Robert's European History Blog

A new university in Wales has announced that it is to be named after fifteenth century Welsh prince Owain Glyndwr. He is chiefly known in England for being a rebel who fought against the future King Henry V, but is better regarded in Wales: Professor Scott, future Vice-Chancellor of the university, said "for many Welsh people he is the single most important historical and cultural figure."

Simon Sebag Montefiore has written two very well received books on the life of Russian dictator Stalin. However, his latest column for Britain’s Times newspaper is likely to be slightly less well received: in debating who should be crowned as the "Greatest Russian", currently the subject of a Russian television programme, he describes King Henry VIII as "the English Stalin"! Given that the murderous regime of Stalin killed millions, I’d loved to have seen Montefiore go into greater detail about this comparison, but regrettably he stays on topic… and it is, to me at least, an interesting topic. There is something horrifying about Stalin being in with even a chance of winning the contest.

Think about chariot racing and images of the film 'Ben Hur' probably spring to mind. Well, soon you might be able to replace that with first hand visions. A re-enactment society called Vadis Al Maximo (To the Maximum) have proposed a three day set of contests in October to the owners of the Circus Maximus in Rome. Crowds of up to 35,000 are possible in the Circus, with more outside seeing things on large screens. There’s no word yet on whether permission will be given.

Last week I discovered this page with photographs of the recovery of a Russian World War Two tank (a T34 / 76 I think) from what looks like a marsh. I don’t speak Russian so can’t tell you anything else about the page, but the pictures are interesting enough. The tank appears to have been in there upside down…

I’m not sure how long this has been available, but Britain’s Times newspaper has put online the archive of its newspapers from 1785-1985 in a searchable format (that’s back to before the French Revolution). While you have to register to read the papers, the service is currently free. Search either by word, dive right to a certain date or use a thematic index. I found things hard to find, but once you land on something of interest it’s worth it: I was bemused to read a report on the Somme which begins “The Empire should be proud of her armies to-day.” Not something you’d read today. Find the archive here.

I wasn’t going to report on how the waxworks museum Madame Tussauds – who create lifelike wax replicas of people and display them – opened a branch in Berlin and courted controversy by displaying a diorama including Hitler, because I am conscious of not flooding the blog with WW2 related items, but the story had a little twist in the end and I have relented. As stated above, Tussauds apparently felt Hitler had played a role in German history so sadly significant that displaying a Hitler figure outweighed the grave concerns felt by many Germans at “his” presence. There had been widespread condemnation. Security guards were positioned so people couldn’t take photographs of themselves alongside Hitler, as is common with other effigies. However, only a few minutes after the museum opened for the first time, a man entered the diorama and tore the head from the Hitler figure in protest. Yahoo has some pictures of what the display looked like before (top left).

A news story by the BBC advertising an arts tv show in Wales is claiming that soccer, or at least the game soccer evolved from, is mentioned in documents dating back over a millennium. The story gives few details, but states “Ms Roberts said references to early forms of the game were made between 942 and 950AD in the Book of Taliesin, where soldiers kicked the heads of defeated soldiers” which doesn’t sound convincingly like soccer to me, but I haven’t seen the programme and the rest of the argument. The article goes on to say that the word “football”, used by the rest of the world to name soccer, originated in 1575.

Archaeologists and construction workers have discovered many skeletons buried beneath London over the years, around 37,000 logged by the Museum of London alone. Many have been kept in museums, but others have been reinterred and it’s these bones which now feature on an electronic street map of London marking their location. Now you’ll know part of what’s under your feet thanks to Britain’s Times newspaper and the Museum of London. The map is on this page, at the top left, and starts very zoomed out.

I’ll happily admit I’ve never “got into” films featuring planes and dogfights, and my lists of the best films on certain modern periods might be a little lacking in military aviation. (I’m not even a fan of Top Gun). So I thought I’d try and make up for that by mentioning this list of the “Top 10 Military Aviation Movies of All Time”, which features four films set in the European theatre of World War’s One and Two. The films are judged on the quality of the aerial action, not the rest of the movie, which is presumably why you’ll see “Pearl Harbour” mentioned.

This year was the 193rd anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, when French Emperor Napoleon was defeated for the final time. To commemorate the event, there was a re-enactment and this forum thread has a lot of pictures!