The present situation in the Ukraine has clear some resonance with our Russia and its rulers A level course (Y317). If you click here you will get to a very clear summary of the present situation. from BBC News How does it link to our studies? If you click here however you will get to an episode of the Moral Maze where there is a discussion about what our response should be.
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will get to a BBC News article on the latest theory that identifies a possible suspect who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis….
A team including an ex-FBI agent said Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish figure in Amsterdam, probably “gave up” the Franks to save his own family. The team, made up of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the “cold case”. That included using computer algorithms to search for connections between many different people, something that would have taken humans thousands of hours.
I have a copy of her diaries if any of you want to borrow them to read.
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will to the NCH essay title questions. Have a look at them, and pop in and see me if you want to chat them through. The history title – What does history teach us about humanity’s ability to adapt to climate change? is a classic open-ended question, which should allow genuine intellectual freedom. 1500 words, and the deadline is 31st January.
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will get to an excellent article from Reading Museum entitled “Five Reading citizens and the fight for votes for women” – Reading had an active WSPU, and I particularly enjoyed the descriptions suffragettes.
Mabel Norton, of Caversham, a member of the Reading branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, which had a premises in West Street, Reading (shown below), was sentenced to seven days’ at Holloway prison for her part in a demonstration. She was reported as giving a ‘racy account’ of her experiences at a meeting of sympathisers on the 14 December 1911. Norton described how ‘I wasn’t a bit hysterical when I took a small hammer and smashed five windows one after the other. I did it quietly and deliberately. Then a walk down the street to the police-station cheered by a friendly crowd.’
Another local militant suffragette was Jessie Laws of Lower Armour Road in Tilehurst. She was arrested more than once (including for a raid on the House of Commons in June 1909 along with their first cousin Emmaline Pethick-Lawrence).
Next time that you are in town, have a look – the shop frontage can still be identified. Have a read and see what you think.
Mr Kydd
In November F W De Klerk died. To support and extend our South Africa course, I posted his last message to the South African people and an obituary (see a few posts down). Over Christmas arguably the last key individual in the ending of Apartheid – Desmond Tutu – also passed. There is much here for us to reflect on. Click here to get to a BBC TV programme reflecting on his life. This link contains an obituary, and here you can find a good summary of his life.
Have an explore – and as ever, let me know what you think.
Happy New Year,
Mr Kydd
If you click here you will get to a way to invest your Christmas book tokens wisely. It is the Financial Times’s top ten history books of 2021. Can I recommend Margarette Lincoln’s “London and the Seventeenth Century – the making of the world’s greatest city. It’s great, and Nigel Jones in the Spectator reviews is thus – ‘Lincoln’s colourful canvas is both a chronicle and an ever-shifting panorama ― a vivid portrayal of a metropolis in the grip of alarming, bewildering and constant change [that] skilfully steers her narrative through such political squalls without losing sight of the background.’
New New Year,
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will get to a BBC Radio 4 “Your dead to me” programme discussing Ivan the Terrible. At the time he was known as Ivan Grozny (the purifying storm) and his only ally was Elizabeth I of England. Later, Stalin called him “teacher” – have a listen and see if you think he was right. Then watch the Timewatch programme investigating his death.
Questions –
Can Russia only be effectively run by repression?
How similar were Stalin and Ivan?
Who killed Ivan the Terrible?
Mr Kydd.
You really should watch this 30 minute presentation of the marking of a level 6 script.
If you click here and here – you will get more marked examples from the exam board.
Mr Kydd
Click here for The Guardian’s obituary of F.W de Klerk – South Africa’s last white president.
It states “when De Klerk succeeded P W Botha in 1989, he oversaw an event no less unexpected than the collapse of Soviet communism was when Gorbachev came to power in 1985. His stunning act of realpolitik in announcing sweeping political reform, including the release of his eventual successor, Nelson Mandela, was the grand gesture that saved his country, and in 1993 they shared the Nobel peace prize. The following year Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected leader”.
Yet, de Klerk’s legacy is a mixed one. You might like to read this article from the BBC. It highlights Nelson Mandela’s view in his book, Long Walk to Freedom, “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation.”
This obviously fits in well with your Y224 Apartheid and Reconciliation: South African Politics 1948–1999 course. Have a read an see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
