At her birth in 1889, Miss Dorothy Walpole, as she then was, seemed to have it all. Her family boasted an impressive political and literary heritage: ancestors included Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister and his famed son, Horace, author of the first gothic novel. Her father was heir to an earldom and her American mother the daughter of a wealthy railroad magnate. Dolly (as she was known) was raised in two of Norfolk’s finest houses, Wolterton and Mannington. But her privilege was tempered by several factors, including the early death of her mother and the clear desire of her father for a male heir.

When Dolly married a clever but poor army officer, Captain Arthur Mills, her father – by then the Earl of Orford – disinherited her and went on to marry a woman younger than his daughter. Life is often described as a journey. As an aristocratic woman with all the attendant advantages, Dolly could have taken the easy route, but the consequences of falling in love with the ‘wrong’ man saw her take another path. In doing so she underwent a metamorphosis and discovered much about herself, physically and mentally. Although she would never lose her love of donning a glamorous frock and downing a cocktail, for several months each year she left the decadent glamour of Jazz Age London for the wildness of desert, jungle and bush, where she found great solace.

Dolly had fallen in love with the Sahara when holidaying in Algeria. Her first expedition was in 1922 to Tunisia, to stay with the reclusive cave dwellers. Before Dolly, few women had chosen to journey through Africa, much of which was still little-known, and she became particularly known for her exploration in West Africa, becoming the first English woman in Timbuktu. Chugging along sluggish rivers on rickety boats she endured deadly heat, man-eating crocodiles and a male pursuer with teeth filed to sharp points. That achievement and the first of her six travel books, The Road to Timbuktu, cemented her reputation as an explorer and a travel writer.

In Liberia she was the first woman to cross the country to its furthest point, encountering cannibals on the way. In Venezuela she travelled over 800 miles through challenging terrain and along the Orinoco river. Everywhere she went, she stayed with local tribes whenever possible. Those who accompanied her on her expeditions were people she hired locally as guides, porters, interpreters. She never travelled with close companions, not even Arthur, who undertook his own journeys to find material for the successful adventure stories he wrote. They would reunite in their London flat, holiday together, then write and socialise.

Dolly travelled during a volatile period, when the world was emerging from the chaos of the Great War and re-shaping itself politically and culturally. She witnessed history in the making when Lord Balfour opened the first Hebrew University in Tel Aviv: her observations of the relationship between Jews and Arabs were prescient. In Iraq, she stayed with the Yezidi tribe, arriving via Aleppo in northern Syria and enduring a near-ambush by brigands. A century later, it is sobering to see that parts of the Middle East into which she ventured remain deeply troubled, and that some other places and peoples she wrote about have, at various times, continued to be the subject of distressing news.

Afterwards she shared her experiences with the world by turning them into compelling prose for her travel books and escapist stories for her novels, while undoubtedly being the only explorer who also wrote journalistic features on a wide range of topics for the emerging modern woman, now empowered by achieving suffrage. That she continued to enjoy the buzz of a social life when back in England provided a marked contrast with the other worlds she inhabited.

Today we take for granted the protection of inoculations for foreign travel. In Dolly’s time, smallpox, malaria and TB were rife, the number of people killed between 1900 and 1950 alone totalling more than those killed in both world wars. In several countries she explored, yellow fever was a killer: inoculation trials did not begin until 1938. Although she took precautions against certain illnesses, she succumbed several times yet survived, her petite, almost delicate frame enduring an extraordinary amount: no doubt she put her resilience down to the cigarettes she smoked and the alcohol she consumed whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Yet she also faced personal tribulations, including – ironically – a serious accident back home in London when she was at the height of her fame, and an emotional blow from her father. But she was buoyed up by her election in 1930 as an early female Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). Always keen to foster a curious mind in the young, on her death in 1959 her most significant bequest was a legacy for a young woman member of the RGS to use for an explorative enterprise.

With no-one close enough to keep her memory alive, Dolly has been overlooked. Yet her curiosity, courage and sense of humanity showed the world extraordinary places and peoples, focusing always on what draws us together rather than what divides us.

The post From cocktails to cannibals: The adventurous life of Lady Dorothy Mills, explorer and writer appeared first on The History Press.

When did you first read about Joanna Plantagenet? And what inspired you to write a book about her?

I’ve known about Joanna’s existence seemingly forever, but she only ever appears in the background of works about the more famous members of her family: as Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter, or as Richard the Lionheart’s sister. She’s just another name on the family tree – and, even then, only where the family tree bothers to include the daughters at all.

Many books have been published about Joanna’s male relatives and about her mother. However, the more I read about them, the more Joanna popped up in a series of wildly different and sometimes unexpected places: in France, in Sicily, in Cyprus, in the Holy Land, in Rome … and I thought to myself, just what sort of a life did this woman lead?

I therefore thought it was about time Joanna had a book of her own, and I’m very glad I was able to write it, because I’ve made some absolutely fascinating discoveries along the way.

What was the most difficult and most rewarding part of the research process?

It was certainly very challenging trying to find specific mentions of Joanna in contemporary medieval records (not to mention digging out my rusty and wasn’t-even-very-good-to-start-with Latin …). Most of these records were written by churchmen, who had very little to say about the deeds of women and even less interest in women’s personal thoughts and experiences.

But, as it happened, this also turned out to be the most rewarding part of the process as well, because those mentions are there if you look carefully, and I was able to dig out some very interesting material. Yes, the narrative of the Third Crusade is mainly about King Richard, but the occasional, almost throwaway ‘and his sister’ or ‘with his queens’ (meaning his wife and his sister) can tell us where Joanna was and what she was doing. I was also able to read the one and only surviving charter of her own, which was very exciting.

It was also fascinating for me to get to grips with some sources that aren’t very well known in England, for example the ones that tell us of Joanna’s time as queen of Sicily. Sicily was a very unusual kingdom in the Middle Ages: a place where Christians, Muslims and Jews all lived side by side in peace. So it was amazing to be able to bring that lesser-known aspect of history to the fore.

What is your favourite chapter in the book? Why?

This will sound a bit weird, but actually it’s Chapter 4, ‘To the East’, where Joanna gets shipwrecked off the coast of Cyprus. This event was unfortunate, of course, but the ensuing situation gave her the chance to demonstrate her leadership skills. She was on a ship with Princess Berengaria of Navarre, whom she was chaperoning, and also some men of lower rank – there was no father, brother, husband or other royal male in sight. So it was Joanna who had to negotiate with and fend off the ruler of the island, who was keen to get the party ashore so he could rob and do harm to them.

The icing on the cake of this episode is that one of the contemporary narratives we have, written by one of those same dismissive churchmen, was produced by an eye-witness who was actually there. And even he was impressed with the way Joanna comported herself in such a perilous situation.

How would you describe Lionessheart in 3 words?

Medieval women rock.

Have you learnt any life lessons from the women featured in the book?

From Eleanor of Brittany I’ve learned that I’m extremely lucky not to have been a minor female member of the Plantagenet family in the twelfth century! From the Damsel of Cyprus I’ve learned that you can make a mark on the world that will last for hundreds of years, even if nobody knows your name. And from Joanna herself I’ve learned that medieval women had to pick their battles very carefully – but that if they did, they could take control of their own lives and exert a great deal more influence on the world around them than they’re generally given credit for.

The post Ask the author: Catherine Hanley on Joanna Plantagenet appeared first on The History Press.

This is the true recollection of Sergeant Fred Hooker, upon leaving Stallag Luft VII, a German prisoner-of-war camp, in the early hours of 19th January, 1945. Sgt Hooker had been captive there since 12th September the previous year, taken after parachuting from the Halifax heavy bomber in which he was upper gunner was attacked, whilst on a bombing raid over Munster, in western Germany. Both the tail gunner on the aircraft and the pilot were killed, failing to escape in time, consumed by the flames. Hooker was reunited the following day with two of his other crew members – Charlie, the flight engineer, and Taffy, the bomb aimer. After a long journey partly on foot and partly on uncomfortable trucks and a train, with little to eat except dry black bread, the three found themselves at Stallag VII, where they were to spend the next four months: until their release into the freezing night air on 19th January the following year, as the Second World War was drawing to a close.

This year will be a busy year of remembrance of the Second World War because of the anniversaries that will – rightly – be marked; not least 8th May will be the eightieth anniversary of VE day, marking the end of the conflict in Europe, followed by VJ day in August – the end of the war in the Pacific, even more significantly marking the end of the entire conflict. Going further back, we will also remember the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain which took place between the middle of July and end of October in 1940; and the 85th anniversary of the Evacuation from Dunkirk at the end of May/beginning of June – when over 330,000 British troops were rescued from France as it fell into German occupation.

I could list so many more turning points of the conflict, of course; markers of the war that changed the course of history and can be illustrated through remarkable acts of individual courage, military strategy or in some cases simple good fortune. It is vital that we do keep WWII in our minds; the service of millions – for many very painful service indeed – who gave us (the sadly only relative perhaps) peace that we have today. Sergeant Fred Hooker (who has now died) is but one of those millions. Fred told me about his capture as a P-o-W, and his release from Stallag VII for my book Remarkable Journeys of the Second World War*, which contains eleven true memories of the war, all equally remarkable, and extraordinary.

Fred, and a further 1,600 or so inmates from Stallag VII, were part of what is now known as the ‘Long March’ together with over 80,000 prisoners of war held at many other camps, that took place between January and April 1945. The prisoners were released by the Russians who, by this point, were successfully pushing into the eastern front; resulting in the German authorities deciding to evacuate the camps. Fred’s release (and that of his comrades) was in the early hours of 19th January, 1945.

The conditions of the ‘march’ were brutal, so tortuous that over 2,000 men perished en route. For miles they endured blizzards, with the temperature falling to below minus twenty; inadequate clothing offered little protection; they were given little, or no, food, forced to eat whatever they could find – cats, rats, grass and raw sugar beet. Many were ill with dysentery, malnutrition, frost-bite and hypothermia. They were afforded very little sleep and rest, too, occasionally stopping for a few hours in empty barns, sheds and warehouses along the way – as and when permitted by the German guards who pushed them along as quickly as they could.

Fred’s journey on foot ended on 5th February – with a transfer for the next stage of his ‘return home’ to a cattle truck, onto which he was loaded with his comrades, squashed ‘like sardines’ into conditions he described as “not fit for animals, let alone human-beings.’ This horrendous journey lasted for about three days, culminating in their arrival at another camp, Stallag III; where they stayed until their eventual release by American troops three long months later, on 5th May.

Fred was taken then to Brussels, where he was lavishly fed and luxuriated in the joy of sleeping in a proper bed, before being flown home, for his recovery to begin.

As ever, through the troubled times that we are living in today, we can and must draw strength from the courage and resilience of Sergeant Fred Hooker, and millions just like him.

The post ‘we closed our eyes to the blizzard …’ Sergeant Fred Hooker’s memory of the Long March appeared first on The History Press.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

It all started when Queen Elizabeth II died, in 2022. I was watching the spectacle that is crowning a new monarch, and realised that Princess Anne—the queen’s eldest daughter—had lived a life of restricted royalty, but without the direction that her brother, the heir, had always had. It made me wonder what her life could have been if she had been the heir instead.

Which is your favourite Queen that you talk about in the book?

Ohhhhh, a tough one! I think probably Isabella, the eldest daughter of Edward III. She lived a bold life in the 1350s when women had very few rights at all, and she was under the control of the most powerful man in the country: her father. And yet she refused to be married off, instead gaining for herself an independent income—I think the first princess to do so—and eventually marrying, for love, in her thirties. What an icon!

What was your biggest challenge while undertaking the research?

Honestly, the fact that there simply aren’t that many records of princesses in the early medieval period! Take William the Conqueror, for example. He began his reign in 1066, and there are plenty of contemporary lists of his children—that is, lists made during his lifetime. The trouble is, none of those lists agree with each other. Not a single one is the same! So we don’t exactly know how many children he had, what their birth order was, or even what their names were. Not exactly helpful!

Where did you gather your information from and what was the research process like?

I’m really fortunate that, thanks to my university, I have access to JSTOR which has hundreds of thousands of academic articles and reports of research. I also gained access to my local university library, including some primary sources, and I used my county’s integrated library network too. I was really fortunate!

The research process was really enjoyable, even though it was a little frustrating at times. I’ve loved history all my life, I have two history degrees, and yet there were many queens who could have been that I had never heard of. It was so exciting discovering them.

Was there anything especially surprising that you found in your research?

Most definitely; just how bold so many of these princesses were! Although their boldness has to be contextualised—boldness in the 1500s looks different to boldness now—it was astonishing how much agency these princesses were not given, but demanded.

How would you describe the book in one word?

Feminist.

What is your favourite chapter in the book? Why?

I’m a medievalist at heart, and so I had a huge amount of fun with the Edward queens. They lived during the height of the medieval era, from around the 1270s to 1370s. So much changed during that time, and the royal princesses had a front-row seat…and at times, were influencing those changes.

Have you learnt any life lessons from these women?

I think to be more bold! To be more open with what I want out of life, where I want to go, what I want to do. There’s nothing like the limitations on my life compared to theirs, and they still pushed forward to make joyful adventures for themselves. They are just so fascinating, and I can’t wait for people to read Regina and discover them.

The post Ask the author: Emily Murdoch Perkins on rewriting royal history appeared first on The History Press.

He went on to fight in the Battle of Arnhem during the Second World War. Of the 10,000 men who landed at Arnhem, 1,400 were killed and more than 6,000 were captured – a bloody disaster in more ways than one. Arnhem Lift is Hagen’s breathtaking and frank account of what it was like in the air and on the ground, including his daring escape from the German Army by swimming the Rhine.

‘I crawled right under the brushwood and saw and heard the bullets splashing the ground and hitting the branches and tree stumps all round me. I was sure this was going to be the end and kicked myself for doing such an idiotic thing; trying to take a strong German position on my own. I swore that if ever I got out of this hopeless position I would never again be such a bloody fool. I lay completely still, bullets whizzing about me. I wondered if I wanted to pray; that is what everybody is supposed to do in a position like this; but I just did not feel like it, and to calm and steady myself I watched a colony of ants go about their well-planned and systematic business.’

Louis Hagen

This quote describes my Father’s attitude to life; brave , reckless and amusing which hopefully the reader will understand from his newly published autobiography Suddenly An Englishman and Arnhem Lift.

By Caroline Hagen Hall

The post To all who fell at Arnhem – Allied and German appeared first on The History Press.

Track 1: Il cielo in una stanza by Mina

The dreamy orchestration evokes Vivien’s first glimpse of Ceylon in 1953, where she would film Elephant Walk. During that time, she also had an affair with Peter Finch. It also made me think of Vivien’s earlier trip to Capri in 1936, when driven by lust, she embarked on the island to surprise her lover, Laurence Olivier, who was holidaying with his wife, Jill Esmond. The beauty of those 2 island paradises, with the tropical flowers, crystallised waters, and exotic scents was intoxicating for Vivien, but her actions were far from dazzling. The contrast reminded me of this song, which, despite sounding romantic (as Italian lyrics always do!) is actually about a brothel.

Track 2: Loco Amor by Pedrito Martinez

The passionate chants of ‘Loco Amor’ (Spanish for ‘crazy love’) bring to mind the long days and nights Vivien spent with Peter in Ceylon, as well as her time with Larry. During the early days of each affair, she was swept up in the intensity of her feelings and only had tunnel vision for the man (or men) she loved. I purposely chose classic songs in Italian, Spanish and French to represent Vivien’s worldliness but also to keep the listener lost in translation, symbolising the secret world in which Vivien and Larry (more so than Peter) existed during those hedonistic days of clandestine meetings in nondescript places and stolen moments on the film set.

Track 3: Good Luck, Babe by Chappell Roan

‘Stop the world to stop the feeling’ summarises the desperation Vivien felt in 1953, when she knew something was a miss, but she was at a loss to understand it. This perfectly sums up the heightened feelings of falling for Peter and the damage it caused, and the tragic aftermath when her mental health collapsed and she was hospitalised for several weeks. Vivien would often wish the world could stop many times throughout her life. It also suggests the loss of Vivien’s support from Larry, as he moved on and had affairs with younger women. Powerless was how Vivien felt, but she also knew nobody could match the intensity of her love.

Track 4: Wake Up Alone by Amy Winehouse

The consequence of Vivien’s illness meant that she drove people away and those she loved bore the brunt of the violence which often came with a manic depressive episode. This song reflects the loneliness of being mentally ill and misunderstood, and the longing she felt to put things right. Sadly, her relationships were fractured beyond repair and the men in her life eventually left her.

Track 5: Young and Beautiful by Lana del Rey

After Vivien awoke from her coma at the hospital, following her mental breakdown, Larry did not recognise her. The woman he loved was a stranger to him and he was afraid. In his memoirs, he wrote, ‘I loved her that much less.’ Having weathered several storms throughout their affair and, then, marriage, the lack of familiarity startled him and he realised it was the beginning of the end. Vivien must have realised it too, but her obsession for Larry would keep her bound to him, at whatever cost to her sanity. The idyllic image he held of her was shattered forever and she was always trying to go back to a happier time, but failed in her mission.

Track 6: Eternal Source of Light Divine by G.F. Handel

The pomp and splendour perfectly sum up the Oliviers when they are at their greatest: on the world’s stage and adored by their legions of fans. Onstage, they were invincible – the King and Queen of the theatre, and the audience forming their court of devoted subjects.

Track 7: You Belong To Me by Patsy Cline

The sentimentality of Vivien and Larry’s marriage, as well as the 1940s and early 50s, when they were the golden couple and seemingly untouchable, are conveyed in the lyrics. It’s all about the past, where Vivien remained stuck for much of the 50s and 60s. She longed for Larry, after he left her, and held onto the happier memories, even if much of it was a figment of her imagination. This much was true, when, in 1962, Vivien went on a lengthy tour of Australasia, retracing the steps she took with Larry in 1948, but, to her sadness, everything had changed. She looked for him everywhere and spoke of him in interviews, as if he was lingering in the next room.

Track 8: Cherry by Lana del Rey

The toxicity of Vivien’s affair with Peter and her failing marriage to Larry was a running conflict throughout her life in the 1950s. In 1955, Vivien and Larry did a season at Stratford but as soon as Peter entered the scene, she discarded Larry for her lover. ‘I fall to pieces when I’m with you’ could have easily translated to Vivien’s question, when she asked her husband and lover, ‘Which one of you is coming to bed with me?’

Track 9: tolerate it by Taylor Swift

Several parts of this song are reflective of Vivien and the men in her life, not only Peter and Larry, but her first husband Leigh Holman, whose love she only ever tolerated. Likewise, Vivien felt neglected by Leigh during their brief marriage and failed to connect on a romantic level with him and his love for her grew after she abandoned him for Larry. And, as Vivien’s marriage to Larry was coming to an end, she often felt he tolerated her and it broke her heart and shattered her confidence.

Track 10: I’d Rather Go Blind by Etta James

In 1960, Vivien attended the divorce hearing alone and wept openly as her marriage to Larry was dissolved. She was distraught, as she always hoped he would call the divorce off. Likewise, when she discovered, from the paparazzi, that he had married Joan Plowright, she was shocked but hid it for the sake of keeping up appearances – those feelings of sadness and regret were also apparent when Larry had children with his new wife. The song reminds me of Vivien’s remark: ‘I’d rather live a short life with Larry than a long life without him.’

Track 11: Please, Please, Please, Let me Get What I Want by She and Him

In middle age, Vivien was desperately trying to navigate her personal life and the lull in her career. She was also beginning a new relationship with Jack Merivale and trying to repair her bond with her only child from her first marriage, whom she abandoned for Larry. I think she was trying to repair her karma and her self-worth by doing good deeds. But her mental illness would cast a dark shadow over her plans and derail her progress. Nevertheless, it was a battle she continued to fight.

Track 12: Je ne sais plus by Dalida

In English, the song is ‘You Don’t Own Me’. Despite the challenges Vivien faced, it was important, as her biographer, to restore her sense of power. She’s an empowering woman who lived by her own set of rules, for better or worse, and was governed by her soul’s journey, instead of society’s rules. She was open about her illness and she was authentic in her passion for living.

Track 13: All Too Well (Ten Minute Version) by Taylor Swift

The greatest battles in Vivien’s life were her mental illness and her (finally) agreeing to give Larry a divorce so he could remarry. She romanticised their life together and carried a torch for him always, seemingly forgetting the horrific times they shared and the infidelity on both sides. Unfortunately, for Vivien, Larry moved on and started a family with his new wife. In Vivien’s dream world, she and Larry would remain friends and be in each other’s lives, but he kept her at arm’s length. To her, their marriage, even when it was over, was sacred. I feel, she was always hoping Larry would romanticise her, as she did him – she remembered it ‘all too well’.

The post The music behind ‘Where Madness Lies’ appeared first on The History Press.

Despite the plethora of general biographical material generated by the Windsor story during the last fifty years, an in-depth, balanced account of the greed and deceit permeating the horde of stolen jewels and artworks they acquired over a lifetime of subterfuge and public denial has never been published.

This is partly due to the mysterious disappearance of vast amount of Windsor archives assiduously preserved by the Duke at his various French residences between the time of his death in 1972 and the last years of the Duchess’s incapacitation and eventual death in 1986. There is a consensus these papers were either stolen by Windsor confidantes, confiscated by royal agents, or destroyed by loyal staff. Those artefacts that managed to survive do surface now and then, such as the small cache of material preserved by the Duchess’s former personal secretary Johanna Schutz.

In The King’s Loot, Richard Wallace has tracked down and sifted through the various competing contemporary accounts that exist and tested their veracity with surviving witnesses.

The 400+ footnotes used in The King’s Loot derive from four principal sources:

• The author covered the 1987 Geneva auction for Fairfax and visited Geneva to witness the first day of the auction (2nd of April) in the giant candy-striped marquee on the shore of Lake Geneva across the main lakeside avenue from the Hotel Beau Rivage (where an old register still had the 1939 signatures of the Duke and Duchess). He used notes of interviews and other first-hand observations of that time in Geneva that were not included in his Fairfax article.

• These primary experiences were supplemented with recent interviews of key witnesses willing to go on the record such as Michael Bloch (veteran Windsor author and assistant to the Duchess’s French executor in the 1970’s and 80’s), Sotheby’s investigative reporter Peter Watson, and Andrew Rayner, brother of the 1987 auctioneer Nicholas Rayner. Richard was also able to use other sources to corroborate comments made by nervous Windsor jewellers and haute couturiers reluctant to be cited for reasons of client confidentiality.

• Extensive references to first-hand contemporary accounts of key moments in the Windsor jewellery story (the fallout from the reading of George V’s will; Wallis Simpson’s escape to the Continent prior to Edward’s abdication; the wedding at Château de Candé; the burglary at Ednam Lodge; the death of the Duchess and her relationship with her executor Maître Suzanne Blum; and the Geneva/New York auctions) drawn from various sources such as The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Times, the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (a member of Edward’s staff), Diaries of Sir John Reith (DG of the BBC and witness to Edward’s abdication broadcast), Diaries of Chips Channon (Society observer), the papers of Walter Monckton (Edward’s chief confidante) at Balliol college, and police files in the National Archives.

• A judicious sampling of relevant secondary sources.

The post How ‘The King’s Loot’ uncovered the murky past of the Windsor Jewellery appeared first on The History Press.

Nevertheless, there were several women who managed to undertake extraordinary journeys, yet these early pioneers and their astonishing stories have been virtually ignored.

This book has been written to finally record and properly set down the stories of the remarkable journeys made by these women, the very first women to achieve a full circumnavigation by sea and land and, more recently, in the air and in space. Author Sally Smith has delved deep around the world, including at record offices and institutions as far afield as Tahiti and Melbourne, to research the full details of these forgotten women. Some of their stories are breathtaking, others are simply hugely entertaining, but they all deserve a proper place in the history books.

Stories like that of Jeanne Baret. Brought up in poverty and illiterate, in 1767 it was against the French law for a woman to go to sea. Jeanne dressed as a man to join a French ship but the expedition leader soon had suspicions. When Jeanne discovered a beautiful plant high up in Brazil, she named it the Bougainvillea to stop Captain Bougainville from arresting her. It worked, but when they reached Tahiti and locals rushed up to touch her, denouncing her as a woman, her secret was exposed. Changing ships and going through many other adventures, including marrying in Mauritius, Jeanne finally made it back to France to become the first ever woman to go round the world.

Then there is Mary Ann Parker, the first woman to go round Cape Horn and circumnavigate the world from east to west. She had sailed out from England with the third fleet in 1791 and wrote the first published report from a woman on the early settlement at Port Jackson, now Sydney. While there, she befriended an Aboriginal Australian. On the way back, in Cape Town her boat picked up Mary Bryant, the first female escaped convict from Australia, and also some mutineers from the Bounty, but back in London her reputation was damaged when she shocked society by welcoming her Australian friend into her London home and she ended up in prison.

And so the stories go on… featuring the 11 women who achieved real firsts in global circumnavigations; records that can never be broken but more than that, fabulous stories that deserve a rightful place in the history books.

The post The Women Who Went Round the World appeared first on The History Press.

Flight Lieutenant Noble Frankland (DFC CB CBE) is one of those for whom 6th June 1944 might have been just another ‘ordinary day’ in the operational course of duty to bring about the end of the war. A Lancaster navigator, Frankland’s D-Day began at the unearthly hour of 2.30 am; he and his crew (of seven) received instructions to bomb a radar station near St Pierre du Mont in Calvados, northern France. Their orders were to hit this target precisely, at a precise time, and return as soon as possible. They succeeded and returned to base, RAF Skellingthorpe in Lincolnshire, later that morning – following which they took a well-earned rest. During the previous weeks they had been attacking railways stations and tracks, and bridges and roads, which they understood was in preparation for a much bigger operation; but they knew very little of the detail. So this flight, one of the first of hundreds of Allied aircraft to fly over northern France on 6th June 1944, to Frankland was just another routine sortie – he did not realise until later that morning D-Day had actually begun. It was only when, at a later briefing, they were told that during future operations over France they would need to take special care not to hit ‘their own troops’ that reality struck. Frankland recalled:

‘So much of the day was most unusual. I thought that when D-Day finally came it would be a ‘battle royal.’ But on the day itself I didn’t see a single German aircraft: the Luftwaffe simply did not intervene. It was extraordinary, I couldn’t understand it. They did arrive, of course, but thankfully too late. In the days that followed we flew in defence of the army, who were engaged in fierce battles on the ground, whilst we were caught up fighting in the air. But the Germans were doomed; and we need to give credit especially to the Americans, they did so much. After we took Cherbourg on 27th June, there was a constant flow of US soldiers and equipment.’  

D-Day itself had been meticulously planned, in strictest secrecy, for many years; a vital factor in the success that it was, beginning the liberation of France which was completed with the Allies entering Paris on 25th August. It was this secrecy that kept the Germans away, at the beginning, enabling the Allies to make their intense and enormous advance that paved the way to success – ultimately bringing about the end of the war. Frankland had the utmost respect and admiration that military leaders, particularly Prime Minister Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower had been able to achieve this, remembering how he was mystified by some unusual occurrences; but his role was not to ask questions, it was to follow orders. Indeed, about their early morning D-Day flight, Frankland recollected:  

‘Usually, our crew were a disciplined, quiet, conscientious bunch – but on this flight the boys were particularly chatty, which I found quite irritating because, as navigator, I was having to do some quite complex calculations; so I told them off. But they continued to be more excitable than usual, pointing out to me they could see quite a lot of ships in the Channel, some with barrage balloons flying from them.   

Anyway, we kept going to our target – the radar station – dropped our bombs and turned to fly home. Then we saw soldiers going ashore, and even more ships with balloons. But we still didn’t know what was going on, I thought it was a Commando raid!‘ 

Frankland also recalled another unusual occurrence; on around 2nd June a large fleet of gliders, flown by the Red Berets in the army, arrived at their squadron base (50 Squadron) in Skellingthorpe, only to leave – very suddenly – late in the day on 5th June. At no point previously in the war had gliders ever shared their base. Frankland remembered them well, also recalling a deeply tragic D-Day accident that befell the gliders. He said:  

‘Certainly, I do remember some very nasty things, including the falling to the ground of two Halifax aircraft, each towing a glider. Each glider had a crew of around 25 men – all four aircraft went down, caught in flak. Seeking to avoid the bullets both Halifax’s turned inwards, crossing each other’s cables, and they all went down. I learnt later they were on their way to Pegasus bridge, the reclamation of which was crucial because it was an important enemy byway to the landing beaches in Normandy.’ 

It was later, during the ten-week campaign to liberate France that Frankland, and his crew, had their own very narrow escape. On 7th July, they were instructed to fly to Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, in the north of France. It was to be a complex operation – Frankland had been given the duty of target finding; which involved calculating the aiming point for other aircraft, which meant circling around the target area more than once. After completing the task they headed for the coast; it was then they were attacked by a German night fighter. The words ‘set starboard petrol tank on fire’ are inscribed into Frankland’s logbook. He recalled how frightening it was, saying:  

‘The starboard wing was hit with incendiary fire. That ignited the petrol tank in the farthest engine, and the fire quickly began to advance along the wing. I saw the flames racing along, and just thought ‘we’ll be dead in a matter of seconds’, but the seconds passed and we weren’t!     

The normal procedure would be to bail out, but both the pilot and I had a fear of heights. We told the rest of the crew they should go if they wanted to, but no-one did – despite knowing our chance of survival was very slim indeed. So, we stuck together; we kept going, and in ten minutes later we landed, at Ford in Sussex.  

Those were probably the longest ten minutes in my life … it felt like 150 years … during that time the wing continued to warp. The second starboard engine also burnt to a frazzle. The pilot dived for about 10,000 feet at one point, trying to blow out the flames, but it only increased their intensity and made things worse because we were so low and couldn’t climb back up. As we arrived towards Ford, instructions were being shouted at us to bail, but none of us would, and we were too low anyway for our parachutes to open. Instead we just told control we would have to make an emergency landing; but as we approached to land we saw the runway was blocked by another aircraft, and all we could do was bump painfully along the grass next to it, and after stopping run for our lives, expecting our aircraft to explode at any moment.’ 

Frankland told me how well they slept that night, and the next day visited the site of their defeated Lancaster – inspecting the starboard wing which he said was ‘burnt to a crisp, thinner than a sheet of tin foil.’ Later that day they were flown back to Skellingthorpe, by a comrade from 50 Squadron. It was the only time during the war that Frankland was a passenger.   

In the years that followed the Second World War, Dr Noble Frankland went on to become an eminent historian of the War, writing books, working in the Air Ministry, and was a director of the Imperial War Museum. He has been honoured by the French, too, receiving the Légion d’honneur for his role in the Normandy landings. He said he felt compelled to undertake this work because:  

‘As far as possible, generations after the war need, at the very least, to have some idea about the actual madness of war, only that can act as a warning to others to be very wary of entering into it. If I (through my writing and my work) can bring out anything like the truth, I hope it will have been a useful thing to have done.’   

I think, given the state of the world today, true stories of courage and strength in war, such as Noble Frankland’s, are more vital than ever. His work is, therefore, in his words, a very ‘useful thing.’   

Dr Noble Frankland’s (DFC CB CBE), true war-time recollection is published in Victoria Panton Bacon’s book Remarkable Journeys of the Second World War. He died in November 2019, aged 97, this is his obituary in The Times. 

The post D-Day, the closely guarded secret that secured victory appeared first on The History Press.

Some see it as a unique first-hand insight into the Brontë family by one of Britain’s greatest writers, while others still dismiss it as a propaganda exercise compromised by unreliable information and pernicious gossip. What is not in doubt is its considerable influence on English literary history, both as the first biography of a woman writer by another and as the model for the hundreds of books about the Brontës that followed. As a runaway bestseller beset by controversy it almost instantly established the romantic myth of the family and accelerated the literary pilgrimages to their Yorkshire hometown, Haworth. After so much time, can we test the integrity of the book and verify or refute its claims? My book, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë aims to do so.

The first challenge of any historical investigation is to distinguish and separate the first-hand historical evidence from the usually more elaborate later interpretations transmitted from one biographer to another, that have collected errors and confirmed biases. With a history as contested as that of the Brontë family this is even more embroiled, as cultural trends apply new interpretations and changing tastes elevate or demote one of the three Brontë sisters over the others, as though only a limited amount of praise can be apportioned and divided between them. Answers, as always, lie in the historical record. Letters and recollections by the Brontë and Gaskell families, their friends and associates and other first-hand witnesses tell rather a different story that challenges many received notions about the Brontës, especially around the writing and reception of Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Gaskell and Brontë had been friends for the last five years of Charlotte’s life, having corresponded with each other for a year before that. Both were professional women who had published well received novels, both came from clerical families and suffered bereavements early in life. There the parallels ended. Gaskell was married with children, hosted intellectual evenings in her large Manchester home with the finest minds of the day, while Brontë, unmarried and practically broken by the recent deaths of her three adult siblings lived in crippling solitude with her volatile elderly father in a remote Yorkshire mill town. When Gaskell began to wonder how one of the greatest talents of their generation could have lived such a deprived life, the germ for telling Charlotte Brontë’s story formed. Crucially, the anecdotes Charlotte herself shared, the ‘wild strange facts’ about the talented quartet of ignored sibling geniuses practically raising and educating themselves in isolation, so captivated Gaskell that when Brontë died and her father asked her to address scurrilous newspaper stories about his family, she was already well prepared.

Nevertheless, refusing to rely solely on her own recollections, she embarked on a remarkable campaign to track down and interview everyone who had known Charlotte Brontë, from former schoolfriends and nursemaids, to neighbouring shopkeepers and fellow writers like William Thackeray and Harriet Martineau, and to read as many of her personal letters as her friends were willing to donate, despite the reserve and caution several felt about making the details of her life public. Even more remarkably, Elizabeth Gaskell travelled to the continent, to Belgium, to interview in person the married man Charlotte nursed a secret love for while she was a student. Looked at together, the accounts conflicted and Gaskell devoted herself to reconstructing a truthful account of a troubled woman whose determination and intellect made her a visionary writer. But Gaskell knew that telling the truth would be controversial. She felt Charlotte had been maligned and manipulated by many of those around her and was determined to shame them publicly, warning her publishers to familiarise themselves with libel laws.

When The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 it triggered a firestorm of controversy that led to the first edition being withdrawn and rewritten twice in six months. Many of those named in it objected to Gaskell’s indiscretions or felt slandered, with several threatening to sue both Gaskell and her publisher. Knowing a court case would require the testimonies of many socially and economically disadvantaged women, as some key biographical statements had come from servants, Gaskell chose to take the blame and publicly admit errors that she privately insisted were true. It was a noble political choice, to sacrifice her own public standing in order to appease her complainants and extinguish legal threats. But the result has gone uncorrected and Gaskell’s reputation as an unreliable biographer remains. Setting the record straight and delivering justice to both Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell is long overdue.

The post The Invention of Charlotte Brontë appeared first on The History Press.