FREE WEEKLY DIGEST

Setting out my history stall

Jun 15, 2024

It’s been a couple of months now, and I’m going to stabilise this ship a bit so that you know better what you can expect from your free/paid subscription.

Below you’ll find my first Weekly Digest, which will always be free. This is where I tell you about what I’ve been waffling about during the week, what events and programmes I might have coming up, and tell you what next week’s content will include. You’ll see snippets of my articles, and teasers about what is to come. You’lll also find periodic book previews like the one I did for Clare Mulley’s book when I have lovely friend releasing something new.
For paid subscribers there will be a minimum of two articles a week, as well as extras like the After Hours podcast, in which Charly White and I are currently cackling about the sex lives of royals. So far other perks already include helping students with essays. Paid subscribers will also get first dibs on some of Istoria’s trips and tours that I happen to be working on.

This online magazine is a reader-supported publication. To help facilitate my history habit, thereby giving me the chance to convert this addiction into shiny articles for you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For the cost of a single take-away coffee each month, you save me from doing some turgid office job and giving up history to be a grown up. It also accelerates you to the top of my favourites list, and puts you in line for prizes!

THIS WEEK

Last weekend I brought you an article on the first person to believe in Islam. The idea came from part of a book called A History of Islam in 21 Women by the very lovely Hossein Kamaly, who we interviewed for History Hack in lockdown. It might surprise you to learn that the first person to adopt the teaching of the Prophet was none other than his wife, and so I went digging in search of her story. The sheer diversity of the Islamic experience is staggering. Generalising that Islamic women live oppressed lives is like saying that all Jews follow strict orthodox rules, and it turns out the very first of them embodied this:

‘His wife’s standing would become of massive importance to broadcasting the Prophet’s message and having the clout to make people listen. Khadija was well placed in Mecca society to protect her husband from the backlash that his lofty message would undoubtedly have. The Prophet himself was had been an orphan since about the age of five, with no tribal pedigree, but he was backed by this formidable woman and this is what kept him afloat. Khadija was not only strong-willed, but she brought a lot of money into the household. She was an astute businesswoman. Involved in long-distance trade, she was amongst a large number of local merchants who sold endless supplies of things like leather and animals skins to the Roman Army. One source claims that when her tribe’s caravans assembled, hers was as large as all the others combined.’

You can read the full article here.

On Monday I gave you the most ADHD thing I’ve ever written in honour of the 40th anniversary of the theatrical release of Gremlins. Employing William Shatner, Will Smith, Roald Dahl, Walt Disney and then finally Steven Spilberg I made the case for it being a war film. This is how it started:

‘In 1923, a Fleet Air Arm pilot who had been on a bender the night before took off in an aircraft with a record of engine trouble and ended up face planting into a nearby body of water. His explanation, when he was picked up, was that the night before (when he was drinking, a lot) miniature people jumped out of his beer bottle. They had plagued him all the night long and now, sober as a judge and dripping wet as he was retrieved, the pilot claimed these little buggers had entered his engine, tampered with it, meddled with his controls and caused him to crash.

And so the gremlin arrived. The name comes from a very old English word, greme, which means to wind up, vex, irritate, annoy. By 1925, an RAF aerodrome was referring to weird incidents of mechanical failure as ‘gremlin action,’ and the term began to spread. There’s a 1938 novel, too, in which, hilariously, Scotland is referred to as ‘gremlin county’ and they apparently rampage around the countryside with scissors cutting the wires on biplanes. Now add the second world war, what we now term PTSD and serviceman humour and the idea explodes.’

If you want the nuttiness in all glory its here

Finally, on Thursday, I gave you a piece on some of the many ways that men, women and children pitched in to defend Britain during the First World War. There was a fair bit in it about the Special Constables, who were kind of a precursor to Dad’s Army:

‘London’s Chief Commissioner, Sir Edward Henry put out a call for volunteers as early as 5th August 1914. Men enrolled at an average of 1000 a day for three weeks and went straight to work guarding railway bridges, tunnels, waterworks, gasworks, canals and ‘places by the destruction of which enemy agents might have tended to incapacitate important public services, thereby rendering the country in a less efficient state for the waging of war.’ Dominated by those past military age, there were also those who had failed medicals and businessmen who could not leave their interests, workmen who did not want to leave their families. A mass of Peers, solicitors, journalists, actors, stockbrokers, tradesmen, labourers went to the post offices to offer their services. There was no snobbery in the unpaid ranks of the Special Constabulary. Under one bridge in south east London, the director of a bank was often paired with a dockworker as a comrade. ‘One instance was recorded of a baronet who left his club at Midnight to for constabulary duty with the waiter who only an hour before had served him with supper.’

You can read that one: here

MAKING HISTORY

Aside from politicians on both sides of the Atlantic attempting to set new standards in stupidity and shady behaviour, it has been a quiet week in the history world after the mayhem of Dday 80. Although apparently some very rich idiot has decided he’s going to go down the wreck of the Titanic.

This is stupid idea on many levels, but then people NEVER LEARN. This should never have been the name of the boat in the first place, because Owen Rees might correct me but I’m pretty sure that in ancient history the Titans were egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur who were banished to the bottom of the ocean. As if that, and the fact that that is exactly what happened to the ship the very first time she attempted to do her job wasn’t dissuasive enough, there is of course that SEVERAL PEOPLE JUST DIED messing about down there.

EVENTS/UPCOMING:

It was a pleasure to help Cath Fletcher celebrate her book launch this week. (By that I mean drink prosecco) She did a fantastic job talking about The Roads to Rome at Blackwell’s in Manchester.

Festival/Tour season is almost upon us. I head out on Istoria’s first trip next Friday, which looks at Chelsea Football Club’s contribution to the First World War.

I’ve also spent this week planning three tours on two three continents For 2024-26, so sign up for the mailing list to get updates on those…

Lastly, Nicolai Eberholst and I hit send on the reworked manuscript for our book this week, having finally got the word count down to something sensible that doesn’t terrify our publisher. Apparently we’ll have cover art soon, which is exciting! You can find out more here. But on a soppy note I could not have asked for a better co-author. The utter lack of competitiveness between us, the shared principles of weight-pulling on both sides that ruled out all chances of bitterness or screaming at each other, has made it as smooth as we could have hoped to get this difficult concept ready for public consumption.

SOMETHING I LEARNED THIS WEEK…

That if you add up the French civilians killed during the Second World War, the number is higher than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. Thanks Kit Chapman for that one. I also learned that the architect of Japan’s nuclear program pissed all his funding up the wall because he didn’t know how to pull it off, and that much of his equipment got lobbed in the sea and people are still looking for it. Speaking of which, anyone who has been to Jordan with me, apparently the great Beduoin treasure hunt is once again rampant, (it involves digging holes all over the desert to look for Ottoman gold…)

NEXT WEEK:

Next week you get the bonus of the next episode of After Hours; in which Charly White and I are joined by Miranda Malins, trustee of the Cromwell Association, to discuss the sex life of Oliver, king-in-all-but-name. This months revelation is, well, thin walls people.

It’s also the anniversary of the first mass transport to Auschwitz, yesterday in fact, so you’ll be getting a full length feature from me about the Jewish political prisoners who arrived at a camp in 1940, one that looked very different to the place you’re picturing in your head later on.

Finally, there will be a book preview next weekend too; this time in honour of Catherine Fletcher’s new book The Roads to Rome. as well as finding out about a mad British spy operating alongside the Allied Invasion in WW2, there will also be details on how you can join Cath in Italy in September to see the roads for yourself.

COMING SOON

Raided another bookshop, and the list of future articles is at about 76 now: Upshot is that soon you’re getting North Dakota Americana, Malta, really sh*t drawings of dinosaurs and a chilling occupation that no longer exists; one that makes Burke and Hare look tame.

Alex Churchill’s HistoryStack

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