November 9th, 1989 - Celia Rees

There are a few dates in history when the world turned. June 28th, 1914, when shots fired by Govrilo Princip in Sarajevo, set off a train of events which resulted in the outbreak of the First World War. April 19th, 1775, when the first shot fired on Lexington Green, Massachusetts, sparked the American Revolution, memorably described by Ralph Waldo Emerson as 'the shot heard around the world'. November 22nd, 1963, when another shot rang out across Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, killing John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. 9/11/2001 when two Boeing 767 passenger planes flew into the Twin Towers. 

9^th November, 1989 is one of those dates: the day, or rather the night, when the Berlin Wall fell.

 

When these things happen, we immediately recognise their huge significance. Years later, we can say where we were, what we were doing, when we heard the news. In that moment, we can't always see all the ramifications, but we know something very big has happened. The actual causes of the world changing events that follow might be complex, go back years, decades, even centuries, but there is that one thing, one event, which causes the dominoes to fall. 

 

This does not have to be violent, it could be minor, trivial even. As small as the turning of a page...

 

On 9th November, 1989, at 6pm a News Conference took place in East Berlin...

 

'The News Conference was due to start at 6pm promptly, live on East German TV. The usual thing. TV cameras ranged round the back and sides of the small rooms. Reporters in the centre, milling about, taking their red plush tip up seats in front of the East German spokespeople, four of them, ranged behind a long press conference desk which was the same drab mid brown as the wall panelling and raised at the front to hide their papers from view. Muddy green floor to ceiling drapes provided the backdrop. Microphone leads trailed from each station but the only one speaking was Günter Shabowski, the East German unofficial spokesman. Middle aged, thick set with heavy features, grey hair, grey suit, he droned in monotone German  ... They were about an hour in and, so far, pretty routine, nothing much said, nothing new anyway, just the usual water tread, change was coming but not quite yet .... Someone even reached to switch off the set when Schabowski picked up a sheet of paper and read a statement: East Germans would be able to leave the GDR without preconditions at all border crossings with West Germany. Everyone leaned forward. There was a moment of absolute silence, as if they could not quite believe what they had just heard. On the screen, people looked to one another, as if for confirmation, and then the hubbub started. An Italian journalist stood up and asked the question: When is this going to happen? A collective intake of breath as Schabowski shrugged, shuffled thorough his papers and answered: Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis... ist das sofort... unverzüglich - As far as I know… this is immediate… immediately. 

Schabowski frowned and looked over his glasses stunned, perhaps, by what he’d just said. Over the page was the detail: the need to apply for travel permits, present passports for stamping, beginning the next day. The 10th. But he hadn’t read that. 

 

History turns on such small things.'

 

This is an extract from my work in progress, provisionally called the Berlin Birdwatchers but the title is likely to change. It's a contemporary spy novel, but the events go back to that night in Berlin. As a historical novelist, it is my task to take myself back to the past, to see with the eyes of those present, to re-create events as they are happening. 

 

This is how I saw that night in Berlin:

‘Several people nodded, unable to frame words for what was happening. Finally, finally the border was going to open with immediate effect. A hand reached up to change TV channels. The Conference was top of the Evening News. They would be seeing this in East Berlin. Everyone there watched TV from the West. They would come pouring out of their homes and apartments and on to the streets, family, friends, neighbours joining together and heading for their nearest border crossing. The guards would have had no warning. They’d had no orders. They didn’t know what was happening. No-one knew what was happening. But some tides are not for turning. They’d have to let the people through, a few at first, no doubt, then there would be no stopping the growing throng.

From outside, laughter, cheering, shouting. People were already out on the streets, making their way to the neopalladian splendour of the Brandenburg Gate with its four bronze horses pawing the sky. For so long, it had stood in brooding isolation behind a 3.6 metre high line of concrete, separating East and West. It would be attracting Berliners from both sides, like iron filings to a magnet.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ Rob grabbed her hand. ‘We can’t miss this.’

Outside, people were leaving their offices and apartment blocks, coming out of the shops, bars and cafes, joining from every side street and alleyway, all going towards the Brandenburg Gate. And then - there it was.

The Wall.

No guards, no barriers, warning signs rendered meaningless, the crowd was right against it looking up at people standing on the top. East Berliners. Many hands reached to help them down and into the West, welcoming them with Sekt, schnapps and beer. The crowd was laughing, cheering, dancing, many were crying. Perfect strangers kissed and parted in wild celebration. West Berliners were clambering on each other shoulders to be hauled up to join their brothers and sisters. The Wall, hated and feared for so long had suddenly become just a strip of graffiti strewn concrete. People straddled the top, beating at it, chipping away with tools they brought for that purpose. A man wielded a pickaxe. All along the wall, hammer and sickle was giving way to hammer and chisel.’

The rest, as they say, is history…

This is my last post for The History Girls. I was a founder member and, over the years, I’ve made many friends among this group of extraordinarily gifted women. I’m still amazed at the range and depth of their knowledge and their generosity in sharing this with our readers. So, my thanks to my fellow bloggers and of course to Mary Hoffman, who has kept us all going. I am, and will always be, proud to have been a History Girl! 

A section of the Berlin Wall. Imperial War Museum, London 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

XTwitter: @CeliaRees
Instagram: @celiarees1

FIGHTING FOR SPACE: A VISIT TO LEEDS ROYAL ARMOURIES. Penny Dolan

 

 Back in the late Nineties, and new to the North, I visited the Royal Armouries Leeds. I recall parking on an empty brownfield site, among broken brick outlines of past industrial buildings. Around the area, large hoardings offered investment opportunities and I could hear the constant rumbling from the cross-city routes and motorway junctions nearby. Edged by stunted bushes and brambles, that windswept space had not been inviting

However, among this emptiness, there stood what seemed a windowless fortress, created from vast blocks of smooth, steel-grey stone. Walking towards the roof-high glazed entrance, I saw it was marked by two copies of a strange curled-horn helmet.

This helmet is an emblem of the Royal Armouries Leeds. Opening in 1996, as one of several new ‘Northern’ museums, the building was designed to display and conserve the UK’s historic collections of armour and weaponry.

Inside were layers of galleries, filled with glittering, polished metal and craftsmanship, with different sections tracking the development of combat, armour, guns, pistols, and policing. Outdoors, but within the walls, was a tiltyard, an open area where exhibitions of combat, falconry and horsemanship were staged. I was interested enough during my visit but, no longer curious about the contents or place, had never returned.

And so it was, until this month, when a visiting friend with an interest in historical armour gave me reason to return. I went, wondering about that windswept site.

Years had passed, so how would the Armouries building look now? Did visitors still visit? Had any of that hoped-for regeneration happened? And was that ‘fortress’ still working as a place of cultural interest and inspiration?

I did not want keen to drive there by car this time, as the routes in, through and around Leeds are currently over-run with roadworks and redirections.

This time, we took the train from Harrogate to the 'new' Leeds Station. We left, as instructed, through a 'new' South exit, down gleaming escalators and sturdy glass doors. We arrived at the level of the Aire and Calder Navigation, and the place where the River Aire flows in a torrent between brick walls and under arches beneath the station. We were close to the famous dark arches of Granary Wharf, where quantities of goods were once loaded and unloaded, but where new businesses fill the renewed spaces.

Following signs to the towpath we arrived at a set of concrete steps and a short wait for the Waterbus. Opposite, on the far canal path, stood small groups, old and young, wrapped against the wet and weather. When the stretch of canal was clear, they cast large magnets on long ropes into the murky water, fishing for lost metal. They seemed more like characters from Mayhew or Dickens than proud examples of the city’s prosperity and regeneration, and I hoped the task brought them fun and occasional profits.

The friendly boatman helped us on to his twelve-pasenger ferry and, motor chugging, steered his craft through an area of the ‘new’ Leeds.

On both sides of the canal, historic warehouses had been converted into waterside apartments, with the new-builds squashed between echoing that same architectural pattern. People did seem to be living within: there were green plants on windowsills, tiny coffee tables on balconies, cloths drying on railings and so on: signs of sparse hopes that this was not an economic illusion.

As we chugged along, the sunshine set letters glittering on old signs, marking out the ornate ironwork decoration on the Victorian bridges and the wide steel arcs of a more recent crossing. Here and there, were glimpses of the smooth walkways and cyclepaths that wove alongside and through the area. When, I wondered, would we come to that bleak open space I remembered?

Suddenly the ferry steered to the right and took us through an open lock gate and into a canal basin. 'Leeds Dock,' the ferryman called as we moored at a long, low wooden jetty. Was this it, our destination?

I stared around. We stood among a horde of tall modern apartment buildings. At ground level, there were shops and offices, and a few house-boats moored in the overshadowed waters. This could have been any new waterfront development, but in brightly coloured eight-metre-high letters across one wall were two words. ‘CREATIVE LEEDS’.

That old windswept wasteland I remembered had been swallowed and changed into what is known as a city hub. We were in a ‘Destination Area,’ complete with coffee shops, yoga studios, tech businesses and monthly weekend craft-markets. Although Creative Leeds was not exactly pulsing with crowds, people were wandering busily or sociably about. As of course, was I, still looking for that empty expanse and the huge, solitary fortress.

Suddenly, turning a corner, I glimpsed two grotesque armoured heads, still on display; we were right beside the Royal Armouries. At that moment, my memory of that solitary grey fortress seemed somewhat diminished, even though the high-rise structures nestling closely beside its walls made the area more hopeful and welcoming.

And inside the Armouries?

The museum, purposefully designed by the architect Derek Walker, is still impressive in appearance, atmosphere and space, with many rooms tall enough for the carrying of an upright lance. Do look at the map of the Armouries maps on arrival: the floors are based around a slightly confusing ‘H’ floor pattern, which allows several floorspaces for talks and presentations. We took the long flight of stairs up the tall circular tower, whose walls house a striking display of weapons and blades, possibly missed by visitorswho ride up in the glass lifts.

The second floor held the collection we were after. The range of armour in the cases ran from mail tunics and simple body plate through to hinged elbow and knee joints, and onwards to neat, close-fitting padded jackets formed hundreds of metal ‘leaves’ and covered with delicate engraved patterns. The gallery offered videos, such as blacksmiths at work or a knight, helped by his squire, putting on armour, as well as several other information panels.

However, the finely honed skills of the metal-smiths would give little protection as handheld guns and firearms arrived. The museum contains a whole range of examples. from the early blunderbuss through to pistols, rifles and every sort and size of deadly device. Among the third floor galleries are displays about policing and modern spy-craft too. Too much to see it all on our short visit!

I must add that the museum seemed aware of the implications its lethal contents. While the second floor did hold a display about the Joust, with flags, banners and a brightly striped tent, overall the galleries overall had little colour: most backgrounds stood sombre and muted against the gleaming metal. Even the life-size tableau of embattled knights on horseback had been given a ghostly, powdery-white cast. To my mind, there was no emphasis on movie-level gore or awful glamour, with focus throughout on the design and technology.

However, along with these static exhibitions, the Armouries can bring its collections to life. Each day, there are real-person talks, displays of combat and more, depending on staffing issues, each event focusing on a different aspect and era of weapons or warfare.

We opted for a 'costumed character‘, who gave us a lively retelling of the 1485 Battle of Bosworth, the last of the Wars of the Roses. He took on the role of a mercenary pikeman in Lord Stanley’s army, waiting on the edge of in the battlefield and unsure who and which side they were to be fight in.

What army should the regiment cheer for? Who should they join? The rightful king, Richard of York, with the bigger army? Or Henry Tudor, with the smaller army, who is also a rightful ruler?

While the soldiers wait and watch, rumours arrive that determine their stance and loyalty. When reports suggest that Richard III's army is struggling, or even that the Yorkist king has been killed, the devious

Lord Stanley and his men set off to join battle on the winning Lancastrian side.

As a presence, our pikeman was large, rough, energetic and told his story with plenty of action and humour. He made it clear that payment, not loyalty, was what interested soldiers like him, as well as rights to the plunder once the battle was over. In fact, he stressed how he was actually protected by such stolen goods: from the thickly padded jacket he stripped from a German soldier, to his brightly patterned metal helmet collected after another battle, and even his treasured short sword.

Tellingly, with humour and gusto, he demonstrated how easily his handy blade could slip through the many gaps in an un-horsed knight's armour, despite such glamourous 'protection'. The audience's groans and gasps proved the relevance of such details, among the parade of glittering armour.

Do, if you go, look on the notice boards for any 'live' activities on offer, as they add much to the whole experience, and come from different periods of time. I did not, that afternoon, have time for the display of non-European armour and weapons, nor the magnificent armoured elephant, but my friend had the information and ideas she needed.

This second visit to the Royal Armouries Leeds was interesting in itself, but also gave me a useful way of reflecting on time passing. That lone fortress in a desolate wasteland is now part of the history of the city's landscape.

And I've reaclled that I may need an 'imagined' sword for in my current working novel. I know where there's help if I need it.


Penny Dolan

Ps. The Royal Armouries Leeds is free, donations welcome and a paying car-park has been built nearby. Closed Mondays. There is still a Royal Armouries collection displayed in the White Tower, at the Tower of London, as well as at Fort Nelson, Fareham, near Portsmouth. Website:  https://royalarmouries.org/leeds

 

Marianne North - Victorian traveller and painter of plants: by Sue Purkiss

 (Apologies - life has caught me on the hop, and I don't have a new post for today. However, I'm happy to have the opportunity to repost this one, from seven years ago: it's about one of my favourite historic characters, Marianne North.)

Marianne North was one of those extraordinary Victorian women who wasn't content to follow the usual pattern involving marriage, children, and domesticity. Like the plant hunters, she travelled the world searching for exotic new plants - but in order to paint them, rather than to collect them.

Marianne North at work

What she did would be remarkable if she had been doing it today - but she did it in the Victorian Age, which makes her even more extraordinary. The conventional image of Victorian women is that they sat at home looking demure, painting water colours and doing embroidery. But some of them weren't content with that kind of life, and they not only broke the mould but utterly smashed it - by climbing the Alps, by writing great novels - and by exploring dangerous corners of the world: women such as Lady Hester Stanhope, Gertrude Bell and Isabella Bird.

Marianne North belongs in their company. She was born in 1830 into a comfortably well-off (and well-bred) family - her father was the Liberal MP for Hastings. Her first passion was for singing, but with a background like hers, a career in music wasn't an option. So then she turned to flower painting. Her sisters married, but Marianne thought marriage was a terrible idea, which turned women into 'a sort of upper servant', and she avoided it. Instead, when her mother died in 1855, she took to travelling with her father, who was also interested in botany. Then when he died some 15 years later, she, at the age of 40, determined to continue her travels, exploring far-flung corners of the world and painting the plants and flowers she found there. She usually travelled alone, finding companions a distraction and an annoyance, and she lived simply - it wasn't a case, obviously, of hopping on a plane and staying in a nice hotel: travelling was difficult, but she did it anyway.

Morning glory climber in South Africa

She wasn't formally trained, so maybe this is why her paintings are so unlike conventional botanical illustrations, in which the plant is shown against a white background. Marianne shows her flowers in context, where they grew - though she clearly took some liberties in order to show a beautiful view or an interesting insect: she didn't simply paint what she saw. Also, she didn't use water colours, she used oils, so her paintings are dense with brilliant colour - full of drama and absolutely wonderful.

In 1879 she offered her paintings to Sir Joseph Hooker, the Director of Kew Gardens. She designed a special building for them, and decreed how they were to be hung: close together, and grouped according to geographical area. However, she lost one fight. She wanted visitors to be served tea or coffee (so sensible!) but Sir Joseph huffed and puffed and said he was running a scientific institution, not a cafe. But she had the last word - she painted a tea plant and a coffee plant above the entrance.

The gallery at Kew

I think I first heard about Marianne North when I went to Kew Gardens when I was researching my children's novel about plant hunting, Jack Fortune, though for some reason I didn't go to the gallery then - I probably didn't know about her till I'd been to the shop, where I bought a pack of reproductions of her paintings. I was enchanted by their boldness and brilliance, and one of them showed a view of the Himalayas through a framework of foliage, which was in my mind as I wrote about my characters' first sighting of the mountain which plays a pivotal part in the book:

Then, between two houses, Jack saw something that stopped him in his tracks. In the distance he could see immense mountains with snow glistening on their peaks. “Look, Uncle!” he breathed.

 
His uncle stood still. He didn’t say a word, and Jack glanced at him. He was gazing at the distant peaks with a look of the most desperate longing on his face. Jack suddenly saw just how much his uncle wanted – no, needed – to reach them. On impulse, he touched his arm, and said seriously, “It’ll be all right, Uncle Edmund. We will get there. I promise you we will.”

His uncle looked surprised. Then he smiled sadly. “I hope so, Jack,” he said. “Oh, I do hope so!”

I showed this picture to the cover designer for Jack Fortune, and he used it as a starting point for the cover. A tiny nod towards Marianne North, and I'm sure she would have been bemused by it - but I'm happy to have made it. And if you go to Kew, be sure to visit the Marianne North Gallery - I promise you, you will be enchanted.

A Victorian Marital Disaster

by Stephanie Williams

In the 1850’s the public breakdown of the marriage of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his wife Rosina filled the press with a scandal that resounded through the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the back-rooms of Westminster. It’s a case that makes Johnnie Depp and Amber Heard look like a walk in the park.

You only have to look at his portraits to know you are dealing with a rogue. That knowing gaze, the laid-back look, the ringlets and slightly unkempt auburn hair.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton © Henry Lytton Cobbold 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton – of Knebworth Hall – member of parliament, and for a brief time Secretary of State for the Colonies, has a reputation for being a wit and a dandy. He is also a famous and prolific writer – in his time selling almost as well as his good friend Charles Dickens. To Bulwer-Lytton we must credit such phrases as ‘pursuit of the mighty dollar’, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, ‘the great unwashed’, and ‘it was a dark and stormy night'. The Last Days of Pompeii, published 1834, was a best-seller for decades; his melodrama inspired Wagner.

As a Cambridge student, his virginity is lost to Bryon’s famous lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, in 1824. He is 21, she is nearly 40. When their affair comes to an end, he consoles himself in Paris among the fashionable ladies of le beau monde.

On the day before his 23rd birthday, Edward returns to London. That evening, his mother takes him to what he fears will be a very boring soirée. There he sets eyes on green-eyed, dark haired Rosina Wheeler, a noted and well-educated Irish beauty.

© National Portrait Gallery, London

You could say it was doomed from the start 

 His mother wanted him to marry money. She forbade the marriage, cut off his allowance, refuses to speak to him and forces him to work. Rosina’s mother, Anna – who at this time Rosina finds slightly embarrassing -- is regarded as a dangerous radical: a socialist and one of the nation’s first campaigners for women’s rights. She thinks Edward is a worthless dandy.

In 1827 the couple set up home in an expensive house in Oxfordshire.

Edward, who had won the chancellor’s medal for English verse at Cambridge, has no choice but to write for his living. Once inspired, he is in a state of fierce concentration. When finished, he sinks into depression. In May 1828 Rosina is in the final weeks of her first pregnancy when half-way up a ladder in the library fetching a book for him, she tells him she feels faint. 

‘He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then suddenly sprang to his feet. A look of hideous fury filled his face. He made a vile curse and pushed me to the ground. The next thing he did, was kick me in the side with such savage violence that I fainted from the pain.’

The next day, he is all sweetness – brushing away any reference to what had happened. Rosina cannot believe his behaviour. Meanwhile, he tells the servants she merely had fall. When their daughter Emily is born a month later, she is immediately given to a wet-nurse. From that time Rosina is scarcely permitted to see her. With his literary career flourishing, they move to London. Edward adds politics to his workload. The birth of a son in November 1831 does nothing to rekindle the marriage. By his own admission, Edward, with his tendency to melancholy, has a vicious temper and voracious sexual appetite. And is now flaunting an affair with a society beauty, Mrs Robert Stanhope. 

In an attempt to repair the marriage, Edward and Rosina travel to Italy – to Rosina's surprise, Mrs Stanhope, with her husband in tow, appears on the Channel crossing to accompany them. Terrible scenes erupt in Naples, where Edward, accuses of her of infidelity with a Neapolitan prince. He attacks her again, this time with a knife. 

'I had frightened myself, as well as Rosina… I possessed a temper so constitutionally violent that it amounted to a terrible infirmity. She should, after all our years together have understood that it was inhumane to tamper with so terrible an infirmity as mine. '

Back in England, they agree to separate. Both are just 33. Edward awards Rosina an allowance that is pitiful. She is denied access to her children. Rosina is forced to write. She does not hold back. Her 1839 novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, takes Edward apart revealing such physical abuse that The Age newspaper dubbed him ‘Wifewhack’.

They are now equally obsessed with loathing one another. In 1847, their daughter Emily, who had spent her life consigned to various governesses, died of typhus fever in poor lodgings, aged nineteen. Rosina, who had to force admission to her death bed, accused him of wilful neglect.

Emily, © Henry Lytton Cobbold

Now Rosina pursues him with embarrassing public pronouncements at every opportunity: writing to Prince Albert decrying the Queen’s support for such a scoundrel by giving a royal premiere of his play, Not So Bad as We Seem in 1851, and posting advertisements around Devonshire House for Even Worse than We Seem by 'Sir Liar-Coward Bulwer Lytton, who has translated his poor daughter into Heaven, and nobly leaves his wife to live on public charity.'

In June 1858, Edward canvasses for re-election as Colonial Secretary in Hertford. Rosina plasters the town with flyers denouncing him. She takes to the hustings herself to tell the world what a man he is. In response, he has her committed to a lunatic asylum. 

 The outcry against him – spearheaded by Rosina’s women friends -- will not be silenced. He has a chat with Dickens at his club who warns him this is a scandal he will not survive. Within three weeks, Rosina is released. 

Both make extensive records of their feelings. As time goes by Rosina’s prose gets wilder and wilder. It may be the drink – of which he accuses her – speaking. But by now she has also realised the validity of many of her mother’s ideas on the rights of women. She will go on to publish a further 20 novels exposing the ill treatment of wives, haunting him for the rest of his life.

'The representative of Romance.'

Vanity Fair, Oct 29 1870

Bulwer-Lytton dies in 1873. Lonely and ill, still often mocked, he is covered in honours: a baronetcy and a peerage, knight grand cross of St Michael and St George and is buried with huge pomp in Westminster Abbey.

She lives on, still beautiful, troubled by pain, sorrow and debt. She dies in obscurity in 1882. Her own grave in Upper Sydenham lay unmarked for over one hundred years, until in 1995 when her great-great grandson arranged for a tombstone with the inscription she had requested: 'The Lord will give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.'

Rosina’s most immediate legacy was passed to her granddaughter Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869–1923), who became one of the heroines of the Edwardian women's suffrage movement. 

But that’s another story.

Himiko the Shaman Queen ~ by Lesley Downer

‘Your ambassadors have arrived here with your tribute, four male slaves and six female slaves plus two pieces of cloth with designs, each 20 feet in length. You live very far away across the sea; yet you have sent an embassy with tribute. Your loyalty and filial piety we appreciate exceedingly. We confer upon you therefore the title “Queen of Wa Friendly to Wei,” together with the decoration of the gold seal with purple ribbon. We expect you, O Queen, to rule your people in peace and to endeavour to be devoted and obedient.’

Emperor Cao Rui of the state of Wei, China, to Pimiko, Queen of Wa, 238 AD

Lady of the period with haniwa
terracotta figure showing clothing
 and hairstyle 

All-powerful Himiko

Two thousand years ago the land we now know as Japan was a patchwork of over a hundred small kingdoms, perpetually at war. Armies fought to grab more and better land for farming and to control the water supplies of river and lakes, fighting with bows and arrows and stone and bronze weapons. They lived in fortified communities surrounded by moats and walls with watch towers and gated fences, where the king lived in the inner enclosure.

In 190 AD thirty of these kingdoms decided they’d had enough of warfare. The kings made a truce and formed a federation and, seeing that men had proved unable to maintain the peace, they appointed a woman to rule over them. It was a little more than a hundred years after Boudicca led her ill-fated rebellion against the Romans. But these kings chose not a warrior queen but a woman who had a very different sort of power.

Haniwa - figure of a shamaness

Shamans were the heart of this society. They formed a bridgehead between the human and the divine, interceding with the gods and the ancestors to ensure that the weather was good, crops were abundant, and to protect against disasters like earthquakes and fire. They carried out secret rituals and presided over festivals wearing awe-inspiring bronze mirrors that reflected the sun’s rays. Many of these visionaries and prophets were women and it made sense to appoint one as their ruler.

Out of the mists of time
The kings chose a woman of extraordinary powers called Himiko. She was nineteen or twenty. Hers is the first name in Japanese history to come floating out of the mists of time.

Shaman at an altar, 
Yoshinogari Yayoi village

She set herself up in a palace surrounded by towers and stockades and guarded by a large and formidable army, with a thousand women attendants and one man to serve her food and drink and act as her spokesperson. There she set about conducting the rites and rituals necessary to keep the gods on side and the crops flourishing. To maintain the mystery necessary for communing with the gods, she was seldom seen in public.

She didn’t just deal with religious affairs, she also wielded temporal power. She issued laws and ensured that her country remained at peace and her people were law-abiding and peaceful.

In 238 when she was fifty, she sent a diplomatic mission on the long and enormously dangerous journey by ship, palanquin, ox cart and horseback to Luoyang, the capital of the neighbouring empire of China, with tribute for the emperor, a bit like the ancient Britons sending an envoy to Rome, but a lot further. China was huge and powerful and very advanced and dominated the neighbouring kingdoms. To have the Chinese emperor’s seal of approval was the ultimate accolade.

Warehouse and market area,
Yoshinogari Yayoi Village 

The emperor accepted Himiko’s tribute and recognised her as Queen of Wa, meaning ‘Dwarf Country’, the rather insulting Chinese name for foreign peoples. As well as the gold seal with purple ribbons he sent other gifts including a hundred bronze mirrors, enormously valuable and an essential resource for conducting rituals. He also sent a legation to study the small island kingdom and they produced a series of reports.

  

Emperor Cao Pi of Wei

Chinese envoys in the land of Wa

The Japanese had no writing, whereas the Chinese did, though there were some Japanese scholars who were able to read Chinese. Thus we know about Himiko from Chinese sources, not Japanese.

 

This was all a very long time ago and there are quite a few mysteries. For a start the name ‘Himiko’ is written ‘Pimiko’ in Chinese but for some reason in Japan she is always known as ‘Himiko’. Her country is known as Wa or Yamatai. It’s not even certain where it was. It may have been in the northern part of the island of Kyushu or, more likely, in central Japan, around where the ancient capital, Nara, was later built.

A Virgin Shaman
The Chinese envoys recorded that Himiko was quite elderly and came from a long line of queens. They called her country Queen Country because there were so many women rulers.

She never married, they wrote, but ‘occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people. Thereupon they placed her on the throne.’

Yoshinogari guard house

Yamatai prospered under Himiko’s rule and had more than 70,000 households, well-organised laws and a taxation system and thriving trade. Her people were gentle and peace-loving. They dined on rice and many other sorts of grain, alongside wild boar and deer and plentiful supplies of fish, all of which they served on beautifully burnished pottery dishes and ate with their hands.

They cultivated mulberry leaves to feed silkworms and wore beautifully woven garments of silk, linen, cotton or hemp, depending on their social standing. Men wore headbands and loose kimono-like garments while women looped their hair and wore jackets over long skirts, tied in place with obi-like belts. Some wore garments like ponchos which they slipped over their heads. Men of high status had four or five wives while the lower-ranking had two or three. Women, said these Chinese observers, were faithful and not jealous.

 

Hashihaka grave mound, Sakurai, Nara Pref

This was very much a hierarchical society. When a lower-ranking person met a superior on the road, the lower-ranking person bowed and stepped aside. They added that ‘in their meetings and in their deportment, there is no distinction between father and son or between men and women’, which the Chinese officials, with their strict Confucian notions of hierarchy, found extraordinary. And they had slaves who were catalogued like merchandise when they were sent to the Chinese emperor as part of Himiko’s tribute.

They also tattooed both their faces and bodies, one purpose being to protect themselves from dangerous fish when they went diving. They coloured their faces with pink or scarlet paint. ‘They are much given to strong drink,’ the chroniclers noted. ‘They are a long-lived race, and persons who have reached 100 are very common. There is no robbery or theft and litigation is infrequent.’

Himiko’s grave mound
By 247 trouble was brewing. Himiko sent a message to the new Chinese governor in Korea, complaining of hostilities with one of the other Wa states and asking for Chinese support.

But in 248 she died. She was around 80 and had ruled for 60 years. She was as awe-inspiring in death as she had been in life. She was given a burial appropriate for a queen of such extraordinary power and status.

 

Haniwa warrior, Tokyo National Museum,
National Treasure

‘A great mound was raised over her, more than a hundred paces in diameter, and over a hundred male and female attendants followed her in death,’ say the Chinese records. According to another source she was buried not with a hundred but a thousand slaves. But archaeologists say that there is no evidence of human sacrifice in Japan so perhaps she was buried with terracotta haniwa attendants such as fill later tomb burials.

After Himiko’s death a king took the throne but the people refused to obey him. There were assassinations and murders and more than a thousand people died. Finally they installed a new ruler, a thirteen-year-old girl named Iyo, a relative of Himiko, who was probably also a shamaness. Under this youthful shaman queen order was restored. The Chinese court too recognised her as the ruler.

After Himiko’s death, grave mounds like hers began to spring up around Japan. One of the oldest of these kofun (‘ancient graves’) is the Hashihaka tumulus outside Nara. It’s a heavily-wooded keyhole-shaped hillock with a square front and rounded back, rising steeply out of the paddy fields. Pots from inside have been radiocarbon-dated to 250 AD, around the time of Himiko’s death, leading some scholars to conclude that this may be her tomb. If so, that would mean that Himiko’s land of Yamatai was the Nara region.

Himiko is not mentioned in any of the Japanese written records, which were compiled around 700 AD. For a long time she was forgotten. Then in the Edo period there was a growing interest in the country’s history and she was rediscovered. Over the years there have been many debates as to where Yamatai was and whether Himiko actually existed or whether one of the legendary empresses mentioned in the Japanese annals was Himiko under another name.

Today she is very popular indeed and has attained new life as a character in manga, anime, video games and films.


Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and in particular all things Japanese. Amazingly she has two books coming out this year. The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) came out on September 10th - 16,500 years of Japanese history in 50,000 words, full of stories and colourful characters! Meanwhile Eland is reissuing her first ‘real’ book - On the Narrow Road to the Deep North - on October 5th, under her new pen name to acknowledge her Chinese roots - Lesley Chan Downer. For more see www.lesleydowner.com

Image of lady is mine; all other images courtesy wikimedia commons.

Operation Manna - food from heaven in WW2

 by Deborah Swift

In the last few weeks we have heard a lot on the news about WW2's 80th anniversary of Operation Market Garden and Arnhem - the attempt by the Allies to free occupied Holland. It was only partially successful, leaving much of Holland still occupied and cut off from the rest of the Netherlands.

By the winter of 1944-1945, the Netherlands was in the grip of a severe famine, known as the "Hongerwinter" (Hunger Winter). The German occupation forces had cut off food and fuel supplies to the western part of the country, a region that included major cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, which remained under German control. Above - Dutch children being fed soup during the famine.

The destruction of transport infrastructure by bombs and sabotage made it nearly impossible to distribute whatever food was available. By April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were facing starvation. An estimated 20,000 people had already died. The situation was dire, and the Dutch government in exile, along with the Dutch resistance, appealed to the Allies for help.

Operation Manna was the response to this desperate plea for assistance. Named after the biblical manna that fed the Israelites in the desert, the operation was conceived by the Royal Air Force (RAF) Negotiations were hastily arranged between the Allies and the German forces in the Netherlands. While the Germans were still an occupying force, they were also aware that they were losing and were perhaps motivated by a desire to avoid post-war retribution. Eventually, truce was agreed to allow unarmed bombers to fly low over Dutch territory and drop food supplies without being fired upon.

The first mission of Operation Manna took place on April 29, 1945. Lancaster Bombers were loaded with food parcels instead of bombs. The aircraft flew at low altitudes, around 400 feet, over designated drop zones in the western Netherlands, including areas around Rotterdam and The Hague. The food parcels contained basic but essential supplies: flour, dried eggs, margarine, sugar, and tinned food. These items were packed in sacks and boxes that were designed to minimize the risk of damage when dropped from the planes.

Over the course of ten days, more than 3,000 sorties were flown by the RAF, dropping nearly 7,000 tons of food. The operation was a logistical triumph and a morale booster for both the Allied forces and the starving Dutch population. For many, these food drops were the difference between life and death.

For months, the Dutch people had been surviving on whatever they could find: tulip bulbs, sugar beets, and anything that could be scavenged. See the photo above of Dutch women transporting food. The sudden influx of supplies amazed the population, delivered from the skies by the sort of bombers that had once represented death and destruction.

The food drops did more than just prevent starvation, they also lifted the spirits of the population. Stories from those who lived through the Hunger Winter often recall the sense of relief and joy that accompanied the arrival of the food parcels. In many cases, the Dutch civilians gathered in the drop zones would wave at the Allied planes as they passed overhead.

Operation Manna continued until May 8th 1945, the day the Germans in the Netherlands officially surrendered to the Allies. This marked the end of the occupation and the beginning of the recovery for the Dutch people. The food drops, however, continued to be a crucial lifeline until normal supply routes could be restored.

The legacy of these operations endures to this day. Monuments and memorials in the Netherlands commemorate the food drops, and the operations are taught in Dutch schools as an example of international cooperation and humanitarianism.

For the airmen who participated, the missions were often among the most rewarding of their military careers. In my latest novel Operation Tulip, these food drops form part of the plot towards the end of the book. When researching I was taken by how moving the British airmen found these missions, to be sending aid not bombs, and how they recalled the Dutch waving from the ground. After five years of war, this must have been a heart-warming sight.

Operation Tulip is out now.

Secret Voices by Sarah Gristwood

We at the History Girls are grateful to Sarah Gristwood for this guest post about her latest, fascinating, book.  

It was way back, in my early twenties, that I first developed an interest in the diaries of other women. A lot has changed since then - for me, but also, more significantly, for the field of women’s studies.

At the risk of painting the 1980s as the Dark Ages, the challenge then was to persuade a reader that women had voices distinct from those of men. That they might possibly be worth hearing…Today, we can all assume a ‘yes’ to that.

Today, the questions are more nuanced. Things have moved on. Academia has seen a lot of work on women’s writing, tv has seen the unmissable diaries of Nella Last (Housewife, 49) and the coded records of Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack). And yet, if you look at the anthologies still out there on the shelves, it’s shocking how few women’s voices feature. That’s why, when Batsford offered me the chance to edit Secret Voices: A Year in Women’s Diaries, I frankly jumped at it.

 

Because one thing remains constant, whether you’re reading them in the 1980s or the 2020s - the astonishing variety, excitement , frankness and relevance of these women’s voices. 

There are some simply extraordinary stories, like that of the Inuit woman who found herself sole survivor of an Arctic expedition. Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh -wife to the famous aviator Charles and herself a pioneering flyer - writing about the kidnap and murder of her infant son (the story behind Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express). Of the Victorian wife cast by her husband into the streets…

There’s Lady Bird Johnson describing Kennedy’s assassination and life in the White House, or Barbara Castle and Oona King casting a cool eye on the House of Commons. Voices, you might say, from the powder rooms of power … Queen Victoria recounting the moment she was told of her accession to the throne (to say nothing of her first night with Prince Albert). But I was almost more struck by finding, so often, the unexpected hiding within the ordinary. 

 

Dilemmas that we view as modern can actually be seen echoing down the centuries. Quaker reformer Elizabeth Fry admits how, after a difficult labour, she couldn’t welcome her new baby as she felt she should; socialist Naomi Mitchison discovers the challenge of combining work and family. Nella Last describes how World War II had unexpectedly liberated her from the limiting expectations of her marriage: Edwardian socialite Lady Cynthia Asquith  the difficulties of having what she saw as a disabled child. 

 

In the privacy of the diary format, women in the past wrote more freely about sex and the life of the body than we might expect. Near the turn of the nineteenth century, we have Anne Lister on her lesbianism and Hester Thrale on her menopause. In the first half of the twentieth, Anne Frank on menarche and Joan Wyndham on masturbation. There are the well-known writers who nonetheless, in their diaries, sound an unexpected note. Would we expect to find Virginia Woolf gleefully describing the delights of a car, and the excitement of being shingled; or Beatrix Potter proclaiming the age of knickerbockers? Or Barbara Pym on the pleasures of peach-coloured underwear - ‘disgraceful I know’, but chosen, she confessed, ‘with a view to it being seen!’?

 

Sometimes it’s our knowledge of what lies ahead that renders the words of the unconscious diarist even more extraordinary. Anne Frank in the summer of 1944 rejoices that the war is almost over and she may be back at school by the autumn - when we know the fate that actually awaited her, in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  Louisa May Alcott describes the decline of her real-life sister Beth, and how the needle with which she used to sew finally grew ‘too heavy’ … What lover of Little Women can read that without remembering the death of Alcott’s fictional Beth?

That question of our knowledge, of well-known women and professional writers does open up a can of worms for the anthologist. One has to accept that, historically, the diaries most likely to have been written - and, crucially, preserved - come largely (though not entirely) from the professional and upper classes. And that, by the same token, this often (though not always) means the diarists will be white. Happily, today a good deal of work  - especially in the States - is being done to remedy that situation, so that we can hear Charlotte Forten, the African American activist, in 1855 wondering ‘that every colored person is not a misanthrope…fearing, with too good reason, to love and trust hardly anyone whose skin is white’.   

It’s just one reason why we need to hear our grandmothers’ voices to understand the big issues - race and rebellion, love and death, pain and identity. And why, where women’s voices are concerned, there has never been a better time to edit an anthology. 

 

Rebecca Alexander will be back next March.