History

Does monotropa hypopithys, or yellow bird’s nest, still grow in Mickleham, Surrey, in the woods once owned by Sir Lucas Pepys the celebrity physician who, in ministering to King George III, ‘found the stool more eloquent than the pulse?’ The question is prompted by the Bodleian’s recent acquisition of a ‘Catalogus Plantarum’ kept in the 1790s by an anonymous Botanist who roamed the south of England looking for specimens and noting them down with meticulous care in an exact italic.

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn big with rich increase Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lord’s decease. Yet this abundant issue seemed to me But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit, For summer and his pleasures wait on thee And thou away, the very birds are mute: Or if they sing, ‘tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near. Spring is a strange time for a break-up. ‘Rejoice!’ says the earth, ‘the world is full of hope!’.

Kevin Maher’s debut novel The Fields is set in the suburban streets of south Dublin in 1984. The story is narrated by Jim Finnegan: an innocent 13-year-old boy who lives in a carefree world that consists of hanging out in the local park and going on nightly bike rides with his geeky friend Gary. But shortly after his fourteenth birthday, Jim’s life drastically changes when he falls in love with a beautiful 18-year-old woman, Saidhbh Donoghue. After a brief honeymoon period their relationship turns sour when the young couple are forced to take a boat to Britain to arrange for Saidhbh to have an abortion.

Precocious genius will never fail to impress. But it is also very hard to relate to. Aged 14, Anthony Van Dyck painted a Portrait of a Seventy-Year-Old man that looked like a portrait by a seventy-year-old man, signed it, and marked it with his age, the idea being that the younger you are, the more impressive you are. And Van Dyck was impressive. Looking at the work he produced in his teenage years, it’s hard not to think of Julius Caesar, sniveling before a statue of Alexander the Great because he achieved so much, so young. Frankly, I feel like a loser. Which is why The Young Van Dyck, edited by Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse, is a welcome read.

Zero Six Bravo tells of 60 Special Forces operators forced to remain silent in the face of accusations of ‘cowardice’ and ‘running away from the Iraqis’ in the 2003 war. In the face of such savage media criticism, and being branded as ‘incompetent cowards’ who ran an ‘operation cluster f___’ in Iraq, the men who served in this epic mission had no way to tell their own side of the story and clear their names. Why? For two main reasons. First, because the MOD operates a policy of ‘neither confirm nor deny’ anything regarding UK Special Forces. This extends to neither confirming nor denying the very existence of such elite units, let alone giving any details of operations.

‘To Oliver Cromwell’ Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Hast reared God's trophies and his work pursued While Darwen streams with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester's laureate wreath; yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less than those of war; new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls in secular chains: Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw. This sonnet was written in 1652 when Milton was part of Oliver Cromwell’s civil service.

Sometimes, in the joyous lotteries we call ‘secondhand bookshops’, you find a volume that takes you back to a different era because of its physical appearance. Sometimes you find one that adds to the effect by its content – a book about Victorian cricket, perhaps, or 1950s industrial policy. But sometimes you find one that goes beyond even that: it shows you a world where books mattered in a way they simply can’t today, and indeed never will again. That’s what happened to me recently, when I bumped into a copy of the sublimely archaic How To Pronounce It by Alan S.C. Ross. Published in 1970, it has a dust-jacket whose shades of green, blue and grey evoke the cardigans of Open University presenters from the time. The price is printed as ‘1.

To my Excellent Lucasia , on our Friendship. I did not live until this time Crowned my felicity - When I could say without a crime I am not thine, but thee. This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept, So that the world believed There was a soul the motions kept; But they were all deceived. For as a watch by art is wound To motion, such was mine: But never had Orinda found A soul till she found thine Which now inspires, cures and supplies, And guides my darkened breast: For thou art all that I can prize, My joy, my life, my rest. No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth To mine compared can be: They have but pieces of this earth, I've all the world in thee.

This week, March 11th, marks the 50th anniversary of the shooting by firing squad near Paris of the last person (so far) to be executed by the state for political offences in France. 36-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, a brilliant young officer of the French Air Force, was a rocket scientist (he invented the SS-10 anti-tank missile) - involved at the highest levels of France's attempt under President De Gaulle to forge a path independent of US hegemony in developing its own defence capability.

It's tempting to reduce the Roman Empire to a roll call of famous men and their infamous deeds. The Republic toppled with Caesar on the steps of the senate; freedom of speech was curtailed as brutally as Cicero's tongue; democracy became an act on Octavian assuming his stage name. However Robert Knapp, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, isn't interested in that version of history. Like Mary Beard, who pottered around Rome deciphering inscriptions for the BBC, he’s concerned with ordinary folk. His Invisible Romans range ‘from fairly wealthy to modestly well-off and downright poor, male and female, slave and free, law-abiding and outlaw’.

from Delia When winter snows upon thy golden hairs, And frost of age hath nipped thy flowers near; When dark shall seem thy day that never clears, And all lies withered that was held so dear;    Then take this picture which I here present thee, Limned with a pencil not all unworthy; Here see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee; Here read thyself, and what I suffered for thee.    This may remain thy lasting monument, Which happily posterity may cherish; These colours with thy fading are not spent; These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.    If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby;    They will remain, and so thou canst not die. Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature portraits are bewitchingly beautiful.

In his latest book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond analyses the behavioral differences between human beings in tribal stateless-societies and those living in bureaucratic nation states. Diamond says that if states only came into existence 5,400 years ago, and agriculture in the last 11,000, human beings have been wandering nomads for most of history. Therefore, if modern nations are relatively new concepts, we have much to learn from traditional cultures. Drawing on his experience of 50 years of field research in New Guinea, Diamond attempts to prove his thesis with a mixture of personal anecdotes and academic research.