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Dealing With the ‘Blackadder’ View of the First World War: The Need for an Inclusive, Bi-Partisan Centenary

1st April 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Gary Sheffield

The intervention of Education Secretary Michael Gove on the First World War suggests that the Centenary is becoming a political football. In this personal reflection, historian Gary Sheffield argues that it is not too late to disentangle the Centenary of the First World War from crude partisan politics.

This article was first published by Royal United Services Institute, January 2014

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Michael Gove’s comments about the First World War have ensured that what some of us feared would happen has come to pass. Aided by a rather-ill-advised reply from Labour’s Tristram Hunt, immediately seized upon by Boris Johnson, the Centenary of 1914-18 has become a political football. Gove’s Daily Mail article attacked Sir Richard Evans, the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge. This might not be unrelated to the fact that Evans has been an outspoken critic of Gove’s educational reforms. In July, Evans published a Guardian article on the Gove reforms which included some trenchant comments on the First World War. Some historians, myself included, were also in his sights.

As a loyal Guardian reader, my feelings about this piece were mixed. Not being one of Michael Gove’s fellow travellers, I actually agreed with many of Evans’ criticisms of the educational reforms. Of course, I dissented from his interpretation of the First World War. Likewise, the opinions formed in the course of my research mean that I cannot support some the things Evans has written and said in response to Gove’s Daily Mail article. He is not going to convert me to his views, and vice versa. So be it. But we share common ground to this extent: it is plain wrong to suggest academic opinion on the First World War is polarised along Left/Right lines.

Historians of all political persuasions and none have been working for decades to discredit what might crudely be described as the ‘Blackadder’ view of the First World War. Views among this group are by no means uniform, and there are some sharp divisions over interpretations. My politics happen to lie on the Left. Interviewed on the BBC’s ‘World at One’, I was asked if I was embarrassed that Gove mentioned my work approvingly. I am not embarrassed, but I am concerned, for by politicising the issue Gove has done the cause of education no favours.

He gets the history broadly right. For Britain, the war was one of national survival, fought in defence of its vital interests against an aggressive, militarist, anti-democratic, near-autocracy. The tired stereotype of the British army as ‘lions led by donkeys’ has long been thoroughly discredited. My worry is that because my work and that of other historians has been used for party political advantage, it might be regarded as tainted by those who are not knowledgeable about current debates. This would be a great shame, because above all the Centenary period offers a wonderful opportunity for education about the seminal catastrophe of the Twentieth century. Sadly, responses to ‘Govegate’ have all too often been intemperate and ill-informed, with ignorance and prejudice to the fore.

A subject as emotive as the First World War can never be depoliticised; nor should it. I hope, however, that it is not too late to disentangle the Centenary of the First World War from crude partisan politics. It is a hopeful sign that both Andrew Murrison, the Prime Minister’s pointman for the event, and Dan Jarvis, his Labour shadow, have taken a much more measured approach. In particular, Jarvis’ article for the Fabian Review should be required reading. Moreover, mutterings have been reported among some of Gove’s fellow Conservatives about his undermining of No. 10’s consciously inclusive, bi-partisan approach to the Centenary.

My hope, perhaps doomed, is that academics and politicians will rise above ‘Govegate’ to ensure that by this time next year, the British public will better informed about the First World War. At a minimum I would like to see general recognition that the ‘sleepwalkers’ interpretation of the origins of the First World War, crudely stated that the great powers stumbled into a war that no one wanted, remains a minority view among scholars. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence that Austria-Hungary and Germany bear the burden of the responsibility for unleashing the war. Moreover, it needs to be understood the vast majority of the British people supported the war, not as an imperialist venture but because they believed that Germany posed a direct threat to their country, their well-being and their families; and many historians argue that they were absolutely right to do so.

To assert that the Kaiser’s Germany was not the same as Nazi Germany is a red herring. True, it was not consciously genocidal (at least in the European context: in Africa it was a different matter); but the aggression and brutal occupation polices of Imperial Germany were, by any other standard, bad enough. Finally, the complexities of understanding what happened on the battlefield needs to be explained. The idea that the heavy British casualties were caused by solely by the stupidity of the generals remains surprisingly enduring, but cannot withstand even a cursory glance at the evidence.

Commemoration of the First World War is too important to become caught up in partisan politics. The years 2014-18 offer a unique opportunity for education and rational debate about the war. We should not squander it.

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Professor Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and spoke at CVHF on ‘Our Father’s War’ on Friday, 27th June 2014.

Email: g.sheffield@wlv.ac.uk
Twitter: @ProfGSheffield

THE INTERESTING BITS: The History You Might Have Missed

31st March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Justin Pollard

Recording from Justin Pollard’s talk, ‘The Interesting Bits: The History You Might Have Missed’ for CVHF, Sunday, 30th June 2013.

Did you give school history lessons your undivided attention? Even if you did, you’re probably none the wiser as to how exactly Henry II of France came to have a two-foot splinter in his head or why Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a piano. Or where terms like bunkum, maverick, John Bull and taking the mickey come from; or how the Tsarina of Russia once saved a life with a comma; or why Robert Pate hit Queen Victoria on the head with a walking stick. For some unknown reason the most interesting bits of history are kept out of lessons and away from syllabuses. In this hugely entertaining talk, Justin Pollard rights this wrong with a veritable treasure trove of those surprising, eccentric, chaotic asides that do not fit neatly into history’s official narrative.

How wartime communities bought Spitfires

27th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Paul Beaver

Wiltshire Moonraker and Sarum & South Wilts – how wartime communities bought Spitfires.

Even in 1940, the Spitfire had celebratory status. Communities and individuals around the British Isles and across the Dominions and Empire were thinking of new ways to collect money and entice their friends to part with their hard-earned savings to buy a Spitfire.

The Spitfire Fund, as a nationwide enterprise was the brainchild of Lord Beaverbrook, Churchill’s friend and political ally in whom the Prime Minister had entrusted the production of military aircraft, especially Spitfires. Churchill realised that producing fighters would be a key part of Britain’s survival.

So enthused were contributors, they funded more than 1500 Spitfires, dubbed ‘Gifts of War’ and donated to the Royal Air Force. The efforts of individuals or community groups were to see a Spitfire painted up with a presentational caption just below the cockpit, telling with the world that the aeroplane had been ‘bought’ by the contributors to the fund.

In six weeks, the Salisbury & Winchester Journal reported that over £6,000 had been collected by the communities of West Wiltshire to buy a Spitfire. Today, £6,000 is the equivalent of about £700,000; a real achievement for a rural community with no large conurbations or industrial enterprises.

The ‘South Wiltshire Spitfire Fund’, based in Salisbury and administered by The Journal, raised over £114 in a single September weekend by displaying a Luftwaffe Dornier Do 17 bomber in the Market Square. Local people were charged thrupence (3d) a time to see it. Part of this bomber is still preserved and displayed in the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop, the wartime base from which Spitfires flew in pursuit of German bombers and probably bought this Dornier down only a few miles from the Hampshire airfield.

Back at Salisbury, little boys spent the weekend trying to find souvenirs. Several will admit today to taking pieces as small as screws despite the watchful eyes of the Home Guard drafted in to protect the bomber.

That weekend more than 9,000 people paid to see the bomber, many coming back several times; perhaps to stand and wonder at their first sight of the enemy or perhaps to rejoice that there was one fewer enemy bomber in British skies.

The result of the fund-raising was an appropriately named Spitfire Mark IA – ‘Sarum & South Wilts’. So on 2 July 1941, serial number P8137 began its operational service with No 234 Squadron just down the road at Middle Wallop.

Sadly, its career was very short even by 1941 standards. The Spitfire and its pilot, Sergeant Ivan Pearce RAFVR were lost just a week later on a sortie over the English Channel to engage German fighters over the Cherbourg peninsula; no trace of aeroplane nor pilot was ever found.

A local Wiltshire Spitfire which lasted slightly longer was the one ‘bought’ by West Wiltshire’s fundraising. More than £8,000, including £3,000 from the people of the market-town of Trowbridge was collected in September 1940. Ironically, Trowbridge was about to become a hub of the dispersed Spitfire production programme after Luftwaffe bombers destroyed the Supermarine works at Southampton.

‘Wiltshire Moonraker’ was the name selected for the West Wiltshire Spitfire Fund. It was completed as a more powerful Mark VB, given the serial number W3312 handed over by Supermarine to the Royal Air Force on 6 June 1941.

The ‘Moonraker’ served with great distinction with No 92 (East India) Squadron based at RAF Biggin Hill, probably the most famous Battle of Britain fighter station. It became the favoured fighter of the squadron’s boss, Squadron Leader James Rankin.

It was damaged in combat, repaired and returned to Fighter Command, ending up with No 65 Squadron at RAF Eastchurch in Kent. On this unit it flew sorties over Occupied France but on 3 September 1942, in the hands of Pilot Officer N R MacQueen it suffered engine failure, probably through combat. Its Rolls-Royce Merlin 45 engine stopped and the Spitfire crashed into the Channel on 3 September 1942. MacQueen baled out but downed before a rescue craft could reach him.

The last of 1500 presentational Spitfire was delivered to the Royal Air Force in 1945 and quite appropriately named ‘Winston Churchill’.

Paul Beaver is an experienced vintage aeroplane pilot who will be speaking on “Spitfire – people, places, politics, production” at the Chalke Valley History Festival on Sunday, 29^th June 2014.

Flying Legend: World Record Holding Test Pilot & War Ace

25th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Capt Eric Brown and Rowland White

Recording from CVHF 2013: Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown in conversation with Rowland White, Saturday, 29th June 2013.

Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown is an extraordinary man, whose career stretched from the pre-war days of the biplane to supersonic jets. Captain Brown visited Nazi Germany before the war, flying with General Ernst Udet, flew with the Fleet Air Arm early in the war, had an escort carrier sunk underneath him, then became a pioneering test pilot. He was the first person to land a two-engine Mosquito on an aircraft carrier, flew every single one of the German experimental jets at the end of the war, interrogated Göring, and was a key figure in the post-war Jet Age. No man has ever flown more aircraft types. Charming, amusing, and with a mind as sharp as ever it was, this is a rare opportunity to hear one of Britain’s true flying legends talk about his life and times.

James Holland interviews Geoffrey Wellum DFC

25th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by James Holland

Squadron Leader Geoffrey Wellum DFC (aged 93) is a British Battle of Britain fighter pilot and author. Aged eighteen, he signed up on a short-service commission with the Royal Air Force in August 1939. He saw extensive action during the Battle of Britain and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in 1941 in recognition of gallantry displayed in flying operations against the enemy. On 11 August 1942, Wellum led eight Spitfires launched from the carrier HMS Furious to reinforce the fighter complement at Luqa airfield on Malta. He wrote a widely acclaimed book about his experiences during World War II, entitled First Light: The Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in the War-Torn Skies Above Britain.

This is a transcript of an interview with Historian and broadcaster, James Holland, 22 February 2001..

…You finished your initial training, elementary, you then went into top drilling things for a fortnight. You then went to flying training school where the discipline started. You didn’t walk anywhere you marched. And there you were split up into two. A limited number — I can’t remember — about ten of us were earmarked for single engineer planes: in other words, potential fighter pilots.

I was delighted. Because we were I think the second course to be trained on quite a vicious little ae. The mark one Harvard. American Harvard. We were the first or second course onto them. And one learned there that one had to repsect an aeroplane. Because if you didn’t respect it, it would turn round and bite you, and that wasn’t a good thing to happen. So we were earmarked from there on as single engine pilots and I think about 3%, let me think. there were five of us at the end of the training ended up in a spitfire or a hurricane. All the rest did other things. So there were just five of us taken out of the whole course. About 40 on the course.

We had our eyes earmarked on what we wanted to fly but at flying training school, two courses for the elementary school joined up. We were joined up with people from I think a place called Anstey. We joined up at flying training school, so there were about 40 of us. And I think five of us ended up on fighters.

James: go back, what made you decide to go to RAF

I always wanted to. I had been model aeroplane mad since I was a little boy. Yes, I had read books about it. Interest in aeroplanes. I lived near North Weald. I can remember in the early days, the 20s and 30s, very gayly decorated fighters with the squadron markings on it, rather like the old mice. The RAF was modelled on the cavalry you see with plumes and knights of old. We had our own squadron markings. If two blokes wanted to fly they flew in the University air squadron that’s what they’d do, they’d go together. They would probably go straight to a flying training school.

In those days it [square bashing] was done at Uxbridge. But we went to Hastings. Uxbridge was a huge station built round an enormous square. [?] policed by sadists who railed and shouted and took us…

We went to Hastings and marched up and down the front as far as I can see. And it was quite a steady indoctrination. It was quite civilised.

James: where were you billeted?

In what used to be local hotels, the front hotels for the holiday-makers. But there was barbed wire going up and there were kids with buckets and spades on the beach. It had a false inclination that there was a war going on. Things were changing a bit.

James: Do you remember your first spitfire flight?

Oh yes. Bloody thing flew me! ha ha. It was a day that you had been waiting for for a long time but it wasn’t until my flight commander briefed me: you better take this aeroplane. I’ll come out and show you the cockpit. I’ll show you round it and if you break it there’ll be hell to pay. And I can remember walking out to it with my helmet on with my oxygen mask flapping in time with my walking and the parachute slung over my shoulder and I looked at this lythe sort of creature sitting there on this little narrow undercarriage. I thought Christ! No instructor in the back. You had to get it right. You sit in this lythe looking creature and the cockpit was very small, great long nose in front full of engine and you thought Oh God! Why can’t I be sweeping out Clapham Common station, something like that, you know. I mean I’d make a bloody good porter! Yes, that was it and once my flight commander had started explaining it to me you settled down a bit and thought well this is what it’s all about. So many things. If you stay too long taxiing on the ground the engine overheats. Be careful of the brakes because they’re nose-heavy on the ground. They tip on… You think God I don’t want a helmet, I want a shroud in this bloody thing. But anyway then I remember him getting off the rigg and I said “Excuse me Sir”. “You don’t call me Sir, not any more. I’m a flight commander. You can call me Brian”. I said alright, excuse me but how do you start it? And he said, Oh I’m sorry. Eventually we started it and he got off and walked away and the engine started to my amazement the first touch of the button. Great clouds of smoke came back and then I settled down and taxied out, turned it into wind. Made certain everything was strapped up. Open up the taps and off you went. The acceleration was something else, that one had never experienced and in the end you felt you were hanging onto the throttle stick for grim death. And that was a bloody silly thing to say at that particular time. And the next thing I knew it had hurtled itself into the air and I was going up into the wide blue yonder. It was exhilarating but it was a bit fearful because in order to get the undercarriage up you had to pump it up with a big pump and you had to change hands on the stick. You had to take your hand off the throttle, put it on the stick, take the right hand off and pump up like that. But of-course every time you did that, this hand did that so you went up into the wide blue yonder like a kangaroo on heat or something. But then once you’d settled down, you thought this is a magnificent aeroplane, magnificent. You know your speed was way up, an indicated speed well over the 200, 210, 15, drop the nose and the speed would build up. It was a very clean design. Something like 400. Magnificent. But landing was a little bit… well it landed me, not the… Because you couldn’t see out of the front of the spitfire because of the nose. You had to look outside like that. It got a bit daunting. They were such a beautiful aeroplane that they preferred a sort of gliding approach whereas we had been taught to come in on the motor. If you came in with lots of power on, the aeroplane used to assume a tail-down set like that which of-course meant that the nose came up. Which meant you couldn’t see. This thing was absolutely stable but sinking at that point. I thought for god’s sake check and cut the power and I did and it just +++ and stuck there. But I didn’t know an awful lot about it.

James: Did you become used to flying it?

You didn’t get in, you strapped it to you. A spitfire could almost think what you wanted to do and it did it. And you didn’t think anything about it. And in the end you could fly them almost like a Tiger Moth. Beautiful aeroplane. You knew exactly what the aeroplane… It could only respond to what you wanted it to. The spitfire did that. It responded to anything you wanted to do. You had to get the landing right, you had to get it right, but once you got used to them you got it right and they were lovely, beautiful aeroplanes, very forgiving.

James: Did you have any flying accidents?

Yes I did. The spitfire was not designed for night flying. It was not easy at night. And we had a thing called a chance light, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It was like a lighthouse on wheels that you called and it lit up and lit the flare path so you could see the ground. And I was coming in one night, my first night, very frightening, pitch dark and we only had six little glim lamps which you could only see from below 1500 feet. And because we were flying from an airfield in South Wales and it was a pitch black night, they had [?] the chance light down and I made one attempt and I couldn’t get in at all. I didn’t line up and all and I said look sorry chum but I’ve got to have the chance light. And they said not now now, there’s a German overhead so when he was clear they put the chance light on and I thought well they still haven’t put that bloody light on but they had. And I thought well if it is on I can’t see it. It can only be in one place, it’s in front and I’m afraid it was, and it took the port wing off.

James: But you were alright?

Yes. It took half the port wing off. And this great explosion and the thing went bang. We thought this is it, I’m dying. This is what it’s like. It’s very peaceful. And I sat there and I thought this is lovely! Any time you like mate, I’ll be off then. And then you realised, I thought hold on a minute, the cockpit lights are still on, they were a lovely dull red for night vision and I looked at the ignition switches and they were off and I looked at the fuel and that was off so I thought gosh I must have done that and after I hit this chance light I must have acted like lightening and not realised it. And I came to sitting on this damn thing and then I saw a face at the side of the cockpit and it was the flight commander: “What the bloody hell are you doing in there. Look what you’ve done”. No are you alright. Actually he had a look at me and they took me out and that was alright.

[J: So you felt quite calm?]

Yes, totally accepted it. This is it, I’m going to die. Didn’t have time to think anything. I thought this is it. I haven’t the faintest idea where I am, what I’m doing, sparks were coming back from the exhaust. Couldn’t see a bloody thing. I ended up very luckily in one piece. It was very quick.

I was far more worried when I knew I wasn’t getting it right. I made two approaches to start with to try and get in and it was a bloody awful night mind you. I was far more het up and the last time I thought well I’m going to give in on this approach, I’ve had this. And having hit it there was a “Oh well, you’ve made a balls of that, I’me going to die”. Next thing I knew was, I think I went unconscious, I just think the mind works so quickly because I switched off the ignition and the fuel. I thought this is OK, what’s everyone worrying about, dying, this is peaceful. After all, I’m fairly warm. And then I realised that the lights were still on in the cockpit and that’s what brought me back to reality. That’s about the size of it.

Once you got used to the spitfire which you did fairly quickly you realised how fortunate you were because you were one of tens of thousands who would give their right arm to be where you were.

You were a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force in perhaps the best aeroplane in the world. How many of the chaps that went through training with you ended up in a Spitfire. One. Me. The other four went to Hurricanes and I went to Spitfire. Once I’d settled down and felt that I’d got the aeroplane where I wanted it to be, I got it as a friend and not as a sort of thoroughbred horse who looks at you and says I’ll play this bastard up until he knows what he’s about. That happened as late as 1941. Because by squadron was at Biggin Hill during the Battle and we stayed on at Biggin Hill. And the squadron in the leading wing to start the 1941 offensive sweeps over France and it was landing after those that you thought you know I’m so luck to be here really. Because by that time you’d survived the Battle, you know your way around in a Spitfire. After three weeks of the Battle itself, if you could survive the first three weeks you knew your way around. And you did things with an aeroplane that was never in any book. It had very few limitations. I’ve heard it said that under the most extreme, brutal conditions, you could in fact pull the wings off a Spitfire. I knew of it to happen but later on because we got to improve our roll rate we got metal ailerons. They used to with the air flow ride up and come proud like that, and put tremendous strain on the bolts: six big bolts. They got over that by trimming the [?] down but the [?] was so light you could chuck it around. You could put stress on them but I never had any trouble like that at all. During the Battle I abused that aeroplane. It’s a question of survival.

I got caught by some 109s one day who had just seen me do a bit of a mischief to a [?] and one of them got on to me and we went round in circles for god knows how long and managed to get a quick squirt at him in front and then I had no ammunition left. I had to get out of there but it wouldn’t let me go. A spitfire could turn inside a 109 and I was gaining on him slightly and he pulled up and away and so did to. I decided to hit the hills as it were. He turned off and I turned on my back and went straight down. You did what you called an alien turn. What you did, the ground was right down there, which was not an ideal place for it to be, and if you put the stick over the aeroplane did that. It revolved around an axis going straight down. And I ended up doing 450 knots indicated and the wings flexed. A rivet popped and I got down and my ground crew reprimanded me because I popped the rivets underneath. But I got away.

James: What distance from ground?

The instrument, the altimeter, there’s always a bit of a lag and I saw 6000 feet pass just like that and I thought its time to do something about this. And I ended up about 500 feet. In fact it sounds terrible I was straight and level going like a bat out of hell at 500 feet. Which is where I wanted to be. From there I went on straight on down to the deck, 50 feet going up over hills and round forests down valleys and up the other side because you’re a difficult target then. That’s the sort of thing that you learn if you survive the first three weeks. You had to think in those terms and think quickly. You never asked questions. If you were in any doubt about anything at all you never asked a question and never fly straight and level for longer than ten seconds. Ten or twenty seconds. Never fly straight and level. And if you saw anything in the sun, they used to come out of the sun. If you had a couple of seconds to look at the sun and there was something there that you thought that’s not quite right, don’t ask questions. Just don’t stay there: a lot of people got the chop like this. Oh let’s have another look. If there’s nothing there, so what, you’re alive to fight another day. And always break into the attack, never away from it. If someone’s coming in here and you turn away, what’s going to happen? He’s on your tail just like that. So what you do, you turn and go under him. Or if not, go for him. Try and ram him. You get out the way. Straight underneath. You go underneath.

James: If he goes above you and you fly underneath, you’re then going in opposite directions?

That’s right.

James: If you’ve got enough time to turn, would you then fly back into him and try and get on his tail?

No he’d never hang around.

James: What stage of Battle did you enter it?

At the start of the Battle of Britain we were at Pembray in South Wales, defending Bristol and the West Midlands like Liverpool and things like that. Because of the intensity of the Battle we transferred to Biggin Hill on I think the 7th September. The battle was absolutely at its height and we were put straight into it. We stayed at Biggin Hill — I can’t remember when the squadron left — but I was sent away on September 1941 so I did bloody nearly, which was as long as most people. And by then I had had it. I’d absolutely had it. Exhausted.

James: asks about tactics

We lost so many fighter pilots through 1914-18 tactics by flying big formations. The Germans, we weren’t trained for war, although we should have been and people will tell you that that was the whole object of having an airforce. But in fact it was an excellent flying club. The best flying club in the world and fighter command was a law unto itself and a club within a club. We were not taught how to conduct ourselves in battle. But the Germans had Spain where it was perfected. Not only did they perfect their tactics, but they perfected their aeroplanes, developed it I mean. By the time the Battle of Britain came, the 109E was fully developed. We weren’t. We didn’t have constant speed air stools, we had a variable pitch thing. The first Spitfire didn’t have armour plate. That sort of thing. So we were behind the whole time and that’s why I hate politicians so much, you can write that down too.

James: did you have a distrust of politicians at that time?

Thinking about it, one didn’t quite realise it or have time to think about that, you know. They’re doing the same thing at the moment. They hurtle blokes into battles all over the place, here and there. Then get them criticised. I just dislike them, having thought about this a lot because I’ve had to answer lots of questions about it. I realise just how bloody stupid they are. They really are. If you are living in utopia then there’s no war, but we’re not. In those days a chap called Hitler had been making a nuisance of himself since 1933. Here were in 1940 still trying to catch up.

James: How much action did you see in Wales?

There was very little in fact. I can’t remember at Pembury ever going off as a squadron. We always went off as sections: two or four to go after a single plot because most of them were reconnaissance. We only did squadron for take-offs and things at Biggin and once of-course you went into them, 150 plus. A lot of aeroplanes. You split up, it was each man for himself. Having gone in, come out the other side, shook your head and you’re on your tod. Then you have to go back and do it again you see. That took a bit out of you.

James: was there anyone in squadron who questioned tactics?

No. Didn’t have time. That [??] didn’t come in till about 1943/ 1942. We changed our formation from fixed like that, we went into fours in line astern. Even then you were relying on the leader to see everything. If you’re flying in formation very close, you look at the bloke next to you. The only person you watch is the fellow there. If you’re doing that you can’t look around.

James: Asks about squadron and colours in flights

Two flights of six but in fact but in fact the squadron was normally divided up into three fours. It’s very complicated.

James: What happened to the colours….?

Red or blue, one two three four. It varied. A pair was red one, red two, red three, red four. Red blue and yellow. Three fours, twelve. I could have got you a picture taken by a great friend of mine… and he took a picture of four of us having just landed [Alan White]. A section of four that had just landed having just shot down a couple of 109s actually. There are four of us…. being debriefed by a spy, by an intelligence officer in front of a Spitfire.

[talks about meeting Alan and then meeting Prince Charles…]

We were aware of a presence and we turned and there was a very smart Wing Commander. And he said you two gentlemen look like you’ve been around a bit. Have you met the Prince? Come on he said and had a chat with Charles for ten minutes and dear old Charlie boy didn’t want to get away….

[Chat about Charlie]

It’s been in a book, Brian Kingcome’s book. I think you ought to [read it]. It’s called “A willingness to die”. He was I think the finest fighter pilot I ever flew with. I used to fly number two to him. He was just brilliant, a first class pilot, and a leader and cool and calm and collected.

James: Do you think calm leadership was what was needed?

There was a calming effect certainly. He was quietly spoken, could be very dry. He could tell you off in the most delightful manner because you came out feeling small but think well I can get up again. And then you’d buy each other a drink in the evening. Forgotten. Wonderful chap.

James: Did you fly number two to him in the Battle?

Yes. We got split up going through cloud on September 11th. There were two of us going into 150 plus and I was number two to him on that day. And I was flying on his left and we went head on and I was slightly underneath him and I saw him break away and I thought it was time for me to do the same. Actually I had been hit by then.

James: Were you hit badly?

Not badly. Went back and had another go a bit later. That was September 11th and after that attack I shot down a H? over Dungeoness. I felt a bit angry. I thought you bastard.

James: can you remember what you felt when shooting down plane?

It was a target.

James: Did you ever think about the people in it?

Not normally. It depends how angry you were. If you’d had a little bit of a breathing space you thought what the hell are these, what’s going on here. They came to this country which is basically a peaceful place and there they are bombing the hell out of us. What right have they got to do this? And make no mistake, I’ve met a lot of German fighter pilots and you woulnd’t probably tell the difference between the two of us but the teutonic mind is that if he’s on top he’s a bastard. Make no mistake he is a [?] bastard. And that came to mind. As I say I’ve met some since the war [?] he’s just died. I met him at one or two reunions. I used to go to my old squadron reunions at [G] in Germany. They were flying Phantoms then and he was there. He was the same as I appear. But this strutting Swastika, it was when they were on top they were bastards. Hit him and hit him hard. Don’t stroke him. And he thought hold on a minute, there’s another angle to this. And the first time they had a setback was in the Battle of Britain. And don’t let anybody in the journalistic world tell you that we didn’t win the Battle of Britain because we bloody well did. It was a near run thing but we beat ‘em. And thereafter they started to go back. I had a friend who survived being in a fighter squadron in France and he would see a 109 shooting up the refugees on a road. And they did, it’s no good saying they didn’t. And he said to me, I remember him coming back.. I think it was just before [?] he was killed shortly afterwards. I met him in London somewhere. We went to Shepherds which was a fighter pilots pub [Shepherds Market]. We’re having a drink. Poor chap. This was very early on, just after I’d joined the squadron. And he was very withdrawn and he said you know they are sods. And I’ve never forgotten the expression on his face. I think he survived and we were obviously involved in another three or five years of pretty total war.

We’d been two years ago a peaceful sort of country and here we were, you know…

James: Did you have a sense of what was going on with the war?

Yes. We realised that we had to win it because the whole country was very aware that we were going to be invaded. Now I have read by some journalist who wasn’t even alive at the time denied that we were ever going to be invaded. But we were. The channel ports were full of [?]. And we were the heroes because people were frightened. But yes we were aware.

James: You knew when you were getting two hours sleep that it had to be done?

Certainly you knew it had to be done. And that’s what you were paid 14 shillings a day for. You knew it was a pretty serious situation. But having said that, it never crossed our minds that we were ever going to lose.

James: Why not?

I don’t know. At the time one didn’t think. Thinking back on it, it was because you knew that you were containing them. I think. The first thing was well where do we start on this lot and then you’d see them, there they were, with bloody great cross on them. You’d think right you bastard, take that. I did anyway.

James: going back to life in Wales…

Rather peaceful. We were fairly well trained as far as we knew what the training entailed. We used to have lots of time off. Not days off, hours. We would go down, if we were released, 30 minutes available, half the squadron would go down and bathe on the beach which was lovely hard sand. We would be able to get down and have a swim, not to leave the camp.

James: Did you ever get leave?

Oh yes, you had leave as and when it was reasonable to do so. In fact fighter command decreed that we should try and have at least, I can’t remember, a day off a week per pilot. It might be a fortnight I don’t know. But it was encouraged to have a break.

James: Where were you living in Wales?

We were stationed, living in the station in the mess. It was a hutted camp. Quite comfortable. Room to ourselves. Oh no, hold on a minute, no. I shared a room with a chap called Wade, Wimpy Wade. Who was a brilliant pilot and later became the chief test pilot of Hawkers. He was killed flying not the prototype Hunter, a [?] wing aeroplane. He was killed then. I shared a room with him.

James: What did you do in evening?

All the boys together. We used to create merry hell.

James: Asks about hierarchy within squadron, program last year re: sergeant schism

I have heard that and there was a very poor misguided fighter pilot. Frankly it upset me. It is not true. OK the fighter pilots had their own mess. It was the sergeants mess and the officers mess. We drank together, we lived together, we fought together. As for this rubbish. And you can quote this: that I have several times flown number two to a sergeant pilot and been delighted to do so because he was a very experienced charming chap and a very good pilot. But this program… said that officers would do that. Absolute nonsense and if any of those blokes who did that program want to come and confront a bloke they can come and do it to me. I wouldn’t stroke them either. I get so angry with these people.

James: Re: book “The Battle” by Richard Overy

Unfortunately the biggest manipulators are the Bashing of Britain Corporation: BBC. Some of their programs are terrible… A “Piece of Cake” was the same thing where an officer got told off for playing squash with a sergeant. That would never happen. There wasn’t any contention. What these ignorant people don’t understand was that the comradeship in a fighter squadron in 1940 was something that unless you were there you would never ever understand. You were flying your fighter as they were meant to be flown in the defence of the realm and twelve of you were defending the population of London I suppose. And had we not done what we were asked to do… OK if we didn’t do it that’s up to them to tell us. But we didn’t do too badly in that the Germans didn’t [?] us. There’s a very good, I can recommend you a book on this that goes into this quite deeply. It’s by a chap called Wynn, a New Zealander, called the “Battle of Britain”… I will show you this book and it gives the claims and exactly how many were claimed by what and how the Germans claimed three times as much as we did. It tries to explain how it happened. When it wasn’t a big day with 150 plus coming in and everybody madly war dear chap and that sort of thing, claims were very accurate. In a smaller context. But Churchill got on to Dowding and Dowding said well if our claims are correct, if what we say is not correct, the Germans will be walking up the Mall in three weeks. We weren’t correct. We overclaimed by quite a lot. The Germans claimed 3000 of us shot down. In fact it was eight. That sort of thing. A long way out.

In terms of victories we didn’t shoot down five to one. We shot down about two to one. Two of them and one of us. And that was enough to make them go away. They got very close to it except for the stupidity of their leader. They changed their tactics defending London because we bombed Berlin.

James: Did you know about that at the time?

No. I don’t think anybody did. Except perhaps Dowding and Bomber Command.

James: Did you think that Park was a good guy?

Brilliant. Would have done anything for him. Park was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. You had great faith in Park. He used to turn up in his Hurricane and have a chat. Never did to me but there we are. I was very upset when he and Dowding were pushed out by that other bastard Liegh Mallory [don’t quote me]. I was there with him. I was up in Malta. There was a nasty, well it’s not much because I had a breakdown in health there but I flew off an aircraft carrier at Malta.

James: Go back to Biggin Hill, 7 September

The Chips were down. It was madly war everywhere. The hangars were flat, bombs all over the place, broken aeroplanes. Yes, I sort of looked around and thought God this is total. But there parked along the side in their bays were brave little Spitfires with our squadron numbers on them. And so you got down to it.

James: How did you get round the total exhaustion. Falling asleep as landing?

You wouldn’t do that, you’d hurt yourself. You just kept going. We used to be out every night at the White Hart. Many’s a time when you got back at one or two in the morning. Instead of going to bed I’d go straight down to dispersal and been there for dawn runs.

James: Sober?

Probably not. Um, not too bad. It took an awful lot, you got into a groove. I suppose really one could say one drunk fairly heavily in the evenings. You could get into your aeroplane but when you got down to dispersal if you had a heavy night and breathed it wasn’t allowed but you took straight oxygen and the doc, we had a doctor to each squadron and he used to have little pills. Whether it was legal, I don’t know but if he didn’t like the look of you he’d give you some of those.

James: You didn’t know what they were?

No. Then of-course you’d be off into the wide blue yonder and another day would begin.

James: How did you deal with death of colleagues?

Didn’t think about it. Totally resigned. Totally resigned. Accepted it. You mustn’t [think about it], you just dare not let yourself think about it. I mean, if you’re going to describe a sort of day, it started at half past four in the morning when something pushed at your shoulder and it was your batman waking you up. And you get up and think Oh God another dawn and you’d wander over to the mess and you’d think god its going to be a lovely day, no breeze to ruffle the hair, or anything like that, go into the mess and empty tankards, ashtrays full left over from the night before, magazines all over the place because it was early in the morning, the steward hadn’t cleared it. Go into the dining room and cup of tea and toast and then you’d [interrupted]… there you’d be munching this toast and looking around at everybody being quiet. There would be a screech of brakes outside, and then so OK here’s the tumble[?], any more for it, and that would take you down to Dispersal. It was a truck or van. You’d go and look on the order of battle and see where you were flying and sling your parachute over your shoulder and walk across to where your Spitfire was parked. You’d notice little things. Everything was quiet and still. No birds. And dew on your feet, that sort of thing. And then you’d get the silence would be broken by — you’d hear the odd clank of the spanner — and the sound I was referring to was “all right mate, all clear, contact” and an engine would start up to warm it up. Next thing you know there would be twelve Merlins shattering the serenity of the moment I suppose. And another day would begin.

James: Must have got used to battle, confident in Spitfire, but wake up call at Biggin Hill

You knew that, but the intensity of the Battle was incredible. Yes but you weren’t prepared for the intensity. It was very sort of … It was rough going.

James: were you frightened?

Terrified, yes. Until I got into the thing. Once you got airborne you were part and parcel of the aeroplane. At least you saw there were other aeroplanes with you. So you weren’t completely on your own. Oh but the waiting was… There used to be a little telephone orderly sitting at his table. He was the dimmest bloke in the squadron. Poor little fellow. And the telephone would go. And everybody… and it would be something like the naffy van’s going to be late because the battery’s flat or something. And you’d swear like hell. And it would go again and scramble base, [?] twenty, and off you’d go. And the moment you got out that door and ran to the aeroplane and the ground crew helped you into it and strapped you in and fussed over you, you felt better.

James: Was your heart thumping?

I wasn’t aware of that. I was just aware of sort of resignation really. And so it went on.

James: did you have any superstitions?

No, I had a mascot and if I didn’t fly with it I’d feel terrible and it was Eyore from Winnie the Pooh. I suppose she was a girlfriend in those days, I can’t remember. I married her in the end. He was about that high, this little Eyore and I used to sit him in the map case. Because you couldn’t bend down to get your map case, it was too far. You stuck your maps in your flying boot. And he was sitting in the map case and I’d take him out after every trip. Buy him a cup of tea at the Naafi. The Naafi used to come round in a van. Not sandwiches, there wasn’t any butter in those days. The odd chocolate bar. Normally mugs of hot sweet wet liquid that went under tea.

James: what did you do while waiting?

Try and sleep. I once saw a chap reading a book and it was upside down. You had so little sleep that you tended to try and rest. You didn’t sleep exactly but you had your feet up. They had sort of beds, these armchair things that you could lean back on it and your feed went down. We were spoiled actually. We got all these things. One was trying to relax. I think I must have fallen asleep. Occasionally I fell asleep. The telephone would have you going.

James: Did you wear the uniform, tie etc?

Oh no, God no. Preservation came into it. And half the problem was you had to look round. It was always the chap you did not see who shot you down. So you’re twisting round. If you had a collar and tie on it used chain you. So you had mufflers on. You wore a muffler but never a collar and tie.

Flight boots because they were fleece lined and it flew up at 30,000 and particularly during the Autumn, October/November, the bomber formations had stopped and the fighters were coming over, the 109s used to come over very high. Anywhere over [?]. Didn’t matter where.

James: Did you always wear your goggles?

No, I never did because they got in the way. I always wore them in case the hood was shot off and it got a bit breezy.

James: And gloves?

Yes always. You know if you’re at altitude, it got bloody cold up there. Nothing too tight. Gauntlets a bit tight for me. You’d lose the feeling in right hand. I used to use — we had silk inners. I just used to use silk. I used to go to my tailor and get some silk underwear too and then fly not too cumbered up. You had to be moving around the whole time as much as you could in a cockpit. Because if you constricted your circulation you could be very uncomfortable. I’ve actually screamed coming down through, getting feeling back to my [?]. Oh yes, in 1941 we were the first squadron to get a thing called the Spit Five. Took our planes up to Rolls Royce. All RR did was get a bloody great supercharger and stuck it on the back and said OK you’ve now got a Spit Five because that’s no longer a Merlin 3 its a Merlin 45 and they would take us up to 40,000 feet in Winter and of-course we weren’t equipped for it. Once my glove dropped into the bottom of the cockpit and I couldn’t reach it. And my hand sort of went up to about here. I’ve never been in such agony. We dived away at the end of the patrol and as we got back to circulation, its murder. I thought, well the language was terrible!

James: About being hit. Did you always know you’d been hit?

Yes you heard it! I didn’t see the chap that hit me, the one that did it badly, I didn’t see him. But I did over three weeks then and I knew my way around a bit. Now quite often a chap was hit and he thought what’s that and went on straight and level and that was the end. You never saw him again. But immediately I knew I’d been hit [sound]. Panned away straight away. You didn’t wait. And I got away with it. I got very close to it [bailing out] coming back from [?] but the sea looked a bit rough and it was a hell of a long way down and I ended up at Hawkinge.

James: asks about bailing out

They’re not easy to get out of. You couldn’t open the hood of the Spitfire above 300 knots. Because it had a curve on the top. So you had a little crowbar on the side. No, the only tme when I was shot up badly I thought of it. Jolly lucky I didn’t because a couple of bullets had gone up through my parachute. The matrimonial prospects would have been very seriously jeopardised. And it must have gone under the dashboard or something and the parachute was in tatters, not in tatters I’m exaggerating but when I got out of the thing the covering over the canopy, over the silk was shot and the silk was dropping out of it so it was just as well I didn’t head for the hills.

[begins to talk about swearing]

You didn’t say “that was a frightfully near miss old boy”, you said two words and the second one was that!

James: Did you go in for jargon?

Oh yes, the RAF was a law unto itself. Had jargon. Gin and all the rest of it. There’s a language. I can’t think of it now. Kite, being an aeroplane, Erk being the ground mechanic. They were the salt of the earth. Your spitfire wasn’t yours at all it was theirs. The fitter looked after the engine, the rigger looked after the fuselage and the rigging of it. You were their pilot. I have seen them looking out down to the south coast when nothing’s turned up. Particularly after the sweeps in 1941. Then they’d get a new aeroplane and a new pilot and they’d adapt.

James: you’re putting an awful lot of trust in them

Oh total. Absolutely total.

James: Did you ever have to turn back because of oil, overheating etc?

Once when the undercarriage didn’t retract. If it didn’t retract in a Spitfire you overheated. I had to take it back. As far as anything, that happened. It was hydraulics. And the flaps worked by air. If they didn’t work well then you landed without flaps which was like a bat out of hell. Generally speaking though, never turned back for an engine failure. Never missed a beat. One had complete faith in the Rolls Royce. I can’t think of anything else that I can contribute. I suppose people say airborne five or six times a day. I think that is journalistic licence. In reality I would suppose you did three trips a day. Difficult to say. If you went off in a convoy patrol up to and hour and a half. If you went up on an interception which 90% of the time it was, 40 minutes to an hour.

James: Did you manage to get a hot bath?

Yes. We were very lucky because we went back to the fighter stations surrounding London: Biggin, Kenley, [?] were peacetime establishments and afterwards at least we weren’t sitting in a slip trench. We went back when we were released which was about half an hour after dusk, half an hour before dawn sort of time we had hot baths.

James: What was your routine after being released (summer)?

If you were lucky, about half past seven because if it had been a busy day they knew the Germans weren’t geared to coming over again. And if they were then the nightfighters would have a go. Hot bath, quick prayer, very quick, normally two words: “thank you”, a meal in the mess served in a civilized manner with stewards and then off to the White Hart at Brasted[?] (Kent). Or there was a place called Hildon Manor which was a sort of night club where there were hostesses would you believe. Pity I dind’t know what was going on, I was a bit young. There were some lovely ladies there. Not that I got a look in with them because I was a boy. They’d been through all the mature blokes I was with. Dreadful business.

James Holland is one the prime movers behind the Chalke Valley History Festival, and a prolific historian, novelist and broadcaster, with a particular interest in the Second World War. Both his two most recent books – one on the Battle of Britain, the other on the Dam Busters Raid – were made into documentaries for the BBC and were also bestsellers. He is currently making a new series for the BBC about Britain and the Jet Age. He is also the author of the Jack Tanner novels, a series of adventures following the exploits of a British soldier in the Second World War, and of Duty Calls, young adult novels.

You can follow James on twitter @James1940

St. Mildred’s, Isle of Wight

24th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Bryan Beggs

The following article by Bryan Beggs features two places, which are mentioned and illustrated in ENGLAND’S STORY, Bryan’s latest children’s book… to be launched at our festival on 25^th June 2014, where Bryan will be speaking about his book during our Year 6 special day.

Yachtsmen sailing down the River Medina estuary from Newport to Cowes will see this church quite clearly on their starboard side, when they are about three miles downstream. Ramblers, and those enjoying a pint on the foreshore at The Folly Inn, may have to walk a little farther on to notice it… but from whatever vantage-point, they will have to look to the east, where they will see, sharply defined on the skyline and just visible between the surrounding trees, the needle-like point of the steeple of a church. This is St. Mildred’s Whippingham, pricking the sky like a giant medieval lance.

The path from Newport on the east bank of the river turns inland at the inn and soon strikes diagonally upward across the steepening slope towards the church. One wonders if this was the route taken to the churchyard by those who carried the bodies of the eighty-four German soldiers of the State of Hesse, typhoid victims here in 1794 and possibly veterans of the War of American Independence,[soldiers of the British crown]. At this time the Hessians were part of the Island’s defences against the threat of Napoleonic invasion. One hundred and fourteen years later, the Duke of Hesse, grandson of Queen Victoria, erected a tablet to their memory beside the south door of this very special church.

Most visitors take the easier, sign-posted route down the sharply twisting lane from the main road to East Cowes… here is still the sign, now in modern ‘heritage brown’, that so intrigued me as a boy…. St. Mildred’s Royal Church 100 yards. How often do I remember during those first visits to ‘The Island’, peering from the upper deck of a bus or through the car window to see this church… and failing… just 100 yards and invisible! I have to admit that fifty years came and went before at last… at long last, on one of those gentle days between the end of spring and the beginning of summer, my wife and I slowed the car and took the turning. I found it hard to believe that this was untrodden ground for us both. Of course it became immediately clear that the road-sign merely meant ‘100 yards to the turning to the church, which is another half-a-mile along the lane, down a gentle gradient. Why a Royal church, you may be wondering? The answer lies in more than its close proximity to Osborne House, the home of Queen Victoria and her family , as I hope will become clear.

As with very many of our English churches, St. Mildred’s has Saxon origins. St. Mildred herself was a Saxon Princess who died about 700 AD, having been Abbess of three different abbeys in Kent. She was the great-grand-daughter of Bertha, the Christian wife of King Ethelbert of Kent, and it was he, who at his wife’s request received the Pope’s envoy, Augustine on his arrival in Kent in 597 AD. Nothing remains of the original Whippingham church except perhaps for a stone relief set into the south wall of the entrance porch; seemingly of two mounted soldiers jousting?

After the Norman Conquest, in 1066 the church and its lands were given by William I to William FitzOsbern, thus it seems highly likely that this name was perpetuated in the more recent Osborne House and its estate of 1000 acres, which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought from Lady Elizabeth Blatchford in 1845. The facts we have, show that the original church on this site was demolished in 1804 and rebuilt by John Nash; famous for his work in the town of Bath. Queen Victoria decided that although the church was the most convenient for Osborne House, it was too small for the needs of her family, visitors and servants. The second rebuilding began with the chancel in 1854 and as with Osborne House itself, Prince Albert had a hand in the church’s design. Specialist architectural advice came from Albert Humbert, who later designed Sandringham House for the then Prince of Wales. The foundation stone for the remainder of the building was laid in 1860 by the Queen and Prince Consort together, and the whole edifice was completed by 1861.

St. Mildred’s is an excellent example of Victorian gothic design with a most effective ‘lantern’ tower, at the centre of which on the inside, is a replica of the Order of the Garter and above which on the outside, stands the fearsome lance-like steeple. This church is unique in that so many members of the Royal Family contributed to its decor and embellished it with their own talents. In particular the Queen’s fourth daughter, Princess Louise, later Duchess of Argyll, designed the font and worked its carpet surround with the help of her sister Beatrice and their ladies-in-waiting. She also made the beautiful four-foot high bronze figure of an angle lifting Christ from his cross, which used to be in the Battenberg Chapel… sadly this item was stolen in April 1966. The Battenberg Chapel which was once the north aisle of the chancel, was originally reserved for the use of the staff of the royal household. However when Prince Henry of Battenberg died in 1896, just eleven years after his marriage to Princess Beatrice in this church, it was the Queen’s wish that this memorial chapel should be created. The Queen herself made a small lace hassock for the chapel. The centre of the chapel is dominated by the marble sarcophagus of Prince Henry. It was not until 1945 that Princess Beatrice died [she was the youngest of Queen Victoria’s nine children] and was laid to rest with her husband. The chapel now commemorates other members of the Battenberg/Mountbatten family, but not Lord Mountbatten of Burma, whose tomb is in Romsey Abbey.

The south aisle of the chancel was the place occupied by Queen Victoria and her family and her chair is still in its original position; the other chairs were removed at the behest of King Edward VII and the more formal pews installed. It is to that king and the rest of the Royal Family of the time that St Mildred’s church owes the supremely beautiful gift of the white marble reredos behind the altar. It was privately commissioned by them in memory of Queen Victoria, and depicts The Last Supper.

The church is cruciform in shape and therefore has two transepts; both have contemporary stained glass rose windows high up on their respective north and south walls, which are miniature versions of those to be found in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

In this ‘gem’ of a church, can be felt the love and pain of an entire Royal Family… the duty, the joy and the grief that is the common experience of us all. It remains as a statement of their faith and presents us today with an inspiration that transcends the commonplace, for all is harmony within these walls… and outside, the slender steeple both guards and guides us.

Bryan Beggs flew in the RAF for many years before becoming a civilian helicopter instructor. He was a councillor and then Mayor of the Borough of Test Valley.

He has written ten books, seven of them for children, all of which are sold in aid of various local charities. He will be speaking at the Schools Festival about his new book, ‘England’s Story’, which is a history of England for young minds from 55BC to 2013 and will be sold in aid of the Chalke Valley History Trust.

www.englandsstory.co.uk

He Dared the Undarable

20th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by David Gilmour

A review of the book, Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

On a summer afternoon in Tuscany in the years of the belle epoque, a celebrated French courtesan alighted from a carriage to greet her host, the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, and was astonished to behold “a frightful gnome with red-rimmed eyes and no eyelashes, no hair, greenish teeth, bad breath, [and] the manners of a mountebank.” Wondering how he could have acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man, Liane de Pougy resisted his advances, climbed back into the carriage, and declined a subsequent offer to revisit the poet’s villa.

To be fair to d’Annunzio, the lady’s response was unusual and indeed unfair. He may have been short and unhandsome, but gnomishness and mountebankery were accusations not made by other women. He was certainly a show-off and often a poseur, and he was a shameless self-publicist: as a teenager he had spiced up his reputation as a romantic poet by fooling a Florentine editor into thinking he had been thrown by his horse and died a tragic death. He was also a narcissist of the most fastidious kind.Yet many women were entranced by d’Annunzio’s energy and flamboyance, by his intellectual brilliance, and by his romanticism and amaranthine extravagance: he would arrange adulterous assignations in rooms hung in green damask; he would buy Persian carpets for his horses to lie down upon; he would visit a mistress in Capri and hang flowers made of Murano glass on all the shrubs in her garden. And above all—despite Mlle de Pougy’s reluctance to test it—his reputation as a sexual mesmerist was by all accounts well earned. He was the very opposite of the protagonist in Alberto Moravia’s L’amore coniugale (Conjugal Love) who is too tired to write his novel if he has had sex with his wife the night before. For d’Annunzio, as Lucy Hughes-Hallett observes in her wonderful biography, “sexual experience…fuelled his creative energy.”“Vivere scrivere”—“to live to write”—was one of his many mottoes, and his most intense and persistent experience of living was the adulterous love affair. His story contains a long procession of desperate women trying vainly to hold onto him. One of the most tragic was the great actress Eleonora Duse, who said before meeting him that she would “rather die in a corner than love such a soul as…that infernal d’Annunzio.” The subsequent eight years of their affair were a period of artistic creativity for the infernal and unfaithful one, but for Duse they were in the main a time of torment, a “terrible convulsion of body and soul.” According to a friend, she was so addicted to the sexual pleasure her lover gave her that “she couldn’t do without him…it was lamentable.”D’Annunzio was born in 1863 into the minor nobility of the Abruzzi, that most rugged of regions nicely described by Hughes-Hallett as “bounded by bald mountains, where bears and wolves still live, and in whose foothills walled towns perch on crags fluted like the underside of mushrooms.” It is the setting of many of d’Annunzio’s early tales and much of his poetry. In “I pastori” (“The Shepherds”), one of his most beautiful rural poems, he writes evocatively of the annual transhumance, the migration of the Abruzzi shepherds and their flocks from the mountain pastures of the Apennines down to the shores of the Adriatic:E vanno pel tratturo antico al piano,
quasi per un erbal fiume silente,
su le vestigia degli antichi padri.
O voce di colui che primamente
conosce il tremolar della marina!They take the path their fathers’ fathers took,
the old drove-road, which bears them to the plain
as if upon a silent current of grass.
And oh the trembling sea, and the young swain
shouting at what he’s never seen before!¹D’Annunzio was happy to be considered an abruzzese as long as he was not required to live in his native land. As a schoolboy in Tuscany, where people speak the purest Italian, he quickly discarded his regional accent, and as a renowned writer he rejected the gift of a house in the Abruzzi because, although he was bankrupt at the time, he could not bear to live in so philistine a backwater. He ended “I pastori” with the line “Ah perché non son io co’ miei pastori?” (“Ah, why am I not with my shepherds there?”), but the question is easy to answer. He preferred to be in Florence or Rome, in a place where he could make money and be famous and seduce sophisticated women.D’Annunzio’s influences were many and diverse. Nietzsche and Wagner had palpable effects, as did Thomas Carlyle, who revealed how heroic men could change the course of history. Walter Pater and his aesthetic creed were also prominent, as were the English Romantics. Shelley was venerated for his poetry and Byron for the way he lived his life, though there is little trace of either’s work in their admirer’s verse. The dramatist Romain Rolland might compare d’Annunzio to a pike, a poacher of other people’s ideas, and the philosopher Benedetto Croce might dismiss him as “a dilettante of sensations,” but there was more to him than superficiality and decadence, at least in his poetry.Poems such as “La pioggia nel pineto” (“Rain in the Pine Grove”) display an understanding of the natural world that is both sensuous and observant, conjuring a landscape in which he and his lady “immensi/noi siam nello spirito/silvestre,/d’arborea vita viventi;/e il tuo volto ebro/è molle di pioggia/come una foglia,/e le tue chiome/auliscono come/le chiare ginestre…” (“are huge inside the/sylvan spirit, alive with/tree life; and your drunken/face is softened by the rain/the way a leaf is, and/your hair is fragrant/like the brilliant broom…”).² And he was a careful poet not merely of color but of specific shades of color. As Hughes-Hallett points out, his heroines don’t just wear gray but “the grey of ashes, of pigeon feathers, of pewter or a pale sky.”

By the age of thirty-one, d’Annunzio had written four fairly successful novels. Although his reputation has since faded—partly as a result of his association with fascism—we are often reminded that in his heyday he was admired by such younger writers as James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Like his French fan, he was seduced by the aristocracy of his capital city, and in his novel Il Piacere (Pleasure) he lamented the dimming of its cultural influence:

Beneath today’s gray democratic flood, which wretchedly submerges so many beautiful and rare things, that special class of ancient Italic nobility in which from generation to generation a certain family tradition of elect culture, elegance, and art was kept alive is also slowly disappearing.³Yet while d’Annunzio’s aristocrats are idle and decadent, intellectually sophisticated and emotionally atrophied, they are not, alas, Proustian: indeed they are very dull and unmemorable compared to the Baron de Charlus or the Duchesse de Guermantes. One female character looks like a portrait by Ghirlandaio, another resembles a high priestess painted by Alma-Tadema, while a third has both the “amber pallor” of a picture by Correggio and eyes that might have been imagined by Leonardo. Almost everything is described secondhand, whether flames that are seen through Shelley, a greyhound that is viewed through Rubens, or a beard that is reminiscent of Van Dyck. As for the Rome they inhabit, it is simply a city of street names. What a subject it might have been, half a generation after unification, with the Piedmontese king in the Quirinal, the pope immured in the Vatican, and a new nation emerging from the civil wars of the Risorgimento.

In his introduction to Pleasure, Alexander Stille quotes Pirandello’s view that one either has to live life or write it before observing that “this was a division d’Annunzio did not accept: he lived writing and wrote living, a dynamic and explosive combination that lasted for about twenty years, until his public life crowded out his writing.” Yet even when he was still writing—and he was a dramatist and librettist as well as a novelist and poet—he was too restless to confine himself to literature. At the end of the nineteenth century he entered parliament, but his time as a deputy was brief and strangely undistinguished. He was more attractive as a conservationist, campaigning for the preservation of his country’s artistic heritage and preventing the demolition of Lucca’s incomparable medieval walls.

D’Annunzio’s life outside literature suits his biographer, who is not a critic and whose primary intention is to depict the character and personality of her extraordinary subject. Her approach to her task is protean and impressionistic, sometimes pointillist, and generally impatient of conventional chronology. The second chapter consists of eighteen “sightings” of d’Annunzio between 1881 and 1937, while Part Two of the book (250 pages long) is divided into the “streams” of his life: decadence, eloquence, virility, and so on. His later public career perforce requires a stricter narrative, but Hughes-Hallett anticipates this with an early chapter on the crucial months in 1915 when d’Annunzio transformed himself from a stagey litterateur to a swaggering warmonger and thence to an improbable war hero.

At the outbreak of World War I d’Annunzio was fifty-one, bored, jaded, and living in France to escape his creditors in Italy. He was not of course the only European writer who needed war to cure his ennui: numerous contemporaries in other countries were in thrall to the “battle-god.” But in Italy the desire for conflict had a long history, rooted in the military failures of the Risorgimento, an era that had concluded with unification only because its enemy Austria had been defeated by the armies of Napoleon III in 1859 and of Bismarck in 1866. In 1914 Italian nationalists still hankered after military glory, “a baptism of blood,” despising their most successful politician, Giovanni Giolitti, because he had abandoned the project of making Italy great in favor of making it prosperous. Among them were the Futurists, a group of painters and intellectuals who worshiped speed and technology and who in 1909 had issued their notorious manifesto glorifying war as “the world’s only hygiene.”⁴ In 1911 they and their allies managed to bully Giolitti into invading Libya and, despite military failures in North Africa, their bellicosity was undiminished three years later when Europe was engulfed by its most convulsive conflict.

Italy was not directly involved in the diplomatic nightmare that followed the archduke’s assassination in Sarajevo. Since it had no enemies (except those it had chosen to make as a colonial power in Libya and the Red Sea region), it had no need to fight on either side in World War I, neither against its old supporters France and Britain, nor against the newer allies to which it had been tied by treaty for thirty-three years, Austria and Germany. Yet the nationalists could not bear to watch other people fighting without joining in, especially when a war against their Austrian friends might lead to the acquisition of new territories, not just Italian-speaking areas of the Hapsburg empire, but Slav-speaking and even German-speaking places as well.

Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett CollectionGabriele d’Annunzio, 1917

If the preservation of Lucca’s walls saw d’Annunzio at his most appealing, his rabble-rousing in the spring of 1915 displayed him at his worst. Of all the voices inciting crowds to demand conflict, his was the most eloquent and irresponsible. Repeatedly he denounced opponents of war as defeatists and traitors and even encouraged his listeners to kill them. Yet only hours after his ranting, he could regarb himself as a poet, “strolling,” in Hughes-Hallett’s words, “pensive and nostalgic…through the jasmine-scented Roman night, his appreciation of Rome’s multi-layered beauty that of a man of deep erudition.”

At the front he redeemed himself in his fashion. Despite his age he saw action with the army, the navy, and the air force, and his extraordinary exploits, which caused the loss of an eye and other injuries, included a dashing raid in a torpedo boat and flights to “bomb” Trento, Trieste, and Vienna with pamphlets written by himself. In moments of leisure he might linger over the zabaglione in Montin’s restaurant in Venice, but he was always ready to get up and make speeches to pilots or sappers or a crowd of mourners.

In 1917 the Italian commander in chief, General Luigi Cadorna, an obtuse man distrustful of clever subordinates, acted bewilderingly out of character by awarding him a squadron of bomber planes. During his offensives, d’Annunzio flew two sorties a day, getting wounded in the process and watching his colleagues being killed one after the other. Yet he was, predictably, in his element. War had brought him, as his biographer points out, manly fame and comradely love as well as adventure, purpose, and “the intoxication of living in constant deadly peril.” No wonder he was apprehensive when first he smelled “the stench of peace.”

Italy gained most of its war aims, including the cities of Trento and Trieste (acquisitions soon commemorated in the street names of almost every Italian city) as well as the German-speaking South Tyrol, which it renamed Alto Adige. But it did not achieve its ambitions in Dalmatia on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, which led d’Annunzio to condemn the postwar settlement as a “mutilated peace,” a phrase that encouraged many people to agree with him about the unfairness of the peace treaties and the perfidy of the wartime allies, whom he accused of trying to belittle Italy. A particular grievance was the fact that the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka), which contained a substantial Italian bourgeoisie, was assigned to the nascent Yugoslavia.

D’Annunzio was no longer just an aesthete rhapsodizing over Fortuny gowns but a man of action who needed a stage on which to strut. One of his mottoes was “to dare the undarable,” and he put this one into practice by daring to capture Fiume for Italy. In September 1919 he placed himself at the head of a band of nationalists and adventurers (who echoed Garibaldi’s slogan “Rome or Death!” with cries of “Fiume or Death!”) and set off for the city. The Italian government ordered its army to prevent his entry, but the officers refused to obey, and the poseur in d’Annunzio delighted in playing the role of Napoleon when confronting his former subordinates after his escape from Elba in 1815: he even imitated the imperial gesture of baring his chest and telling the troops to shoot him. Unopposed, he entered the city, proclaimed from a palace balcony its annexation to Italy, and inaugurated what his opponents called an “operatic dictatorship” that lasted for more than a year.

At that moment d’Annunzio may have been the most popular man in Italy, his charisma and bravado providing a radiant contrast to the weakness of the government in Rome and the irresponsibility of the Socialist Party, which, although the largest grouping in parliament, refused to take part in the administration of the country. Many people saw him as a possible—and even desirable—dictator, and Hughes-Hallett wonders whether he might have gained power as Mussolini did three years later—simply by going to Rome and grabbing it.

Yet d’Annunzio hesitated, apparently waiting for an insurrection that the country was not yet ready for. In any case, although he might have been able to set off a revolution, would he have been capable of controlling it and turning it into a regime? Could a man unable to run his own household have governed such a complicated and disunited country? As even his supporters noted, d’Annunzio was bored by the chore of running Fiume, which he turned into a vulgar and hedonistic Ruritania known as the “Italian Regency of Carnaro.”

In June 1920 Giolitti returned to power for the final time, and ended the farce by sending troops to Fiume and forcing d’Annunzio to surrender. Yet the nationalists could claim a victory of sorts because the city remained a free port and, four years later, it was annexed anyway by Mussolini.

The socialist historian Gaetano Salvemini reflected the view of the left when he described d’Annunzio’s adventure as a source of dishonor and ridicule for Italy. Unfortunately, one observer who found it neither dishonorable nor ridiculous was the former socialist Benito Mussolini, who supported the escapade in the pages of the newspaper he then edited, Il popolo d’Italia. From Milan the journalist noted how the comandante (as d’Annunzio liked to style himself) manipulated crowds with speeches from a balcony, how he made use of gestures and salutes, how he stirred up audiences with oratorical crescendoes culminating in a peculiar cry, “Eia, Eia, Eia, Alalà!,” which he claimed was the battle yell of Achilles. Mussolini studied and absorbed these tactics, and years later he encouraged the writing of a biography of d’Annunzio to be called The John the Baptist of Fascism.

D’Annunzio may have been a precursor of the duce—at any rate in style—but he was not a true fascist: he was too independent, too anti-German, too much the epicurean and aesthete, and ultimately too intelligent. Soon after Mussolini became prime minister, he tactlessly told him that fascism had taken all its ideas from dannunzianesimo and invented nothing by itself. Yet that wasn’t quite accurate. Hughes-Hallett sums up the relationship between the two with the felicitous observation that “though d’Annunzio was not a fascist, fascism was d’Annunzian.”

In August 1921 Italo Balbo, the ablest of the fascist bosses, visited d’Annunzio and invited him to assume leadership of the “national forces” in place of Mussolini. But the aging writer dithered, the moment was lost, and fifteen months later the duce was installed as head of the government in Rome. Fascist friends of d’Annunzio implored him to endorse the new regime, whose “superb prophet” he had been, but he refused. Fascism’s “ideal for the world” may have been similar to his own, but it had already, he said, been “squandered and falsified.”

For her last chapter Hughes-Hallett reverts to her staccato technique, using the historic present as her tense as she picks moments in the progress of fascism and juxtaposes them with scenes from d’Annunzio’s retirement in his villa on the shores of Lake Garda. There are inevitably moments of both pathos and bathos in the years leading up to his death from a brain hemorrhage in 1938. While fascist squads are beating up the city of Genoa, d’Annunzio (newly ennobled as the Prince of Monte Nevoso—“snowy mountain”) is buying cufflinks and tiepins.

Yet his last years are lived in the requisite style, with a pack of huge dogs—Great Danes with d’Annunzian names such as Danski and Danzetta—with the forward half of a battleship in his garden firing salutes for his guests, and with his last mistress Luisa, a pianist “imprisoned by her senses” (like Duse) who is prepared to look after him, run his household, and share him with other women. At night she leaves a rose in the keyhole of her bedroom door when she wants him to visit.

All this is told with an empathy and craftsmanship that d’Annunzio would admire even if he might not appreciate every judgment. Although himself the least empathetic of men, he has attracted a biographer of rare sensibility who has set out not to condemn—“disapproval,” she writes, “is not an interesting response”—but to understand. The result is a magnificent and beautifully written book that makes readers feel they have really come to know d’Annunzio, his many faults, his fewer virtues, and his enormous talent for life.

Translated by Geoffrey Brock in The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, edited by Geoffrey Brock (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). ↩
Translated by Jonathan Galassi in The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry.
Pleasure, translated by Lara Gochin Raffaelli, with an introduction by Alexander Stille (Penguin, 2013), p. 33. The previous English edition, published in 1898, had removed the sex scenes from a novel that is mainly about sex. ↩
Even after the “hygiene” had taken 600,000 Italian lives in World War I, the Futurist leader Marinetti was calling for the abolition of pasta on the grounds that it encouraged pacifism. His credibility was, however, punctured when he himself was photographed munching his way through a bowl of spaghetti. ↩

This article was first published in The New York Review of Books on 6 March 2014

David Gilmour is the author of several books including The Last Leopard, his prize-winning biography of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, award-winning biographies of Curzon and Rudyard Kipling (The Long Recessional) and The Ruling Caste. His most recent book is The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples.

Holiday Time Travel

19th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Caroline Lawrence

For children as well as adults, a book can be a time machine, opening a door to faraway places and letting you take part in a thousand different adventures. My life was changed forever when, at the age of nineteen, I read Mary Renault’s masterpiece The Last of the Wine. This book sparked my lifelong obsession with history in general and the Classical world in particular.

Because I grew up in the ‘Mediterranean’ climate of California and had seen plenty of sword and sandal movies, I could easily visualise ancient Greece and Rome. But what if a book is set in a time which is simply too remote? Or what if your child has trouble conjuring up the pictures painted by words?

One way to give your child a frame of reference is to take them to a good documentary or historical film, but these aren’t always suitable for children. And a film can’t show you what the world smelled or tasted like. What can satisfy the five senses and more?

Travel.

Take your children to the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech and you’ll give them a taste of life of a Roman forum: they’ll see metal smiths, snake charmers, acrobats and pavement dentists, just as they might have done in Roman times. Beggars, pushy shopkeepers, unwanted guides, unscrupulous innkeepers and overpriced food are also totally authentic to ancient Rome. If you are brave enough, you might even glimpse the biblical sight of a ram being slaughtered in front of a thorn bush as we did several years ago.

Passing the open door of a hamam (public bath house) in a Fes souk, I saw a boy shovelling sawdust into the furnace just as Roma bath-slaves would have fed a hypocaust. And a visit to the Cağaloğlu Hamam in Istanbul was the closest I’ll ever get to a day at the Roman Baths.

Attend a bullfight in Spain, and you will find all the ingredients of a day at a Roman amphitheatre. You have an opening procession, musicians playing in the stands, people waving of handkerchiefs to show approval, menials raking bloody sand between bouts, celebrity beast-fighters and merchants selling cushions, drinks and nuts. The Spanish bullring is a mini replicas of the ancient Roman amphitheatres, sometimes even down to the garlands they draped from awnings. Yes, it’s barbaric, but it’s a form of time-travel.

If these overseas options seem too exotic, expensive or extreme, you can find something just as good right here in Britain. Take your children to a re-enactment event. Encourage them to watch the shows, visit the stalls, handle the artefacts, buy a souvenir, try on gear, test equipment, taste the food. Best of all, encourage your children to chat with these living historians. They know far more than academics about the past because they come the closest to living it. They are almost always enthusiastic, accessible and generous with their knowledge. I have learned so much from re-enactors. Without their devotion my understanding of my history-mystery books would be much thinner and drier.

Many re-enactments are held around the country, but one of the best is the Chalke Valley History Festival. I’m going this summer and I hope to see you and your children there for a few days of holiday time travel.

Caroline Lawrence is the author of The Roman Mysteries, the children’s adventure stories set in Ancient Rome. They combine Caroline’s love of art history, ancient languages and travel and were made into a BBC children’s TV series. In 2009, she won the Classical Association Prize for ‘a significant contribution to the public understanding of Classics’. Caroline will be speaking at CVHF 2014 on Friday, 27th June about The Roman Mysteries.

Churchill: Finest Years, 1940-1945

19th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Max Hastings

Recording from Max Hasting’s talk, ‘Churchill: Finest Years. 1940-1945’ for CVHF, Sunday, 30th June 2013.

Max Hastings is one of the foremost chroniclers of the Second World War. Here he talks about Winston Churchill, our greatest war leader. Always forthright, Sir Max looks at the triumphs and the tragedies, the successes and the failures, whether it be the extraordinary rallying cry of 1940 or the impulsiveness that often drove a wedge between him and his generals and even Britain’s allies. He also touches on some of the lesser-known features of Churchill’s war leadership. This is an affectionate and vivid portrait, but also an unsparing one, in which he is willing to challenge some of the myths that surround our view of Britain’s wartime performance.

War Memorial

18th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Clive Aslet

Recording from Clive Aslet’s talk, ‘War Memorial’ for CVHF, Sunday, 30th June 2013.

Who were the men and women whose names are immortalised on war memorials around the country? Where did they live, and how and why did they die? Such questions usually go unanswered, but in this talk Clive Aslet unravells the story of just one war memorial – that of Lydford, a village on Dartmoor – and tracing the stories of the twenty-two men and one woman who made the ultimate sacrifice. Lydford, of course, speaks for any village in Britain, but in this touching, poignant and moving talk, he shows how one small community produced many tales of endurance and bravery from otherwise ordinary people who, but for the war memorial, would be forgotten.