A big apple, and Europe on six floors - Sue Purkiss

I quite often go to Brussels, because I have family living there. While there a couple of weeks ago, I visited two museums that were new to me. The first, the House of European History, I'd never heard of before: I'd read about it in the free magazine they give you on the Eurostar, and it sounded interesting, so my son and I went off to visit it, knowing next to nothing about it.

The House of European History

It's in what's known as the Eastman Building, in the complex which also houses the European Parliament. An icy wind howled around our ears and numbed our fingers, and we were relieved to find the entrance - it took some doing: then a little startled to go through airport-style security. We realised straight away we hadn't allowed enough time to visit it; it covers six floors. Less than a year old, it's the most modern museum I've ever been to: there is nothing so old-fashioned as a label on any of the displays - you are given a tablet, and you have to use that to find out what you're looking at. It's fine when you get used to it, and of course it has the advantage that you can set it to any one of a number of languages - but I couldn't help feeling a little wistful for the simplicity of a label.

Inside

The museum focuses on the history of Europe since 1789. It doesn't do it country by country, but focuses on different strands, or significant events. But at the moment there is a temporary exhibition downstairs (which actually looked pretty permanent) of Europe's earlier history - which was interesting and had helpful audio recordings, to familiarise you with, for instance, the Thirty Years War, or the way that banking developed. This exhibition did have labels - though it was almost too dark to read them. I sound a little carping, but I don't mean too; the exhibits are imaginatively displayed, and it's intriguing to see history presented from different viewpoints. A concrete example of this was a display of maps in the permanent exhibition; one was a Chinese map, so naturally it showed China at the centre - and Europe, with all its multiplicity of countries, suddenly looked strangely small. Another was an upside-down view of the world, which showed the southern hemisphere at the top and the northern at the bottom. That was odd.

Shell cases from the First World War. I found it utterly bizarre that they were so beautifully decorated.

There were exhibition areas devoted to the First and Second World Wars, and one to the Shoah. There was a display about the legend of Europa, the nymph abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull. I'm really not sure what that choice of names signifies.

And that's really all we had time for - but I will certainly go back. I know now (thanks, Wikipedia) that the museum cost vast sums of money, and is therefore the subject of controversy. I expect they said the same about the Louvre and the Prado, and I'm not sure where I stand on that. But I love the idea of a museum which looks at the story of Europe as a whole, and I'm impressed by the innovative design. As it happens, we heard just afterwards that my grandson is going there with his school, and the children have been asked to take along a story of immigration from their own family - and I like that too: that the museum is not merely a means of recording the past, but that it also reflects on and celebrates the disparate origins of the city's present inhabitants.

I hadn't intended to go to the second museum. This was the Magritte Museum. I'd planned to go to the Fine Art Museum - but I'd forgotten that most galleries etc are closed on Mondays; for some reason Magritte's doors were open. He must be one of Belgium's most famous artists, but I'm not much of a fan of surrealism, so I'd never bothered to go before. You'll be familiar with some of his paintings: a man with a bowler hat and an apple in front of his face, for instance. I still don't really understand surrealism - I suspect Magritte might say that's fine: you don't need to understand - just look. And that's all I did - all I could do, as I'd stupidly failed to spot the audio-guides at the entrance.

And as I walked round, I became more and more intrigued. I saw that he is incredibly skilled at the actual craft of painting: that apple, for instance, is exquisitely painted. He rarely uses texture: the surface is usually satin smooth. His portraits may have strange things going on, but they usually give a crystal-clear impression of the person who's his subject. Most of all, I liked the paintings he did not long before he died, which feature trees, the moon, and often a house. But the moon, impossibly, is in front of the foliage; and the sky is blue and sunny - but the house and garden are in darkness, lit perhaps by a lamp. They're beautiful, but eerie and a little unsettling: rather like the maps in the House of European History, they make the familiar seem strange - they make you see things differently.

'The Dominion of Light'. You can't see from this small image, but it is exquisitely painted: the reflections in the water are quite beautiful.

I was still thinking about Magritte as I travelled home the next day. I tried to take a picture of the Belgian countryside as it flew past, and when I looked at the image, I saw it contained reflections from the carriage and even the view from the windows opposite. Aha, I thought. There's a touch of Magritte there. It's good to find your perceptions have shifted.

The 'real' Santa Claus - by Sue Purkiss

I recently went to Brussels (well, somebody needed to go and sort things out - really, there's no need to thank me...) - on a pre-Christmas visit to my son, his Polish partner and their family. I had a slightly protracted journey, meeting various delightful History Girls in London on the way, before heading for my favourite station, St Pancras, which always has such a buzz about it. There was a magnificent Christmas tree, covered in flowers, and as usual, someone was playing one of the two pianos. It's the gateway to the continent: it's exciting.

When I got to the Gare du Midi in Brussels, I called in at my favourite chocolate shop, Leonidas. As I waited in the queue, I saw little chocolate figures, which looked rather like chessmen. Not long afterwards, I was meeting my two grandsons, each of whom was clutching a bag with similar figures in it: 6th December was St Nicholas's Day, they reminded me, and the great man had been into school bearing gifts. So not chessmen at all!

At the weekend, there was a party for several of the Polish families who live near my son. Everyone took seasonal food - barszcz (beetroot soup) with pierogi (dumplings stuffed with mushrooms), a gorgeous potato salad with herring and gherkins, and lots of cake - my favourite was a ginger one, with plum jam in the middle and melted chocolate on top. There may even have been some bison vodka, taken with apple juice and ice.

And guess who popped in? Yes, St Nicholas himself, looking remarkably like Santa Claus, and bearing gifts for the children. I guess 'Santa Claus' derives from 'Sankt Niklaus' or something similar.

Curious to find out more about this generous saint, I looked him up. He was born in Asia Minor in a town called Patara (in modern day Turkey) towards the end of the third century. He became a priest and eventually the Bishop of Myra, and was imprisoned at one time by the Romans, during Diocletian's persecution of the Christians. He seems to have been a brave and kindly man, who stood up for those who couldn't defend themselves, and championed the poor, sailors, and children. The most well-known story about him is probably this one.

One day - perhaps even in December - he heard about a very poor man who had three daughters. At that time, a bride needed to have a dowry, and this man had no money to provide one for any of his girls; nor did he have sons who could have helped him out. Such was the poverty in which they were living that he felt his only choice was to sell them into slavery.

Stephen had inherited money from his parents, who died when he was young. When he heard of the plight of this family, he filled a bag with gold, and dropped it down the chimney of their hut. (No, I don't know how he got onto the roof. Maybe the houses all had flat roofs, and it was a regular pastime to stroll across them.) It fell into a stocking which the eldest daughter had hung up to dry by the fire. He repeated the performance for the other two daughters. On the third occasion, the father caught sight of him. Stephen asked him not to tell anyone - but clearly, either he or one of his daughters couldn't resist, and the tale soon spread.

It's a lovely tradition, I think. I'm glad I was there on the 6th December.

Happy Christmas!

What a Difference A Day Makes by Julie Summers

Tomorrow, Wednesday 29 March 2017, is the most significant day in the life of the United Kingdom this century and possibly even of the last forty years. Some go as far as to say it is the most momentous decision taken by this country since the end of the Second World War. Whatever side you are on in the question about whether it is a good or bad thing that Britain is going to leave the European Union, it cannot be denied that invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is a noteworthy event. The Britain of today will look different in two, five, twenty years time. The anxiety must be what that Britain will look like and how will the changes affect all our futures.

The idyllic Suffolk village of Long Melford, a corner of Old England

As a historian I find momentous and noteworthy events both alarming and exciting. As such I turned back to history to give me some lead on the whole development of the idea of a united Europe and examine what its forefathers had in mind in the immediate aftermath of 1939-45 for the future of a war torn continent. There are many significant players who had a finger in the early version of the European pie but one of the most fascinating from my perspective was a man who had spent the pinnacle of his career training volunteers to enter Nazi occupied Europe and cause mayhem, murder and sabotage. His name was Sir Colin McVean Gubbins. His name may not be familiar to British or American readers but in France, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, Norway and the Netherlands he is recognized as a great hero. 

Sir Colin McVean Gubbins KCMG

Born in Tokyo in 1896 he was sent, aged seven, to live with his maternal grandparents on the Isle of Mull. He did not see his father or mother for five years but he described his childhood as blissfully happy. After school he attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and in the summer of 1914 he was in Heidelberg learning German. In August had to make a frantic dash back to Britain to avoid arrest. He succeeded by disguising himself as a child and later wrote: ‘My escape from being imprisoned in Germany was entirely due to the kindness of the Englishman, a complete stranger, who lent me £1 on Cologne platform.’ Gubbins was at Ypres for the first and second battles, then on the Somme where he won his Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry. He was shot in the neck on the Somme in October and was in hospital for eleven days; he was gassed in 1917 and suffered from trench fever in April 1918 but was fit enough to join General Ironside, later commander-in-chief of the Home Forces, as ADC on the autumn mission to Archangel in Russia to prepare a winter campaign. After the war, then aged twenty-three, Gubbins was sent to Ireland where he was given a three day course in guerrilla warfare and observed the methods used by the nationalists at first-hand. In 1923 he learned Russian and then went to India to learn Urdu.

Promoted to major in February 1934, he was posted to the War Office and appointed GS02 in a new section of MTI (Military Training Instruction), which was the policy making arm of the Military Training Directorate. In this role he was sent in 1938 to Czechoslovakia to oversee the withdrawal of Czech forces from the Sudetenland. It was something that he found exceptionally repugnant and it remained a matter of lasting shame to him for the rest of his life. It also gave him a first-hand view of the brutal force of Nazi expansion.

In the summer of 1940, after the fall of France, the invasion of Britain seemed imminent. Gubbins was put in charge of training stay-behind parties of men who would work locally to sabotage Germans stores, blow up bridges and generally slow down their advance parties. When the threat of invasion lessened he was transferred to a new section called Special Operations Executive, known by its nickname Baker Street which was the London HQ. Its aim was to train foreign fighters who would be sent back to their own countries to carry out secret missions.

Arisaig House, HQ of  SOE Special Training Schools

He moved to the Highlands to set up Special Training Schools where agents from occupied countries could be trained in the brutal arts of guerrilla or, as Churchill called it, ungentlemanly warfare. Men and women were turned into silent killers, explosives experts, radio operators and sabotage agents who were parachuted into France, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Norway and so on to carry out their secret and often deadly work. Gubbins worked with SOE for the whole war and clocked up some notable successes in Norway, France and, most spectacularly, in the Czech Republic when two agents trained in the Highlands carried out the successful assassination of Acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942. The reprisals for the murder of Germans was hideous but the heads of the various governments-in-exile in London thought the boost to a country’s morale and the confirmation that they had not been forgotten was a price worth paying.

Jozef Gabcik (left) and Jan Kubis who were responsible
for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942

At the end of the war Gubbins’ department was shut down. His biographer wrote of him:

Britain was spared the shame and misery of enemy occupation; without this experience it is difficult to appreciate the part played by clandestine resistance both in restoring national self-respect and in permitting courageous individuals to escape from the ignominy of their situation. . . It was as a resistance leader that he came to fashion Special Operations Executive, and to write his own page in the history of almost every country occupied by the enemy in the Second World War.

So respected was he in the countries that had been occupied by the Nazis that the government had to waive the rule that an officer could receive only four foreign honours for services in the war. Eventually he received more fourteen awards including the highest from Norway, Denmark, Greece, France, Poland, Belgium and the United States of America. Gubbins received a knighthood in 1946 and began the second half of his life’s work, which was to promote European Unity. Despite the fact he had spent five years trying to devise every possible lethal means of undermining the Germans, he realized that the only way of securing a lasting peace in Europe was to work together.

In 1946 an old Polish friend, Josef Retinger, asked him to help set up the Independent League for Economic Cooperation in Brussels. This was merged with various others in 1947 to become the International Committee of the Movement for European Unity with Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys as chairman. In 1954 he was asked to represent Britain as a founder member of the Bilderberg Group, an organisation set up to promote a strengthening of US-European relations and preventing another world war. When asked what he considered to be his greatest achievement he said the role he had been most honoured to play was in helping to prevent a further war.

Gubbins died in 1976 at the age of eighty, by which time Britain had been a full member of the European Union for three years. I wonder what he would think of the step his country is about to take on 29 March 2017.

Gubbins' story will be told in full in my next book Behind Closed Doors. It will be published in spring 2018.

Things to do in Brussels - by Sue Purkiss

You quite often see a little bit of Brussels on TV, don't you? It's generally a bit of one of the European Commission or Parliament buildings, used as a backdrop for a reporter relating the latest bit of news about some aspect of EU policy, or the latest twist or turn in Britain's tortuous relationship with Europe.

But there is much more to Brussels than this. Well, everybody knows about the chocolate and the beer, and lots of people know about the Manneken Pis, the little statue of the small boy having a pee. (But did you know that in one of the beautiful baroque buildings in the Grande Place, there is a display of the many little outfits in which, over the years, the little statue has been dressed for special occasions...?)

We go to Brussels quite often - we have family there, including two grandchildren. We're just back from there now, and here, to give you a flavour of the city, are some of the things we saw and did.

You may recognise that this is a Smurf. Quite a large one. Apart from chocolate and beer, Brussels' other great export is comic strips. The Smurfs, Asterix, and my elder grandson's personal favourite, Tintin, all hail from Belgium, and the weekend before last, there was a comic strip festival in the big square in front of the royal palace. Everyone was there: several Tintins, Captain Haddocks and Snowies; Asterix, Obelix, and heaven knows who else, all inexplicably playing musical instruments; ditto more Smurfs; and to top it all off, there was a Tintin Car Rally. This consisted largely of cars which had appeared in one or other of Herge's books, along with a few interlopers - notably a Batmobile.

Here's Tintin (whisper it softly, but I think he was a girl) and Snowy. 'He' strolled about smiling enigmatically and posing for photographs. 'He may not have been a dead ringer for Tintin, but he certainly had style.

This was the star of the cars - an Oldsmobile, lovingly cared for and the subject of much admiration. 

The cars entered the square under an inflatable purple archway. But when this glamorous car load arrived, the archway was quite overcome and promptly collapsed, which the ladies in the back seat thought was hilarious.

The whole thing was very relaxed, with cars and people milling about, much eating of chips, churros, waffles and ice cream, and not a health-and-safety rule in sight.

For our next outing, we hunted down the Musee d'Ixelles - no easy task as it's not in the centre, But we persevered because we were keen to see a special exhibition - 'Belgian Landscape'. Now, if you've ever driven to Brussels from Calais or Dunkerque, you may well have noticed that this particular bit of Belgian landscape is not especially varied. It's flat and it's green and there some nice trees, and that's about it. So we were interested to find out more about Belgium's other landscapes. Well, this didn't really happen, but we did see this nice picture of sand dunes, by Anna Boch - and some very lovely other paintings in the general collection, which has art from the 19th century up to the present.

Much easier to find is the Musee des Beaux Arts. It's just round the corner from the royal palace, on top of a hill, looking down on the lower city where the poorer people used to live. This is a wonderful museum/art gallery, with a very good shop and a pleasant cafe. The only unfortunate thing about it is that you have to choose which section to buy a ticket for; you can't wonder at will. We went for the Old Masters, because we wanted to see the Breughels...

... which, of course, were marvellous. A lot of the other Old Masters featured crucifixions, women with their eyes raised piously to heaven, and dead birds - but I always like the earlier pictures. Here's a detail from one such:

I've always loved the look of medieval gowns, and I thought this one was exquisite. (Unfortunately the security was draconian; they wouldn't let me take my handbag, which meant that I didn't have my notebook and so couldn't take note of the painter or the subject. She was a saint - that's all I can tell you: a very elegant one. Humble apologies for such lackadaisical scholarship.)

After the Old Masters, we had lunch in the museum cafe. We sat outside, looking over the rooftops, guarded by these splendid fellows as we ate delicious cheese with some sort of 'sirop' and grapes.

Another thing Brussels is known for is its Art Deco architecture. This is all over the place; you just have to look up, and the chances are that you will see a decorated panel or a balcony made of sinuously curved wrought iron.

The chief splendour of Belgium lies not in its landscape, but in its cities. Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven, Bruges; they're all beautiful. This is Aalst. I once sat beside a girl from there on the Eurostar, and she told me that she thought her city was just as lovely as these more famous ones. I've wanted to go and see it ever since, and last week we did. It's small, but it certainly has a lovely square, with this old belfry and cafes in front of the tall houses whose gables are decorated with curlicues. Why is it, I wonder, that all over Europe, cities both in the north and the south have these squares where people sit outside, drink coffee or sip wine and watch the world go by - but Britain does not?

Brussels is not as picturesque as these better preserved old cities. But it's vibrant and often unexpected - and of course, there's the chocolate. And the waffles... and the ice cream... and lots of art.