publications

#57 From mayor to meat market. Getting elected in the 18th Century.

At least until the 1990s historian Lewis Namier’s shadow loomed so heavily over the 18th century that that period – unlike any other - was still being written largely from the papers of central government and the gentry. Historians still considered the period, in the title of a well-thumbed textbook, the ‘aristocratic century.’ According to Namier, for example, the gentry bought their way into a parliamentary seat, mainly by purchasing land, or by gaining the approval of some unrepresentative local patron who had the borough in his pocket. Well, Jon's 1985 doctoral thesis, researched entirely from local documents rescued from mouldy parish chests and corporation vaults, contradicted Namier so baldly that although Jon was awarded his doctorate he could never publish. But now that the old Namier orthodoxy has collapsed and everyone agrees with Jon, he’s been able to bring out his book. It shows just how far the ordinary people of eighteenth century Britain ran rings around the gentry and aristocracy and ran things for themselves.
Listen here.

Abstract
W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman’s 1066 and All That is a satirical history of England, published in 1930. It has long been thought to be a parody of popular history textbooks, characteristic of a generation of post-war writers disillusioned with the tone of patriotic English exceptionalism of many books. This paper explores contemporary critiques of history textbooks in the first third of the twentieth century and finds, however, that 1066 And All That is unusual in its implied criticism. It suggests that the standpoint of its authors reflects more than simply the recoil of their generation of ex-servicemen. It proposes that the book reflects their own particular experience of reading history at Oxford in 1919–22, at a time when teaching in the Modern History School still included much that was literary and whiggish. G.N. Clark had been their tutor, a historian close to C.H. Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History, and sympathetic to Firth’s long and controversial campaign for reform. While Clark’s later reputation was as a cautious scholar, as a young man he was a witty iconoclast, active in left-wing politics. We trace his influence on Sellar and Yeatman through the lectures they attended and discover that 1066 And All That bears clear references to Clark’s reformist views on history at Oxford.

We turned to diaries kept during the second world war to comprehend that period of our families’ lives and our shared history. We chose nine diarists – five women and four men – all living in Britain when the war began in September 1939. We looked for working-class writers to include in the mix but we found none who kept going for the duration. To balance this we include letters and writings from a wide range of witnesses at the end of each seasonal chapter.

George Beardmore (31) a temporary insurance clerk who was afraid of losing his job and being unable to provide for his wife and baby

Vera Brittain (45) mother of the late Dame Shirley Williams and author of Testament of Youth. A nurse in the first world war and now a leading pacifist campaigner but surprisingly on Hitler’s hit list.

Alan Brooke (56) a senior officer in the British Army – eventually Chief of the Imperial General Staff -  writing an illegal diary to his wife Benita.

Anne Garnett (30) wife of a country lawyer in rural Somerset and mother of two young girls

Clara Milburn (56) living with her husband near Coventry’s engineering factories – likely to be a target for the Luftwaffe – with a son about to be called up.

Naomi Mitchison (41) author of 20 novels and mother of six children. She and her husband were Labour Party intellectuals and moved to their second home in Scotland for the duration where she became pregnant once more.

Harold Nicolson (53) – MP for West Leicester, former diplomat to Berlin, owner of Sissinghurst in Kent and husband of Vita Sackville West. He opposed Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. His name was also on Hitler’s hit list.  

Hermione Ranfurly (25) – alone in the world after her parents abandon her, her brother is killed in a flying accident and her grandparents die, now married to the sixth Earl of Ranfurly who is called up and posted to Palestine.

Charles Ritchie (32) a Canadian diplomat who’d studied at Oxford and moved in upper-class literary circles.

Edith Olivier (1872-1948), witty conversationalist and novelist, eccentric daughter of a Wiltshire rector, kept a journal for sixty years. In it she recorded her life as the first woman mayor of Wilton during the second world war, also her friendships with the many young artists she inspired and entertained: Cecil Beaton, Siegfried Sassoon, Lord David Cecil, the American poet Elinor Wylie, and William Walton (who wrote his first symphony whilst staying with Edith. But her greatest friend and protégé was the painter, Rex Whistler.

Penelope spent 5 years transcribing her great, great aunt’s hard-to-read handwriting and producing this book so that these revealing diaries could be appreciated by a wider audience.  They have been much quoted since.