Horror and Gore in Children’s Histories May 31, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
***Dedicated to a suffering Little Miss B***
Beachombing’s eldest daughter (4) has recently begun to appreciate her nation’s past. This would be fascinating in itself. But it has become a haunting replay of Beach’s own childhood because Beach (good historian that he is) saved his own childhood reads and is now sharing them with Little Miss B. Beach has been particularly interested by the pictures that he remembers from his infancy and those he has quite forgotten. Naturally the remembered images tend to include pain or anticipated pain and all the sluiced up horror that goes with that. Who can forget ‘the page’ that you as a child tried to turn over without looking or that you only looked at with parents present? Well, here are a few from Beachcombing’s catalogue of terrors. Above is Joan ”the maid” Arc as she is turned into base elements and cooking fat and here follows the most chilling of them all: the princes in the tower about to be suffocated by ‘the shaggy shadow’.
The jousting toys are a stroke of genius.
From the little seen so far of 2012 history books for the very young there has been a period of sanitation since Beach last sat on a potty. Difficult but memorable scenes are becoming rarer. The images included here are taken from Ladybird’s Kings and Queens of England (1968). It would be interesting to see whether any of this horror and gore survives in the modern edition. Beach wonders whether any of his readers had any ghastly perhaps even inappropriate images from children’s history books of twenty or forty or sixty years ago? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
And have we gone too far in cleaning up the past? Beach, who is a great believer in the Roald Dahl school of childhood noted with a thrill that the pictures that most interested Little Miss B were precisely those that had most interested Beach himself a generation or two ago. The questions were probably the same too. Is he good? Is he bad? What will happen next? What is the black hood for? Why didn’t anyone help the little children? Daddy, what’s he wiping off his sword?
Beach’s daughter – a free spirit – was particularly bemused by a page of slavers with a long row of African tribespeople being marched towards a boat (flying the Stars and Stripes!). The very concept of slavery confused her. She also noted the man in the water in this shipwreck image below and was incredulous at his lack of armbands.
Coincidentally as Beach was writing this an email arrived from Larry (for which many thanks) linking to the image from a nineteenth-century German book on children’s bad habits. The images are beyond belief. But Beach, who had that book too as a child, always found it amusing rather than frightening. Whereas some of the simple images above lurked in the cracks between his nightmares.
The Problem with Sea Apes May 24, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary, Modern
***Dedicated to Andy the Mad Monk and Invisible***
Beach has, since the early days of this site, shown a persistent interest in mermaids. It would be outrageous then to pass by the important new documentary coming out (or has it already aired?) on Animal Planet. The following is borrowed from Wikipedia (courtesy of the inestimable Invisible).
Mermaids: The Body Found is a two hour Animal Planet… The fictional film tells the story of a scientific team’s investigative efforts to uncover the source behind mysterious underwater recordings and an unidentified marine body. Two former National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists tell their story on camera for the first time. After investigating mass strandings of whales, the team claimed to have recorded mysterious underwater noises coming from an unknown source. This sound resembled a sound previously recorded in 1997, called the ‘bloop’. They also claimed to have recovered 30% of the remains of an unknown creature from inside a great white shark which was said to possess attributes of the human body. They alleged that the marine creature had hands, not fins, and the hip structure of an upright animal. These findings, along with many others led the team to determine that this unknown animal was very closely related to humans, possibly a mermaid.
So a mockumentary has been created to entertain and to offer the latest theory on mermaids. And what is this theory? This time Beach borrows from part of a Fox News report (courtesy of Andy). Note how there is absolutely no mention here of the fictional content unless the word ‘compelling’ (as in ‘the punters don’t do simple facts’) is supposed to cover that!
In the two-hour CGI Special Mermaids: The Body Found, Animal Planet dives deep into the idea that mermaids may have been real, and, even better – related to humans! ‘It’s a very radical theory on human evolution, but we have approached an age-old myth and really chased its origins,’ Animal Planet honcho Charlie Foley told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. ‘It has been compiled in a way that is very compelling, making us think that mermaids might not just be mythical creatures.’ The show unravels mysterious underwater sound recordings and presents a bone-chilling argument for the Aquatic Ape Theory, which suggests that during the transition from apes to hominid, some humans went through an aquatic stage. This stage is argued to have resulted in ‘aquatic ape-like’ creatures. ‘There are striking differences between us and other primates, yet [there are] many features we share with marine mammals, like the webbing between our fingers, which other primates don’t have, a layer of subcutaneous fat, and a loss of body hair,’ Foley explained. ‘We also have an instinctive ability to swim, and control over breath. Humans can hold breath up to 20 minutes, longer than any other terrestrial animal.’ Mermaids: The Body Found ponders the concept that coastal flooding millions of years ago turned some of our ancestors inland, while another group branched off into the deep water out of necessity and for food.
Beach has already highlighted sea apes. In fact, he dug up, to the best of his knowledge, the earliest reference to the concept that dates back to the eighteenth century. And this is where the problems begin… Readers might want to flag up problem concerning biology, which Beachcombing is, sadly, not qualified to do: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com However, Beachcombing would like to stick his oar into the epistemology of sea-bourne monkeys.
If you want to explain the unicorn then it makes sense to look for a now extinct creature. After all, people no longer see unicorns (with very few exceptions) and those sightings there are usually involve travelers far from home confronted by unusual but known animals. If there was a unicorn-like animal ten thousand years ago then it is possible that this animal got trapped in an early phase of human myth and that it was passed down to us from there.
However, the problem with explaining mermaids in this way is that sightings continue into the present. There are dozens of sightings, for example, from the Hebrides (Scotland) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beach can only see three ways forward in relation to the sea-ape theory.
(i) There is a small population of sea apes that survived (or survives) on and off the British coast and yet no body or photograph has ever turned up.
(ii) The mermaids that are seen cannot be explained as physical entities. Here you can give a psychological, a theosophist or a ‘pagan’ explanation, but sea apes are out.
(iii) By some bizarre mechanism presently beyond our understanding the sea ape, which has not lived on the Scottish coast for a thousand or ten thousand years, entered ‘collective memory’ and has reappeared in the imagination of locals: go to (ii) above but with sea apes ‘in’.
Beach just might be able to conceive, against all his better judgement, that in the wild backwoods of New Zealand or in the expanses of the Rocky Mountains there are giant flightless birds or unknown hominids. But if anyone finds a sea ape community on the coast of Scotland, he’ll eat a tonne of boiled sweets. He has never seen (pace Jungians) any proof for ancestral memory. And so he would plump for number (ii), as he would for fairies.
In fact, forget sea apes, mermaids seem to be sea fairies. And in many ways the sea ape theory is to mermaids what the late nineteenth century pygmy theory was to the fey.
People sometimes see things that are not physically present: whether they are truly external or not Beach will happily leave to the philosophers. What is absolutely terrifying about this is that if our perception can play these kinds of tricks on us (or ‘pull back the veils of creation’ if you prefer) can our senses be trusted under any circumstances? On just that subject, looking forward to the documentary…
***
25 May 2012: Wade writes in ‘Your sea ape post instantly reminded me of the aquatic ape theory, first proposed by a German pathologist, Max Westenhofer, in 1942, then proposed again British marine biologist, Alister Hardy, in 1960. It has since been championed by Elaine Morgan, a Welsh writer (per Wikipedia). I saw a special on this years ago. It is a fascinating idea. My impression is that most anthropologists have either actively hated or completely ignored the theory as pseudo-science. Here are two links: Elaine Morgan’s and an anthropologist’s view that examines the controversial theory and yields the sceptical response. Thanks Wade!
The Devil in Disney May 23, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
A book was recently sent anonymously to Beachcombing named The Dark Side of Disney: Utterly Unauthorised Tips, Tricks and Scams for you WDW Vacation (Leonard Kinsey). Beach cannot really write a review of said work; as he is not an expert in the field. He has very vague memories of Disney World from a childhood visit and most of that involves students dressed as Disney characters with terrifying rictus smiles. But as strangehistory celebrates the curious this seems the place to signal to readers that a piece of extended writing exists that ‘shines a light into the roachy shadows of Walt Disney World. With 33 years of experience storming the gates of the Magic Castle, Leonard Kinsey has explored every possible option for a low-cost Disney vacation ranging from the immoral to the downright illegal. Packed with all the tips that Disney was hoping you wouldn’t discover, like free parking and bottomless beverage scams, this book also teaches you how to get free airline drink tickets and bar/pool hop around the high end Disney resorts like Hollywood glitterati.’
Beach, of course, felt morally obliged to hurl the book into the bin when he read this, but was just too intrigued. He decided, in fact, to give the contents a go and things got worse/better from there. And after seeing such titles as ‘How to Find Someone to Have Sex With’, ‘Front of the Line With a Wheelchair’ and ‘Top 5 Best and Worst Places to Get High’ there was no stopping him. Beachcombing has lived a sheltered life as far as sex, wheelchairs and ‘getting high’ (whatever that means) are concerned. But he was fascinated to flick through this pages of thieving wisdom that might have come out of a Victorian rookery, applied strangely to the sterilised, pat world of Brother Bear and the Seven Dwarfs.
The best part of the book is, at least for Beach, the interview with urban explorer Shane Perez and the description of his ‘trip to Discovery Island, Walt Disney World’s long-abandoned nature park. Discovery Island, located in the heart of Bay Lake, was left to rot years ago when the opening of Animal Kingdom effectively rendered the previously well maintained zoo obsolete. Instead of bulldozing the property, Disney simply decided to leave it as-is and let nature take its course, turning it into an overgrown urban ruin that was an irresistible destination for Shane and his fellow Urban Explorers.’ Memories here of illegal climbing in Cambridge. A highlight within a highlight was Shane and his adventurers bumping into some vultures on Discovery Island…
Mickey above is clearly not the cover, but then the real thing would get us black listed by google!
Beach is always on the look out for unusual books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com This one shocked but did not disappoint him.
Review: I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student May 13, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
University campuses have seen many changes in the last fifty years: digital technology, new teaching methods, ‘political correctness’… But the change that really matters has been the extraordinary growth in student numbers. Take the UK and the US. About 60% of young men and women now undertake third-level education in these two countries, whereas in the 1950s this number was well under 10%, and in some regions and among some classes it was substantially lower. The effect of this growth has been both catastrophic and beneficial: the standard of studies has fallen, but the number of those educated (albeit to a lesser level) has grown. What this means is that today most universities – with the exception of elite institutions – represent a continuation of high school rather than another kind of education (you need a doctorate program for that). For teachers there are two strategies. Either you accept, as Beachcombing has in his teaching, the reality of the situation and begin to do high-school ‘plus’ courses (with space for the best students to show their mettle); or you, like Cu Chuliann, fight the waves and continue to teach university level courses, a generation after universities, as our parents knew them, ceased to exist.
Patrick Allitt is one of the warriors who fights on. And, in his book, I’m the Teacher You’re the Student (Penn State 2005) he describes one semester at Emory University (Georgia) in a witty diary of his day-to-day pleasures and battles while sharing history with students. It is an outstanding read and articulates the experience of a ‘university’ level teacher, put together by someone who is clearly very good at what he does. (In a strange way Beach is an alumnus of PA. He once listened to an audio course the good professor had created and was absolutely charmed: even the sound engineer could be heard laughing at some points).
We have the exam howlers, the sociology of late homework (the shift from dead grandparents to broken computers), plagiarism, evaluations, reading assignments and the difficulty of understanding whether students have actually looked at these assignments. But this book also comes closer than anything Beach has ever read to, let’s call it, the metaphysics of teaching: the way, for example, that an unkempt rather intimidating bunch of late teens in the first lesson become a cohort of promising young men and women by the end of the course and the object of affectionate memories.
How precisely does PA fight the waves? Well, first of all he rejects the natural camaraderie of the classroom, a camaraderie which is open to anyone teaching American students. This is summed up in that title ‘I’M THE TEACHER, you’re the student’ (‘my station and its duties’).
Second, PA uses images and music and extensive readings to examine different periods of history, while demanding a certain standard of knowledge of maps, dates etc. In doing so he rejects text books and naff power points. But he also deprives students of a corpus that they can study: the hardest-working student will have no guarantee that they’ve effectively covered everything, notwithstanding lecture summaries handed out in each class. Here there is a bias towards ability rather than effort.
Third, PA cares about the execrable English of his students. This means explaining that not all books are ‘novels’, raging about tense sequence and daring to name the pluperfect. More about PA’s English lessons in a moment.
The result of this trio is that students get lower grades than they might expect from a history class. But, in recompense, they come closer to the essence of history and perhaps get to improve their written English into the bargain. Does this make PA a hero for the ages or an intolerable reactionary? Well, probably both. He certainly doesn’t qualify as a high-school plus teacher.
Let’s take now the example of English style, something that fascinates Beachcombing because it is the area where Anglo-Saxon education has so conspicuously failed; not helped by the insane orthography of our mother tongue. Beach has taught about six hundred American university students in the last five years. Of these perhaps fifty wrote good English. About two hundred and fifty could get by. And the other three hundred were an indictment of US secondary education: their high-school English teachers deserved a little gentle, non-therapeutic lynching.
In those five years Beach has never marked a student down for bad grammar or spelling. And, ever the pragmatist, he only troubles to correct English grammar and spelling when students hand in drafts for final papers (few do) as, in one-on-one encounters, he (believes he) can make a difference. He also had one experience of taking a student through a special studies paper, over a semester, where he was able to revolutionize said student’s prose: she’s now working in publishing…
PA on the other hand holds his students to far higher standards. The Saxon genitive is defended (the Germans do without the apostrophe so why can’t we?), tense sequence matters, good spelling is celebrated… But sometimes perhaps PA wades a little too far into the water in his sword-fight against the waves. Take this passage by PA’s student X and judge for yourself how well it is written.
‘In a time when the United States was vying to be a colonial power and prove supremacy in the western hemisphere, Cuba’s cry for freedom from Spain was prefect. At the first sight of risk for Americans and their property, McKinley consented to send in the troops. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy, having been steadfastly urging the war and craving to fight in it, rather quickly organised a team of skilled volunteers to fight under his command. When called, they joined the regular cavalry and infantry units in embarkation in Cuba. Some units were, to their disappointment, denied leave for lack of room.
If we could create an education system where the average student was able to write to this standard then it would be time for fireworks and champagne. PA is, however, damning.
‘It could be worse. [The student] covers a lot of points quickly and is grammatically sound – he even uses the apostrophe correctly. But like most students’ writing it shows every sign of inexperience. There are too many participles (‘vying’, ‘urging’, ‘craving’). There are too many adverbs and adjectives (‘steadfastly’, ‘rather’ [in rather quickly], and ‘skilled’ should go). The first sentence should begin with At rather than In, and he should tell the reader when this ‘time’ was by using a date. [There follow another eleven sentences of critique!]. I do not write any of this nitpicky criticism of the paragraph on the paper – I can’t possibly devote that much time to every paragraph, nor do I want to crush students to the ground with impossible high demands and my own sometimes quirky editorializing. On the paper I write an ‘S’, for satisfactory, mark a couple of grammatical infelicities further on, and leave it at that.
An ‘S’! What must be remembered is that most academics in the humanities and particularly in the social sciences write prose that is little better than the passage quoted here!! Fifty years ago it would have been worthwhile taking student X to one side and giving him some advice (while complimenting him) because, back then, there were only ten students in the class, and they were all bright and motivated. You might even slip your arm in his and invite him over to the hall to take some port and discuss Roosevelt’s opportunism. Today, the high-school plus teachers have other battles to fight: the wyrms of administration, the dragon heads of mandatory courses, not to mention the thrashing snake tails of indifference.
Beach is always looking out for unusual books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
***
13/05/2012: KMH has a radical suggestion. ‘The university concept must continue to change and change profoundly. Here is one future change I think will eventually happen at the undergraduate level: separating the teacher from the tester. Real learning occurs in an environment friendly to learning. This is where the teacher is the ‘friend,’ mentor, and advisor for his students, rather than also acting as a final judge in assigning grades to those in his courses. Imagine a separate testing facility for each university where students go to be given the standard tests (several per course) appropriate to the courses they are taking. The testing faculty does not teach these courses but it does make up the tests (or acquires them from outside sources) and grades the papers. The standards for grading are set in advance and there is no grading “on the curve.” It is then possible for everyone in a class to get a higher grade. This separation allows the teacher to gain better rapport with his students, and because grading on the curve is not allowed, students can also be more helpful each other. The final grade is based on testing results with accompanying remarks by the teacher attached to the grade itself describing classroom participation, general attitude, the student’s potential, etc. I hope I am making the grade.’ Thanks KMH!
Zombie Planes May 3, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
***Dedicated to Ricardo***
Beach is properly modest about his knowledge of aeronautics – apart from perhaps the prehistory of flight. But he is as moved as the next man to see the spitfire test in First of the Few or (1.37.40) or, for that matter, Corky sweating in Tales of the Golden Monkey as a zero races out of the sun. And, now, thanks to Ricardo, he has some new images from the annals of aviation archaeology to add to his mental collection.
First up are these beautiful shots of a Kittyhawk that was discovered in the Egyptian desert this March (2012). The plane came down in the WW2 apparently being flown to a repair depot (this still has not been confirmed). What the sands of Egypt did to the pilot is not yet known. But there can be no doubt that, after the initial tussle of landing, they treated the plane well. The colours and the cockpit are happily preserved. And looking at them brings back, with frightening immediacy, the desert war and long distance runs over the heads of Eighth Army against Rommel’s Afrika Corps.
Another 1942 wreck comes from the far north. In that year, a squadron of eight planes (six P-38s and two B-17 bombers) were forced to land in the desolation of east Greenland en route to Iceland. That all eight planes came down on the ice without a death is in itself a small miracle; that the crew members were taken out of Greenland without life-threatening frost-bite and gangrene is also pretty extraordinary. But what needn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about plane nuts is that the plane was retrieved in the 1990s from 250 feet of ice, piece by piece! (see the picture at the head of this post). It was then reconstructed, named Glacier Girl and then finally in 2007 it set off on the the mission it had been sent on 65 years before, attempting to fly to the UK.
Actually it had to end its flight in Newfoundland because of a coolant leak. And Beach can’t help thinking that GG just didn’t want to go anywhere near that bloody ice massif again.
ù
If the desert and tundra are good for preserving planes a league of salt water must be pretty handy too. But Beach hasn’t found that many examples of historic underwater plane wrecks. (There is, of course, the horror in these cases that the pilot is almost certainly still sitting hunched over his instruments.) This final picture of a Japanese fighter (1942?) was taken off of Papua New Guinea. Any other well preserved planes, zombie or otherwise? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
***
4 May 2012: Southern Man writes in: Beach you forgot one of your earlier posts: the watery grave of Brian Lane. Jonathan Jarret from A Corner confesses: ‘you hit on a child’s interest of mine with this one [always a good sign!]. Deep water appears to be the thing; the Norwegian fjords have turned up a number of German WWII fighters in the last decade, and this YouTube video and its attached links are quite evocative. (The pilot seems to have got out, don’t worry.) The other place that I wish someone would mount some salvage in is Loch Ryan in south-western Scotland, where there was during the war a flying boat base. At the end of 1946, with the mighty `Flying Porcupine’, the Short Sunderland, leaving service as land-based aircraft finally matched its range and warload, the half-squadron of them that remained on the Loch were scuttled rather than waste time scrapping them, and they’re still down there. Divers report that they’re deep enough that there’s very little oxygen in the water and so their preservation is allegedly marvellous. There are some Sunderlands in museums but no flying ones and I for one would put up more than the usual airshow ticket price if one could be got into the air again. I can’t find any footage of those, but a similar thing occurred at Pembroke Dock and there there is dive video: The other place that has turned out to be surprisingly good for warbird preservation is Siberia: a fair few little Russian warbirds have made their way west ever since the locals realised that mad Westerners would pay for them in sufficiently good condition. I can’t find a good webpage on that process exactly, but if you will take my word for it that this is the story behind this machine. You will see that some of these `zombies’, like the Focke Wulf in first link, may well live twice. Googling for the Siberian stuff, by the way, also brought me this on abandoned fields which seems as if it might catch your attention.’ Next up is Wade: ‘You may have already seen this, but if not…in recent news, an American has researched and located a dozen to as many as twenty Spitfire Mark XIV planes with the more powerful Rolls Royce Griffon engines, still crated as they were originally shipped to Burma just at the end of WWII. Rather than having them returned to Great Britain, the decision was made to bury them at the Burmese airfield. Tacitus from Debris writes in: Look at this now on display at Chicago OHare and in swell shape. Remarkable details of preservation, and I like the story of the faux aircraft carriers on Lake Michigan. Then Invisible: ‘You’ll find many tales of zombie planes here including the 20 Spitfires found buried in Burma [see Wade above] and the remains of an RAF pilot discovered with his Spitfire 5 metres under a French farm. Here at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, there is a poignant display, with some parts of the plane, about Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator (wikipedia), lost in the Libyan desert during the Second World War. Tragically, the crew thought they were bailing out over the Mediterranean instead of the desert and walked in the wrong direction, not knowing that the plane, with a working radio and some supplies, could have been reached. When found, the plane was incredibly well-preserved. The remains of the crew were not recovered until the 1960s. Thanks to Wade, Tacitus, JJ, Invisible and Southern Man!!
14/May 2011. Judith W (aka Zenobia) writes in: This just appeared, with a wee bit more information and the pilot’s name….: You might well also be interested in some of the extraordinary pictures of the Kittyhawk P-40 crashlanded in the Egyptian desert (via CassandraVivien). They were taken by Jakub Perka, the Polish oil worker who discovered the plane. Sadly, that was a month ago and the plane is now being stripped of its parts by locals for scrap. While this is obviously a remarkable find, I remember horseriding in the desert many years ago, not quite as far as el-Alamien, and the horse kicking up all sorts of army kit, empty food tins, spent ammunition, an amazing collection all lying under a few centimetres of sand. I’m sure it’s all still there, untarnished by time.’ Thanks Judith!
Suicide and Historical Loopholes April 7, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Ancient, Contemporary, Modern
***Dedicated to David: ‘between the bridge and the river…’***
Suicide has proved abhorrent to most spiritual traditions. Certainly, the great monotheistic religions and most of the far Eastern religions have condemned ‘self-murder’: cue lots of pulpit bashing and descriptions of hell or unpleasant reincarnations. This begs the question though of what you can do if you live in 500 BC or 500 AD or 1500 AD and you want to end your life at all costs. Beach was musing on this last night (as you do) and he wondered, human ingenuity being what it is, how individuals have got around these strictures through time. He would be very interested in any other categories or vivid examples: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com At the same time he should say that he writes this well aware of the horrible gravity of these matters and their capacity to blight families and communities; none of what follows is meant to be flippant either to G-K-Chesteron-Flag-of-the-World types or, indeed, to euthanasia ‘enthusiasts’.
i) This doesn’t count. Beach has come across several examples where individuals convince themselves that certain forms of suicide are not really suicide. For instance, if I eat rat poison then clearly I am ending my life and must suffer the eternal consequences. But if I stop putting food and drink in my mouth and I die then I have not ‘done’ anything: at best we can talk of a sin of omission. Curiously the examples of non-suicide by starvation, that he has found, come from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Not sure what to make of that or its historical background. Naturally many modern just-turn-off-the-machine debates involve similar arguments. It is one thing to fill someone’s veins with poison: another to stop pumping oxygen into the lungs or to take the food tube out of someone who has spent three decades immobile in hospital. An orthodox Catholic would claim, of course, that the difference, in the end, is not a categorical one: though even Beach’s beloved uber-Catholic wife would give up here if we talk about an elderly patient refusing, say, to take medicine.
ii) It wasn’t me. One extreme version of ‘this doesn’t count’ is tricking someone else into killing you. Take ‘a soldier’s death’: remembering countless examples from the eastern front in WW2. The man who does not want to go on living leaps out of the trench and walks towards the enemy firing to be killed moments later. There are some instances of death by cop in the modern United States, one problem with having an armed constabulary: a ‘perp’ pulls a weapon and police officers fire to defend themselves not knowing that they are really being coerced. Then there are even some extraordinary instances from history where a suicide kills an innocent (murder can be forgiven in most religions) so that they can be executed. This became a veritable plague in Denmark in the Early Modern Period. (Thanks to Andy the Mad Monk for this reference and Jason Z for some comments. ) Interestingly the early Christian martyrs had debates on a related question. Was it right to go and give yourself up to the Roman authorities? Or should you sit at home and wait for them to come to you? Christian attitudes to suicide arguably formed in this period in a strong rejection of the first.
iii) Can you help me? The reader will have noted that a lot of this suicide-avoiding-stuff involves loopholes. We’ll have to hope that, if there is an Almighty, He is more interested in the letter than the spirit of the law. Along similar lines one slightly more moral version of the ‘it wasn’t me’ technique is actually negotiating with someone to kill you so the sin is not on your head. A famous historical case of this was Masada where the defenders slaughtered each other by taking lots before the Romans could break through into the inner sanctum: that peculiar reluctance found in some period of not wanting to give your enemy the pleasure of massacring you. Beach, getting fictional, also has a scene from the Three Colours White in mind where much is made of this idea and the ‘murderer’ succeeds – the scene is extraordinarily moving - in giving the suicide a renewed will to live. It is interesting that in many cases couple suicides involve the partners ‘helping’ each other, almost as if there is a desire (unconscious or otherwise) to avoid putting your own hand on yourself.
iv) I ended my life but to save others. This is the category for those who suspect that, contrary to what was said above, the Almighty (always granting His existence) is more interested in the spirit than the letter of the law. There are, after all, cases where an act of suicide should actually help the world: depending naturally on our appallingly limited human viewpoints of what ‘help’ means. This might include the suicide of a Woolwich cadet described in an A.E.Housman poem who ends his life because he is worried he is going to damage himself and others: he was presumably homosexual at a time, late 19 cent, when this was unacceptable. This argument is passionately used as a justification for suicide bombing by some Islamists. An uneasy Biblical ‘precedent’ is Samson who brings down the temple on the heads of himself but also the Philistines: the same Samson praised by the normally grumpy Paul in his letters. Altruistic suicide might very reasonably be used to describe the death of Bruno Fanciullacci the Italian resistance fighter in the last war who hurled himself from an upper storey window to avoid torture and indiscretions at the hands of the Gestapo, arguably saving tens of lives. Thinking about this Beach once had a fascinating discussion with a member of Opus Dei who argued that, by this definition, Christ himself had committed suicide. Discuss.
Bullwhips and Brown Belts: Beach’s Style Guide April 4, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
Beachcombing recently stumbled on an unconventional online guide to being a good writer. Advice ranged from the sensible ‘be honest’, to the silly ‘drink coffee’, to the frankly bizarre ‘have a huge bowel movement each day’. It was entertaining but left Beach no closer to Evelyn Waugh and Walt Whitman. In fact, it left Beach pretty bloody frustrated because it barely touched on what is, for him, the really crucial question: style. The post did though get Beachcombing thinking about his cherished RULES.
Writing has never come easy to this poor sot. Indeed, the following COMMANDMENTS stand as make-shift shelters, put together in desperation over years living on an exposed mountain side. But as they have served Beach through the past two decades it proved cathartic (even in an insanely busy period) to write them out and see them on the computer screen. Any other contributions gratefully received: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com It should be noted that this is written with great humility. Beach finally got his brown belt after long stretches of hard work and bribing officials: and he’s just good enough to know that he’s never going to make it to black. Though if any readers know the right official…
1) If a paragraph/sentence can come out without damaging your writing it shouldn’t be there. That structure must trump content, is one of the hardest lessons to learn. Writers particularly fall down when they are so in love with a secondary sentiment that they build their work around that instead of the central theme; the writing equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci spending more passion on the bridge in the background than on Mona Lisa’s smile. There is a beautiful piece of advice from Samuel Johnson that comes at this from a different direction. ‘Find the sentence you most love and then cross it out.’
2) Introductions stink. Even very experienced writers screw up first paragraphs: pick ten history books and this will be true of six. A common mistake is to effectively write two introductory paragraphs, one after another. When read back both could stand alone (see point one): but together they give a sense of sloppy thinking. What is worse, the more highly charged a piece of writing, the more likely it is that the introduction will be crooked. The tragedy is that Beach can only warn here. He’s never come up with a solution to the problem. At present he is experimenting with the unhelpful ‘be boring’.
3) Short words and old words are good, but short, old words are best. (Who said this?) One of the most frustrating academic experiences that Beachcombing ever had was to have a nincompoop in Edinburgh run through his written work replacing phrasal verbs with Latin verbs: ‘take away’ to ‘remove’ etc etc. Having said that the Anglo-Saxonists sometimes go over the top. A hefty five syllable Latin word can pepper-and-popinjay a passage especially if it is surrounded by some good rough-hewn salty Germanic-sounding words. See further rule ten and bring out the dictionary.
4) Words. There are a series of words that English could probably do without: ‘seem’, ‘may well’, (as opposed to the useful ‘may’), ‘literally’, ‘although’, ‘period’, ‘during’, ‘process’ etc etc. Note too that English is extraordinarily sensitive to dittology or repetition: much more so than other languages that Beach knows. (Why?) If you say ‘though’ twice in the same paragraph, or ‘put’ or ‘cat’ you have committed a capital error. The problem with English is that even if you write ‘although’ (after though) or ‘putting’ (after put) or catnap (after cat) things can get kind of ugly. Also, avoid abstracts: honourable is better than honour.
5) Paragraphs are not just about units of thought: lies these our teachers told us. They are, above all, about page aesthetics: T. E. Lawrence spent hours on the shape of his paragraphs in the Seven Pillars. Your paragraphs do not need to be all the same size, but there should be some sort of symmetry: mid, short, mid, mid, mid, short is acceptable; long, mid, mid, short, mid, short, long would be moving towards ugly. The present paragraph needed this penultimate sentence, so that it became borderline acceptable to the eyes. It probably needs another sentence too, but let’s drop this before it gets old…
7) You should rule punctuation, punctuation should not rule you. Grammarians, correctors and editors pretend that there are scientific rules behind punctuation. This is simply untrue. You use a dash instead of a comma or a full stop instead of a colon because of the effect that you want to have on the reader. The ‘science’ of punctuation is a fool’s errand. When your finger reaches to bottom left of the keyboard strap a bull-whip to your nail. Also avoid brackets whenever possible.
8 ) Practice a lot. Too many people believe that writing well and playing the piano well are different matters. Writing, they opine, is something that most of humanity has down, whereas piano-playing needs hours and scales: cue that common sentence ‘I’m thinking of writing a novel’. The truth, of course, is that writing demands the same kind of practice that playing the piano demands. Day after day, year after year… Note to self: teaching English AND correcting other people’s English AND journalism helps immensely: as does the hell of editing and publishing a book.
9) Revise and review, review and revise. With time you will get to the fourth draft first time. But at the beginning you will start ten or twenty drafts away from the last. Read the text through twice and thrice. Read the text aloud to imaginary audiences. Read the text out to real audiences. Try and remember hunks and repeat it in the shower. Read the text with your ears underwater in the bath. Read aloud into a tape recorder and play back to yourself. When you’ve got to the end of correcting, lock the text in a drawer and re-read it after three days. Then read it backwards, sentence by sentence with a ruler.
10) Create writing rituals. Beach always passionately kisses his keyboard before he has to write something really important: not this post unfortunately. Have your favourite pens, your superstitions, your special writing foods (corn biscuits with bananas, peanuts and honey) and a comfortable chair and a cozy writing area. Light candles if you have to: play around with incense and Satie. Experiment with sexual abstinence and excess. Find 72 hours when you can write and nothing else, particularly when the kids are on holiday.
11) Break all of these rules with impunity, particularly when writing for the internet. This one is borrowed from Orwell apart, of course, from the second clause. Golly, what a blogger Orwell would have made!
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7 April 2012: This one comes from Invisible and is a lot of fun from an experienced writer. On writing introductions: a) get someone famous or amusing to do it for you. b) do it only after the entire book is written. In teaching writing I’ve found that the one thing that stops people absolutely dead is trying to start at the beginning. Quotes from Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights by Jon Winokur “The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.” –A.J. Liebling “Best advice I’ve ever received: Finish.” –Peter Mayle One of the best sets of advice for fiction writers is “Notes for a Young Writer” by Shirley Jackson. Not advice, but a look at the “unspeakable horror of the literary life”: The Unstrung Harp or Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey: Several other memorable quotes: I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit. - P G Wodehouse Remember that once something is written down it becomes truth. – Gary Henderson And my own line, which I often quote to would-be writers, but don’t always live by: A page a day is a book a year. Literally!’ Thanks Invisibile!!
Icelandic Penis Collections, Gnome Sanctuaries and Other Unusual Museums April 3, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
Beachcombing was in his early teens on holiday in Cornwall when he went to the Gnome Museum. There was a very likeable hippy in her early forties (?) who ran the place and showed Beach and family around a couple of rooms and the garden where she had ‘seen’ the gnomes: there had been some form of mystic contact. She had also come up with a brilliant marketing trick. If you joined the gnome club you were given a small gnome and then every year you renewed your subscription you received a larger and larger gnome by post. Naturally, the young Beach went away with a little plaster cast figure and then lost the kind lady’s address.
In an alternative universe where everything proceeded according to God’s plan, there is a six-foot gnome of gold presently being run up the hill in a postal van. Perhaps in that parallel universe the Gnome museum has expanded to Ikea-like dimensions and displaced Truro.
In our pissy little version of time and space, meanwhile, the gnome museum has disappeared. Beach can find no proof that it ever existed. But some gentle musing this morning did get Beach thinking about other strange museums throughout the world and sent him running to his files. The vast majority, he should note, he has never been to: though he would love to visit Leila’s Hair Museum if anyone has some airmiles to spare.
Stalin World: Based in Lithuania this vast park specialises in statues of Soviet leaders and particularly Uncle Joe. There are also train carriages from ‘vintage’ trains: the trains that carried Lithuanians to the gulags or worse fates. And rather strangely – but this is Stalin World – there is a zoo as well. What animals are kept in the Stalin World zoo? Is petting allowed? Unfortunately, Beach cannot answer these questions because he was unable to find an internet page for Grutas Park where statues are kept: likely because of his lack of reach in the Baltic languages. The wikipedia page suggests that it is still open though.
Icelandic Phallic Museum: This is one where the blurb should be enough. ‘The Icelandic Phallological Museum is probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country… Phallology is an ancient science which, until recent years, has received very little attention in Iceland, except as a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature and other artistic fields like music and ballet.’ Ballet?!
Cheating Museum: A museum that went the way of the gnomes. In Rome in the 1990s university students opened a centre to celebrate different methods of exam cheating. Italy is a country, it must be remembered, where cheating at high schools and universities has been brought up to the level of an art form with no sense of moral fault attached. (Though God help you if you overcook the pasta.) Mrs B spent some time in a seminary as a theology student where, in the New Testament Greek exams, future priests would jostle to sit next to her and copy from her translation, while the teacher looked benevolently on.
Oradour-sur-Glane: This French town in Limousin was a site of a WW2 massacre and, in commemoration of the 642 people murdered there the town has been left frozen in time, recalling the events of 10 June 1944. Over several nightmare hours the men of the village were machine gunned in barns, the women and children burnt alive in the local church by German occupiers. Photographs show wrecked buildings and a car eternally parked in the village square. Went the Day Well with a snuff ending.
Leila’s Hair Museum: Leila appears to be a delightful person. ‘When Leila Cohoon tells people she owns a hair museum, they envision old curling irons, hair dyers, and other such tools. However, this is not the case. There are 159 wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewelry containing, or made of, human hair dating before 1900… According to Cohoon, ‘It could possibly be the only hair museum in the United States, maybe the world’.
HezBollah’s Museum: HezBollah decided to open their own museum in 2010 to celebrate (a remarkable) victory over Israel in their war in Lebanon. ‘A young boy ducks under a barricade to have his photo taken next to an Israeli tank. A father puts his baby daughter’s hand on the trigger of a piece of artillery. A Shiite sheikh, in full religious dress, strolls past a map of ‘Occupied Palestine’. Two women silently sob at the site where former Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi, now dead, was said to have prayed.’ Essentially the whole site is dedicated to battle spoils and HezBollah paraphernalia. Not a place to wear your kippah.
Beach would be fascinated by any other strange museums (past and present) that are sent his way: particularly ones that have been missed by the internet: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com In the meantime he would like to offer some ‘internet museum’ sites put together by Invisible on that old obsession of his: fairies. The Fairy Museum (virtual), the Renaissance Faire Pictorial (mobile), the Leprechaun Museum, and the Japanese Fairy Museum. And here is one virtual museum that Beach found while looking for the gnomes: children should not visit unaccompanied… Thanks Invisible!!
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3 April 2012: JB writes in ‘Dear Beach, my guess is that you are befuddled with old age and that you are thinking of the Gnome Reserve in Devon (rather than in Cornwall). And I quote from their very entertaining website: For a completely unique 100% fun experience, simultaneously 100% ecologically interesting, with an extra 100% wonder and magic mixed in, visit The Gnome Reserve. Set amid truly rural countryside between Bideford and Bude just 7 miles from the Devon Cornwall border. the 4 acre Reserve comprises woodland, stream, 30 yard pond, meadow and garden – home to 1000+ gnomes and pixies, and about 250 labelled species of wild flowers, herbs, grasses and ferns. Gnome hats are loaned free of charge together with fishing rods, so you don’t embarrass the gnomes! Take your cameras and embarrass the family with some truly memorable photos for the family album! The children will love it because there is so much for them to discover from a woodpecker in a tree to a pixie flitting over clumps of comfrey. Recommended also for adults whose sophistication can have robbed them of a freshness of vision…The Gnome Reserve will rejuvenate you!’ Thanks JB. I’ll do some research, certainly some of these images seem familiar.
4 April 2012: Pam makes the same point: ‘Is the gnomereserve the place you’re searching for, Dr. B? They have a Gnome Museum there. I remember driving by it on my way to and from Tintagel. (The yard was *filled* with gnomic statuary.) I didn’t get a chance to visit the reserve as I was with two non-gnome/fairy fetishists and they weren’t interested. Since my friends had indulged my Arthur mania, including climbing up to Tintagel Castle, I thought I should leave well enough alone. I also have a vague memory of reading something in Fortean Times about a lady who had a museum and communed with gnomes (or fairies or pixies or…), but a search of their site yielded a big zero in that regard. Perhaps the gnomes have fogged my memory, or there’s some Big Conspiracy to suppress the Truth. It couldn’t be that I have a bad memory.’ The gnome reserve still hasn’t written back. Heidi Fury comes up with Marshsfreemuseum ‘It’s not terribly museumy, but maybe something there will catch your fancy.’ Lehmansterms writes (seconded by Dennis): It’s probably not among the oddest of all museums, but it contains some of the more bizarre items in what is a decidedly bizarre museum genre, the Mutter Museum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia museum/campus has a few of the odder medical marvels Lehmansterms ever saw on public display – and in it’s heyday in the 60′s he saw and toured, more than once, the Army Medical Museum and Library in Washington D.C. At one time just across Independence Ave. from the Smithsonian’s venerable “castle”, it was moved to a far less visible location at the Walter Reed Medical Center (and, I believe, recently closed for good). The Mutter’s collection includes, among other items, the shared liver of Chang & Eng – Barnum’s original “Siamese Twins”, the “Soap Lady” – a saponified Colonial-era corpse unearthed in the 19th century, and an enormous collection of objects removed from the throats of choking victims rescued from the brink of death by the first revolutionary 19th century optical “endoscope”-type looker-grabber device. There are also a few skeletons of legitimate, non-hoax, physical bones (and not concrete castings or stone carvings) of actual human giants, to refer to a subject evidently of some interest to the good Dr. B. Photos on Google from the Mutter. A more informative, official website on the Mutter. The old Army Medical Museum - Lehmansterms also recalls what he found to be an extremely unusual exhibit in another of his original hometown, Philadelphia’s museums. Otherwise to be considered unusual only for the vast breadth and wealth of its collections (and for being the largest example of Classical Greek archtecture in the world, including Greece), this is the noted and notable Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the mid 90′s, while on a visit with his 3 daughters and a Swedish exchange student his ex was then hosting, we encountered in a back stairwell a large vitrine full of Victorian-era (lehmansterms believes he recalls) plaster casts of human genetalia. While the “plaster-casters” were a short-lived phenomenon recording the endowments of some of the more famous musicians of the early Psychedelic rock era - and, lehmansterms supposes, could be considered “Art” in an era in which handicrafters the like of Robert Mapplethorpe, et als, are considered to be artists - these were of a different time altogether, if not of dissimilar substance.’ Bennett has more on the phallic museum Thanks to Lehmansterms, Pam, Bennett and Heidi Fury!!!
7 April 2012: Ervy sends in this classic from Alberta: ‘Strange but true, Torrington is the home to the infamous Gopher Hole Museum. This attraction features stuffed gophers (Richardson ground squirrels) posed in a series of 47 anthropomorphic scenes, from a hair dresser to a preacher to an RCMP officer. Located north of Calgary, east of Olds on highway #27. Open daily from 10am to 5pm. Admission $2 for adults.’
Invisible Library in Skyrim March 28, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
***dedicated to Larry K***
Beach’s nightmare week continues and the search for the aupair proceeds a pace. In an attempt then to relax in these brutish hours as the Beachcombings try and put their lives back together Beach thought that he would offer up another invisible library: libraries that have only ever existed in the imagination of authors. This time though an invisible library with a difference: a library found, against all the odds, in a modern video game.
Beach was inspired in this search by the always stimulating Larry K whose sons had informed him that the new game Skyrim ‘has thousands of actual books that you can open up and read’.
Skyrim in case you are wondering is a province of Tamriel in the world of Nirn. Larry perhaps says it better: ‘Skyrim takes place in one of those Tolkien mythical places that are vaguely Nordic, but they have two moons in the sky so it cannot be Middle Earth.’
Beach was naturally sceptical but he was soon press-ganged into astounded silence by various youtube videos and online lists. It seems – Beach waits to be corrected here – that scattered through the video games world there are books, with concentrations in libraries and in other player’s knapsacks: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Now as to the Skyrim books, titles include such epics as
Advance in Lock Pickings
Before the Ages of Man
Bravil: Daughter of the Neben
Disaster at Ionith
Fall of the Snow Prince
Forsworn Note
Frost’s Identity Papers
Have Need of Cynric
Hired Thug’s Missive
Letter from Solitude
On Lycanthropy
Reports of a Disturbance
Sven’s Fake Letter from Faendal
The Cabin in the Woods
The Pig Children
The Lusty Argonian Maiden (parts one and two)
There Be Dragons
Vlad’s Debt
Ysmir Collective
This is a just a sample of close to a thousand books. Note that pedants might say that this is not a true invisible library in that you can read the books. But it would be truer to say that you can read parts of the book. For example, here is the first couple of pages from the Lusty Argonian Maiden: making use of the penis=rising bread joke found in the Anglo-Saxon riddles. But the pages are tasters rarely the whole thing. Though even there, Beach can see exceptions where you would take half an hour to read a book properly.
Thanks Larry and more importantly thanks to Larry’s sons.
***
Wade writes: I’m not sure who started including books within video games, but from its beginning World of Warcraft, like Skyrim, has had books scattered throughout the game, most dealing with WoW lore. Someone should be able to identify the Ur-game that started this. I looked online, but had no luck. Here though some real experts step in. Howard writes: It never occurred to me that your “Invisible Libraries” series might include videogames/computer games. I’m not sure where you draw the line, but I’d draw your attention to The Sims 3 suite of games. Now, The Sims 3 is the largest-selling computer game franchise in history, but most players tend to be adolescent girls, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re not familiar with it. The library in The Sims 3 is a true invisible library, in that you can’t actually read the books, but your characters and the non-playing, in-game characters can. Here’s a partial list of books that characters can read in-game. It’s in an ugly table format, and I can’t easily copy it into an email. Many of the book titles contain in-jokes and pop-culture references. For example, Grant Rodiek, Point Farmer, is a reference to the lead software developer for the series. Game of Thorns is a reference to Game of Thrones. For “Jimmy Sprocket” read “Harry Potter.” And so on. I believe there’s a TV Tropes article about this, but I know better than to look that up. Unlike most other invisible libraries I’ve seen, The Sims 3 also includes cookbooks, how-to and self-help books, sheet music, and other books which actually help your in-game character achieve higher skills. Progressing in the game actually requires reading books, either to gain skills or simply to keep your character entertained enough that they don’t become depressed and pee on themselves. Also, your in-game character can learn “writing skill,” and create new books that you can add to the invisible library. If your character sells these to the bookstore, you can subsequently find NPCs reading the books you’ve written. On the subject of literary invisible libraries, I don’t believe you’ve mentioned The Book of Hali, (an ancient disquisition on soul, mind, and body, and the clear inspiration for the Necronomicon) which appears in several tales by Ambrose Bierce, got namechecked by Dunsany, Chambers, Lovecraft, et al, and is consistently ignored by the legions of Lovecraft scholars who seem to have sprung up like eldritch, rugose mushrooms in the last few years. Tony also adds an angle to this: Having readable books in-game is actually a fairly well established mechanism for establishing the ‘lore’ of a gameworld in computer role playing games (cRPGs). It has the advantage of allowing players who are interested in such things to read the neato backstory, and allows the players who want to just hack at goblins to get on with business. Here is a list from Baldur’s Gate (BioWare, 1998) the books labelled ‘History‘ were all readable: Here is the list from Morrowind (Bethesda, 2003)… Morrowind was installment 3 in the Elder Scrolls series, of which Skyrim is V. I’m not sure what the first game to have used in-game literature would have been. If you get too deep into the ’80s, storage limitations made what could be put on disk fairly limited. When a game had a more text than could be packaged in software, a separate manual would be published and when some event happened, the player would be instructed to “Read paragraph 27″. A good example is Wasteland (Interplay, 1988). Apparently at least one book item in that game triggered a direction to read a specific paragraph. I suspect Might and Magic IV (New World Computing, 1993) would have had in-game readable lore (probably packaged as scrolls rather than books though), but I haven’t been able to find a list of non-combat items for that game. And Ultima probably had them by Ultima VII (Origin, 1990), but same problem. (Not that I’ve devoted ton’s of time to looking for item lists for cRPGs that were published two decades ago… they’re probably out there somewhere) There’s probably an interesting phylogenic tree of the cRPGs that could be drawn, but I don’t think I could get funding for it. 
‘ SY finally notes: I was thinking how many strategy games – this moves beyond invisible libraries – actually include rule books as ‘trading guides’ etc in the box. The most dramatic example of this was the novella The Dark Wheel, included in that hoary old classic Elite.’ Thanks to Howard, Tony, SY and Wade!!
Britain’s Obsession with the Second World War March 27, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
Anyone who knows Britain will be aware of the constant references to the Second World War in the island’s political culture, particularly when national sovereignty is at stake. Harold Wilson decried appeals to ‘the Dunkirk Spirit’: and then shamelessly used the same trick himself. And the recent spats over Britain’s use of its ‘veto’ within the European Union inevitably brought up ‘peace in our time’, the ‘bulldog spirit’ (with accompanying images of Churchill) and David Low’s Very Well Alone cartoon!
All this is mildly irritating, because most of it is reflexive and lazy thinking. But far worse are those who decry Britain’s obsession with the Second World War as provincialism. Britain is, it is true, obsessed with the last war. But in this she is hardly different than France or Finland and most countries in between. Even the neutrals – Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden – can hardly stop picking at the scab of what happened sixty odd years ago. The Second World War has become, in fact, for Europe what Homer was for the Greeks, a kind of Bible of identity in which we look for ourselves and each other and our relations to each other.
Of course, our reconstructions of the recent past are almost always shockingly inadequate. Certainly, the Second World War as remembered by Britain is full of myths. So Britain never, for example, fought ‘alone’. She was backed by the Dominions and the Empire (a mere fifth of the globe) who had plunged into the fire storm along with the mother country: New Zealand and Australia immediately, democratically and at great risk to their own territories. Britain’s claim that she was fighting ‘alone but not for Britain alone’ is sainthood after the fact. And Britain’s moments of WW2 glory from the Battle of Britain (the UK brilliantly fought Germany to a draw) to the Dambusters (a tragically underexploited stroke against the Reich) have almost all been artfully misconstrued.
Sometimes Beach wonders if Germany alone sees the Second World War in a rational light: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
But this is human nature and history will constantly be distorted by its creators. The sea captain might as well sue the sea as historians complain about such popular reimaginings. The fact is that Britain’s clingy, wallowing attitude to the Second World War is no better or worse than the attitudes of most other countries in this corner of the world. Those Britons who call the British obsession with WW2 ‘provincialism’ are either demanding a higher standard of behaviour from their country or, more likely, displaying their all too provincial ignorance of what happens in the rest of continent.
At least, in Britain the war is over and there is a consensus across the political spectrum as to what the war represented. In other countries (Ex-Yugoslavia, Austria…) the war is still being fought. Take Beach’s second home, Italy. There the right, particularly the post-Fascist right, continues to question the role of the partisans, particularly the communist partisans. While left-wingers still march to the music of the resistance: with ‘classics’ (most actually written several decade after hostilities ceased) such as Bella Ciao.
In much of Europe, the Second World War did not end in 1945: gunpowder and cordite were simply replaced by paper and podiums.
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29 March 2012: KMH writes: Since the USA has engaged in politically difficult conflicts since WWII, (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) the war has receded from the public consciousness. The only ones left who participated in it are now approaching their nineties. If the British had suffered through another period of hostilities in the 70 odd years since WWII it might also have had the same effect. The economic recoveries of Japan and Germany (and perhaps also Italy) may have helped to redirect their political attention away from the war. And now China has entered into its economic boom era. Russia is still focusing on WWII perhaps because its communist leaders rejected help with economic recovery through the Marshall Plan. The large quantity of military aid to Russia in the war seems to have been forgotten about. To both forget and forgive can take quite a while, but without learning lessons from history we are bound to repeat it. Battles from the US Civil War are still being re-enacted – a reflection of the traumatic effect of this war on the American spirit. Thanks as always KMH!
