Anniversaries by Mary Hoffman

by Carfax2 (creative commons)

Everybody knows that 2012 saw the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne. And in 2013 those who wish to celebrate her long reign can do it all over again with the 60th anniversary of her Coronation. I heard a Yeoman Warder carefully explaining to a family at the Tower of London on Sunday that it took a year between accession and coronation not just because of preparing the ceremony but all the crests and headed notepaper that had to be changed.

It was the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth too - a fact we celebrated with a party here on the History Girls blog. Adèle Geras even baked him a cake!

But there were many other anniversaries less written and talked about. Here are some of them:

The film Jules et Jim, directed by François Truffaut, was first shown in Paris 50 years ago
100 years ago the National Biscuit Company began selling the Oreo
Captain Robert Scott made the last entry in his diary and died not long afterwards 100 years ago
100 years ago, the Titanic sank

50 years ago Coventry Cathedral was reconsecrated and Benjamin Britten's War Requiem first performed there.
150 years ago the Rev. Charles Dodgson invented a story about a girl and a white rabbit
Nelson Mandela was arrested in Johannesburg 50 years ago
150 years ago Debussy was born

The Battle of Borodino took place between Russian and Allied Forces 200 years ago, resulting in stalemate with huge loss of life
250 years ago a six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave his first public performance
200 years ago the Brothers Grimm published the first volume of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen.
The Cuban missile crisis was 50 years ago

Some of these I remember though Mozart was a bit before my time. And some had more personal significance than others. Growing up in the '60s, I really did think we might all be wiped out in a Nuclear Holocaust and it might happen before I could fascinate men in the way Jeanne Moreau did in Jules et Jim. I was in hospital recovering from having my appendix taken out (by Enid Blyton's husband) when the "old king" died. And I sang in Britten's War Requiem in the Netherlands and the UK.


But there was an even more personal anniversary in 2012, just before Christmas: my husband and I celebrated 40 years of marriage and it got me wondering about the names for these milestones and when they were invented. There's an association for the first 15 wedding anniversaries (though I don't remember getting any leather on my third or silk on my twelfth) then it all goes quiet till the 20th (China).

Wikipedia tells me, "The historic origins of wedding anniversaries date back to the Holy Roman Empire, when husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth anniversary and a gold wreath on the fiftieth." (I'm going to work on that gold wreath idea for ten years' time). Most of the other anniversary associations seem to have been invented by jewellers in the late 1930s.

So, disappointingly, it seems the commercial imperative was what named them.

But a big milestone in one's own life or the public celebration of an event remembered in one's lifetime underlines how rapidly the present becomes part of what now constitutes History. A novel set even fifty years ago would definitely count as historical fiction.

And what of 2013?

200 years since the publication of Pride and Prejudice, 100 since the riots at the first performance of The Rite of Spring, Benjamin Britten's centenary (on 22nd November, Saint Cecilia's Day - was ever anyone named and born so appropriately?), 50 years since the Beatles released their first LP and Sylvia Plath killed herself.

Like every year it will be a mixture. On this first day of the year are there any public or private that you look forward to celebrating?

Royal River Pageants by Eve Edwards

Today we should be treated to one of those very British moments: the Diamond Jubilee River Thames Pageant.  I'm guessing you are probably not even reading this blog post on the day as you will either be tackling the challenging logistics of finding a spot of the riverbank to view the spectacle or watching the whole thing from the comfort of your sofa.

Or perhaps you are reading this from somewhere else in the world and wondering what all the fuss is about. In the UK we are celebrating a whole year (yes, an entire year of flag waving) for the Queen's sixty years on the throne.  I suppose the party began with the royal wedding last year and has carried on to peak with the maximum viewing opportunity of the Thames pageant with the Queen heading a flotilla of over a thousand boats.  Queen Elizabeth II has certainly done us proud, not seriously stumbling over the decades, which is no doubt why she is still head of state for sixteen countries worldwide.  Inherited monarchy maybe a strange system for a democracy but I am not one to quarrel with the results.

Rainbow Portrait - a rather flattering likeness!

As a History Girl, my thoughts went to that earlier Elizabeth who also recognised the importance of pageantry.  You could argue the heart of Good Queen Bess' power was her grasp on her image.  A natural publicist, I think she was unmatched until the modern age of celebrity worship.  There was much more to the Tudor monarch, of course, than the Lilliputian stars who are nothing but image, yet the handling and moulding of their public reception is scarily similar - from the airbrushed portraits to the carefully staged public appearances.  And though I don't remember Bess entering any talent competitions, surviving her sister's reign was a little like a macabre version 'I'm a Protestant, get me out of here'.

A trip up and down the Thames was a necessity for Elizabeth I as the river connected many of her key royal residences - Windsor, Hampton Court, Richmond, Westminster, Greenwich.  The court would move often as a matter of convenience - when the *cough* conveniences were full, they upped and left for the next palace, leaving the cleaning out to the servants left behind (something I discovered when researching The Queen's Lady). There were other reasons too, of course, but I rather like this very practical one of the Queen running away from the blocked loos.

Windsor Castle

I had fun describing one of Elizabeth's ceremonial arrivals at Windsor for my first book: The Other Countess.  She didn't quite travel with a thousand boats but she was accompanied by yeoman of the guard, serjeants-at-arms and gentleman pensioners, ladies of the bedchamber and maids of honour musicians, two dwarf ladies, jesters and whichever politician or favourite she ordered to accompany her.  I have my hero calculating how much the display cost as it is largely from the accounts that we know the details of her household.  In similarly cash-strapped times, our present queen seems to have taken a leaf from her predecessor's book.  The original Bess expected her ministers to fund the 'civil service' such as it was often out of their own purse and pay for the honour of putting her up on her royal progresses.  I note that the pageant today is paid for by private funds.

Like our present queen, Bess also knew how to dress for practical impact.  I have been reading in The Week (an excellent news digest magazine)how the Queen chooses solid bright colours (like the yellow above) so she can be seen easily.  Shoes are worn in by attendants so the long hours on her feet don't result in blisters (and I think we can allow her one or two foibles like this at her age - I am amazed she still does so much meeting-and-greeting).  Bess demanded her ladies wore white or black so she could shine like a jewel in their midst.  I don't know about shoes but she was extremely demanding, losing her temper if they tried to rival her.  She boxed the ears of one noble lady for her presumptuous clothes and banished her from court.  Thankfully Queen Elizabeth II is far more tactful with her subjects.

There's a fun timeline of other Thames pageants here and an exhibition in at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, on the subject if you can get there.

www.eve-edwards.co.uk

New Elizabethans revisited by Mary Hoffman

Coronation street party June 1953

When does History begin? Well, clearly from all the current coverage, sixty years ago counts as historical.

I am a bit of a New Elizabethan myself I suppose, having been alive for all of the current monarch's reign. I am in the photograph above, having dressed up for a  Coronationstreet party in Clapham Junction. The extraordinary thing about this photo to me now, though, and indeed the having of a fancy dress costume made by my mother ("No I am not Little Red Riding Hood - I am an Irish Colleen.") is that my oldest sister had died the week before, at the age of 19.

That's the perennial issue between the public and private faces of national events. Any child or adult  in that picture might have been experiencing a wide range of things besides enthusiasm for a new young queen. OK, not many as dramatic as mine, but the Coronation for me is always connected with that life-changing event. You can't tell that from my party smile.

The Royals did not let the death of the Queen's grandmother, Queen Mary, ten weeks earlier, impede the Coronation and my family did not deny me attendance at the patriotic tea-party.

Three months ago, I blogged about Radio 4 choosing 60 "new Elizabethans"

I grumbled then about how  the final list would be full of dreary Prime Ministers, sportspeople and pop stars and wondered how they would compare with the first Elizabethans.

You can read who have actually been chosen as the New Elizabethans here.

As I feared, there are Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, but also Roy Jenkins and Enoch Powell and even Alex Salmond, John Hume and David Trimble (this last one choice, like Lennon and McCartney). Won't the Welsh feel peeved about this obviously PC-inclusive  list of UK leaders?

To my surprise only Basil D'Olivera and George Best representing sport (so clearly no element of role model involved as far as the latter is concerned). I wouldn't have included any sporting heroes myself but if forced would have said Roger Bannister.

There are about a dozen nominees I have never heard of or know little about. The writers are:  Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Philip Larkin, Harold Pinter, Roald Dahl and Salman Rushdie. What? Larkin rather than Eliot or Auden? They must be kidding. And it's not that one was born in America and the other defected there in 1939, because you don't have to be British to be on the list.

Germaine Greer and Rupert Murdoch are there, after all. So why not Steve Jobs as well as Tim Berners-Lee?

And why Crick without Watson (let alone without Rosalind Franklin)?

My list of writers would have included Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel. But then it's not supposed to be a list of any individual's preferences, is it? The criteria aren't really very clear. Someone who has been an influence on the nation? (Is that why the ghastly Simon Cowell is included?)

Pop music is limited to half the Beatles, David Bowie and Goldie, while Classical music is reduced to Benjamin Britten and perhaps also Margot Fonteyn (why not paired with that famous defector to the UK, Rudolf Nureyev as she was in life?) 

Barbara Windsor? Do they think her real name is Babs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha?

The person I am most furious to find on the list is Fred Goodwin (at least no longer "Sir") and the person I am most pleased to find is Doreen Lawrence, someone who really did and does make a difference to public and private lives.

But I would have included Shami Chakrabarti and Camila Batmanghelidjh too.

Not Queen Salote of Tonga