a commentary on tyrants and if it’s ever justified to assassinate them – a particularly touchy subject at the time, as there were many assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth and the England of the time was very repressive. Italy was also the country of the future – da Mosto made much of how the Renaissance was in full swing in Italy but England was lagging behind. Anthony & Cleopatra was an example of a play where Shakespeare was exploring new ideas to come out of Italy – in this case how a ruler should act and da Mosto said it owed much to Machiavelli. The final play he talked about was The Tempest – based in part on a well known alchemist or sorcerer in Naples at around that time. Again a touchy subject – James I was paranoid about witchcraft – but it was also the way of the future (in that alchemy leads to science in a while).

I’m a bit conflicted about this series – it was an interesting subject, but I still found the presenter irritating.

David Attenborough’s Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates

This is a new two part David Attenborough series, all about the evolution of vertebrates. The first part, From the Seas to the Skies, covered the first vertebrates and the major developments leading to the evolution of fish, amphibians, reptiles (including dinosaurs) & birds. It was a rather good mix of fossils, modern animals and cgi reconstructions of ancient animals. I was particularly fond of the tiktaalik taking it’s first waddly steps across the land. The gliding feathered dinosaurs were also neat. I don’t think I learnt anything new in terms of concepts or the overall story, but there were several new details – like the tiktaalik as the first animal to get onto land (I’m sure I learnt about lungfish escaping predators in the past), or the Chinese fossil beds that pre-date the Burgess Shale ones that I knew about (and contain the first known chordate, ancestor of modern vertebrates).

If I’ve got one quibble is that the language used emphasises progress too much. I’m probably over-sensitive to this, tho. But I do think it’s important that there’s no inevitability about the evolution of any species or group, and that there’s no progress – modern lampreys aren’t “primitive” for instance, they’re well suited to the places they live. Lacking most of the features we think of as common to the vertebrates (like jaws, fins or limbs) doesn’t make them worse it just makes them different. But it’s very hard to avoid because when talking about these things it’s easiest and clearest to tell a story, which leads to language that implies progression and purpose. So in this programme Attenborough talks about problems needing to be solved before vertebrates could move onto the land. Which makes me wince because there wasn’t any working towards a goal involved.

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Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth

This is a recent series from Michael Scott, about the development of drama & theatre in Ancient Greece. The first episode looked at how the development of drama as an artform is intertwined with the development of democracy. Both have their roots in Athens, in the 5th & 6th Centuries BC and at the smaller local level debates & plays would even happen in the same assembly spaces. Greeks had three sorts of plays, two of which we still have. These were tragedy, comedy & satyr plays – the last were bawdy, farcical plays which were used as a sort of palate cleanser after a cycle of tragedies. Tragedies in a modern sense are stories with a sad ending, but Scott said Greek ones were more about posing questions about situations. One of the experts he spoke to characterised tragedies as setting up problems caused by bad luck or bad decisions, and suggesting how they might be dealt with while getting the audience to think about what would they do in this or similar situations. Plays were often based on myths, but the stories told were topical and relevant to recent politics domestically & abroad. And the audience for the plays would be the same men who would then vote on how Athens was run & how it reacted to events. Scott was saying that this close link between the subjects of plays and the real life decisions that were being made meant that plays can be seen as educating the Athenians about democracy and as a part of how democracy evolved. Comedies were also important in this process – they weren’t just funny stories, they were generally pointedly aimed at particular political figures. Who would be right there watching thinly veiled versions of themselves be publicly mocked. Scott said this was part of how the boundaries on what was & wasn’t appropriate behaviour were enforced.

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The Story of the Jews

The last episode of Simon Schama’s series about Jewish history looked at the formation & history of the modern state of Israel. He started with the Holocaust and the plight of the Jewish refugees during & after that horror. He talked about how even those fighting against Germany in the war were not willing to do much for the Jews – lots of sympathetic noises not much if any actual support. And how this led to more Zionism in the Jewish population – if no-one else will aid you or want you, then you are even more in need of a homeland of your own. And then Schama moved back to trace the steps towards the formation of the modern Israel – starting with the Zionist movement in the early 20th Century getting the British Empire on board with granting the Jews a homeland within Palestine. Apparently in the early days post WWI there were even some glimmers of hope that a future Israel and the existing Arab nations might co-exist in some form of peace. Sadly, as we now know, this was not to be – the influx of Jews post-WWII being a contributing factor, with the British Empire’s poor handling of the situation pre & post war also being important. (Promising the same real estate to two groups of people as “their own nation” isn’t ever going to end well …). Schama then discussed the history of Israel since independence, and how over time (and after two wars, more persecution of Jews in Arab nations & violence and terrorist attacks on Israelis in Israel) the politics & sentiment inside Israel has calcified into hatred & mistrust of Arabs. Schama talked to someone involved in the Settler movement, who was disturbing in his starry-eyed rhetoric about how the Jews were entitled to the land up to the biblical borders by God given right. And Schama visited the wall built to keep the Palestinians out of Israel, or at least only allow them through under strict observation.

I found this series thought provoking & well worth watching, although frequently grimly depressing. As well as the subject matter itself it was an interesting reminder that so much of the stuff we watch is from our own perspective – this very much wasn’t, it was Simon Schama’s take on Jewish history from the perspective of a member of the culture whose history it was.

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This Week’s TV Including Anglo-Saxons, Jewish History, Dogs & the A303

King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons

The last episode of Michael Wood’s series about King Alfred & his descendants was about Æthelstan. He was the only of King Alfred’s grandsons to be born while Alfred was still alive, and was the son of Edward who was King of Wessex after Alfred. Yet his ascension to the throne was still controversial. Edward had 14 children, by three different women – two of whom were crowned Queen (consecutively, I imagine, but Wood didn’t say). Æthelstan’s mother wasn’t one of these more important wives, and so Edward’s designated heir was one of his younger sons. However Æthelstan believed himself to’ve been chosen by Alfred (having met the man, and been “knighted” by him). He was brought up in Mercia by his aunt Æthelflæd, the Lady of Mercia, and after Edward’s death he lost no time in taking control of first Mercia and then Wessex. He was crowned in Kingston on the border of the two countries. He didn’t stop there, either – he was the first King of all the English, fulfilling Alfred’s dream. He claimed overlordship of the King of Scotland and the Kings of the Welsh too, although that may’ve looked different from the perspective of those countries than it was represented by Æthelstan in his charters etc 😉 He was a King in his grandfather’s mould – both warrior & learned. He too looked to Rome for a certain degree of legitimacy, and was well read in religious texts. He had no children, Wood suggested that this might’ve been as the result of negotiation with one of his brothers – that Æthelstan would rule, but his brother’s children would inherit.

I enjoyed this series 🙂 One thing I particularly liked which I’ve not mentioned so far is that there was a lot of reading from the original texts in Anglo-Saxon (with subtitles, obviously). I like the way the language sounds, alien yet just on the edge of familiarity.

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The Story of the Jews

In this episode of Simon Schama’s Story of the Jews he discussed the Jews of Eastern Europe & their impact on the world. Schama’s mother’s family were Lithuanian Jews so this was personal history for him. A lot of Jews had moved to Poland during the period where that kingdom was one of the more tolerant places on the continent. After Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Austria & Russia at the end of the 18th Century it became less welcoming to Jews, but many still lived there (of course) – mostly restricted to an area known as the Pale of Settlement. Schama described how finding joy in the harsh environment of the Pale lead to the development of Hasidic Judaism – an ecstatic & less rigid form of the religion than more orthodox traditions.

The harsh conditions, and increasing pogroms, lead to many Jews emigrating from the Pale to the USA – seen by many as a promised land where they could be people rather than outsiders. There they had a large impact on US culture. Schama talked about the lower East Side of New York where many of these emigrants lived, and he talked about the many song-writers who came from that area and wrote some of the memorable songs of early 20th Century US music. Names like Gershwin and Harburg, songs like “Over the Rainbow”, and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”.

The programme was bookended by the Holocaust, so despite the moments of beauty & joy in the middle it was still a sobering piece of viewing.

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The Wonder of Dogs

Having finished off several series recently we started up a new one. When I’d spotted The Wonder of Dogs in the listings we’d not been quite sure about it, so we started watching it soon after recording so that we could cancel it if we wanted to. No need to worry tho, this first episode was entertaining & interesting. In the series Kate Humble, Steve Leonard & Ruth Goodman are talking about all things canine – they are based in a village in England and are using the dogs of the village to illustrate many different aspects of canine biology & history, and also talking to various experts. So in this programme they were mostly looking at the astonishing variety of dogs.. Goodman looked at the history of a few of the different breeds – like chihuahuas, greyhounds and bulldogs. Up until Victorian times dog breeds weren’t really formalised, there were different sorts of dogs for different sorts of jobs (or fashion accessories) but there weren’t defined types. They also looked at the underlying biology of the dog – how the bone structure is always the same, just different in scale or precise configuration. Humble talked to an genetic expert who said that all the variety in modern dogs is down to just 50 or so genes, and that the rest of the dog genome is the same as their wild grey wolf ancestors. Quite a lot of “look at the cute dog” to the programme, but some interesting facts in there too 🙂

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A303: Highway to the Sun

This programme was a one-off that we’ve had sitting on the PVR for months & months and never quite got round to watching. I’m not sure it was quite what I was expecting, but this was rather fun 🙂 Tom Fort (who I’d not heard of before) drove a Morris Minor Traveller along the A303 from start to end, stopping at places with historical significance and covering approximately 5000 years of the history of England. So we had the Amesbury Man for prehistoric stuff as well as Stonehenge, we had some stuff about the Romans where the road runs along the old Roman road, we had some stuff about Alfred (someone’s 18th Century folly on the site of a battle of Alfred’s), and more modern stuff like toll roads and even the many many attempts to shift the position of the A303 away from Stonehenge (which have all failed so far). Fort also met a variety of interesting people … including a man who uses the A303 as the perfect place to collect roadkill for his dinner.

Fun, and worth watching 🙂

In Our Time: Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a 17th Century Frenchman who was a scientist, mathematician & philosopher. Several of his ideas are still recognised today – either still in use (for instance some of his mathematical work) or recognised by the naming of modern things (like the programming language Pascal). Discussing him on In Our Time were David Wootton (University of York), Michael Moriarty (University of Cambridge) & Michela Massimi (University of Edinburgh).

Pascal was born in 1623, and died in 1662 age 39. David Wootton gave us some context for the France of the time which he called essentially the time of the Three Musketeers – so Richelieu is in charge in France, the country is allying with Protestants in the Thirty Years War but in terms of internal politics there is a big crackdown on Protestantism. In the wider world Galileo is active at this time – which took me by surprise as I think of Pascal as nearly-modern but Galileo as end-of-medieval and clearly that’s not a sensible distinction! Descartes is also still alive when Pascal is born.

Pascal was educated at home, his father had planned that the boy should be told about various subjects young but then not study them until later when he was ready for them. But the young Pascal had other ideas – for instance figuring out Euclidean geometry himself once he’d been told about it, rather than waiting till he was taught the subject. One of the people on the programme (I forget which one) said that Pascal was Mozart type levels of genius – just in maths, science & philosophy rather than music. One of Pascal’s first notable works was inventing a mechanical calculator while he was still in his teens – he did this to save his father time (his father was a banker and thus had lots of adding up to do).

Pascal’s work in physics was on one of the big questions of the day – could there be such a things as a vacuum or not. Aristotelian ideas said no, but an actual experiment suggested yes. Pascal repeated the experiment – taking a tube filled with mercury & closed at one end, then inverting it in a basin of mercury. The level of the mercury in the tube drops and a space opens up at the top of the tube, there’s nothing this space can be full of, so it must be a vacuum. Pascal also took these experiments further – looking at different liquids (like water), and testing the effects on the height of the mercury at different heights above sea level. He was one of the first to demonstrate that air had pressure, and that this pressure varied with altitude.

Pascal also had an influence on the future of science & the scientific method. He hadn’t been brought up reading Aristotle as the “answer” to all the questions about the natural world, and he didn’t believe that you required a metaphysical starting point to answer a physical question. So he said that in science there was no appeal to authority, nor was there Truth, just that you looked at the facts as they were and explained them as best you could. Then when more facts were known you might have to change your mind – you’d not have Truth, just have got as close as you could under the circumstances. One of the experts said that Pascal was one of the first people to actually demonstrate this way of having scientific progress – other writers before him had talked about how you could progress in science but he actually did it.

Pascal was also interested in mathematics & he corresponded with Fermat. One of his theorems to do with the geometry of conic sections is still used by mathematicians today. Pascal’s triangle was mentioned briefly on the programme as another example of his mathematical legacy. He was particularly interested in probability, and would work on gambling problems for French aristocrats he knew. He & Fermat worked on a particular problem to do with what the pay out should be for a game of Points that is interrupted before the end. In Points a coin is flipped multiple times, each time it’s heads player A gets a point, each time it’s tails player B does. First player to 10 points wins the pot. How the pot should be split if it’s terminated early depends on what the probabilities of each player winning from the state it’s in (rather than just splitting it according to how many points so far). Pascal & Fermat’s work has had far reaching implications in a lot of the business world, not just in gambling or the specific problem – like insurance for instance.

Later in life (if you can call it that for someone who dies so young) after some sort of intense religious experience Pascal turned away from science & towards religion & religious philosophy. Here he believed strongly in appeal to authority – he built on the work of earlier philosophers who said that human reason is too weak to comprehend the Truth of the world in a metaphysical sense. And so in contrast to his scientific ideas Pascal felt that religious Truth is revealed and is unchanging. Pascal had become a member of the Jasenists, a Catholic sect that built on the ideas of Augustine in the same sort of way that Protestants did – in particular believing that people cannot come to a state of grace through their own efforts, they must be chosen by God to receive God’s Grace and so only the chosen are saved. Mainstream Catholicism of the day believed that by doing good and repenting sin you could come closer to being saved, and so the Jesuits regarded the Jansenists as heretics just as much as Protestants were. One of Pascal’s later works was written to argue that the Jesuits & mainstream Catholicism were wrong, and it was partly arguing based on appealing to the authority of Augustine and saying that the Jesuits were diluting the true Christian morality to make it more palatable to the masses. This work is credited by some later Catholics as having damaged the reputation of the Jesuits enough to have been a contributing factor in their suppression in the late 18th Century.

Pascal’s Wager is one of his philosophical ideas that is still remembered today. Massimi pointed out that it was never intended to convert an atheist, but was aimed at sceptical Christians. In it Pascal says that given there are two states – either there is a God or there isn’t – then there two ways to wager: either bet for God or bet against God. Given this, how should you bet to maximise the chance of a good outcome? If you bet against God and you are wrong, then you will suffer eternal damnation after death, so the best thing to do is to avoid that – bet for God and even if you’re wrong you’ll suffer no consequences. This doesn’t work if you believe there is no God, you need to have doubt about that. It also doesn’t say anything about whether or not Christianity is the Truth – Massimi pointed out that one objection to Pascal’s Wager is that the same argument can be made for any religion. And if you enjoy this world’s pleasures then there is also a down side to betting for God, making it a less obvious choice (definitely no pleasure now as vs. possibly no pleasure later, a more complex situation to weigh up) – which was not a problem that Pascal had. He said once that life was like being chained in a dungeon in the dark, and every so often the guards come in and strangle someone. Cheerful fellow …!

In the summing up section of the programme they discussed how Pascal’s legacy lives on in science & mathematics but is most influential in religious thought. The three experts credited him with laying the foundations of modern Christianity – in that faith & religion now are seen as something that you choose to believe in without needing a rational argument. And that is a very Pascalian way to see it.

This Week’s TV including Cute Fluffy Animals, Roman Women, an Anglo Saxon Queen and Jewish History

The Burrowers: Animals Underground

The second episode of The Burrowers continued with the three main species they were looking at in the artifical burrows – with a main theme of “leaving the nest for the first time”. The rabbit babies had their first trip outside, the water voles got over their dislike of each other & had some babies who then visited the outside, and the badger orphans bonded into a group and took their first trip out.

As well as this they showed us what an actual wild rabbit burrow looks like – by pouring concrete down an abandoned one and then excavating it (which presumably actually happened before they built their artificial one). And Packham also told us about moles. I hadn’t previously realised that moles keep larders of zombie worms. When they catch a worm first they squeeze the dirt out, then they bite the head off and in the process they inject it with their venomous saliva which paralyses the worm. And then they put the still living, paralysed, headless worm in a larder where it stays fresh until they want a meal. o.O

The third episode was set in summer and was mostly wrapping up & talking about what the future holds for the various creatures. The rabbits by this stage had had three litters each – as soon as the female finished giving birth each time the dominant male mated with her. Thus ensuring that all the baby rabbits came out of the nest in waves (presumably there’s some initial way they set up the synchronisation for the first litter) to overwhelm the predators. Only one in ten rabbits normally survives to the age of 1 due to predation, which frankly is just as well given 10 rabbits turned into over 50 in just a few months. They didn’t say on the programme, but that behaviour also means non-dominant males don’t get much of a window of opportunity to impregnate the females. Most of these rabbits were apparently going back to the breeders, but some were staying for future study.

The water voles managed to have another litter as well – almost despite themselves as the breeding pair still didn’t seem to get along peacefully. They’re all being released into the wild in Scotland somewhere as part of a regeneration programme. And the badgers are also being released into the wild. They actually moved out of the pre-prepared sett and started digging their own in their enclosure. The researchers had been testing their response to badger calls by playing sounds in their sett, and they’d provided extra bedding while the badgers were away. So I reckon the badgers moved out coz they thought the old sett was haunted 😉 Noises in the darkness where there were no badgers, randomly appearing plants in rooms you didn’t leave anything in … who’d want to live somewhere like that? 😉

A fun series, although to be honest not much of note beyond “aww, look at the cute fluffy animals”.

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Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome

The last episode of Catharine Edward’s series about powerful Roman women covered more ground & more women than the first two. The themes linking them together (other than “these are the rest of them”) were that these women were generally outsiders to the aristocratic Roman culture that the women of the first two episodes came from, and they mostly wielded their power more overtly. Edwards started by telling us about Caenis, who had been a slave to a member of the Imperial family (Antonia, mother of Claudius). Caenis had had an affair with Vespasian long before he was Emperor (and when she was still a slave). She was given her freedom, and after Vespasian’s wife died the two resumed their relationship – however her low social status meant that he could not marry her. Once he became Emperor she continued to live as his wife in all but name, and exerted quite a lot of influence over him including some degree of control over access to him. Next up was Berenice who provides an object lesson in how Roman Emperors weren’t as all powerful as they might hope. The Emperor Titus (son of Vespasian) had formed a relationship with the Jewish Queen, Berenice, while he father was still alive. Once he became Emperor he was forced to bow to public pressure & to set her aside – she was too old (i.e. past child-bearing age) and too foreign.

The next three women were all foreigners, and all related. The wife of the Emperor Septimus Severus was a Syrian woman called Julia Domna. She wielded power alongside her husband much more openly than previous Empresses, and was popular & respected when doing so. After Septimus’s death their son’s inherited jointly, which ended badly as one might imagine. Despite never forgiving her older son for murdering his younger brother she still helped to run the empire, and was grief-stricken at his death (although mostly because she wouldn’t have power any more after that). The next two Emperors were both put on the throne by female relatives of Julia Domna. Sadly the first of these teenage boys was utterly useless as Emperor, and despite the best efforts of his mother Julia Soaemias to rule through him he was overthrown by his aunt Julia Avita and her son Alexander. Alexander might’ve made it as a decent Emperor, but his mother forgot the cardinal rule of keeping the army onside and got stingy with their pay – with the obvious result.

Last of the powerful Roman women was Helena, who can’t really be missed out – mother of Constantine and discoverer of the True Cross (amongst other pious things). Edwards credited her as a major influence on Constantine’s move towards Christianity, and of his changing imperial policy to make the Empire Christian.

A good series, Edwards managed to make it both informative & fun. We did at times wonder how the Roman Empire had got anything done or lasted as long as it did – so many of the Emperors seemed useless or overly concerned with their own debaucheries at the expense of the Empire.

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King Alfred & the Anglo-Saxons

The second episode of Michael Wood’s series about the Anglo-Saxons was mostly about Æthelflæd, the daughter of Alfred the Great. Alfred was succeeded by his son Edward in Wessex, and his daughter Æthelflæd was married to the King of the Mercians. The main political crisis of the time was caused by Alfred naming Edward his heir. Alfred had succeeded his elder brother and re-taken Wessex from the Viking’s who’d killed his brother. His nephew Æthelwold had in many ways a better claim to the throne than Edward, but was cut out of the succession by Alfred. So once Alfred died Æthelwold rose up in rebellion, with the help of the Vikings who still ruled East Anglia & Northumbria. He was eventually beaten back by an alliance of Wessex & Mercia led by Edward & Æthelflæd.

Æthelflæd is known as the Lady of the Mercians, and after her husband’s death she ruled on her own. Unusually for the time there is documentary evidence for her power & rule – the “official” record of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle doesn’t refer to her much, but there is a chronicle written detailing the same events from her perspective (in the sense of she’s the main figure of the chronicle not in the sense of a first person account). She is recorded as acting as a King – she leads armies, she plans military campaigns, she acts as a diplomat. Wood tells us that without Æthelflæd & her leadership of Mercia there would not have been England as we know it. Æthelflæd was even succeeded by her daughter, the only time this has happened in English history, but she was removed from power by her uncle (King Edward of Wessex) and he ruled Mercia as King of the Anglo-Saxons.

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The Story of the Jews

The third episode of Simon Schama’s series The Story of the Jews covered the promise of integration of the early Englightenment, and the subsequent dashing of those hopes with the rise of a particularly anti-Semitic form of nationalism. At the start of the Enlightenment a spirit of toleration was growing – that put forward the idea that a Jew could be a person who just happened to follow the Judaic religion and should be treated like any other person. Many Jewish families in Germany & France began to integrate into the culture of the country they lived in, becoming members of society & even notable members of high society. Moses Mendelssohn was one of the first examples of this. Although some of his descendants (like Felix Mendelssohn the composer) were baptised, other families like the Beer family remained true to their Jewish religion & heritage. One of the prominent members of the Beer family was Giacomo Meyerbeer (who started life in Berlin as Jacob Beer, changing his name when he moved to Italy) who was a very popular composer of operas in Paris. He was an early patron of Wagner’s – encouraging him and providing him with opportunities to stage his own operas. Schama had other examples, including banking families & others – the common thread was that they generally thought of themselves as German or French or whatever people who happened to be Jewish, rather than Jews who happened to be living in whatever country it might be.

Sadly this promising mood of integration & an end to prejudice against the Jews didn’t last. Wagner as mentioned above might’ve had a Jewish patron initially, but he published anti-Semitic rants against Meyerbeer late. He took the stance that “true art” had much to do with nationalism and roots in a country and that Jews by definition could not be a part of that and so could not produce any real art – which frankly is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start to shake one’s head at it. This nationalistic stance was common in the late 19th Century, and incidents like the disgrace of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew in the French Army, for allegedly passing state secrets to the Germans hardened this anti-Semitism. The propaganda was that Jews could only be loyal to each other first, and their “adopted” countries second … along with the usual collection of prejudices dating back medieval times. And the rising anti-Semitism lead to a change in Jewish attitudes too and the rise of Zionism. Instead of integration into other countries & cultures many Jews now wanted their own country where they were already the culture.

The programme ended where one would expect – with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, as the extreme towards which that anti-Semitic strain of nationalism was tending. A sombre end to a period which had begun with such hope.

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This Week’s TV Including Romans, the Indian Ocean, Jewish History and Cute Fluffy Animals

Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome

Catharine Edwards presents this series about the women with power in the Roman Empire. While there was no woman who was an Empress in her own right there were still women who helped to shape the politics of the empire. In the first episode Edwards’s focus was on Livia who was the wife of the first Emperor, Augustus. Her public role was as the epitome of the perfect Roman matron – she was submissive & demure, and attended to the domestic sphere rather than the political (spinning & weaving for instance). Augustus used this public persona of Livia’s to his advantage – first to contrast her with Cleopatra. And also to help his personification of his rule as back to basics & himself as just the first amongst equals. Behind the scenes Livia wielded more power & there are references to her influencing the outcomes of trials, and pulling strings to get things done. After Augustus’s death she was given the title Augusta & made the high priestess of his cult, and she started to wield power somewhat more overtly (which her son Tiberius who was now Emperor wasn’t so keen on).

During the programme Edwards also told us about Julia, the daughter of Augustus and Julia’s daughter Agrippina. Both of these women misjudged their way in the balance between power & appearances. Julia behaved scandalously – although her children were all presumed to be her husband’s this was because she’d made sure to only take lovers while she was pregnant. But the scandals were to be her downfall, she didn’t fit in with the image of the imperial family that Augustus wanted to portray, and she ended up exiled for her behaviour. Agrippina was married to one of Livia’s descendants and was the mother of Caligula. After her husband’s death in suspicious circumstances, which she blamed on Livia & Tiberius, Agrippina returned to Rome to fight for justice & for her family’s right to the throne. She too ended her days in exile.

The second episode covered Agrippina the Younger & Messalina. This Agrippina holds the distinction of having been sister of one Emperor (Caligula), wife of the next (Claudius) and mother of the one after (Nero). Messalina was the wife of Claudius when he became Emperor & she and Agrippina were bitter rivals during Messalina’s lifetime. Edwards spent some time discussing Messalina’s ruthlessness in getting rid of rivals (including Agrippina’s sister), and also Messalina’s bad reputation. She’s been immortalised in history as a nyphomanic, but Edwards pointed out that this sort of gossip was a way of attacking the power of the Emperor – if he can’t even control his wife, how can he rule the Empire? Of symbolically castrating him. So the reputation is probably undeserved. However, it was sexual misconduct that brought about her downfall – she is said to’ve undergone some sort of a marriage ceremony with a lover in front of witnesses & “spent the night with him as man & wife”. When Claudius heard of this she hoped to be able to talk her way out of it, but some of Claudius’s loyal freemen had her executed before she could do so.

After Messalina’s death Claudius married Agrippina – she engineered this, but it made sound political sense as she was a direct descendent of Augustus (unlike Claudius who was descended from Livia). But he was also her uncle, which made it an illegal marriage so it needed special dispensation from the Senate. Agrippina pulled strings to get this to happen. After her marriage she was pretty much an equal partner in the government of the Empire, and publicly visible as such – which the various later Roman historians like Suetonius and Tacitus did Not Approve of. She took care to organise things so that her son Nero would become Emperor next, rather than Claudius & Messalina’s son. This included having Nero adopted by Claudius, and by having Nero marry Claudius’s daughter. So the woman Nero was married to was a) his wife, b) his step-sister, c) his adoptive sister and d) his first cousin once removed. Which seems a few more relationships than are really necessary 😉 And he didn’t like her, either. Once Claudius died (conveniently timed for Agrippina, and probably at her orders) Agrippina attempted to continue to rule as the dominant partner with Nero as the junior. Edwards pointed out the Agrippina wasn’t one to compromise or persuade, and Nero as a teenager who was being taunted about being under his mother’s thumb did not appreciate her “help”. Eventually he had Agrippina murdered.

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The Burrowers: Animals Underground

This series presented by Chris Packham is looking at the underground life of three burrowing British mammals. The first episode introduced us to the animals – rabbits, water voles & badgers – and showed us how the team have built burrows for each species that have cutaway sections where the researchers & cameras can see the animals. So far the rabbits moved in and started breeding like rabbits. The pair of water voles seemed less keen on each other, separating to opposite sides of the burrow, but at the end of the programme we were show indications they may’ve bred after all. And the badgers are all orphan cubs, which are bonding to form a social group – the drama here is that the last addition might or might not integrate (and won’t survive if she doesn’t).

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Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve

The last instalment of how we’re screwing up the planet, Indian Ocean edition, covered Indonesia to Australia. Along the way Simon Reeve visited an area of Indonesia where they’re enforcing strict Sharia law, including arresting teenagers who are incautious enough to make public displays of affection. He also visited a team who study slow lorises, which are really very cute and very endangered. The team don’t just study them in the wild they also rehabilitate animals that’ve been sold as pets and subsequently confiscated from their owners – they are generally mutilated before sale, their teeth are removed because their bite is poisonous. Reeve managed to surreptitiously film in a pet market in a nearby city where there were slow lorises openly for sale, along with other endangered species, all kept in poor conditions.

Once in Australia Reeve started by visiting a fish farm & the helping to catch a salt water crocodile. These are very dangerous animals, and so if they start harassing an area where people live they need dealt with – often they’re shot, but they are also endangered. So the people Reeve was helping catch them & put them in a wildlife sanctuary instead … it was a pretty hair-raising sequence, much respect for people who willingly get that close to an over 8 foot crocodile. After that he visited the mainland of Australia to see the sorts of places where vast industrial complexes are being built to get at the mineral resources. The programme did end on a note of hope though – a team in south west Australia who are championing establishing National Parks in the oceans around Australia. Over fishing has been a theme through the series, and this scheme is a part answer to that problem – if there are areas where people cannot fish, then the wildlife recovers and this will spill over into replenishing fish stocks in the surrounding ocean too.

This has been an interesting series, but interesting in a sobering way. Although Reeve did visit some nice places & see some interesting things the theme was mainly how we’re screwing up the environment through our (the West in particular’s) desire for cheap food, and how people are treating each other badly.

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The Story of the Jews

The second episode of Simon Schama’s series about Jewish History covered over a millennium from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem through to the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492. The title of the episode was Among Believers & this was one of the threads tying the programme together – the Jews lived in Christian or Muslim societies through the majority of these years. Schama looked at both how they worked at staying Jewish & at what this cost them. To keep their faith & culture in the absence of the ritual centre (the Temple) the Jews turned to even stronger veneration of the word. In the early years their Bible was extended with commentary and the oral traditions of the Jews, and books were written that reorganised & gathered together the laws & teachings – so you could for instance look up what was & wasn’t permitted on the Sabbath in one place rather than search through the text for all references. This was later extended further with commentaries (and still, I believe, gets extended) and commentaries on the commentaries into the Talmud. This collection of the original text & the thoughts of Rabbis over the years on these texts is part of an on-going conversation or argument across the centuries about how to be Jewish in the changing world around them.

In terms of what it cost them – demonisation of the Jews started early in Christianity, with Paul. His message of the Christ killers who didn’t recognise the Messiah was taken further by John Chrysostom who preached against the Jews as not fully human devil worshippers who sacrificed their own children. Unsurprisingly when Islam first arose Jewish relations with Muslims were better – there was even a brief period right at the start when it looked like the two traditions might exist in harmony (it didn’t last). But in the medieval Islamic world Jews (and Christians) were “only” treated as second class citizens – they had to distinguish themselves by their clothing, there were whole lists of petty things they couldn’t do (like not ride horses, too dignified, only riding donkeys side-saddle like a woman was permitted). But at least they were treated as human beings rather than demonic devil worshippers. Muslim Spain was a particular centre for a flourishing of Jewish culture – Schama quoted us poetry & show us beautiful books & architecture from that time. Sadly the Reconquest of Spain by the Christians and the replacement of the Caliphate with fundamentalist Islamists from Morocco brought this golden age to a close ultimately ending with the expulsion of all Jews from Spain.

Schama also covered Jews in the rest of Christendom during this period – using Lincoln as his example because it had good examples of both threads. On the one hand Jews were terribly useful to the governments of the day – they would lend money (at interest) to Kings, nobles or the Church, which was a sin for a Christian. Aaron of Lincoln was one of this money brokers, who became very rich from lending money to build such places as Lincoln Cathedral. But then they were resented as they got rich, and the same people who took advantage of their loans would look the other way while angry mobs attacked them (and conveniently destroyed records of loans, oh how fortunate). And the mobs were fuelled by the sorts of things Chrysostom had preached about so long ago – in Lincoln there was an incident of a young boy, Hugh, who was murdered. Fury was whipped up by a story that he’d been tortured & killed by Jews in a mock crucifixion – the blood libel that has often been falsely raised against Jews. While Hugh wasn’t officially canonised there is still the remains of a shrine to “Little Saint Hugh”, and only shockingly recently has the sign next to it been changed to reflect the fact that the stories told about his death were lies.

The other thread running through the programme was a quote from Deutronomy:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed;*

Schama used this to illustrate how even after being expelled from their homes, after being demonised & libelled, the Jews continued to choose life & to choose to continue as Jews. Their books of may’ve been designed to be portable – suitcase ready, Schama said – but they were still beautifully made, and treasured. Even tho ultimately their homes may’ve been temporary and were only theirs at someone else’s sufferance, they built beautiful synagogues to meet in.

*I looked this up to check the wording, but only via Googling for it, so hopefully I have the text correct. I used this wording because the site is explicitly saying it’s Jewish rather than Christian.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 2)

After the introductory chapters the first half of the book proper is a chronological look at the politics & wars of the time period. This chapter covers 40 years of Henry III’s reign, from when he started to exert his own authority in 1225 through to the final end of the rebellion against him with the death of Simon de Montfort in battle in 1265.

Orientation Dates:

Henry III reigns 1216-1272.
Saint Louis IX (builder of Sainte-Chapelle) ruled France 1226-1270.
Genghis Khan died in 1227.
Edward I born 1239.

Politics Under Henry III

The thread that ties this chapter together is that the politics of the day was very much grounded in the personalities of the players. The interactions between & the fallings out of the aristocracy shaped the government of the country. And Henry III was not a strong enough king to pull it all together – Prestwich describes Henry III as a man who could talk the talk, but not walk the walk. He had strong ideas about the authority & power that king should command, but when faced with opposition he tended to back off. He successively fell under the influence of different groups at court – often foreign relatives of himself or his wife – which didn’t help relations with other factions, particularly English ones. So his reign was a turbulent time politically speaking, even before the conflict with de Montfort.

He’d become king at the age of 9 (in 1216) while England was in the middle of a civil war, with the eldest son of the King of France (Louis, son of Philip II) in control of the south-east of the country. His initial regents(? Prestwich doesn’t use the term, so perhaps that’s an anachronism on my part) got the country back under control and over the rest of Henry III’s minority Plantagenet authority was restored. But factionalism was still rife. The next twenty or so years after Henry started to exert authority on his own behalf (in 1227) were characterised by a stumbling from crisis to crisis, with the king failing to prevent the bickering & factional infighting. At times it veered close to civil war but mostly the situation pulled back from the brink before armies met (with an exception being the Welsh Marches in 1234, where battles were fought).

Finance & taxation began to become an issue. At this time to raise a tax the king had to have the consent of the aristocracy. During this period Parliament came to prominence as the way to gain this consent, and it’s in Henry’s reign that the term “parliament” was first used. The king had to persuade them that he was going to spend the money in a useful & profitable fashion for the country. Parliament could and did say no to requests for taxes, or could agree only after imposing conditions on the king (for instance to re-affirm the Magna Carta). In 1244 Henry III tried to negotiate a tax, but failed to come to an agreement with Parliament. He wasn’t to succeed in any further requests either, so had to resort to other ways to raise money. These included increasing the amounts that sheriffs paid for their counties, and tax on Jews (this could be done without an agreement) – these sorts of measures weren’t sustainable in the long term.

Foreigners at court were a perennial complaint, but became a more significant issue from the 1240s onwards. Prestwich notes that most of the information here comes from a single chronicler who was rather xenophobic, but there are indications it was a wider spread issue than just one man’s prejudices. One group of foreigners were Henry’s wife Eleanor of Provence’s relatives, the Savoyards – when he married her in 1236 she brought members of her family & various retainers to court. Henry was generous to them & gave them jobs, lands, marriages & so on. Some like Eleanor’s uncle William of Savoy were particularly useful to him & helped reform government of the country, but that didn’t help make them any more popular. Another group of foreigners to get patronage were the Poitevins, related to Henry via his mother’s second marriage – this included his four half-brothers. The numbers of foreigners in these groups were not small. There were approximately 170 men with Savoyard connections to get patronage from Henry, and about 100 Poitevins. Adding to the turbulent politics was the fact that the Savoyards & Poitevins saw each other as rivals.

The third “group” of foreigners is a single man – Simon de Montfort. Not part of either the Savoyard or Poitevins, he came from the Ile de France and his family had a claim via marriage to the earldom of Leicester which he came to England to claim in 1230. He soon charmed his way into the inner circle of the court, he even married the king’s sister in 1238 (clandestinely, and this sparked a political crisis with him & the king on the same side for now). Henry & Simon started to fall out over money as early as 1239, but reconciled. In the early 1250s Simon’s rule over Gascony (as Henry’s lieutenant) had started to attract protest over its harshness. He was even brought back to England and put on trial in 1252 (a case that Prestwich says he “did not lose”). Even after this he & Henry reconciled once more.

Prestwich takes a short digression at this point in the story of the period to discuss the Church & how it played into the political situation in the late 1250s. During approximately the same time that Henry had been on the throne of England there was a gathering enthusiasm for reform within the Church. The new emphasis was on pastoral care & included measures such as clerics only holding one benefice each and not behaving in unseemly ways. The various orders of friars start up in this period – the Dominicans and Franciscans both reach England in the 1220s. And this enthusiasm for reform spilled over into the secular politics of the day – that the king should be subject to the law, that he should choose his councillors wisely, that his officials had an obligation to act fairly.

And now we’re at the build up to the civil war that ended with Simon de Montfort’s death. By 1258 Henry’s government was seen as incompetent & the Parliament that met in Oxford that year took steps to Do Something About It. They set out a complex scheme for picking a fair council of 15 that would evenly represent both king & barons, and this council would be where the final authority rested rather than with the king. At first it worked, and investigations were set up into all areas of administration with an aim to reforming them to make the rule of the country more fair and just (notably this extended significantly down the social strata, including grievances to be righted that would favour ordinary freemen). But progress was too slow for many on the baronial side, and personalities were still important – Prestwich says that de Montfort was not good at collaboration, or compromise, which meant that rifts opened in the baronial ranks. The initiative started to move to the king’s side, and by 1261 he’d managed to regain control to the extent that he could dismiss the council & put his own men in positions of power. Some of the barons had come over to his side, and Henry started to try & patch up his private quarrels with Simon de Montfort in hopes of neutralising him (which didn’t work).

But finance was still a problem – Henry still could not gather taxes. He also failed again to establish any sort of stable regime. Simon de Montfort returned to England in 1263 determined to force the king to accept the reforms propsed in 1258. There was some violence in early 1263 that lead to a series of negotiations in the second half of the year, under the arbitration of the King of France. At first Louis favoured de Montfort – Louis approved the Provisions of Oxford that had been laid out in 1258 & demanded the restitution of property to those who’d suffered in the violence in 1263. The opposition of the future Edward I was a particular problem for this negotiated peace, and a further round of negotiations was required. Louis had now changed his mind – Prestwich says that Queen Eleanor’s influence was a major factor in this – and he was firmly on the royalist side. These negotiations got nowhere & proper civil war broke out in spring 1264.

The advantage at first lay with the king. Henry had summoned a traditional feudal army, ostensibly to fight the Welsh but everyone knew de Montfort & his supporters were the true target. De Montfort’s support was centred on the Midlands (which he ruled a lot of as the Earl of Leicester) and in towns (including London). Henry’s army won the first few battles, including a triumph at Northampton that included the capture of one of de Montfort’s sons. But de Montfort’s supporters felt themselves to be cursaders and went into battle wearing crosses, feeling that God was on their side. This moral zeal and a combination of poor tactics from Edward & good tactics from de Montfort lead to a decisive victory for the baronial cause at Lewes. Victory wasn’t total – they didn’t capture the king or his son, but they did pen them up in Lewes priory from where they negotiated a peace settlement that included Edward remaining in custody as a hostage.

Simon de Montfort was now in charge of the government of the country, and although the king was still king he had no say in anything that happened. The council that was set up was a lot less complex than the previous experiment in 1258, and this let de Montfort exert a great deal of control over who was on it & the decisions it made. Prestwich says that actual reform was thin on the ground, de Montfort spent more time pursuing his personal gain. Despite this he had widespread support. Unfortunately where he started losing support was in the upper echelons of society & that was crucial. The escape of Edward from custody in May 1265, and his subsequent joining of forces with barons who were disaffected with de Montfort lead to the outbreak of further civil war. This time the baronial cause didn’t feel so much that God was on their side – and the royalist cause wore crosses too. Edward & his allies were the winners of the battles, and on 4 August 1265 Simon de Montfort was slain on the field of battle. Some resistance to the royalists rumbled on for another year or so, but the back was broken of the rebellion.

Prestwich rounds off the chapter by concluding that even though the royalist cause were the winners the attempts to reform the government of England were not ignored. The civil war had been short but bitter, and the government of the country needed rebuilt afterwards. There was no longer any talk of restricting the king’s authority, but the reforms were not all tossed out. The next chapter of the book will cover the next 30 years, including the rebuilding process.

A thought I had while reading this was to wonder if there’s ever been a successful English king who took the throne as a minor. The ones that spring to my mind are Henry III (not terribly competent, as discussed here), Richard II (overly autocratic once he came to power, subsequently deposed), Henry VI (turned out to be very incompetent and had mental health issues, deposed twice during Wars of the Roses). Edward VI died too young to know how he’d’ve turned out if he’d reached his majority. Have I forgotten someone?

Another thought is that it’s interesting that Henry III was never deposed, nor even in danger of it. He might’ve had his authority restricted to the point where he wasn’t really ruling any more, but de Montfort didn’t set himself up as king or try & put anyone else on the throne. Particularly interesting in light of Edward II being deposed, as that’s only two generations later.

Tangents to follow up on: The obvious ones really – biography of Simon de Montfort & of Henry III.

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This Week’s TV Including Tigers, Jewish History, the Indian Ocean & King Alfred

Tiger: Spy in the Jungle

Having been to the zoo last week & seen the tigers there, we decided to watch the series about tigers narrated by David Attenborough that we’d recently been recording. It’s a relatively old series (2008), but we hadn’t seen it before. The tigers in a national park in India have been filmed using cameras carried by elephants, or motion-sensing cameras left at spots the tigers frequent. As the tigers aren’t bothered about having elephants around (even ones with cameras & people sitting on top of them) this allowed the programme makers to film the tigers’ natural behaviour.

The three programmes followed a litter of tigers cubs from a few weeks old through to maturity. So it started with four cute fluffy little tiger kittens plus mother, and went through to having a pack of five tigers wandering about (just before the family split up). And lots of footage of young tigers failing to hunt in a variety of amusing ways. Also some footage of the other animals they shared the national park with (and not just their prey animals) – including a selection of monkeys, some jackals, leopards, and peacocks.

A good series 🙂 Although I did find it a bit annoying that the narration constantly said things like “The elephants decide to move on”, because I’m sure it was the mahouts who decided to move on …

The Story of the Jews

This is a new series, presented by Simon Schama, about the history of the Jews. He’s positioning it very much as his way of telling the story of the Jews, rather than a definitive “one true history”. In the intro to the first episode he talks about how Jews are spread through the world and don’t share a common culture, or language, or skin colour, or even common beliefs – but what they have in common is the shared story of their heritage, and the words of their bible.

The bulk of the episode covered the history of the Jews from when they arose as a religion/tribal group through to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Firstly he covered some of the biblical stories that are possibly more metaphorical than actual – ie the Exodus with Moses (although there is no archaeological evidence for any of that story), which is still an integral part of the Jewish ritual calendar. And also the fight between David & Goliath, which is probably a story personalising a much longer lasting border conflict between the Jews & the Philistines. He visited a site which has some of the earliest archaeological evidence for Jews following Jewish practice – a fort on the border between Israel & the Philistines where there is evidence that the population didn’t eat pigs (lots of other butchered animal bones, no pig bones), and that their temple had some similar features to later Jewish temples.

Moving on to more solidly historical events he talked about the exile in Babylon and how that shaped the cultural identity of the Jews. While the elite of their society were in Babylon they spent time editing & refining the words of the Jewish Bible into what they considered the definitive version. So on return to Jerusalem those who’d remained behind had to be dragged up to the right standard (presumably much to their dismay). Schama also told us about the Jews who’d fled back into Egypt, to Elephantine Island, when the Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem. Their faith & practice had begun to take a different course, much to the disgust of the new purists in Jerusalem. Including setting up a Temple where they performed animal sacrifice in their town, which was against the rules (the only Temple in which animal sacrifice was permitted was the one in Jerusalem). But this offshoot didn’t flourish – disputes with the other non-Jewish inhabitants of the town resulted in the destruction of their Temple, which removed their local focus of worship.

As obviously this is about the Jews he skipped over Jesus with a mere mention, spending more time talking about Herod and dwelling on the mystics who lived near the Dead Sea (and wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls that are visions of the apocalypse they believed was coming). And Schama finished up by talking about the ill-fated Jewish rebellion against the Romans that led to the destruction of the Temple. He mentioned he’d been brought up to regard the historian Josephus as a traitor to his people, and that attitude was still very clear 😉

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Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve

The fifth episode of Simon Reeve’s series about the Indian Ocean took us from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh & was quite thoroughly depressing. In Sri Lanka the focus was on the aftermath of the civil war with children in the north of the island being taught how to identify mines & shells and what to do (Don’t Touch, Find an Adult). And in the capital Reeve talked to a man who runs a newspaper that is critical of the government. His brother (and co-owner) was murdered, equipment has been destroyed and current staff get death threats – the government does not like being criticised.

In India & Bangladesh he looked at the destruction caused by the demand for prawns. He went out on a trawler with some fishermen dredging for prawns, and it was shocking how little they caught in their nets. Dredging for prawns results in a lot of fish being killed because they’re not wanted. Reeve then visited prawn farms in Bangladesh … great idea, right? Unfortunately, no. To farm prawns you flood your land with sea water & then it’s contaminated with salt so you can’t ever move back to growing rice, fruit & veg. The water also contaminates your drinking water supplies, and your neighbours’ land. So a whole area will end up farming prawns as the only thing their land will support and having to buy all their food & water.

And lastly container ship recycling takes place in Bangladesh – another great idea in theory that kinda fails in execution. The workers who break down the ships are not safe – 8 die a month, many more are injured. And the oil & other waste products contaminate the ocean.

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King Alfred & the Anglo-Saxons

We also started watching a recent series presented by Michael Wood about the Anglo-Saxons. He is setting forth the idea that three of the most influential kings of England were Anglo-Saxon – King Alfred & his successors. The first episode covered King Alfred’s reign. Alfred wasn’t originally going to be a King – he was a younger son of the King of Wessex (one of the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 9th Century). While he was a young man, and his brother was King, the Vikings conquered all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Alfred’s brother was killed, and Alfred himself fled into the marshes of Somerset. Here he re-grouped over the next few years, and gathered warriors – he then pushed the Vikings back from Wessex & Mercia. He was referred to as the King of all the English kin, but by the end of his life the Vikings still ruled in Northumbria & East Anglia.

The programme didn’t just follow the military side of his life (via the records in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle), but also looked at the ways that he was a good peacetime King. He reformed the economy, and the coins that were minted after he re-took the two kingdoms were much higher quality than previous. He also laid the foundations of south & west England’s towns & cities – many burgs were founded during his reign. These were partly military garrisons to stand ready against any future Viking incursions, but they also became the economic centres of their areas (because they were safer places to conduct your business). One of these burgs was London – it already existed, obviously, but there are references to Alfred re-laying out the streets, or re-founding it (the Anglo-Saxon word is hard to translate).

Alfred was also involved in the translation of “all the important books that a man should read” into Anglo-Saxon – mostly religious texts & commentaries. He was keen to return the country to a state of wisdom & learning, like he believed it had been before the Vikings came. And because the education of people had been interrupted by the decades of war he thought that the books should be translated from Latin into a language they understood.

I already had an idea of the rough outline of Alfred’s story, but the next couple of programmes cover people I don’t have even that much knowledge of, which will be interesting 🙂

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