History Hub Archives - Page 27 of 28 - History Hub Chalke History Festival

All the World’s a Stage!

17th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Christopher Lloyd

Introducing children a young as five to the complete plays of Shakespeare could be the answer to making our curriculum more human.

They are with us from the moment we are born (perhaps before?) and stay with us until the day we die. They define us. Most people would agree that without them we are not human. I am referring to feelings. Nothing is more fundamental to our being.

Yet is it remarkable how little science – and education – has to say about them. Since Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals surprisingly little research has been focussed on why and how we feel the way we do. Psychology and neuroscience nibble at the subject from different sides, but since feelings are so hard to describe let alone measure, it is mostly an un-trodden domain. Emotions are not rational. They are “not logical, Captain”, as the infamous Spock would say.

Worst of all, even though emotions generally rule our everyday lives, they hardly feature at all in the school curriculum. Reason – packaged up morsels of maths and physics are today’s hot topics. Literacy – at least initially – is more to do with learning how to read, less about understanding or sharing feelings, while the whole business of examinations and testing is about as unfeeling as can be imagined. Music and drama – those soft, right-hemisphere subjects – are probably the closest our school system gets to the emotional roller-coaster of everyday living, but usually these are subjects relegated to the sidings as optional extras.

What’s to be done? How can sentiment gain a more central place in the curriculum for students of all ages – from as young as five to 18.

One solution is to make it compulsory for every school child to be introduced to the complete plays of William Shakespeare from the age of five, and to ensure that these magnificent plays continue to be on offer to all pupils throughout their school days until the day they leave.

Surprising as this may sound, it is a conclusion I have come to after having had the privilege to work for the last 18 months on a fascinating project in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – a charity established in 1847 and charged with looking after Shakespeare’s heritage. During this time, we have been pioneering a new way of introducing young children (and their teachers and parents) to the emotional power of the complete plays of Britain’s greatest literary hero.

Make it compulsory for every school child to be introduced to the complete plays of William Shakespeare from the age of five

The complete plays of Shakespeare represent an emotional spectrum no less significant than James Maxwell’s electromagnetic spectrum is in the world of science. Everyday all of us, young and old, experience the essence of what is presented in these 38 stories. They are a comprehensive encyclopaedia of feeling – a reflection of our emotional selves that contain every possible colour and hue of human emotion contextualised in the power of narrative drama.

But how on earth can you present the plays of Shakespeare in a meaningful way to children as young as five? Ask any 14-year old who is beginning their studies of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time as part of the English GSCE and the groans are as predictable as they are universal.

In my view, we make three basic mistakes: we begin too late, we rely far too heavily on words and, finally, we only look at fragments, not the whole.

Imagine the challenge of introducing a five-year old child to the complete works of Shakespeare. Where would you begin? Perhaps with a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream with fairies arguing in a wood? Or maybe at a masked ball where two lovers from rival families fall in love at first sight?

Our project, inspired by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Educational Manager, Dr Nick Walton, took exactly the opposite approach. Rather than suggest one play, or a scene of a play, why not show ALL THE PLAYS AT ONCE so that a young mind can do what is does best – roam through any of them using nothing more than the power of natural curiosity?

Of course the plays should be presented in a way they were intended – that’s primarily through images not through words. Afterall, today when you go to a theatre you go to SEE a play, not to HEAR it. We dream in images, we remember in pictures. Our brains are hard-wired to make judgements and feelings based more on how the world looks, less about how it sounds.

So, for the first time ever, we have assembled all of Shakespeare’s 38 plays on a fold-out timeline showing when each was written and what was happening in Shakespeare’s life and around the world at the time. Each story is set inside an audience box around the stage of the Globe Theatre where his plays were performed from 1599 until the theatre dramatically burned down during a performance of Shakespeare’s last play, Henry VIII, in 1613.

Even on a 2.4m long fold out timeline, there isn’t room in a single audience box to retell each play in its entirety. But the main plot, the characters and most importantly the transformation of emotions in each story (that can translate into feelings that we all experience in our everyday lives) are all possible.

Now it’s up the child (with their parents or teacher, perhaps) to choose where to wander and which plays to look at.

See those ghosts circling around a tent! What’s that? – a bear? A woman falling out of a boat.. ? Witches dancing around a pot….? A boy with a donkey’s head…? a woman struggling with a snake around her neck, she doesn’t look too happy!… Or that fat guy with his head popping out of a laundry basket … what on earth is he doing?

In just one sweep we’ve touched on Richard III, A Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony & Cleopatra and the Merry Wives of Windsor.

A woman struggling with a snake around her neck, she doesn’t look too happy!

We could just as easily explore which plays may be based on fact and which are made up. Fairies are fiction, Henry V probably not. Best look him up just in case to see if a king called Henry V actually existed…… Yes he DID – must be fact…..

For example, the emotional journey from joy to hate to sorrow could be the story of a child being given a birthday present, it being seized by the child’s sibling and then destroyed in a struggle by the first child in a vain attempt to get it back. The same emotional rollercoaster could also be applied to the story Julius Caesar. His joyful entry into Rome after a triumphant victory in battle, the hatred stirred up in the hearts of his fellow rulers at Caesar’s rising popularity which could spell doom for the Republic and the sorrow of Brutus and his co-conspirators once the consequences of Caesar’s murder play out. Such transformations could equally be understood in terms of colours – perhaps yellow (joy) to red (hate) and blue (sorrow).

To engage a child in such stories is simply just a matter of approach, not a matter of them not being old enough. If a fourteen year old, who has never before experienced the world of Shakespeare, is compelled to sit in a classroom and take it in turns reading a play composed in a quaint, confusing language, (he probably hates reading anyway) with myriad intricate plots and subplots that were never designed to be read in a book anyway – it is no great surprise that pupil engagement does not naturally follow.

Compare with this a 5 year-old child who realises that the emotional journeys they experience themselves every day are also played out in stories from the plays of Shakespeare which can be brought to life through a galaxy of pictures!

A Wallbook of 38 plays can and should never be a substitute for actually seeing (and hearing) the plays of our greatest playwright in a theatre. But if a child’s curiosity is aroused sufficiently by images that stick in their minds, be the ghosts, fairies or bears, such that they decide at some point that they’d like to see the play for themselves, then the Wallbook’s job is done.

Later this month, more than 2,000 UK primary schools will join in a celebration of Shakespeare Week, (17^th to 23^rd March), an initiative set up by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to celebrate the 450^th birthday of the bard. What a fabulous opportunity not only to instil a love of Shakespeare at an early age through pictures and feelings, but also to make our school curriculum a little more about emotions and not all about facts, figures and reason.

An edited version of this article appeared in Weekend Telegraph on 8th March 2014

The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton

13th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Diane Atkinson

Recording from Diane Atkinson’s talk, ‘The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton’ for CVHF, Tuesday 25th June 2013.

Critically-acclaimed author Diane Atkinson tells the story of one woman’s fight for the rights of women everywhere. On the morning of 22nd June, 1836, crowds were gathering at the Court of Common Pleas to witness the case of Caroline Sheridan who had been accused, by her violent bully of a husband, of having a ‘criminal conversation’ (an affair), with the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. The woman accused was not only a talented poet and songwriter but beautiful and notoriously flirtatious as well. But although she was acquitted, her husband’s revenge was savage. Having become a laughing stock, he cut her off (as was his legal right), refused to let her see her children and left her destitute. This is a fascinating insight into Victorian morals, prejudice and hypocrisy as well as Sheridan’s campaign for women’s rights.

The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting In The Raj

13th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Anne De Courcy

Recording from Anne De Courcy’s talk, ‘The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj’ for CVHF, Thursday 27th June 2013.

When the British Empire was at its height in the mid-nineteenth century, legions of ambitious young men were sent out from England to rule it. With the beginning of steam travel and the opening of the Suez Canal, a new breed of Englishwoman, anxious to find an eligible husband after failing to find one at home, followed them. Most discovered a social whirl of parties, picnics and gymkhanas with men in the Raj outnumbering women four to one. But once married off, life often changed dramatically for these women of the Fishing Fleet: whisked off to a remote outpost with few other Europeans for company and with disease rife, they found it a far cry from the social whirlwind of their first arrival. This is the story of these women and it is one of courage, desperation, hope and a great deal of humour.

The Watchers: Spies & Espionage in the Reign of Elizabeth I

12th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Stephen Alford

Recording from Stephen Alford’s talk, ‘The Watchers: Spies & Espionage in the Reign of Elizabeth I’ for CVHF, Tuesday 25th June.

In this gripping talk, Stephen Alford tells the story of Elizabeth’s spies, code breakers, ambassadors and confidence-men, who battled constantly throughout her reign to protect their queen. For while she was a ruler who radiated power and purpose, most of Europe, from the Pope to Philip II, conspired to destroy her. Her reign required endless watchfulness – of the coasts, of the Catholic seminaries, of Elizabeth’s own subjects. The stakes could not have been higher: priests coming secretly ashore were hunted down and executed, and assassination plots, real and imagined, sprung up everywhere. Drawing on extraordinary secret files, Stephen Alford brings to life this shadow world, where nobody could be trusted and where a single mistake could have changed England’s history drastically. This is a dark, surprising and utterly compelling talk of an extraordinary reign.

The Legacy of Rome: When Did the Roman Empire End?

11th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Tom Holland

Recording from Tom Holland’s talk, ‘The Legacy of Rome: When Did the Roman Empire End?’ for CVHF, Wednesday, 26th June 2013.

In AD 476, Romulus Augustulus, emperor in line to Augustus, Trajan and Constantine, was deposed by a German chieftain. It is an event that in most history books is identified as marking the end of the Roman Empire. But did it? Tom Holland explores whether the Romans themselves had any comprehension that their empire could possibly fall, traces the surprisingly obdurate survival of a Roman imperial identity across the centuries, and identifies the moment in history when the Roman Empire definitively came to an end. Told with his enormous knowledge and wide-ranging understanding of history, this was a hugely entertaining, provocative and utterly absorbing talk, proving why Tom Holland has become one of our foremost authorities and scholars of the Roman Empire.

The Vikings

11th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Neil Oliver

Recording from Neil Oliver’s talk, ‘The Vikings’, for CVHF, Saturday, 29th June 2013.

The Vikings were wild-looking marauders, bent on rape and pillage and notorious for taking no prisoners – or so the myth would have it. Much of this is the fault of the Vikings themselves who never wrote a word of their history. But in this talk, Neil Oliver shows the Vikings as a people that came back from the brink of destruction to travel half way around the world and build an empire that lasted 200 years. From their Scandinavian roots, the Vikings set out on an epic voyage of trade and discovery that would take them from America to Baghdad. Theirs is a riveting story told by a brilliant presenter who has uncovered new facts and theories to bring these Norsemen alive once more.

The Peninsular War

10th March 2014/in History Hub, Talks & Audio/by Peter Caddick-Adams

Recording from Peter Caddick Adam’s talk, ‘The Peninsular War’, for CVHF, Tuesday 25th June 2013.

Acclaimed historian Peter Caddick-Adams brought his vast knowledge and his experience of walking the ground to bear in this talk about the Peninsular War, a long and drawn-out campaign, in which the combined British and allied forces gradually ground down and defeated Napoleon’s French armies. Notable for the reputations made and ruined, and for the numerous battles and sieges fought across Portugal and Spain, this was a brutal and bloody campaign. From Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna, through the Lines of Torres Vedras and the siege of Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo to the battles of Salamanca and Vitoria (recreated at the Festival on Sunday 30th), he told the tale of this six-year campaign with all his usual enthusiasm, expertise and empathy for those who fought, from the lowly rifleman to Wellington himself.

Who Killed Rasputin? The secret role of MI6

10th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Giles Milton

The frozen corpse was spotted in the Neva River on the last day of December, 1916. A river policeman noticed a fur coat lodged beneath the ice and ordered the surface crust to be broken.

The frozen body was immediately recognisable as belonging to Grigori Rasputin, ‘holy’ advisor to the tsar and tsarina of Russia.

Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, believed Rasputin to be blessed with semi-magical powers that brought temporary relief to their haemophiliac son.

Others took a rather different view. Rasputin was widely hated as a dissolute fraudster who was manipulating the affairs of state to his own advantage. Many in the Russian capital had long wished him dead.

The corpse was prised from its icy sepulchre and taken to Chesmenskii Hospice. Here, an autopsy was undertaken by Professor Dmitrii Kosorotov.

Rumours about Rasputin’s death were already circulating around Petrograd, rumours that would later be fuelled by one of the murderers. Prince Felix Yusupov, in whose palace Rasputin had died, not only admitted to being involved, but also justified the killing by arguing that Rasputin was bad for Russia.

He bragged about having poisoned him with cyanide before shooting him through the heart.

‘He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips.’

From the outset there were good reasons to doubt Yusupov’s account. The professor conducting the autopsy noted that the corpse was in a terrible state of mutilation.

‘His left side has a weeping wound, due to some sort of slicing object or a sword. His right eye has come out of its cavity and falls down onto his face… His right ear is hanging down and torn. His neck has a wound from some sort of rope tie. The victim’s face and body carry traces of blows given by a supple but hard object.’

Rasputin had been repeatedly beaten with a heavy cosh.

More horrifying was the damage to his genitals. At some point his legs had been wrenched apart and his testicles had been ‘crushed by the action of a similar object.’

Other details gleaned by Professor Kosorotov suggest that Yusupov’s account was nothing more than fantasy. The story of the poisoned cakes was untrue: the post mortem found no trace of poison in Rasputin’s stomach.

Kosorotov also examined the three bullet wounds in Rasputin’s body. ‘The first has penetrated the left side of the chest and has gone through the stomach and liver. The second has entered into the right side of the back and gone through the kidney.’

Both of these would have inflicted terrible wounds, but the third bullet was the fatal shot. ‘[It] hit the victim on the forehead and penetrated into his brain.’

Professor Kosorotov noted – significantly – that the bullets ‘came from different calibre revolvers.’

On the night of the murder, Yusupov was in possession of a pocket Browning, as was fellow conspirator Grand Duke Dmitrii. Vladimir Purishkevich, also present, had a Sauvage.

These weapons could have caused the wounds to Rasputin’s liver and kidney. But the fatal gunshot wound to Rasputin’s head could only have come from a revolver. Ballistic experts now agree that the grazing around the wound is consistent with that which is left by a lead, non-jacketed bullet fired at point blank range.

All the evidence points to the fact that the gun was a British-made .455 Webley revolver. This was the gun that belonged to Oswald Rayner, a close friend of Yusupov since the days when they had both studied at Oxford University.

Unbeknown to anyone except the small group of conspirators, Rayner had also been present on the night of Rasputin’s murder. Sent to Russia more than a year earlier, he was a British agent working for the Secret Intelligence Service (now MI6).

Prince Yusupov was circumspect about Rayner when he wrote his memoirs. He mentions meeting him on the day after Rasputin’s murder but presents their meeting as a chance encounter.

‘I met my friend Oswald Rayner… he knew of our conspiracy and had come in search of news.’

Yusupov did indeed meet with Rayner after the murder, but Rayner had not needed to ‘come in search of news’ for he had fired the fatal shot.

Rayner would later tell his family that he was present in the Yusupov Palace, information that would eventually find its way into his obituary.

Surviving letters from his fellow agents also shed light on his role. ‘A few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement,’ wrote one. ‘Rayner is attending to loose ends.’

The tsar was quick to hear rumours of British involvement in Rasputin’s murder. Anxious to know more, he asked the British ambassador if Rayner had a hand in the murder.

The ambassador denied any knowledge of Rayner’s involvement. So, too, did Samuel Hoare, the head of the British espionage bureau in Petrograd. ‘An outrageous charge’, he said, ‘and incredible to the point of childishness.’

It may well have been ‘outrageous’, but it was also true. Indeed Hoare was so quick to learn of Rasputin’s death that he was able to inform London before it was publically known in Petrograd.

Giles Milton is author of ‘Russian Roulette: Spies in the First World War and 1920’s’.

He will be speaking at CVHF 2014 on Wednesday, 25th June on this subject.

The Power of Non-Fiction

6th March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Christopher Lloyd

ENGLAND, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. According to the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) education report our young adults have amongst the lowest literacy rates of any country in the modern industrialised world. England came 22nd out the 24 countries surveyed.

What is going on? It seems that for at least a generation all significant attempts by government and educationalists to nurture a love of reading amongst younger people appear to have failed.

Recently I was asked to speak at the Federation of Children’s Books Groups annual conference, at Bradfield College near Reading. It is an august organisation dedicated to instilling a love of reading in young people. The gathering, now in its twentieth year, was packed with teachers, book lovers and educationalists.

‘How wonderfully refreshing to have a non-fiction author speaking’ said one delegate after I had given my 60 minutes romp through the history of the world, with a giant Wallbook timeline as a backdrop.

Why, I wondered, should being a ‘non fiction’ author be such a big deal? In my world stories about the real world are so much more amazing than any number of fantasies you can dream up in your mind. If you love truly amazing stories then non-fiction’s the place for you…. Most children I speak to seem to agree.

Facts, how things work, encyclopaedias, maps, explorers, books about nature, superheroes and villains from the past – in my experience this is the stuff that really sets off fireworks in many young brains. World records, bloody wars, space travel, Titanic….. to many youngsters these stories are no less incredible than Harry Potter or Spiderman.

As adults we forget that to the young mind reality is often far more magical than fiction. It’s only as we grow older that social conventions condition us into thinking that the world around us is ‘normal’ – far from it!

Take the birth of a child – it is a stunningly extraordinary occurrence. To any rational mind, the self-assembling mechanics of foetal embryological development utterly defy ordinary comprehension. And just because a new baby is born on average 370,000 times worldwide every day doesn’t make it ‘ordinary’. Frequency should never undermine wonder. In fact, to a curious young mind the more often something amazing happens, the more extraordinary it is!

I recall visiting the Picasso museum in Barcelona with my wife and two young children when we were on our travels in a campervan around Europe. One display board explained how it was this great artist’s adult ambition to learn once again how to paint like a child. I remember how powerfully I was moved by his attempt to rediscover a sense of wonder and curiosity about the everyday world. His paintings now seem to make so much more sense.

For most of us grown-ups the extraordinary world around us has long since become mundane and fascination for fact is often substituted by an addiction to fiction – as is shown by the difference in sales each week between fiction and non-fiction titles.

As I left the talk I gave to the Federation, that woman’s voice kept reverberating around my mind. Why did she say it was such a novelty having a non-fiction author give a talk at a conference on reading and children’s books?

Then a penny dropped. Almost without exception the books that are generally used to promote literacy in schools are popular reading schemes based on a diet of fictional stories, graded into levels that can easily be monitored and measured. Using the same set of books for every child means they can be measured against each other – ideal for an adult-centred approach to assessing performance in schools.

Now put yourself in the mind of a reluctant child who is being taught to read via such a scheme. The question most likely to be going through their mind will be this:

Why on earth are these adult bullies forcing me to learn how to read something that I am not interested in anyway? What’s the point when I want to be outside playing with my friends?

And if the educating adult were being brutally honest, I suspect the answer may well be this:

Because it’s my job. Because I want to help you succeed in life. Because it’s my responsibility to help you pass your tests…..(which means I will be praised by your parents and the head teacher and the school will look good in its league tables….).

But all is not lost.

On Thursday this week schools all over the UK will have the chance to celebrate National Non-Fiction Day, now in its third year – a relatively new initiative organised by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups.

Now imagine a young boy who happens to have a fascination with space travel. His teacher asks him to find a book from the library that he finds interesting. He chooses one about the true story of those astronauts who failed to reach the moon on Apollo 13 and only just managed to return to Earth in what remained of their spaceship after it had exploded.

Now he is taking a book he wants to read because he is following his own natural curiosity about something he is already interested in. And the best way for him to find out more is… to learn how to read.

England – we do not have a problem. We just need to remind ourselves again and again that children learn best through their natural curiosity. When and where they will learn to read doesn’t much matter. Far more important is to ensure we do not diminish their built-in light-bulb of fascination for the world around them by forcing them into senseless reading schemes many of which have little natural context, meaning or purpose to a young spongy mind.

This article appeared in the Weekend Telegraph, p.13 on Saturday 2nd November 2013

Royal Enemy Aliens

3rd March 2014/in History Hub, Writing/by Thomas Harding

When I first heard the eulogy in 2006 for my great-uncle Hanns Alexander, I was amazed. Apparently, he had been served as a Nazi hunter in the British Army at the end of the Second World War. How was this possible? After all, he had grown up as a Jew in Berlin.

Like so many other European Jews in the 1930s, the nineteen-year-old Hanns and his family had fled Nazi persecution and had arrived in Britain in 1936. His first task was to learn the language and find a job.

But when war was declared in September 1939 he immediately signed-up for military service. He felt that it was his duty to fight for the adopted country which had so generously provided refuge to his family. It would also be a chance to wreak revenge on the Third Reich who had driven them out of Germany.

Yet, Hanns’ offer to fight for his adopted country was not immediately accepted. The British government was uncertain about how to deal with applications from newly arrived German and Austrian refugees. Officially it welcomed all who volunteered and were fit for service, but it was wary of taking in men who it feared might pursue espionage or sabotage.

It wasn’t until December 1939, three months later, that the Hanns received word regarding his enlistment: Hanns was to be part of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and was ordered to report at once. He was given the army number 264280.

The Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps had been created on 17 October 1939 to make use of men who were refugees from Germany and elsewhere who wanted to fight Hitler. For these men the stakes were high. If caught by the Reich, they would be viewed as traitors and shot. Yet, of the more than 70,000 German and Austrian refugees who landed in Britain between 1933 and 1939, approximately one in seven enlisted with the Pioneers.

At the Kitchener training camp on the south coast of England, Hanns joined up with other refugees who had been assigned to the Pioneers. Housed in dilapidated barracks that let in snow through the holes in the roofs, the Pioneers jokingly called the place ‘Anglo-Sachsenhausen’, after the Berlin camp in which some of them had recently been held.

Few of the volunteers spoke the local language, yet they insisted that they swear allegiance to the King in English: “I certify that I understand the risks . . . to which I and my relatives may be exposed by my employment in the British Army outside the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding this, I certify that I am willing to be employed in any theatre of war.”

But Hanns and his comrade’s hopes that they would be soon fighting the Nazis were soon disappointed. For they learned that the British Army trusted them enough to don the official uniforms and swear allegiance, but not enough to equip them with guns.

The Pioneers would spend the next few years digging trenches, loading trainings and acting as orderlies in field hospitals. Even when it came for the big push into Europe, in June 1944, spearheaded during the Normandy Landing, these Pioneers served only in non-combat roles.

Shortly after being deposited on Gold Beach near the small town of Arromanches, Hanns and his company were asked to supervise a small group of German officers who had been captured the day before. They held the POWs in an open field without barbed wire. The only boundaries to this makeshift camp were white anti-mine ribbons that they had strung between some trees. These German Jews, who had been forced out of their homes and were now wearing British uniform, were tasked with controlling their oppressors. It was a strange, awkward situation.

The British attitude towards the Pioneers changed with the approach of the war’s end. It was as if they suddenly realised the incredible resource they had at their disposal, for these refugees knew the language, the culture and the lay of the land better than anyone else.

In May 1945, Hanns was assigned to the 1 War Crimes Investigation Team and sent to a camp in the North of Germany to help with interrogating some guards who had been captured. The name of the camp was Belsen.

It was early evening on 12 May 1945 when they arrived at the barbed-wire gates of Belsen. Inside the camp, corpses lay piled on top of each other. The living prisoners were so thin that their ribs poked through their skin. Mothers clutched dead children; shaven-headed survivors in black-and-white-striped uniforms stared vacantly by decrepit wooden barracks; painted signs warning of typhus epidemics were everywhere. There was no water, no food, inadequate medical supplies and little shelter.

Hanns’ first impressions of Belsen were visceral: “Before it came to interpreting it was a question of cleaning the camp out. Everybody did whatever they could. There were dead bodies walking about, dead bodies lying about, people who thought they were alive and they weren’t. It was a terrible sight.”

Hanns’ first task was to help bury the corpses strewn across Belsen’s grounds. With the help of other soldiers – one holding the legs, the other grasping the arms – Hanns carried hundreds of bodies to a mass grave.

All the British soldiers were deeply disturbed by what they had found in Belsen. But Hanns’ reaction was different. The atrocity at Belsen had happened in the country of his birth; its victims were mostly Jews, his people. He could understand the German-speaking prisoners, people with whom he shared a context and background. Their story could so easily have been his. For Hanns, this was his home, and there would be no respite. It was as if Belsen had tripped a switch in him. No longer was he a carefree, selfish young man. He was gripped by a barely controllable rage. And he sensed a purpose.

Hanns approached his commander and suggested that he search for senior Nazis who were beyond the camp fences, hiding somewhere in North Germany. After some negotiation, he was soon spending his time tracking down the perpetrators of the Final Solution.

To my surprise, as I continued my research, I learned that my great-uncle had not only been a Nazi hunter, he had been one of the first, if not the first in the British Army.

During his time he interrogated the Kommandant of Belsen, the doctors who oversaw the selections in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he tracked down the leading Nazi in Luxembourg, the Gauleiter of Luxembourg and, after an extraordinary chase through Northern Germany, the Kommandant of Auschwitz.

It seemed amazing, but it turned out to be true: it was possible that you could be born a Jew in Germany, and serve as a Nazi Hunter in the British Army at the end of the Second World War.

Thomas Harding is author of “Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Kommandant of Auschwitz” (Windmill; paperback available May 2014). He will be speaking at CVHF 2014 on this subject.

You can follow Thomas on twitter @thomasharding