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.
My favourite history book of the year – Margarette Lincoln’s London and the Seventeenth Century
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.’
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.
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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
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Above is F.W de Klerk’s last message to South Africa . In it he states “I, without qualification, apologise for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa”
Click here for The Guardian’s obituary of F.W de Klerk – South Africa’s last white president.
De Klerk was awarded a joint Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and served as Nelson Mandela’s deputy president in 1994.
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.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Obitury – F.W. de Klerk. Something to discuss – what is his legacy?
If you click here you will get to information from the British Library about their current Elizabeth and Mary – Royal Cousins, Rival Queens exhibition.
Mary, Queen of Scots by François Clouet, c 1558, and Elizabeth I, attributed to George Gower, c 1567
Click here for Phillipa Gregory’s review of the exhibition. In it she states “the exhibition is steered by its content, and many of the documents perpetuate the traditional contrasting of the two queens. It was in the interests of both sides to imply that the women were opposites: the Protestant, astute, controlled self-proclaimed virgin Elizabeth, and the Roman Catholic, spontaneous, emotional, fertile Mary. Although both queens struggled with religious controversy, advisers, lovers, would-be husbands, hangers-on, spies and plotters, it is Elizabeth’s papers that predominate. Her personal letters and speeches to parliament emphasise her statecraft; Mary’s courage on the battlefield and her daring escapes can only be represented by maps and sketches. As ever, it is the victor who writes the history“.
It fits beautifully with our OCR Y107 later Tudors course. It is well worth a visit.
Mr Kydd
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If you click here you will get to a BBC article exploring the trial of a 100-year-old SS guard – Josef S – who is accused of complicity in the shooting Soviet prisoners of war and the murder of others with Zyklon B gas.
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If you clickhere you will get a link for the excellent Nero exhibition at the British Museum. It is on until 23rd October. I have been, and it is excellent. Now that we can start to get back to normal, you may like to consider going. This is what the intellectual independence that I am always banging on about looks like. Below is the curator’s video, and a written summary.
Mr Kydd.
Nero is known as one of Rome’s most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty, debauchery and madness.
The last male descendant of the emperor Augustus, Nero succeeded to the throne in AD 54 aged just 16 and died a violent death at 30. His turbulent rule saw momentous events including the Great Fire of Rome, Boudicca’s rebellion in Britain, the execution of his own mother and first wife, grand projects and extravagant excesses.
Drawing on the latest research, this major exhibition questions the traditional narrative of the ruthless tyrant and eccentric performer, revealing a different Nero, a populist leader at a time of great change in Roman society.
Through some 200 spectacular objects, from the imperial palace in Rome to the streets of Pompeii, follow the young emperor’s rise and fall and make up your own mind about Nero. Was he a young, inexperienced ruler trying his best in a divided society, or the merciless, matricidal megalomaniac history has painted him to be?
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If you click here you will get to historians such as Robert Service and Richard Evans discuss how there is nothing new about fake news. It is excellent enrichment, and I recommend it to you.
Mr Kydd.
Programme description.
Phil Tinline mines the archives to trace the story of ‘disinformation’ – navigating the slippery history of such incidents as the Zinoviev Letter, the Reichstag Fire, the Moscow Trials, the allegations that the US used germ warfare in the Korean War, British operations in Northern Ireland and the CIA’s attempt at a pornographic movie.
He tracks the origins of disinformation to struggles between Tsarists and revolutionaries in pre- and post-Revolutionary Russia – a period which produced the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was championed by the Nazis. It was a milieu that shaped the Bolsheviks’ ruthless approach to information and disinformation – a mindset they carried with them from the underground to the Kremlin.
Amid the rise of totalitarianism, leading thinkers on left and right alike were worrying about the ‘End of Truth’ over 70 years before today’s furores. Anxiety about truth and its enemies seems to flare up at times when orthodoxies are falling apart – political uncertainty is rife and people become unusually open to the comforting certainty of extreme ideas.
So – if ‘fake news’ is not as new as advertised, might we have something to learn from this history? Phil uses this long history of deliberate attacks on truth to identify tricks and techniques that are still in use today, drawing on the expertise of Lawrence Bittman, the ex-deputy chief of the Czechoslovak disinformation department.
Posted inEnrichment, historians, History Society|Comments Off on Enrichment – something to listen to. Radio 4 – a user’s guide to disinformation.
